Here are the latest poems I’ve written, from newest to oldest. Comments are welcome.
<i>Felix Culpa</i>
The summer breezes lilted through her hair
As she pranced to the gnarled and wizened tree.
“What dark secret unknown to me hath thee?”
She pondered, and bit the fruit that plumped there.
Her eyes shut, opened narrow with a gleam.
“Where once I felt a summer’s breeze inside,
A tempest swirls, and I would match its stride!
Lilt me no more, winds. Pummel me, and scream!”
She cast herself out to find the storm-gale,
To dance the violent gusts to exhaustion–
But rather found me, couched in confusion
In the verdance of our protective vale.
Rouged with the flush of paradisial fruit,
She bade me join her panting hot pursuit.
<i>Nymph</i>
Lure me, nymph, to your cave-secluded lair.
Court my licentious thirsts and starving lusts;
With dark enticements blind my roving stare
To the gleams of day, till my sight adjusts.
My mortal cravings pant for fulfilments
More keen and lusty than cozy earth brings,
To its docious little inhabitants.
Their little joys scarcely whet my longings.
I mean to overreach this small delight!
The foolishness of humankind is fear.
I shy not from your bondage, evening sprite.
Nymph! Come to me, as stars of heaven rear
Their glorious passions 'cross the self-lit night;
And pleasure me darkling with throat-caught gasp
Till fey charms loose their nigh-eternal grasp.
<i>Guardian Angel</i>
A tattered angel holds out bloody hands,
And drips his life onto depleted soil.
Plants violently sprout up from the sands
And blossom in flushes, and wildly coil.
“I am the way to resurrect your heart.
My hands will touch and move your mortal flesh,
Stain it red with raw passion, and impart
The pain of deep love to wrack it afresh.”
A falling teardrop stains the angel’s cloak,
And trickles down his cruelly naked breast.
The plants tremble and softly moan, and soak
The ground with living drops. I bare my chest.
Sorrows rain like an angel’s wounded prayer.
Kill now your tender breath, and bloodshot, stare.
<i>A Scientist and a Priest</i>
“You whimsical and myth-perplexéd man.
Fond and random sentiments guide your thought,
And willful inclinations are the span
Of your knowledge. Old preacher, you know nought.
Only by experiment can one know!
For knowledge comes of trial and error,
And rude hypotheses, once tested, go
The way of religions: they go under.
With shut eyes, you’ll never know the fresh thrill,
The ecstatic prospect of new findings.
Open your eyes, see the marvels that fill
Our land, and try to grasp the diverse things!”
“I know the thrill of reaching your fresh goal
Is nothing, to my deep content of soul.
I do not truly know if God exists,
Or whether my devout prayers will be heard,
When my days end and my weary eyes close;
Yet my inward search for meaning persists!
And I feel, when my deep passions are stirred,
My labor is the truest mankind knows.”
<i>Riddled Things</i>
I find my solace not in riddled things,
That trick the mind to surprised oddity,
That boggle the brain with complexity,
And startle it to unforeseen feelings.
I find no lasting joy in novel things:
The thrill of unexpected wit, to me,
Is merely the passing frivolity
Of an artificer and his playthings.
My pleasures rise from the depths of dark life,
The currents that run through the living soul,
That rise up to our consciousness by strife,
Like water drawn from a yielding well-hole.
The flowing passions that my labor brings
Excel by far my joy in riddled things.