"The road we stalk"

...is stark-adorned with harbingers,
Enshrining fields of missioned woe
And words that whorl; so:

"Stabilities, I bring.
 And peace and tranquil space
 Apace our gallant, stepwise pairings
 Of progress, and passion's terminus,"
I sing.

Singed, moonstruck, and damped with sun
That dimlit down through wiry irises
Of progress, lit-up egress,
And stippled mess of goodness
Stashed in us. Lavishly, abrim
With spiral-masted vim,
Shoots of savage chivalry,
Civil masonry,
And carpentries of wood-that-were
That stranded time not rot
But greenly (draught of Autumn)
Flipped and flippant saught,
Flay-sashed in mantling, vibrant earth
And carpet's cloak of flower-sowing,
Sipped of viral colour, veal
Knowing that:

Pollution is begat
By vermouth towers. Rigour spat
Grey-mouthed, moon-shorn, and sun-forlorned relics of
Our realms of augury.

August. (Unwelcomed livery.)
August and welcome misery,
Commiserating steeps, unment,
Of sodden, mist-betrodden nar-wails
Of metaled air
And charnal, littering streets
We meant.

A gust of winded metal
Winding through our sculpture
(Sancrosanct), what sank above
Careening folds of
Crows, what preen
In sidling, sidelong rows
(Idling hopes, unsightly) of
Thronged, 'un-home' hoar, what dimmer-roar
Abeyance and intimations
Of matings of glass
And ghastly, ribbed might ---
That they might sate their spittled
Hate, askance.

That I might glance
A glancing lance through it
With eyes that happenstance
Would dance through it,
Subvert its cloying beams to calm,
Becalm its musty dawn, ---
I must! --- And dust
What paleness pools
Of water remain
Of freshness flushed
With last refrains, ---
Though I disdain to judge,
Divisively --- besmudged
By what detains
My heart from giving way
So solely.

Sole divisor
Of my hearth
And harbours of my neighbor's mettle
Ever earn
A haven in
 "My nettles' hope."

"The road we stalk"

...is stark-adorned with bringers of
That veriform design, undelt;
That svelt, unreeling rune of
   Symbols spent
On lowing songs,
On soughing tufts of wind 
Through ruins in
This last of lover's din.


----

"Epistle to D. Alexander C."

I.

There!,

where gaping hearts
     are gnashed 'gainst the utmost hearth,
do swill dark tides, at most
     to cloy their pride with vinous swell
that's swelt'ring well-uprising heat
     of tithed, bleating young
that yonder hung
     upon the black's entreat.
     
And cobbled to this crucible
     of rot'ry death
and karma's meth,

conjoined to this press
     of iron wills
that fess they wanted wills
     to bend to steel
and bright
     to splint'ring lines,

my science brought dim ore
     of veins within.

Some mountains whore
     to sop the brittle charm
of wardens posted at
     the lampost of the children.

Looms of other brethren dye.
Lo,

below elm-felled poolings
     of el knowledge,
wreaths upon
     a fell, up-seething pond
pellmell, water-stratiated,
     and strata work of leafy tree lattice
that's folding them
     into deep rest
and ("Ne'er, e'er") give them to
     the rest o' you ---

who sickly brey about
     these nimbus heaps
that once, "Oh, once!"
     did greenly shore
the slumber of
     the Summer Land.

Whose kin did mosh
     knit-tossed seeds of old
that sowed purblinding mess, perplexed,
     in this exposed, heathen dress ---

thy Master's quilt, unworn,
     though ghostly it adorn
the forests of your wealth
     and ghast of blasting cities' hulls,
as double nickels
     on our singly rotting, civil dime
do, consigned, rhyme
     that sullen missive
that you age:

    "I have no thing to hold on to."

II.

Sagely staid,
     on lulling, lesser plains
     of greensward kilt
     and highland, ruddy silt
     penumbra-ed by the shade
     of Ultimatum's accident
     of Occidentally grown enclaves of
     numberless and wafting grain,
     rudderless and seaward slain,
     and seam of masses, lame
     and stowing graft, amassed,
     in chambers aft of life and rifting throb,
     I clamber that,
     that daft or plainly:

    "You are just."

     I just disdain
     torn mounds of weaving rain;
     the missing tendrils of "What gain?";
     mist-trips of knowledge that profain

     thy grin,
     Ookami-kin.

With wander-crush
     that's culled valla chaparral
     of lushness, white,
     and wavering such
     a staving gun you've knelled into
     that fleeced grey of day
     has stopped reels
     of chirping flay; so real
     that I should hotly, besott'dly have you say,

    "I've held not gun
     nor gulls of leaving 'gainst
     the dayward, broken keeper-sons
     of moonbent, hyper-world bereavers,
     ensconsced, second-world believer-émigrés, or
     orderly, emergent knots of children steeped
     in humid-seeping, steep sublimes
     of petrol-bleeding, third-world climes."

     Keep her lofted well,
     unhidden, aug'ry kite
     of sight to weep
     into your limbs
     this meet of hope
     and minute's flight.

I hope you find your days.

I hope they sash your praise
     and bray indignance,
     praying say, that,

    "On this may
     you raise an entrant fist
     of meme-entranced, kiln supremacy,
     and braid them to thy gist:

     sovereign sun, son, and wist,
     storm-wing'd,
     steam-taught,
     and franker tinged with wolfen, loping pride,

     thy grin, unhinged,
     Ookami-kin."

"Epistle to A. Rex K." 

There grows a verdancy of pleasing dearth:
That mirth of comfort's lack
That girth of temples frosted in the dour
Flourishing the cysts of cracked thunder
With a raucous, slurred flurry 

Hurry! Ride,
And diligence will guide thy palms
To grieve thy shins
With warriored skins
And all about thy flanks,
The flaxen silk and satin
Of thy ranks ---

The warrior's grime
Is snow upon the fonder blush of lamp
And dreams that 'neath the sheath encamp
Are silvered by a steam of morning breath 

Shiver! Go,
And by the sliver of
The jays in mourning know:

The cold, out-cropping dawn
Bedecks thee,
Luminescent Rex.