Calling to mind, since first my love begun,
Th'uncertain times oft varying in their course,
How things still unexpectedly have run,
As it please the Fates, by their resistless force.
Lastly mine eyes amazedly have seen
Essex' great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain;
The quiet end of that long-living Queen;
This King's fair entrance; and our peace with Spain,
We and the Dutch at length ourselves to sever.
Thus the world doth and evermore shall reel;
Yet to my Goddess am I constant ever,
Howe'er blind Fortune turn her giddy wheel.
Though Heav'n and Earth prove both to me untrue,
Yet am I still inviolate to you.
...

In the light of birds the lunatic wakes from uncountable sleeps
His burning electric wires begin to glow
Birds sing in every forest of flesh and blood
The lunatic's fingers turn into strings in the outer silence

The darkness of half-asleep awareness roars through
The lunatic's widening arteries, it's another kind of
Waking-- and even total sleep is a frightening fire
It's compelled to burst out even while being awake.


...

Ours is the romance of ironies
That thrives on virtual volumes
Glide thou away from my skies
Like the desert mirage does

Preferring detachment to attachment
Ask thou to bury our dreams in oblivion
Vanish thee with the words
" Remember me less as you love me"


...

A pathetic tale of the sea I will unfold,
Enough to make one's blood run cold;
Concerning four fishermen cast adrift in a dory.
As I've been told I'll relate the story.
T'was on the 8th April on the afternoon of that day
That the village of Louisburg was thrown into a wild state or dismay,

And the villagers flew to the beach in a state of wild uproar
And in a dory they found four men were cast ashore.
Then the villagers, in surprise assembled about the dory,
And they found that the bottom of the boat was gory;
Then their hearts were seized with sudden dread,
when they discovered that two of the men were dead.

And the two survivors were exhausted from exposure, hunger, and cold,
Which used the spectators to shudder when them they did behold;
And with hunger the poor men couldn't stand on their feet,
They felt so weakly on their legs for want of meat.

They were carried to a boarding-house without delay,
But those that were looking on were stricken with dismay,
When the remains of James and Angus McDonald were found in the boat,
Likewise three pieces or flesh in a pool or blood afloat.

Angus McDonald's right arm was missing from the elbow,
and the throat was cut in a sickening manner which filled the villagers hearts with woe,
Especially when they saw two pieces of flesh had been cut from each thigh,
'Twas then the kind-hearted villagers did murmur and sigh.

Angus McDonald must have felt the pangs of hunger before he did try

...

I

I want to paint
2000 dead birds crucified on a background of night
Thoughts that lie too deep for tears
Thoughts that lie too deep for queers
Thoughts that move at 186,000 miles/second
The Entry of Christ into Liverpool in 1966
The installation of Roger McGough in the Chair of Poetry at Oxford
Francis Bacon making the President's Speech at the Royal Academy dinner

...

Never rock the boat? !
I completely disagree.
Indeed, I want to
Smash it into a million
Pieces! And begin
Again; start from scratch: create
New and vital forms
That will smite stale traditions,
And importantly,
Echo throughout the ages.
...

Heard ye the Gothic trumpet's blast?
The march of hosts as Alaric passed?
His steps have tracked that glorious clime,
The birth-place of heroic time;
But he, in northern deserts bred,
Spared not the living for the dad,
Nor heard the voice, whose pleading cries
From temple and from tomb arise.
He passed - the light of burning fanes
Hath been his torch o'er Grecian plains;
And woke they not, the brave, the free,
To guard their own Thermopylae?
And left they not their silent dwelling,
When Scythia's note of war was swelling?
No! where the bold Three Hundred slept,
Sad freedom battled not - but wept!
For nerveless then the Spartan's hand,
And Thebes could rouse no Sacred Band;
Nor one high soul from slumber broke,
When Athens owned the Northern yoke.

But was there none for thee to dare
The conflict, scorning to despair?
O city of the seven proud hills!
Whose name e'en yet the spirit thrills,
As doth a clarion's battle-call-
Didst thou too, ancient empress, fall?
Did no Camillus from the chain
Ransom thy Capitol again?
Oh! who shall tell the days to be,

...

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--

...

GLORY TO PIGEON:
Greedy Pigeon!
Don't fight with your wife!
Give her some rice
You've chased away the sparrows
Why's your outlook so narrow?
Learn charity and kindness
Don't act like Royal Highness
And you'd better meditate
Your stress levels aren't great

...