GAWAIN`S LAMENT.
If I could stand up where I lie,
If I could arise with my breath.
Through sulpherious clouds would I fly, 
While devouring the vapors of death.
If I could remodel the mud
Making hermits of primeordal ooze.
Then I would imbibe my own blood,
Bid apples and serpents adieu.
Bright silver,old copper and lead,
Fine feathers of pure beaten Gold,
I will steal from the face of the dead
When passion has perished from cold.
Base body and spirit will wed
When all of my treasures Iv sold.
If I could stand up to be free.
If I could but taste my own teeth.
If I could but feel what I see
If I could escape whats beneath.
I would glide in quicksilver flight.
Twix ravens and signits to play
Then I would regain second sight.
And abandon grey feet of clay.
With peacocks I would be transformed.
By placeing bronze eyes in my tail.
With knights of the east would I storm.
And truths falling towers Id scale.
By melding my mind with the swarm
I would find and forge my own grail.
If I could just move in the still,
If I could but turn on the stile.
Then Id become wind for the mill
Or water that flows from the Nile.
If I could make cannons like bells.
To fire the sun at the sky.
I would fly like the moon over hell,
Never fearing the reasons for why
Id decipher the lines of the earth.
Magnetizing all danger and fear
Return to the place of my birth,
Lay Orchids on throne of King Lear.
I would drink from the fountain of youth,
To proceed behind my own bier.
If I could emblazen the night.
If I could just green what was grey.
If I could but thicken the light.
Then who could deny what I say.
If I could still lose what is found,
Yet scribble the words in a book,
I would plant my eyes in the ground
Gain vision of what was forsook.
Old nuns and whores I both will kiss
And search the forest for Mandrake.
With thorny thistle in my fist,
I will court the Lady of the Lake
And spark a becon in the mist
And follow in Fat Tuesdays wake.
If I could stand up where I lie,
If I could just bend where I sway.
With morter and pessal Id try
The sins of our fathers to pay.
Id build magic pelicans nest,
where nourishments knots Id untie.
Let damsals embroider my quest,
Let passion like Gabrial fly.
So let eagles of Jupiter prey
As they sing their secrets in Chyme.
Let them eat the heart of decay
While their sounding eeyrie in rhyme.
And I will clime upward through time.
If I should stand up where I lie.............
KNIGHT ERRANT
A dark and dreary knight returns,
His gifts of roses has been spurned.
But gilded stirups have been earned
Now all the dragons have been burned.
With body battered, brused and torn
His spirits poor with hope forlorn
He`s wandered homless for score years
And passed beyond the vale of tears.
No longer quite so cavalier
Within his eyes the shade of fear,
That shields him from forgotten dreams.
All sacrificed on field of screams
.
"Look"he sings"I am surrounded
By thorny roses made from wine,
In my hunger I`m confounded
On trail of breadcrumbs I must dine"
He steped within a twilight stream
To pluck his tune upon moonbeam,
And there inside reflected place
With visions bright his eyes were graced;
Of virgins learning from old whores
And Bishops preying on the law
While Marx`s paid pennance for the poor
By burning down their wooden Tor.
The Knight sat down with leaden brow,
A mighty guies upon him now.
To plough a fallow field he`d vow,
And pluck the acorns from the bough
His days of tilting were all past,
And from the flesh he swore would fast.
Old memories would serve him well
Repaving painfull paths from hell.
He carried still the lighthouse bell
That he`d recovered from the well.
And from its chime he understood.
That She was water...while he was wood.
He stumbled on around the daze
With hollow hand and eyes aglaze
Onto a pier where prelates praise
The idols that men made from clay.
Where monks were chanting on the sand
Accompanied by flaggile bands,
And telling all with joyfull tear
That Potolomy was drawing near.
That all should bow and bend the knee
If they would maintain liberty.
But from the madness of their plea,
The brave knight errant did break free.
He travled on beyond the plain,
Unto a chasm without name,
Gehanas pit of evil fame
Whos very sight could cause great pain.
He sat upon the edge to wait
To find out what would be his fate
And saw the lemmings streaming by.
He stoped the leader to ask why.
With Hitlers voice it did reply.
"Because, I know one day we`ll fly"
So using sacrifice as gain,
He crossed the chasm without shame,
And found at last the place he`d sought;
The resting place of Argonaughts.
Beneath an oak, a pile of bones
Tended nightly by three crones.
The suitor of a saint called Joan,
Had found at last a royal throne.
For caution now he did not care,
The sword and Grail were buried here
He sang aloud his Nome-De-Gere
And wounded heart he did lay bare.
Dismounting from the dread nightmare
At last he could embrase dispare.
The Grail he`d found so close to home
Was buried in a palendrome.
The years he`d squndered spent in Rome
While crawling through the catacombs,
Were but the prelude to his fate,
Where he had learned not love but hate.
All past specters he could shed,
His hungry soul at last was fed.
While fate with free will could be wed,
The message on the wall stays red.
Amours commitments he had held fast
While he himself was still outcast.
Had kept him on the narrow track
And been his aphrodisiac.
Full circle of the zodiac
Unbent the stiffness of his back.
And though he suffered still in pain,
He had survived the hurricain.
That blew cold cobwebs from his mind
And gave him space to search and find
The meaning of his carnal side.
Within this place he did dicide
To make The Earth his one true bride.
He could at last in peace abide.
BABYLON.
This is no country for old men. Where young
Turks spray graffiti on the walls and trees.
A dying generation quoting songs
Of purple haze and soft quicksilver seas,
Are selling fish and fowl all summer long.
All those dreams,begotten,still born and died.
Smoked in the sensual music of neglect,
Petrifying unageing intellect.
A glutted nation is a foulsome thing,
A silken shroud upon some bones unless
Our conciance rears its head to loudly sing
For every mortal who in tatters dress.
Long gone the singing fools "a wandering"
Who gave verb to the music of distress.
And herefor have I sailed the seas and gone
Unto the ancient land of Babylon.
Where prophets selling off Gods Holy fire,
Have built themselves a heaven here on Earth,
While paradice in Harlem is a wire.
So we respond by telling tales of mirth,
Comsuming misery, sick with desire,
Counting on its value to know its worth.
Building piles of garbage ever higher.
Carnal pleasure without the pain of birth.
At odds with nature,It cannot prevale
Beyond the midnight passing of the moon.
The dream of Grecian forums doomed to fail
Beneath the power of the nordic rune.
So Ill recross the ocean to the Gael,
Tell tales to Irish poets in the sun
About the hights of ancient Babylon,
Of its past and passing,
And what is yet to come..........................................
