The Witch’s Song

¶

Bring back, bring back to me
Wild eyes and wicked mouth!
Bring back my precious loves
Lost in the lanes of youth.

Bring back the necromancer,
The sorceress with her sighs
And the golden girl of summer
With secrets in her eyes!

Bring back the raging moon
And the old, old temptations!
Bring back the bed of lust,
The devil and damnation!

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THE GRAVEYARD OF DEAD GIRLS

♣

These gifts are not given, they have
to be taken. Things come
when you’re ready.
Slowly
day after day
new treasures arrive from
the summerlands. From the courts of

morning. From the magical lands
of longing. The southlands
of the sun. Two
shalt nots
are now needed:
never to open the
forbidden drawer again, never

again to touch the red velvet
box. This is the first thing.
The second, this:
never
again to crave
that delicious poison,
never again to hanker for

those addictive toxins, never
to go climbing again
the mountains of
madness,
never again
to wander in the waste
lands of lust, panting for shadows.

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Weep no more, dry your eyes!
Let me show you where peace lies:
In my pussy lies your prize!

Spider, spider, weave for me
Your web of black iniquity
So I can snare my victims three—
Honour, Truth and Dignity!

Laughing, lilting, see me go
Where the girls of summer blow
In the gardens we all know.

In the gardens of delight
Where nobody laughs tonight
But the loathers of daylight.

O In is out and Out is in—
And where we end, there we begin.
The downward road snakes back above
For Evil is the bite of Love.

O aren’t you sick of all my lies?
Aren’t you weary of being wise?
Come, find peace between my thighs!

Dying Slowly

Come, keep your heart from breaking
And let your lips be dumb
And learn to die a little
Until I cruel come.

Oh try and smile, my darling,
And learn the ancient art
Of plucking out the dagger
I’ve plunged into your heart.

THE  GARDENS  OF  YEARNING

You’ve heard of the gardens of yearning
Where rivers of shining crystal
Flow, and there in the courts of morning
The dead walk again, immortal.

There the boys all have laughing eyes
And they peep from the leaves of trees
At the angels rustling shy thighs
In their summerland sorceries.

There the angels are all young girls
Pubescent in bud and in bloom
And their eyes are like moths of darkness
And their mouths are like fruits of doom.

How they dance all night under Sirius—
By the moondrugged lakes how they dance!—
Now deathless, divinely delirious,
Round and round in a toxic trance!

And one day they wake up all weeping
In the cold harsh light of the dawn
And the dream has fled and there’s nothing—
No Xanadu, no Avalon!

And then with a shock they discover
In the hideous light of the sun
That out of the mists of Maya
The webs of the world have been spun.

O the sun’s made of cocaine powder
And the moon’s a mad butterfly
And everyone’s guilty of murder—
And only God’s got an alibi!

Now the boys are all bent and broken
And the girls have gum in their eyes
And the moon of magic has fallen
Into the dead sea where it lies.

 

---

 

From sparkling windows see
The spires of the New
Jerusalem a-shining.
Here’s no iniquity
To vex or trouble you
Or mar your soul’s refining.

From smutted windows see
The towers of Sodom rise,
The mean streets of Gomorrah.
Here’s no divinity
To undefile your eyes
Or save you from tomorrow.

THE GYBROCH
(CLICK TO EXPAND)

THE GYBROCH: A sex demon; a real entity of the hellworlds, a type of incubus or succubus who often assumes human form and eventually devours its caged victims after raping them a thousand times.

THE  GYBROCH

As I walked by the Sea of Longing,
The lost sea of Kasmere,
The gybroch flew to my shoulder
And gibbered in my ear.

My blood ran cold when I saw her,
Her long hair lank with brine,
Her wintry eyes like sunless seas,
Her mouth a thin red line.

The moon swooned sickly in heaven
As she bound me to her breast
And turned her wild smoke-pistol eyes
To the Isles of the Unblest.

Her wings spread wide and up we flew
Into the black abyss.
Her grip was hard, her claws were cold,
Her breath a leper’s kiss.

Terror and vertigo! and then—
Down to her wailing castle
On the island of Lalára
In the Lake of Ice Crystal.

She kept me in a hanging cage
Bound with a rubied chain
And brought me strange white breads to eat
And goblets of rare rain. 

I will not let you go, she growled,
Until you learn to dream
Of me alone, and be my slave
In the City of the Scream!

I shall keep you here forever
In the queendom of my crime,
My puppet and my plaything
Until the end of time!

You will learn to find a pleasure
In the deepest pits of pain
Till there’s nothing but a howling
Hole of darkness in your brain!

She climbed into my raging cage
And scourged me with her hair
And flung me the blood red rose
Of her cruel mouth to wear

And proffered the poisoned apples
Of her breasts with silken sighs
And turned on the pleasure fountains
Between her feathered thighs,

Until the bubble in her burst
Like a brain round a pistol
On the island of Lalára
In the Lake of Ice Crystal.

Now the moon hangs high in heaven—
Or else it hangs in hell!—
Like the moon in a madman’s painting
Seen from a padded cell.

“Lower than this…you cannot fall.”

Lower than this

lower than this
you cannot fall
the writing is
upon the wall

soon time will tell
if you can see
a sadder hell
than this you be

than this you are
than this become
who once were star
and now are scum

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THE  MONKEY  ON  YOUR  BACK

Who sprinkles pepper in my pot?
Upon my wall who laid this crack?
Who deals my cards, who writes my plot?
How comes this monkey on my back?

— The monkey on your back is you.
The lurker on the landing is
Your nemesis. You know it’s true
You made the killer and his kiss.

Agent provocateur of sin,
You built the mad menagerie:
The bars you clang, the cage you’re in
You forged in your mind factory.

Never, never, never again!—
And yet the horror’s back, it’s here.
The maggot festers in the brain,
The monkey gibbers in your ear.

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youtube presentation: The Monkey on Your Back

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I shed my tears for the shining
rills of Zion into rage
with skulls of myrrh and scorpions
in the sleep of kings in a cage
for I am the sun Tipháreth
and I lick their wounds for a wage

I shed my tears for the aching
stars of the young into stones
with eyes of ancient longing
in the city of sad saloons
for I am the lust of the angels
and I seed their suns and moons

I shed my tears for the endless
aeons of blood into horn
with webs of winter and summer
in the trance of the yet unborn
for I am the snake of Eden
and I give the rose its thorn

I shed my tears for the wounded
wailing for wombs into wings
with requiem bells for ringing
in the courts of the raving kings
for I am the doomed till the trumpets
turn all their rags into rings

I shed my tears for the Always
garden of grief without God
with suns and moons of Carmel
on the feast of the bleeding rod
for I am the Tree of Raptures
and I grow by red seas of blood

I shed my tears for the angels
weary of pleasures and pains
with eyes and tongues of terror
in the song of the singing drains
for I am the damned till your praises
wash out the world and its stains

“I clang the bells of madness until morning…”

Solitaire

Lying on red satin sheets, with long black hair,
My lilyscented lover Solitaire!
Her mouth lascivious and her eyes aslant,
My succuba so ripe and ravissante!

And so I abseil down from paradise
Into the bed of Satan, lord of lies,
Where my vampiric sweetheart Solitaire
Lies with vermilion mouth and raven hair.

My demon lover lapped in lilyskin
(Her eyes like smokeholes) gently sucks me in
To the sweet darkness where there is no sin.

I brush her neckbone with my burning lips
I froll her nipples with my fingertips
I stroke her silk and make her velvet wet
I slip my tongue into her cool cachette
I fly her on my broomstick to the moon
I bring her to the City of the Swoon.

And my dark angel drowns me all night long
In pools of pleasure where we’re always young.
I cry for beauty, all I find is burning!
I clang the bells of madness until morning.

And I have fished and caught in the abyss
The Beast that was, and is not, and yet is!—
And She has given me ad nauseam
New wounds, new swoons, and made me what I am!

Padding behind me soft, à pas-de-loup,
The devil whispers, “Madam, don’t you know,
God’s a leaf in the wind . . . It’s I who blow!”

NEVERMORE

Nevermore, nevermore!—
Old suns and moons of summer or
Childhood’s lost lands, youth’s shining shore.

Endure, endure.
Here lies the cure:
Your mind be clean, your heart be pure!

Learn the lesson, rind and core—
Then ship to your
Calm blue sea and sunkissed shore.