Somebody turned the lights on,
And Sally was standing there,
But the stranger wasn’t; he was done,
And Sal was arranging her hair.
A Lady’s Chamber
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Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where the dead men grope.
Silver, ruby-eyed leopards crouch
At the carven ends of the silken couch.
A purple mist of a perfume rare
Billows and sways, and weights the air.
The pale blue domes of the ceiling rise
Gemmed and carved like opium skies—
Golden serpents with crystal eyes.
Why should men grow strange and cold,
Like a marble heart in a breast of gold?
Their eyes are ice and they look strange tales,
They carve the mist with their long jade nails.
Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope
Scent the gloom where dead men grope;
They have stabbed their hearts with a golden sword
And hanged themselves with a silken rope.
Laughter
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Laughter's the lure of the gods; therefore must ye laugh
Mocking Destiny's nods, a strong wind driving the chaff
Lesbia
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From whence came this grim desire?
What was the wine in my blood?
What raced through my veins like fire
And beat at my brain like a flood?
Bare is the desert's dust,
Deep is the emerald sea—
Barer my deathless lust,
Deeper the hunger of me.
Goddess I sit and brood—
They cringe to my Hell-lit eyes,
The wretched women nude
I have gripped between my thighs.
As they writhed between my hands
And the ocean heard their screams
Firing my passion's brands
As I dreamed my lurid dreams.
Their breath came fast and hot,
Their tresses were Hades' mesh;
World and the worlds were not;
Flesh against pulsing flesh.
Their white limbs fluttered and tossed,
They whimpered beneath my grasp
And their maindenhood was lost
In strange unnatural clasp.
Hours my pleasure beguiled
The green Arcadian glades,
As idle mornings I whiled
With free-hipped country maids.
Under the star-gemmed skies
That looked upon curious scenes
I have spread the round white things
Of naked and frightened queens.
What was it turned my face
From brown-limbed Grecian boys,
Weary of their embrace
To darker and barer joys?
A miser weary of coins
I wearied of early charms,
Of youths who ungirt my loins,
Restless sighed in their arms.
With many a youth I lay,
But their wine to me was dregs.
I found scant joy in they
Who parted my supple legs.
I turned to the loves I prize;
Found joy amid perfumed curls,
In a maiden's amorous sighs,
In the tears of naked girls.
These are the wine of delight—
A girl's ungirdled charms,
A woman's laugh in the night
As she lies in my eager arms.
Goddess I sit and laugh,
Nude as the scornful moon—
World and the worlds are chaff
Say, shall my day be soon?
Libertine
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I set my soul to a wild lute
And taught my feet to dance.
I float, a broken straw,
Upon the Sea of Chance.
Life
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They bruised my soul with a proverb,
They bruised my back with a rod,
And they bade me bow to my elders,
For that was the word of God.
They pent up my soul and bound me
Till life was a living death,
They struck the wine from my fingers,
The passion from my breath.
I reached my hands to living,
They hurled me back into school,
And they said, "Go learn your lessons,
"You innocent young fool."
They yowled till they woke the trumpets --
And the sword blade rent the plow,
And they said, "It is your duty
"To die for your elders now."
They cowered far from the battle
As I went to the strife,
And I spilled my guts in the trenches
In the red dawn of my life.
And the elders named me hero,
But more than their words and ire
Was the scent of a strange wild flower
There where I died in the mire.
Lines to G. B. Shaw
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Oh, G.B.S., oh, G.B.S.,
You lousy son of a bitch,
You lift your yawp across the world
Like a bullfrog in a ditch.
I would that by foliage which
Your scholarly phizz thatches
Tied to a smoking stake you were
By a tribe of wild Apaches
You could deride them in that style
Of which you're so enamored,
While someone with a tomahawk
Your lordly cranium hammered.
And several thousand dancing braves,
The more the merrier,
Were sticking Spanish Daggers in
Your antequate posterior.
Lust
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I am a golden lure.
I am the laughter of false goddesses.
I go disguised as Love.
Men are my slaves.
Women are my slaves.
I am a goddess and the world is my shrine.
I am the night wind
Blowing through the leaves.
I am the moonlight of a hidden glade.
I am starlight
On a palace.
I am Lust.
The Madness of Cormac
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