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Onoma Feb 2017
Pi~lated by Pontius to an undisclosed location--
we traded presence, as the fruits of labor.
Half-eaten...the ratty dark-lets of our pits--
eyed forms of survival.
You the better for, I the better for...with our
overgrown estates of separation--(spare us the
indignity)...never!
We were made for this, weren't we?
Who got in front of a beam of light first--you or I...
seems like something I would have done--nonetheless,
therefrom the race.
More naked than two millennia of winter...whoa,
aye--glory baby, glory!
Eye contacting eyes...in and out, out and in, sheets
bathed in volumes of water.
We tried to ****** one another in a fit of passion...
so what.
A passion that swore responsibility for whatever it
may, or may not do...so what.
I was the burning mascot of your dormitory for
three and a half years, illegally--sharing a single bed,
cultivating my poetry.
You Adam-ed me...I Eve-ed you--we watched the apple
go red, we both bit--chewing it to the core, mouth to mouth.
As our jaws tired, we noticed the poppies everywhere...
the poppies are everywhere, we cried!
Black, covetous mass, black--sleep bedding sleep, closing
skies--opening grounds.
The poppies are everywhere--we began to horde grace,
deadpan our burial grounds in plain view, something
went amiss.
We played with frames, instead of obliterating the de-vice...
for faces lost in time, adoration.
Where's the reserve to suffer this rich knowledge--everywhere
is your womb, all-seeing and blind!
The poppies are everywhere...I pose upon the ground--
offer tragic gestures, feel me!
No, it all must be exhausted--human genius must be bested,
made the fool--it must be so.
Air after air of convincibility booted--left, right and center stage.
Clay in cold light, natural of its own...that's what we should want
for one another, shouldn't it...how?
We wanting more, as someone we may never know--let alone
one another.
Take that light, and work it to forgiveness, that is possible I
believe...the poppies wink.
Funny thing though...one of the two shall work far less for that
forgiveness, nearly not at all--******* inequity!
No...the schema's perfect--karma's debt, as served, perfect.
Stay in that truth, but the Truth is too big...the poppies are everywhere.
My head wraps around it like a whirling dervish--though no planet
dizzies...this is no matter of intellect but Heart.
The butterfly that's pinned--becomes the pinhead...spare me!
If I am she, and she is me...as one and all, who spares who--from
what and why...the poppies pock affirmatively.
*First of a series of poems, as in that vein, under this title.
Jo  Oct 2014
Poppies
Jo Oct 2014
Poppies blossom like open cuts.
Ripe and red, they fill the air
With a cloying sweetness
So potent anyone downwind
Must shut their eyes and breathe
Through open mouths.  Tasting
The breath of flowers, they grow
Nauseous and afraid.  

The fields sway in the hot breeze
Until they resemble an ocean aflame -
It is here, among these poppies, I have
Found the blood of the Earth.  
It is moist and toxic, an acid eating away the soles
Of all that wade through it.  
How many gaunt, pale bundles of bone
Rest below these soft, red petals?
No one dares to count.  

People do not fear such
Lovely things - if they’ve only seen
Pictures.  How nice it must be
To know nothing of poppies
But their color, their shape.  
They seem almost beautiful -
But you know better.

You have stood waist deep in the
Malignant fields, breathing the air
That slowed your limbs -
Turning your arms and legs into pendulums
Swaying to the beat of the buds
That encircle them -
Until you knelt, weighed down,
Nearly submerged by saccharine terrors,
And cried, hoping the water leaking from your heart
Would put out the fires you find yourself embracing.  
After all, during the darker hours
Any light is better than no light at all
(Or so something whispers in your tired ear).  

You know the horror of poppies -
But  still you have yet to plunge
Past the black eyes of those red beasts -
For when the wind blows clean, cold
Air to you what do you do?
You raise your arms and let yourself
Feel as though you can fly -
And one day…one day
You will look down
And see yourself above
A ground free of poppies.
For a friend
"Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way."
Letter of George Keats, 18--


Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark,
Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake,
Writhing eternally in smoky gyres,
Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn
Within them. So the Eastern fisherman
Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal,
Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar;
And -- well, how went the tale? Like this, like this? . . .

No herbage broke the barren flats of land,
No winds dared loiter within smiling trees,
Nor were there any brooks on either hand,
Only the dry, bright sand,
Naked and golden, lay before the seas.

One boat toiled noiselessly along the deep,
The thirsty ripples dying silently
Upon its track. Far out the brown nets sweep,
And night begins to creep
Across the intolerable mirror of the sea.

Twice the nets rise, a-trail with sea-plants brown,
Distorted shells, and rocks green-mossed with slime,
Nought else. The fisher, sick at heart, kneels down;
"Prayer may appease God's frown,"
He thinks, then, kneeling, casts for the third time.

And lo! an earthen jar, bound round with brass,
Lies tangled in the cordage of his net.
About the bright waves gleam like shattered glass,
And where the sea's rim was
The sun dips, flat and red, about to set.

The prow grates on the beach. The fisherman
Stoops, tearing at the cords that bind the seal.
Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and wan?
Lapis? carnelian?
Unheard-of stones that make the sick mind reel

With wonder of their beauty? Rubies, then?
Green emeralds, glittering like the eyes of beasts?
Poisonous opals, good to madden men?
Gold bezants, ten and ten?
Hard, regal diamonds, like kingly feasts?

He tugged; the seal gave way. A little smoke
Curled like a feather in the darkening sky.
A blinding gush of fire burst, flamed, and broke.
A voice like a wind spoke.
Armored with light, and turbaned terribly,

A genie tramped the round earth underfoot;
His head sought out the stars, his cupped right hand
Made half the sky one darkness. He was mute.
The sun, a ripened fruit,
Drooped lower. Scarlet eddied o'er the sand.

The genie spoke: "O miserable one!
Thy prize awaits thee; come, and hug it close!
A noble crown thy draggled nets have won
For this that thou hast done.
Blessed are fools! A gift remains for those!"

His hand sought out his sword, and lightnings flared
Across the sky in one great bloom of fire.
Poised like a toppling mountain, it hung bared;
Suns that were jewels glared
Along its hilt. The air burnt like a pyre.

Once more the genie spoke: "Something I owe
To thee, thou fool, thou fool. Come, canst thou sing?
Yea? Sing then; if thy song be brave, then go
Free and released -- or no!
Find first some task, some overmastering thing
I cannot do, and find it speedily,
For if thou dost not thou shalt surely die!"

The sword whirled back. The fisherman uprose,
And if at first his voice was weak with fear
And his limbs trembled, it was but a doze,
And at the high song's close
He stood up straight. His voice rang loud and clear.


The Song.

Last night the quays were lighted;
Cressets of smoking pine
Glared o'er the roaring mariners
That drink the yellow wine.

Their song rolled to the rafters,
It struck the high stars pale,
Such worth was in their discourse,
Such wonder in their tale.

Blue borage filled the clinking cups,
The murky night grew wan,
Till one rose, crowned with laurel-leaves,
That was an outland man.

"Come, let us drink to war!" said he,
"The torch of the sacked town!
The swan's-bath and the wolf-ships,
And Harald of renown!

"Yea, while the milk was on his lips,
Before the day was born,
He took the Almayne Kaiser's head
To be his drinking-horn!

"Yea, while the down was on his chin,
Or yet his beard was grown,
He broke the gates of Micklegarth,
And stole the lion-throne!

"Drink to Harald, king of the world,
Lord of the tongue and the troth!
To the bellowing horns of Ostfriesland,
And the trumpets of the Goth!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The drink-horns crashed and rang,
And all their talk was a clangor of war,
As swords together sang!

But dimly, through the deep night,
Where stars like flowers shone,
A passionate shape came gliding --
I saw one thing alone.

I only saw my young love
Shining against the dark,
The whiteness of her raiment,
The head that bent to hark.

I only saw my young love,
Like flowers in the sun --
Her hands like waxen petals,
Where yawning poppies run.

I only felt there, chrysmal,
Against my cheek her breath,
Though all the winds were baying,
And the sky bright with Death.

Red sparks whirled up the chimney,
A hungry flaught of flame,
And a lean man from Greece arose;
Thrasyllos was his name.

"I praise all noble wines!" he cried,
"Green robes of tissue fine,
Peacocks and apes and ivory,
And Homer's sea-loud line,

"Statues and rings and carven gems,
And the wise crawling sea;
But most of all the crowns of kings,
The rule they wield thereby!

"Power, fired power, blank and bright!
A fit hilt for the hand!
The one good sword for a freeman,
While yet the cold stars stand!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The air was thick with wine.
I only knew her deep eyes,
And felt her hand in mine.

Softly as quiet water,
One finger touched my cheek;
Her face like gracious moonlight --
I might not move nor speak.

I only saw that beauty,
I only felt that form
There, in the silken darkness --
God wot my heart was warm!

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
Another chief began;
His slit lips showed him for a ***;
He was an evil man.

"Sing to the joys of women!" he yelled,
"The hot delicious tents,
The soft couch, and the white limbs;
The air a steam of scents!"

His eyes gleamed, and he wet his lips,
The rafters shook with cheers,
As he sang of woman, who is man's slave
For all unhonored years.

"Whether the wanton laughs amain,
With one white shoulder bare,
Or in a sacked room you unbind
Some crouching maiden's hair;

"This is the only good for man,
Like spices of the South --
To see the glimmering body laid
As pasture to his mouth!

"To leave no lees within the cup,
To see and take and rend;
To lap a girl's limbs up like wine,
And laugh, knowing the end!"

Only, like low, still breathing,
I heard one voice, one word;
And hot speech poured upon my lips,
As my hands held a sword.

"Fools, thrice fools of lust!" I cried,
"Your eyes are blind to see
Eternal beauty, moving far,
More glorious than horns of war!
But though my eyes were one blind scar,
That sight is shown to me!

"You nuzzle at the ivory side,
You clasp the golden head;
Fools, fools, who chatter and sing,
You have taken the sign of a terrible thing,
You have drunk down God with your beeswing,
And broken the saints for bread!

"For God moves darkly,
In silence and in storm;
But in the body of woman
He shows one burning form.

"For God moves blindly,
In darkness and in dread;
But in the body of woman
He raises up the dead.

"Gracile and straight as birches,
Swift as the questing birds,
They fill true-lovers' drink-horns up,
Who speak not, having no words.

"Love is not delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.

"Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.

"Satin ease of the body,
Fattened sloth of the hands,
These and their like he will not send,
Only immortal fires to rend --
And the world's end is your journey's end,
And your stream chokes in the sands.

"Pleached calms shall not await you,
Peace you shall never find;
Nought but the living moorland
Scourged naked by the wind.

"Nought but the living moorland,
And your love's hand in yours;
The strength more sure than surety,
The mercy that endures.

"Then, though they give you to be burned,
And slay you like a stoat,
You have found the world's heart in the turn of a cheek,
Heaven in the lift of a throat.

"Although they break you on the wheel,
That stood so straight in the sun,
Behind you the trumpets split the sky,
Where the lost and furious fight goes by --
And God, our God, will have victory
When the red day is done!"

Their mirth rolled to the rafters,
They bellowed lechery;
Light as a drifting feather
My love slipped from my knee.

Within, the lights were yellow
In drowsy rooms and warm;
Without, the stabbing lightning
Shattered across the storm.

Within, the great logs crackled,
The drink-horns emptied soon;
Without, the black cloaks of the clouds
Strangled the waning moon.

My love crossed o'er the threshold --
God! but the night was murk!
I set myself against the cold,
And left them to their work.

Their shouts rolled to the rafters;
A bitterer way was mine,
And I left them in the tavern,
Drinking the yellow wine!

The last faint echoes rang along the plains,
Died, and were gone. The genie spoke: "Thy song
Serves well enough -- but yet thy task remains;
Many and rending pains
Shall torture him who dares delay too long!"

His brown face hardened to a leaden mask.
A bitter brine crusted the fisher's cheek --
"Almighty God, one thing alone I ask,
Show me a task, a task!"
The hard cup of the sky shone, gemmed and bleak.

"O love, whom I have sought by devious ways;
O hidden beauty, naked as a star;
You whose bright hair has burned across my days,
Making them lamps of praise;
O dawn-wind, breathing of Arabia!

"You have I served. Now fire has parched the vine,
And Death is on the singers and the song.
No longer are there lips to cling to mine,
And the heart wearies of wine,
And I am sick, for my desire is long.

"O love, soft-moving, delicate and tender!
In her gold house the pipe calls querulously,
They cloud with thin green silks her body slender,
They talk to her and tend her;
Come, piteous, gentle love, and set me free!"

He ceased -- and, slowly rising o'er the deep,
A faint song chimed, grew clearer, till at last
A golden horn of light began to creep
Where the dumb ripples sweep,
Making the sea one splendor where it passed.

A golden boat! The bright oars rested soon,
And the prow met the sand. The purple veils
Misting the cabin fell. Fair as the moon
When the morning comes too soon,
And all the air is silver in the dales,

A gold-robed princess stepped upon the beach.
The fisher knelt and kissed her garment's hem,
And then her lips, and strove at last for speech.
The waters lapped the reach.
"Here thy strength breaks, thy might is nought to stem!"

He cried at last. Speech shook him like a flame:
"Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky,
Each lovely one would be a withered shame --
Each thou couldst find or name --
To this fire-hearted beauty!" Wearily

The genie heard. A slow smile came like dawn
Over his face. "Thy task is done!" he said.
A whirlwind roared, smoke shattered, he was gone;
And, like a sudden horn,
The moon shone clear, no longer smoked and red.

They passed into the boat. The gold oars beat
Loudly, then fainter, fainter, till at last
Only the quiet waters barely moved
Along the whispering sand -- till all the vast
Expanse of sea began to shake with heat,
And morning brought soft airs, by sailors loved.

And after? . . . Well . . .
The shop-bell clangs! Who comes?
Quinine -- I pour the little bitter grains
Out upon blue, glazed squares of paper. So.
And all the dusk I shall sit here alone,
With many powers in my hands -- ah, see
How the blurred labels run on the old jars!
***** -- and a cruel and sleepy scent,
The harsh taste of white poppies; India --
The writhing woods a-crawl with monstrous life,
Save where the deodars are set like spears,
And a calm pool is mirrored ebony;
***** -- brown and warm and slender-breasted
She rises, shaking off the cool black water,
And twisting up her hair, that ripples down,
A torrent of black water, to her feet;
How the drops sparkle in the moonlight! Once
I made a rhyme about it, singing softly:

Over Damascus every star
Keeps his unchanging course and cold,
The dark weighs like an iron bar,
The intense and pallid night is old,
Dim the moon's scimitar.

Still the lamps blaze within those halls,
Where poppies heap the marble vats
For girls to tread; the thick air palls;
And shadows hang like evil bats
About the scented walls.

The girls are many, and they sing;
Their white feet fall like flakes of snow,
Making a ceaseless murmuring --
Whispers of love, dead long ago,
And dear, forgotten Spring.

One alone sings not. Tiredly
She sees the white blooms crushed, and smells
The heavy scent. They chatter: "See!
White Zira thinks of nothing else
But the morn's jollity --

"Then Haroun takes her!" But she dreams,
Unhearing, of a certain field
Of poppies, cut by many streams,
Like lines across a round Turk shield,
Where now the hot sun gleams.

The field whereon they walked that day,
And splendor filled her body up,
And his; and then the trampled clay,
And slow smoke climbing the sky's cup
From where the village lay.

And after -- much ache of the wrists,
Where the cords irked her -- till she came,
The price of many amethysts,
Hither. And now the ultimate shame
Blew trumpet in the lists.

And so she trod the poppies there,
Remembering other poppies, too,
And did not seem to see or care.
Without, the first gray drops of dew
Sweetened the trembling air.

She trod the poppies. Hours passed
Until she slept at length -- and Time
Dragged his slow sickle. When at last
She woke, the moon shone, bright as rime,
And night's tide rolled on fast.

She moaned once, knowing everything;
Then, bitterer than death, she found
The soft handmaidens, in a ring,
Come to anoint her, all around,
That she might please the king.

***** -- and the odor dies away,
Leaving the air yet heavy -- cassia -- myrrh --
Bitter and splendid. See, the poisons come,
Trooping in squat green vials, blazoned red
With grinning skulls: strychnine, a pallid dust
Of tiny grains, like bones ground fine; and next
The muddy green of arsenic, all livid,
Likest the face of one long dead -- they creep
Along the dusty shelf like deadly beetles,
Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood
May run down easily to the blind mouth
That snaps and gapes; and high above them there,
My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow ***
Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees
Still moan among the low sweet purple clover,
Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods,
When the incredible silver of the moon
Comes like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches,
Still steal dark shapes from the enchanted glens,
Which yet are purple with high dreams, and still
Fronting that quiet and eternal shield
Which is much more than Peace, does there still stand
One sharp black shadow -- and the short, smooth horns
Are clear against that disk?
O great Diana!
I, I have praised thee, yet I do not know
What moves my mind so strangely, save that once
I lay all night upon a thymy hill,
And watched the slow clouds pass like heaped-up foam
Across blue marble, till at last no speck
Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon
Rose in much light, and all night long I saw
Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven,
There came a terrible silence, and the mice
Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp,
All the small night-sounds stopped -- and clear pure light
Rippled like silk over the universe,
Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast,
Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not
For what I waited -- something very great --
I dared not look up to the sky for fear
A brittle crackling should clash suddenly
Against the quiet, and a black line creep
Across the sky, and widen like a mouth,
Until the broken heavens streamed apart,
Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires,
Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God.
I lay there, a black blot upon a shield
Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held
Until I staggered up and cried aloud,
And then it seemed that something far too great
For knowledge, and illimitable as God,
Rent th
Stu Harley Sep 2018
young red poppies
sparkle in the air
spring flair awakens
untangle their hair
then
poppies...poppies
everywhere
ShuckFacedGirl Jan 2016
roses are red
violets are blue
but we both know
that’s not true

Roses are red
but violets aren’t blue
they’re violet which
is a different hue

plus, roses are red
but poppies are too
and poppies are better-
they remind me of you

poppies are red,
but what is blue?
I’ll get to the point
before I go coocoo

Poppies are red
violets aren’t blue
I just wanna say
I love you
Just a silly poem for Josh #^-^#
David Williams  Sep 2012
Poppies
David Williams Sep 2012
As poppies drip blood red petals
Among the fields where souls do roam
A silenced voice, away from home
Buried deep with twisted metals

Khaki men, are dead and rotting
As poppies drip blood red petals
Overgrown with rats and nettles
Men and women stood reflecting

A resting place to end the fight
In peaceful slumber they settle
As poppies drip blood red petals
Weathered cadavers all bleached white

Depressions fade, vista settles
Bodies and branches both stripped bare
Once passionate men, showed they care
As poppies drip blood red petals.

© 27/6/2012
Come on ! Come on !
Let's go ! . . .
row upon row
do the red poppies grow

Red ! Red !
the petal fed
taken from the lives
of the young and dead

The white bones
bleached of dreams
and forgotten sins ,
everything

Row upon row
of white the markers go
drenched in poppies
the dead in red grow

Bleached bone dreams
no breath
no whispers of "dear"
that death's spear pierced

Their's , no longer
the years , the fears , and tears
where the red poppies grow
row upon row
Poppies abloom in memoriam.

Fields content of the past.

Storms brewing above.

To renew them once again.

Memories of battle, scars on the earth.
Revealed once again.

In the fields.

It was the poppies to bloom

In memoriam.
By J.R.Williamson
No one calls me by name anymore
I'm the Poppy Man to most
At least that's how most folks know me

I've been selling poppies for the legion
Since 1946
Let's see...yep...it was 46
Went over in 43 at 17 years of age
Home in 45, and yep...46
Same spot too.
There's been two owners here at Danny's. Funny thing though....
neither was called Danny. Turns out Danny was the brother of the original owner, got shot down over Germany, so they named the place after him.
I guess that's why they let me come here and sell poppies every year.

Good thing.
Now, I'm getting up there, they let me sit inside the door. Have a nice little table for myself, and they keep my cup full.
I start selling November 1st, at precisely 11 o'clock. That's just the way it should be....11 o'clock.

Over the years, I've put up with wind, rain, snow and I've always held my post. Lost a few poppies in the wind one time, and the funny thing was...people came and paid me for them afterwards. Told me they found them blowing up the street, figured they were mine. Funny things that people do.

I'll tell you 'bout the name The Poppy Man. It started in 1952. A young mother and her daughter were inside having lunch, and I heard the daughter going on about saving change for the Poppy Man. I guess, I was the Poppy Man.
One of the waitresses put a sign up by the register saying "don't forget to save your change for The Poppy Man"....and it's kinda stuck.
That little girl came back every day with her mother, dropped her pennies in and saluted. You know the way kids do...hand open and all. I guess I owe the name to her.
I've collected lots of memories over the years, most of which I can only smile about now. If I start talking about them, I'd just tear up and you wouldn't get the whole story...so, I'll keep them to myself.
I'm a bit of a celebrity in these parts I guess.
Teachers bring their classes to me, every year to get their poppies. They always send me nice letters too, saying thanks Poppy Man. Cute little drawings, and big printing. Nowadays, I appreciate the big printing more and more.
Over the years, I've collected pennies, dimes, nickels, the usual suspects, bus tickets, candy wrappers, subway tokens, whatever someone had in their pocket at the time. I've seen it all in my tin.
The last few years, I guess since about 1997 or so, the cadets send someone down to stand with me for a while during my stint here.
Good kids mostly, dedicated, and with the same determined look I think we all had back in 43 when I went over.
Most of us didn't make it back, I'm one of the lucky ones. Some who did, never came back right if you know what I mean. But, that's all I'm gonna say about that.
There's only 5 of us left now from the old regiment. I can still see their faces when I shut my eyes....young, virile, strong. I miss them all.
I guess that's why I do it. Sell the poppies every year. It's for them. And for the new kids. New soldiers, new wars, it never changes in that way...just a different style of fighting.
Every now and then though, you know I hear that old bugler tuning up his bugle, and I think "not yet...I'm not ready to have The Last Post played for me"...."not yet".
So, that's about it for me, The Poppy Man....everyone knows me, and I'm easy to find ....just head to Danny's, I'll be at the table at the front.
Don't forget now....save your change for the poppy man.
Sombro  May 2017
Poppies
Sombro May 2017
Pretty poppies
And burnt earth for horizons
Crackling savage against the cool blue
That burns you without and tightens within
Endless green and poppies

I wish I spoke like you,
In red earth, pebbles spilling from my grin
Able to lie as much as gabble
And taste the impatient air
The scent of expectant poppies

Hurriedly, I'd rush back there
And feel the emptiness apart from me again,
That kind of emptiness that lends itself to
An adventure in you
And blushes
Like poppies blush
In turbulent valleys of burnt dirt
Parable Megaron Dodeká Spathiá: “Procorus perceptibly saw how the sky of Patmos was crossed by heavy metalloids of bronze, tin, and acrobalistics; for the cavalry of Kanti and his six Para Sinuses appeared who used to ride on the roof of the Megarons belling in the sounds of the acroteras. In these episodes, in twelve Swords that multiplied in advance by thousands, before the Megaron began to be built. In relevant and virtual dimensions, foundation lines, acrostics of Thessalian steeds on their palfrey, mounted Polish Winged Hussars, carrying twelve armor wings with twelve horsemen, adjoining the halo of heavy cavalry in Katyn, being abducted by a circum-regressive parapsychological Ellipsis of the 1939 event in Poland. Each rider was skewered in blood with golden wing feathers. In each of their hands, they carried the curved sword Szabla, to conceal the tacit target of oppressors and musketeer intruders from the armory hearth of the hypothetical-unknown enemy but if outsider, assaulting the flanks of the rooftops in the Virtual Megaron of Patmos, using Kopias or pikes that schemed on the impulses of deadly resistance and betrayed ancestry. On the roof that pointed to the southwest, the light of Orion was reflected by aerial forms of the Orpheum in the Aegean, riding on the high seas with the Exvotos or offerings of Cyclamen and Red Poppies, looming in majesty and in their nomadic obtuse compass of the Rapsodas Orpheming epic elegies, of those venerable and revived triumphs that were stretched out on the banner of glory and on the bed of epiphany.

Rapsoda proclaims like this: “In Katyn Wings of Golden Wood and Red Poppy, they adorned themselves with Bellis Perennis in twelve thousand rags, in our steppes harassing their wailing in blood wars, framed in large sections on the thresholds of the threshold of their mounted war. There were twelve thousand red poppies burning on the executory pilaster near Smolensk"

How much there is to be fed up in the Polish cavalry of the seventeenth century, that, upon glimpsing of barbarous sounds, the temple approached the altar of the Virtual Megaron, shining in acquiescent ceremoniality and counter-revolution of bloodless aristocracy in needy portals-living and mortals- living creatures, who posed in the rear of twelve thousand slain officers in Katyn Forest, like gentle medieval men in the contemporary untimely invasion. Here, in this place, the winged horsemen, snorted were by fate when they were sacrificed, like steel cushions galloping on their heads and sheltered by brotherhoods of Hussars that protected them with their lion and tiger breastplates with deterred claws.

Procorus, observed in the virtuous imaginography as medieval winged specimens, protected the frontispiece of the Megaron, in a battered super existence and trance of historical architectural pavement. Here on Patmian soil, each of the officers who was assisted by each Polish cuirassier of the 17th century with fierce wings, they were making them agonize with honor and glory, with those similar twice right there in their likeness, with interwoven discrepant blood fogging and executing apocryphal witnesses who covered their faces, overflowing evasion and delays of bodies stained with mourning and grief, in quilts of red poppies scattered and bordering a naive disarmed forest. On exalted memorandums and with secret cries of Adrastea procreating with the nymphs of her kind, they drowned the cry of cuirassiers like Didaskein, before sobbing on their topic, but of Pashkein in the foliage of the putrid hopes, of those who beat them for the back, in analogous vexation to Katyn's heroes. Here neither Crones nor Mother Rea heard them, only Adrastea prevented the cries of the men-children who were atoned for their backs; unburden them of the foliage of the Didaskein-Pashkien, in tears of solid mercury. Kanti's steeds rise up, carrying them the curved Zsabla sabers, before each is shot in the head, in the manner of twelve thousand Winged Horsemen caught in each Zsabla. These sacrificed them before they were killed at the waist of their head, not being expired by bullets, rather by sabers of honor and glory of their own winged protectors that would lead them by sharp weapons towards the holocaust of the Mashiach surrounded by red poppies.

“The red and fiery mist of the forest led the souls of the Hussars to pass through the sabers of their compatriots before they were slain by the Soviets, so their apostolate souls will be catechized by Zsablas of air stained of Red Poppies turned into the air of respite from the heroes of Katyn Forest, redeemed by the Golden-Winged Horsemen of the 17th Century ”

(Procorus in the immensity of the voices and epithets that were heard and differed in the volatile and explosive sabers metals, at present they were extinguished in their crooked breastplates and in their Polish beings, in the rear that finally Procorus settled them in warps of immaculate habit, suspended in twelve thousand Red Poppies crossed by their forehead, before being shot in the cortex and occipital lobe, forging themselves in the golden sabers and of transvestite cenobites who received them in their arms in the sublime stench of the effluvium of their blood and their hosts, never left and desisted of the bubbling by the figures of the acroteras near the Megaron, idem in the same Katyn Forest, surrounded in a string of the Rosary that was splendid in Procorus prohibiting them)
Parable Megarón Dodeka Spathiá
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker.  I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames.  Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little ****** skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless.  Colorless.
Dr Peter Lim Aug 2015
IN FLANDERS FIELDS THE POPPIES BLOW*

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Here my comrades and I are laden
We fought for King and Country
Here we are---the fallen.

‘Be proud’, was the national proclamation
‘ You are the chosen’
We left home and our loved ones
Here we are—the ill-begotten.

Some of us  once upon glorious corridors
Of Cambridge and Oxford had trodden
The best and most fertile of young minds
Here we are—the forgotten.

How strong we then were, riding on the back of youth
Its dreams so sweet and resplendent
Rained by bullets in the battlefield
Here we are---death has spoken.

Pro patria gloria, dulcis pro patria mori
(Never mind if our hearts were cruel and rotten
We must **** all enemies  over the fence)
Here we are---the terrible  who were chosen.


Were we born to destroy and mutilate?
But in the battle-front ---all we loved and espoused had been stolen  
Buried in dark pits of hate and revenge
There we were----inhuman and despondent.

Those whom we slaughtered and maimed
Didn’t they like us once did hold dreams just as golden?
Weren’t they who happiness sought as we did?
Here we are—to bemoan all the precious from such that had been stolen.


In Flanders fields the poppies weep
For us who are far from home and have nowhere to return
With the wind’s nightly melancholic sighs whispering in our ears
Here we are----empty,  with dark sins upon us—for absolution is all we yearn.

• inspired by the opening line of John McCrae’s poem IN FLANDERS FIELDS   published in December 1915 (Flanders is in Belgium where a million died or were maimed).

John McCrae (1872—1918) was a Canadian doctor who joined the army as a gunner but later transferred to the medical service.
IN 1918 he was made consultant to all the British armies in France
but died of pneumonia before taking up the appointment.
NIL

— The End —