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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Lock your arm of iron
Around the reeling moon,
Draw your sword, the grey sword,
The sword of Fin, the fey sword,
Carved with a nameless rune.
Brace your feet like talons
On the dreaming world,
Break the shapes, the dread shapes,
The dragon-things, the red apes,
Out of the abyss hurled.
Ghosts of all the ages
Fill the ancient skies,
Red queens and white kings,
Nameless forms and night things,
Men fools and wise.
The Maiden of Kercheezer
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She was snoozing on her sweezer,
Many a goofish year ago,
And a smile was on her beezer,
As she gently scratched her toe.
She, the Maiden of Kercheezer,
Hair as black as a harness tug,
As is fluttered in the breezer,
O'er her lovely, girlish mug.
Evening dress of green and yeller,
What a shoulder she could shake
And she had a nifty feller,
Hight the knight of Duckandrake.
He was knock-kneed, she was cross-eyed,
Oh, they were a lovely pair,
How he'd fondly knock her hoss-eyed,
As she gently pulled out his hair.
And her folks didn't like his beezer,
But what difference did that make?
And the maiden of Kercheezer, ever
Eloped with noble Duckandrake.
A Mick in Israel
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Old King Saul was a bold old scut;
He rammed his sword in Ashdod’s gut.
The warriors of Gaza shook in their shoes,
Their fingers twitched till they spilled their booze.
And every hussy and every john
Shook at his name in Askalon.
The warriors of Gath went after him
To hang his scalp on a hickory limb.
They went—when they came limping back
They carried their guts in a gunny-sack.
And busted noses and blackened eyes
And chewed-up ears were as thick as flies.
And before they could unbar their gates,
They felt his hobnails in their nates.
His eyes were blue as the ocean’s haze,
His hair was red as a dancing blaze.
He always drank his whiskey straight
And he had a gut that could carry the freight.
For music he had an elegant ear,
Especially after the fifteenth beer.
He’d sprawl on the throne with a stein in his mitts
And his feet propped up on a keg of Schlitz,
With a jewelled scepter beating time
To the beat of the rhythm and the rhyme,
While David on his harp would lean
Playing “The Wearin’ of the Green.
And Samuel swore by bead and bell
The kingdom was going straight to Hell.
Half the babies born in his reign
Had blue eyes and a crimson mane.
The reason Samuel didn’t enthuse—
He was making micks out of all the Jews!
Miser’s Gold
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"Nay, have no fear. The man was blind," said she.
"How could he see ’twas we that took his gold?
"The devil, man! I thought you were bold!"
"This is a chancy business!" muttered he,
"And we’ll be lucky if we get to sea.
"The fellow deals with demons, I’ve been told."
"Let’s open the chest, shut up and take a hold."
Then silence as they knocked the hinges free.
A glint of silver and a sheen of jade—
Two strange gems gleaming from a silken fold—
Rare plunder – gods, was that a hidden blade?
A scream, a curse, two bodies stark and cold.
With jewel eyes above them crawled and swayed
The serpent left to watch the miser’s gold.
Monarchs
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These be kings of men,
Lords of the Ultimate Night,
Kings-of-the-desert and fen -
Jackal, vulture, and kite.
Moon Mockery
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I walked in Tara's wood one summer night,
And saw, amid the still, star-haunted skies,
A slender moon in silver mist arise,
And hover on the hill as if in fright.
Burning, I seized her veil and held her tight:
An instant all her glow was in my eyes;
Then she was gone, swift as a white bird flies,
And I went down the hill in opal light.
And soon I was aware, as down I came,
That all was strange and new on every side;
Strange people went about me to and fro,
And when I spoke with trembling mine own name
They turned away, but one man said: “He died
In Tara Wood, a hundred years ago.”
The Moor Ghost
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They hauled him to the crossroads
As day was at its close;
They hung him to the gallows
And left him for the crows.
His hands in life were bloody,
His ghost will not be still
He haunts the naked moorlands
About the gibbet hill.
And oft a lonely traveler
Is found upon the fen
Whose dead eyes hold a horror
