On Hipsters

These sun-starved soul-sick lonely vagrant boys

commit themselves to only blank pages;

the words they spill, they leave as only ploys;

they say their verses are their own cages,

but each vagrant boy in silence rages

against his tepid urges and passions.

The settling dust accrues across ages,

atop each book, designed after fashions,

as each vagrant boy takes drugs as rations,

and calls himself a maker of the truth.

What use could they make of sweet compassion's

warm touch? For they are the world's uncouth,

adrift and wayward, cast to sea, lost in

dreamy tarnished glory, and far too thin.

Marching Song

My person out of many people grew,

steeped hot in many climes of human thought;

of their best parts, as Pallas born anew,

fresh from their forge, my better self was wrought.

In caution's clasp my fancies were arrest,

lost but for verse's sweet escape from flesh,

'til their many characteristics blest

enraptured verse which with their strength enmeshed.

What lies inside the secret hearts of men,

which little keys the light of day doth bring!

How harsh the burn, how fierce the field! But then,

how sweet the day, and too, how right the sting.

Parades of youth to tides of time are lost,

but change's mark is on my soul embossed.

Oneiroic Ode

Awakened I with some slight im-

perfection rent from Sleep's sweet shadow realm,

haloed 'round with vision, song, and storm, and him,

smoky, bright Morpheus, sand, and cloak, and helm.

Prophetic cries burst from him of fancy and dread,

graven portentious dream things of sleep and rest!:

"Wake ye not, die ye not, for the middle places are the bed

of human want and human need. 'tis best

to 'void low depths. Sleep's realm has idylls vast.

Soporific veils may cast on thy soul

a pallor which life nary at first hast,

but this pallor's peace make thee at last whole.

Find in my dream palace your own wide berth,

create for thee thy own true human worth."