Category: Poem

Biblical History

Did you know, oh wise men

Akhenaten was the

Cruel Pharaoh of Egypt?

The years of kings, judges

And the exiles, come

Well within error’s mark?

 

Did you know, oh wise men

That Abraham is said

To have lived during

Mesopotamia’s

Time? Hamurabi’s code

Was codified right when

Abraham’s said to live?

 

Could ancient writers be

So precise, or have so

Much knowledge to do

These two miraculous

Things? I say they couldn’t.

 

Abraham appears at

The first description of

The Law, and Aten’s Cult

Appears right when Moses

Parted the large Red Seas?

Could it be anything

Less than a miracle?

 

A Patriot’s Hymn

We at the shores of Maine

To the shores of Florida’s bays

To the California coast

And that Texas’ large host

Do not bow to any king.

We are rife to call a man

A traitor, who takes up political gains.

 

We fought a bloody war

So men could live their dreams

So men, by voice, could scream

“I haven’t, nor will I ever, a king!”

We get to condemn politicians

We get to proclaim ourselves wise.

We, being free, can live or even die

Saying what we will,

Believing what we must.

O’ Liberty, O’ Liberty,

In God, we all must trust!

 

The thunder cracks at dawn

The Liberty bell has cracked.

Yet, tired liberty, ring twice

And you shall break out at last.

The moving troops do wander

The seas carry their waves.

Ships and seamen wonder

At the shore’s of liberty’s fame.

Men hide themselves in the hallows

Women do not grind their bread.

Liberty, O’ Liberty

My face has been surely made red.

For I see the coasts are calling.

I see the airs do rise.

Liberty, O’ Liberty,

My heart’s in you invest’d.

 

Men do not know

Who’ve not tasted liberty once.

To decry each king,

To say rebellious things,

And to meet for freedom’s bunch.

To say what we will,

No matter what will or deign do cost…

Liberty, O’ Liberty, in your name let tyranny rot.

 

For the nations sing their glory

And the oceans tyrant’s fame.

But, in this land that spans the seas

Old Liberty has a name.

The Misfit Finds His Rebel Cause

The misfit finds his rebel cause.

Goes to war, defies all the laws.

How a ripe peach of which to pluck

Is the rebel’s cause loved so much.

 

I? I sit, also, misfit too

Unabashed from eternal youth.

My creative means dries so much

My country dies, the one I love.

 

Is the rifle my fated way?

To lose myself in coup d’é tat?

Will it suffice this longing heart?

Will I in glory play my part?

 

No! I say, in my angry gloom.

My vengeance shall be bloody noon.

I would rather let life depart

From my nostrils than play my part.

 

I will laugh at the wretched dogs

As my body swings o’er the logs.

I died, your hope for freedom last.

Because you’d not free me, I laughed.

Balaam

Some prophets never were saved.

Nietzsche, Yeats and Byron all wrote

Songs of what Earth would be

If no Christianity.

 

I don’t ask whether they rose

But that their spirits were wrong

That when they spoke war or peace

So they had a little yeast.

 

It would rise in bitterness;

It did rise angry at God.

Whether war or peace, they wrought

Bloodshed, for only blood’s bought

 

The foundation of reason.

Whether fairy or the gun

Men within themselves would catch

The trains to power; at last

 

They would, in all likelihood

Turn back to shaman with the

Blood of infants in their soup,

Whether or not they did coup.

 

I look at them to know aught

About my brothers gone wrong.

To have peace means right must win.

Right religion’s without sin.

 

That when Christ had brought the sword

It was good reason He did.

All other religions, sin’s

The core of their holy writ.

Christabel by Samuel Taylor Colridge, a Biographical Analysis

First thing that becomes clear, the poem is describing Lesbian themes. Furthermore, the demonic presence is captured in the “Spell” which is the unnatural romantic love between women.

Coleridge seems to have been fantasizing about a love triangle between he, his wife and his paramour.

It makes sense, that Coleridge would entertain such ideas. He loved his wife, and his paramour. Frankly, the theme of the successful love triangle has been a strange one to espouse upon, though the poem is not explicitly about this.

The poem is merely a naughty daydream, giving the moral tone significance that the relationship is not right. The “Spell” as is the case, “Spell” in the traditions of the romantic poets is likened to a wicked thing.

Why the protagonist’s name is “Christabel”, frankly, duly understood I don’t believe the poem was finished for a reason. I think Coleridge had initially entertained the gruesome thought of bedding two women who were romantically involved, and played the subconscious moral play out in this little poem.

Coleridge is almost entertaining a modern attitude about it. Which, to say, I think in this regard the correct attitude is to understand the poem as Erotic, Lesbian, but to not shy away from the cultural taboos of the day. I don’t think Coleridge would be completely aware of why he was writing it, nor what he was writing.

It seems to me that the poem was a fancy which captured Coleridge, that he would have greatly desired a romantic ménage à trois between he and the two lovers of his life. Passively, though. The poem is not conscious of diving into the material, so neither is the reader consciously aware of the true meaning of the poem. There is a mystery of the Lesbian eroticism in the poem, disparaging it nonetheless. The tone is utterly negative, taken in the context that the woman has become the desired object of both a father and daughter. It is in effect bibliomancy, and should the poem continue it would most likely end in the father and daughter’s utter destruction. Hopefully the reader cannot assume that this theme is taken lightly, and is possibly why the poem was abandoned by its author, because the subject was inappropriate. Scandalous, even for today’s day and age.

There is something unnatural in the thought of two so closely related being romantically involved with the same person, therefore, it might be a testament to the utter disparity of adultery, that such thoughts will even be allowed to be entertained. It is a testament to how wrong sin is, that if there were a boundary broken by our modern standards, this one surely will not be. Which should disturb the reader’s opinion on the legality of Homo-eroticism, whether it is Malum in Se, or Malum Prohibitum.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Complete Poems. Edited by William Keach. “Christabel”, pp. 187 – 205. Penguin Classics, 2004. Text.