Saturday, December 27, 2014

And so, in dream and limb we sing
Blown free from our constant notions
That hath in sense extension unerring
Belief and faith winsome ablutions

Nonsense saith some Puritanical hearts
That hath more will than trust in grace
And constraining men in all their arts
That would by God's own troth lay waste

To each and every good notion gave birth
By hope and love and skill, by belief's art
Each man made light and swift and whole by mirth
And even flesh and dirt given still some part

Herein breaks free the bubbling brook of life
That extinguishes fire of divine strife

C.M. Hagmaier 12/27/14

Meh.  Iambic pentameter doesn't come naturally to me, and I think I got a couple feet wrong there, but oh, well.  There's a reason nobody does anything in formal measures anymore.

Sunday, December 07, 2014

Grain Liquor on a Chequerboard


Sissah said to the tyrant
All I have done can
Be paid by a grain of wheat
Placed double on a board
For chessmen, square
By square as your majesty
Deigns, filled row by row
Column by column
Doubled and doubled
And redoubled again
Though your granaries fail
Though the universe fail
Heavy with precision
The tasseled heads nod
Over your honor pledged
All your wealth spilled
Across a child's toy
Tipped over-loaded weighed
With the finite product
Of your vast imperial 
Fruited plains exhausted
And still your word not
Redeemed by the 
Feckless promise of  your
Ignorant imperiousness

So my thirst distilled
From every single grain
Wheat and rye and maize
Through the retorts of
Clever men and the
Art of bourbon-masters
Casked and even
The angels whose share
Spilled by the action of
Wood and wear and 
Time's long march
Through cooper's art
And warehouser's 
Patience and the fat
Fungoidal mass that
Growth from drunkard's
Environmental footprint
Darwinian god's imprint
On the wood of a 
Distillery's backlot.

So I am, so it is
All that thirst and despair
And the joy of a nightly
Drunken haze that kills
The regrets of a million
Wasted fruitless lives
Brown-tinted oceans of
Misery murdered in 
Alcoholic metabolic
Poisons, before the 
Liver reduced before the
Heart ruined before the
Stomach shredded the
Sorrow that murdered the
Rest killed by the hand of
The merciful distiller's 
Daughter, bourbon
Sweet as innocence
Sharp as the morning
Swift as the ending
That brings with it
That final finishing
Hangover which
Hangs over 
Lies of Eternity.

One cannot kill time
Without injuring eternity
Well;
To hell with 
Eternity which gifts us 
This taste of fire that
Burns on the tongue
To mind us of that
Lake of fire before
Our inevitable end.

M. Hagmaier
12/7/14
Ah, fill the Cup: - what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TO-M0RROW, and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste -
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing - Oh, make haste!

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute?
Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

For "Is" and "IS-NOT" though with Rule and Line,
And "UP-AND-DOWN" without, I could define,
I yet in all I only cared to know,
Was never deep in anything but - Wine.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas - the Grape!.

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald, First Edition