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.

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