agnusde2017’s Substack

Chaos and Dead Flowers: September 1, 2026

agnusde2017 — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:59:33 GMT

Chaos and Dead Flowers
Plures efficimur quotiens metimur a vobis...(TertullianApologeticus 50.13)

Spent, withered sunflowers stoop at Summer's end:
Worn petals curl atop rough stalks that bend
In early morning light, and sagging rows
Of ripening seeds scatter near the White Rose.

**********

The White Rose: Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst, young resisters against war and fascism, members of The White Rose Resistance, were guillotined for treason on February 22, 1943. It was not until September 1, 1998 that the death sentences of the White Rose Resisters were vacated in Germany.

But today, as our leaders descend deeper into crudity and coarseness, and threaten to exterminate whole nations and civilizations on the altar of the unholy trinity of hegemony, oil, and the petrodollar, I feel the urgency of The White Rose and strain to hear the wisdom of youth.

Omnia Vincit Amor

agnusde2017 — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 02:30:44 GMT

Omnia Vincit Amor

In a finely appointed tent
Judith and Holofernes met.

With blood-red wine they sealed their tryst,
And he caressed her where she wished.

Holofernes raised Judith's dress:
She arched her back and spread her legs.

He pushed his manhood between her thighs,
And panted as she moaned soft lies.

In Judith's lap he made his bed,
And as he slept, she took his head.

**************

Then she pulled the head out of the bag and showed it to them and said, “See here, the head of Holofernes, the commander of the Assyrian army, and here is the canopy beneath which he lay in his drunken stupor. The Lord has struck him down by the hand of a woman.

To White Armed Helen: The Oath of Tyndareus

agnusde2017 — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:30:44 GMT

To White Armed Helen: The Oath of Tyndareus

Ah, how foolish men are. Before the walls
Of Troy, amid the vultures' carrion calls,
The Argive host made boyish eyes at you,
And, as the javelins and arrows flew
Through the blue sky, Xanthus and Simois
Washed flesh struck dead for want of Helen's kiss.

------------------------------------------

This epigrammatic poem is a variation on The Teichoskopia (τειχοσκοπία), a passage in Book 3 of the Iliad. The word can be understood as a viewing from the walls.

Helen is on the walls of Troy. She looks down at the Greek host and, in response to Priam, names the Achaean heroes whom she can see. Meanwhile the Trojan Elders are so taken by her beauty that they remark among themselves that they do not fault the Argives for waging war for her sake.

Helen, reputedly the most beautiful of women, attracted many powerful suitors. Tyndareus, her father, was anxious that the choice of a husband not provoke conflict from the rejected petitioners.
The Oath of Tyndareus is the promise extracted by her father, Tyndareus, from Helen's suitors that should the marital rights of her successful suitor be threatened or violated, they would all go to war, if necessary, to protect his privileges.
The hopeful suitors swore the Oath over the butchered parts of a
sacrificial horse.

The Oath was a stratagem devised by Odysseus for Tyndareus in exchange for helping him to win Penelope.

The war for Helen exposes a bitter and brutal irony: the Oath, which was supposed to prevent bloodshed and death, becomes the instrument of violence that tears at the roots of two societies. Priam dies with his country and his sons. Agamemnon and the Trojan princess Cassandra, his concubine and war prize, perish at the hands of Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, and in the blackness of the Nether World Achilles speaks the hard truth that it is better to be a living nobody than a shade among the dead.

In Love's Confessional

agnusde2017 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:31:39 GMT

In Love's Confessional

When sorrow pierced us, we poured over
True secrets that only a lover
Seeking refuge from doubts and fears
Might impart in trust and tears.

Before you died we found a note
We'd shared. I'd signed what you wrote,
And we'd sealed it with faith's lips,
That fragrant narthex of love's dark kiss.

You linger, but not as flesh and blood.
Each night I light your sandalwood:
Despite death's fire, you comfort me
In alabastra of memory.

***************

I have been accused of making my words work too hard for me. I would only quibble with the use of the adverb too in that judgment.
My latest victim of servitude is narthex. It has been a botanical and medicinal term, as well as a religious and architectural designation. It was also the name of a kind of casket or vessel for precious unguents and rare jewels.

The giant fennel (narthex) had the honor of being a Dionysian and poetic thyrsus. The narthex carried Promethean fire to mankind, and the entire plant was famed for its healing properties.

When I was a boy I lived for awhile in New Jersey, not far from the Pine Barrens, the final redoubt of another narthex, Narthecium Americanum, the nearly extinct Yellow Asphodel. This vanishing flower, a golden narthex, was named narthecium for its supposed similarity to the Giant Fennel. With its common name of asphodel, it calls to mind the Asphodel Meadows of the ancient Greek underworld, a nomenclatural correspondence that, given the endangered state of Narthecium Americanum, seems strangely and sadly appropriate.

John Gerard, Of the Historie of Plants, Chap. 427, Of Herbe Ferula, or Fennell Gyant, p. 1057
The first is called in Greeke νάρθηξ, in Latine, Ferula...
In this chapter of his great treatise, Gerard discourses on the various kinds of narthex (ferula) and their apothecary properties and uses, the gums and ointments from the vegetative world that bring comfort and solace to the men who gain knowledge of them. Here is a little snippet from his treatment of a variety of ferula/ narthex, Ferula Galbanifera.

The pith or marrow, called Corculum Ferulae, as Galen teaches, is of an astringent or binding qualitie, and therefore good for them that spit bloud, and that are troubled with the flux.
Dioscorides saith, that being put into the nosthrils it stayed bleeding, and is given in Wine to those that are bitten with Vipers...
The iuyce of Ferula Galbanifera, called Galbanum, drunk in wine with a little myrrh, is good against all venom or poison that hath been taken inwardly, or shot into the body with venomous darts, quarrels or arrows.
It helps a womens painful travel, if they do take thereof in a cup of wine the quantitie of a bean.
The perfume of Galbanum helpeth women that are grieved with the rising of the mother, and is good for those that hath the falling sicknesse.

(Dover 1975 Reprint and Reproduction of Gerard)

Post Gerard, late 20th century, Chanel brought Galbanum full circle, from Gerard's prescription for hysteria or a displaced uterus to Chanel's creation of an aggressive perfume built around the green bitterness of a high grade Persian Galbanum.

Pliny the Elder, in Book VII, Chapter 29 of his Historia Naturalis, mentions a special and famous narthex, namely the Narthex Alexandri, a casket once used for precious unguents, but which Alexander put to a new use. As Pliny tells it, this chest may be understood as a repository of culture and knowledge, a treasure chest of tradition and humanitas.

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, in the person of Democritus Iunior, seems to understand his catalogue and storehouse of fine writing in the Plinian manner. Here is the passage from Pliny (note that in the Latin the parenthetical clause beginning with etenim refers not specifically to Alexander, but to the judgmental flow of cultural criticism and history, of which, in this instance, Alexander is an agent and exemplar. In my rendering I slightly alter the syntax ad make this a relative clause modifying Alexander.). For the borrowed Greek word narthex, Pliny uses the native Latin scrinium, which has the specific meaning of a box for documents or books:
Therefore Alexander the Great, who will be held in such high repute and lofty opinion, beyond envy, took from among the booty of Darius the king of the Persians, a casket of precious unguents which was decorated with gold, pearls and precious stones. His friends pointed out various uses for it. Yet Alexander was not drawn to those perfumes, for he was a warrior and soiled from battle: "Truly, by Hercules," he exclaimed, "I will use it to hold the books of Homer, since the most valuable achievement of the human spirit should be preserved in as rich a chest as possible."
itaque Alexander Magnus — etenim insignibus iudiciis optime citraque invidiam tam superba censura peragetur — inter spolia Darii Persarum regis unguentorum scrinio capto, quod erat auro, margaritis gemmisque pretiosum, varios eius usus amicis demonstrantibus, quando taedebat unguenti bellatorem et militia sordidum: immo Hercule, inquit, librorum Homeri custodiae detur, ut pretiosissimum humani animi opus quam maxime diviti opere servaretur.

Finally, here is a brief lexical treatment of narthex, touching on its several meanings across semantical history. Indeed, across the centuries it tells a rich and varied tale. It is a Proteus of the imagination, an ever renewing serpent leaving us an ever growing pile of old snakeskin.

νάρθηξ,ηκος,ὁ, A.giant fen-
nel, Ferula communis,Thphr.HP1.2.7, Dsc.3.77, etc.;κλέψας. .πυρὸς τηλέσκοπον αὐγὴν ἐνκοίλῳν., of Prometheus,νάρθηξ, cf.Op.52; of the stalk used as a θύρσος,E.Ba.147(lyr.), al.; as a schoolmaster's cane,X.Cyr.2.3.20, cf.Arist.Pr.948a10; as asplint for a broken limb,Hp.Off.12,Gal.10.437;singlestickfor military exercises,Onos. 10.4.
II.casket for unguents, etc.,Luc.Ind.29;ἡ ἐκτοῦν.διόρθωσις, of Aristotle's recension of Ho mer, carried by Alexander in aν.,Str.13.1.27,Plu.Alex.8.
2.title of medical works by Heras, Cratippus, and Soranus,Gal.12.398,959,Aët.8.45.
III.fore-courtof a church,EM597.48.
Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.

First Snow

agnusde2017 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:30:55 GMT

First Snow

October snow has cloaked the mountaintops,
And from serrated peaks a piercing cold
Rolls down across lean aspens and tall spruce,
Hardening the golden grass of early Fall.
Why do we call it Fall? Last summer's leaves,
Sunlit jasper, and the banded agate,
Yellow gold pressed into virgin quartz,
Float on the wind: in lapidary leafstorms
Dryads dance to the blaze at this year's end.
Soon the winter deer will shake its head
And drop love's weaponry on solitary
Woodland paths, far from the trophy rooms
Of guns and knives and meadowland Nimrods.

Does withered cosmos, once the pride
Of summer's glow, portend a world's collapse?
Do brown eyed sunflowers spread seed in Fall sun?
Grief-tinted mourning cloaks, exiled to shreds
Of shaggy bark, survive the deaths of flowers
And the honed, frozen strokes of razor winds.
They'll rise in flight at winter's end, renew
Their kind, then fold their wings and fly no more.

And so it is, here, under turning leaf,
As we are blanketed in numbing chill,
And pledged beginnings lie sequestered
Under the ancient promises of old
Branches and dimpled scars of fallen leaves.
We are among them, creaking bone and sentient
Mortality knocking timidly
At some gray, undulating blur.

If we should part that curling mist and step
Through the gray tear in trembling tapestry,
What might there be? Another changing season?
A nothingness of which there is no telling?
Or an insensate tumble through vacuity,
A constant, gradual disintegration
Of cinder into ash, and then to dust,
Dust that slides into metamorphosis
And the centrifuge of primordial chaos?

Autumn Near the Peaks

agnusde2017 — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 02:30:32 GMT

Autumn Near the Peaks

Aspens, golden in the crisp, clear sunlight,
Arrayed in gleaming fire of Autumn's arc,
Sway gently in the mountain breeze, and mark
This kiss between Summer and Winter’s bite.
Grasshoppers die, the last gray geese take flight:
Small beetles chew black channels in sick bark,
And, as the moist days sink into their dark
Solstice, mute snow will cling to day and night.

Winter is first in these high places, far
From the first seedling’s tender sprout and all
The blandishments of Spring. Winter is last
To free the frozen sap, to heal the scar
On last year’s wood. How many leaves will fall,
Love, and seeds sleep before our Winter’s past?

A Cygnet's Song

agnusde2017 — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 02:30:42 GMT

A Cygnet’s Song

Deneb, in your cool light I stand, while Time,
Which lies out there between us, beckons me
Into its far, unspoken mystery,
And silence coaxes me to swan-soft rhyme.
Was it so when sweet jasmine and fresh lime
Washed the flower-strewn bowers of old Araby,
And lovers, touched with light and poetry,
Cajoled the red rose and dark grape to climb?

We listen to low owl songs and the tear
Of the wind through the tall trees. Crickets sing,
The thin night clouds are silent, and the dark
Grows cold: here we stand, a bent, furrowed thing.
We wither in the limpid mountain air,
And our flame crackles, then shoots one last spark.

After Leonidas of Tarentum A.P. VII.715

agnusde2017 — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:25:52 GMT

After Leonidas of Tarentum A.P. VII.715

Far from Italian soil I lie, far from Tarentum,
My native land: for me this is more bitter
Than death. Such is the worthless life of wanderers.
But the Muses loved me, so I have sweets
Not bitterness. The name of Leonidas has not fallen,
The Muses' gifts proclaim me for all days.

Πολλὸν ἀπ᾽ Ἰταλίης κεῖμαι χθονός, ἔκ τε Τάραντος
πάτρης: τοῦτο δέ μοι πικρότερον θανάτου.
τοιοῦτος πλανίων ἄβιος βίος: ἀλλά με Μοῦσαι
ἔστερξαν, λυγρῶν δ᾽ ἀντὶ μελιχρὸν ἔχω.
οὔνομα δ᾽ οὐκ ἤμυσε Λεωνίδου: αὐτά με δῶρα
κηρύσσει Μουσέων πάντας ἐπ᾽ ἠελίους.

-------

The Muses' gifts are the poems of Leonidas.

...proclaim...= κηρύσσει. The Greek verb conveys all the sacrosanctness of the herald's (κῆρυξ ) office.

This poem is in the form of an epitaph for Leonidas himself.

For Chamchun

agnusde2017 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 02:30:16 GMT

For Chamchun

Illa cantat; nos tacemus; quando ver venit meum?
Quando fiam uti chelidon, ut tacere desinam?

It is mid-March and the wide sky is gray
With tissued clouds that blot the sun away.
The season of the moaning dove is near,
It is the Springtime of a younger year,

When old rose canes are green with tender shoots,
And Russian sage stirs on erupting roots.
All the world seems awakening in birth,
And the tall swaying trees increase their girth,

While I walk through the leaf of last year's woods,
And the mountain ash shakes its trembling buds.
In the pine grove, under a rocking tree,
Gray squirrels, with tufted ears, circle me,

And scurrying deer-mice chatter and squeak,
While a perched thrush sprays water on my cheek
In cool, fine droplets of renewed baptism,
And healing balm of true love's holy chrism.

**************

The epigraph is from the Latin poem Pervigilium Veneris:
She sings, I am silent, when will my spring come?
When will I become as the swallow, that I may break my silence?

Should anyone wish to read a fine English version of the entire poem, Allen Tate has left us an excellent, inspired translation in his Collected Poems.

Gray squirrels, with tufted ears: Abert's or the tassel-eared squirrel of the southern Rocky Mountains.

Time and the River's Daughter

agnusde2017 — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:30:34 GMT

Time and the River's Daughter

The Blood of Christ, still purple as the lips
And cheeks of one I longed to know, is covered
With a winding sheet of frigid snow.
Ivory coronae, a baleen moon
Illuminate a blue- black tapestry
Of velvet mantled night, where gray faced owls
Slice the swaying conifers with winged
Assaults of swift, taloned death. The Blood
Of Christ, as dark as the onyx hair of her
Whose name I cannot call up from the sunset’s
Emptiness, congeals under a cloth
Of blood flecked snow. These little animals
Whose lives and deaths devolve unnoticed in
The brief memorials of short-lived men,
Do not hide their coming and going from
The lords and ladies of this starlit sky:
Hunter, hero, virgin, lover observe
That earthly panoply of birth and death,
And somewhere out there, in the bright array
Of the Milky Way, the violet memory
Of her whose name is secrecy, is moving
Through indigo and starlight, into a womb
Of cold, inchoate, elemental star dust.

I am into the season of withering
Cosmos, of moist, scented carnations, and tall
Sunflowers wrinkled and picked clean of seed,
Of golden days and frosty nights, of sunlight
And the inexorable train of snowflakes
Descending from the bare escarpments, down
Through the dark spruce forest, into the days
And nights and cities and towns of the human beast.

Underneath a slushy carapace
Of half frozen pewter affect, swift waters
Of memory ripple through dim, refracted
Rays of muted incandescence. Time
And the heart’s spring bubble from the brain’s
Gray rock, and the river’s daughter stirs
In the frozen billows. I am old
And she is fresh as newly cut grass, cool
As dewdrops on the early violet’s flesh.
I am dying and she is sweet scented
Heliotrope. She stings my lips, she’s fire
In the corners of my eyes, red embers
In the moist flesh of dammed up lacrimation.

Brighter than the resurrection lily
Is my lady’s flesh, than the deep
Fields of Maeotic snow, and her lips and cheeks
Make pale the cinnabar of Almaden,
Exsanguinate the violet almandine.
She is the rolling river of my blood,
The sacred spring, the crystal drops which roll
From the whinstone sheen of the horse’s hooves,
The lucent foam of the panting stag’s hot breath,
The root of my tongue, the tender shoot of all
My words, the canopy of my silence.

Whatever songs I’ve sung I’ve made for her
Whose favor shook the new moon till the horns
Of Artemis pierced the star speckled belly
Of night, and the Milky Way sparked the tinder
Of imagination. Yet my voice is not
The Dorian: no flute, no barbitos.
I do not gather sharp acanthus, nor
Have I drunk only from the stallion’s cool
Waters. I have drained to the thick fines
The centaur’s hot wine, and now, out of thirst
Long unquenched, I lift my reason up,
And, with these measured words, I break my silence
And honor her as best and while I may,
Out here, at the gravel’s edge, where I can not stay.

--------------------

This poem is a few years old, but not out of a distant past.

I would have thought that celebrating the Muse in verse was the pursuit of a young man or a boy, but for the fact that as the years have rolled on, I have not outgrown my affection for my Muse and her personification. Although Apollo is the god of poetry, I think for many it is still the female presence that moves men of all ages to embrace her in garlands of words, even to see in living flesh and blood the spirit of beauty. Often the muses are personified. Hesiod tells us how he saw them in the mountains. For me my muse is and has been my wife, but sometimes I've wondered if she has really understood that she is and always will be my goddess.

This poem is situated in Autumn. Hopefully it will be followed by happy readers who will not find it too puerile an offering from
an old man.

Blood of Christ: a southern spur of the Rockies,
Sangre de Cristo, so named for their reddish purple hue.

Time
And the heart’s spring bubble from the brain’s
Gray rock, and the river’s daughter stirs
In the frozen billows...This image comes from memories of a statue I used to see throughout the mountains of northwest Thailand. It was an image of a naked woman whose lower half was that of a fish. Her breasts were full and firm, and her black hair was longer than she was tall. She held the free end of her hair in her hands and was wringing the excess water from it. The water flowed from her hair in a steady rush that, as it was told in the legend, became a deep, flowing stream that watered the land. This statue was a common sight in those mountains, and it was always situated near running water.

Maeotic snow...: thought to be around the Sea of Azov, a fabled land of deep snows and large ice formations. Propertius, in the third elegy of his second book, compares his mistress's skin to Maeotic snow and red vermilion of Spain (see next note).

Make pale the cinnabar of Almaden,
Exsanguinate the violet almandine.. : cinnabar was valued for its rich red color and Almaden was celebrated for its cinnabar, which was an ingredient in cosmetics. Almandine is a valuable variety of red or purple garnet. Pliny the Elder writes about it being mined at Alabanda in Asia Minor. It was prized both for its color and its hardness.

Whinstone: a kind of very black basalt.

whose name is secrecy, is moving: there is an occult belief in the power and significance of secret names and numbers. Confirmation names, name changes upon entering religious societies, initiation names chosen for a disciple by a master: these are all examples of the survival of the secret name in our culture. Erving Goffman, in his book, Asylums, details such rituals in what he calls "total institutions."

Heliotrope: pure oil of heliotrope, besides its rich scent, will sting and burn the lips, thus living up to its kinship with the sun.

Out here, at the gravel’s edge: This image is derived from the opening of a song by Marcabru:
A la fontana del vergier,
On l'erb' es vertz josta·l gravier...
By the fountain in the garden
Where the grass is green up to the gravel...

Only Paid Subscribers?

agnusde2017 — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 03:43:24 GMT

I recently found a substack publication displaying part of a sequence authored my me. A banner advises the reader that the sequence can only be accessed by paid subscribers to the pub- lication.

My poems are freely available— no charge— at my substack and at venues like The Hypertexts, Bob Zisk Unleashed at The Hypertexts, The New Stylus, The Lyric and Quora.

Please let me know if you find my work on pay sites. I think it is customary for a publishing journal to get first print rights. To charge subsequently is sloppy and unethical, especially since I, the author, receive no licencing fee for reprints which must be purchased.

If any other of my works appears for pay, I will make it available free of charge to anyone who wants to read it.

After Mimnermus

agnusde2017 — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 16:27:50 GMT

After Mimnermus

We are like leaves brought forth in many flowered Spring.

They quickly swell beneath the sun-light's rays.

Like them our youth flowers only half an arm's brief span

And from the gods we know not good nor bad

Until it happens, for beside us death's dark spirits

Stand. One deals grievous age, the other death.

Youth's fruit is plucked as fast as the sun moves over earth,

And when our Springtime's done, death rules our lives.
.
For many miseries beset the heart. One man

Loses all that is his, and he is doomed

By doleful poverty. Another fellow goes

Longing for sons not fathered, down to Hades.

Another' s soul is wracked with wasting sickness. Ills

Too vast to count does Zeus inflict on all.

----------------------
Mimnermus is thought to have lived and written in the latter third of the seventh century B.C.E. While his fellow elegists seem to have garnered fame for their martial poetry, Mimnermus, an elegist, is one of the first to sing of love and to use the "amatory I."

From a treatise, On Music, by Pseudo-Plutarch, we know that he played the flute, and that in the early days, elegies were composed to be accompanied by the sweet melodies of a flute (8.1133f).

As is the case with many of the early Greek poets, what we have of them comes to us through quotations collected by other authors. This justly famous poem was collected for his son by the Byzantine anthologist, Stobaeus. So lovely a poem is known by the rather dry designation of 2 Stobaeus 4.34.12. The title in the modest heading is my own coinage, but, as I fear, it will always be 2 Stobaeus 4.34.12.

My translation is not literal. In it I have tried to follow the method established by St. Jerome in a letter to a friend, a Roman Senator, with the seemingly dissonant name Pammachius. Jerome said that we should translate not word for word but sense for sense. So this translation, though it follows the Greek, probably would not make a good trot for a young school boy. But I hope it might give him, while inexperienced in both Greek and life, a little taste of beauty from nearly twenty-seven centuries in the past.

----------------------------
In many flowered Spring: the poet uses a compound adjective πολυανθεμος so that the sense is literally "many flowered Spring."

Half an arm's brief span: the Greek word denotes the distance from elbow to wrist, and is often translated by the Latin derivative cubit, or by the expression arm's length. But this arm's length is more precisely half an arm's length.

Until it happens: the sense of the Greek seems to suggest "pre-ordained by the gods."

Beside us death's dark spirits stand: two female spirits, known as the Keres, who seem to be ever present, but not involved with humans until the time of illness and dying.

Loses all that is: the Greek word οἶκος means house or household in the fullest sense of the word: everything that is his.

Honeysuckle and Hazel

agnusde2017 — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 02:00:51 GMT

Marie de France, in her short lai, Chevrefoil, makes the honeysuckle and the hazel not only symbols of Tristram and Iseult's true and inviolable love, but representations of the lovers themselves, and, like the nightingale of other love stories, honeysuckle and hazel, by the device of the inscribed branch, become instruments of their love trysts. Here are a few lines freely taken from Marie's tale:

They were like the honeysuckle
Which wraps itself around the hazel.
Hazel and honeysuckle, joined, will thrive,
But torn apart neither will survive.
The hazel rapidly perishes
Thus too the honeysuckle dies.
"Fair love, it's so for you and me,
Without each other we must die."

*************************************

Come del chevrefoil esteit
Ki a la codre se perneit:
Quant il s'i est laciez e pris
E tut entur le fust s'est mis,
Ensemble point bien durer;
Mes ki puis les Volt desevrer,
Li codres muert hastivement
E li chevrefoil easement.
'Bele amie, si est de nus:
Ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!'
(Marie de France, Chevrefoil, 68-78)

****************

Honeysuckle was often tolerated by the orchardists of old because it's natural sweetness drew pollinators to the trees.

The Argument of Night

agnusde2017 — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 02:30:50 GMT

The Argument of Night

I hear an owl late in the afternoon.

A breeze parts the ash boughs. A single thrush,

Soundless, alights on a thin branch. Moths brush

Against my cheeks. It will be twilight soon.

Will the bright hunter and the rising moon

Extinguish this sunset’s last crimson blush?

It is night now, and honeysuckle, lush

And fragrant, fills the dark with thick perfume.

Out back, in the arroyo, there are tracks:

Coyotes, rabbits, and mule deer. Moist piles

Of droppings, tufts of hair, and broken stalks

Sing the old song. Crushed throats and punctured skulls

Keep faith. Generations of savaged necks

Rot in the sand and on the flood worn rocks.

************

This sonnet, a few years old, still has relevance for me as I am swept up in the processes of nature and finitude.

Embracing 4.0 × 10¹³.

agnusde2017 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 21:22:16 GMT

Here is an article from the current issue of the AJUPE, The American Journal of Unipolar Economics, Embracing 4.0 × 10¹³.

America is the land of innovation, and Capitalism has proved to be the great engine of that innovation. It is Capitalism that has raised us out of feudalism, past colonialism and neocolonialism into the glory of divinely ordered unipolar hegemony.

Amid much pewling and gnashing of teeth, American Capitalism has turned another corner, carved and set a new milestone to guide us in these uncertain times.

Mr. Bessent is pointing the way to the reluctant, calling the hesitant to be adventurous and embrace 4.0 × 10¹³ as an opportunity to be grasped, not lamented.

Carpe diem! Do not fear the Capitalist Road. Seize opportunity by the forelock. Make the so called debt crisis work for America. Licence innovative sub-regional local money production facilities. In this scheme, for a modest fee, a worthy will be given a licence to print money and buy a segment of the national debt. The paper and toner will, of course, be purchased under licence from the Treasury Department. The licensed entities can up the take by issuing special commemorative issues like an archivally packaged Giants of Capitalism series. Maybe the commemoratives could be holographic, memorializing great moments in Capitalist history like The Edsel and Alphabet Soup. Imagine Tony the Tiger on a three dollar bill! Licences would be purchased by exchange of precious metals. This model is foolproof: income generated by printing worthless currency and junk bonds, junk secured by junk -- the great circle, the dragon swallowing its tail.

One of the most attractive aspects of this enterprise is the opportunity it will offer to ordinary working people. Workers will be provided with a great investment opportunity. Their vehicle for swift travel along the highway to wealth will be something they have in abundance, namely their surplus value as laborers.

This economic engine will move the working class into the express lane. It will give new life to the maxim that the union makes one strong.

Workers will be able to pool their surplus value into aggregates with sufficient potential wealth that after a modest discount to the Treasury Department, the pooled surplus value of their aggregated labor potential will allow them to invest in junk currency, junk securities, and junk bonds. This new-found freedom will be the greatest socioeconomic advance for working people since the days of The Black Death.

For more information and a government- authored and produced prospectus, please call this toll free number: 800-727-3987 (800-SCREWUS)

Sent from my Galaxy

The Old Poet Peers into his Future

agnusde2017 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 02:00:19 GMT

The Old Poet Peers into his Future

I wear a crown of withered leaves,
I wear a shirt with tattered sleeves:

Not because I am too poor,
But rather, pride sways me no more:

I do not try to stand up straight
Nor make excuses for my weight.

A tiny leak under my skull
And soon I am a vacant shell.

The Wounded Moment

agnusde2017 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 02:38:06 GMT

The Wounded Moment

Love lost, I am spilling over with you,
At every turn wondering what you might do
If we could touch -- whether you might smile
Or laugh, or just hang out with me awhile,
In the umbra of thieving Time, he who
Has shattered us, and made away with you.

Among Sorrow's Flowers

agnusde2017 — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 02:01:45 GMT

Among Sorrow's Flowers

Today, as I am looking at our flowers,
All planted in the weeks before you left,
I'll make cause with this little skink who cowers
Where I, wrapped in mourning weeds, stand, bereft
Of the morning star and the night-fast moon.
Forlorn, in a deep trench of loneliness,
I ache, lacerated by grief's wound,
Smothered in cerements of leaden loss:
But I'll not reach for some new epithet
Or other glittering spark of craft or art.
For there is just finality, and death,
Who needs no new trope to kindle my heart.
Perhaps, like my small lizard, bronze and lean,
I'll find a twig to peel off sorrow's skin.

**************************

I don't think I previously posted this. It's a very recent poem. It's part of a sequence.

Lupus, The Body's Wolf, and Sjogren's

agnusde2017 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 02:31:51 GMT

Lupus, The Body's Wolf, and Sjogren's

As I sit here, music pipes through the room,
This last redoubt where I become my tomb.

I scarcely hear the tunes; instead tired thought
Meets lungs and kidneys, where the war is fought.

The body strikes at its rebellious flesh,
And I am squeezed in the gnarled claws of death.

Through manhood and old age, I've known those jaws
Would rip all joy and love to certain loss,

And now, here, at my body's last revolt,
I brace myself to meet one more assault.

----------------

Lupus and Sjogren's are inflammatory diseases, amautoimmune diseases which attack connective tissue and organ systems. They can cause tiredness, dangerous fluctuations in blood pressure, attacks on the circulatory system. They also attack joints, mouth, eyes, lungs, kidneys, digestive tract and brain. They can cause dry eyes and distorted vision, and high fevers. They can be hard to diagnose because they mimic so many other conditions. In about 50% of patients they cause renal disease. One way of describing Lupus and Sjogren's is that they cause the body to have an immune response to itself. It's not pleasant, and there is no cure.

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Announcement

I must add my modicum of praise for the continuing poetic achievements of Jared Carter.

Able Muse has recently announced that Jared is the 2026 recipient of The Able Muse Book Award in recognition of his poetry manuscript, Heart's Forest. Annie Finch was the final judge.

For more information, please follow this link:

https://www.ablemusepress.com/2026-book-award-jared-carter

Lupus, The Body's Wolf, and Sjogren's

agnusde2017 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 02:31:50 GMT