Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ...St John the Baptist at the Well ...1607-08

 

 The Executioner of John the Baptist

MS 1 of the Scottish Collection

Askelon, the royal seat,
In which the great deed was done;
There, not lasting was the fame,
John the noble was slain.

'What evil woman among you
Will take in hand my beheading?
Not one from east or west,
Of the blood of Foreigners or Gaels.

'Thou handsome yellow-haired John,
Yonder is a Gael beyond all others;
His abode is far away in the west,
In the lands of the western men.'

'I ask a boon from Christ who loves me,'
Said John the noble,
'That no comely Gael may get
Food nor rainment in any case.'

Said Mogh Ruith without grace,
'Give to me even his rainment,
And I shall cut off his head
For the weal of the men of Ireland.'

Then was John beheaded,
The Gael will suffer therefrom;
Much silver and gold
Was put under the head east in Askelon.

trans. by Prof. MacKinnon

Alastair (Baron Hans Henning) & Harry Crosby... illustrations & poem

  TheYoung Lovers

The Passionate EmbraceThe Passionate Embrace

 The Passionate Embrace

more HERE

Lit de Mort

I shall not die within a mad man's cell

Or in the city of unconquered pain

Nor on the ocean in a cockle shell

When mad March winds are blowing hurricane.

I shall not die among the multitude

Or as a martyr tortured at the stake,

I shall not die in business servitude

Nor as a soldier for my country's sake;

But i shall die within my lady's arms

And from her mouth drink down the purple wine

And tremble at the touch of naked charms

With silver fingers seeking to entwine.

My dying words shall be a lover's sighs

Beyond the last faint rhythm of her thighs.

Harry Crosby

Rosaleen Norton ... drawing & poem excerpt

...My home is the house of winds,
With great songs of Space ringing wild in my ears
Whose shouting heart leaps to their tune.
I mock at the shapes, plodding thickly, through lamplight:
stupid and cruel - or kind -
They are alien, Other, I'm touched with uneasiness...
Fear of these human.... and glide away sidelong:
Yet joying in fear, in my stealthy aloofness,
To know they are They and I'm I.
Towers of old cities are spiralling over me, Night-conjured,
rising from Time
And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence -
Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude -
Calling of others like me
Quietly they come, flitting softly as secrets; light-footed,
velvety, swift...
With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.
Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.
I am I ... but I know we are we
Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman
stars:
You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.
Here is no loneliness, secret Master -
You, Dark Spirit are with me.

from Pan's Daughter by Nevill Drury

previous Rosaleen Norton

Rosa Mundi a poem...excerpts...H.D. Carr (Aleister Crowley) & Auguste Rodin... 1905

click on image to enlarge

Limited edition, 488 copies printed with a full page watercolor drawing by Auguste Rodin signed in the plate.

pencil and wash design by Auguste Rodin

1. ROSE of the World!
Red glory of the secret heart of Love!
Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled
Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above!
Its flower in its own perfumed passion,
Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled
In flower fashion;
And my deep spirit taking its pure part
Of that voluptuous heart
Of hidden happiness!

2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!
(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress
Stolen of the scented rose
Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)
Bend into an agony of art
Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears
For their own purity's undivided sake
Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves
Sliver-coiled in the Sun
Into green girdled spheres
Purer than all a maiden's dream enweaves,
Lies the unutterable beauty of
The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove
Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings
And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine
Of that most softly-spoken one,
Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,
Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!
Inspire a holy tune
Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine
Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan
By any soul of man!

...

Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes
Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind
To aught but its own mastery of song
And light, shown ever as silence and deep night
Secret as death and final. Let me long
Never again for aught! This great delight
Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss,
Seals me with its own kiss,
Draws me to thee with every dream that glows,
Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows
Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn!
O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn
In the truth: -- for this is truth: Love knows!
Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!

excerpts from Rosa Mundi by H. D. Carr (Aleister Crowley)

Patrick John Larabee...drawing & poem

 
click on image to enlarge

Janus

An Invokation of the Hidden Light

I call forth to the Eldritch Spirits of the Dark Abyss,

Thee who don the Masks of Earths Gods,

I am Enchanted as a Light in the Dark,

Illuminated Rays ever searching for You.

Fiery Serpent of Wisdom I call forth to You,

Mighty Angel of the Absolute,

O' Sacred King of the Witch-Blood True,

To the Land of Man Thou hast Come as the Leader of the Way,

Let Thine Blessed Radiance impregnate this Red Clay.

I look forward into the Past,

I awaken the Soul of my Ancestor Qayin,

I bring to light the Hidden Wisdom of Midnight's Gods,

O' Gates of mine own Self be open!

O' Light of the Soul,

O' Brilliance of the Spirit,

Forever Shimmering is the Light of the Peacock Angel,

Descending from the Heavens to Earth to Embrace

the Flesh of the Existent.

Wisdom and Truth of the Light I seek,

Ever to be found in the Gnosis of I,

Self-Knowledge of Mine Ever-Changing Ways,

Forever swirling about the Point,

As an Un-Earthed Treasure ever abiding in the Dark.

Sacred Fire of the Most High shine from Within,

Illuminate the Mind of the Wise with the Vision of the Eternal,

O' Secret Light cast by Witches Fire,

O' Secret Light cast by Sorcerer's Pyre,

Burn bright, grow high, forever alight in the Mind's Eye.

Patrick Larabee on Etsy

I am first and foremost a practitioner of the Traditional Witchcraft Mysteries as a Walker of the Lonley Road. My work is concerned with Arte of Magick and Sorcery. Secondly, I am an artist and writer who seeks to bring to light the Mysteries of the Darkness through Image and Word, Rite and Praxis.

 

Patricks Artists page on Facebook

Anne Sexton (1928- 1974)... self portrait & poem...

Self Portrait Undated

'You are the answer, '
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.

O daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man. 

excerpt from ~ Consorting with Angels by Anne Sexton

J Karl Bogartte... A Curious night for a double eclipse..2011

Received my copy today of a collaboration with a favourite poet/artist  JK Bogartte...

The levels of consciousness passing through at unfamiliar angles, aroused by intuition and the enfolding future of wasps in a secretive handshake... The word for venom is always glowing in the dark. The storm takes your shape, impregnates those clear-cut moments of primitive bliss and darkens them. Everything unknown comes from deceptive distances. Authenticity enlightens death.

J Karl Bogartte

click on image to enlarge

   

Life is another identity to the one you call your own, and the mystery of who desires its own form, follows the rush of nebulae...

    The missing links ravishing the landscape, hesitant poses, reluctant portraits, the erotic gathering of phantoms that cast themselves skimming over the water, where you and your shadow mediate with death, shaking the clarities between the poles of unconscious desires, striking up the band, of thieves and precious stones, languorous nights collaborating with philosophers haunted by wolves in the foundry of priceless shoulder blades... Bone is like breath when it reflects the sun. It is like devotion, even when it slumbers and dreams of a desirable climax, a beautiful havoc no one can resist.

   There is joy and longing in the skeletal remains of the astronomy that announces your passion, in quadrants, so completely out of step, so flint-like in those moments before waking, where you cannot even be seen...

   “Eat me, my love, live on me with animal-thirst, in the charade of a diamond split open for perilous novelty. Lick my fleece and draw blood into enchanted circles... Suffer for me, my eager shadow, sip the nightshade of my buzzing and my antennae, and cling to my stake, glow for me in the shallows of all that resemble the artifacts of confusion and dismay... my love, enter me and become my hunger for you...”

   Gold is time compressed into a diamond. Time is the process by which infinity lifts her dress just enough to unsilver the mirror that reflects your absence. Your breath is the completed triangle of a furious glance. Night trembles, because it knows you...

   Desire and desperation unfold like roadblocks on a street of glaciers burning up the architecture of fear, where swans mimic giant prisms and autopsy implements fondling the brightest of your glimpses, with passion and concern, with empathy and idealization, a little violence and projection, a passing semblance of erotic devotion, and yes, filled with a certain grace, moments of acceptable doubt, an anguish that allows us to evolve... If we do not falter...

    You are, in spite of yourself, a series of references, and ingenious designs, however brilliant and often too intricate for precise placement in the moment, and we become medial angles taunted by candles and poetic crimes in progress, crossbows of a lunar eclipse, and chaste fountains in the middle of the room with opened arms. We follow you with intent to commit mayhem. We love you endlessly, your propellers tearing up the forest, and when your transparency astounds us, we love you even more. A lunacy of longing dwells in us like words that have no meaning, but animal cries, torn linen, a loving defiance... There is hope for fire.

Dolorosa ... a drawing for Harry Crosby 2012

...if it were not for you...

Dolorosa  2012 ~ for Harry Crosby

The Sun in unconcealed rage
Glares down across the magic of the world

The sun within us, that sways un incalculably.

At night
Swift to the Sun
Deep imaged in my soul
But during the long day black lands
To cross

And it is faith in the incalculable sun, inner and outer, which keeps us alive.

Sunmaid
Left by the tide
I bring you a conch-shell
That listening to the Sun you may
Revive

          And there is always the battle of the sun, against the corrosive acid vapour of vanity and poisonous conceit, which is the breath of the world.

Dark clouds
Are not so dark
As our embittered thoughts
Which carve strange silences within
The Sun

 HARRY CROSBY ~ CHARIOT OF THE SUN

Dolorosa... new drawing 2011 & Ithell Colquhoun poem...

Dolorosa ~ Arch Old Inquest ~2011

Sent Away

Sent away

By Light of day

I return

When candles burn

Ithell Colquhoun

František Tichý & Gerard de Nerval ...Chimeras 1949

Front cover illustration by František Tichý  for Chimeras by Gerard de Nerval 1949

Gilded Verse

And so! Everything is sentient!

-Pythagoras

Man, free thinker! You think you alone think

In this world where life splatters everywhere?

You're free to dispose of your charge,

But the firmament's gone from your schemes.

Respect the spirit that moves in beasts:

Every flower a ghost that opens to Nature,

Every alloy harbors the secrets of love;

“Everything is sentient,” & everything can change you,

Fear the eyes in blind walls,

Even dead matter is infused with a verb,

Don't use it perversely.

Even in the shunned ones lives a secret god,

Like a nascent eye obscured by its lids,

A pure spirit blooms behind the veil of stones. 

The Chimeras ~ by Gerard de Nerval  translated by Translated by Mark Lamoureux

Ernst Fuchs... Vision... 1953

click on image to enlarge

previous Fuchs

A vision

I lost the love of heaven above,
I spurned the lust of earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And hell itself my only foe.

I lost earth's joys but felt the glow
Of heaven's flame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of immortality.

I loved but woman fell away
I hid me from her faded fame,
I snatched the sun's eternal ray
And wrote till earth was but a name

In every language upon earth,
On every shore, o'er every sea,
I give my name immortal birth
And kept my spirit with the free.

John Clare

(1793 - 1864)

Edgar Allan Poe poem... Dolorosa pen & ink sketch...

pen and ink sketch Dolorosa

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Maman Brigitte ... Jessica Grote, poem & Claude Saintilius, art.

click on image to enlarge

Maman Brigitte by Claude Saintilius

~~ Our Lady of the Cemetery: Maman Brigitte ~~

The Face of Death

Ruby-red drops of blood mix with the white flour. The strong

alcohol is still burning in her throat. Passion overcomes her,a

yearning, a desperate physical hunger, spreading her legs wide

open, shivering through her body. She wants to embrace...the

Dead. 

Fixing her gaze on the purple candle, raising it high

above her head, she whispers... Maman... Ma mere... An irresistable

urge has her pouring the purple wax over her body

while calling out to HER...

You are walking down the long and sparely lit hallway.

Following a noise, a whisper, the distant echo of MY voice.

It is cold, you are alone and yet you know we are all around -

waiting for you.

Treading on the path of the unknown, you feel fear, my child,

I know.

Be brave, go ahead, follow MY call, open that door.

I am over here, standing below the willow on that old cemetery

Yes, it is music coming out of this crypt. Have a look, go inside,

you will see strange rites but also merry dancing and laughter.

Dance with the Dead, my child! Dance with my children!

Do not take yourself too serious!

I am the Mother of the Dead and we are everywhere. In fact

everyone is a walking Dead.

So why not laugh in the face of Death?

by Jessica Grote ~October 2010 excerpt from Atua

Robert Taylor... Pen & Ink drawings and Poem...

Rose ~ pen and ink

Sri Yantra for the Kali Yuga ~ Pen and Ink

 

Flower of  Freya ~ Pen and Ink

The Pointillist

In the gathering indigo of evening
at the twilight of the day,
as ghosts of blue smoke be rising
from chimeys red and grey,

an ink-besmeared drawing board,
testament to lonely nights
of labor-intense endeavors
where his patient work is wrought.

The small key rolls the tumblers
of an oiled, aged lock
that opens the door to stillness.
He feels for the light switch
to vanquish the dark.

Alchemist of the stipple-pen
in his black kitchen of art,
pursuing the endless journey
from ink to pen to dot.

His hair now streaked with silver,
Myopia dims his sight.
His years in dots are measured,
subtracting from his life...

more wonders here at the Red Salon

Gerrit van Honthorst.... Saint Sebastian... c1623

click on image to enlarge

The Love Song of St. Sebastian

T. S. Eliot

I would come in a shirt of hair
I would come with a lamp in the night
And sit at the foot of your stair;
I would flog myself until I bled,
And after hour on hour of prayer
And torture and delight
Until my blood should ring the lamp
And glisten in the light;
I should arise your neophyte
And then put out the light
To follow where you lead,
To follow where your feet are white
In the darkness toward your bed
And where your gown is white
And against your gown your braided hair.
Then you would take me in
Because I was hideous in your sight
You would take me in without shame
Because I should be dead
And when the morning came
Between your breasts should lie my head.
I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your earls curl back in a certain way
Like no one’s else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees---
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.

1914

Shuji Terayama... Collage & Haiku poem...

click on image to enlarge

while an ant
toiled from the dahlia
to the ash tray
I was forming
a beautiful lie

more here > UBUWEB

Felicien Rops & Victor Neuburg... erotic print. & poem excerpt...

L'Amante du Christ, 1888 ~ Felicien Rops

Sweet wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod

Unto the shrine of the most obscene god, and

Let me once more feel thy strong hand to be

Making the magic signs upon me! Stand,

Stand in the light, and let mine eyes drink in

The glorious vision of the death of sin!

from 'The Romance of Olivia Vane' Victor Neuburg.

Edward Estlin Cummings...poem & drawings...

i like my body when it is with your

 

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

previous posts EE CUMMINGS

Edmond Jabès ... poem...

From "Groundless,"

by Edmond Jabès (b. Cairo, 1912–d. Paris, 1991)

Translated by Keith Waldrop

I

No-man's-land, obsessed page

A dwelling-place is a long insomnia

in the hooded trails of a mine.

My days are days of roots,

love's yoke extolled.

The sky is always to cross and

foreground to be bed with new nights.

I form, in my weeds,

a wedge in the wall's opaque brightness.

The earth is steeped in

empty dreams of travel.

VI

Land beyond night, which the sun wrenches from

meditation, from the thorns of doubt.

Flowers parade their artful candor. The stems

emulate grand adventures in space.

Honey flows between stones

which this cement will join.

VII

Around the branches, the world mimes its hunger.

So many cries for a tree, fragrant god to

plant, to bend by a magic round. . .

My secrets are orchards.

There is no trick to the mystery.

* with thanks to Ruairi

Paul Holman... poem... 3

3

 She had been earthed

( had i earthed

her by my intrusion? )

eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I

could not locate.

She considered me a 

plunderer, a facund man,

a madman: one who

scries alphabets

of daggers, of arrows.

Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,

the tip of each

hair luminous a fox-

fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet

gate at her throat

to release the fractal

silhouette of Pan.

Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 

previous POEMS

 

PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.