August Resolve

I will not let August destroy me

You can keep the reins

You can hold the aces

You can bury the hatchet with your black beast

I will not feast on these sorrows

I will not let August drag me down

You have a basement filled with tendrils

From which you suspend your captives

They twitch like antennae before a storm

I must inform you I will not be hoist among them

I will not let August wear me down

I will outpace the calendar

Page by page I will outface the season

You can pass the baton to September

I will remember, but I will not regress

Bacchanale
(To H. P. Lovecraft)
by Samuel Loveman

A flagon is filled for the vintage guest,
The grapes are crushed at the brim;

The young lord loosens his loric vest,
Violets bound on his brow and breast—
And the revel is all for him,
The revel is all for him.

There, where the orchards fire and smoulder,
Agavè dances around;
Arm to white arm and shoulder to shoulder,
Naked Pentheus leaps to enfold her—
But the Mænads make no sound,
The Mænads make no sound.

In Mysia, a low wind shakes and sighs,
An oarsman calls to his crew;
There is a cry the dead man cries,
Once, ere the darkness fills his eyes—
With a knife that his mother drew,
A knife that his mother drew.

(1936)

lessons

Build nothing but a fire
write your name
only on sand or in water
bet only on time
on death and destruction
consider decay
a form of clemency
snatch your daily bread
from the jaws of the
unborn
and leave posterity
to the dead

even your face

after sometime you will see
that nothing is your own
the name soiled by too many voices
no longer something you can handle
with the certainty of ownership
the hours were always divided for you
by things outside your volition
parents. the solar system.
your choices were always made for you
now you are made to choose
carefully
and certainly
the lady or the tiger
you have no third choice
even your face is stained by time
by the atmosphere, by climate
weathered by smoke and oxygen
captured by gravity
dragged down until it finally peels
or is burned away
and then you are left with same face
as anyone
who
has died
?
you will no longer know