The Vultures and the Forest of Alupluto
In the forest of Alupluto there are many nights,
But only one morning.
There are many weeping voices,
But only one song.
Behold: the Sheol dances when the forest is red,
Giving life to the underworld at night.
The gale that went north turned south;
The gale that went south turned west;
And the gale that went west went everywhere.
A thousand broth-boys fell in the forest of Alupluto;
As the goose, so the gander.
Tens of thousands withered in the orchard,
And the colors of the rainbow that went east struck the gully-slough,
Restraining the equinoctial gales of the old greybeard.
See how he grunted bardesquely—this tormentor—
With his esquires.
How hard it is for the pirates to resist white-elephant luxury:
A swamp on misty mountains for chic pacifism.
It evinces the eastern colors of the rainbow,
Where the gazelle might flee to gavel the epicure
And find relief from the working sun.
Had the gully-miasma gripping Alupluto not struck?
And had the fallen trees not adorned the bouquet for the undertaker?
How gross the luxury held in the mist!
Froth impales the mistimed,
And the gale that went north went everywhere.
Espionage refrains from debiting him where the greybeard debouched
For the days of reckoning.
Never bereaved, nor traversed by dearth,
He was as truthful as a knight of old,
Brandished by the orchard’s hair-raising twinges.
O, let that crux not lie!
Nor let the cuss cruise away without a scion.
Cuddled with barleycorn to curry the soul along,
Dappled horses at Alupluto court their bibliomania with glee.
Struck with merry girth, they carry dark ages in their loins.
Death-wishes, death-watch beetles, and death-blows:
The common refrain of goons over the Alupluto deathbed.
A deadly, pale girth—the unction of the knight of old—
As tree-hoppers leap over the greybeard.
Are they prowled no more? Does the fret wither away?
Haywire haunted and haywire funfests—
Hawk-less with gritstone to loop the headstrong.
It is hazy where the golden hook is mangled,
As Sheol performs the dance of the macabre.
Ruffled by masquerade and haunted by manacles,
He hurls melodrama to reach a mellow apotheosis.
See anew the mountain molehill;
See the molehill on the mountain.
Here lies the murderer; O, murder-earth!
A mug’s game with the uncouth dregs in no-man’s-land.
The bard’s ferret foregathers the summons
As foxholes and foxhounds wait for the reckoning.
Will his fowling piece revive the golden hook?
Foxy, foxier, foxiest—the middle appends.
He does not vent his bucolic passion,
Frothing with the buccaneer’s fiery pawn,
To dip his pen in a brown study
Or divulge the bugbears of the country bumpkins.
He will neither run nor offer invectives
To the despots whose oven grips Alupluto.
In gall he dipped his boyhood pen,
As the bard, brusque and sly, chronicled the bullet:
“Bunkering of the nether-worlds flung open the orchard.
Morning souls were hurled into Sheol by bandits
To sever the forest's compassion.
Carols and epicures are unfairly caroused by cavalry.
A thousand broth-boys fell in the forest of Alupluto.
O, casino of death, we castrate thee!”
The gall in the pen hurled out the cavalry,
As the grim-hack pen hops from tree to tree.
In surfeit he sighed, shrieking with a nervous cough,
To ensure the monarchy of the days of yore.
Taciturn, he regained his mooring,
As Sheol’s dance continued,
Chopping with the axe of a brawling mood.
With galloping hoofs, the buccaneers strode to un-soil the earth.
They chortled at the theft of the great spoil—
The harvest of souls that never return.
Alupluto is a cipher-hound of trenches; who will bail it out?
To the cavewoman’s valley he trod,
With a brown study greater than all of Alupluto.
There, he worked the press to exhume the rainbow’s rudder
And refrain this gale.
Does it not savor? “Thunder damps the mortal brawn.”
The mystery of the greybeard clamors nearby.
Craving boyish strength, for he who sees like the gods
Must battle like the gods.
He did not revile; his mortal tarry pounded the gongs.
Hopping trees in the siege of bandits
To envelop his writ for the gutter press.
Recklessness speaks his dialect;
A tide of dexterity pulls the trigger.
He does not recline when servitude snaps at dusk,
Unless the reconnaissance falls in the trenches.
Quizzes never quiver this rabidity—
A racket of platitudes and an avalanche of rhapsody.
O simple ones, revile not his nature
When the ferry of rife unction hits the billows,
And rifts are held in rampage.
Paddling through with the rigs of the ancients,
He ripples through the storm to do a roaring trade.
Bibliomania went everywhere in Alupluto,
And the gale that went north went everywhere.
Quibble not with this ire; his metaphor speaks no guile.
There is no time to dine, no time for wine,
With a meta-language that cannot be read by the simple or the bold.
Behold a seriocomic for the world!
O simple ones, avoid the reckless!
Like the saints in confession, recklessness sings of freedom.
As he greys in the press, he hacks in the press.
A sonorous pen tingles beyond his peers:
Brawny and brassy, windy and boisterous,
Fomenting mortal steam.
See, the brat has courted more laurels than the bold.
Bruises are pearls for glory.
Revile not his nature; bind your wounds with recklessness
That thou mightest contend.
Tame the dissidents for an ounce of glory.
From the north country into the wild he trod,
For he, gulled by pogroms, would soon be away
Like a sheep to the slaughter—
He goes in the whore and comes in the gore.
THE BARD OF ALUPLUTO
He comes down the valley and the sky gets balmier.
The sea ruptures cramped rocks at the shore
And gets grimier than ever before.
The monsoon is past ebbing, yet no moisture comes.
Bug upon bugaboo catches the common cold
And the common crass.
Gratifying the ego beyond bounds,
Hanging round the shore,
The ascension of grey matter grazes and polishes
The projected gravy train.
Shallow buds with unwavering brood
Are not as they were in the cold and the crass.
Narcissus, forsook by the oracle,
Turns turtle.
Betwixt the fallen, the crimson, the caisson—
Alas, he rises to graze the mire,
To dabble, to venture, to darn, and swagger by ginger.
Scorning and scolding the whole caboodle,
The Babylon,
And the forest of Alupluto—
Had he not loved to dwell there?
Yoked with the fallen gauntlet,
Sated and adumbrated by metaphors.
Growing pains ebb; he grows to grovel, hopping in the grove.
Did he knacker to grunt?
Distant thunder prepares the air to growl.
With gumption like a guided missile,
He stealthily signals the pirates for the guillotine.
A little grotto for the grappling hook,
Taken to the guillotine, bereaved the greybeard.
“When wilt thou return?”
They have cast him into the open mine,
With the pixies of the grey matter to judge the ungory.
Aluplutans fall in trenches—plain sailing outwits the serfs—
And the gale that went north went everywhere.
Harum-scarum venges the bloodhound.
It pulls in the undertaker for the final rites.
O, thou harlequin that courts madness!
Wilt thou relish the coming sun?
A hassle for the gods and their medicine.
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