ABBA

agnetha

My fantasies turned blonde  in ‘seventy-six

Bjorn, and the flickas sailed from East to West.

Santa Lucia never shone so blessed

as she did in my private Euro-mix.

Perfect pop longs for that feminine fix.

Cassette wheels whirred –  branding, then impressing

grooves upon the brain; my thrall confessing

love for Nordic light (in Disco metrics).

The names still strike flames, kindling bright renown:

Frida, Agnetha  –  your longships linger

Your Viking faces sacked my harbor town.

portaging hope to this shipwrecked singer,

enwreathing smiles to reach our further shore.

 I Do… (times five – and will forevermore).

 

Welcome to my ABBA obsession
(just one of many…)

Ω Gothic Postcard Ω

Dear diabolic debutante / Spawn of the unfathomable abyss of blackness / Daughter of dreadful dead desire / Black-shrouded sinister sister of celestial gloom before whose imperious gaze the heavens fall silent / Whip-lash girl-child of the graves whose pallid visage kindles the myriad infernal fires / Autocratic vampiress of lunar doom whose winding-cloth enfolds the thousand horrors of blood-drenched nightmare / Thou that wanderest the cypress-crested hills of funereal necropolises / Whose icy glance cracks the ungraven tombstones of utter desolation / Empress of night and madness / Who stalks the locked and shadowed hallways of unhallowed thought / Whose burial-boat glides the still waters over Lethe’s silent depths to the unglimpsed isle of eternal mourning / Whose parapets tower above the fiefdoms of quotidian banality / Whose flying buttresses overlook the Stygian waters of the forgotten drowned denizens of damnation / Whose unshackled dungeons open to worlds of regal splendor / Whose spires pierce dark skies where oblivion buries the ruined cities of revelry under the drifting clouds of leaden time / Oh maiden of melancholic alchemy whose petrified passions transmute base metal into pure gold…

May the gibbous moon of equinox shine its baleful eye upon you; may you tread in sacramental calm the winding starlit paths of somnolent cemeteries; may my unmixed metaphors unveil in delirium their parabolic mysteries before the smoldering altar of your uninterpretable allegory; may the favor of your scorn forever lay me out, embalmed, undead, on the cold stone of merciless reality. Behold: in cryptic script of spectral apparition, in tracery of coded illumination, amidst the dawning rays of torment I write thine unknown name on the threshold of daylight. And from within the mortared wall of self I speak forth from my sepulcher the Sibylline utterance, unsought, unheard, undreamt:

JUST WANTED TO SAY ‘HI’ !!!

Circe offers the cup to Ulysses, Waterhouse

♣You Again ♣

 

A face in the chamber –  I couldn’t connect it

Like Dante’s Beatrice, beatific in black

Loquacious you weren’t.  But I’ve come to expect it

How lovely to see you – it threw me off track.

As the summer deceases and winter approaches

Let casting of shadows be gone from your art.

Lighten up, dark enchantress. Your coldness reproaches.

Oh pull out the dagger you’ve stuck in my heart!

Will another bad sonnet, addressed to your highness

Suffice to start thawing the frost in your soul?

Ennobling it isn’t – this taciturn shyness…

Vampire girl – be a sociable witch;

Even necrophiles hope for a smile, or a twitch.

Never fear. Not your corpse, just your friendship’s my goal.

Degrees of B.S.

BS

Bernie Sanders hatched a scheme
to rant an old progressive theme.
He left the greening mountain heights
to bellow forth for Social Rights,
descending to our nation’s valleys
milking the faithful at his rallies.
Mr. Sanders sold the farm,
sounded socialist alarm,
trading professorial tweeds
to bloviate for human needs.
Setting lefties all a-twitter,
bartering the sweet for bitter,
he glared through academic glasses
at the doubtful working classes
wondering why they failed to note
exactly how they ought to vote.
Sanders patched up race-relations
fixing holes with reparations,
working up his magic wonder:
horsey voice of righteous thunder –
till the clouds hung heavy and gray
the portent of a darker day.
Warming up leftover Hope
sparing no change for hangman’s rope,
sputtering — he blew a gasket
redistributing our basket;
scolding, bellowing, pumping fist
and waving fingers from the wrist
(like Politburo retro-chic:
a tousled old white-headed freak).

image adapted from Bernie Sanders Caricature Art by Steve Nyman