Summer is dying--
long, hot breezes pant their last.
Sleep soft, old summer.

---

Because I have to do something to keep my mind occupied while I'm working.

In shadowed Ulthar, where the moonbeams fall
Draping the chimneys with a silver pall
Where the people work by light of day
And trade with the merchants from down Hatheg way
In Ulthar, one must all cats respect
No cat in Ulthar ever knows neglect
For the cats of Ulthar are special ones
Old ones that drowse by the light of the sun
Young ones that sing when the moon fills the sky
Wise ones that gaze with intelligent eye
Kittens that caper on slanted rooftops
Teasing the moon till the Old Man cries "Stop!"
Leaping and climbing from gable to gable
Till rooftops are seething with calico and sable
Until finally, the sunrise
When they narrow their bright eyes
Down from rooftops they gambol
And homeward they amble
To nap on the hearth till the sun should go down
And the gibbous moon rises on their little town
And the star-pinned night sky will send out its call
In shadowed Ulthar, where the moonbeams fall

---

The first "poem" I ever wrote, sixteen years ago.

Misty moon-clouds fly--
This is where coyotes sing,
Drawing down the night.

Cascarones crunch,
confetti falls around you--
flowers in your hair.

A spoken song, really.  A background of music with spoken words.  The music was performed on a shamisen, I think, or possibly a koto.  One of those things I managed to memorize long ago but failed to remember the person who wrote or performed it.  I haven't been able to google anything about it.

---

Well, there was Gemini Jim and Scorpio Sal,
And they were living by the Golden Gate.
Freezing their nose
And wearing leather clothes
And dealing every way but straight.
They had a Leo dog and a Capricorn cat,
And everything was going fine.
Until, into their life,
On a moonless night,
Come the man
Who got no sign.

He roared right in
Like some evil wind
And he rolled himself a righteous smoke.
And as the thunder crashed,
And the lightning flashed
He took a toke
And spoke...
He said he was born in an astrological warp,
When the stars refused to shine.
On the cusp of nowhere and nevermore:
He's the man that got no sign.

So he told a story of an endless search
To find his missing part.
But Scorpio Sal, she just smiled at him, and
Tried to do his chart.
But Pisces Ben, who was Jim's best friend,
Said, "Man...you must be blind.
You better grab your knife,
And take the life
Of that man
What got no sign."

And so, it happened...
And his blood ran...
Soaked the ground...

The arrest was made by Sheriff Slade,
An Aquarius through and through.
But the jailer was a Sagittarius
And he beat Jim black and blue,
And as they dragged him up the courthouse stairs,
They said, "Jim, how do you plead?"
Jim said, "Man, the moon's in Virgo, so
Blame no fault on me!"

Well, the jury all was Libras,
So you know they were more than fair,
But his lawyer was Aries,
And an Aries just don't care.
And the judge, he was a Cancer,
And a Cancer's got no friends.
But the hangman
Was a Taurus,
And that's where
The circle
Ends...

Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.

Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.

Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal.
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.

Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets;
Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.

Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.

I haven't posted any Saturday night poetry in a while, but I'm in the mood to do so tonight.  Technically I guess this isn't a poem because it's actually lyrics to a song, but it'll do.

I like to sing this softly to myself sometimes just to disturb people.

---

When I come down from Liverpool, the day was dull and bleak;
I met an old seafarin' man, his name was Jack McTeague.
He told to me a story about a robber mean,
Who lived in a cave on the Scottish coast, and his name was Sawney Beane.

'Twas in the reign of Jolly James, in 1424,
His incestuously inbred family patrolled the Galloway shore.
They robbed the innocent travelers, but worse than that they did,
For they feasted on roasted, murdered men, and then their bones they hid.

So good King James, he heard of this, and he sent 400 men.
On hooks in the cave they found human flesh, and they took the family in.
The women they burned in the public square, but not before they'd seen
The men bleeding to death with no hands and feet, with their leader Sawney Beane.

---

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Sawney Beane.

I have been surprised in the past week by how many people are searching for Moon Song, the poem by Mildred Plew Meigs that I posted last Saturday.  I have always like that poem for its haunting images, although it is allegedly a children's poem.

So, here's another by the same author.  The Road to Raffydiddle is another poem from the same book as last week's poem, and has been lurking in the shadows of my mind ever since I learned to read at four years old.  At least since then.  My mother or grandmother probably read it to me before I learned to read myself.  Like Moon Song, this poem conjures up some mysterious images that appeal to me.

---

On the road to Raffydiddle
Sits a fiddler with a fiddle,
   And there beneath the melting of the moon,
Each night he puts his chin
To his cheery violin
   And plucks him out a frisky feather tune.

And when as they go down
To Raffydiddle town
   The people hear him playing in the dusk,
Beside the crooked stile
They pause a little while
  To dance beneath the moon the moneymusk.

Oh, the fiddler he is slight
And his hair is salty white,
   And none who live will ever know his name.
But when he sets his bow
A tickle to and fro
   Each foot begins to flicker like a flame.

Oh, it's fun to see them come
When they hear the fiddle strum,
   All the lords and all the ladies with their cooks;
All the butchers and the bakers,
All the cake and candy makers,
   All the scholars with their noses in their books.

With their breeches in a crease,
Come the gorgeous blue police,
   Come the cowboys with their chaps upon their shins,
Comes a tailor spick-and-span
And a scissor-grinder man
   And a seamstress with her bosum full of pins.

Oh, it's fun to see them prance
At the raffydiddle dance,
   All the doctors and the judges in their gowns,
All the farmers in their slickers,
All the rag and bottle pickers,
   All the gypsies and the jockeys and the clowns.

There below the blinky stars
Come the tinkers and the tars,
   And the brigands with their daggers and their dirks,
Come the vixens and the villains
And the mammies with their "chilluns"
   And the chauffeurs and the soda water clerks.

On the road to Raffydiddle
Sits a fiddler with his fiddle,
   And round about the fiddler falls a cloak;
While past the crooked stile
In Raffydiddle file
   Come flitting all the merrymaking folk.

Oh, the fiddler he is old,
He is eery to behold,
   And none have guessed the riddle of his race;
But folk who linger long
To hear his final song
   Have often seen a sadness in his face.

On the road to Raffydiddle,
Sits a fiddler with his fiddle,
   And he fiddles and he fiddles in the dusk,
But those who come at dawn
Will find the fiddler gone
   And all the music melted into musk.

Every Raffydiddle tune
Will be shut up in the moon
   And none who seek will find his dark abode,
But where the music thinned
A creepy little wind
   Will ripple down the Raffydiddle road.

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
   Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the net lies long
   And the midnight hour is ripe;
The moon man fishes for some old song
   That fell from a sailor's pipe.

And some folk say that he fishes the bars
   Down where the dead ships lie,
Looking for lost little baby stars
   That slid from the slippery sky.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, net of the moon
   Rides on the wrinkling sea;
Bright is the fret and shining wet,
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say when the great net gleams
   And the waves are dusky blue,
The moon man fishes for two little dreams
   He lost when the world was new.

And some folk say in the late night hours,
   While the long fin-shadows slide,
The moon man fishes for cold sea flowers
   Under the tumbling tide.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the gray gulls dip and doze,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon--
   Over the crinkling sea,
The moon man flings him a silvered net
   Fashioned of moonbeams three.

And some folk say that he follows the flecks
   Down where the last light flows,
Fishing for two round gold-rimmed "specs"
   That blew from his button-like nose.

And some folk say while the salt sea foams
   And the silver net lines snare,
The moon man fishes for carven combs
   That float from the mermaids' hair.

And the waves roll out and the waves roll in
   And the nodding night wind blows,
But why the moon man fishes the sea
   Only the moon man knows.

---

Because I haven't written anything myself in a while and this is one I have liked as long as I can remember.  From The Golden Book of Poetry published in 1949, given to my mother when she was a little girl, and which she has passed on to me.

Cold breath moves softly
like a dream barely realized--
distant wings hammer.

Funereal leaves
falling, rustle restlessly:
laughter old and dry

Icy limbs clatter,
trembling timber intertwines,
moaning gale laments.

Moonlight ensorcells
writhing bleak and twisted clouds,
dark turbid shadows.

Gaunt ravenous sky--
high lonesome wrawl of winter:
hungry like the wind.