Dorland’s Ghosts [Dedicated to Clark A. Smith]

The road separated when
I found my appointed way:
”Your poems shall ring as chimes
In ancient ruins…” a covert
Storm from an irretrievable island
Carried this Echo: Dorland’s Ghosts!
“There is a hexed bounty
On love and peace,” they inserted
Into my dreams: perhaps (thinking,
Someday I’d be one of them) entrenched,
Long ago in those rose-colored marble stones,
Vine-vindictive pillars that cling like
Phantom cords: these dreams and
Echoes are flowers that never can be,
Laughter that never will be: from
These ardent, amorous Ghosts
(The penitence ghosts)) That knows me.
They cling to the earth’s tumult
To women, or men, with lutes and
Songs, and play fountains of affection
Until they fall—and fall they shall
These seedless Beings exhume and faint:
Long-dead, now wanting lovers;
I say: cast them to the winds, and flee
Or thou shall know their greed—
Pale and sweet they can be...!
Their muzzling pleasures never glow:
These irrelevant ghouls, play
Tyrant, blushing as if the breasts
Of lovers are Satisfying….
Forfeit, they did—such colored grapes;
They are caught in-between,
Neutralized and scattered

Notes 1: Written 11/1/2006 [Lima, Peru]; a dedication poem to Clark A. Smith, and inspired by him.

Note 2: Dennis has written something like 10-volumes of books on poetry, one and only one on Macabre Poems, Volume III. This is an area he has explored, and according to The Mango Tree Magazine, in India, and other magazines in Australia, and Internet magazines, he again does well according to them. But he doesn’t write exclusively this genre. There have been editors whom wished he had. So here’s a selected poem, he just did he considers Macabre, to a certain degree; you may not see many of them from him in the future so this is a treat. Rosa Penaloza de Siluk