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Dragonfly's Poems

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Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on November 24th, 2015, 7:04 pm

The bluish-green marble of the Earth
Rolls its colors of the sea onto the forest,
Making a pale turquoise dot of fluff
As seen from afar, a pearl in the rough.

On Earth, all is so close at hand
That some myth takes over the band,
Yet upon far away shores the waves roll in,
For there can be no end or begin
To this Cosmos we’re living in.

Energy flows through its paces set
At the speed of time’s patient steps,
Yet, during eternity out there, aware,
Other selves walk through every ‘there’.

All is done time and time again,
In every possible way and yen,
And then it happens all over again,
In every locale, time and time again.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on November 26th, 2015, 11:35 pm

Here's my updated retransmogrified Bodleian Manuscript of Omar Khayyam, to which I added more than a hundred new images. Males can appreciate the ladies rendered and females can appreciate the fashions. FitzGerald only utilized about 25% of this material, so there is very much that is new. 350 images will be appearing.

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 10th, 2015, 9:58 pm

For my perhaps last hurrah and new illustrated book, ‘Rubaiyat of Eternal Secrets’, of 164 pages of about 80 quatrains, with facing pictures, that was spurred by Positor's quatrains and my own philosophies, I first scrounged my iPhoto library for the remnants of unused images, as well as deviantart.com for resources that they were giving away or selling for cheap, and illustrated the book first, not having loads of pictures to choose from anymore, without any words in it, and then wrote words to match some of the illustrations that I composited, somehow putting it together in a few days, since I suppose I was very pregnant with it.

I then had to go and live out all the words, to test them, in old time Persia, which took another few days.

In the video, which I will show first, at least part 1, that has about 13 quatrains in it of an introductory/romantical nature, without any real secrets revealed yet, it begins with a pipe dream in the enchanted Persian forest, one of Omar’s retreats, which we can take as real, including the belly dancer, followed by a scene from ‘The Keeper’, in which young Omar brings the stars down to ground, and thus obtains a job.

There is then a local village/palace sequence, which I slowed down for a cinematic effect, along with adding some light glows, during which the book pages fade in and out (done with imovie picture-in-picture). I added ‘optical flow’ from Final Cut Pro to smooth things out, although it took hours to run and used up a lot of space.

Let me know, you all, if you like the video and/or if you might write try writing some quatrains of your own.

(Part 2 of the video is done but I still have to upload it.)

It’s great to watch it in HD. Click the little gear thing at the lower right and select 1080 (or at least 720).
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 13th, 2015, 8:10 pm

Here are the illustrated book pages of my 'Rubaiyat of Eternal Secrets':

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 15th, 2015, 10:26 pm

A shorter (image-wise) 6x9 edition of 'Rubaiyat of Eternal Secrets':

The rest of the video parts:

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL7FHrOoMEE

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3sGUwMJUeg

part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0VM4FA2vjw

The text:

The morn springs thee o’er oblivion’s brink,
The stars overcome, sunk in the day’s drink.
Now set thy path, past Allah’s golden dome,
Unto the green-grassed river-bank to sink.

The heat and noises of the day will find
My empty chair at home, throwing their rind
Of dust and grime on through the open door,
While afar I read, write, play, and find.

What sword, sling, and arrows from nature sing
Will serve repast, after the noon chimes ring,
My prayers but expressed to the balmy airs,
While the day-star shines as life happening.

She runs past the old and patterned doorways,
And through the dim, undusted alley strays,
Until all have gone to mosque to praise,
When-upon she’s off, her lover to raise.

Here the purest pitch, where the bluebirds sing,
Where the lilacs ne’er know it isn’t spring,
Where Heaven’s eternity bides its time,
Where all woes and troubles have taken wing.

Here the grape vines ne’er toll their final knell,
E’er pouring ruby nectar in life’s dell,
An idyll, where we’re the cups to be filled
To the brim, and spill, quenched and drenched so well.

What fires burn; what flares radiate and rise,
Passioned here, connecting us to the skies,
Beyond all ken, as flames that ne’er lessen;
Oh, Mother Nature outdid herself this prize.

She shines, well beyond the radiant dome,
And she curves, as gracefully as a poem—
Like a gift of orange roses wrapped with bows,
She’s the eternal present, e’er at home.

What wingéd creature arises and flies
Though the red rose garden of paradise!
Whose fair dreams become from visions realized!
The definite blooms from the many tries.

Who knew that the twin-born Peri was bred
From lower flesh and higher spirit bled,
Where the Hellish desert meets the greensward,
When the hot sands and the luscious turf wed.

The night promised great warmth from a simoom,
So we fell back to the tent, for the doom,
And there re-treated— the city gates closed;
Morn soon enough to return and resume.

The next evening, near the tavern door,
An anxious man asked, from the stubborn floor,
“What do fates and furies portend with sand?”
I said, “Those are the grains of time—the roar.”

“Ah,” she gleamed, “the lights of the night return,
And the holy spires strain to reach the burn,
But can never attain those stars afire;
Yet we glow of their dust, lighted in turn.”

“Let us enter, to converse and commune,
With many tales to unveil or subsume,
But we’ll remember our plans made from drink,
Especially those born of Persia fume.”

Inside, some clamored, bewildered, weary,
“What are the secrets of eternity?”
She looked about… “You unlock the unknown
By living; we’re all on its committee.”

“From whence doth your Heavenly beauty shine?”
She told, “From time, dust, light, love, verse, and wine.”
“Ah, the alef; hence, what brings on the end?”
“You tricky questioners, it’s the same line!”

“Are you formed of fire, like Omar Khayyam,
Descended from fallen angels, damned,
Exiled from paradise, until repentance?”
“Well, if you’re into penance, then I am!”

“Well, since you seem otherworldly and wise,
We figured out that you must come from the skies.”
“My unbounded highs are as what flies, so,
I’m djinni, in varied human guise.”

“What Heavenly Saki serves our portions
And pours our illuminating potions?”
“It, so long and slow, thus wasn’t Divine—
Nature’s scroll imprints our emotions.”

“Why must we turn to the deep grave of death,
Having become accustomed to life’s breadth?”
I said, “Expiry rends all composites;
E’en the Wheel will someday breathe its last breath.”

“I, as all, must one day soft surrender,
When the Angel knocks to take me under.
What will remain are my written quatrains—
For all those who’ll come to be to ponder.”

“What are the ways to live?” One wished to know.
“There’s the sensual, the emotional,
And the intellectual; however,
Living them blended makes for the best morale.”

“Hindu goddesses aren’t virgins thought of;
Their healthy desires are free to rove.
Enlightenment is sought and reached through the
Profound experience of sensual love.”

She: “Omar, they think you’ve many ladies,
And they don’t believe I’m fire from Hades—
All because I just flat out told them so.”
“They’d rather that one’s tales must be shady.”

My day filled with algebra, for the Shah,
And then the Davean bombast of the bazaar;
But I caught a whiff of scented khuskhus,
Calling me to the forest of chinar.

On Shah’s errands, I bought a rose bouquet,
For the next after-dusk, to give away,
When the bulbul sweetly sings all night,
Where the jasmine and julep drink of May.

My sweetheart, too, had to work all this day,
Selling pearled beads to earn her time to play.
She said, “Bring a carafe; I’ll drink your musk.”
From back behind, I brought forth her bouquet.

“I love the light, and that we are the dark
Inside the light that makes our love to spark.”
“Undisturbed by the day’s bright noise, I’ll sing,
Sensing your soft sweep across my heart string.”

“I played a fine trick on the Shah last night;
I said that I’d bring down the star light
Of his favorite sky pattern to ground…
My sparklers dug into the sand lit bright!”

“Follow the path, past the rose bushes sight,
Where the forest opens to a shaft of light.
Here the flower beds, one with a lush of grass,
Where greenish light glows forth the hours we’ll pass.”

“Quatrains are the pearls strung along the wrath,
Illuminating beads that life’s web hath,
Lighting the decades of one’s rosary,
To thread the enchanted gossamer path.”

“Days are the cyclic units of time’s pearls—
Beads worn round in the necklace of the months;
They distance themselves, like night echoes,
Into the rosary of the seasons.”

“Are there stars in roses and they in stars?”
“The roses are made of the dust of stars
And worlds within star systems have roses;
We’re all life-stars and roses from the stars.”

Would I, even for a day, live without
One I would love, and leave unfound, in doubt,
A paramour, the love of my life?
Then my standard of life has bottomed out.

Upon all worlds our shadows are cast,
From our inner musings that are so vast,
While we savor the gladness of life.
We’re off back to the inn to hear what’s asked.

“Is future connected to the present?”
“Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.”

“Oh why, why is there anything at all?”
“There has to be, for Nothing has no call.”
“No birth, nor creation, choice, or option?”
“Even the Great Wheel knows not its withal.”

“What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?”
“Everything happens, for it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.”

“What becomes of this potential everything?”
“Anything, as all its possible rings.”
“What’s the information of All these things”?
“Nothing, so it e’er jitters, flutters, and sings.”

“What sense to it all, in that it must be?
What is the message of eternity?”
“The only missive of all time is being,
It’s point is but that it cannot not be.”

“But what’s the base of the basis, as First,
The simplest from which all things fill their thirst?”
“True, the simple, fundamental monad
Composes complicates, uni-versed.”

“So, we’ve it wrong that the base is complex?”
“Yes, as wrong as opposites can expect,
For complexities are ever the less,
From more and more underlying simplex.”

“Fine, but not; you leave me with mystery.
What is going on here? For what purpose me?”
“You and it are the riddle that solves itself.
“You are exactly ‘being’ in its spree.”

Life suddenly fits me like a glove,
As I float on feelings like a dove,
Renewed energy giving a shove.
Well, could it be that I am in love?

A life ought to be rich with excitation—
One deserves to enjoy complete sensation.
Pleasure’s not merely a reward for working;
It’s life’s foremost experience of elation.

As of now I hold reality’s attention—
This is the time of my present comprehension.
What is past exists only in my memory,
The future only in my imagination.

Love is the mutual creation of identity.
To be in love is not a loss of independence,
But rather a shared identity with the lover
That does not destroy the identity of the other.

“As we walk and while away the hours,
We taste a life that’s sweet without the sour.
As soul meets soul under love’s great power,
We merge what’s yours and mine into ours!”

I give no reason for love’s passion planned,
Because to do so would be second-hand;
For the Heart and Soul have many reasons
That Reason could never understand.

Back to the tavern we crept, its drinks calling,
Where the inquisitive sat, pondering.
One and another said, “We’ve more questions,
For we’ve all been born here without asking.”

“The scroll writes itself, my wondering friends,
Having not any plan unto its ends,
In this life borrowed from death that it lends,
So we know not how the veil weaves and wends.”

“Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense;
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.”

“Who can we blame for our selves unmended,
For our nature’s ingredients blended?”
“You could invent ‘Allah’, as the baker,
Who disowns His recipe intended.”

“What this wonderland? I am baffled here.
What sends me though the ages, to my bier?”
“You’ve just said: death sifts the best from the rest;
And, overall, you cannot not be here.”

“What my life’s narrative that I hie through?”
“No matters it, for any one will do.”
“What’s left, then, in all common, as the clue?”
“We’re back to being—experiencing a ‘who’.”

“Where am I going? Am I important?”
“You're going nowhere; here is your life’s plant.”
“In the mosque, they say ‘God’ as if its true.”
“‘Faith’ in their wishes is behind what they chant.”

“Only a Fool would blame His own creations
For the taint therein—of His poor craftsmanship,
So, rejoice, there’s no Maker of Man; these ‘flaws’
Provide for interesting character types!”

“Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.”

“Of elements four and planets seven,
You strain to divine those signs eleven.
Drink de-vined juice! I’ve long taught this lesson:
When not, you’re nought; naught in Hell nor Heaven.”

“No one has plumbed the Secret Depths of Truth—
The jewel eludes e’en the wisest sleuth;
Thus we hear wishes turned to beliefs’ lore,
Yet none can say, ‘It’s this, and here’s the proof.’”

“The impossible dream we’d of our fate
Was to outwit life’s expiration date—
To be deathless and somewhere carry on;
We’ll live, and on, in the lives we’ve touched, mate!”

“Bless your soul with tongues of fire; Holy Spirit burn;
Leave no trace of man’s desire; Holy Spirit turn.
Oh, man, why detest thy constitution;
Doth thou think Nature has a lot to learn?”

“Though ne’er we can know the Ultimate named,
From that fact something profound is still framed;
It’s that when one can’t know, one must still live,
And as such in that life cannot be blamed.”

“So Nature got it wrong, the pious say,
In man’s constitution, erring its essay,
Granting so many ways to go astray;
Well, then, Who, do they say, penned this world’s play?”

“What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
Experience alone is the benefit.”

“Throw not life to the breeze, draft this day known,
For yesterday’s winds have already blown
And future’s currents have not yet stirred.
Forget dead airs; now’s breath is all you own.”

“Think not that I am existent as ‘I’,
Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
For all’s of the ‘IS’; the Cosmos is I;
Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?”

“All moves by law of output from input,
The will, too, since it votes to step a foot,
And worse, by the time we know, all’s been cast;
We can neither wax nor wane the mold’s root.”

“Cloudbursts wash the faces of the tulips,
The wine cleansing you, pouring through thy lips.
All becomes of light, dust, water, and air,
As in the meadow grown from your eclipse.”

“The raindrop falls and returns to the sea;
Dust floats to earth and merges with the lea;
Lives come and go in time— what’s denoted?
Nows spark and fly; they’ve no eternity.”

“Mind is the ultimate of all there is;
It is the universe: billions of years
Of primordial material, complex;
So, then, what more could human beings want?”

“Life, mind, spirit, form, time, and consciousness
Derive from the fundamental content
That materialized from the unknowable,
And grants us the experience of being.”

CARE, a gentle old man, sits silently
By the sundial in Time’s sanctuary,
Slowly marking the hours by the shadows
That creep over the face of eternity.

Worries may not come true, and if they do,
Thus they would, and then in them you must stew.
Past imperfect points to a future tense,
Yet ever only Nows does the Wheel brew.

There’s naught else but lone, resultant Nows.
No matter how one tries to shake from boughs
The fruits of truth from the Tree of Knowledge,
Computation makes not yet the morrows.

Sung songs of life composed now lie reposed,
Thy face-dust Beauty’s music decomposed;
Ah, Sun’s Venus-brows we’re honored to brush,
That future’s wand will rearrange recomposed.

The weight of the world I bear on my back;
‘Tis mine to own, so there’s nought that I lack.
I’ve everything, and no place to put it;
After it crushes me to dust, I’ll unpack.

Oh, those imaginings that can ne’er be,
Such as Nought, Stillness, and Infinity,
As well as Random, Beginning, and End,
Plus Full Solidity, Free Will, and He.

In the whisperings of the after-years,
The winds of time slowly dry my tears;
Nor would I take back a single drop, for
From those tears the flowers grew without fears.

Now we depart. Farewell to the moon-bow
That glowed with our delight! Often that old
World will rise and look for us in vain, ‘though
Time can’t scatter the flowers that we grew!
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 8th, 2016, 2:22 pm

I made yet another Rubaiyat, 'Rubaiyat of Rhymes and Reasons'; here are the book pages:

Hope it delivers some inspirations.

Video Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE9rg4arHO4

The text:

“Oh peri, jasmine of midnight’s garden,
We bask in our moon-glowed, vapored haven,
Bathing in the orb’s silver light again,
Here in this otherworldly forest glen.”

“Omar, the moon’s ring binds us truly here,
Wherein from the strict world we disappear—
They to wonder hence whither whence we went:
Love, kisses, and selves bonded to endear.”

“Colored stars pierce the veil of formless night,
Gemming Heaven’s gloried, crown-jeweled might;
In the depths of the deep we live, anon:
We’re all alone here to weather the plight.”

“The four elements and dust e’vr conspire,
From the fires of stars to those of cremation;
We all breathe, flourish, grow old, and dissolve:
Life is ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.”

“After we’ve lived, loved, and worked our worth,
Through airy winds, vapors, and a soft earth
We will rest at last, under spinning skies,
Those of Earth’s sunny days and starry nights.”

“Perhaps one day, aft this universe sings,
New stars will shine and radiate their flings
To repaint the colors of our ashes—
We then born anew of Time’s phoenix wings.”

Soul to soul, she said, softly, “I’m the light,
Thy spirit’s sight, a beauty bold and bright,
An inspiration come from darkest night,
A newborn star aglow with insight.”

Each night, my djinni fills up my urn,
Pouring sleep into me till day’s return.
Such as day follows night for all eterne,
Fulfillment follows all for which I yearn.

We slept the sleep that only lovers know,
As front to back, under the blankets’ throw,
While meteors criss-crossed the darkling skies—
Our floating selves through love and wine aglow.

Near dawn, she stirred the glowing embers of
The watch-fire, and whispered softly, with love,
“It’s as the transparent veil has lifted;
The stars have gone and the dome shines above.”

Slumbering in the orient sunbeam,
We soft awoke, as dewdrops all agleam,
Refreshed by the delight of a daydream,
Then rose as mist, carried on the day-beam.

Here our secret, sacred elfin forest,
Whereat the base of a chinar we rest,
While all about lay the lush, revered deeps,
And a green-grassed path that heads o’er a crest.

It was so still you could hear a nut fall,
And the enraptured tones of mystic call,
In soft waves flowered upon the silence,
As wafting on the surface of the All.

‘Twas that time of morn when all outcasts rise,
Thrown to time’s Earthly bondage through the skies,
Being for a time their half-Heavenly selves,
Their full glory unmasked by disguise.

These forest fairies, houris, nymphs, and fauns
Ever flash their nude blossoms on the lawns,
Beckoning us along, for though the air
We’ve passed thoughts of love, verses, and songs.

Of man and angel, one yet neither, they came,
To dwell forever, in shadow worlds, between
Form and substance, they, all elfin creatures
And all who float or fly as came from Paradise.

Magical things we saw, that often appear
Elsewhere when one’s eyes close but for a second:
Wingèd ladies, and flowered butterflies,
Whose prints are pressed as dust upon the pansies.

Unicorns and chimeras wandered by,
With nixies, gremlins, and centaur men;
Faeries danced, caught by a believing glance,
As dreamy visions held us sleepy-eyed.

A flush of youth shot through us, as the chain
Of light from angel to faerie added our link,
And our eyes were sparks of bright burning fire,
Sense extended in a new dimension.

The life of my jinni is in her eyes,
Soft-lipped mouth, and the ears that pointed rise,
As like moon and stars reflect in a pool,
Which look as for a lifetime pours surprise.

I dive into her eyes, her soulful gate,
And worship before her heart’s flaming grate,
Midst flowers in the gardens of our dreams,
Then whirl back up through her eyes as her mate.

I’m left with a feeling that’s no mere spell,
But a truth in Heaven that’s whimsy in Hell,
Of elemental affinity’s flame,
Deeper than thought, much older than speech can tell.

Yet still we went on to tell, with quatrains,
Intertwining, of that which forever deigns,
Moving all that must ever move by change,
Closing in on pervading cause that reigns.

“Though I’m a scientist, philosopher,
Astronomer, mathematician, we’re
Together wiser from your spirit core:
Why, how, when, and where things occur.”

“We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
Ever unveiling this life’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.”

“There is rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From a latent whence into us hence.”

“Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.”

“Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Due to the requisite of ongoing change.”

“So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.”

“All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of possibility, as like the
Probable cloud of distributed paces.”

“What remains unchanged over time are All’s
Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.”

“The weave of the discrete bits as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

“Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.”

“Via this concordance of literature,
We’re the cosmos’ conscious adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.

“A poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from one’s profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
It’s both the existence and the essence.”

“After all we’ve solved of the mysterium,
And what’s seen on Earth surprising me some,
I’ve realized that it needn’t all make sense,
Which insures my stand of ‘Carpe Diem’.

“Saki, though fate’s blows here may retard us,
And oft a sleeping place be denied us,
So long as a wine cup lies between us,
We’ve the very truth at hand to guide us.”

“The wine-jar is our sacred place of prayer—
We drink in lessons of true being here;
Let’s pass much more time in taverns, so that
Our time misspent in mosques we can repair.”

“When Allah set the course of the sun,
And pro-creed the Pleiades their place to run,
Our lot too was fixed in fate’s high court;
So why blame us for wrongs that fate has done?”

“The lodgers of the graves to dust decay,
Ignorant of self, and soon outside are they,
Their unleashed atoms floating through the air,
As mirages, until the judgment-day.”

“Take up thy wine goblet, dear, unafraid,
In this haunt of the bank’s grassy glade,
For many moon-like forms has heaven’s wheel
Into golden cups and goblets like us made!

“Lo, such as I am, Allah created me,
And hath kept me for a half-century!
Through all these years I’ve made experiment:
If my sins or His mercy greater be.”

“We know the secrets of this earthly sphere,
But still remain the prey to empty fear.
We cannot bend things to our will, but we
Can cheer for the few moments we are here!”

“The fullness of the moment can only
Be had by being fully present for it,
For then there are no regrets of the dead past,
No worries quaking the unborn future.”

“Close your eyes and realize the light within;
Allow visualization to begin;
This attracts into your life: dreams, wishes,
And desires—all that you would believe in!”

“Dreams become imagination’s command;
The impossible I now understand.
To know that dreams can come true makes them so.
A real fantasyland is being planned.”

“Here we are, to learn just how good life can be;
Woe’s not with me, Care’s eagle eye can’t find me,
Stress is left behind, with the serpent Despair;
I’ll feast on the Earth before it feasts on me.”

“Look, wherever we turn our tired eyes,
Sweet nature springs, and crystal bearers rise.
The desert, once bare as hell, now verdant smiles:
Let us enjoy, oh maid of Paradise!”

“Driven not by desperation or pain,
But purely by love alone, I sustain
Affection through the goodness of giving,
For true love’s but pure love preordained.”

“A mutual self we form, one both friend and lover,
Touching soul-to-soul through language we discover,
Opening each other up to connect our selves;
Now we Two total more than One plus One other.”

“True kisses are always new, and never
Lose their freshness, for, like falling water
Or the cyclic moon, the power of love
Renews itself, and sustains forever.”

I’d entered her being, snuggling in there,
Gently wading where few had ever tread;
Then, like childhood laughing without a care,
I followed her stream to its sparkling head!

We’d pledged our selves, and we were living the dream,
After many a loving way with charm;
We danced, splashed, and played in that stream
Where our souls drank deep and safe from harm.

She sends out emanations of love fair
That are sweet, soft, and smiling on the air;
‘Tis a scented mist, a liquid love filling
The scene with its well-being everywhere.

The tulip lifts her blushing cheeks to me,
While wandering winds caress the rose tree.
She wears a spring smile and pours dewy tea.
“Yes, I’ll drink you long and deep into me.”

“I drink your wine into my two-lip cup,
As meanwhile the giver-of-life comes up;
Petal by petal, your rose wide unfolds—
Passions grow from the dew on which we sup.

“My dearest: Your wet lips’ sensual pout
Draws me to the cooling well, in and out.
Love’s sensation touches us everywhere;
At last, the sweet-water puts the fire out.”

“A sixth sense is the mind when alive,
For it makes sense of the other five,
Bypassing non-sense, and creating
The only way in this world to survive.”

“Past, going, leads to future that will be—
Transformational—‘now’ in the middle,
Rolling smoothly through recall, sensation,
And anticipation. Time is movement!”

“Space/matter and past-future blend to create
The spirit of life as the pyramid’s core
That furthers the sparks of pair relationships
That evolve as the life of our species.”

“Past matter is history—what’s occurred,
While future matter is progression seen.
Matter past to future changes structure,
That which moves and/or reforms through time.”

“Past space is remembrance—the memories,
While future space is wishes, hopes, and dreams.
Space past to future is a change of outlook
From what is known to what might become.”

“Remembering history is learning;
Wishing of a progression is vision;
We venture on into creation from
Structural changes and education.”

“Direction is learning from outlook’s change,
While planning’s the formation of vision;
Vision and change of outlook beget growth;
All of no-where to now-here as Being.”

“Direction arrives or one goes nowhere;
Growth happens or one vanishes to null;
Creation comes or reaction destroys;
Planning makes a life or it collapses.”

“Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its ‘best’—
It’s merely there to die in its sublimeness.”

“Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion.

“All becomes from its glorious excursions,
Through the change that patient time restrains,
It feasting upon the glorious decayed remains,
In its progressive march through losses for gains.”

“We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.”

“One need not look where there is no light,
For being alive is the very meaning of life—
Living life is the sparkle that gleams so bright;
Why parade in the dark when all here’s so right?”

“What is the Earth with these pastimes so fine?”
“It is the gift of the Universe’s fine sweet valentine.”
“What loveliness brings such soft breezes that caress?”
“The winds are the pressured airs mixing up the rest.”

“Where in the Woe is Purgatory’s bane?”
“Purgatory’s on Venus, where sulfurs rain.”
“Where in the Heck is that deep Hell of pain?”
“Hell’s found in the sun’s heart, oh hot burning pain!”

“Where in the name of Heaven is Paradisea?”
“Of Heaven’s site no one has any idea—”
“Really now, where’s Heaven one and the same?”
“It’s the world’s best kept secret: Earth is its name!”

“Yes, that’s said, but truly, where is the stead?”
“I must tell of them that they’re only read;”
“Of those places spent after we are dead?”
“It’s written in words ancient language bred.”

“I love that time just after the gloaming,
With the last of the glow-flies still roaming,
The night airs full of amorous promise,
And the quietus that lets love’s dreams rise.”

“Here our ships are over-brimmed with visions
So clearly seen that some must roll on in,
For the prismatic arch of the sun bow
Is anchored twice to the real world below.”

“I dip myself in, as the cup to fill
From the stream of consciousness my will
That is beyond the plain reality,
As waking from it all the more to be.”

“There’s a bluish purplish maroon view, on high,
Of streaking lights of a magical sky,
Heretofore never imagined by my self.”
We strolled on and into the vale itself.

The nightingale, overcome by the fume
Of the failing rose, pierces itself in doom
On the thorn, bleeding red the life that flees,
Then revives in the beauty of the bloom.

I own a solar system way out there,
One whose planets contain diamonds, silver,
And much in gold; so now I’m rich; it’s all
Mine because I chose a favorite star.

Born of stardust and nourished by sunlight,
I fill my cup with wonders of delight.
Life is a treasure, a radiant gem,
A vision that I’ll never see again.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 13th, 2016, 10:34 pm

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 22nd, 2016, 3:06 pm

Here's a short but great video covering quatrains 1-12 of 'Austin's Golden Rubaiyat Persia-Fumes':

Book pages here:

Quatrain text 1-12:

Life is a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,
Stretched in time between eternal boughs.
Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,
Each moment a sequence of instant nows.

At first, we sleep in our dear mother’s womb;
At last, we sleep in the cold silent tomb.
In between, Life whispers a dream that says,
“Wake, live, for the rose withers all too soon!”

The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!

Good and evil were wrought from wrong and right,
When, of nought, twin genii split day and night.
Some may think that black’s might can vanquish white,
But night can’t even quench the smallest light!

I fear not death, Heaven, or even Hell,
For death is only life’s natural knell,
And Heaven and Hell are within myself;
The one thing I fear is not living well!

Breathe in all that’s good, breathe out all that’s bad;
Peace flows into you—it’s warm, wet, and glad.
Feel it spread throughout the body, then say,
“This is the best life that I’ve ever had!”

In the darkness, I alit from the Wiz,
And tried to make sense of this world of His.
I soon find the ‘answer’ to life’s dark quiz:
One must live this life by what light there is.

Once again, I have lived through winter’s chills,
To see another spring of daffodils.
Eager sap rises in my veins and thrills,
As the sun pours life into my tendrils.

She grows a clutch of blossoms to propose;
His zephyr blows nature’s page to disclose:
Spring, departing, caresses the summer—
From their only kiss blooms the lovely rose.

Spring’s last breath awakens him—he’s living:
The life-force passes to summer from spring—
His clover spreads, vines grow strong, roses cling,
All from the kiss of which she died giving.

“I’m the darkest,” says the Shadow to the Night.
“No,” says Midnight, “compared to me you’re bright.”
“You floodlights!” says Starless Space, “Stop your fight.
The darkest plight is the lack of love’s delight!”

A thousand starry goblets fill the sky,
So we can taste Heaven’s drink when we die.
This is only man’s tale, so drink today;
The stars shine on, heedless of where we lie.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 25th, 2016, 3:04 pm

Video for part 2 of 'Austin's Golden Rubaiyat Persia-Fumes':

Seize the moment or lose its momentum,
Wearing time as a royal diadem;
Richly accelerate life’s momentous gem,
Letting your motto be ‘Carpe diem’.

A rose’s prime lasts for but an hour of morn:
Flowering and free, then fragile and forlorn,
The petals float to earth, and there signify
That beauty’s past, for all that’s left is the thorn.

There’s a subtle, interlinked complexity of
Life, a relation that unites the world in love:
The earth is our mother, sustaining from below;
The sky is our father, nourishing from above.

Success blossoms out of a thoughtful dream,
Grown from seeds of what life to us should seem,
Then bears forth fruit, healthy and delicious,
In the garden watered by a wishing stream.

When tomorrow’s well is full, will I drink?
Or should I live today? Must I sit and think?
If so, then even today is too late;
The wise just lived yesterday to the brink!

For those of us who ignore life’s romance:
Ignorance, like shadow, has no substance.
The shade is removed by the light within—
Feel the rhythm of the universal dance!

If we were angels, life would be so just;
Instead, we try, we push, we climb, we lust,
We dance, we dream, we feel, and love with zest;
Yes, all this, thanks to the beast within us!

Look at the stars in the depths of the night;
Hold their flames in your mind, keeping them bright.
Their power flows, energizing you, from
The Eternal Charger—you see the light!

In the night, lies the healthy breath of morn;
The giant oak sleeps within the acorn;
The flower waits for spring inside the seed;
So too in a daydream is one’s life born.

Quick-walker down the morning path gazes,
To where she’ll be when the next trail blazes.
Do we too, whom this moment calls her own,
Stare past the scene, into hazy mazes?

Walking gives more energy than it takes;
It’s as easy as falling forward makes.
Thoughts ‘come clear, cares fade, alertness tingles;
Life’s spirit whispers one along, wide awake.

To future columns, we stretch our present row,
By a lifeline of tenuously spun vow.
Oh how soon the weighted web begins to fail;
The only real time under our feet is now.

Bickering and quarreling expend breath,
Sap energy, and undo love’s promise.
Precious breath, waste it not when you have it!
Enjoy all that life can give, ere comes death.

Hectic and hurried, we rush to success.
Serenity can’t find us unless
We slow down, see shades, hear tones, feel textures,
Smell scents, and enjoy life’s loving caress.

Engraved is ‘The End’ of your Earthly sigh;
Six sides surround: five are dirt, one is sky.
Shov’ling, Death talks to you at last and says,
“What were you doing during all of nigh?”

Refreshed, I wandered among the tombstones,
Under which rested little more than bones,
Wherefrom the life had fled when dreams were dead—
Which under me became life’s stepping stones.

Not quite sober blessed nor drunk to excess;
Never too foolish nor very reckless—
Ah, life’s passion is so reasonable
In this delicate state of awareness.

Where the river runs, far from Sultan’s throne,
We live by the stream-side, just us alone.
Here we’ve the perfect equilibrium:
Poor but rich, home yet free, great but unknown.

The zephyr faints, dying in the half-light,
Its caress suspended, as day kisses night,
When for some instants, stretching into moments,
We are neither here nor there, but in twilight.

Senses melt away, drip by drop by drip.
Impressions flood the speechless spirit.
Emotions flow free for the heart to read.
Love draws us in: we dissolve in it.

In the water, a face to me is shown,
One that sang all the songs the earth has known:
It’s yesterday’s summer wanderer,
Free again to shine on the world I own.

Heart-flight is love that the wondrous Earth brings,
As wind to the soul whispers unimaged things;
Senses merge, as streams, to flow beyond joy;
Imagination fires enlightened wings.

Purgatory’s on Venus, where sulfurs rain.
Hell’s found in the sun’s heart—hot burning pain!
Of Heaven’s site, no one has an idea;
It’s the world’s best kept secret: Earth’s its name!

Earth couldn’t be farther out in space, alone;
In all directions it rolls along, unknown.
Look to the stars piercing the depths of time:
They beckon, warm and welcome, the fires of home.

Ambition’s mist drifts upward each morning,
Outlining daydreams, although still forming,
But rising still, into the clear sunlight,
And taking shape, sculpting clouds, then sailing.

Reason speaks to Passion, with logic cool,
“Quench thy inner fire, lest it burn us, fool.”
Says Passion, “I know What I feel, not Why;
‘Tis better you take heed of me; I rule!”

Of hitherto, I know not, but am whither going,
Willy-nilly, whence all there is to knowing;
Hence thither I went on hither flowing to find
Myself flowing free, all from not knowing.

World does not pass by; you pass through it.
Clear your being so the treasure may arrive;
This spirit sparkles of a different light,
The gemstones are of a different mine.

Above us, the branches slowly sway, and fan
Away the little creatures that try to land.
The trickling waters play tinkling lullabies,
While flocks of returning geese fly the skies.

She is sweet, soft, and inconsummably wild,
As she lies beside me, like a sleeping child.
Her quiet breathing stirs not the wooded scene,
As she rests silently on the forest green.

I caress her tresses, in romantic rhythm,
To the contented sighs she sends toward Heaven.
We slumber where the grass fledges the stream,
Half-awake or asleep in love’s peaceful dream.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 27th, 2016, 11:42 pm

part 3 video:

Throughout the day, we sit beside a brook,
Reading with life its most wonderful book,
Then sleep with each other in a sweet nook,
And this of her and me was all it took.

So there we lay in the embrace of love,
And in our intensity lost track of
The world around, and were surprised to look
And see beside us a rabbit and a dove.

Like living lenses, we mirror our love:
In feedback loops, images spiral above,
Echoing as infinite reflections
That fill up the scene—that’s what love’s made of!

Life, although anguishing, must be lived fully,
Yet, if we’re alive enough to feel its beauty
Then we’re exposed to its opposite twin;
Yes, Beauty’s other side is Melancholy.

Together we sing, in the fugal voice,
For we live in two-part harmonic choice.
We’re opposite twins in love, a canon
Of chime in which we in unison rejoice.

Our fugal voices blend, part, join, and long
Weave in and out, the music sweeping strong
And onward, upward, inward, and outward,
Until being is left to the spirit’s song.

Like voices merged in the Canon Pachelbel,
We speak as one, as the knell to the bell,
She saying what I think and vice-versa,
In tune, in unison, yet parallel.

So much sweeter sounds are your lover’s sighs
Than the groan of war that wins great prize.
Just one taste of true love by far outbuys
A Sultan’s wealth in some rich paradise.

Convince me, Nature, that Reason is right,
That the strength of the heart is not in flight;
I’ll plunge into the depths of thought and love,
And tell the spirit to defy the blight.

For my sins of spring I repent my part;
No! I mustn’t atone, for how, apart,
Could I resist the beauty of love’s truth
When roses and tulips bloom in love’s heart?

Daydreams are filled with thoughts on promenade:
Wishes, fantasies o’er the mind cascade.
Listen well to these plans already made,
For by sundown the phantom shapes may fade.

The spirit calls, steam risen from the rain,
A missing so sweet that it’s almost pain.
The future’s heavy, swelling with promise,
Of the season when love can breathe again.

A diamond sparkles though its every face,
Each plane contributing a view of space.
Such radiant richness does life reflect,
For one facet does not a diamond make.

Life must be more like a mosaic done,
Than a focused laser tunnel of sun.
Since few lengthy pleasures are lent to us,
We build stained-glass windows of small ones.

Arithmetic theory fails in love’s plot:
Love when divided diminishes not,
Unlike sadness, and vanishes not.
Each love multiplies to exceed the lot!

The day pours life into roots with sunlight;
Flowers bloom, showering us with delight.
In a blossom, a firefly blinks its light,
Kindling the flames of a romantic night.

The glow-worm rises into the summer sky,
Twinkling, love’s light unspent—now a firefly,
Sighting the beacon of love’s reply; they then,
With electric hugs, become lightning bugs!

The sky is lit, a twinkling promenade
Of mating calls from luminated pods,
Tracers pulsing wild, searching thoughts that smile—
From fireflies named Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Nod.

Coffee plants are in the desert first seen,
By a starving outcast, who eats the bean,
And finds it bitter, so he boils some, tart,
Finding that the water is the better part.

Such from asylum he returns home, quaint,
And for his coffee is declared a saint,
But its drinkers are despised by clerics—
The partakers dally over their cups!

Days are the cyclic units of time’s pearls—
Beads worn round in the necklace of the months;
They distance themselves, like night echoes,
Into the rosary of the seasons.

Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
While quick death sifted the rest from the best.
Those three, our birthright, form our epitaph:
RIP; time expired, death came, dust is left.

Like the moon, challenge night and gain the light;
Like the rose, suffer the thorn, gain the fragrance;
Of life, surrender to live forever,
Enlightened more than a thousand suns.

Earth’s a garden, an oasis in space,
A planet of boundless beauty and grace.
One might search the heavens for such in vain,
Finding no equal, any time or place.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 30th, 2016, 2:55 am

part 4 video and text

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.

Classicists drone toward dull perfection;
Romanticists drown in feeling’s affection;
Worse, others alternate between extremes;
It’s not this nor that, but of joined direction.

Where go the leaves of yesterday, we say,
Aft winter comes and crumbles them away?
They like us turn to dust—rejoin the clay,
To rise someday, from unremembered lay.

The wings of time are checkered black and white,
For fluttering round the day flies the night.
Like chess pieces we gamely play for life,
Until into the box we return, quite!

Each holds within itself the seed of the other:
Yin reaches climax then retreats in Yang’s favor—
Cyclic movement of rotational symmetry.
Rounded life is the blend of Yin-Yang together.

All the stars roll by for me to classify;
Science more and more my life does simplify;
But I have one final question left to ask:
“Why in the world was I born to live and die?”

Since death is a certain fate on the Earth,
One might ask: How shall I live my worth?
Stay busy living, or you’ll be dying.
The answer please? There’s life after birth!

Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
The highest power of language and wit.
The reader then translates back to spirit;
If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!

As I age, I drink life’s bountiful wine,
Savoring each droplet in its good time.
As a living chalice of swirling blood,
I must tip my cup to this life of mine.

Some may ask of Life: “How does one find love?”
Life says, “Be still! Don’t rush far and above;
Stop; let love’s butterfly alight on you,
For that’s the touch that romance is made of.”

Your wine, my persona radiata,
Fills my golden chalice. Oh, Sultana,
I’m intoxicated by your love-stream
Flowing freely; oh dear, amorata!

Men and women can’t stay in isolation,
For like valleys which give rise to mountains,
One’s nature makes necessary the other;
When they’re joined in love, there’s wholeness again.

In Heaven, desired pleasures fall like rain,
Or so we dream to avoid mortal pain;
But we needn’t wait for some promise beyond,
Since on Earth, enjoying life, we have the same!

See them hurrying hither and thither:
Oh, look at the time! I must go whither.
What sense the life that has no time to live?
Wherefore the wind that swirls in a dither?

Like the bright faces that define the jewel,
Friends enrich each others view of life’s gem:
As love’s reflection in life’s diamond, they’re
Glints and gleams of reality’s sparkle!

Life’s a continual cosmic energy dance,
From some ultimate underlying happenstance.
We’re immersed in matter’s universal rhythm;
Therefore, we must all participate in the dance.

A moment of eternity in hand,
Caught from a wingéd creature on time’s sand,
Yet put aside to later view in peace.
It flies! Now pursue it through Never-Land.

We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.

Behind the Veil, being that which ev’r thrives,
The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.

Some time it needed to variate Everything for,
And now knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some ‘meant’ universe,
Those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

So as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl our cup of brew is mixed
Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has formed trillions of baubles
Like ours, for e’vr—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
In those universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past,
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure it grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on February 1st, 2016, 11:26 pm

part 5 video and text:

Life on Earth is death’s borrowed debit;
We spend this life on good fortune’s credit;
We’re not His puppets, but free of the strings;
Dispensing with angst, we’re free to live it.

Myth’s performance is now over its tasks;
The artists have taken off their masks.
The illusion is fading; it couldn't last;
The scenes behind are appearing fast.

They tried to undo evolution’s pace of snails,
But the stratified fossils ever told the tales
Of no special humans at once unveiled,
But of only natural selection’s weathered sails.

A hundred trillion stars and countless shores
Were built to light our universal nights explored;
Forty million other lower species too, the All-Might
Placed about our world, merely for our delight.

On and on they say of Who paved the way,
Then even tell the nature of such Theity,
And on and on they presume further upon,
Joining that group called ‘On and On Anon’.

Let not the certainty of the present be
Held mortgage for the Deed of Futurity,
For tomorrow’s just a gleam from afar
And yesterday’s but a cold ash of thee.

The child in us was warm, playful, and bold,
But vanished, ere we knew, leaving us cold.
Now this we know: The day we stop being
Playful is the day we start to get old.

When younger, I knew not my elder same,
But as older, I tell my younger same
That youth must be young; he knows not my name!
It is my younger self who is to blame.

As seasons pass, the world comes to our door:
Spring sings through the wingéd troubadour;
Summer calls with the rose, ‘midst the woodlore;
Autumn crows, plump and sweet, through frosty hoar.

What would be the price of a moment’s breath
Purchased from Death’s hand at the final hour?
All the world’s wealth cannot extend the power
That drains the cup and withers the flower.

From Heaven’s stars came our dust eterne,
As time’s seas nurtured thee and thine in turn.
From time, death, and dust we thus became,
And by this, thus, and that we must return.

Time on its stream brings all sweet things to us;
Its aquavita quenches human thirst.
Water of life; we drink time, it drinks us!
Time on its stream bears all sweet things from us.

Summer passed away in his sleep last night,
Autumn, sweet and plump, carries his offspring.
The year dies in the night, ghostly winter comes—
Yet spring’s flower is already in the seed.

Youth and Beauty made agéd Winter mourn,
For Summer’s grain, the waving wheat and corn;
For Old Autumn, withered, wan, had passed on,
Leaving the Earth a widow, weatherworn.

Time on its stream brings all sweet things to us;
Its aquavita quenches human thirst.
Water of life; we drink time, it drinks us!
Time on its stream bears all sweet things from us.

Fleeting Time vanishes, e’vr the winged prize
That flies in a perpetual sunrise.
With the breath of eternity on its lips,
The Bird of Time is All that never dies.

The Bird of Time is off and whither flown,
And rides on breezes wherever blown,
Lightly here, slightly there, but after gone,
Leaves the cold vacuum of what once was known.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on February 4th, 2016, 9:41 pm

All good things…

Last part; part 6 video and text:

The Great Equalizer stalks all creatures made,
Lying ever just ‘round the corner, in the shade,
Taking both human and the beetle as one,
After their lives are spent from rolling some dung.

Not all poems are pleasant—some speak of death,
Of life’s end, separate by just a breath;
I see tombstones overgrown, under swept,
Names unknown, and to all the message saith:

“Read Me,” it says, in words engraved beyond the brink,
“You who live, up above: of life go drink;
And you underneath now lying so dead:
Rest in peace, relax; it’s later than you think!”

All that we know, even the loveliest and the best,
Decomposes into the dust of earth compressed.
The songs of all composed now lie in repose;
With this dust the future can arrange and recompose.

Oh never has there been a time more rare,
But that I could truly say, “I was there
On that Heavenly sphere of blue and green;
Yes, I was there, in life extraordinaire!”

At first, it was like a moving picture show,
Attended by mysteries, row upon row,
That were faceless, laughing, in the dark below,
So I laughed too, and better enjoyed it so.

The Angel of Light found Omar to bless,
And said, “Khayyàm, I must soon repossess
Your clay, so let us drink to your success!”
He drank and smiled, then met Life’s last caress.

Sad Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,
They all came, led by their tears and sorrow,
To mourn old Khayyàm: “Hail, cheer, and farewell!
You took from death All that life could borrow.”

In Naishàpùr, Persia, rose gardens sing,
Then shed their blossoms at the end of spring.
Likewise, Old Khayyàm’s Earthly splendor flew,
Yet his Bird of Time still lives, on the wing.

I turn the cup: wine-drops to thirsty lips descend;
Can Old Khayyàm rise anew, like spring grass ascend?
Mournful rose petals kiss his grave, hence he a-rose!
Now Omar lives again in the heart of his friend.

Your spirit wanders ‘long the Persian way
With an houri, life’s nows to drink away,
In some sweet wood far from the noise of day,
Where with her you yet live, sing, laugh, and play.

The fumes of ageless rhyme from ancient times
Waft from the Persian verse, as some chimes
New are mixed with the spirit of the old,
Deftly transmogrified for Victorian climes.

Through his Rubàiyàt, I sense enchantment,
Essence distilled by the translator’s scent.
Recomposed from Khayyàm’s dust and spirit,
Potent elixirs escape interment!

Across Khayyàm’s gravestone blows the simoom,
Carrying forth Omar’s Persia-fume.
Redressed in the translator’s costume,
It’s remade into Victorian perfume.

Obliterated by a war nuclear,
The Earth explodes in blazes solar!
Says a child in a galaxy afar,
“Oh, look! Look at the pretty shooting star!”
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on February 16th, 2016, 6:41 pm

Omar begins his most famous turn now…

Video part 1 of Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam FitzGerald iclone

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
“Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.”

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted--“Open then the Door.
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand Of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.

And David's Lips are lock't; but in divine
High piping Pelevi, with “Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!”--the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That sallow Cheek of hers to'incarnadine.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

And look--a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke--and a thousand scatter'd into Clay:
And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on February 28th, 2016, 6:38 pm

More Great Videos;

First half of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam iclone 4K
(Parts 1-5 combined, quatrains 1-54)

Time Explained: Eternalism vs. Presentism on a beach in Tahiti.

All That Lies Between

Bodleian Rubaiyat Manuscriipt Retransmogrified Spoken

Better Resolution Playlist for Rubaiyat of Rhymes and Reasons

Mysteries of the Night

Some of these may win an Oscar.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on March 29th, 2016, 7:59 pm

Persian Dreams

Persian life simplifies to the extremes,
Loving and fierce, to have or not the means,
The Genii granting the best and the worse,
As too the Sultan’s favor and Fate’s gleams.

A subsistence aplenty engendered
By the sun’s bounty and climate rendered
Contrasts to the simoom, the plague, the wars,
The mirage, and the beast endangered.

Life or death hangs by the skin of water,
In a realm so large to die no better
From a freeze in the north to suffocate
From the heat in the south, of the whether.

Temper’s all poetry and religion,
And there are but two days distinction—
The Day of the Lot—origination,
And the Day of Judgement—destination.

Atween, inexorable Destiny
Weaves life’s braided wave, warp, and woof, Sufi,
Whose virtue is courage and submission
To what has been appointed so surely.

Exquisitely pleasured by poetry,
Senses excite ‘yond control, nearly,
By verses chanted, to drive the fearless,
Then prove reward, returned from victory.

Verse exhilaration bests the grapevine—
Quatrains and couplets exceeding fine wine;
Flowers and tenders become drink-spirits,
With the rose gleam a dram of hashish shine.

Poetry dresses the phantasmic new
By enshrining the apparition’s brew—
Captured and bottled as aquavita,
As pearled, no longer evanescent dew.

Solomon by ring commands the spirits,
And in glass sees his enemy’s secrets
And the cause of all things, while on his horse—
The east wind that quick transports his carpet.

Jamschid reigned seven hundred years, wary;
Karum, the rich gold-maker, lies buried,
With all his treasures, near the Pyramids;
Kai Kaus’ palace was built by demons varied.

The Persian pearls bear the down of the lip,
The mole on the cheek, the eyelash, — tulips,
Lilies, roses, jasmines, — pearls, musk, — birds, song,
Epigrammatic, and sometimes epic.

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive,
The willow, and fig-tree, the birds therein,
Are ne’er wanting in the musky verses,
Nor the garden flowers, as well as wind.

What’s pent and smouldered as the numb and dumb
Is not spent in the poet, but from this crumb
Rises and grows over into new form,
As relief and creation from his plumb.

Of a keen bodily sense with sensation,
With a deep intellectual passion,
Poets wing far between Heaven and Earth,
As delight in the two’s composition.

A snatch of poem the camel-driver sings,
While painting with sun-beams what vision brings,
Of the waving veils adorning the tent
Of the pipe-dreams floating up in smoke rings…

Which fumes were as sighs sent to Heaven far,
For consideration, from his altar
On this bubbled puff of a worldly sphere,
In case Destiny wished to shake its jar.

In the night of her tresses, the day flees;
In the round of her rose lips, naught but these;
In her walking, waking form, to my knees;
Of her swelling breasts, oh, please to me, please.

The fence is a temptation for a flout,
But souls are the breezes that have no route.
Were that I was her soft breath in and out,
I could e’er on my way kiss her lips’ pout.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on October 8th, 2016, 4:16 pm

See my blog for the illustration of Persian Dreams, and all my endeavors:

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 17th, 2016, 8:31 pm

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 28th, 2016, 6:06 pm

The fence is a temptation for a flout,
But souls are the breezes that have no route.
Were that I was her soft breath in and out,
I could e’er on my way kiss her lips’ pout.

In the night of her tresses the day flees;
In the round of her rose lips naught but these;
In her walking, waking form, to my knees;
Of her swelling breasts, oh, please to show, please.

As I wander ‘long the romantic way,
With the one who drinks life’s sadness away,
I realize that the cost of a loveless life
Is much too high a price for me to pay.

Pleasant smelling scents lift her heart and mine;
Essence of lotus, rose, amber, jasmine,
Night-queen, myrtle, saffron, and sandalwood
Stimulate the inner spirit sublime.

Sensual bliss should not be a lost art,
For the body is an integral part
Of the human being, joined with the spirit;
Realize thy self with whole body and heart.

To find yourself, lose yourself in another,
For she will touch your being and therein share,
Gently unveiling your heart, soul, mind, and senses,
Till there’s nowhere to hide! You’re found, forever!

Oh, thou, beloved, moon of my heart’s delight,
I return, in these rhymes, from the night,
To unlock, with philosophic logic,
The Secret of Existence and man’s plight.

Last night, a genie came to fill my urn,
And poured sleep into me till day’s return.
Such as the day follows night for Eterne,
Fulfillment follows all for which I yearn.

Starlight is the origin of our being,
The source of matter, energy; everything.
Permanent, reassuring, unquenchable;
It’s our radiant soul, a self-winding mainspring.

Forget about the blame or even the fame,
For the Wheel was never designed by name,
Since, with no beginning, it ne’er became;
Thus no Alef through Ye: it’s e’er the same.

Discourse, as with a rich Persian carpet,
Can only be shown by extending it,
Spreading the beauteous figures and shapes,
Inviting speech offerings into it.

Here’s a secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlight magic, from their thoughts sublime.

The literary scenes unfold before us,
Such as music often approaches and surrounds,
And then builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.

Our quick thoughts rise, as of mist from the dew,
While living dreams unveil more than we knew.
From poetry’s light this garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.

Heaven’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
It having to turn and return, to be,
Transforming, as ne’er still—eternally,
Into life’s temporary pattern-trees.

Change in the Eterne dooms forms’ permanence;
But the time required for their constructance
Restrains for a while the shapes’ destructance;
Thus they can slowly traverse some distance.

The chain is forged that links a thousand deaths
To a thousand future-generated breaths
When lips ripe as fruit gently part in pain:
The smile of a corpse is life touched by death.

I am thy moon, thy constant satellite,
Thy crystal paramour of day and night.
Above and below, and within thy sight,
I whirl around you in loving delight.

In a magnetic dance, I whirl and twirl,
Attracted to you, oh liveliest world;
Around you as a necklace I’m aswirl—
Wear me as thy crystalline gem impearled.

Wherever thou orbits ‘round Apollo,
I must twirl and whirl, hurry and follow;
Dust I gather, meteors I swallow,
Ranging far and wide through space not hollow.

Thy romantic beam, as Cupid’s arrow,
Pierces my heart and kills my sorrow,
Injecting life and love for tomorrow;
Henceforth I’ll shine with this life I borrow.

Around you I whirl, a necklace of pearl,
Trailing afterimages of my world,
Adorning you, thy bosom bountiful,
With crystalline gems of another world.

Oh moon, thy Earth would wobble like a top
With your steadying influence not,
In turns quick of searing and freezing ruins,
Unto dying soon, without you, oh moon!

As twin planets, our orbits must convolve;
Into each our tidal motions dissolve.
Around a common center we revolve—
The focus from which our passions evolve.

As twin planets, each other’s way we pave,
With the push-pulse of the graviton wave.
We’re captured, but not as each other’s slave,
For to the sun our orbits are concave.

To your lines of flux my path I align—
I’m your constant paramour, crystalline;
Your world pours life on mine, on mine!
Dearest Earth, I must be thine, must be thine!

A magnetic beam emanates from thee,
Attracting me, holding me, kissing me;
Tidal love washes freely over me,
Linking you and me for eternity.

Basking warmly in your reflected light,
I’m bright, oh so radiant in your sight!
In the love and light of your spirit bright
I need not ever face the endless night.

Your vibrations travel without a sound,
Circling from all directions to surround;
This affection touches me ‘round and ‘round
And closely binds me to you—I’m love-bound!

We’re as different as midnight and noon,
Yet drawn close by the force of Earth and moon;
As lovers we merge in a sweet eclipse,
When world meets world as a kiss on our lips.

Oh as your shadow of love covers me
I am full, so full in the shade of thee;
When we overlap, that union is us;
The you is in me, the me is in thee!

As moon and Earth, we bathe in radiance,
Cleansing our hearts in love’s grand alliance;
Around and around each other we dance,
Entranced by the whirl of our dalliance.

My blood runs warm with the sun’s heat at noon.
My spirit is swept by thee, swelling moon.
Space surrounds us. The tides flow through us.
Global rhythms are always playing our tune.

Night’s mystical flight of fulfilled desires
Heralds the day-star, as darkness retires;
The Sun subsumes the stars, fire-paints the dawn,
And captures the Sultan’s holy spires.

And Lo! King Jamshyd’s Golden Garden Land
Now’s the sunken Atlantis of his band.
A turret reaches forth, then sinks in a
Rolling dune; life’s but a handful of sand!

Of the hourglass of time, the desert’s grains
Ever blow, grind, and blast the camel trains,
Yet, where the river flows, the grasses blow;
You and I, beloved, drink the day’s remains.

Love’s spirit weaves the soul’s warp, weft, and wave,
Creating an eternal, perfect braid,
Wound from strands of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty;
Each different forms, but from the same All made.

Our mental fabric quilted truths have been sown,
By evolution, as what wove and woofed the known.
At first we admire but a few strands unknown,
Then blend the weave and weft—all the beauty shown.

People are like stained-glass windows without:
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
But when darkness sets in, their true beauty
Is revealed only if there’s light within.

I’m the All and the One, present-omni,
For I’m eternal and can neither be
Created nor destroyed, being my own cause
And the Ground of All—I am Energy.

Our fruits are of a universal seed,
As yet another yield of All possibility treed,
For siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Are also born of such probability.

There could not have been any special time,
One that was privileged over any other chime,
Nor any special place nor any specific form
Arising out of the necessarily causeless realm.

All possibilities must exist,
Because nonexistence cannot be so.
Existence is inevitable. What does exist?
Whatever is possible to exist does exist.

‘Possibility’ is what’s fundamental,
For all that can be must first be possible.
This ‘Potential’ for All is the default,
Since a Not can’t be, nor even be meant.

The necessity of no One and no None
Makes for no absolutes, which means
That time, space, matter, and motion
Have no intrinsic, indivisible qualities.

In succession due does the large give way and rule
To the ever smaller, the tiny, the minuscule,
And onto the negligibly insufficient ‘awol’
Of not really much of anything there at all.

The underwriter of the universal wave of matter
Covers all loss and liability,
Guaranteeing payment, by dipping into Possibility,
Issuing both the credit and the debit.

Down… where the mind whirls round and round,
As the ear draws forth the echoing sound,
As the eye sees the light, and of the dark the fright—
We brave the crypt of cause in the depths of night,

Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow…
To the fathoms of the cryptic,
Where substance slept with arithmetic,

Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
To the first and last the universe remembers—
To seek the gem that shines—the wealth of mines,
The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.

Knowing that we can’t solve all life’s mysteries
Frees us from that senseless task of misery.
We can see, hear, smell, feel, and drink in all
Reality that penetrates sensibility.

Art and poetry enrich human experience,
But they’re no substitutes for the living of it.
Like the figures on an urn, should we live life less?
No, because what is deathless is also lifeless!

Loss is painful when leaves fall, but we cope;
As always, new attachments form, with hope,
For the seasonal cycle mirrors all:
Life is a generous kaleidoscope!

For those of us who ignore life’s romance:
Ignorance, like shadow, has no substance.
The shade is removed by the light within—
Feel the rhythm of the universal dance!

As to the rich and variegated sheet
Of plumage of the peacock, all hearts beat
And quick cry out with its splendourous spread.
Would that bird then blush for his ugly feet?

From what beastly heart sprung our zest?
Of what searching eye became our sight?
What sound in the bushes made us hear?
What dark past haunts but helped us be?

We are ready to mix the Witch’s brew,
Of that endless energy making me and you…
Stand back, for when we tickle the tail,
The dragon may laugh, cry, or ach-choo.

I live in my prime but for just a while.
First, I’m flowering and free, as a child,
But I’m fragile, and finally, forlorn—
My petals torn—all that’s left is the thorn!

Enjoy the play that you get to act in,
Sometimes retreating to the back row,
As the distanced audience, witnessing afar,
Finding peace and everlasting gladness.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 3rd, 2017, 10:11 pm

(extra, ongoing, to place somewhere)

The Patience Stone is the most empathetic
Of listeners, absorbing into it
All pains and sorrows of the one telling;
When it’s full of ache it bursts into bits.

(Before “Oh, Thou, Beloved moon…)

Of this moonrise, I am reborn today,
Having been whirling within the Persian Way,
Untying entangled knots of wild thoughts,
For I heard these twisted quatrains’ word play:

Oh, come with the Ancients, and leave the Lot
Of Khayyam and FitzGerald forgot:
Let Omar cry “To Tavern” as he likes
Or Edward cry “Rubaiyat”—heed them not!

Proclaiming when Myth’s lure was Man’s whole Sky
All heard the Voices of the Ancients cry,
“Adore Him, Little ones, and fill His Cup,
Before His presence in your self goes dry.”

And, as the Bells tolled, those who stood before
The Mosque shouted out—“Open up the Door.
You know how little while we have to pray,
And, once in Heaven, may worship no more.”

Eden’s Garden is gone with all its Rose,
And Heaven’s Magic Tree where no one knows;
But still the Myth the ancient vision yields,
And still the patron in the Temple shows.

A Book of Psalms unveiling the How,
The Blood of Him, His Body of Bread—and Thou
Beside me hymning in the Sanctuary—
Oh, the Worship House’s Paradise enow!

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts aplod
Turns Ashes—or it prospers, if well trod;
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Sod
It lights one little Hour or two for God.

Beware! for Dogma from the Dark of Night
Has Carved in Stone what puts Reason to Flight:
And Lo! the lasso of Blind Faith has caught
The human beings in its Noose of Fright.

I don’t much mind what Idol they adore,
Nor what structures about it they implore;
But, when they state it all as truth and fact,
That misleads, at best, and’s dishonest more!

(Before “In succession due…)

Light peels information off the object;
Air waves carry vibrations select;
Odors are molecules brought to inspect;
Reality’s but in what mind connects.

(After “Enjoy the play…)

The ancients found themselves here and not there,
Yet to fathom earth, fire, water, and air,
Asking why life was not square, as unfair,
So invented the Bad Role Model’s Care.

They looked unto their calamities,
Their powerful rulers and enemies,
Toward their olden family structure’s way,
Of strict father, and mother with no say.

The Father Notion they based on themselves,
As the best answer that was ever delved:
The demanding Male Mind who was called ‘God’,
An idea for some to this day, as trod.

Answers were needed for them to persist;
They extended the Notion with more myths
And legends into lore layered upon,
Inventing all the scrolls of scripture on.

‘God’ brought both fear and comfort in those days,
Making people better through fearsome ways,
Although worse for others—unchosen tribes,
Protecting their notions, as taught by scribes.

A wasteland of superstition plod,
Instantiating a meaning for ‘God’.
Emotion e’er sets up a firm blockade
When thoughts fired more build a stockade.

There were various modifications,
Yet the Creator concept remained one;
But natural understandings progressed,
Leaping ahead of the dogmatical rest.

Thousands of years came to pass, in stories,
But then we solved much of the mystery,
Irrefutable now, as gone beyond,
Utterly not any magical wand.

The basis is forev’r, no creation—
Energy being the primest potion,
And Entirety is seen that it can be
No way but than it is, eternally.

Claims of Revelation in Genesis
Of all of Nature’s species made, as is,
Have been demolished, obliterated,
By evolution and data liberated.

Nature finds no requirement for a ‘God’,
Growth naturally forming from the sod.
The organic ‘comes of the mud and slime,
Formed within billions of years of sweet time.

A trillion lights shine through, of depths of the deep,
Stars afire, with us the souls from their keep.
Man oft spouts the ‘truth’ of a Creator,
As did proto-men near the equator.

Scrolled into scripture, ‘God’ brought rapture,
Enough for sad hearts to wholly capture;
Yet, there can’t be First Complexity’s shove,
And there wasn’t much to make anything of.

(The following are by Positor and would appear
as the ending, if he lets me borrow them, with attribution,
and then I’ll have one last Rubaiyat
made out of all of these, with illustrations,
called ‘Omar Returns’.)

The lake is calm, the stellar gaze benign;
The gibbous moon marks out the bay’s smooth line.
High-leaping fish and iridescent birds
In chorus serenade the sacred vine.

Across the plain fly hosts of silent geese,
Their stridor muted by celestial peace;
For in the midnight haunts of hedonists
The irksome peals of daily strife must cease.

Behold the magus at his nightly feast:
The very synthesis of god and beast!
Some montane maiden or riparian nymph
Inspires the musings of this pleasure-priest.

He plucks sweet cherries from a scented bowl
While waves of wisdom animate his soul;
He ponders things exalted and profane—
Love, music, and Creation’s final Goal.

The sage is joined by acolytes and friends
Who ask how far the universe extends;
He draws some parallelograms and squares
Before intoning gravely: “It depends.”

One protégé, numerically wise,
Mistrusts such vague oracular replies,
And craves more detail; but the Master now
Heeds only his exotic lover’s eyes.

A cloud of smoke appears, and seven jinns
Emerge in line abreast with violins;
A girl—half angel and half courtesan—
Gyrates before the players’ lustful grins.

Bring us more grapes, and let the taste enhance
This spectacle of orgiastic dance!
I care not if she be a Hindu queen
Or demoiselle from semi-Christian France.

Mild faith consoles; but when Belief is strict,
Joy is expelled by holy interdict.
Life has no worth unless we gladly grasp
The pleasures that Religion would evict.

Did human life evolve by senseless course,
Or spring from naught, by Heaven's tour de force?
The questers scour the land for hidden clues;
The preachers quote a more dogmatic source.

Is all the world composed of partless grains,
Some loose, and others bound by ghostly chains?
Or can each Thing be infinitely cut
While all its Substance nonetheless remains?

Some say Geometry makes time and space;
Some claim pure Algebra is Being’s base.
Unless our mathematic skill is strong,
We should withhold opinion in this case.

The wise engage in civilized debate,
In which diverse opinions circulate.
The foolish fling their facile fancies forth
And cause loud insults to reverberate.

While anger, to a limited degree,
Can whet the senses and dispel ennui,
’Tis an unworthy and inconstant friend,
Inducing madness and infirmity.

What an enigma human lives present!
Dynamic sparks of minimal extent,
Provisioned by an unimpressive star.
A cosmic need, or just an accident?

Astronomers have wondrous modern means
Of witnessing the heavens’ distant scenes.
What unimagined realms may they espy
When aided by tomorrow’s great machines?

These agonising puzzles take their toll,
Wherefore debauchery and alcohol
Are common comforters in Academe,
But intellect does not ensure control.

The surest path to wholesome happiness,
And fertile thought, is to avoid excess;
So say the wise old Sultan and his muse,
The beautiful and erudite Princess.

The teeming galaxies have not a care
For human exultation or despair;
We must exploit the gifts that Chance bestowed,
And lead our lives without recourse to prayer.

We may not comprehend how Will is free
While subject to the Laws of Energy;
But let us not conclude that Choice is vain –
We cannot cede Responsibility.

What manner of phenomenon is Sin?
An independent entity, akin
To noxious fumes, which God resolved to clear
By proxy, through his Son in human skin?

Or is it just a property, possessed
By people who have willfully transgressed?
If so, a scapegoat proves of no avail;
The remedy lies in the Sinner’s breast.

Stern tutors warn that Levity’s a vice,
And call for Dignity at any price.
In truth, the sufferer who mocks his grief
Recovers sooner than the man of ice.

Some passing peasants in an ox-drawn cart
Sing rustic ditties with unpolished art;
The fiddles interpose some rhythmic chords,
With strange cadenzas in the highest part.

The moonlit mermaids by the waterfall,
The sentries on the distant city wall,
The barrel-bearers and the servant boys—
A graceful aura lingers round them all.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby Positor on January 3rd, 2017, 11:30 pm

DragonFly » January 4th, 2017, 2:11 am wrote:The following are by Positor and would appear
as the ending, if he lets me borrow them, with attribution,
and then I’ll have one last Rubaiyat
made out of all of these, with illustrations,
called ‘Omar Returns’.)

Yes, thank you. I would have no objection to this.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 9th, 2017, 3:57 am

Omar Returns Rubaiyat Video:

The Fully Animated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Video:
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on March 12th, 2017, 6:08 pm

Recent Videos:

(On YouTube, click on the little gear thing
at the bottom right to play the video
in a higher resolution.)

Ornamented Art 4K

Fantastic Tales Ornamented 4K

The Ornamented Flora Symbolica Embellished—
The Lore and Legends of the Flowers 4K

The Ornamented Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Embellished 4K

Selected Ornamented Quatrains of Austin P Torney 4K

Ornamented Elfin Legends Embellished 4K

Existence Eterne Collection

Austin's Golden Rubaiyat iclone complete newer 1-6

Rubayats of Omar Khayyam Ancient Times and Resplendent 1

Rubayats of Omar Khayyam Ancient Times and Resplendent 2
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on May 18th, 2017, 10:21 pm

New stuff… see the top of my blog:

(All book pages shown; better to see onscreen than in a book.)
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on October 2nd, 2017, 11:30 pm

Single Rubaiyat quatrain 5 minute videos playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnqopud7Fzfqj0l5PiXdT4A6da7HwqVya
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on November 3rd, 2017, 2:26 pm

Come see the new Omar Khayyam Club of America site that I'm running:

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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on December 27th, 2017, 8:27 pm

DragonFly » November 3rd, 2017, 1:26 pm wrote:Come see the new Omar Khayyam Club of America site that I'm running:

Rubaiyat II has begun, recently.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby DragonFly on January 3rd, 2018, 1:48 am

The following are not my poems, but are Positor's as they could look if added into Rubaiyat II, if approved in this form to which I made a few changes in line length to make them fit better across a book page…

I don’t dismiss angels or backward causation,
Infinity, thought waves, or even Creation;
I ponder each premise, no matter how subtle,
Until I’ve produced a convincing rebuttal.

I trust that Existence adheres to strict rules,
Which humans may seek with sharp reasoning tools.
We may not succeed in our ultimate quest,
But that’s no excuse for not trying our best.

If Data and Logic advance hand in hand,
The bounds of our knowledge will surely expand;
So let us consider the unorthodox,
The better to loosen conceptual blocks.

Some types of philosopher shun this approach;
They waffle, and hate to let Reason encroach
Upon their unqualified relativism,
Which views simple facts through a scattering prism.

They see True and False as in no way distinct,
And scoff at Reduction, for ‘all things are linked’.
With such scorn for Method, how can we progress?
I think my approach has more chance of success.

So this is the principle which I hold dear:
E’er keep the mind open, but make thoughts clear.

If I tell that Existence’s not physical,
And then proceed to say all is math,
You’d disbelieve, but praise my mental path.

There’s theory, that things in their totality
Are equations, which do not describe, but are, reality.
Complexity reflects their cosmic scope;
We can’t produce them in our wildest hope.

If we had knowledge to ultimate degree,
We’d find they amount to all we hear and see.
They’re perfectly defined, not vague or random—
They’re made of numbers and rules in tandem.

If maths exist, they have no need of God;
They are their own abacus, as may seem odd;
They don’t need to be conceived by creatures;
They sit eternally as basic features.

Whether this convinces depends on ontology;
One may challenge for reasons of theology.
The skeptics declare assumptions unreliable;
Empiricists claim the theory’s unfalsifiable.

Should I proclaim it nonsense on conservatives’ behalf?
Or will the mathematicians have the final laugh?

I see the world dissolve, and in its place
Appears a numinous, effulgent face
Whose name is Truth;
With plaintive plea it bids me heed its homily,
Declaring Man a localized anomaly
It deems uncouth.

And while it speaks, the dusky ether teems;
Quanta of meaning physically streams,
With contrails glowing.
The grave locutor calling me to attention,
And tells me of a network of Dimension
Beyond my knowing.

“Dear thinker”, it intoned, “your mathematics
Are limited to juvenile quadratics
And schoolroom surds.
You cannot grasp the Transcendental Rule,
Which defeats the wit of Gauss or Boole,
Through signs or words.

“Permit me, though, to say that Space and Time
Are side-effects of something more sublime.
It may be solved
By humans if they finally attain
The necessary wisdom, when their brain
Is more evolved.”

I sigh in wonderment, alloyed with gloom,
For such a revelation seems to doom
My lifetime search;
I understand why those with lofty aims
Seize on the grand but unsupported claims
One hears in church.

And then, amid the data-streams so bright,
I spy a hair-thin grid of long slim light,
Or so I think.
Its lines formed curious polyhedral sections,
Which the dynamic pattern of reflections
Serve to distort.

“These filaments”, the spirit-face explains,
“Allow co-ordinates to be obtained
In 7D.
For in this awesome, vast and complex realm,
Geometry can even overwhelm
Great gods like me.”

At every junction of the lucent net,
Some symbols from an alien alphabet
Dimly appear.
I asked myself if I am really seeing
The key to some exalted plane of Being—
It is too weird!

But suddenly the whole perplexing scene
Fragments into the dots on a screen,
Then fades out...
Though still I probe the riddle of Existence,
I now suspect the fruits of such persistence
Must be in doubt.

The cerebral primate, the questioning ape,
By will, wile and wisdom resolves to escape
The age-old routine of arboreal strife
And ventures towards a more purposeful life.

Across the savanna, persistent and bold,
Through desert, marshland, tempest, and cold,
We hunt and breed, and placate our gods—
A vital precaution for beating the odds.

The centuries pass, and we spread round the globe
And ever continue to query and probe;
The stars are exploited for magical arts,
And catalogued later with accurate charts.

Ad hoc explanations of natural facts
In terms of pure chance, or a Deity’s acts,
Give way to grand theories, and greater reliance
On regular laws of empirical science.

We now possess data on issues as grand
As whether the Cosmos will always expand
Till Time itself dies in the final dispersal
Or whether we’ll see a dramatic reversal.

Though saints revelations and oracles’ trances
Have oft retarded our wondrous advances,
Such tiresome diversions can never quite stall
The gain in our knowledge of things large and small.

Despite our assured individual death,
We look to the future while still we draw breath
And fervently hope that our species survives,
To give lasting meaning to previous lives.

Humanity can be divided broadly into two:
The folk who cherish certainty and guard a settled view,
And those who probe the points in search of synthesis;
Both types are represented in discussion fora like this.

Consider first the dogmatists, who can be further split
Into the would-be saints and seers who thrive on holy writ
And confident contrarians who circumvent hard queries
With modes that mods reject and shunt into Alt Theories.

Apologists of faith may harp on ancient myths or quarrels,
Condemn the modern world in terms of antiquated morals,
Anathematize reason as a tactic of the Devil,
Or put forth other statements at that qualitative level.

The mavericks who scorn the physics paradigm
Incur the wrath of scientists for wasting precious time:
“All tests have proved you wrong,
So there is really no excuse...
Go on, then, show your formulae.
You can’t? Oh, what’s the use!”

In contrast, honest thinkers read, revise and ruminate;
No inference is final, no result beyond debate.
The world’s a complicated place,
And open-minded teachers
Can offer more enlightenment
Than cocksure public preachers.

You cannot have relative place
In the absence of physical space.
A ring’s not a ring
Without some kind of thing
In the middle to make it the case.

There was a philosopher, Quine,
Who said: “You can't hope to define
Two words and then claim
That they mean just the same,
But a rough similarity's fine”.

A solipsist’s given short shrift;
He propounds a conceptual shift,
But realists scoff
And bellow: “**** off!”
No wonder the poor fellow's miffed.

Some thinkers write books in a style
That percipient readers revile.
Kant’s prose may be dense,
But at least it makes sense—
It beats Derrida by a mile.

If your knowledge of science is rough,
You can get by at parties through bluff;
A random wisecrack
About Bohr or Dirac
Will probably serve well enough.

I think Leo’s posts are spectacular—
A mixture of Aussie vernacular
And radical notions
Of physical motions,
Which verges upon the oracular.

DragonFly’s thought never pauses;
His posts flow in sinuous clauses.
His points are arcane
But he’s keen to explain
Any problems his paradigm causes.

Awestruck ancients write about the music of the spheres,
That great harmonious concert which eludes human ears.
The god with whose arithmetic each orbit is designed
Deserves unstinting daily praise from feeble mankind.

Suddenly the Lord sees fit to adumbrate the rules
That govern the celestial dance; but, since folk are fools,
He calls up Isaac Newton to receive the sacred code
From which, by perfect logic, the divine equations flow.

And so men come to understand how gravity constrains
The universe in such a way that order is maintained.
They liken the ensemble to a vast precision clock;
Then Relativity arrives and give them all a shock.

They quickly grow used to the changeless speed of Light,
Yet paradoxes make them think something isn’t right.
But any slight misgivings about twins’ inertial frame
Pale into insignificance when Quantum theory came.

Though no-one comprehends Quantum Mechanics,
We’ve learned to live with it;
It always makes predictions that results precisely fit.
So now we seek a formula that covers everything;
We’ve thought of quantum gravity, multiverse, and string.

It seems there are some quantities which hold a vital key:
Some Planck amounts, like hbar, and trusty constant, c.
Though God is silent, all our hope of progress is not lost;
Smart minds pursue the truth; keep your fingers crossed.

Most reasonable people share the basic moral view:
Treat others as you would demand that others treat you.
But working out the details of this can cause much strife;
Emotion, ignorance, and dogma make such conflict rife.

Believers introduce ideas derived from holy writ;
They ask not “What do humans feel?”,
But “What does God permit?”.
Some outlaw mercy killing or abortion in this way,
While praising torture, “justified chastisement”.

Supporters of armed conflict, euphemized as self-defence,
Attempt to prove its rightness in a lofty moral sense.
They claim that civil ethics are a code that war transcends
In needfully exploiting folk as means instead of ends.

Utilitarians would maximise the sum of pleasure,
But such a nebulous idea is difficult to measure.
To weigh the pain of One against the comfort of the Many
Requires a subtle calculus—it’s doubtful if there’s any.

Conservatives embrace the Rule, according to their claim:
“I'll let you make a million bucks if I can do the same”,
While communists and fascists, like exclusive brothers,
Omit class enemies from the reciprocated ‘others’.

Good liberals, whose list of human rights is quite prolific,
Are apt to err by making these too rigid and specific.
Eradicate death penalties? Democracy for all?
Can not the Rule allow anomalies, however small?

Ah, fallible Humanity! Your every noble word
Is mocked by Folly and Desire, and made to look absurd!
But though our prejudices taint our sense of the Ideal,
Our moral aspirations are unquestionably real.

Time Travel Conundrum

If I could travel back in time
And see the retrogressive clocks,
My wonderment, although sublime,
Would be alloyed by paradox.

For if I travel to the past
In terms of numbered days and years,
That time is what I cognize last,
And thus my present, it appears.

The future, as defined by date,
Is where I was before my trip;
But History should track my state
Of mind, with this subjective flip.

And so it seems our graphs require
Two axes, pointing ‘east’ and ‘north’,
To plot the timelines I acquire
As my machine flies back and forth.

Two time dimensions, three of space;
A highly complex 5D block.
‘Lived time’ that temporonauts face,
And time as measured by a clock.

The curves and loops that weave among
These five dimensions Nature draws
Confound ideas of ‘old’ and ‘young’
And complicate entropic laws.

If time machines are balderdash,
Reverse causation just a dream,
We may consign 5D to trash
And keep our four-dimensional scheme.

The Dichotomy

Existence has two modes in parallel:
Alternative accounts that we may tell.
Our mind dictates the story in one case,
While in the other, physics forms the base.

Phenomena, as purely felt or thought,
Require no test or theory for support;
Invulnerable in their own domain,
Immune to doubt, or failure to explain;

They may be pondered, listed, schematized
In terms that German thinkers have devised,
And, though the practicalists may appeal,
‘Tis vain to call such entities unreal.

Now turn to the materialist tale,
Where claims about the world may pass or fail
Experiments to show them false or true,
And aggregate to an objective view.

Here, Mind gives way to Brain; and things perceived
Are deemed veridical or disbelieved.
The cosmic truth, obscured to some degree,
Needs joint pursuit, and yields no certainty.

These two perspectives, facing In and Out,
Involve a paradox much talked about:
In one, I’m puny, brief, and commonplace,
But in the other, I’m the Hub of space.

By what strange cause am I embodied here?
By what caprice, or law, did ‘I’ appear?
May I conclude, on rationalist grounds,
That part of me surpasses spacetime's bounds?

Till some insightful sage comes to the fore,
Combining Einstein, Kant, Husserl, and Bohr,
Let us with dauntless optimism cling
To hope of synthesizing everything.

For us, who see events begin and end,
The universe is hard to comprehend.
If it be bounded, we would probe its wall;
If infinite, it mocks the notion ‘all’.

The trained and lay opiners in these threads
Engage, and find themselves at loggerheads,
For when they must abandon earthly norms,
Their intuition takes divergent forms.

Some hold that Time itself must needs commence,
While others claim that such a Start lacks sense.
So long as solid evidence is scant,
Both views seem flawed, as pointed out by Kant.

Some genius will one day find the key,
By gloomy toil or bright epiphany;
We must be patient, though advance is slow,
And modestly admit: “We don't yet know”.

It maddens curious minds
That the fundamental mystery sits unsolved:
What grounds the Universe, and disallows
Alternative Existence or the Void?

Simplicity, perhaps, demands
That Plus and Minus dance in equilibrium
Through time and space,
Two faces of a deeper unity;
But how can we explain the
Specific attributes of these opposing forms?

For zero-sums can be produced in many ways,
Diverse in quality and quantity.

One such is thorough Nothingness,
Subtracting naught from naught;
But such a mathematical idea
Cannot reflect Reality, because
The property of being real
Must hang upon a Thing;
Existence therefore reigns, and ever did.

So what accounts for Being’s size and shape,
And all the rich asymmetry
Of our bewilderingly complex world
Which science, by a slow and tortuous path,
Learns to describe?

Philosophers may feel it is their job
To conjure clever answers by transcendent nous,
Or prove by logical analysis that which is must be.

But scientists declare themselves
Entirely capable of such profundity,
And properly equipped to test their speculations.

The ordinary folk who wonder at the world
Await enlightenment.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby Positor on January 3rd, 2018, 12:00 pm

I have had a quick look at the above post. I am generally happy for you to divide long lines into two, but there are some amended lines that do not scan properly or have other slight inaccuracies. I will give you more details as soon as possible.
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Re: Dragonfly's Poems

Postby Positor on January 4th, 2018, 1:07 am

When you have time, can you please re-post your latest post, highlighting all the lines that you have changed in any way, and any lines of your own that you have added. I want to check that all the lines still have the correct number of syllables, and are consistent in tone.

Can you also remove the humorous poems, as I think these are too 'light' for a Rubaiyat-style work.

Finally, can you omit any references (e.g. to Obvious Leo) that would not be understood outside these forums.

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