Salome

Proud panoply of fans and frankincense,
Gold blare of trumpets, flowered robes of state,
Unnumbered symbols of magnificence,
To lead Salome through the palace gate,
Where loud the prophet of the Lord blasphemes
The red abominations of her race
And chides her for her flesh-entangled dreams
and turns his back upon her painted face.

Thus do we turn from some red-shadowed lust
That through the broken forests of the brain
Weaves silently with tentacles out-thrust,
Groping in darkness, but for one in vain,
For like a sliding sun the soul has fled
Leaving a princess and a vultured head.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Dissonance

You've slipped from out your evening gown, you muse
Before the polished lookingglass, a hand
Unclasping frail corsage, while you peruse
Your blushing charms. Your wayward eyes demand
Intrigue, as slowly you remove the clothes
Which cling around your girlish loveliness.
In silken stockings of the palest rose
Your slender legs encased, twin gracefulness
Beyond compare, while all your perfumed hair
Comes tumbling down and glorybath of gold ;
And thus you stand before me ivorybare
Craving to yield in passion as of old.
I take you in my arms yet am I sad,
So many other loves have made you glad

poem by Harry Crosby
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Baudelaire

I think I understand you, Baudelaire,
With all your strangeness and perverted ways,
You whose fierce hatred of dull working days
Led you to seek your macabre visions there
Where shrouded night came creeping to ensnare
Your phantomfevered brain, with subtle maze
Of decomposéd loves, remorse, dismays,
And all the gnawing of a world's despair.
Within my soul you've set your blackest flag
And made my disillusioned heart your tomb ;
My mind which once was young and virginal
Is now a swamp, a spleenfilled pregnant womb
Of things abominable, things androgynal,
Flowers of Dissolution, Fleurs du Mal.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Water-Lillies

Unwedded from the world, I stray through trees
To where a pool lies mirrored in the sun
A disk of polished gold that I have won
With labours not unknown to Hercules.
Slender they bathe, all naked as a breeze,
Their nipples hollow and their hair undone,
While from their widespread thighs cool ripples run
To rock the water-lilies round their knees.

Nymphs of the fountains, naiads innocent,
Frail sunbeams who have passed between my arms
So beautiful in your imprisonment,
Fill now my soul with symbols of delight:
Soft voices and soft fingers and soft charms
And the perfume of the lotus in the night.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Temple de la Douleur

My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.

These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Poem For The Feet Of Polia

they have walked through the gateways
of my eyes
they have climbed the mountains
of my body
they have marched across the desert
of my heart
they have forded the rivers
of my mind
they have penetrated into the dark forest
of my soul
if I were a cannibal I might devour them
if I were Pilate I might crucify them
if I were a sorcerer I might make them vanish away
if I were Neptune I might drown them
if I were a robber I might steal them

but I am a bridge to the sun
bridge leading away from a world of pain
bridge leading away from a night of sin
bridge over the abyss of doubt

[...] Read more

poem by Harry Crosby
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Scorn

You business men with your large desks with your stenographers and your bell-boys and your private telephones I say to you these are the four walls of your cage.
You are tame as canaries with your small bird-brains where lurks the evil worm you are fat from being over-fed you know not the lean wild sunbirds that arrow down paths of fire.
I despise you. I am too hard to pity you. I would hang you on the gallows of the Stock Exchange. I would flay you with taxes. I would burn you alive with Wall Street Journals. I wouild condemn you to an endless round of bank banquets. I deride you. I mock at you. I laugh you to scorn.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Psycopathia Sexualis

Case 19)
X., peasant, aged thirty-four and a half; Sun-Worshipper. Father and Mother were hard drinkers. Since his fifth year patient has had epileptic convulsions-i.e. he falls down unconscious, lies still two or three minutes, and then gets up and runs directly with staring eyes towards the Sun. Sexuality was first manifested at seventeen. The patient had inclinations neither for women nor for men, but for constellations (stars, moons, suns et cetera). He had intercourse with stars and moons and later with comets and suns. Never any onanism.

The patient paints pictures of suns; is of a very limited intelligence. For years, religious paranoia, with states of ecstasy. He has an 'inexplicable' love for the Sun, for whom he would sacrifice his life. Taken to hospital, he proves to be free from infirmity and signs of anatomical degeneration.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Quatrains to the Sun

I
A sunfort flourished in my sunless heart
Beyond the Sun. Here in a tower apart
The sunbirds of my lady's eyes were caged
Alas, poor targets for the sun-god's dart.

II

The Sun at Chartres seen through an open door
Was like a nest, wherein I hatched a score
Of red-gold sun-thoughts. Now unheralded
They change to sun-nymphs on my heart's dark shore.

III

The Sun at noon is like a pool of gold
Towards whose uncertain brink the clouds have rolled
To quench their thirst. Likewise the invisible winds
Drink fire, and all my heart is sun-consoled.

[...] Read more

poem by Harry Crosby
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In Search of the Young Wizard

I have invited our little seamstress to take her thread and needle and sew our two mouths together. I have asked the village blacksmith to forge golden chains to tie our ankles together. I have gathered all the gay ribbons in the world to wind around and around and around and around and around and around again around our two waists. I have arranged with the coiffeur for your hair to be made to grow into mine and my hair to be made to grow into yours. I have persuaded (not without bribery) the world's most famous Eskimo sealing-wax maker to perform the delicate operation of sealing us together so that I am warm in your depths, but though we hunt for him all night and though we hear various reports of his existence we can never find the young wizard who is able so they say to graft the soul of a girl to the soul of her lover so that not even the sharp scissors of the Fates can ever sever them apart.

poem by Harry Crosby
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