Lemons from a Lime Tree Eighteen Short Poems By Frater Pyramidatus Copyright Adam Newman 2009 A Basilisk Dream Adurations of Abra Melin Choronzon’s Choir Cybele Dwelldom I was Aiwass Once Our Name is Legion Pan’s Promise Reward Starkeeper Statuesquely Fourfold The Black Rose The Caduceus The Labyrinth of Leviathan The Lyre of Fire The Only Poem of Lonely The Precipice of Pain Trees A Basilisk Dream Disgruntled sat the tepid beast, On steaming rocks and twisted dead tree, It glanced about its ashen feast, And wondered what to eat, Perhaps Nero, Picasso, Churchill or you, Or Hitler, or Peter Pan, or God’s very shoes. The teeth of Basilisk diamond sharp yet crooked, His haunches a testament to centuries decay, Eyes of bloodshot fire and bent spine a winged, This monster would never have its day, To chew on coals of souls for ever more, To only find sustenance on earth impure. Adurations of Abra Melin The moon was waning into crescent silver, A Beast did conjure in his lair, All pervading sky of heaven, a pristine quiver, Rushed through Boleskine and raised his hair. Aleister lied victim to grim devotion, The Abra Melin was deadlocked to begin, The tight gripped Phoenix Wand was motioned, About the symbols on dragon’s skin. A candled perimeter or pentagram, A ruby ring adorned his hand, The incense by the breeze was fanned, The evocation, the master plan. Vivid portal did sit and tightly wait, A host of demons five-thousand wide, The triangle, the blood, the gate, Operatic instruments of the other side. Upon the half-dead embers of raven coal, Crowley did sit the gum Arabic of his desire, To give form to the spirit was his goal, Then to banish Asmodee into formless fire. To work magick was his stern-eyed expectation, To consume Aleister’s soul the infernal delectation. Choronzon’s Choir Formless jabberings throng the endless pit, Of sorcery, warlocks, witches and devils, The eunuchs of Sodom encircle it, And billions of poetasters ceaselessly revel. Choronzon is the dweller of void and abyss, To stare at him is suicide, To lend one’s mind irredeemably amiss, It turns fire to hate, and truth into lies. We dare not join the insane mass, We run from here and we run fast, Over bloodied glass and windless marsh, ZAZAS ZAZAS NASATANADA ZAZAS. Babblings and musings, scattered incoherent dance, An eyeless vulture floats down foetid floods, We feel the Choronzon, his talons, his glance, Disperses all into blindness, to poisonous blood. Stillness is it’s clandestine foe, If one is quiet and motionless, And statue still from head to toes, Then maybe an exit from this mess. For Choronzon is contradiction unholy, He is never for you, and never for me. Cybele He laid me on a velvet bed, All my secrets softly spread, Apart! Every nuance of my condition, At the whims of his position, I was a Princess, an Empress, His to possess and his to caress, Flourished out on the silky deck, The words of love that laced his neck, Posing at me the querulous question, As I lay silently nesting, Touching me like a Prince, His to hold ever since, A furtive, fleeting and fanciful flourish, My secret heart his hands did nourish, Me I am a simple harlot, Yet he picked me out a Queen, As I slid around serene, I the truest Harlequin, Immaculate, no stain of sin, All my secrets he exposed, Because of questions that he posed, Onsets of the seductive query, Would make another very teary, And then he started to get hard, And picked me out, His Tarot Card! Dwelldom Born in the township Leamington Spa, Wishing dearly to sail afar, All notions of time killed by the scythe, The little boy could now unwind. He floated off to Mexico, Through the archipelago, With the star and with the sceptre, A youth pressed on with feet unfettered. Walked on through to ancient Egypt, And well he slept in some old crypt, Brandishing fire and lust and sword, A proud young man with great reward. He trotted off to blue Sicilia, Talking tongues still not familiar, Lancing with a golden spear, The magician now forgot the fear. A donkey trek through Indo-China, With a Rose called Rex Regina, To the chime of crazy sistrum, His parents gone he dearly missed them. And so returned to Angel Land, To help some people understand, The Gordian knot of silken string, Our mystic now could clearly sing. Promptly vanished to bold New York, On the back of a silvery hawk, Unleashed the grip of eldritch snake, A merlin, a madman, a prophet awake. But now he’s buried beneath the Earth, Below the trees, below the mirth, Above there is no barren stone, To say the poet lived alone. I was Aiwass Once The belly of the clock struck its demon sound, And the Victim in close-breathed anticipation, Wandered what wand his pen had become and how, Whilst Rose Kelly’s eyes revealed no turncoat hesitation. The minister of Hoor shook twice this vapid hotel room, A makeshift temple, honeymoon, panorama and portal, This minister knew well the souls he was to woo, Aiwass cared not for these two for he was irredeemably immortal. And yes the words of sheet lightning and sweet despair, Did conjure but scratchings on a fervent parchment, Of the Law of Agape and all things denounced unfair, Aleister’s crystal mind plunged into a raven black lament. Schizophrenic musings about the tip of the iceberg, Whose ownership of words heaven sent? This water of words has risen to submerge, A crown of reason that under waves went. Three days of this NEMO could endure, A pen not his own and world to climb, Three thousand years of Thelema and more, Produced from the chasm in one man’s mind. Our Name is Legion The Man in Black, roughshod, he slowly walked, The dark forest roads, a menagerie of branch and leaf, His feet pitiful sore as inside his head the voice did talk, And cursing moonlight magnified his grief, A homeless man on the endless tarmac, The blood and sweat upon his back. He sought the midnight daemon undeterred, Drew in dark breath to heed the call, He flung his man-roar to disperse the hidden herd, “Prince of demons: BELPHEGOR”, His voice was lost in tree-twisted hate, For the lunatic vigil had not time to wait. An inhuman grunt splintered his spirits, From behind a rusted fence it shook, The beastly noise did shake his wits, So disregarding the courage it took, Over this with tight clenched teeth, He jumped the rampart and faced the fiend. Although he faced the smitten heathen, Only a whisper, “ OUR AME IS LEGIO… ”, Upon his senses fell the dark windless scene, Which did not explain the shaking trees, Further into Nature’s madness he stalked, More distant from sanity he slowly walked. Reward Rockish surveyance, the harsh terrain, Citadel of gloom on the silhouettes’ plain, Inclines of quartz and little relent, From heed to heel a doomed ascent. Entirety of navigation, fugitive chance, Scaled labyrinth of stone not avalanche, Icy spectres that earthward slide, The climb is high yet is not wide. Watery spews sent skyward, Cutting chills into the blood, Splintered through by hateful hurricane, Whirling winds of icy pain. And such empyrean did not expect, The man and tent to stand erect, Less still a summit be so crowned, By so few men of such renown. Rippled laughs beneath the void, Softly stirred to not annoy, Constellations of mythic folk, Whom simply witnessed wisps of smoke. Men of nerve and eager feet, Sherpas press ganged from the fleet, Princes they could not defeat, Gods defying all retreat, Beasts that lived with the elite. Star Keeper Ineffable gravity pinned the mountain of books, By the plum table and spinning astrolabe, Whilst the meteor plummeted, turned and shook, And the eyeglass lent witness to his craft, The Star Keeper was as dazed and confused, As the distant galaxies upon which he mused. The paper plan had twelve charted houses, From the ram to the fishes and back again, To the conjunct Mars-Pluto that now says, Not quite what the Star Keeper had in his brain, He fiddled his compass and threw hands in the air, His psychocosmic conspiracy led to despair. Trine and sextile and retrograde Saturn, Albus and white tincture and Scorpio too, Done nothing more to open the pattern, Even Lucifer would have not a clue, For the Star Keeper had utterly riddled his head, Despite all the books he had read whilst in bed. Statuesquely Fourfold Do what thou wilt, the whole of the Law, The will to love is the law to live, From your lion’s head to bullish paws, I behold the silence the stone mouth does give. Stern eyes are defiant and strong, Their coral pupils pierce through vain desires, Although icy dead their spectrum pure and long, Is over deserts that throng the intermittent fires. The proud carved Nemyss of night, Sweeps over and protects, A half-dead soul of light, The brain of Sphinx’s chaos nest. Within the stone one’s heart imagines, What greater depth of universal plumb, The Sphinx must dive to, and what is given, In stony blocks of love to everyone. But the last word on the Fourfold Sphinx, Is something never spoken, This is something true methinks, Because words are often broken. The Black Rose I never felt unique, just lay beneath, My brother roses, indistinct, Myriads of crimson cousins formed my wreath, To escape obscurity was my only wish.