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The Allegro Quartet

Book One

The Judgement of Solomon

Michael Shea

Copyrighted in 2010 by the sole author, Michael J. D. Shea

©
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In a moment unending, eternal

In a realm, if not super, supernal,

The Heavenly host receives in the post

A quote about matters infernal.

“Though man and God created Nod, a life is not in vain

If suffering has meaning; and, if love surpasses pain.”

And Adam spoke those words when he

Was thinking of his lady. “She was free,

In thirsty Nod, from Eden’s God?

(S)He sentenced Eve to not-to-be.”

And Adam lived in Paradise before he dwelt in Nod:

The Garden now abandoned, on the orders of his God.

The roses were Christian, the violets Jewish,

The heavens were azure, the mood never bluish:

The creation of God, whose behaviour is odd

In a testament ancient and testament newish.

(S)He set a seal on the gates that we attempt in vain

To open, seeking refuge from the sorrow and the pain

That Adam mentioned. When he said, among the thorns of Nod,

The rose of love is fragile as the children of his God.

The roses are red, the violets blue,

And fragrant as Eden when Gaia was new.

But time may sow the seeds of woe

Til roses are blue and violets too.

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And God decreed that every man, and every woman too,

Would live a life in contrast to the perfect pale blue

Of angels: Pale as the planet far beneath the wings

Of seraphs safe from suffering the human portion brings.

And Adam was a single soul, til he and Eve made two.

They gazed upon the richness of the campanulas’ blue:

The floral bells of Paradise that chimed in praise of wings;

The thoughts by which the spirit flies to realms reflection brings.

The violets are violet. The angels are blue;

Yet happy as pigs that gleefully flew

On proverbial wings, where porkers are kings:

The monarchs of moonshine, where nonsense rings true.

And Adam thought about the lot of women and of men

Reflected, in the stream of time, by writings of the wren.

With little quill he writes about a summer’s midnight dream

Of water hens and ousel cocks. Their springtime pairings seem

To be reflections, in the stream, of women and of men

Whose hopes and dreams are fragile as the storm-endangered wren.

And Eve and Adam dreamed, and lived, an Eden-summer dream

Of throstles singing notes as true as springtime pairings seem.

The ousel cocks and water hens

Are using quills, instead of pens,

To write of schemes and lovers’ dreams

In summer’s midnight woodland glens.

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And Adam woke, one night in Nod, from dreams of Eden lost:

Of Paradise surrendered, when his soul was tempest-tost

By gusts of Godly anger. When the Deity of Nod

Made no attempt to justify His ways to man, or God.

And so the little island that was Paradise was lost,

Unlike the ship in Macker’s play that just was tempest-tost.

The little isle of Paradise, among the dunes of Nod;

The sea of sands and sorrows Eve inherited from God.

The water hens and ousel cocks

Invested in some risky stocks.

They thus incurred financial Nod. For Fortune is a fickle bawd.

She Lynches Merrilly one’s hopes, as Morgan laughs and Stanley mocks.

A God-bestowed inheritance of all the human race:

As (S)He announced to Adam; God assumed a human face,

And walking in the Garden, (S)He then threatened to ordain

A life of many struggles, and of suffering and pain,

If Adam and his lady were to lose their risky race

To stay ahead of danger that we human beings face.

The danger we will fall on stage, like Shakespeare’s Scot or Dane.

For Mackers, just like Hamlet, fell to fear-full depths of pain.

And Mackers is a Scottish thane.

He sells Big Mac’s for gold and gain.

The thirteenth bite turns out the light

Of life for Scots who wane in pain.

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And Adam, just like Hamlet, felt the pain within his soul.

For Adam saw his lady hurt by payment of the toll:

The pain that God exacted as the price for love and life

In Nod, where Cain and Abel fell in fearful fatal strife.

For Abel fell beneath the blows that killed his self and soul.

Since no one really gets to pay Saint Pete the final toll?

The fee to enter Heaven’s gates, and live an endless life

In Paradise, where blessèd bliss has vanquished pain and strife.

Jack Falstaff goes to Paradise.

Where snow is cool and ice is nice

To send to bankers in Hell. Fettered and bound in a cell,

In stocks and bonds they pay greed’s price.

And Cain descended to a pit of loathing and despair:

He loathed the deed his rage decreed. And paced among the sere

And dying grain his hands had harmed, when Cain incurred his guilt;

The crops of Nod that Adam tilled, and God then willed to wilt:

Reminder of the fratricide that led to Cain’s despair.

As Mac despaired: His way of life descended to the sere.

And gold his royal coffers held could never gild with gilt

The rotting tree of death that caused his hope for life to wilt.

As each banker and broker rehashes

His sins, he defiantly gnashes

His teeth: No repentance, despite his grave sentence.

“T’ain’t funny!” It’s not Ogden Nashish.

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A tree of life was at the heart of Eden’s pleasant glade.

It cast upon the maiden-grass a welcome heart-shaped shade.

And on the heart-shaped leaves of life, and veins like paths of blood,

The lady Eve wrote lines about the sculpted emerald bud

Of hope unfolding. Like the flowers carpeting the glade

And opening their petals to the rays that shape the shade.

For light gives form to darkness; as the water to the blood

That’s flowing with the stream of time to where the trees will bud.

Sir John Falstaff’s reclining on the soft silver lining

Of a cloud. A rhyme that is stolen. But Nash isn’t whining.

For Ogden’s in Heaven, where he and Jack leaven

Forever with wit they’re forever refining.

The trees of life and knowledge, that will open to the sky:

To sunlight bringing knowledge that the light of life will die, --

And yet, a life of light and dark that Eve will take to heart;

Embracing life with every beat that tide and time impart,

As hope ascends and ebbs beneath the beauty in the sky:

The moon that will return to life each time she seems to die. --

Though buds will open to the sun that warms the human heart,

And to the light that brings the truths that thought and time impart.

The wit they are whetting and honing

Makes fun of the Boss. S(H)e is loaning

(‘Loaning’ is lending.) the days we are spending

In ways every angel’s bemoaning.

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And Adam tried to understand the words that Eve had penned.

But he was just a man. And so, he couldn’t comprehend

Complexities that woman-wit had written on the leaves

And limned upon the limbs of trees that mythic thinking weaves.

The serpent in the tree could grasp the truths that Eve had penned.

And other truths the snake would hiss and Eve would comprehend

When he was hidden as the face of God, among the leaves:

Concealed, like the future that the loom of Fortune weaves.

The world, as Will Shakespeare has noted,

Is a stage where his scribblings are quoted.

And angels are critics whose keen analytics

Lick sugar off pills it has coated.

And Adam wandered off, to find the kind of rind a male mind

Could peel till, in such a little space, it found confined

Some tiny truths that even guys could grasp and understand;

Unlike the universal laws that God conceived and planned.

For (S)He had formed the galaxies, and Yahweh’s mighty mind

Had spun them in the void of space. And space and time confined

A fellow in a Garden that he tried to understand.

But Adam couldn’t grasp the scene, and plot, that God had planned.

So Yahweh is hatching a plan

On the fly: It is hatch as hatch can.

S(H)e will use any means that effectively greens

The scarlet of sins angels pan.

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Jehovah spun the galaxies as children spin a top.

And then (S)He spun the universe: Impossible to stop

The spinning world that’s dizzying the people on its rind,

Confused by harsh vicissitudes that humankind will find.

And long before mankind will find that spinning on this top

Are problems that may bring about a sudden global stop,

In Eden Adam’s wondering if ants upon the rind

Can understand the orange that his hungry fingers find.

The orange is orange. The planet is blue,

And home to the species that makes much ado --

A species unsettled, and frequently nettled --

About nothing, and something, and everything too.

In Eden Eve was quite naive: A limerick this ain’t.

And yet those words have formed a line like those such verses paint.

Naive is not the same as dumb. For Eve was very smart,

Yet didn’t understand the ways of God’s dogmatic heart.

For (S)He’s enacted many laws about such words as ‘ain’t’.

Did (S)He establish regulations bullshit artists paint?

When they are promulgating rules for folks what ain’t too smart,

Believing that commands of men are at religion’s heart.

The orange is orange. And Adam is red

From hundreds of ant bites reprisal has bred:

A score ants have settled because they were nettled.

A rhyme twice used is a rhyme half dead.

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And at the heart of Eden’s garden, Adam brushed the ants

Off orange rind. They took revenge. Because he wore no pants

They climbed up Adam’s hairy legs, and bit his homely ass.

In fact, he wore no clothes at all. And so, it came to pass

They bit the parts distinguishing the uncles from the aunts.

One may say ‘aunt’ and thus will vaunt much clauss. And wear the pants

And other classy clothes that hide one’s base and lowly ass;

Such fraudulence, like flatulence, has often come to pass.

His inside is crimson. His outside is red;

The colour of life that a cranberry bled.

Like that juice, Adam’s puce.

A puce is a flea that a clochard has fed.

It came to pass that trout and bass were swimming in the stream

Of time. And Adam saw the current, and the glint and gleam,

Of water that reflected time: The future years when Will

Would write his plays about the days when God’s relentless mill

Would grind its prey. The mill is powered by the racing stream

Of time. It grinds down flesh and bone until the fading gleam

Of sunset signals darkness that abides forever will

Bring stillness to the speeding stream and God’s fine-grinding mill.

The orange is orange. And Adam is blue;

As azure as angles the angels pursue:

Celestial perspective gives rise to invective

Denouncing the ants that have changed Adam’s hue.

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“To Hell with this!” said Adam. And, he left to find his friend

With saber teeth and mighty paws. They rapidly would end

Ambitions of aristocrats: The lions, none too bright,

Who pick a fight with Wilbur in the forest of the night.

The fearful symmetry of Adam’s huge and gentle friend,

Like hamburgers in Macker’s joint, could cause a fearsome end.

And Adam thought and thought about the tiger burning bright.

“It’s only Wilbur’s eyes ablaze, in Paradise at night.”

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

As angels who have fought the fight

Recorded by Milton. He’s English as Stilton,

And houses like Wilton, and islands like Wight.

And Eve was never puzzled by profound symbolic lines

That Blake would author. For she knew that references to wines

In books like this are not about Merlot or Chardonnay,

Or villages of mellow stone, or any ancient way

Of life. Or death from rage, or pain, and alcohol. But lines

Of symbols in these foxy books that speak of sack or wines.

Though Yahweh waved to vixens as (S)He planted Chardonnay,

(S)He drank the wine of Eden in a metaphoric way.

And ate the cheese of Cheddar gorge;

As English as the blokes who forge

The documents and mockuments

Aligning Shakespeare with Saint George.

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And Adam wandered through the glens and groves of Paradise.

He passed the tree of knowledge, and wondered if the price

Of knowing would be worth the gain. Would their mortality,

As thinking reeds that flame or storm could launch upon the sea

Of nothingness, be worth the loss of perfect Paradise,

Imperfect in the ignorance exacted as the price

Of living in a kindergarten? Brief mortality

Would banish frightened mortals to the cold, benumbing sea.

They claim that Will Shakespeare is English.

His scripts are unique: They are singlish,

Though sometimes simplistic, and quite jingoistic.

By jingo, they’re too jolly jinglish!

“Perfection, here in Eden, is imperfect at its core.

So little ever happens, for anything that’s more

Or less than is the status quo would have to be a change

From static stati, singularly simple in their range

From flawless to the faultless. This accursed esprit de core

Is boring as an apple-worm! But (S)He decreed that more

Is less than perfect. God’s regime prohibits any change.

Rebellion’s price is exile: We’d be homeless on the range.”

Though making one’s home on the range

Is scorching and searing and strange,

It wards off a chill if one sits as still

As a loon on Canadian change.

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And Adam wondered what a life in Eden lost would be.

He’d looked into the stream of time to see what he would see.

But every time the ripples marred his view of future days

When he and Eve were wandering the labyrinthine maze

Of life, if lived outside the womb that God had caused to be

The origin, before the fall, of summer and the sea:

The summer-sea of azure skies, unmarred as future days

If he and Eve chose Eden, as the Englishmen choose ‘”maize”.

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye

When dead characters act in the great bye and bye.

And patient Saint Peter is using a meter

To measure the lines they have twisted awry.

The English turn their backs on “corn”: The corn upon the stage,

When characters are hamming up the words upon the page --

The silent words so different from hostilities that rage

When Shakespeare’s knaves and varlets, and their scarlet harlots, wage

A war against the kingdom of the language, on the stage;

When they transform to ham and corn the ink upon the page --

Induces sneering in the fans, and searing in their rage

When characters are paid, by flames, a just and well-earned wage.

King Lear’s a ham on Stratford’s stages.

He’s always paid starvation wages.

He dives for ham and dumpster spam

To fortify his macrophages.

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The critics roast Will’s characters who massacre their lines,

Igniting flames in summer’s heat. And then the sun declines

From summer solstice to the depths of January cold,

As seasons change with days, and lives, capricious Fates behold.

And in the stream and scheme of time, when years have come to lines

That Shakespeare writes about the ways the agèd Lear declines

From summer days of strength and hope to homelessness and cold,

The mind of Adam sees those scenes the playwright’s fans behold.

When you’re caught on the horns of a zany yak,

That dilemma would need a most brainiac

To see how your me could continue to be

If that beast were a murderous maniac.

“So that’s a way some lives are lived in hopelessness and Nod,

For Lear’s bereft of mercy from the hands of man or God.

His soul is burned to ashes in the play of scalding lead.

A savage storm is raging. And, the hope of life is dead.

We’d rather live in Eden, where the wild flowers nod

In breezes? Lear is battered by the wind, and hands, of God.

Then stumbles on the painful march: His destiny has led

The king to timeless nescience; the country of the dead.”

Homicidal maniacs? They’re William Shakespeare’s fans.

They sauté every character The Globe and Mail pans.

They fry the guy. Til bye and bye

Il saute! He jumps! Out of the pan, quite sans.

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Then Adam sees, in stream and time, a funny, festive play.

Jack Falstaff’s happy as the pig that adages portray

As wallowing in similes about the happiness

Of people rapt, and wrapped, in bliss; like piggies in a mess.

And Jack is out, and round about. The girls come out to play

With Falstaff; round as sun and moon that Shakespeare’s plays portray

As being welcome as the swill that rounds out happiness

Of barnyard piggies rolling in an excremental mess.

Sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything: Because he jumped so fast,

He left behind the faculties intuiting the vast

And complex world we see unfurled

On banners that the hands of God have raised on being’s mast.

That simile is false, because the pigs prefer to be

In cleanliness. And Godliness, from sea to sea to sea,

Would be a startling change within a country that is vast

As Satan in John Milton’s book. The Devil, there, is cast

As villain and as hero. He’s determined he will be

Revenged upon the Deity: (S)He hurled him to the sea

Of fire that is burning in a conflagration vast

As galaxies the mind of God has formed and grasped and cast.

In the forest of Arden, the fellows

Were feeling the cold from the bellows

Of Aeolian wind. Then the wind waned, chagrined,

To a dirge on Aeolian cellos.

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(S)He cast them through the universe: The universal stars

That burn intensely as the mind of Satan. Trapped by bars

Imprisoning the Devil in the Hades of his mind,

He schemes to wreak his vengeance by the wreck of humankind.

The people in the Garden are considering the stars

As brilliant as the mind of God. (S)He resolutely bars

The Devil from escaping from the depths that (S)He has mined

For gold to form the stars to please the eyes of humankind.

And Jacques’s pronounced Jacques, never Jay-kwees,

Where Orlando is pinning on pine trees

A series of notes. Of course they’re all quotes

From Will, as you like it to please.

And other stars are silver as the keys that open doors

To thoughts about the Paradise a pair of dice explores

By rolling first a snake eyes; like the eyes within a tree

Of knowledge of the ways of God. And rolling next a three;

Reminder of the Trinity that closed the golden doors

To blessèd lives the human heart, in grief and hope, explores:

The Trinity, or Unity, who made the Eden tree

That harboured knowledge of the One, or Three in One -- not Three.

As you like the play where Will’s words portray

Orlando. He believes that love’s for ever and a day.

And everyone’s a queen or king, and life is an eternal spring,

And God has fashioned deities from Eden’s lowly clay.

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And then the dice are rolling four; like rolling, roiling streams

That Eve has named in Genesis. And turbulent as dreams

Of Hamlet in Will Shakespeare’s play -- where mustangs roam the range

Of possibilities that mark the limits of the strange --

The Middle East is home to that quartet of roiling streams;

Where tyrants ride the night mares that are trampling youthful dreams.

And Hamlet killed an autocrat who’s roasting on the range.

And no one thinks that stove in Hell is out of place, or strange.

The weather in Hell is unpleasant

For potentate, poet, and peasant

Who’ve stolen fine wines from Will Shakespeare’s vines,

And claimed that the theft was a present.

For Satan is a clever lad, inventing what he needs

To punish wicked tyrants for their homicidal deeds.

And now the dice are tumbling til they topple to a five;

A number prime as Eden-land, and odd as Adam-jive.

For Adam had invented words to meet the covert needs

Of Eve and him to hide from God their undercovers deeds.

In Nod, ‘twas odd: The number of the people totaled five.

Three sons were procreated, under cover of the jive.

Any line in this book that is stolen

From Shakespeare dooms the hack to a hole in

The bottom of Hell, where plagiarists dwell

In a bend in great Satan’s large colon.

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Jehovah was as puritan as Milton in his views,

Rejecting the positions that the Vatican eschews.

Though Eden’s lost when Adam’s tossed to Nod’s infernal land,

No missionary’s there to echo God’s bluenose command

That Eve’s nose must be facing up; so she can see the views

Of Nod that every tourist who is well informed eschews.

And Adam takes positions on the new-known bone-dry land,

And missionaries’ views on Yahweh’s sexual command.

So Adam has opinions on the missionaries’ views.

He wonders how a rabbi who talked with ancient Jews

Became a god. How very odd.

“The stream of time has currents that bewilder and confuse.”

And now the dice are rolling six. The hand of Fate has tossed

The dice upon a maple table hands of God embossed

With symbols of the lot of Eve. And there she sees a tree

Of knowledge thriving in the woods where she is bound to be

Unbounded in her freedom. When the wrath of God has tossed

The couple, Eden-lost, to Crucifixion Thorns embossed

By scouring sands with images of Eden’s knowledge-tree.

So Eve beholds a portent of to-be and not-to-be.

Yet Adam fathoms the stream of time

When silent actors deftly mime

The mimes within the times within

The play, in Hamlet, penned in rhyme.

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For Nod’s to be. And Eden not. And Eve and Adam? Free

In scraggly woods to think upon the choice they chose to be.

For they have chosen liberty, though difficult, in Nod.

Perfection’s lacking liberty. For liberty is flawed.

When people choose, they make mistakes. And Eve and Adam, free

Can choose, and err, like Hamlet when he chose the not-to-be:

The not-to-be of nothingness. Instead of life in Nod:

The Nod of Hamlet’s anguish, in a play that’s slightly flawed.

I think that I shall never see a play as perfect as a bee.

A month ago, a honey bee departed for eternity.

When cycling up a mountainside, it stung my lathered leather hide.

The bee was cycling? No. And who was michaeling? Me.

For Hamlet isn’t perfect. There’s a scene within the play

That leads the fans to rise in wrath, determined they will slay

The playwright who’s imposed on them the lines about a cup

Of poison that the queen imbibes. And so, her number’s up;

Despite the fact the king could save the queen in Shakespeare’s play.

Will’s oversight enrages fans. And when they try to slay

The author, they are free to choose to drink the brimming cup

Of vengeance: Free as Adam, when the three and three were up.

In different volumes, the hack relates

The history of Hamlet from two starting gates.

An easy way to paltry pelf is stealing stories from myself.

And thus avoid, by auto-theft, the plagiarists’ infernal fates.

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For he was free to curse his God, who sentenced them to Nod;

The penalty, and requisite, for freedom from their God:

For freedom from the Absolute, determining the ways

That Eve and Adam walk if God is ruler of their days.

But Adam rolls the dice again. The Furies doze and nod,

Allowing both the dice to roll until a face of God

Is seen within the number that the temperamental ways

Of chance disclose to Adam in the crucible of days.

The flames of Hell await the guys

Who steal truths and pilfer lies

From Adam’s dreams, and wily schemes

The characters in Sol devise.

The crucible of days beneath the singeing sun of Nod,

Where sunlight finds a number that unmasks a face of God.

For Adam rolls a seven. Jesus said to Peter, “When

Your brother is a jerk, and then an irksome jerk again,

Forgive the guy not seven times for making life a Nod,

But seventy times seven.” And, the rabbi added, “God

Forgives.” And Adam thought on this. And then decided when

The Deity has been a jerk, he should forgive again.

Great Satan had a cunning plan

To bring to nought the hopes of man

And woman. A tricky plot that itself came to nought:

All by ourselves, we’ve turned this planet-poem into doggerel that doesn’t scan.
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The ‘he’ refers to Adam. He was “Doing what I can.

Although I couldn’t justify the ways of God to man,

At least I can forgive the Boss responsible for this

Condition of the human race. And yet, I’m free to diss

The Deity. For why should we agree to hold the can

For God? (S)He’s never justified the ways of God to man.

Jehovah is responsible! (S)He’s saddled us with this:

The sort of thing that leads a guy to start ‘respect’ with ‘dis’.”

Though they’re askew, my apple tree

Has limbs in flawless harmony.

I think that I shall never see a God as perfect as a tree,

For gods are made by fools, like me.

Then Adam rolls the dice again. They stop at number eight:

Reminder of the crooks who fish with sham financial bait.

For they deceive the proles and plebes with convoluted schemes

Elaborate as language in a summer’s midnight dreams,

And composite: The markets are composed, like number eight,

Of other numbers favoured by the danglers of the bait.

The digit two: The serpent eyes, unblinking when the schemes

Were hatched that put an end to Eve’s and Adam’s artless dreams.

Did Someone make my apple tree

With limbs in secret symmetry?

(S)He set those limbs awry and then, with craftsmanship, began again

Creating time from eternity?

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The digit four: The number of the rolling, roiling streams

That carry off the nuggets in the ordinary dreams

Of plebes and proles, and leave those souls impoverished and broke.

And broken, like the damned in Hell the imps compel to stoke

The fires frying captains of the vile rip-off schemes. No streams

Will quench infernal fires as the breakers of the dreams

Are stabbed by prongs of pitchforks. When the super-rich, who broke

The gulls and dupes, are sizzling over flames the friars stoke.

If I could make an apple tree

I’d screw it up most royally.

The thirsty roots and leafy crown would be positioned upside down.

Too bad this book was made by me.

Then Adam rolled the number nine: And traveled in his thought

From Hell to Heaven, seeing there the angels he had caught

In nets of contemplation. And, he listened to the song:

Gregorian simplicity of music that the throng

Of angels in their choirs sang. As pure as angel-thought,

The music filled the heavens-vault the eyes of Adam caught

In visions of the choirs: Nine, enwrapped in angel-song

As beautiful as colours of the music and the throng.

King Knute held up a royal hand

To stop the tide by his command.

If carbonic acid brings the death of oceans, that will still the breath

Of everything that walks on land.

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For Adam saw the colours as he heard the music sung.

And thought of brilliant colours of the flowers that had clung

To walls of Eden; climbing high upon the sun-warmed stone

Toward the golden glory of the jewel-embellished throne:

The throne of great Jehovah, who enjoyed the music sung

In praise of all the virtues that had resolutely clung

To Yahweh’s reputation. That’s despite the heart of stone

Of Yahweh who had banished people, far from Heaven’s throne.

Perhaps God made each living sea.

But mankind brings mortality

To oceans stricken by abuse and by rapacious overuse.

And if they die, then so will we.

At least, it seemed to Adam that a gentle heart would lack

The adamantine hardness that had sent the angel back

To Eden. Not, this second time, to counsel and protect;

But rather with the orders to, “Inspect, correct, eject.”

Rejected, and dejected, and afflicted with the lack

Of Eden-fruit, the man of Nod was burdened. For the back

Of Adam bore the toil that was needed to protect

His family from prowling threats he struggled to eject.

If oceans die, this planet too

Will disappear from human view

Because there won’t be any folks to fan the fires Satan stokes

And chase the dreams his imps pursue.

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Evicting from the barren land the threats of pain and death

Remained a goal elusive as the zephyr’s gentle breath.

It shunned the brow of Adam as he strove to grow the grain

That wilted in the crucible of Nod. He prayed that rain,

Bestowed by mighty Zeus or Thor, would parry pain and death.

And that the beating of the wings of Thunderbird bring breath

Of breezes, following the rain restoring life to grain.

The resurrection didn’t come, for neither did the rain.

The imps are dreaming of the days

When flames of Hades flare and blaze

In bloodshot eyes of fans who gaze at villains whom the Devil pays,

And pays damned well in Shakespeare’s plays.

And Eve and Adam’s little boys were feeling gnawing pain

Of hunger. Cain and Abel were afflicted by the bane

Of multitudes of children, in an era then to come,

Who hear the death-march rhythm sounded on a hollow drum.

“The deities don’t care!” And Eve was feeling double pain:

From hunger; and, from love for kids the prey of vicious bane.

“How do the wealthy nations of the pale planet come

To be unmindful of the souls who hear the hollow drum?”

The Devil has a pair of horns.

We hear them on October morns.

The spectrum of his music weaves chromatic hues of autumn leaves

The Devil’s paintbrush thus adorns.

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And Adam knew that if he acted to defend his kids --

From hunger and starvation that the wealth of nations bids

Comprise the global orders that the boss of Hades gives,

Disguised as economics – then the wrath of God; that lives

In edicts that some parents still inflict on helpless kids;

Would fall upon his shoulders that the love of children bids

Support the portion of the sky where gentle kindness lives.

And showers down its blessings on the lives of little kids.

The Devil has a scarlet door.

It’s red as leaves the maples wore

When casting shade upon the glade

And apple tree of Eden-lore.

And Adam knew an angel stood beside the Garden gate:

A cherubim named Angelo. He guarded the estate

Of Eden; now reserved for God to walk at eventide,

Enjoying a respite and rest from having to decide

The fate of every atom in the universe. The gate

Was decorated, with the stars that shone on God’s estate,

And Artemis, the goddess of the moon and even tide

That flows so smoothly over sand, as sands of time decide.

And gazing at the apple tree,

Eve marveled at its harmony.

“Jehovah made this apple tree with limbs askew so perfectly.”

But books are made by fools, like me.

 25

And Angelo was most displeased that people often think

That cherubim are figments that bedeck the sky with pink,

And pudgy, flying putti, bringing roses to adorn

The brow of Aphrodite: Is it art or is it porn?

For cherubim are mighty men with wings. And experts think

They guard the throne of Heaven -- where Jehovah’s in the pink:

Dianthus blooms that fill the skies with fragrance – and adorn

Jehovah’s halls in classic art that sneers at modern porn.

Apollo was a Roman god.

He swung both ways until the sod

Embedded him with yew-tree roots. Where zephyrs sway the daisy shoots,

And Latin dianthi doze and nod.

And Angelo was told by God to guard the Garden gate.

He held a massive, mammoth sword as fiery as the great

And monstrous regions of the depths where Satan warms his hands.

And schemes, amid the flames, to rule the rulers of the lands

That tread on other nations, in a military gait

That leads toward a Hellish stench and opened sewer grate.

But Angelo’s a soldier who has never dipped his hands

In blood, for he protects the folk in wounded foreign lands.

The hawkweed is a brilliant bloom:

The Devil’s paintbrush lit the gloom

Of cloudy days. Til sunny rays

Were woven on Apollo’s loom.

 26

Although angelic, Angelo’s been ordered to prevent

The entrance into Paradise of Adam. Adam’s spent

The silver coins of language in a way that nettled God,

By saying that his liberty was worth the toll of Nod.

And Adam feared the bite and flames of swords that could prevent

His mission to the tree of life. A fee for life is spent

When death’s the toll that’s paid to stroll the path to Heaven’s God.

Is life in death the toll that’s paid by those who dwell in Nod?

And on the loom of Adam’s God,

(S)He wove the woof of life in Nod.

That life is rife with pain and strife.

And Adam’s broken by the sod.

“Like Hell it is!’ says Adam: He’s resolved that he will reach

The tree of life, that conquers death. Once more unto the breach,

Dear friend; if breach there is, within the circling Garden wall.

Or imitate the action of the tiger. Wilbur’s all

Determination, muscle, saber teeth, and claws to reach

The topless towers’ tops: Prepared, in Ilium, to breach

The protocols of politesse, defenders of the wall

Will find that spears and boiling pitch cannot defeat that all.

He tried to break the hardened earth.

But he was broken by the mirth:

The Devil’s laughter resounding after

Adam reaped a year of dearth.

 27

But Adam’s just a fellow. And a klutz, as Eve well knows.

A swallow-tailed butterfly will save his fear-curled toes

And everything attached to them. The roving, ravening Beast,

With drooling mouth, and teeth like spikes, was hunting to the east

Of Eden. Adam hid behind a pawpaw tree. No nose

Can smell out trouble like a guy who never ever toes

The line survival promulgates for those who see the Beast:

Locate the largest rock, and hide! Or else, your ass goes east.

We must avoid the fearsome Beast.

Or else become his human feast

Unseamèd from the nave to chops, as Mackers clove from butts to tops

The foes he sent to Hades’ priest.

Perhaps the Beast is mean because his childhood was tough:

It’s arduous to slaughter kin, when once is not enough.

Perhaps the Beast is mean because he’s never heard of Jesus?

Could Torquemada set him straight, with methods meek as breezes?

Let’s contemplate a better world, in which the going’s tough

For those who think that Beastiality is nice enough.

The Beast repents, and dedicates his life to love and Jesus.

From now on, he will live upon, not flesh, but gentle breezes.

For Satan saves, with fluid fire

And Hellish hymns of Hades’ choir,

The souls, baptized with flowing pitch, preserved forever in the ditch

Where Torquemada writhes in mire.

 28

Tom Torquemada took a theological position

As warrant for the methods of the Spanish Inquisition.

And some believe that “Good Queen Bess” was gentle as a dove:

A notion false as trochees ending both those lines above.

A writer who had published an unorthodox position

Was likely to be tortured by the English inquisition.

So Shakespeare, on those topics, chose the silence of the dove.

Did England’s Shakespeare write those plays to please the brutes above?

In truth, those plays were written by an underpaid Canuck.

He doesn’t writhe in mire. Instead, he dug in muck

Then smeared the dirt on royal thrones. It soils souls the Devil owns.

And Mackers, now, is laved, enslaved, by blood, with “dearest chuck”.

Was William Shakespeare, Englishman, the author of the plays?

Two questions that the Beast decides are better left for days

When he has had a belly full of winsome, winning fawns,

And eaten all the little beasts his copulation spawns.

“And ‘Jesus’! ‘Breezes’! Trochees!” He’s a Beast who never plays

So fast and loose with wording. Though the Beast of Evil Days,

He reads the classics mirrored in the stream of time. And fawns

Before the rules of prosody the Great Tradition spawns.

Will Shakespeare’s Mac and Missus Mac committed lethal crimes.

They sowed those soiled seeds within the wombs of tainted times.

The crimson blood on Macker’s floor consigns him to the scarlet door:

Hell’s bells will ring, through smoke and murk, the welcome of their chimes.
 29

And Adam still is hiding. And, a busy butterfly

Is laying eggs on pawpaw leaves. And when her flutterguy

Was fluttering to meadows on a mountain that is cold;

His odyssey to cooler climes, as Exodus has told,

And literary journey for a lettered butterfly;

A robin ate him. Moral? Never take a flutter, guy,

On ventures that are risky? For, it’s better to be cold

Of heart and brain, ignoring tunes the chimes at midnight tolled?

Jack Falstaff heard the chimes that rang

At midnight, when his merry gang

Heard Saint James’ bells. Their chiming tells

The swans to sing the song they sang.

And Adam hears the chimes that ring the melodies of life.

He doesn’t want to leave the love he feels for his wife.

And doesn’t want the Beast to ring the chimes that sound the knell

Of Adam, by consuming him with mustard and a yell

Of brutal triumph. Falstaff’s bells at midnight chime for life.

He hears the chimes of starlight ring for Adam and his wife.

And glancing then at Genesis, he wonders if the knell

For Abel peals loudly as the Beast’s triumphant yell.

The song swans sang when they beheld,

Reflected where the sunfish dwelled,

The stars that shone on Stratford town, when down was up, and up was down:

Perspective, thus, and logic meld.

 30

Jack Falstaff also wonders if the bells the angels ring

Will manifest to Adam that the vulture’s on the wing,

Awaiting, rather patiently, the day that Adam dies.

And Adam’s spirit, like the bird of carrion, then flies

On high, ascending with the chimes the carillon will ring.

The flight of time is breakneck. And, the vulture’s on the wing.

And will the bells tell Adam that the Beast that never dies

Is sovereign in infernal climes and lord of many flies?

The heavens glimmer in the stream

Where stars and Mars and moonlight gleam.

So up is down in Stratford town,

Where things are seldom what they seem.

And will the bells tell Adam human evil and the Beast

Are one? And Lucifer’s a monstrously parodic priest

Who offers up a sacrifice of lives he doesn’t own:

An offering to nescience of blood and nerve and bone?

And will the bells tell Adam that the terrifying Beast,

And Santa Claus, and Tinkling Bell, are guises of the priest

Called Satan? He’s the enemy of righteous priests who own

The right to offer sacrifices, calming flesh and bone.

The Milky Way’s the heavens’ stream.

It flows where wonders reign supreme.

The Avon’s stream, where starlight lies, is mirrored in the midnight skies.

So down is up, and light is cream.

 31

Symbolic sacrifices, that betray no blood or bone

To suffering or death. And they’re intended to atone,

As offerings, for failings of the people on the globe

That’s trodden by the weary feet of every Joan and Job.

And Job and Joan are suffering in nerve or blood or bone.

And Job cries out in anger that Jehovah should atone

For pain that (S)He’s inflicting on the pilgrims on the globe

Where God has never justified Jehovah’s ways to Job.

The swans are singing of the lawns

Where dew reflects the silver dawns

Reflected in Jack Falstaff’s eyes. Reflecting on the starry skies,

He cannot hear the singing swans.

And Adam is a pilgrim. He is traveling to find

The answers to the questions that perplex his puzzled mind:

“How much should all the imps of Hell, and dainty Tinkling Bell,

And ‘kindly’ Santa Claus; the Beast, ferocious, fierce, and fell;

And Yahweh, who is letting all this come about; be fined

For violating principles that saints and scholars mined

For precious gems of verity? And how is Tinkling Bell

Related to angelic hosts that sinned and fought and fell?

The swans are singing winning airs.

The lyrics die in Falstaff’s ears.

For people, though they hear the chimes, are not allowed to hear those rhymes,

Or hear the music of the spheres.

 32

“And will the Beast, who lusts for pain and blood and sorrow, see

That I am hiding here, behind this puny pawpaw tree?

Will he indulge his fondness for extreme brutality?

And are the Beast and Santa Claus a Fiendish unity?

And is the water calm and clean within the Holy See?

And does a mama like to climb a leafy papa tree?

Am I for lunch? And what’s the word? It’s fierce ‘brutality’:

A word that rhymes with ‘see’ and ‘tree’, and sunders ‘unity’.”

For, gliding on the Milky stream,

Celestial swans, in beauty, deem

The human race to lack the grace

Of God, and swans, that swans esteem.

The Beast will see that Adam’s there, behind the pawpaw tree.

And then the Beast’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be?”

Will frighten Adam; for, he knows, “To be, or not? That’s me!”

Although he could be Santa Claus, the Beast decides that he

Will not transmogrify himself. Because the knowledge tree

Of Eden knows there ain’t no Claus. So Santa’s not to be.

“He’s not to be. It’s me to be. John Milton wrote me mee.

But either way, I kill my prey. And mee shall slaughter hee.”

Celestial swans ordain that we,

Confined to mere humanity,

Like all the souls who breath in breath twixt human birth and human death,

“Shall hear the swans sing silently”.

 33

Thus speaks the Beast. He sniffs the air. Then breathes in deep the spoor

Of Adam, who expects, so soon, to knock on Heaven’s door.

Saint Peter would let Adam in, regardless of the Boss,

Who huffs and puffs. The Deity proclaimed eternal loss

Of Heaven for the human race. For Adam lost the spoor

Supposed to lead that leading man to Heaven’s burnished door.

And so the Beast has gained the souls rejected by the Boss?

And we shall see his scarlet door, and everlasting loss?

The swan songs sung by Avon’s swans

Are silent as the girl in bronze:

The girl whose statue stands beside the path where theatre patrons stride

Toward the play with russet dawns.

The Beast has honed the human teeth of evils in the world,

Increasing pain: The suffering the human hands unfurled

On banners that proclaim that, “We are good and strong and clean,

And other people serve the cause of Satan”. Though we’ve seen

The Devil is, in fact, a joke who traipses through the world

As Tinkling Bell. And she has raised her silken flag, unfurled

To flaunt the flies of Hades that inspect, infect, and clean

The skull and crossbones flapping in a diabolic scene.

“The dawn in russet mantle clad,”

Is spoken by a Danish grad

Of Wittenberg, a German town sun-honeyed college-towers crown.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is a German noun.

 34

And in the scene where Falstaff talks with Shallow of the days

That they have seen, the chimes of midnight sing of Tudor lays

In brothels like the Windmill in the field of the saint:

His banner is the emblem of the Englishmen. They paint

The plays of Shakespeare with the red and white and blue of days

Beneath the Union Jack. In truth, the Brits’ contention lays

One colour extra on the plays. Enquire of the saint.

For George admits the maple flag is what they ought to paint.

It really is a German noun.

And Hamlet leaves that German town

And academics’ ruffled fur, and Gaudeamus igitur.

Ubi sunt, qui ante nos in mundo fuere? Up? Or down?

The red and white has dyed the night when Falstaff and his friends

Enjoyed a ribald humour that descends til it offends

The proper prudes. But that offence is minimal when paired

With deeds of Limey blokes and chaps who, many times, have erred:

“Will Shakespeare’s plays, and raunchy lays of paunchy Falstaff’s friends,

Were written by an Englishman.” A claim that much offends

Canucks. When every layer of the onion has been pared,

The heart reveals honest truths that prove the Brits have erred.

Up: Vadite ad superos.

Down: Transite ad infernos.

Read of Heaven. Read of Hell. Explore the places spirits dwell,

Forever joyful or morose.

 35

And truths are telling Adam that the Beast could rip and tear

His lanky stringy body, from his mussy messy hair

To toes the reader knows are saved by madam butterfly.

The Beast attempts to send him to the endless by and by:

Celestial spheres where seraphim will shed a gentle tear.

Because the Hound of Heaven sends this wounded human hare

To fields, home to just a solitary butterfly?

In fields of Elysium, she seeks her guy. And by

Will Shakespeare’s critics went to Hell.

But readers of this book won’t dwell

With howling, yowling legions who populate the regions

Where sulphur stinks and critics smell.

The asphodel, she finds her butterfly. That broken line

Is cheating. Like the horrid hack, whose writings intertwine

Adventures of Odysseus and loss of Paradise,

Because he’s much too lazy to expend the costly price

Of fashioning mythology. The hack would rather line

His pockets; stealing strands of gold from works that intertwine

A storyline with threads of verse: A pilfered paradise.

He hits a homer in the ninth; but Homer pays the price.

The pope is an indulgent guy

With friends well placed, high in the sky.

And dwelling in refulgence, they have granted an indulgence

That’s good for you, and good for aye?

 36

Yet Adam isn’t Jason: He commands no golden fleece

To help him out of sticky jams. Such stolen stories grease

The wheels of creation for the hack, when filching plots.

The wheels of privation grind the gulls his luck allots:

Because they lack the copyrights, they’re easy guys to fleece;

The hack has taken tales from the bards of ancient Greece.

Though shy, she’s sly: The butterfly is spinning cunning plots;

The storylines this story mines for lines the hack allots.

I think that I shall never see

Upon the pope’s indulgence-tree

The clemency that’s good for aye. That really gives the soul a by,

When prayers can buy eternity.

The hack will steal fables from the butterfly. She spins

The silken threads of storylines about who drops or wins

The golden fleece. It helps a guy like Adam reach his goal:

The golden fruit that nourishes the body and the soul.

The tree of life has roots in Earth; the goddess tilts and spins.

She’s Terra incognita in the mind of one who wins

The honey-golden laurels, and his golden-money goal.

Yet loses, as the prophets said, the essence of his soul.

Though readers of this novel book

Can all be sure their geese won’t cook

Where Satan lives: The pope forgives,

Indulgently, the sins of people who read all the way to the end of this rather long brook.
 37

No money, gold, or tale told, can turn the Beast away

From searching for the fellow whom the brute’s resolved to slay:

Resolved to grind his brain to grains, and mill his balls to bits,

When Adam undergoes a fate like that in Shakespeare’s hits.

Like Dick the Third, whose head will roll down grassy slopes, away

From what is left of Richard, whom the dogs of vengeance slay.

And Mac’s a walking shadow, for his body’s ripped to bits.

And petty paces creep toward the snares in Shakespeare’s hits.

Brook? This stream of words, and time, that flows

To where a tree of knowledge grows:

The island where the willows weep, and several Persian silk trees sleep,

Beside the songs the brooks compose.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow never come

For those who meet the Beast on days mortality’s snare drum

Is sounding in a funeral march; as slowly as the flow

Of Avon water, drifting where the peers of Hamlet go:

The underpaid and hungry characters who nightly come

To snare the ducks. Unless Will Shakespeare’s latest play can drum

Up business for the theatre, and increase the money-flow,

Those characters will starve, and go where shades, in Hades, go.

And in the stream of flowing time

The ducks are swimming to a crime,

For avicide’s a lawless deed. And after mallard victims bleed,

Their spirits fly where James’ chimes climb.

 38

The Avon is a river that reflects a thousand lights

Of stars: The souls of those who die on clear and starry nights

Are not consigned to Hades. They ascend to sable skies.

And shine their heavenly resplendence in the searching eyes

Of those who hope the light of life will never die. Though lights

Of dying stars will cease to shine in somber far-off nights,

The seekers hope their souls will be reborn, in starry skies,

When God decides to recreate the universe, and eyes.

He packs them in a burlap sack.

The mallards quack til axes hack.

He stuffs those parents, daughters, sons, into the maws of burger buns:

Those victims of Big Mac’s attack.

Although he might be shade or shadow, star or silver light,

When Adam voyages to realms of final sleep and night,

He doesn’t want to die today, or any other time.

And Adam fears the claws besmirched with filth, and fangs with slime --

The weapons that the Beast may use to quench the liquid light

Of stars: The daytime crucible of Nod gives way to night,

And Adam sees reminders of eternity and time

In starry skies -- will poison him with toxic grime and slime.

Big Mac’s the thane who makes, for gain,

The burgers causing deathly pain

For customers who eat the grease that ends their brief, expensive lease

On life. Don’t ever trust the thane.

 39

The Beast would like to grind the stars in dark Satanic mills.

Annihilating all the stars the mind of Yahweh wills

To shine in constellations that the sable cloak of night

Reveals: Two are dippers pouring down their liquid light.

The stones are grinding slowly. But, the gods’ celestial mills

Will pulverize to cosmic dust the stars Jehovah wills

To ornament the silver-sable beauty of the night:

Exceeding fine is ground and sea, beneath celestial light.

King Duncan trusted Mackers’ wife

And Mackers with his royal life.

But Big Mac stabbed King Duncan dead. Then stuffed him into burger bread,

And sold him to the laird of Fife.

The mills are grinding slowly. But, they grind exceeding fine.

The grapes are growing slowly. But, they flourish on the vine

In summer sun. Until the gods decide that autumn’s gold

Will buy the right of vineyards to withstand the winter’s cold,

And earn the warmth of springtime. When the ground, exceeding fine;

As powdered as the snow on grapes that perished on the vine;

Will nurture the chrysanthemums that flaunt their floral gold:

Reminders of the winter sun that burns in dazzling cold.

The laird, thus, crossed his life’s short span.

The thane’s a profit-conscious man.

He spread the laird, in stringy shreds, on musty buns and moldy breads,

For purchase on the end-game plan.

 40

And Adam fears the cold between the fires of the suns:

The stars that shine upon the globe where Adam’s river runs

So swiftly to the endless sea: The speeding stream of time,

And cosmic scope of boundless space, are frightening; and, sublime.

They’re frightening; for, he fears the all that’s home to countless suns,

And fears the nothingness to which his private Avon runs.

And yet the stream’s surpassing strange, for Adam thinks in time.

And all the space between the stars, though humbling, is sublime.

And Adam thinks about the ways

Of Yahweh in reflective days.

When (S)He creates, in rhyming verse, reflections of the universe

The cosmic eye of God surveys.

And Adam doesn’t want to die: He’s made that point before.

He doesn’t want to find himself at Hell’s, or Heaven’s, door.

The Beast, indifferent to the view that Adam has expressed

About a fear of nothingness between the stars, confessed,

When speaking to his fiendish friends and confidants before

He went in search of Adam, that he favours Hades’ door.

Then Adam will be damned. And doomed to hear the thoughts expressed,

Forever, by the minor minds the priest of Hell confessed.

Or maybe it’s the uniworse.

Perhaps that word’s a tad perverse.

Or maybe not: If God’s so great, how come (S)He couldn’t make the fate

Of everything work unto good in this galactic neighbourhood?

 41

Of the twelve books Michael Shea has written:

How many pages are in each book?

And how many pages are on this website?

The Allegro Quartet

The Judgement of Solomon -- 403 pages -- Forty pages

Eden Lost -- 338 pages -- Thirty-three pages

The Silver Apples of the Moon -- 334 pages -- Thirty-three pages

The Blue Star of Twilight -- 361 pages -- Thirty-six pages

The Adagio Quartet

The Sable Swans -- 366 pages – Thirty-seven pages

The Willows of the Brook -- 350 pages – Thirty-five pages

The Field of the Lilies -- 364 pages – Thirty-six pages

The Noontide Sun -- 326 pages – Thirty-two pages

The Andante Quartet

The Pine and Cedar -- 299 pages – Thirty pages

This Rough Magic -- 377 pages – Thirty-seven pages

The Mountain Nymph -- 394 pages – Thirty-eight pages

The Seeds of Time -- 333 pages – Thirty-four pages

The excerpts can be read, free of any fee, on the author’s website:

MichaelShea12books.com

Thank you for reading excerpts from the books.

If you wish to read the books in their entirety, each is, or will be, available.

They are published by ( ).

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The twelve books are dedicated to my daughter, Marie-Laure,

and to my brothers, Philip and Gerald.

I completed the books in the following years:

The Judgement of Solomon - 2010

Eden Lost - 2011

The Silver Apples of the Moon - 2012

The Blue Star of Twilight - 2012

The Sable Swans - 2013

The Willows of the Brook - 2013

The Field of the Lilies - 2014

The Noontide Sun - 2015

The Pine and Cedar - 2015

This Rough Magic - 2016

The Mountain Nymph - 2016

The Seeds of Time - 2017

Thank you for reading this selection from The Judgement of Solomon.

To read the remaining pages of The Judgement of Solomon, please buy the book.

From my office, looking through the window at my apple tree and the cedars and maples,

best wishes from Michael Shea.

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