Across antiphonal streams

I hear his frantic beat

As he stomps and taps around

With his loud loud feet.

I hear his years of Armageddon

For Napoleon

And listen to his ladyfriends

While traveling in Ceylon.

I sense ancestral paragon

Etching novel verse,

His thoughts so old and challenging,

I think I am his curse.

I underline his score within

My chromosomal sea;

Attempt to scan the birthright,

Legate the legacy.

I shout aloud his passions

Which now I count my own:

"My father! My father!

The DNA remembers

What the world has never known!"

Here comes worry

In black snake skin,

Zazzling in on the tempo

Of temper's sure fire;

Sailing with a bang

Like noisy winged serpents

In a holly tree.

And here comes love,

Waiting in white soliloquy

Like a tree surviving affront

Of an awful tide,

Standing calm in the after-silence

Of a spring rain.

Each candlestick

Must need a light,

Must need a flame

To brave the night.

Each man must need

A life-desire

And forge his faith--

Or lack the fire.

I would give you the

Pen of my mind

Seeing you are like the

Flash of the rainbow

Ready to whither into transient cloud

Or like the glint on

Holiday roses--

Which no one notices

Exactly when it stops shining:

I would let you handle me;

I would let you know my loves

And measure as trained logic

Would measure and keep.

I would.

But then you would not want

To give my essential me back

And I would then become

The straight blade in the

Grasses I think of me as;

And like the last moment of Sun

On the erratic mouth of the sky

I would flick,

And then be gone.

--thank you, shapelessevan.