Untitled Chant Royal by Captain Ned

Though I’m young, and my wiring’s taut –
Mechanic cogs still run with ease –
I’m struck by the perturbing thought
That well-oiled engines one day freeze.
My breath quickens, my skin goes pale:
Even now, as I lewdly flail
And shudder as my bedsmate brays,
With mournful notes the music plays;
My store of passion I expend.
Fatigue deflates the best soufflés –
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

Has lusty verve no high-walled fort
Secured against time’s harsh decrees?
Shall stout defences come to nought,
Their ramparts routed by the breeze?
No castle can protect its grail;
The king shall weaken, though he rail.
From crag to sand each rock decays;
The transition ought not amaze.
This example we must perpend:
If nothing lingers, nothing stays,
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

Shall the will press on, sensing sport?
Or falter, though the gamesmen please?
The worn-out vessel’s held in port,
Too old to brave the thrilling seas;
The ship, once mighty, now is frail –
But still the captain longs to sail!
The ropes loosen; the canvas frays;
The decrepit mast limply sways.
The captain stirs to patch and mend;
He craves those bracing ocean sprays.
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

Bewail this wrong before the court,
You’ll have poor answer to your pleas.
There’s no redressing Nature’s tort:
Age withers the most sturdy trees.
No sly parliament can prevail:
Each politician’s bound to fail.
No knotted legislative maze
With perplexing turns meant to faze
Shall timeless laws a jot amend.
These bills’ defeat the house dismays:
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

Let this lesson be soundly taught:
Those merry Metaphysic fleas
Who with our mingled blood disport
Must succumb to the wry disease
That leaves no creature brisk and hale.
Ardent verses are no avail;
Delude yourself that lines of praise
In honour of your lover’s ways
Shall the unerring clock suspend,
When re-read, the same question weighs:
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

ENVOI

Old and feeble in far-off days,
I’ll turn to see with squinting gaze
Time’s dark backward abysm extend,
Tunnelling through the haunted haze.
Does love’s sweet passage have an end?

Untitled Chant Royal by exitbarnardine

You claim we must to ‘purer ways’ return
Or some infinitude of loss incur
Of ‘how to swerve abominations’ learn
To spill no seed and heed no serpent’s purr
Treat ‘those who would abominate’ with scorn
And troop upright, the lust within unborn
You’ve told me, many thanks, and told me straight
Of God’s sky-filling love, pit-filling hate
How we must heed this good and great design
Or show ourselves of life’s stern gift ingrate
You’ll prove it, sweetheart, sure, but first some wine?

Just one thing more, my judge, one small concern
A detail, maybe two, then I’ll concur
I full-endorse that we must pleasure spurn
We shed our license when we shed our fur
And troop upright, of luxury full-shorn
Face night with prayer, with ‘leuia greet the morn
But can you, please, the founding dogma state
Why our own bodies serve our souls as bait?
And why each instinct wiles to undermine
That perfect law that thrust us from the gate?
I’m keen to learn, sweetheart, but first some wine?

In Eden’s belly, fig-tree, frond and fern
First waved to gentle drum, then shook ablur
A cockatoo flapped closer to discern
A bald backside, sweat-stuck with leaf and burr
That rose and fell ‘midst moans that caused a fawn
To dash the garden through, all beasts to warn
‘The woman bears a strange and laughing weight
Yet cries to spur him on, not to placate
They heave and succour, curse and intertwine.’
The soil was tilled, made fertile by its freight
One glass more, sweetheart, then we’ll say Compline.

It’s late, we must theology adjourn
I hope you’ll not offence take, or infer
That I for cruder, pagan doctrines yearn
Or your Head Gardener rate as some voyeur
Before you leave, impurities foresworn
To tropic Cancer, I to Capricorn
I ask, I hope, you do not fluctuate
Your wine it seems to ripple, palpitate
A voltage, I confess, runs through my spine
There’s figs and olives, still, upon the plate
The bottle’s empty, sweetheart, I’ll fetch wine,

Then scuttle from the Word unto the urn
And all my joys and appetites inter
Or let me every gospel truth unlearn
My flesh takes them as slander, crime and slur
Your body’s more than chaff to spirit’s corn
Why starve the ruby vine to feed the thorn?
Your Testament will leave us intestate
Whilst mine will nourish, sweet as ripened date
Don’t speak, don’t wink to which path you incline
In silence, sweetheart, repossess your fate
Just proffer up your cup if you choose wine.

ENVOI

The path that leads to lover, friend and mate
Is choked with man-made walls innumerate
But fling your holy water to the brine
Nail up your creed in some cramped, dusty crate
And tumble into bed, forget the wine.

Untitled Chant Royal by MeltonMowbray

They say imagination is the key
to a lifetime of sexual success
and I suppose in a way you can see
going in-house has a certain finesse,
no problem finding candidates to shag,
or figuring out what might be their bag
but when your fancy’s as feeble as mine
building a fantasy can be a swine,
so I mainly go for the human embrace
and ignore the argument from design:
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

There are those who’ll tell you that venery
is satiated by the porno press,
and my teenage stash of wankery
was an important resource, I confess;
but there does come a time when the jizz mag
and solo pleasuring becomes a fag;
when you see the naked female form divine
in some luxurious room recline
and find yourself checking out the bookcase,
you know your mojo is on the decline:
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

Of course, you could pick up your phone and be
in the middle of sexual congress
(if you’ve got credit) almost instantly:
I don’t understand the appeal, unless
lending an ear to some raddled old hag
assuming the part of a juicy slag
loads the ammunition in your carbine.
Anyway, my phone manner’s not benign,
I struggle for a modicum of grace
even when the vicar is on the line:
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

The sex film aspires to urbanity,
but somehow they always seem to possess
too much in the way of humanity,
a far too obvious self-consciousness,
in which the details of the body nag,
the wrinkles, pimples, the ruddy skin tag,
those bunions, boils, that receding hairline.
No, observing two humans intertwine
is not exactly an erotic place,
it’s more like a sexual stop sign:
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

The arrival of new technology
gave every Janet and John an access
to the full grimoire of sexology,
an encyclopaedia of excess;
but that generous erotic grab-bag
hides in its steaming folds of flesh a snag,
those lurking strings of coding which define
your taste for men or milfs or sheep or kine,
and save it for your government to trace:
I think I’ll stick with my carnal guideline,
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

Envoi

I’m going to run up the missionary flag,
though I know you swingers find it a drag,
can you conceive of anything more fine
than having your lady in your eyeline?
Alternative postures are a disgrace,
and you won’t find me adopting canine:
I love to do my lovin’ face to face.

Thoughts upon my Ruby Wedding: Chant Royal by pinkroom

Thoughts upon my Ruby Wedding

My dear old mum was a bobby soxer
had an eye for a man in uniform
my sad, old dad was a losing boxer
just three wins in nineteen, when I was born.
None surprised when she left with a gunner,
from pictures I’ve seen, she looked a stunner
so I was mostly brought up by my nan;
my father’s mother, who lived in East Ham –
what was left of it post the Luftwaafe –
where once Mum and Dad pushed me in a pram
and made love to the songs of Sinatra

Then dad caught her with the gunner, clocks her
but the gunner had fists that could perform
another bout, left flat on the floor sir,
gunner and mum left, my pram on the lawn.
Me? Crying inside. They did a runner;
had I been my dad, I would have done her
but losing too often, breaks down a man,
just gave a shrug as away those two ran.
out over the hills and far, far farther.
A new life together, they danced and sang
and made love to the songs of Sinatra

So after a fashion, I grew faster.
No motherly guilt, to bind or be torn.
My childhood was filled loud and with laughter
as I ran with orphans, wild sown corn,
across bricks and the weeds ev’ry summer,
no kid seemed to have quite their own mumma,
or any one much, to give much a damn,
for flocks of small sparrows, out on the lam.
The big boys and girls were no martyrs
Babysit? No, they’d head west on the tram
And made love to the songs of Sinatra.

Not that I didn’t feel pains of hunger
and rage, feeling sometimes lost and forlorn.
Oftentimes I would just lie and wonder
if she were off in New York, or Cape Horn?
At those times I could not have been glummer
And my spirits left hardly more numb-er
As I dreamed of her dark, Bondi Beach tan
her arms round a big, broad, Aus-tra-li-an
and three kiddiwinks: thick, dumb and dumber,
holidaying just south of Sumatra.
Evenings they spent there, in talk of Siam
and made love to the songs of Sinatra

Of first love I soon had my first taster,
fell for a girl with the eyes of a faun.
So determined I was not to waste her,
I gave her my whole thought, from morn to morn
‘til the day came I knew that I’d won her,
her disposition so much sunnier
held me close and said that I was her Dan,
that we should do it whenever we can,
and for a while nothing was funnier;
to my Leytonstone digs, to walk not far
I’d sneak her in, the dansette primed, planned
and made love to the songs of Sinatra

ENVOI

But we grew apart, sooner than later,
like my old mum I proved quite the traitor
I met my Irene, an affair began
Inevitable happened, I caught the can
Had a nipper together named Arthur.
Forty years on, we’ve stumbled and ran
and made love to the songs of Sinatra.

No Reason for Love: Chant Royal by freepoland

No Reason for Love

Were Hobbes and Locke and Newton so august,
So bent on butting hard at thought’s frontier,
That in their souls there was no room for lust?
Their minds, engorged with concepts so severe,
Their deep inheritance, has left us gravel dry;
Our pulse may beat, but how hard must we lie?
All day my flesh it yearns for touches light,
My tongue for taste of skin in liquid night.
There’s no philosophy as good that could be penned
No theory that could stretch me to a height.
This longing has no reason, has no end.

I know philosophers must earn a crust
To pay for words and coal and watery beer,
But luxury and fornication, both, we must
Have often: thoughts are too austere.
There’s no analysis can comprehend a thigh
That’s warm against the loin, no reason why
The hair that strokes my neck in soft delight,
The perfume that enfolds me with its might
Should not all harsh dialectic transcend
And grant me deepest physical insight.
This longing has no reason, has no end.

In high scholastic thinking, love is just
A necessary labour, entered on to cheer
The failing appetite; it’s proof against the rust
Of long exposure to the bitter clear
Waters of the pool of learning. To try
To teach the mind how it must feel is high
In old mens’ teaching to their acolytes:
Pah! Rot is talked by ageing sybarites;
They sweat in vain, they have no juice to spend;
The best they’ll do is stroke their catamites.
This longing has no reason, has no end.

The dogs of night take pleasure in the dust
And with their mates in Venus persevere.
They bark, they nip, they butt, they mount, they thrust,
They howl their love like any sonneteer.
But the yellow men of learning classify,
They footnote, and they gloss the stimuli.
Masters and Johnson’s work they know to cite
And will rehearse the science sans respite.
From excitement up to plateau is the trend;
They’ll call the stage of orgasm ‘dynamite’
But longing has no reason, has no end.

There’s sure a way to love that’s more robust,
A path that’s not all fouled with logorrhoea;
A bed where we can lie for weeks and trust
We’re not defined by specious scrutineers.
This private place, it has no termini;
It’s only there for us to gratify
Each, all and every sense, and to ignite
A fire so red and hot and fierce and bright
We’ll stoke it, stroke it, poke at it my friend,
And keep it burning beyond Fahrenheit.
This longing has no reason, has no end.

ENVOI

When pedants print their findings, copyright
They’re welcome to. Their amorous goodnights
Are gaseous words worth only a fag end.
There’s no explaining love’s dark meteorites.
This longing has no reason, has no end.

Skin of Moonlight: Chant Royal by Jack Brae Curtingstall

Skin of Moonlight

The forest was a cage of birch,
its limbs of silver bright as stars;
the forest floor a crackling mulch,
hemmed in by greenwood’s spectral bars.
And through the forest, naked, trod
(her tied-up hair as brown as clod)
an elfin princess, blue of flesh,
her skin as soft as spider’s mesh.
And hunting her, with heart of sin,
a knight with lust for virgin fresh.
Her skin of moonlight drew him in.

This forest now an empty church,
with roofless canopy of spars,
devoid of angels, low or arch,
offers no sanctuary or laws,
and elfin maidens can but nod
to evils that will curdle blood.
The knight undresses in a rush
as iron mail and metals clash,
and naked now begins to grin,
as moonshine on his garments flash.
Her skin of moonlight draws him in.

With skin of lunar velvet’s crush,
this maiden is the prey of Mars,
and in her final panic’s rush
the seconds slow to turgid hours,
the distant stars through Heaven plod
and Time is nothing, unbegot.
The Is and Is-Not start to crash
as existential notions mash,
and under Heaven’s grinding din
the knight’s agendas turn to ash.
Her skin of moonlight draws him in.

Now from a distant stand of larch
a chinking like the touch of jars,
and through the night’s eternal march
strange birdsong heals all stubborn scars.
And standing with his clothes unshod,
his manhood limp, the knight hears God:
a sound that itches like a rash
in skeins of thought that catch, un-catch,
until he ponders clothes of tin
strewn before that seraphic lass.
Her skin of moonlight draws him in.

Now mesmerized like hares in March,
his mind a sliding bog of tars,
he’s mindless of the maiden’s lurch
or that her hands are sprouting claws.
For this fine bastard, this fine sod,
this heartless rapist once so mad
for whorish girls and reefer hash,
(and only loved if paying cash)
is mired in trouble to his chin
as slathering crone’s teeth start to gnash.
Her skin of moonlight draws him in.

ENVOI

In glades of moonbeams moth-folk wish
such foolish men with minds like fish
to step into their traps so thin
for humans are their favoured dish.
Her skin of moonlight draws him in.

Jack Brae Curtingstall

Untitled Chant Royal by HenryLloydMoon

‘Tis time to scour the cracks and pare the cheese
And dust with care the wrapper and the rind
For I am on a promise, if you please
Of boy and girl engaged in bump and grind
The itch has turned to scratch has turned to grate
The foreplay (to a fella means fellate)
Arouses in me deep felicity
Her tongue – the goddess Electricity –
Has more twang than a thousand air guitars
And as to her rumoured toxicity
Who cares! She is my Venus, I her Mars

No sooner have we burned one, than it’s seize
The sapling! Leather it in fascist bind
And thus fashion our fagots into trees
Once more unto the sawmill; crank and wind,
Be sure to time delivery as “late”
The lumber boss is keen this time to wait!
Once more her dazzling motricity
Eclipses my humble mendicity
A pauper to the kaisers and the czars
A cap-in-hand, a curiosity
Vernacular attempt to conquer Mars

Some see such strident needs as a disease
A vile indulgence that can make you blind
Though Women’s Institutes do sometimes tease
Unlike Doris, they never pay in kind
They frown upon the urge to procreate
And scowl at mistresses who masturbate
Their masters. Is such pandemicity
A plot constructed on duplicity?
The men retire for brandy and cigars
Served by Sabrina with simplicity
With one match for Uranus, one for Mars

A fag; (both lit and fig) I’m on my knees
Instructed to impale her from behind
This feat demands a certain expertise
When one is with a writhing eel entwined
The point of carnal jousts is to relate
To knead and prove a malleable soul mate
To stretch the bounds of eccentricity
And corporeal elasticity
The minibar proposes sundry bars
She unwraps slow, winking complicity
Eschewing Twix, insisting it be Mars

Ring-A-Ding-Ding’s an album on Reprise
Once More Unto The Breach a much-maligned
War-cry; my strength is fading by degrees
A jaded Henry and a Frank combined
Failed bounty-hunter, resigned to my fate
To search for distant isles to dessicate
To Doris, column specificity
Is integral to domesticity
I’ll leave her, in her quest for superstars
To promulgate her own publicity:
“Earthy female seeks rocket trip to Mars”

ENVOI

When once again the stalk is strong and straight
And, panting like a flabby middleweight
I part the vulva veil mendacity
Insert the weeping wand veracity
Thus healing at a stroke the subtle scars
Inflicted by her grim tenacity
That maims and and mangles, mutilates and mars