Gold Dust
1
I heard a hawk—found two—
In not the mating season—
Swirling—
Together—
Red-tail females—
I want to see it as a sign—
It is happenstance—
Unless it is a sign—
Or a happenstance ruled
By a Great One—
I want it to be propitious.
The Great Book guides location
And ascension of the Sacred Mountain.
Why would I follow birds?
2
Gold Dust: dust or gold?
She says, “Men are monopolists
of ‘stars, garters, buttons
and other shining baubles’—
unfit to be the guardians
of another person’s happiness.”
must be handled carefully . . .
that severe object
with a pleasing geometry . . .”
Proud bosom
Proud woman
In your service and your need
You rule man
Who rules you in his need
Who is ruled by the Christ-childe
3
Granddaughter likely of Ahithophel,
Likely daughter of a mighty man of David,
Married to a mighty man though maybe jaded
As into military discipline her life befell.
poetchilde reads how Eve and Adam
Ate the forbidden fruit
And thinks it the darkest moment
In human history.
4
The elephant has a wart!
Awake in the bright of day
Eyes closed
Miss Astrid sees plenty of light
But no direction.
Mr. Kant astounds the philosophic world
With his a priori synthetic.
The one who tastes and sees that Yahweh is good
Finds Yahweh in the a posteriori synthetic.
The King’s lizard
As sometimes happens
Runs under the table
Changing the course of history.
poetchilde thinks he is something
time-reversal kicks in
and the universe retreats to big bang
5
“America’s storyteller”
—of Stephen King
The Gunslinger chases the Man in Black
Who is the gateway to the Dark Tower.
(Does one address Airy Nothings with a smile?)
Vicariously, I prove myself worthy
Through Mr. King’s Roland and through the trap
I cross desert and mountain and cognoscible tunnel
(Does one stop for bonbons for stop one does.)
Leading potentially outside the known universe—
(¿Is all the nexus the all is?)
I am tendered a priesthood to the beyond!
Through this Roland (not Mr. Browning’s Childe)
I murder those infected by false religion.
I affirm my Covenant with Death by lighting up a smoke.
(If thrown a dead man’s head, does one catch it in respect?)
I let the succubus have me to prove I have what it takes.
I grow hungry for pizza pizza for hungry grow I.
I wonder why universes are entrusted to figments
(What manner of figment am I?)
Formed in competition with the hobbits
And I wonder if I was battle-ready
As this devil’s eye leered back at me
And I wonder why my retirement plan is thin.
6
When poets go bad
One short of seven.
Irony gone to rust.
Metaphor reaching only metathree.
Synecdoche okee dokee.
It breaks my heart that “emordnilap”
Is not a word
For if it were then
“Palindrome emordnilap”
Would be a palindrome.
As I wonder who—who who?—will decide in the Great Tribulation that his life is worth more than the respect due to Peace, our Summons, our Trial, I recall Mr. Larson’s Far Side cartoon “When Clowns Go Bad” picturing a man in clown gear buying a gun from a shabby shop.
Jimmy—
Of the Allman Brothers?
Jimmy—
Of MIB International?
Jimmy?
Cide Hamete Benengeli marginalizes that Don Quixote,
The bravest of all possible knights on-the-go,
Once fell in a hole, which fact was quietly overlooked
By his faithful companion Sancho Panza.
Regarding the wineskin sucked dry: Deep sleep.
Regarding the last of the bottle: Two dangers—
The first: I look; Not much left; I pour; O wow!
The second: The sadness; Empty; No more; What now?
Humans
Hue-mans sporting Mr. Hume’s
Four tries to get it right.
What news bringest thou, sweet jolly postman?
problemchilde sees a movie in which a man, Pinocchio-like, outbrazens truth only to see his penis grow each time. Said agency of child-flow — haunting the wherewithal of pleasure-seeking responsibility-shunning love/hate fascination with baby-making apparatus—surpasses snake, reaching rope of coiled length, the movie lacking acumen in development of this thesis to enlighten, but the mind of the mesmerized monitor marvels machinated.
how to keep pantaloons aloft
when squeezing belt does grip
with rage the pelvis bones opposing
the fall desired by the secret thought
like gravity enduring
how does it happen Master Albin pours his third glass Boss!
when a sleepy thought
gets caught in a squeeek
Of red vino into his undies
Wishing to share the joy with the nether goods
Ruining a pair of goodly pants.
Tubular!
Rufous!
Gnarly!
Awesome!
7
I am young and firstborn and I fear
For the legacy my father leaves.
The roundtop tops the table
The seven chairs wait
Poker players arrive
Little ones to their room—
Me and Dave—
To hear the muttering of “checks”
And the chinking of chips
And Mom poking in with solace.
I am young and firstborn and I fear
My father grows old
And my mother sad
And it will be up to me.
Please, Dad, please, one hand nevermore—
No, son, not appropriate.
Please, Dad, please, have you not taught me to play?
Okay, my son, play one.
Big men gather as I watch and wait.
Dad opens the deal—five card stud—
And standing chest-high to the table
I play his cards and in my innocence
I think not “what” of a win!
Stacked cards!? Charged to my Dad?!
Probability professes a hand I must fold—
Do I leave the table a rat or a void—
Or worse, “what”—
If I lose—“what” of the legacy?
One chip I bet, a-look at the pair
My hum of faith had assured me would show.
Fold, fold, fold, around the table—until—
One calls
And another chip joins the pot.
The battle is mine but not the war.
Cards and wampum proceed—
Inner knowing feeds outer denial.
Two pair I gain, but with nerves—
Something is right and something is wrong.
Full house fails and my check is raised.
I call with my papa’s chips.
Then anxious to prove I have a hand
Scared they’ll think I play only hope
I show my two pair with pride—
And I wait.
The one challenging, defying,
Shows the win I was too scared to see—
Three of a selfsame kind.
I am young and firstborn and I fear
As I dip my head and depart.
I ponder my burst of bravery
And ponder Dad’s patience with me
And ponder what truly weaves a win
And ponder where my knowing was lodged
And ponder why I ponder so much
And ponder the angels
Who evidently manipulate cards
At need,
For one under the eye of God.
8
A Marsupial of Tasmania
Vicious like a devil
Bites
Like a Badger
Also vicious.
Who, however, has the stronger jaws?
Who the sharper claws?
Who the snip-snap disposition
Proven by a pushing
In persisting proxy bouts?
Or, is it only humans who compare?
9
I would not know a monad if I saw one.
10
A bird with a broken wing
Craving boyfriends but keeping none
Fighting boredom
Drives her aging Camry down the dirt road
Out the back of the Indian village
To be stopped by two men and a rifle sliding off a tailgate
Informing her that visitors are not allowed
On sacred ground.
Meanwhile a Navajo man, disdaining White man’s way—
11
Wanting a flat rock for my attempt at a fish tank
I meander the foothills of the Sandias
Passing by a rock too good for me
Only to find it again on the way back.
Underneath it says:
12
A cry is bounced off Heaven
To echo through the Earth
Why souls with such potential
Must die amidst their worth.
The echo fades to cosmic groan
As is recalled the primal fist
Shaken in the tender face
Of the Almighty Sovereign of us all
Answered in combination
Of hand upon the shoulder
And birthright in withdrawal.
Folk mostly good but stuck
In the crook-joint of the knee
Will never make the final grade—
Tested in the light of Thee.
13
Transgender poetry
A woman suffers from breast aversion
Having been raised under the agitation
Of male sufferance of A-cluster dysorderality
And wishes to share ums breasts with someone more deserving
(Letting go the coconut to free um hand from the cage?)
Umph writes poems—Thrash! Cry! Laugh! Escape to an island!
(Finnegan(’)s Wake supplying finngut for genderfree peoplelinks)
(Sune awl wil seke de cayves inwhich too hyde)
14
A man suffers from breast envy.
He reads a poem featuring rolled-up meats
And brown bread
And pictures himself placing a rolled-up meat
Into his cleavage
Soiling his superfluous double-A undergarment
Yearning heavy—heavy in love—
And he wonders whether he will ever
Draw his desires
Into those which can be had.
15
How curious that I leave this Earth
Right here.
It seems God will take me somewhere else.
Probably my parents will shed tears.
Mom! I almost died!
The ice cube that had lodged within my windpipe
Melted just in time!
Why a look of horror?
Is the God within my heart
A fiction
Or reality?
16
Heroes must be hurt and hurt along the way
For our silly selves to hold them dear—
Stuck with an arrow or chipped by a snag—
Winging his fellow then laughing a ‘sorry’—
Pervious to the disordered word
Which is the real hurt
Poisoning the cheer of love feasts real
Which the real hero must survive.
17
My id was chattering breezily
Till in stepped my ego
Saying “Drench it!”
Manifest in my birth-chart—
Hard square—
Moon just so in Gemini—
Sun just so in Pisces—
Suggesting that the spirit-realm
Is real.
18
Arriving late I ask the seated kid
What’s going on?
Miracles, he says.
In the dark as usual, I scrunch my face.
His feet rise horizontal
And one falls short of the other
Then bravely pulls into its proper place.
Miracles, he says.
19
The Apocalypse—
Gathered as a War Cry—
Speaks of a Lamb—
A Lamb the Lion of the tribe of Judah—
The root of David who has conquered—
One semblable to a lamb been slaughtered—
Jesus!
Who else?—
20
The pulling of the fruitloop
On the back of a schoolmate’s shirt
Has turned to school shootings.
The corn first of mottled colors
And then of golden yellow
Has turned to all-embracing white.
The plagues that took a land
Have turned to take a world.
The sky so blue, so ancient,
Has turned—not—
The sky’s still blue.
21
Innocent Bathsheba washing off her sweat
Within the bounds of her skyward parapet
Falls within the view of lusty king.
Poor sweet thing? Or calculation hatching brave coquette?
poetchilde wonders why Jacob names
The camp of God “Two Camps”
Then reads how Jacob separates his wealth
Into two camps, thanking Yahweh.
22
Peyote ceremony with drumbeat
Replete with demons
Would be my ruin
Now that I know
23
Last chance
Goomberada
Last chance
Dry and dusty
Last chance
To gas up while you can
24
Emergency rations
Desperate situation
Alcohol preceding lunch
I gave you everything you asked for
But none of what you needed
We were happy with a beer in me
And nectar of the heavens filling you
25
(I have enhanced my thoughts with professional help at
mathworld.wolfram.com search Klein bottle)
Who but geeks compare a Möbius strip with a Klein bottle
Or else a doofus like me?
Snip the 2-d ring, then draw arrows opposing,
Then put a 3-d twist in the ring
And watch the arrows line up to be secured,
Noting one arrow on “top” and the other on “bottom.”
26
Sixth-grade math and the teacher has a plan—
Two-by-two, chosen ones are called up to the board.
The math I comprehend yet I beg heaven that I be overlooked—
Heaven begging something else with me—
And when called up with my best friend terror strikes my heart.
The problem is presented
And as my fear-struck hand writes the problem out
The answer pops into my head so I write it too,
Skipping all the stuff that goes between.
Back to my desk where I just breathe until the terror goes away
Whereupon I look up to be struck with dismay
As I see my best friend making random marks upon the board
And I learn that he doesn’t have a clue.
I regret that I left him not a line to follow
And I curse the gods of terror who strike me through and through.
Not until years later do I understand
Why my best friend took to clouting me as we walked away from school.
27
The wages of sin is death
Meaning, I am told, “separation from God.”
Tormented day and night for ever and ever
Meaning, I am again told, “tortured.”
Why the first in denial
And the second brutal?
Have we not read?
There is no work, nor device,
Nor knowledge, nor wisdom,
In the grave, whither thou goest
And have we not read?
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
The wages unto death cross-grained—
Agony of soul yet rest in peace—
For God has placed Eternity
In the heart of Man.
The torment nevertheless
Attempting comfort—
When understood
That wickedness has bought the farm
Forever.
In combination—
Simple as a child’s puzzle
Puzzling the lofts
Of hard-sought Love of Wisdom—
Yes, in chiasmal combination
We find truth.
28
How hither the iron
Be not cleft
By the clay?
How whither the clay
Be not caged
By the iron?
I spit and spat in anger
As the people cried in hurt
Which I felt within their cry
And I left my wroth hand empty
As the bullets flying round about
Gave excuse for bullets flying back
And I asked the wind
If she might carry my sput spit
To the enemy who is the enemy.
29
Now that it is summer
The back door breathes
And if the ants show up for crumbs
After Fifi’s evening treat
I shake their scurrying selves from hoisted rug
To the backyard where they thrive before I vacuum.
Now that it is summer
Valle’s walk must be early morn
Lest I tire of hearing her pant
The whole way home.
It will soon be winter
And the challenges will shift
And I pray I will not falter in despair.
30
Fifi eyes the lizard
Gauging quickness.
Valle eyes the burrito
Wishing . . . meditating . . . dreaming . . .
31
Mr. Sze’s early riser writes
A message on a sidewalk
With a wet sponge
Perhaps for writing practice—
Perhaps to express fleeting opportunities—
Perhaps for the pure joy—
I nearly discovered the imaginary point—
The holy grail of geometry—
But found my error before shaming myself.
32
. . . and that fast, you’re thinking of a grubby desert girl . . .
writing from Anxiety . . . Arabic sources . . . purveyors of Zero . . .
Gabriel’s red rover come over you will not get beyond . . .
The wild-donkey bloodline in the face
Of all his brothers.
33
The dogs at home on the furniture
The mice through the secret entryways
The pocket of daddy-longlegs
The squirrel what winters in the attic
And the dustbunnies loving corners
Own this place.
I just squat here.
I just squat.
34
What is the matter with you people
That you have all gone up to your roofs?
Asks Isaiah
Of his people.
35
A trip to the Holy Land!
Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives!
Pondering Jerusalem—
Has Yahweh claimed her?
36
And if her integument like a wineskin bodes a burst
Beseeching time to herself to turn wine into prose
Sighing her prolepsis for a room of her own
What better than the eighth wife of a king?
poetchilde doubts it an accident
That Eve, the woman,
Was privileged to be the first on record
To pronounce the Holy Name.
37
Is it the Thumb of God?
Is it Heaviness of Soul?
Is it my unconscious mind knowing what I do not?
Whatever it is, when it’s got me, it’s got me
Till it breaks.
38
Watching my dog dying, my vet having diagnosed
The tumor, yet she out of town whence my heaviness holds me
In our time of sudden distress, I realize my Whitmanian self,
Flowing with nature, not fighting, infused with sadness
And empathy which I see reflected in Valle’s kind eyes
Until I can once again hear the birds sing.
Each little thing is big, and yet little.
39
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up . . .
—opening “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”
by Robert W. Service
Gold dust valued for its rarity
And its qualities as it melts
Buys no wisdom
Yet serves the Poet.
poetchilde tortoise all in all
seeks sympathy in shuttle.
Lester names his firstborn
Not after the prophet Daniel
Nor after his wife’s grandfather Daniel
Nor after the tribe of Dan
But rather after Dangerous Dan McGrew
Darkling where a poke of dust holds sway
Killing and killed over some kind of play
Regarding the lady that’s known as Lou.
Sara welcomes her husband’s choice of names
As she practices Biblical arrangement
Like her namesake Sarai known as Sarah.
Little Dan—me and an atomic bomb
Danbaggett the college student
adopts a compound name
from a new-found friend
(fresh off the boat from India)
Danbaggett the mighty mite
later ponders eponymy
with Sanballat the Horonite
(who stood in opposition to Nehemiah)
Dan the Engineer earns his pay
(Unaware it was the pushing against the king of the north)
Dan the Project Leader fumbles and flees
(Leadership and organizational skills stunted)
Dan the Congregation Elder slips off the peg
(To a problematic path by direction from above?)
Dan the Man searches his roots
and sees himself a chosen one
since his days of youth
like the young hero of Dune
and searches his humility
to separate wild thoughts from truth
while giving it all he can.
poetchilde disturbed by the history of his hometown
unwittingly pins the floating prophecy to 11/17/22
with 1335 days to go, to be tallied off by prophetic years and months,
which he awakens to in the summer of ’23
after reading all he could stand of nuclear engineering and physics.
Little Dan—so-so physicist, philosopher, mathematician,
poet, reader of sacred script, but still Little Dan—kept
by the past, haunted, intrigued, moving on but maybe we never can—
having blown a crater in the desert before underground was obligatory—
now blowing a crater in our complacency from an overground underword—
Little Dan.
poetchilde knows folks
Of slave-trade ancestry (both taking and taken)
Of compulsory and chosen soldiering (the word built from a sou)
Of broken homes (a dime a dozen anymore)
Of astrological charts (after science proved sketchy)
Who made it back to the sprouted seeds
In the gold dust of their hearts.
40
And now we arrive at—
The last of the bottle—
The cul-de-sac—
The bottom of the barrel—
Unlike the final bite of Big Mac—
_______