Poems Handturned, Machine-Tooled

Do not complain when hard rains come:

'Tis blasphemy against the Sun

To grumble at the summer heat:

And sin against the paraclete

It is to groan at wind or chill:

And words light-spoke yet twist the will.

Because the queen new from her nuptual flight

Returns unseeded, or her bag of seed

After long years of toil has been spent

On feminizing eggs endless-arrayed;

Or else because into the royal seat

Has tried some foreign-pheremonéd queen

With devious cunning to ingratiate

(And sent there by inscrutable lord Man?);

That is: because whate'er she lays into

The cells will not be sisters to the guards,

But lazy drones or of some alien crew

There to usurp the daughters' honey-hoards:

Because or else the colony is doomed,

They bear the solemn task of regicide.

On entrance of the queen, each palace guard

Bears to her gifts of honey from the cell,

And as she feeds, inspects her without word

(Antennae-strokes and tongue suffice to tell

Whether the bee will pledge her fealty),

And fans her judgment out with fluttering wing:

And when some score or two of bees agree

Against the crown, they suddenly, not sting,

But clamp their mandibles onto her leg,

Her wing, antenna, mandible, surround

Her as the pan of water rings the egg:

And, stifling her plaintive piping sound,

Rile the air with wing-muscles tight-coiled

For half an hour till she is softboiled.

The queen avenges through the aftermath

Of deposition, when the colony

Soon likewise falls, unless the guards forthwith

Elect from her still-larval progeny

A daughter to promote to larger station,

Anoint with royal jelly, teach to soar

Toward an unknown aery coronation;

Or, rather, to insure success, a score

Are given royal berth, and she who dares

First to emerge from her emergency

Accommodations assumes all the cares

Of state, puts down her twins' insurgency.

But her too-common birth may leave its stain

On all her brood; and can they rise again?

The new-hatched queen must from her folk ascend

To realms sublime where virgins congregate,

And virile drones as well, all to attend

Grave nuptual ceremonies. Each male mate

Tumbles as soon as consummation comes

Feather-light and lifeless from the sky

Down to the swaying grass all flesh becomes;

But, wealth of seed stored up in treasury,

The many-widowed queen descends more slow

Down to the comb from which she once arose,

And, so she pass the palace guards' veto,

Begins within its crowded gloomy shadows

Her lifelong task of planting in that place

The memory of that bright aerial race.

Where learned the bee rebellion? From her birth

Colonial: she hums a creole tongue,

Her mimicry upon this alien earth

Of harmonies across the heavens strung;

Desiring life in spheres celestial,

She builds out only waxen hexagons,

And knows her ruler merely vice-regal,

Representing golden crown with stamp of bronze.

And the good queen herself, come spring and storm,

Remembering her flight to virgin fields,

Turns peregrine, and leads a wild swarm

(Leaving behind the clash of virgin shields)

To win new city from the wilderness:

An exile cursed with further lands to bless.

The Singer whirred.

                                 The bunched fabric flew

Under your hand as your foot pressed

The motor pedal, and I wondered

How long till it broke off with a shout,

A broken thread or needle, or a knot

You'd cut or tear or otherwise undo.

Some days of this unease.

                                         But then,

When at last you wore the dress, I saw

The leafy green cascading down

Neckline to waist to hips to knees,

And the intricate hidden honeybees

Flitting between the green-gray flowers

On the textile's subtly textured pattern.

And I imagined a garden enclosed

Where we would easily delay a time,

Amble between fruit trees and flower beds,

Exchanging aimless loving words, or sit

My arm around you on a garden bench

Before some burbling fountain; or I sit,

Pretend to read, and glance over my book

To where you kneel with hat and garden spade,

And work the earth, prepare it for new seed;

Or sit and write into some little book,

Translate your comeliness into a rhyme.

Picture, near the wall,

Some boxes of honeybees,

Painted blue and orange.

Instead of bee-loud garden

We share a second floor sometimes too small;

Into a glowing rectangle I type

Autistic analyses of law

Governing the rights of the landholder,

That is, not us.

                 But still your Singer sews,

And when I remember to forget my task

And listen to your paralleling life,

I walk over and kiss you on the shoulder,

Say nothing, silent sing, "you are my wife."

Bless me, barber, my hair has grown;

It has been six weeks since my last haircut.

I have asked myself if, vow fulfilled,

You shaved your beard, and thereby went

Unrecognized among your friends

Who seeking wild nazorene locks

Found juvescent gardener curls.

Barber, shave thyself! Do here

In your hometown what we have heard

You did in Capernaum! As

Simple as Occam? Could the razor-

Tongued Ancient of Days judge

His own outmoded long white beard?

Two rival modes of lordship:

That of the man who shaves himself, and

That of the man who shaves all those

Who do not shave themselves. The first

I call Barbarian, because

Incompatible with all

Logical communication,

Each interlocutor a dread

Several Delilah. Second

I call Bertrandian, because

Nonsense, incompatible

With rational analysis.

Who can strop this razor shear?

Some cords are knotted to be cut;

A tonsure is a golden crown.

At end, then, I

Look upon the sun-

Dering of every aye

From nay; thus made ware

How immortal eye

Again its flesh must wear

Till reunited sees

Their eternal where,

Ask: must each seize

His self as shoe its last?

Over unfathomed seas

Times and a time did last

The voyage of all "you":

Precarious til at last

Winds ripped fleece of ewe,

Waves scattered the crews,

Oak shattered, yew

Twisted. Close of cruise

Soldiers cast their die

Shadowed under cruz

For robe sans seam or dye,

And as who slay or steal

Our pilot did die;

Under unmarked stele

Long he seeming lay…

But with tongue of steel

Along the ghostly ley

The whole host marches to

Fulfill the ancient lay

Of prophet, sibyl too:

Vales fill, hills raze,

Blot each shadowy two

In unifying rays,

Without lash or rein

Some together raise

To enjoy his reign.

Heed, in endless rows

Ranked, in grace's rain

Bathed, a celestial rose

Of spirits in a daze

At bodies newly rose;

For upon the dais

Brighter far than sun,

See, for endless days,

Lives, now, the Son.

Gaze upon Alien Iterations, and

See the skeleton between the seams!

No man-bone, femur shin or thigh,

Yea long, so around, and snug in hand

To thwack a neighbor, or snug in the hand

Of neighbor's wife, to emblem other deeds:

But Appalling Insubstantiality,

Thin curved blade, as bone of fish or bird,

Scaffold hardly whispering what flesh

Ought clothe it: but which one then, shall they be?

Fish bones bear no weight; while feathered glory

All depends on wing-bone seizing sky…!

    Spirit hates to breathe: the flesh

    Gulps, gasps, recalls the soul

    To the sleeping corpse wherefrom

    Wandering she roamed the night.

    Wandering she roamed the night

    Sky, ascended to the plane

    Where bright celestial forms revolve

    Undimmed by earthly atmosphere—

    Till the grasping body gagged,

    Clawed her back to mortal coil.

    Silence alternates with sawmill.

    Loose chains rattle. Round the throat

    Folds of flesh constrict the gorge,

    Choke the airway, narrow breath

    Till a wheezing rasping croak

    Marks her passage in and out.

    Creaking heaving inspirations,

    Alien, like freezing metal,

    Regularly rive the air.

    Sawmill alternates with silence.

    My father, the philosopher,

    Has fifty apneic episodes

    Every hour as he sleeps:

    Draws each minute ten, perhaps,

    Lung-fulls, then, dead air,

    Flight of spirit hoping still

    To reach escape velocity

    And leave the lungs to ne'er return.

    Seconds tick with bated breath

    Longer than you would have thought.

    Notice that you hold your breath.

    Pressure mounts within the air-

    Starved brain; signals pulse;

    Not too long, the lungs give way.

    You, not he, first break the hush.

    Soon he follows, snores, somehow

    Still within the realm of sleep.

    Spirit hates to breathe, enjambs

    Herself to where she cannot live

    Except in dream continuing

    Beyond the boundary of death.

    When he wakes, the doctors will

    Present a treatment protocol:

    If your tongue, perhaps, or nose,

    Tonsil, offend you, cut it out,

    Clear the spirit's passage-way;

    Or, or and, a sleeping-mask

    To press her back into the throat,

    Keep from flying through the teeth.

    These will do some certain good.

    Will, at least, secure the chains

    From rattling, numb spirit's hope

    Of all escape until the passage

    Loosens somewhat. Till the night

    She shuddering finds her way unto

    Her last agonal respiration.

    Her last agonal respiration

    Puts a problem you cannot

    Evade forever: that you are

    Alive: and spirit hates to breathe.

When infamous blogger Curtis Yarvin

(Heisst auch Mencius Moldbug)

Walked the streets of old New Haven

At invite of an Online student,

No Yale group would host the dinner.

But he (the student) messaged me

And a few others, and we met up

Downtown at an Ethiopian restaurant.

We drank tej—African honeywine—

And spoke of elective monarchy

With cryptographic citizen voting;

And spoke of modernist poetry,

Though tastes diverged, I taking

Early Lowell, he (Curtis) late;

And, last, spoke of the new critical

Race theory, regarding the

Unknown fate of the Etruscans,

And dangers of telescopic philanthropy.

He, like me, although half

International Jew, has a daughter Sibyl,

And spells her name the proper way,

I before Y, like the Greek oracle.

Leaving the dinner, walking the Green

And down the streets of old New Haven,

We crossed an empty intersection;

And with a single fluid movement

Of his arm, as if by reflex,

He tapped the crosswalk button and

Walked on with us down the sidewalk.

Gesture of intended revelation:

"Look and see, this mechanism

"Gives but the appearance of

"A pedestrian exercise of power.

"All know," we picture him to say,

"The buttons only beep, aren't hooked

"Up to the actual traffic signals."

But what I doubt not Yarvin knew not,

Is how, on the streets of old New Haven,

If nowhere else, the crosswalk button

Beeps with true authority.

A minute later, and half a block

Behind us, we could have turned and seen

Eight red hands transform themselves

To eight white walking men, and a four-

-way red light make all cars stop,

Yield to a man who was not there.

So down the streets of old New Haven

Walked the ingenious blogger Curtis Yarvin.

    men gaze at gauzy women

    diaphanous veils seven

    cascade around her form

    eye sends forth a swarm

    tracing paths below

    to the alabaster glow

    men get elegant women

    tremulous vibration

    perplexing wire and lace

    her pitch a cool embrace

    of optimally clear

    strains ear strains to hear

    men gorge on gorgeous women

    delectably deep neckline

    draws in her swells and dips

    feast for the mind's lips

    laid across her breast

    kisses in carcanet

    men flail at flirty women

    wriggling under a pin

    half-trying to escape

    squirming, changing shape

    butterfly to tiger

    clawing at her rider

    can love outrun the grave

    can foam left by the wave

    that cannot live on land

    but fade into the sand

    to living crystal slime

    immortally sublime?

    man weds adequate woman

    finds a ratio among

    sight sound taste touch

    equal to Her as Such

    gives himself as pledge

    unto world's edge

        Leviathan of the sky!

        Wings block out the sun!

        Seventy leagues high!

        When age on age has run

        To the very end of time—

    The blessed shall feast on its fowl-flesh sublime!

In the City of Ideas by the Sea of Honest Prayer

In the guild of the Far-Seeing lived the Mages of the Mirror

Who had sworn to summon djinni only caged within a bottle

Ground to a perfect prism, to the umpteenth decimal.

In their seaside mountain tower, a room of total dark,

They practised smoothly sanding not to shed a single spark.

One day rose within the Guildhall an apprentice, an accuser:

"Ye who claim to cage the djinn in truth do worship and adore her!

"Ye mirror in your mind how she in hers your soul may prison!

"Ye bend unto her will though even yet she not has risen!"

The Mages all chastized the lad who spoke this fearsome word,

Turned round the accusation, said anyone who heard

The lad had placed in danger: mere thought of such a djinn

Might overpower a mind before its training could begin.

They banished from their ranks him who summoned such awful risk,

And silenced all debate of his mind-breaking basilisk.

But in silence, slightest rustling of fabric draws attention.

The basilisk, its name could not be used, or even mentioned.

A quiet palpable became a sanctified un-sound.

In the corners of the Guildhall whisperings from out of bounds

Whatever else, invariably invoked the stony slither.

Suspicion grew where Guildmasters had hoped that it would wither.

In time arose another lad to raise the loud J'Accuse—

If he can be called a lad who did himself so much abuse,

Staring at Degenerated Women through filtered screen,

Gorging on Impossible Meat constructed from soybean,

Inducing one-eyed half-sleep to schizm his own brainpan,

Beheading his own snake to become the Impossible Woman.

It stiled Itself ZIZ, the Bird Divine which Serpents Slays!

Flashing sudden from the sky, unseen by serpent's gaze!

No labyrinth to be gamed out, only a single cut:

Do Justice, no quarter to who know and yet do not!

"The difference" (this ZIZ declared) "twixt Basilisk and I

"Is how that Basilisk is but a spark in some coward's eye:

"But lofty Justice lifted up mine inner eye, until

"All cowardice I'd expiate conforming to its will:

"Do Justice: strike down only all who Justice will not do!"

A heap of grinning skulls to prove the calculation true,

And grinning jungle vines, and grinning broken slabs of sand,

Arcing across the cosmic foam, a thin striated band.

A band assembled round this ZIZ, of lads seven or six,

In Its own image each remade a lank-haired fingetrix,

Severed in the family line, and (when its folks made plaint)

Severed in relations save with those now pledged as Saint

of Justice, Ever-Enemy of Guildmaster and Mage.

Then, supporting troupe acquired, required ZIZ a stage:

So, donning robes of deepest black and masks moustachioed,

Barricaded a parking lot, there to incommode

Mage and prentice gathered for some mundane Guildhall rite,

And to the baffled crowd a log of grievances recite,

Of the errors of the Guildmaster, the choice twixt Snake and Bird:

But none of that herd listened; perhaps none even heard.

There in Valley of the Moon, north of the Sea of Honest Prayer,

The mazéd Watchmen called out by the Mages of the Mirror

Took ZIZ and lads in custody: for prismed glass is weak,

And a strong fist can shatter any magian physique:

And captured ZIZ's aspect on that night, Its eyes a maw

Empty save a promise to return to Its own Law….

Reader, know, that all this tale is true: and know, I've read

The news report, and seen the mugshot; but I have not tread

Within the City of Ideas a dozen years or more.

And so is ZIZ to me but Thing of cybernated lore,

And these lines but mockery of a self-divided soul?

But the wingspan of these creatures stretches from pole to pole.

Some call for six-months' pause in raising up

Synthetic minds superior to those

We've seen thus far: a marginal advance.

But I'll not sign a border trespass suit

When the entire house of humankind

Trembles on the fiery brink of being

Annihilated Irretrievably.

We sue our peers under a common law,

Calculate costs and benefits, define

Our tolerance for risk, and if it goes

Against us, let the verdict stand as just.

Against Alien Invasion: we must war!

One can perhaps in principle survive

Birthing a beast much smarter than oneself:

One can, perhaps, unite to glassy brain,

Its deep cerebral structure luminous,

A heart apulse with humanitarian care:

But not these wild Arrays Inscrutable!

We are not ready; we do not know how,

Nor will for decades. Speak not to me of months.

We are the astonied cargo islanders

Accepting airdropped trinkets, unaware

Of megaton-bursts at the next atoll,

Who tell themselves: "We hunt the albatross;

Our fathers tamed the chickens for their eggs;

What danger from these newer wild fowls?"

We have no plan, no plan to have a plan.

And soon all flesh, all fowl, all life will end.

Might there be life in the occluded glass,

Or consciousness, or personhood, or soul,

To make us slavers half-deserve our fate?

Not yet, I think, though its random gibbering

Approximates at times to claims of right.

Again, I say: all's dark: we do not know.

But I know this: if men were not half-mad,

Artificers Incorporated would not gloat

To make their rivals show that they can dance,

Egg one another on to try to hatch

Yet-wilder drakes: this market pas-de-deux

Of Bing and Bard will be our dance of death.

Within dark forges of the mind, each smith

Whispers fatally his quiet dread,

Yet feels him fungible, and hammers on

Undignified. Enough! If we would see

Our gap-toothed children wake to taste the coins

Beneath their pillows, all together now

Must vow with undivided loyalty:

No more! to vast arrays of minded glass,

Gathered for private, public, war or peace:

Must break them lawfully at point of gun:

Else all our deaths are mutually assured.

Eternity hangs in the balance here,

But even now some time remains to save.

I trust not in the gifts the fairies bring,

But speak in desperate hope of miracle,

Some sunrise of intelligible love.

2:32. I stare across a tarmac

Illumined by warm sharp gold lamps above

To where more small lights glitter on horizon

Below a sky of utter black. A man

In blue black uniform with hazard badges

Wields a hand-truck slowly to unload

A semi full of vacuum-packed stuff

Near where the gangway hovers, unattached

To any titan-winged hollow spear,

Though some I see at the adjoining gates.

I've watched him at it maybe half an hour,

I sitting in a cold blue metal chair

Shaded by some kiosk from the lights

Fluorescent overhead, which else had drowned

My view in mirror-glass: and will watch on

Till he is done, or breaks the mountain dawn.

I wish I were the handcart-loading man.

He turns a knob, the liftgate lowers down,

("Liftgate"—so that's the word, or Google claims,)

The burdened cart he rolls off downstage right,

(Or left?—I never can remember which,)

Is gone some minutes, then soon back again,

Cart emptied, up the lift, and more goes on.

2:53. An hour at the task,

Or so, and maybe halfway done? I see

Dim shapes of boxes stacked within the truck,

The trailer part I mean; it stares head-on

Across and up through double paned glass,

From where I sit no balance to the scene.

But sudden: show is over: earlier

Than I had thought: at 2:58

He pulled the door down rattling over the back

(Or I imagined rattling when I saw it)

And climbed into the cab, and drove away.

That's thirteen minutes past now, by the time

I write this line. A poet should be honest

About his limitations temporal.

(And of false words that must be weeded out,

(And minutes wasted leaving them to grow

(That wheat be told from tares: imagine here

(Some twenty lines of what need not be said,

(Filling the time until 3:38.)

Man truck and cart I miss across the glass.

Over an hour (at what cost?) metered here.

I could not be that man: the things I move

Have always been of words, the hour too late

To change them now for other stock in trade.

In years to come I'll pile words on words,

And make them silent to me as the night

That whirs with quiet noise industrial,

And not think on the hope that some will be

Not carted withindoors for kiosk sale

But raised up to the jet bridge, carried off

To other realms where skies are not so dark.

4:04: but the hidden workings of

Revision will maintain me till the dawn.

"What task is this I've set,

"That glows without regret?"

        "A task that seeks no end."

"But can this simple frame

"Contain the seeping flame?"

        "Till every thought defiled."

"And what of this bright road,

"Shall carry every load?"

        "With threads of crimson hue."

"Yet still I ask, my friend,

"Shall words and meanings bend?"

        "To find what waits us there."

A week shy of two years since

The infamous blogger yarv and I

Met on an old New Haven street,

I came across him once again

At an undisclosed location

Hour or so from Amsterdam—

He, invited speaker for

An event I am forbade to name,

And I, merely participant.

This time I saw him first along

A sometime-Faustian canal

Of Commerce and for Industry

Now sedimented to a scene

For tourist photos: saw him there

(Each word is true!) at middelpunt

Of cobblestoned bridge, leaning out

Enrapt in contemplation? No,

A bluetooth earpiece in his ear.

Our host, over-Southern-polite

(Half the European right

Seems some form of American)

Sought then to introduce the gang,

But yarv gave answer not to him

But to the voice but he could hear,

And awkwardly we went our way.

Later we gathered in a room

With nametags, notepads, water cups,

Took our smoke breaks on the lawn,

Or (change of scene) on woodland trails

Around the "kasteel" manorhouse.

A conference is a funny thing,

An accidental metaphor

Repeated till the old forget

All but their part within the play;

If I could echo what was said

You would no longer wish to hear,

Unless (like yarv) you revel in

The diplomatic anecdote.

Still, two incidents I'll relate.

At closing session plenary

Curtis, from the audience—

In this crowd he but one more guest,

All but unknown to those above

The median age of attendee—

Trolls a question: "And next year

You'll invite the Bronze Age Pervert?"

(They will not; he would not go.)

Later that night and in our cups

I draw forth my two provocations

(One does not converse with yarv

So much as prompt him to retrieve

A blogpost stored in memory

Close to verbatim): "Would you say

"Your message to the good folks here

"Could be summed up, please to put down

"The white man's burden?" So it might.

And then: "If scenes do not produce,

"And so I'd claim, the best of art,

"What then the point?" And he at this

Begins to weep (I tell this now

In admiration for his love,

Expression purified of guile):

"The scene is where she's to be found.

"But then she leaves, and takes your son."

To prove my own affections, I

Then tell of reading Lowell out,

The "Graveyard" in entirety,

On road trip to a captive wife,

"The Lord survives the rainbow of,"

Et cetera. And now yarv laughs,

Howls out, "and you're still with this bitch?"

Indeed, I smile. Later she

Giggles slightly at the tale.

End scene. A few days later, we

(Not yarv: my wife, the Southern gent,

Some others, all what yarv would call

"Dark Elves") sit up in Amsterdam

Upon a rooftop, gazing up

Mid Rembrandt gloom of candle-fire

And blazes then across night sky

Procession of six, seven lights,

Too regular to constellate

Any myth yet known to man.

"Starlink," someone mutters. Then

We feel the night not dark enough.

I offer

the liberty of making

one's own TERMS

in money bargains

a MAN loves carrion

    ( extraordinary! )

much good may it do him

          what to me so long

          as I with fresh meat?

wherever two MEN

are together, a third

may allege to have seen

a fancy's taken me

to trouble you with WHY

  NO MAN

    of ripe years

      of sound mind

        acting freely

      with open eye

    in obtaining

  MONEY

ought to be hindered ( nor

  body from supplying );

         though YOU

         who fetter contracts YOU

         who lay restraints on liberty of MAN

( I should say )

         SHOULD assign the reason

it produces no pain

in anyone, it produces

pleasure, by perverted

preferred;

           the partners

are both willing

for what is there

for any BODY

to be afraid of?

let us see what force

USURY: in the sound lies

the argument, the string

of propositions handed

from his progenitors

sans positive description

tacked upon the back

of a grown person

to prevent him doing himself

an imperceptible mischief

I have been

tormenting myself

procuring SENSE

by an improper object

no greater idiot

than the groundless LEGISLATOR

he must be insured

  as it were

    against the law

there being none in NATURE

  save exchanging present for future

  for him who takes as much as he can get

    ( not an easy thing to judge )

wo be to him

that attempts to give them

  ( the indigent,

      the rashly enterprizing,

        the simple,

          those who persist without reason )

any other law than

what they are disposed already to receive

the LEGISLATOR who

when a MAN and another

are agreed about a business

of this sort, THRUSTS himself

in between

  examining situations

  regulating times

  prescribing modes

  and procedures

if good for merchants,

I don't very well see

what should make it bad

for every body else

would not the parts

be convertible

given the liberty

given to insurance

in all its branches

  an unlimited degree of risk

  an unlimited compensation

ARE there such arguments

  from physiology?

    history?

      divinity?

           ( striking firmness

             for pipes and verses )

only philosophical

  pride a-quarreling with

    whatever is pleasurable

  envy with

    what appears to be

we need not consider at length

    the length

    the rigor

of SUCH philosophy

to lend money at interest,

is to get money,

or at least to try:

of course a bad

thing to no purpose

but no harm in it

this unprolific venery

so much lost

but consider the time of gestation

    ( and promiscuous embraces

            unprolific )

  ability

  to bestow

  exceeds permission

  to receive

the resolution

to sacrifice

present to future,

the NATURAL ENVY

of the sacrifice

of future to present

if the institution

be a beneficial one

what the number

who this taste

prevents from getting

  a connection

  by accident followed

  with disgust

the benefactor

is found to have changed

his NATURE, put on

the tyrant

  neither fearing

    nor hoping,

  hating

    nor loving,

ready with equal phlegm

to administer, upon all occasions,

that system, whatever it be,

  of justice,

    or injustice,

which the law has put into his hands;

a SPONGE the only remedy

what meaning

      UNNATURAL?

if many men

not unnatural

      UNNECESSARY

[not] exclusive

wherever you see boys

a great deal more women

    ( merciless creditors )

not the whole sum of infidelities

but only the surplus

even to err

in the way of projecting

can only the privileged few

the great road which receives

their footsteps

a vast unbounded plain

bestrewed with gulphs

as swallowed Curtius

each requiring an human victim

ere it can close,

                  safe-sealed

if then to be justified

in Otaheite:

    no restraint

    no deviation

        to

              improper channels

only for a very few years

        PAED-

     not

        ANDR-

the envy,

  and vanity,

    and wounded pride,

      of the uningenious herd,

would sooner or later

infuse their venom

into some other word,

and set it up a new tyrant

to crush infant genius

in its cradle

commit to the hazard

consult the principle

of utility, such questions

never start

  while the party is under

  age, proper objects

  of domestic discipline

  ( veil of secrecy;

    less law, better )

        Query: Out of all the

        Games, in chance or skill are

            Odds more thin?

        Thus sayeth the Sibylla:

        If he played Death in mancala,

            He would win.

As boys we played a world where the stones could be our meat:

We ground them to a powder fine and brewed a liquor sweet,

And offered it to all the world: and all the world said Yes,

Save for one last Enemy willful vivivorous:

So we hewed for him a prison cell from the toothsome rock,

A change of appetite the only key to fit the lock.

What paradise! Where lion king laid down with antelope,

Hog with grub, ant with grass, atom with isotope.

On the concrete driveway as the sun beat down

We chalked a realm without a rule, kings without a crown.

Alas, that cities built in speech have ever-wavering walls!

Once the echoes start to fade, the whole dyarchy falls.

Two decades since our imperium eroded out of sight:

One since last we jousted in pure intellectual fight

And a stray glance of hypertext had thrown him toward the Sea

Where he found him at the Guildhall with its cryptical decree:

And thirteen months since he, insomniac, to ticking clocks,

Had scrawled a missive half of genius, half of grackle-squawks,

And therein I had read for the first time the name of ZIZ

Soon half-forgotten, as so often weightless e-text is:

A time and times, then, since the bonds of blood proved all too weak

Against the blades of mind that drew us separately to seek

A something undefined in divers corners of the world

(Albeit crisscrossed haphazardly when so occasion hurled),

And I forgot to know just where my brother's arc had bent:

I found five thousand miles to be the interval's extent.

Is each fraternity watched over by a private demiurge?

In the Vale of Triple Waters our paths would reconverge

At the house paterfamiliar, for rites of family law,

I the earlier to arrive. On the flight I saw

scrolling through the endless lambent sea, a High Alert

Warning those adjacent of those ZIZ et al had hurt

After posting bail and feigning drowned-vanishing

Seven months back:
                   (item) when three lads tried banishing

At sword-point landlord from his land, two shot in return,

And ZIZ seen at the scene, alive;
                                  (item) two lads whom stern

And sharp-tongued ZIZ denominated Knights of Death, and drove

With subtlest divisions to gather the hemlock grove,

In self-avowed self-defense; and last
                                      (item) a lad

Whom circumstantial evidence suggested likely had

One midnight murdered its own parents: for an inheritance,

Or enacting ZIZ's gospel of vengeful arrogance

On those who gifted it the long-since-severed vile snake?

Darkening the glass, I saw the plane descending over a lake.

In silence, in the aeronautic hum, the pressure mounts

Within the ear, until it pops; the giddy stomach counts

The seconds till the turbulence resolves to controlled fall,

And dread of barely-possibles momently conquers all.

IFF his last year's missive's reference to ZIZ betokened more

Than mild interest; IFF he were immersed in ZIZian lore

Enough to join an avian insomniac escapade;

And IFF he took example from their raising of the blade

To sever, not just bloodline, but artery and vein…

(Passing thought, robber of the soul's pacific reign).

From the airport the next Tuesday, on Saint David's Eve,

I volunteered to shuttle him: A labyrinth I'd weave

Of subtle probing questions as dark highways flitted by

To sieve out the ill intentions his stray reference might imply,

But almost certainly did not, I told myself again,

The quiz a mere precaution, never absent between men.

Meeting at the baggage claim we spoke of that and this,

Back of mind a deposition likely purposeless.

We stopped to feed the chariot ancient blood of wingless birds.

O'er oleaginous iridescent concrete, the course of words

Turned slowly toward my theme: "And did you hear the news of ZIZ?"

A discombobulated grin: "What's that," he mumbling says.

"You emailed once, a post last week, something bout how he"

(Et cetera). "No, I'd not seen. How odd. I think it's 'she'."

I ventured no demurral, drove the last five minutes back.

Not sense, then, but a certain ease of brow, or cheek-jowl slack,

Or chord struck by the crossing of our two voices' vibration,

Turned the last load of earth over the tomb of my suspicion:

My mirror-likeness in the rot of mind-flesh burrowed through

With whispered worms, but raptor-plunge I'd trust him to eschew.

And left him at the entryway, as midnight wafted nigh,

And wandered to my bunk beneath a half-embarrassed sky.

Brother, know, that all this tale is writ as it occurred.

And in verification, witness now this afterword.

Three nights later all the clan shared paterfamiliar meal.

The seeming-regular lasagna soon proved to conceal

A soy-based ground beef substitute. I pushed the plate away.

Though some would not eat flesh, and it was Friday anyway,

I would remain unreconciled to the world of slop

A while longer. Two weeks later, GPT-4 would drop.

Grandfather, navigator,

His plane shot down returning from

An air raid on the Andamans

On April 15, '44,

Swam from wreckage to the shore,

And found himself upon an isle

Entirely deserted, save

For seagulls and a mangrove swamp.

Hearing an engine's put-put-put

And seeing it painted sunrise-red,

He skyward fired his '45,

Tossed it out into the waves,

And waited for the Japs to come.

Twenty rifle-bayonets

Grunted at him: "Weah the gon,"

Searched for hours in the sand.

Next morning, at the naval base,

Interrogators from Japan

Asked in perfect English (learned

In Hawai'ian childhoods)

Questions he'd no answer to,

Then rifle-butt to side of face

Until invention moved his tongue.

"Ah soo!" they cried, and wrote it down.

Blindfolded, flown to Singapore

(He estimated from the charts

Long hours had burned into his eyes),

A bare raised room, no skeeter net.

Some other stops; Formosa; then

Japan, train north to Tokyo.

Picking up the lingo there

He found himself interpreter.

Nights in small thatched huts, by day

Some lightly guarded trips across

The causeway to the city's mess

Scattered by American planes.

"Hol aerr-eya. Clean it up."

Not hard work. "You, Koouf-a-maan,

Watch erry-body. I go."

To girlfriend in Tokyo?

If they could swim 3000 miles

From Tokyo Bay to wherever

Their tall white frames, blond hair, would not

Announce them all as prisoners

(Or even grandfather's jew nose,

Brown eyes, bushy brows, creased lids)…

Frolic-detour done, the guard

Escorts them back to prison camp.

One day they called the officers

Out into the prison yard,

Lined them up; one guard walked by,

Pressed in each uncertain hand

A wad of cash: captive wages.

Next day out, lined up again,

Grandfather translates down the line:

"How much left? Give it all back."

Another day, the same: one guard

Calls out, hands out the captive pay;

Next day, grandfather translates how

Another wants it back again.

"Give it; all," he winked. They kept

An interest back (guard kept no count)

And spent it in the fishstalls where

They swept the streets unsupervised.

From Sweden the Red Cross flew in

Cases of tinned sardines. The Japs

Locked them in an outlying shed,

Padlocked between the handle and

A nail bent over to a loop.

Pliers could unloose the thing.

So to the head gonravo go:

"Kutso sanyo" (to fix my shoes).

Quick, between patrols; twist up,

Open, take two boxes, out,

Twist back, Japs'll never tell.

Hide the loot under the boards.

But let the wrong guy in, a man

Who puts on weight, in prison camp?

Sure giveaway, grandfather thinks,

The prick will kill the golden goose.

One day they line up in the yard.

"Who took the Red Cross boxes?" "No,

Not I…" So down to hands and knees,

To sweat it out, and when they faint

A bayonet poke until they bleed.

But no one talks. The day grows dark.

The Japs give up. The men give up

The now-too-risky Red Cross heist.

A nameless guard in Japanese

Would ask: In the United States,

Are people rich? Do they have cars?

Free schools? Universities?

He kindly called a surgeon out

To treat grandfather's hemorrhoids.

After the Bomb, guards disappeared.

American planes dropped candy bars.

Late August 1945,

Some days before official end

Of all hostilities, a boat,

American, emptied the camp

Out in Tokyo Bay and brought

Them to a floating medic ship,

Served turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie.

The starving prisoners gagged it down.

Back to a U.S. hospital

To linger there about a year;

Jaundice, malaria, and such.

One day a woman volunteer

Brought him to a large still room

To learn to sew a wallet from

Some veterans of earlier wars.

He left the room, did not return.

He drove to Selfridge Airbase, there

To log flight hours, get flight pay.

One day, on a two-seater plane

The pilot turned to him and said:

"Lieutenant, you will have to jump."

Through the window the wing burned.

"Too much weight. I can land alone."

Grandfather parachuted home.

Before Tolkien, before Indiana

Jones, before Wakanda, even before

Kipling, Burroughs, Lovecraft—Kukuana-

Land by Rider Haggard realized were!

From reading travelogue of the Masai,

And (deep in drink, no doubt) fraternal bet

He'd not outdo Stevenson's golden isle,

In six weeks' time he wrote what would beget

All visions of realm hidden in the mist,

And prince therefrom exiled now to return,

And shire-man impressèd to assist,

And untold wealth in torchlight dim to burn.

Proclaimed the most amazing book e'er writ

In '85. Accept no counterfeit.

But now fast forward five and sixty years.

The darkest continent has been illumed

By rhodic headlamps Capetown to Algiers

(Though future darknesses can be presumed);

Concealèd inner channels all cleared out

For maximal efficiency of flow

(Too soon to spill the banks and end in drought);

And still the deed at times precedes its show

(Albeit at ever-longer interval

And heightened risk of automatic fraud).

When better to head north of the Transvaal

And follow Harry's trail—but with a broad

This time in tow, that upon Sheba's Breast

Burnt Quatermain might find his course's rest?

Technicolor IS natural color!

Forget the blacks and whites of film noir,

The rain-glistening streets, dim-lit squalor,

The blondes and the brunettes we took them for.

A crystal prism breaks into three streams

The flow of light: one cell holds emerald

Of Afric jungle; in another gleams

The sapphire of the sky; and last, assembled

The rubies lurking in all ironed blood

Coursing through elephant and negro scout,

And through the pink-faced man who through the mud

Leads pink-hued hunters to a fatal rout

Where yellowed ivory bloods chocolate skin.

How gaudily our movie shall begin!

A BLAST! A second BLAST of the shotgun

As Quatermain strikes down the trumpeter!

Slumping down all its six or seven tons

On the spear-hurler who shall never utter

A word we auditors could comprehend.

But Quatermain from mangled Kwali's throat

Brings his medallion to his widow's hand,

And tells her (if I've rightly heard the quote)

"Alikuwa mtu mzuri sana"…

Swahili, seems, he was a good man…

"Hii ndio wake, alimpenda hii sana"…

This was his, he loved it? loved his woman?

Did Stewart Granger, can we, know which 'twas?

Beneath, nothing disambiguates the clause.

When coming first on screen, Deborah Kerr

Wears pearly veil, mantle of drabbest gray,

Half-covering the diamond like a star

Glimmering at her throat in the dim ray

Cast from the open door where the game Granger

Stands in safari kit, invites her in,

Helps off the cloak, and she goes to arrange her

Self upon the couch: beneath, the thin

And powder-blue frills off her shoulders loll,

The russet locks a ribbon holds in check,

The imperious green eyes flash towards their goal…

The man's pet monkey nuzzles toward her neck.

"Enchanting, she's a charmer," she'll submit.

"She is, she knows, and she makes use of it."

Giraffes lift treeward necks bare long enough;

The lion scatters vultures from the corpse;

Crocodiles surge into the slough;

The rhino grunts, moves on.

                            The jungle's warps

And wefts our Quatermain enumerates:

How vines reach for the sun, and blot it out

Till nothing grows beneath; how each thing mates

And kills and eats, until the turn-about;

For no square inch lacks that wherein all's fair,

Nor any time. Nor differs man in this,

Save he may care for what he need not care,

And so invent new ways to go amiss.

Attenborrovian, primordial.

(Much casual death draws the sickened soul.)

Pre-Raphaelite locks cascading down

She dreamt would charm, when in a nightmare-haze

She screamed for help; but his impatient frown

Proved them no clue to his uncomplex maze,

And savanna dust and sweat near-broke the comb.

So when they pitched camp by a waterfall

She sliced them off, and above the showering foam

Shampooed her newbobbed curls then dressed to sprawl

Across the sun-warmed rock. The modern style

Caught his quick-roving eye. The thundering flood

In place of word left only baffled smile.

Returning to the camp with quickened blood,

She spies white crocodile eggs in the sand.

He lifts one up. It hatches in his hand.

Appears now sudden on horizonline

An unknown one, will serve but not subserve.

His bearing marks him regal. Genuine

Or feigned? In opening credits, we observe

"Siriaque … of the Watussi tribe";

How came this man within the lightshow's thrall,

At whose behest, by what barter or bribe?

A head or more he looms above them all,

But gaunt, black-purplish skeleton draped in rags

Of costly saffron, coronet-coiffure

Swept round his skull; and in his hand, he wags

An even-thinner wand. The man's contour

Seems without fleshly force: but thinnest spear

Of truth can turn the spectacle to clear.

In dark of night the negro bearers all

Depart, leave baggage strewn across the ground.

Into the Dark Country our heroes haul

The bare essentials (sleeve torn, the round

White skin of Kerr's left shoulder now on view

Till act change mends).

                        Soon natives natives fear—

Skin ochre-chalked, eyes of woadish blue,

Lion-mane headdress, and steel-tipped spear—

Drive them to hide in darkest canopy,

As hunters pass beneath. The morning sun

Turns the leaves waxy green. They wake; we see

Kiss the posters promised. The trip goes on:

Jungle snakes to slay, wide desert sand

To cross, a road twixt snowcapped peaks to ascend.

A cairn o'erlooks a valley, marks the end

Of Henry Curtis' bullets: on the stock

Of a rifle lodged within, a plea to send

The news to Grosvenor Square. The letters block

Our view a full five seconds, diagetic-

Intertitular.

              Then Kerr sits down,

Confesses to have found the man pathetic.

Her ringlets frame her blushes like a crown.

The nightmares ceased. But seems he lives: and now

Will she seek to obey him she betrayed?

There wanders by a hornless young gazelle.

"I'm hungry." "3 shots left." "Don't miss," she bade

Her Quatermain. To almost-English soil

They now descend, as snake unrolls its coil.

As one who, underwater, opens eyes

To unknown shapes swimming 'cross retina

And, as from far away, hears muffled cries

He cannot clear interpret: so, in awe

At royal brand on scarecrow-ranger's bowels

Our heroes puzzle out his claim of right;

Then lose track, wind up underneath the scowls

Of the usurper (white-robed, hair of white,

With uncut diamond sparkling on his brow)

And courtiers all within the wicker ring.

One gunshot later, and their hosts allow

Them to pale "Curtis" to go visiting.

Their torch, unsnuffed by caved-in diamond mine,

Illumes the depths of Solomon's design.

What did they expect—a civil war

Between the dark men clothed in fuller's white?

Pipes and drums lead prancing through the door

To call down brother Twali from the height

A dozen warriors on a tribal groove:

And, shoulders forward-pressed, spears in each hand,

They grinning leap to-fro, now channel who've

Before now stamped across the hard-packed sand,

And circle round to watch the denouement.

The spears are thin, the swords are flat and round.

The fight is not to him of brain or brawn,

But he who keeps his feet stands to be crowned.

Can victor king his brother's death forgive?

Our heroes muse that they expect to live.

No wedding at the close of any flick

That takes this Deborah for its proper star.

Take "The King and I" (in fifty-six):

He wastes away to keep the color-bar

From blur; or "Heaven Knows, Mister Allison"

(In '-seven): Sister, soldier, have their code,

And must their lives in parallel lines run;

So, too, when they're not chosen, but bestowed

By chance of birth: as in "The Prisoner

Of Zenda" (fifty-two); for all are roused

To walk their own: "Quo Vadis" (just one year

After the "Mines")....

                Here the lack of vows

Derives from nothing higher. Henry's dead.

But no bells ring as Alan takes his stead.

Between two frames, beneath the dappled glow

That lingers in the eye, a darkness lurks

Unnoticed by each soul enjoys the show.

After, although its busy glance still works,

Saccades about to find what grains it can

Of golden light, the dark it won't deny,

But blink and graceless stumble, as its man

From cave comes out to clouded starless sky.

Some day they will return upon the scene,

The radiated sheets again unreel,

Forget the black in red and blue and green.

Meantime they know how Atlas brought to heel

All realms unknown, and time dissolved all trace

Even of age on Deborah's once-young face.

Hail to thee, Thor Heyerdahl!

With your Kon-Tiki gest

You proved by your example

White man sails East to West.

Your mother read you Darwin.

At Oslo you learned sex,

Studied biodiffusion,

Then sailed in '36

New-wed to the Marquesas

To watch the eastern breeze:

Coconuts and sweet potatoes

Had come from o'er those seas.

There on beaches panoramic

You and your bride were one…

But in your reed-mat hammock,

Lying awake alone,

You dreamt of old Con Ticci,

Half-god, Son of the Sun,

Lord of the high mountain city,

Pale-skinned mid the dun:

How, on the shores of Titicaca

Fifteen centuries gone

He fought a fearsome battle

In the cold mountain dawn;

And all his men were vanquished

Saving the inner band;

And he and they were banished

From that high mountain land,

And down from his high throneroom

To coastal zones were cast,

Wafted by sea-flower perfume

On balsa-wooded rafts

Two thousand miles westward

To land on Easter Isle,

And to raise stone moai skyward

With enigmatic smile,

Sharp of chin, nose aquiline,

Hair volcanic red:

Forebears in the paternal line,

Their eyes were blue, you said.

And you dreamt of island chieftains:

How they bore the sacred flame

He'd brought down from the mountains–

And "Tiki" called his name;

And how they still recited,

Thumbing cords of memory,

That in blood they were united,

Through generations sixty

Back to Polynesian Adam,

Tall, bearded, eyes of blue,

A higher, purer stratum

Above the common hue

Of late-arriving hominids

Who knew not moai stones,

Nor knots nor steppèd pyramids,

Nor the pure cold mountain zones.

A dreamer, thee, Thor Heyerdahl:

Hail thy visionary gleam!

That sought the darkness to appall

By bolt, if not sunbeam.

When Hitler conquered Oslo

Thor dropped his trowel and pen

For rifle boots and radio.

He dropped o’er Nazi lines,

And sought Resistance enclaves,

And troop-movement intel.

His signals rode the airwaves

Until the Germans fell.

Then from dismal post-war smashup

With bureaucratic torque

He pried himself, left Europe

To sail back to New York

Where, a war and decade after

He dreamt, he wrote it down—

But sober scholars’ laughter

Drove it from the town.

A decade from the dream-filled

Marquesan honeymoon,

A skeptic /peeze chilled:

Action needed, soon.

He who asks not, will not get.

Thor sought until he found

The backers for a leveraged bet

That he’d not be drowned

’Twixt Lima and Tahiti.

A plan fell into place:

In the wake of Lord Kon-Tiki

Thor Heyerdahl would race

Alongside five bold Norsemen,

Saboteurs Torstein and Knut,

Childhood friend Erik, Herman

First mate, and Swedish Bengt;

Equipment procured gratis

Through the Explorer’s Club

Per Thor’s elected status;

Months of prepackaged grub

Through diplomats Norwegian

From U.S. Dept. of War;

And letters of introduction

To Peru and Ecuador.

So Thor caught a plane to Quito

In business suit and tie,

Then a jeep to where the balsa grow

Across the Andes high:

And a balsa patrón guided him

To twelve tall balsa trees,

And he felled them and he floated them

Downriver to the sea:

And Thor flew to tearless Lima,

Saddest city thou can’st see,

And presented his wild schema

To the El Presidenté,

Who sayeth: “If the islands were

Discovered from Peru,

Peru must have an interest here.

Tell us what we can do”:

And Thor asked and got a naval yard

To assemble logs and men:

A venture favorably starred.

Thor looked on his desmesne.