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Too much obsessed with nuts and bolts
My father failed to see the whole.
My mother hated locks and bolts.
Although I have myopic eyes
A landcape makes my spirit soar.
I’m not much good with nuts and bolts.
My mother trusted anyone.
My father fancied she was rich,
The door swung and fate slammed the bolt.
She taught me a prophetic song
“A gypsy stands at the castle gate”
He beckons and the woman bolts.
We left one January day
Clutching at straws of clothes and toys,
Creaking hinges, banging bolts.
The legal system sent me back,
Dad courted me with sweets and toys
But secretly I studied bolts.
"If Bourbaki did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." — Language Hat
If there had never burbled a Bourbaki,
still by logic's rigor, math's design,
there would have had to be invented, fake Bourbaki.
Among the garden's frozen poses jockey
flutters of viridian, and shine
tender theorems redolent of Bourbaki.
By order of the King, official hockey
takes three teams, five pucks, and goalies nine.
This never would have happened under Bourbaki.
I call you on a tiny walkie-talkie.
Your absence and its silence now combine
to prove more trines than dreamt of by Bourbaki.
Father, Son and Spirit Holy. Some things need to be in three.
It was, is now, and is to be. Some things need to be in three.
The earth and sky and teeming sea. Some things need to be in three.
We do not want just Moe and Curly. Some things need to be in three.
Just Kukla, Fran; Athos, Porthos; Winkin, Blinkin; Bach and Brahms;
Simon, Alvin; Huey, Louie. Some things need to be in three.
With two, a delta's but a vee. Some things need to be in three.
We need hypotenuse to square. With only axes X and Y
without a Z, where would we be? Some things need to be in three.
I fight for thesis and you for antithesis, fight equally.
We struggle on as enemies. Some things need to be in three.
Life needs synthesis. Agree? Some things need to be in three.
There's you and me, and then there's we. Our union's a new entity
much greater than just you and me. Some things need to be in three.
Without the we, much less are we. Some things need to be in three.
The ghazalkar just sits and writes and thinks the world will sing his song
for all posterity. Then tumbles over on his ass;
his stool has but two legs. You see, some things need to be in three.
Surely this Eric Ambler is out of print.
A vivified megalith, a wind of plenty
casts upon us here a gout of print.
The dumpster waits its share of bardic spiel,
i dare not say it nay. The heart grows flinty
in those whose ravings lack the clout of print.
A broken-concrete-scattered, bare dirt field
lit with lamenting winds; its cognoscenti
whisper dull threats, at peace with the rout of print.
Gasohol shudders, this gray morn: the Veil
runs thin. I grind grim lenses. Four and twenty
blackbirds fly when i put my doubt in print.
Two out of three people lie about books they’ve read.
In Remembrance of Things Past? Oh, yes, madelines.
Even when I tint the truth my ears turn red.
In Dante’s Purgatory the envious
Had their eyes sewn shut with wire. Forewarned,
Praise, praise, praise the hummingbird’s gorget of red.
Hollyhocks are such plucky blooms. No screams
As we children ripped their tender petals
To fashion fake nails of bordello red.
“Not all those that wander are lost,” noted Tolkien.
Consider those nomads the cedar waxwings —
How their feathers are tipped with Marco Polo red.
A carpet, the rug merchant says, is like a poem
by Hafiz. Light can change its voice from soprano
to bass. There are myriads of sounds in red.
Don’t expect a badge of achievement, Susan,
For every fear faced. Yet you did open the gate
Where the sentry displayed her hourglass of red.