Ask the Dust

the dust remembers the first shore and the first cry it made
out of the air and its far vision back over water and land ahead

the dust remembers when fire appeared like a miracle
full of so many ideas and passion verging on violence

the dust remembers storms that took it east west north and south
mixed it with dirt until it clapped its hands and said I’m hungry

the dust is not the remains on your window ledge
where the fly lies like a fallen pilot without a parachute

the dust is not what accumulates when you don’t clean
the dust has secrets

the dust has traveled on star waves to get here
attracted to other dust like dancers at a spring concert

the dust remembers rising with your eyes and looking out
feeling like you and you alone for a minute out of eternity

the dust remembers amazing vehicles and rooms full of music
and sunsets that make you weep to witness them

the dust remembers more and floats like a missionary downstream
towards the canal of your ear like a fog of memory out of focus

more so much more and if you’re curious and want to know
all you have to do is get down on the ground and ask

 

CONQUERORS

 

I am in a city riparian, eight-legged,
once launching and colonial,
brutal, even, rising out of a brutal history.

But all of history looks brutal, you say,
just look at these claws cutting the water
and those heads blackening on their pikes,

spirits whispering from their stone palaces
that clatter like castanets in the waves,
don't do it, don't do it, or take it all, take it all.

We climb out of the sunset.
We eat your temples one by one.
Our bones mingle with gold dust on a riverbed.

And we sleep a version of peace you can't reach
by philosophy no matter how high the empire
couch or the fire on the other side of the library.

 

Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and the novel, The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. He is a regular contributor to Mythaxis, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have been popular contributions. He also writes a regular monthly column called “Trading Fours” for Jerry Jazz Musician and has recently been named the editor for “American Poetry” in Read Carpet, an international, predominantly Spanish-language journal produced by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia from Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, he was awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Editors’ Choice Award for fiction by RiverSedge, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is douglastcole.com. You can find him on Twitter @TheShadow_man.