I am tasting the Holy Ghost

i would tell you
not to dust me, nor dance me
on the fine sharp brittle edge
of a darling dead poet!

i am wrapped in wrinkled leather
and famously stuffed inside
my fatal gas oven,

screaming Daddy words
like chiseling pieces of
hard dust, literary dust,
hallucinogenic personal dust:
dust like piercing shards of Hell
which do not fly gently.

in the adjacent children's room,
where they sleep under cover,
under blankets of soft candle glow
more dust settles
and falls and sifts like a splendid flour,

quietly.

their pillow seems wrapped
inside the dust of mother's love.

i see the dust fill their eyes
and watch it take away tiny smiles.

i feel the dust settle onto
my tongue as it whispers:

i am tasting the Holy Ghost.

i hear an anvil brightly ring
while the fire still burns,
white sparks and gray smoke,
the hammer and the forge,
hot coals and fine ash,
like dust rising into the warming air,

into the jet stream current
of an old and dusty Earth,
into the brief minute it spins
with no seconds to spare.

and ghosts on a midnight train
always speeding into their dark dusty night,
without a map, without a hint, without a hope,
without a conductor waving the baton
which tunes the note:

into the bones of a family grave yard.

arms and legs and bodies of dust,
headstones of dust, obituaries of dust,
young and old, triumphant and worn,
the great elephant seal of dust,

this roaring locomotive tossing me
with tracks across my head.

my feet and hands into blood,
into the chambers of a beating heart,
into the water with a virgin birth,
and when i hear talk of dust,

i wonder why no angel

gave me wings.