The Babylonian Test

What you want

Is offered;

What is good

Is given.

 

The king says,

“What you want

“I will give

“If what is

“Good, you give.”

 

The king’s eyes

Watch. Loose what

Is wanted

And take what

Is needed.

The King will

Soon reward.

He sees a

Man with worth.

 

If you like my work, please click on the link below, and purchase a copy of my books.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=B.+K.+Neifert&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Daughter of Zion

What crushes my soul,

More than anything else

Is the nagging thought,

“You’ll never feel your spouse.”

I suppose I thwart myself because of it.

What is the wealth of nations

Without someone to love?

The thought of being rich is frightening.

What’s more frightening is being rich

Without a woman who loved me when I was poor.

What’s more frightening

Is being poor, without a woman

And never eating from this labor.

 

My own stink rises up to my nostrils…

That foul smell of pajamas

Which were worn a little too long.

The smell of sleep.

Sleep… though ever pleasant

Scares me.

To sleep a life away

In my own stink…

 

Frankly, I’d share this body with my wife

And I’d be happy

Though poor.

But, the looming catastrophes lurk somewhere…

Are there trustworthy women?

I don’t know.

Seduction is an art…

There are men, many of them,

Who will seduce even the best of women.

There are women, the best of women,

Who turn bad, and then seduce the foulest of men.

 

So, I look at the riches.

I can eat…

Be praised.

Praise and wealth scare me.

I say to God, “If you can add no sorrows to it,”

Which, I forecast the sorrows of success.

Two times thwarted

I had the greats read me.

Pilidod Grass looks fine

And so does the harvest bread…

It will satisfy me if my bonny lass

Waits for me.

 

I’ll love her when she has mud

Upon her boots, and the dung of cows

Plastered on her worn out shoes.

Her hair tawny, and a mess

With a frown on her face because the cow gave no milk.

Her father waiting in the pantry,

For her milk to come, and the look of sheer astonishment on her face

When her favorite cow—she’d call it a heifer—

Didn’t give the milk needed.

Crying, she’ll go,

Where her father will beat her

For disobeying her…

Calling hers slack hands

Like mine…

Always disciplined for hard work

Thus it’s all we can do

To sit side saddled on our furniture

In our pajama stink.

Because work,

When we enjoyed it,

When we made the slightest mistake

That we could not control,

Was always disciplined.

Her with a rod,

I with a cruel rod too…

My dove…

Shunned by the ones I love

Because the utters didn’t produce milk.

And sure enough, my family and friends would go,

And miraculously—or otherwise cynically—

Pull and get a long draw of precious milk.

As if I’d never drawn milk from a cow…

They’d then tell me to draw the milk.

And it would work.

Happen to be…

They’d also know I tried

And would still discipline me.

 

What crushes my soul is that I have married a strange wife…

Like Elijah in Nehemiah,

Yet I cannot awaken from my sleep.

Be my muse tonight,—

A beautiful Savant has had visions

She has shown you happy with me

But impervious to the outside world.

Rightly, my suitors are chosen by God.

Which one would I want?

I don’t know, o’ angel spoken of in the pilidod grass.

Loneliness creeps very close to all of us…

The Laurel, the Savant, the Gift from God.

 

No… there is one for me…

I just have to choose.

Though I cannot…

We both mourn for this world

O’ Daughter of Zion.

It seems like sadness is in all men’s bones.

 

 

If you like my poetry, please click on the link and purchase a copy of my books.

 

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=B.+K.+Neifert&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Slavery

Those slaves made some good cookin’.

They tidied up your house,

So you wouldn’t have to lay a finger.

You didn’t have to pay them,

You owned them.

They hoed in the garden.

They… were far more comfortable than

Showers, electricity, television,

iPhones, and internet.

 

You could sit all day,

Drink mint juleps,

Sip on lemonade,

Eat their homemade cooking,

Listen to their music;—

Like a radio—

Beat them and rape them if you wanted to.

You could have instant access to the best

Live action pornography available at the time.

One of those black women looked nice

Almost pretty enough,

You’d have a concubine

Whose bastard son would

Be just like the shovel in the tool shed.

 

You could befriend them,

Real nice…

Murder them, and you’d get away with it.

 

I say, they were a comfort we don’t even know is humanly possible.

 

So… now you know why there was a war fought

To let them go.

 

If this offends anyone,

It should.

Bonny Lass

Bonny Lass

Your eyes so gloomy

To think yourself a grifter.

 

You saw your betrothed

So you dressed yourself in your everyday clothes

To be married to the husband of your youth.

 

He rejected you, o’ Bonny Lass

So you took to dressing in floral gown.

The peoples scorned you,

Until you made up a beautiful face.

For your husband of youth had rejected you.

 

So, Bonny Lass,

You learned to ride side saddle;

Made your feet dainty.

A wooer came, upon Arabian steed

With train of Clydesdale behind.

A prince, who you wooed.

 

You received your prince.

Some years later, as mud cleaved to your boots

While in the stalls taking care of your favorite mare

You found a stable boy, who seeing you thought you fair.

Yet… your trim which brought you the prince

Left your ring bound to his.

 

The Feats of Brittos

Aught known, Brittos’ feats

He killed Athena.

To approximate:

Athena knows all which is possible for man.

Athena also commanded the souls of

Dead Giants,

Which she could then control

Anyone—even the innocent—whom she pleased to place those cold souls into.

 

Brittos shaved Thor’s beard,

Thor who wore nine realms in his ring

Who slaughtered Sun Wukong

Who while fighting,

Destroyed the entire nine realms of Thor.

Brittos beat the knave with, with knife and shield.

 

Brittos slew an entire army

With the jawbone he ripped

From out an opponent.

 

Brittos killed an entire city of Valkyries

When he killed their king;

One Valkyrie was enough to give grave fight

In Gladiatorial pits.

 

Brittos killed an army of cyborgs

When he threw a magnet which weighted thirty tons.

Brittos also fought the Elf Priestess

With spear and shield.

She wielded a Bow,

Its arrows lightning.

 

Brittos won his fight against the Grea

Which commanded the sea,

To also summon the Chok

Which did manipulate

The very verse of the Odes of Brittos.

Imps, Ghouls and Goblins; What They Mean

I think I’ve finally gotten fairyland

Out of my head.

Just demonic things…

Have to show why a vampire is evil…

Or a dragon…

I guess.

 

Funny thing is that the one poem I wrote

Is so effective at preserving my faith

So effective at teaching me…

I think there’s some good to it.

Really… people think of Christianity as Fairy Tales

But eerily, my poems make the Fairy Tales real.

Which is why I’m a little concerned about them…

I don’t want my audiences believing in Jontunheim

Or that I’m really Judas Son of James.

I also don’t want my audience believing I wrote a gospel.

As, I find that manipulative…

 

But… John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

Is so good at describing theology.

Mine, much in the same tradition as it

Is really dealing with dreams.

I suppose rather than there being actual, physical beings

The dancing skeletons exist somewhere in our minds;

Maybe where the “Skeletons in our closet,”

Line comes from.

Though, I’ve never written about dancing skeletons.

 

Sometimes, a subconscious cue…

A factual inaccuracy

Can be more real pertaining the truth

Of what we want to say.

We call it a literary device.

They sometimes offend an audience

Who wants the easy explanation…

 

Reading wise, there’s a device called the “Vertical Axis”

A wonderful little tool by the Postmodernists—

You will hear me praise them as much as I scorn them—

That removes something that you don’t understand

From the text, so you don’t have to labor over it.

It might… by all accounts…

Come to mind later.

 

Frankly, though, I was always taught to use “Context Clues.”

That was my big ta-da in reading class…

And using context clues I learned how society will punish you for using context clues.

So I don’t know what a word actually means

I context clued to make it mean what I thought it meant

And was later made fun of by grammarian snobs.

We called that critical thinking at a time…

It produced philosophers

But not deck swabs.

So, the reason why our education system is revamped

To produce serfs instead of kings.

Serfs who no longer use context clues

Nor ignore a difficult trope

But rather must laboriously tire over it

Until the meaning is divined.

They come… with practice.

Sometimes it’s best to just ignore something the fifth or sixth time through.

Sooner or later

A comprehensive education will unearth the fact

And it will make whatever I seem to be writing

More enjoyable for my audiences.

I know I love that in other poems…

When I realize an allusion relates to Photo-Synthesis

How unrelated it is, but the allusion is still one

I can dive into for about an hour.

 

That’s Fairyland, though, what it essentially is for.

Rather than

Let’s not get caught up in the flesh of the poems

Let’s dive deep into the metaphors

To kind of understand why the poems

Kind of reflect some kind of grand conspiracy theory

That almost compulsively wants to be believed.

If the metaphor is found,

The Thirteen Kings

My villains,

Are understood in their proper context,

We see they are rather sins, or Satans incarnate

In us… which we must remove by Christ’s power.

What is God’s power?

The reason to know that there is spiritual power

In trying to act more kind and benevolent.

Because it’s important that we understand that is what the Gospel meant

By power.

 

Not the power to raise the dead

But the power to make a person feel good about themselves.

Which, in all circumstances, makes life a lot easier

Without a burdened conscience always complaining about others

When you’re the real villain.

In Fairyland, the reader finds themselves to be the villain.

As, that’s what Wicked John or Abaddon really is

Is just you, me, anyone who has an uncontrolled urge

That leads them into the dark depths of sin

And suffering.

 

Because Hell and Fairyland

Start on earth…

That is my process with Fairyland is getting the hell

The delusion of hell

Out of my head—which I had subconsciously wrote as hell—

So that we can see

Better.

 

I want it to be clear

That a Unicorn is a goal that can’t be obtained.

That a Pegasus is a token that will always prosper

But it will be your ruin.

A Vampire is someone who will always try to be in vogue with Status Quo—

Status Quo is who I call Belial…

A Dragon is a hoarder of wealth

A Giant is an uncontrollable urge or sin,

A Werewolf is anger,

A Hydra is a beast of lies and the one truth that is meant to ruin you,

A Mermaid and Elf are people who lust for the good life

Even to the point of distorting their relationships,

A fairy is an iPhone or Android; an idol, a false reality,

Meant to be more real, and satisfy our boredom:—

Wicked John is our flesh,

Abaddon is our flagrant, unconscious sins,

Medea is the Media,

Thor is our lust for absolute control and power,

Lucifer, he is when we have obtained the goal

Of absolute control and power.

 

So many other things lurk in there…

Geists, which often embody the Archetypes instilled in us from entertainment,

Fairy lORD, the creature, almost living,

Which feeds us with Geists and Giant Souls,

Somodivas and Nymphs, which are women

Who will utterly forsake family and friend

Simply because they can… they even think they ought.

The Red Bull, who is the path of life we didn’t choose

And there he is, with all his glory.

Here we are, with all our shame.

Helen of Troy, and her infamous beauty, which is distracting

And tries to throw us off the good path.

 

So many…

And often we find ourselves becoming one or the other of these.

Either a low level minion

Or the very devils themselves.

The Bull frustrating us,

Of what we could have been

If we had just made the wrong decision

And sold out.

Or the Valkyrie and Harpy,

The pride and patriotism

Which blinds us from what is right from wrong

To puts us in contention with those so much like ourselves

But are only different because they have spotted wings.

 

That is my process in Fairyland.

Imps, Ghouls and Goblins

I think I’ve finally gotten fairyland

Out of my head.

Just demonic things…

Have to show why a vampire is evil…

Or a dragon…

I guess.

 

Funny thing is that the one poem I wrote

Is so effective at preserving my faith

So effective at teaching me…

I think there’s some good to it.

Really… people think of Christianity as Fairy Tales

But eerily, my poems make the Fairy Tales real.

Which is why I’m a little concerned about them…

I don’t want my audiences believing in Jontunheim

Or that I’m really Judas Son of James.

I also don’t want my audience believing I wrote a gospel.

As, I find that manipulative…

 

But… John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

Is so good at describing theology.

Mine, much in the same tradition as it

Is really dealing with dreams.

I suppose rather than there being actual, physical beings

The dancing skeletons exist somewhere in our minds;

Maybe where the “Skeletons in our closet,”

Line comes from.

Though, I’ve never written about dancing skeletons.

 

Sometimes, a subconscious cue…

A factual inaccuracy

Can be more real pertaining the truth

Of what we want to say.

We call it a literary device.

They sometimes offend an audience

Who wants the easy explanation…

 

Reading wise, there’s a device called the “Vertical Axis”

A wonderful little tool by the Postmodernists—

You will hear me praise them as much as I scorn them—

That removes something that you don’t understand

From the text, so you don’t have to labor over it.

It might… by all accounts…

Come to mind later.

 

Frankly, though, I was always taught to use “Context Clues.”

That was my big ta-da in reading class…

And using context clues I learned how society will punish you for using context clues.

So I don’t know what a word actually means

I context clued to make it mean what I thought it meant

And was later made fun of by grammarian snobs.

We called that critical thinking at a time…

It produced philosophers

But not deck swabs.

So, the reason why our education system is revamped

To produce serfs instead of kings.

Serfs who no longer use context clues

Nor ignore a difficult trope

But rather must laboriously tire over it

Until the meaning is divined.

They come… with practice.

Sometimes it’s best to just ignore something the fifth or sixth time through.

Sooner or later

A comprehensive education will unearth the fact

And it will make whatever I seem to be writing

More enjoyable for my audiences.

I know I love that in other poems…

When I realize an allusion relates to Photo-Synthesis

How unrelated it is, but the allusion is still one

I can dive into for about an hour.

 

That’s Fairyland, though, what it essentially is for.

Rather than

Let’s not get caught up in the flesh of the poems

Let’s dive deep into the metaphors

To kind of understand why the poems

Kind of reflect some kind of grand conspiracy theory

That almost compulsively wants to be believed.

If the metaphor is found,

The Thirteen Kings

My villains,

Are understood in their proper context,

We see they are rather sins, or Satans incarnate

In us… which we must remove by Christ’s power.

What is God’s power?

The reason to know that there is spiritual power

In trying to act more kind and benevolent.

Because it’s important that we understand that is what the Gospel meant

By power.

 

Not the power to raise the dead

But the power to make a person feel good about themselves.

Which, in all circumstances, makes life a lot easier

Without a burdened conscience always complaining about others

When you’re the real villain.

In Fairyland, the reader finds themselves to be the villain.

As, that’s what Wicked John or Abaddon really is

Is just you, me, anyone who has an uncontrolled urge

That leads them into the dark depths of sin

And suffering.

 

Because Hell and Fairyland

Start on earth…

That is my process with Fairyland is getting the hell

The delusion of hell

Out of my head—which I had subconsciously wrote as hell—

So that we can see

Better.

 

I want it to be clear

That a Unicorn is a goal that can’t be obtained.

That a Pegasus is a token that will always prosper

But it will be your ruin.

A Vampire is someone who will always try to be in vogue with Status Quo—

Status Quo is who I call Belial…

A Dragon is a hoarder of wealth

A Giant is an uncontrollable urge or sin,

A Werewolf is anger,

A Hydra is a beast of lies and the one truth that is meant to ruin you,

A Mermaid and Elf are people who lust for the good life

Even to the point of distorting their relationships,

A fairy is an iPhone or Android; an idol, a false reality,

Meant to be more real, and satisfy our boredom:—

Wicked John is our flesh,

Abaddon is our flagrant, unconscious sins,

Medea is the Media,

Thor is our lust for absolute control and power,

Lucifer, he is when we have obtained the goal

Of absolute control and power.

 

So many other things lurk in there…

Geists, which often embody the Archetypes instilled in us from entertainment,

Fairy lORD, the creature, almost living,

Which feeds us with Geists and Giant Souls,

Somodivas and Nymphs, which are women

Who will utterly forsake family and friend

Simply because they can… they even think they ought.

The Red Bull, who is the path of life we didn’t choose

And there he is, with all his glory.

Here we are, with all our shame.

Helen of Troy, and her infamous beauty, which is distracting

And tries to throw us off the good path.

 

So many…

And often we find ourselves becoming one or the other of these.

Either a low level minion

Or the very devils themselves.

The Bull frustrating us,

Of what we could have been

If we had just made the wrong decision

And sold out.

Or the Valkyrie and Harpy,

The pride and patriotism

Which blinds us from what is right from wrong

To puts us in contention with those so much like ourselves

But are only different because they have spotted wings.

 

That is my process in Fairyland.