Visit St George's by the light of the moon,
if you dare, there in olde Flushing
now surrounded by banks, the Chamber of
Insolence, and varied trees
with the fingerprints of Vikings and feudal serfs.
bring a metal detector
for the silver coffin in which
the blot
god sleeps, a blanket of seeds
up to the eyelids that never close,
watching how slavery on the streets above
has merely molted, shed one outer skin,
and feasts on all makes and models
without the trappings of prejudice
in this dense hamlet of millions,
most diverse melting pot since
the dragon's breath turned all the Old World
to a cauldron of refugees,
pilgrims, migrants, swimming a stew
of gold, wrapped in beaver skinned leggings,
better bowling alleys, more
gruesome ghosts in hollow cold chain,
the burghers good on unleavened bread.
Visit St George's by the dark of the Sun,
there in New Vlissingen, if
you care, and wear the royal blue
once verboten, or the purple and green
of plants bearing our names,
once Latin, once guttural or gestured,
to show how time blooms,
covering the trails past wampum bay
over to the corner of a lot not
desecrated under a cement lid,
pry up the moss and dust off the tardigrade
guards dancing their 8 legged jig
on the silver box,
locked from within with his Captain's
fingernails grown through the inner
hardware, moisture free from 360 years
of held ancient breath, and the
speech Olde Bloetgoet took within his boob,
down to rummage the thousand years
prior, eyes open and a peck of
squash seeds ticking the inner ear,
as the Steeple of St George
heaved to the street, with the usual
superstitions acquainted with phenomena,
there on the corner of Main and 39th,
the top hats all now gone
the tall sails sallied off
the hoop skirts and whalebone dentures done,
seeds still saw
their way out of the garret as
forms of sacrifice, the blot
hanging from the trees riddled with ravens,
the bay fog warm
as it washes inland over stone joke hi-rises
mini-marts and cultural outposts,
championed by the unknown as religious
tolerance, doing unto others
as one would like done to ourselves,
in their tidy life boxes and worthless plots,
the headstones long crumbled
the peg and awl termite known
the keel under repair in a barn half built,
clocks half maintained for the public good
and hourglasses filled
half, in open sesame seeds
1659, Flushing, New Bloggod
"Feudal"
"The most widely held theory was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch.
Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term
*fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means "cattle"
and -ôd means "goods", implying
"a moveable object of value."
Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with moveable objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or food.
This was known as feos, a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money."
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