8.27.2003

From "Palm Sunday" (chapter 3 of Grassblade Light):


      4




A wave within a wave, a wavelet.
Curves and curves over a grain of friction.
Swirls – a mussy Pushkin cushion
numbering each hairlet, starlet.


Peaks, combs. Nautical particles
combine en masse, become
kindred tribology – the summer
summit of the sum (from little trickles).


Anointed with his Joseph coatings
(a ruddy surface) weary of his nano-cosmos
Michael designates his runs-in-place
with a broken log (lost jettings, leavings).


Maps going blind. He limps
toward the coon-brake, shadows
himself with a Cherokee cross.
Strange turbine figurehead. Lamps


flare black coals, tongues nostril smoke
floodwatered swirled away from touch
lobbed under riverbanks, scotched
scorched. Sixteen marble pieces (in one rock).


Totem for Henry Clay Club, or
52 pick-up. All they must admire.
And circulate its image – where
all this is written in full, every stone apse.


After the ship goes down (all hands)
only the wooden scar remains.
A three-way Tyre of purple runes'
knot of names (Makushki) in the dunes.


Drowned wooden image. Flatboat
Mike's on deck – only shadow of a sailor
now. His lead must figure (somehow)
while I must bail em out, sd Johnnie Profit.


Surface tension of a heedless figurehead.
Sail on through, she said.
Through the wavering shade. Red
circles circling your oddest eye (your sty, Sinbad).


Where the pressure of the swirl grows
stronger. Massive darkness,
leering mother-heart – swells, stress sails –
your orbiting shame (so Levantine) sows


mustered seeds – your crime-
leashed hand on board
end – the weird herd
of the word-hoard climbs


toward
No One's
noon:
D-


tailed solidified train-
trail Turk's Head tri-poly-
murmur of a moldy-holy
Son-song gone insane –


nascent no sound gnshd ossfrruss
rodent post – stopped rigd
oath-red odic ballead
blockhouse. Ravenous.


2.23.99

*



A limpid Mike Crow padded from Triangle Park
to rundown Seven Corners. A neon rodeo light there
sped through trysted rope – so slow, corpuscular,
night-light, crepuscular. Light growing dark.


His hood swirled on his hair. Black cone,
asturban – alien almond-pitted crown – unseen
strange tripod head of spiral jasmine
Melkanhonshi trumpeter-chauffeur carmen


(coalmined, incarnadine). Snuffed out
a sound of singing, somewhere – where the prim
deejay was welded – 1, 2, 3 – and wielded him
one bronze horn out of astricues – a deserted


dervish hut squared from paralensic
Tripoli voltimeters. Toward the wisecracks
of dawn marked a crossgrainhouse runtlet
bow-taut. Tongue-tied. Strung for the rackets.



*


Something heavy in the swirl – the pattern grows light.
There (on the veridical viridian chromosomatic
verge) your heaven parallents will go inside-ecstatic.
Dervish wish-swish struck-out Mighty Mite


disintegrated welded whirled and wind-blue J-
flown shofar – sure as Walter's witty fox tract or
– reversing soil – flash (shadow overheard) – your
own saloon-man, sister C – J.D. Deejay –


been framed out of a double-cross to be forever
so, it seems – one love fits all, she sang!
Where the spanner spun, wreath waving –
and rose, wheeled, solemn, gradual. . . sheer


sweetness at the door, the entryway –
lie back, lilacs, and blow, you delta air-
borne flights! We'll go there, Maggie,
to the Mardi Gras – today, today!

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