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!