from July :

 5

  
 A wash of evening colors the swerving crowds
 around the statue with its own Code Noir
 as, lifting three steeples out of its groin
 over the fracas, squat St. Louis works

  
 toward the sky.  Evening outward,
 spread flat past the levées, the river’s
 tongues flow swirling – a severance
 larger, wider than our herd can understand,

  
 soldered as it is behind its masks
 within a masque, like a quick-drying
 dying mudpie funneled through ridiculous
 morning - after tubes of – scams

  
 and slippery make-ups – repartee
 for fast departures – old recipes for
 sleep.  On the twenty-eighth of August
 at the hour of midnight   a latteen sail

  
 was visible   in the direction of Cat Island
 And Edna was awakening   or was it
 only a weakening?  The cords loosening
 into a catenary arc   one   (naked) isolato

  
 stares toward the Gulf beginning
 to dilate and to end within her own
 breast   heaving-ho now
 solitaire   (au secours!)   nigredo   Flood

  
 tears from inside   outwards
 to the white majestic peaks of a mirage
 Andes   her own melting   Jeremiah’s
 daughter-dryad   vaporizing into   drought

  
 (– these waters and these feral masks
 crowding the square, emerging to merge
 magnetized like iron – glimmering germ
 of bronze ribcage – Julius the Czar).


 
 Whose woods these are I think I know   where
 an outline sags into swamp   into the Nile
 a vernal undertaking or   snaking line
 of some royal blue J’s funeral   Erewhwhwhw...

  
 My little horse must think it queer   the shakes
 of harness bells undersea or   under the skin
 outline gone   a coracle of hardened mud and ink
 drifts or   swims upside-down   flesh succotash

  
 Cawtantowwit   Coatlicue   the way an eye
 swims in Bluejay’s hand like a   Natchez
 match for a   Red Clay bridle’s channel
 of   loose rains   swims   your way

  
 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
 Snow now soon for sure   on the rooftops
 of Florence and the Negus peaks of
 Ethiopia   upstream, down   perpendicular

  
 like a grid or crossroad   And miles to go
 into a Danish interior, Edna   of melted wax
 and a half-ring   carnelian   of cat paternity
 (missing the rest of the tale, O   Solomon)

  
 before I sleep   and the drugged blood
 dissipates with age and complacent cork
 bobs   wine-spilled   Queen to Rook
 my flesh will stand before you   double-

  
 You   O Thou Hand   of bubbled light
 (through the depth-charge of the Gulf’s
 ink Sanskrit and   Rosetta-Stone   glyph)
 because   this mud-cap is   one reddish tile

  
 atop   that kingdom’s Dome (aerie
 of kingdom come)   between the
 woods and frozen lake   The
 darkest evening of the year.

         
 Erupts   a droning man or   infant   burning
 between truth and desire forever   and
 must stand by his word (revolving
 referee with   heavy revolver   like a nub

  
 weighted with lead   through the hole
 in the candyman’s lifesaver)   coffin drop
 for the throat of muddy earth   poured
 out upon the ground   red-wreathd   Lo

  
 the millennial Moi   of gypsy water
 (tumbleweed-spine node) doubling over
 You   wracked   reverberating
 telegraphic Thou –   Tereuuuu...

  
 as Hamlet reverses course O prodigal
 homing   binding the ring to the promise
 and the arm to the sword as   Ophelia
 droops   into the flowery dewlap

  
 of that Minotaur of starry   tarry   Nay,
 tarry   water   (O   Nevermore
 velocity   beneath the sea   your venerable
 remorse   my son, my   rat-bitten son)

  
 And only the eye swims in the muddy
 coracle of your hand, messy messenger.
 Bluejay, funereal, crowing.  Seminal
 guardian of the drownèd doomed.

  
 Our W hand   lifted in blessing and   savage
 saving.  Listening Crane twitched his long-
 necked crown   toward the scree   (a lone
 emissary note   his own wing-bone gave).

  
 Circles   swims over the parallactic
 tables   the spirals graven
 in his brain (wake of one vagrant
 blood-vessel’s burst   moonship calipers).

         
 Thus   the featherweighted   drunken coracle
 rimmed around the rooftop   with an arc
 of sloping copper   (burnished barge
 or burning car of king’s   collected bones within)

  
 slipped out   into a Gulf
 of merging clays and
 colored sands.
 One fibrillated leaf

  
 of green Ophelia   Coatlicue
 asleep   upon her coat of faded blue.
 One penny in the deep.  One lobe
 of an ear   of Natchez corn

  
 one bee one   W   into   Y (our)  G
 Ophelia  your shapely   L    O     U
 splintered spar    O        U    R     L 
 hove-to  O   U  curling   J  (B2)   F...


      
                                        12.3.99