spoke of a water-wheel

SALT WAVE

Along the riverbank, these rich

dark green moss-terraces;

a miniature forest

spreading wide along each niche

of Pliocene sea-limestone.

Archive of mollusc-whorl

& sea-worm spiral

layers of plastered ivory linen.

An infinitely tiny bronze

french horn accompanies

trompette marine – Willie’s

gauzy smoke-signal de Paris;

petrified remains of carven

calumet from Red Wing,

maybe.  This is nothing

like a Pipestone atlatl, Raven

croaks.  Spoke of a water-wheel,

more likely.  Jessie O’s

clay potter swells

with gentle pats & frills – feel

how her spine of Fish-Man surfaces

profound supremacy of whale!

A wheel that will not fail

springs to its trickle-task, washes

the wilderness from every face

until its light-green glory

meshes Ezekiel’s story –

wheel wends with wheel (a carapace

                *

of pearl enfolds that golden bough)

until a plangent joy

beams from unfurling J

in spokes of rose aye-aye lands now –

one Great Red Spot, so thundery

& jovial – one Yahweh-

Manitou, in one streamway –

the Rio del Espiritu, at play

across prairies & meadowlands

in centrifugal fugue –

day-lily orange bugle-

calls, mauvelets a monarch understands –

until at last the torch of Liberty

lifts from her copper shroud

to chant moss-green out loud

& set the Mississippi free...

As when the labyrinth of St. Louis

glimmers wheat-gold amid

deep shade (Monk’s Mound)

– & signs the tidal drone (commence!)

to shift the Earth from fraudulence –

fallacious Midas-usura

whose Minotaur is US-

R-US – whose glow of carbon flatulence

burns orange rage (from White House

into every gilded cage)

& all the world’s a stage

for strutting tyros in malevolence...

                *

Peace is another way.  Humility.

How Eeyore-mule (San Fran)

transmutes to Eero Saarinen.

With the power  of soul   any-

thing is possible   the tacit poverty

of yearning love  bent

by Br’er Francesco’s Lent

into a welcoming   equality

chaste eye of akme equity

out of an almond branch

in Petersburg   will launch

once more   peals of humanity

from the great Rose of Providence

wheeling & swinging wide

with Chartres sunlight   O glide

with me   downstream, Hobo   immense

Pacific beckons   from the galaxies

where kind Melchizedek

pours milk of live-oak

acorn mead   shares bread   from nursing

YHWH’s heart   sweet Manitou’s   delight.

Enfolded in the subtle veil

of golden fleece   & gray whale-

oil   that infinite fine safety-net

swings like a hammock in the breeze

beneath twin flaming pillars

where a starfish falls

& lifts her   from salt wave   to Paradise

7.19.17

in my style of raven-squawk

OVER AMERICA

America, replete with stories,

bursting with tales – I’ll

tell you another, in my style

of raven-squawk (Cautantowwit’s

oblique rescue-directions, south-

southwest).  Narragansett

wraith of Afterlife – what

zigzags from the smokehole (mouth

full of shade).  Ink-echo of an Incan

Thunderbird, or bald eagle,

or maybe owl.  Feel

the light gray prickling your human

scalp, Columbia.  That Mexican

tin double-dove mirror

frames Aztec cult of fear

& violence (Dia de Muertos, Halloween).

The Consul, slobbering mescal,

muttering William Blackstone...

Went to live with Indians...

With Narragansetts.  Harboring all

refugees – all troubled, exiled souls

(Rog Williams testified).

& so we double back to Rhode

Island, to Providence.  My school’s

a bit of Brownian motion, drawn in

toward indomitable diamond

by Love’s invisible almond.

As magnet gathers scattered iron

                * 

into a Magna Chartres wheel

her beautiful dove-wings

breathed into lungs

inured to painvine (coal dust, steel)

& lifted Life up wholly from the ground.

That green palm held by Alighieri

circuited grey orrery

spun from high Ocean River State – profound

light fiery water vessel made of clay

wrested from death-cave

to quintessential grave

transfiguration – your soul’s dancing ray.

It is Love’s interlacing hands

figuring a catamaran

or Manitou two-woman

womb-canoe – crossweaving islands

in a cat’s-cradle (a fleecy safety-

net).  You may not

recognize the US yet

in such pre-Cambrian confetti –

Ezra Caw-Caw Ezekiel, on his harsh

bark, wandered, insane

with hatred.  All began

in 1913, he would cuss – poison marsh-

land of the War to End All Wars...

Yet Henry’s hobo mule

mutters an older Yule

under his breath.  Open the doors...

                *

those silver mirror-doors of monarch-land.

Roger’s canoe banks in Ferrara

shade-garage... Alleluiah.

A little almond planted on good ground

blooms to Eternity.  Thanksgiving

magnanimity, sweet William

sings; the grey I AM

flickers in flocks of overshadowing

lightness.  The one who made himself

perfect transparent acorn

octahedron – he was born

at end of May (ancient festival

of restoration).  Like evergreen

King Arthur... JFK

or MLK... Melchizedek

emerges from his tent of welcoming.

The doom that Jesus faced on Golgotha

he had prepared for, long

before.  Green prow or prong

of spiritual Power, he bent like Uther

Pendragon into the beggar-skins of men;

he smiled, & shared the bread

& wine; made his last bed

a sepulcher of victory, beyond our ken.

Over America, the clouds roll by.

The curling fiddlehead,

the milkweed pod... float

on your way, Monarch.  Souls never die.

7.18.17

St. Henry's Day

GRACIE MANSION

Hobo (the Holey Roamin’ Umpire)

waits on a pitch from Sleepy-Eye

Hank.  It is his day.

Home plate always Big Mother Star-

Fish play (a hide-seek curve ball –

Dad’s Scrambled Hamlet).

Around 9 innings yet.

Black diamond in Elkhart... St. Paul

stole bases off that pokey Cobb

(guess – tie).  The Twins

still mirroring last year’s

lost wins.  The ball can wobble

1132 feet per sec – 33 miles

per the union (1099).

Hank Aaron was my man.

Hit the dead aim toss, all smiles –

black pay-dirt (out of Elkhart minors

graveyard).  Rod bloomed,

the whole world boomed –

from Thunder Winnebago Hen (majors,

truly) into found pro (his Red-Eye Land).

Only a game, anyway.

If somebody tries to say

who started it... sweet Joanny Hand

of Gracie Mansion, twirling down

on Monday morning

(twilight grey).  So swing

on, Homer Hank – de day’s yo own.

7.15.17

in memoriam Liu Xiaobo

SAND-CASTLE

                                                i.m. Liu Xiaobo

The workmen are building a great new wall

beside my octagonal turtle-

hermitage – where Sophie’s little

ruddy chair sits patiently, for one & all.

Another chair remained in Stockholm,

waiting for a noble prince

to win his prize of Peace.

His prize is won.  He’s going home.

He held his vigil by Heavenly Gate.

Hatred can rot a person’s

wisdom & conscience,

enemy mentality poison the spirit

of a nation, inflict brutal life & death

struggles, destroy a country’s

tolerance, humanity...

They want to bury him deep in the earth

yet verily I say to you, unless

a grain of wheat falls

into earth & dies,

it remains alone – but if it dies

it bears much fruit.  I remember

the orange Chinese lantern

peeking its bright octagon

out of green shade.  Welcome glimmer

with hidden crimson berry – lamp

of mountain sheepherder

marked by the torture

cell like turtleshell (or scarab stamp)

                *

only to grope toward pine-green Liberty.

My beetle’s modest haruspex,

the ideogram for pontifex,

key row-your-boat for Vera City –

check the N-trail labyrinth.

This liver between Earth

& Sky was micro-moth

or Maximus (locked up til 44th

of July, by Bureau of Injustice).

His wounded knee, his tender

foot, his gentle mind were

furrowed brow, for cultivating scholars...

Thrones are made for serial tumblers.

You can demote King Tubby Lou,

kill Voodoo Queen Marie – so

what?  Arrestocrats come back in numbers

juggling for electric chairs.  Polly

Pound says so, the mystical

Apologist of Tyranny; she’ll

sow you Uncle Ez’s grapes – see

how they make great yappy whine!

(& his chinoise Confusion

still bakes a mean Rune

Cake.)  He not the Way, sez Hen.

The blot thickens.  Blue Emperor Mon-Ki,

with his twin princelings, Rude May-Hem

& Gilt Moon-Eye... descended from

Lord Me-Man, Minotaur of Die-Nasty...

                *

[sludge on the honey-scroll, I guess]

We circulate by arrow-

glance, the human sorrow

of disharmony (each creepy-eepy instance);

only the gentleness of Manitou

the windy sheep-liver

& fleet   lamb-giver

who stands   magnanimous & true

blue cedar (melodious   rainbow

of royal   Reality)

is King.  So let her be.

Your soul, sealed so, dear Liu Xiaobo –

your spouse, waiting by prison-house,

will flex her wings, & spread

your word – rise from the dead;

her torch (inalienable human justice)

shines from copper harbors & green hills;

over harm & over hate,

ever-flowing   light on light

descends   like turtledove   on twisted wills

to straighten ways   streams merging

into concord   toward the sea

Ocean of Charter 8   mercy

& fellowship   in gratitude   Thanksgiving

Day   after the battlefields are still

& Liberty beams   far & wide

her smile   across the tide

& turmoil of the mind’s   sand-castle jail

7.14.17

ovals over pyramids

WAKAN TANKA

That poor man’s body frozen in the snow

at Wounded Knee.

Big Foot, mistaken for somebody

else (Sasquatch?  Goliath?).  Into

the valley of the shadow goes, Raven.

Wisdom & humility,

twin sisters.  See

how the old chief aches for comprehension.

Forbearance, mutual understanding,

peace.  In short supply

fallen under Assyria –

out in the sticks (Badlands), freezing.

When flour’s ground, small insects too

are crushed.  Bullish philosophy

for young rough riders, bloody

with their ba-ball clubs (Yankee, Hindu).

Boys ape men’s wars for an inheritance.

The monarch, meanwhile, churns

reptile venom – earns

replication in a prairie sundance

all the way to Mexico.  A delicate

sword fight with Judy Hotchkiss

(deadly bees taken amiss

lead Rachel down to Sheol, Juliet)

ends in snowballing massacre

the day after (frozen

conclusion).  Take me away

from these scenes, black star

                *

of harvest moon – bury them in trench

to hide the crying shame

of unquenched hell-flame

(mustard kiln rank with lime-stench).

Eyes frost over.  Hopelessness

of dauber’s art.  Oddly

placed boulders, hardly

balanced on the tip of mysterious

20th century placement & weathering.

Glazed over enough, yah?

Giotto’s all the cry

now, Cimabue – gag order on that thing

hung over the Capitol (New Glum).

Crowds trading places

for a view of the races

at State Fair (Human Bird-Hum).

Awake, Russia!  Make America

Great Again!  Nation

shall lift gas station

against nation – fail, Columbia!

Everything is inside out, & there’s

the Salamanca forest

for recalcitrant peacocks.

Even so.  This grey pebble, this

kamen soldier, simple carpenter

might open just one eye

in palm of clay hand, see –

check the hoary Isis river-

                *

level, placed like a Franklin Bridge

between twin banks.

Through airy arc (thanks,

Saarinen) soars prairie Wind-Wedge

(spooky Manitou’s whole altar).

She’s not a Ghost Dance,

she’s an entrance-trance –

a way of weighing Light Feather

against your heavy heart (soul-

sorrow).  Lake Victoria

or little Lake Itasca

spring to mind – Madonna del

Parto – light-skipping lamp-sheep

traipsing grass mosaic

in shade-sketch (archaic

camera oscura).  Black Elk sleeps

& dreams.  Big Foot & Wounded Knee

& Buried Heart &

Yearning Soul & Mind

lift from that heap of yesterday...

light feather-memory.  Young one

be strong, be good,

be not afraid.  World

law of gentleness is airy crown –

breeze breathing through the universe

bestowing life upon

worried monkeys – sun-

heart of Wakan Tanka (Jesus-nurse).

7.13.17

one last hurdle, Amelia

DANTE CHAIR

The gazebo’s grime-filmed mosquito net.

The black chain-link fence

in backyard Providence

climbed by Clem (mock-orange? Nyet).

Elegant quincunx in Cyrus-orchard.

Natural calculations

for dames in Netherlands –

to sieve the flux of spacetime (hard

homework).  Oxidized old photographs

curl to brown negatives.

A lime-warp cosmos

rolls up like a scroll of epitaphs

on fire.  So memory seems to curdle

too.  Gödel’s fetal pose

(knot of incompleteness).

Here’s the Pacific! – one last hurdle,

Amelia.  Archival snapshot

lost at sea...  your back

on deck, maybe?  Ack-

ack survivor?  Unknown soldier?  Dot

gone a-whaling vast expanse,

revived in some albumen

album.  Icarhea, return –

amaze us.  Dad is dead.  All US

mourns you, lass.  Jesus the airman

in a Paris dream   floats

through rainbow dust-motes

light checkmate   first the grain

                *

then the ear   then the grain

of wheat   in the heart

of your ear   lost art

of flying flute   solo   Dakota plain-

song   Black Elk   pilot-fish

naturally Christian

(more so than mission-

school)   so dream your spirit-wish

when the brutal tide of inhumanity

recedes   we will stand

by the shores of Mini-land

bullets   baby hummingbirds   no-see-

ums now   old Green Man chair

of Old Man North   unseen

now too   copper-sheen

bright mold of Liberty   still there

like curule seat of Caesar (Jules)

a Dante chair   Mom spied

in the PX   at Salvation Army

& dragged back home   April Fools!

It’s very rocky   in Armenia

an Abyssinian ark   sleeps

in Paul Bunyan steeps

a Tuscan nurses   meek Elephantea

with yellow ivory   fantasia

folk tales of the sun

shining   for everyone

through rose-glass coracles (acacia)

7.12.17

Sunset (Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls)

broody engraving

HIGH WATERSHED

As when a song transposes suddenly

into more stringent chords

the charismatic words

Dante-Apollinaire relay

from salty mud-flats of Ravenna

hungry Parisian streets

emerge with copper rivulets

of Mississippi calumet – that gateway

mound out of the bottomland

that mundus in a grove

or Okie Argo alcove

up from rustling bronze riverbend.

A pileated woodpecker

with fiery crest drives

toward dread beehives

of Annie Oakley – checkmates her

bull’s-eye – knocks at the door

of sharpshooter & target

as she drills toward

his dragon-beak of pain & blood, for

leafy harvest-time of bread & wine 

(ripe honey-gold high meed

poured out of night   freed

goldfinch   slipped from nest of twine).

So Thunderbird laced the perimeter

like one ghost dancer over

one ghost kingdom.  Power

flickered from its lightning center

                *

& with spark of recognition

the Life-whirr dove across

an abyss of non-existence

wakening green acorn nation

to restoration of all things

as it was in the beginning

ever shall   beginning

with your soul & mine.  The king’s

a monarch like Melchizedek

alighting on a milkweed

whose electric feed

mauve candelabra Shaker-speak

& lift the everlasting seed

to drift on orange wings

& ange d’or strings

to azure Gates   high watershed

for humble mule-servant   that beggar’s

beggar   slave’s life-saver

huffy Hen’s   broody engraver

Elijah’s raven   bearing messages

like crumbs of hope   for dying prophets

thirsting by the stream

to hear the pure Dream-

Songe   of limpid safety-nets

where rivers stream toward glory

in the salt infinity

one sarabande soul-tree

of beaming suns   their wake of Victory

7.11.17

musing on time passing

OPEN SEA

Hobo lingers in his old hideout,

musing on Time passing

inexorable, unceasing.

Even that Son of Man, no doubt,

is subject to the steady stream.

That He rose from the dead

after the carmine dogwood

petals bled... is like a dream –

when broken Magdalen beheld

Him, held Him tight

as she lay, hid by night

stone still, in sleep – felled

by the noon nightmare upon the hill.

It is a mystery

too deep for Hobo, or for me.

Jesus submitted to the Father’s will –

not on Golgotha, but with every beat

of that red pulsing wheel

of Ocean River (waxy seal

for human honeycomb – complete

sweet sign of infinite benevolence).

My yellowing maroon

& off-white leaf-pontoon...

my Hobo raft snaking past violence,

my dogwood octagon, shaved off

by Time into a simple

convex fish-vessel...

my melting hexagon, snow-staff

                *

of almond blooms, shading a well

in Palestine... stone skiff

leaping Gennesaret – if

only all these metaphors knot in one spell!

The spiral of a fingerprint

in limestone sea-cave

might unfurl a concave

hour-glass – etch kind intent

in pregnant sheets aslant the wind.

Each step taken, each

wave-slap on the beach

will glance to faceted perfection – find

ripe summa in a planetary plan;

the ants have theirs, Hobo

his role to play – go

find her, who unveils the sun of Man!

Magnanimous dome (Emanu-el’s)

on Morris Avenue,

your turtleshell (blue

arc of sky over her Book of Kells)

circumferences a shady tree

of leafy ladders (Jacob’s,

Jonah’s... Honest Abe’s).

We climb together, you & me,

through thunderclouds of poetry –

counting the heartbeats

as we rise... fleets

thread the Gate, to open sea.

7.10.17

the wind-chime found

FIFE-HUM

The gazebo is an octagon

of peace & quietness

this morning.  A salience,

a turtleshell (on gray-green

surface of a Sunday plane).

By the tumbledown back

fence, buried in black

soil & leaf-remains (rain-

soaked), I found a mysterious

old wind-chime.  Slim row

of silver pipes, bow-

tied to tangle free by turquoise

winged cherub (with turtledove

nestled against his chest,

like a kid’s cherished

carrier pigeon).  Bell-tones hove-

to in the air, by the furrowed brow

of weathered cedar gazebo-

door.  We’ve all passed over

the red, & through blue forest now

ring the tiny silver seraphim;

your carmine car is here

from emerald whispershere

cry the whirl-a-wings, that skim

in ferrous rings’ unmoving flight

above elongate coracle

of almond lips...  One coal

glows from steep well of night

                 *

like North Star in vast Ocean State

– one double rose wheel

swelling out of two – seal

of Elohim! – Love to consecrate;

the union of the subtle One

who hums through everyone

across creation – sun-

dance of manifold children, spun

by tread of Ariadne-gold –

maize ring of Chartres

frisbee’d to Paradise

atop oblong St. Louis mound

by monks’ naval arc-sheepfold.

As in shady Ravenna once

forecast of Providence

uttered by clay beseeching, rolled

from dusty lips toward dark mosaic;

fast prayer of Alighieri

bent by Beatrice

via sigh of starlight...  On a windbreak

east of Voronezh, quick beak

of finch-tuned Mandelstam

corrals her sweet I AM

within a limpid rill of spring – a streak

of black-gold monarch wings

slant toward akme

of octave solidarity –

whose fife-hum resurrection brings.

7.9.17

still life life still

STANDARD MODEL

So summer, Susanna, slowly, slowly

decelerates, among the weeds

& celery, the radish seeds.

&, painted into a corner, quietly

arrives full stop.  Like Peto

still life.  Or Adagietto

seeping on the Lido.

Gradually.  More things, Horatio,

than are dreamt of...  Plumb pleroma

if you can, Hobo –

speak what we feel we know,

somehow.  Premonitions (like a

wind-blown pennant toppling

at Little Big Horn).

Do not compare, Son

of the Morning Star (glass tippling);

you are the only one of a kind

Wakan Tanka.  To come

back from the grave... some

stretch, Hermione.  Out of your mind?

The Blue Morpho of Vladimir

eludes his abstract net –

yet he’ll catch a Hazel.

Bet.  Meet your double in a mirror

(is good luck, not bad).  The way

a doubting Peter folds

a king of hearts, & holds

the diamond.  One homing ray

                *

unlocks the elephant casket (gold-

lined interior, with keys

to inside story)

figured by Jonah, Susanna – double

coracles conveying chronicles

to Finland, now, for you.

Finis.  He’s us, too.

With eyes like Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, down Arthur Street

(the once & future thing).

Two heavy charms, making

an up-quark reddish baryon, Snoopy –

hiccups of a Higgs bison, maybe?

Concerns which we cannot

discern at CERN, just yet.

Professor Nyet beside the Neva...

– Knock it off, Nobby.  That Large

Hadron won’t bunt the Standard

Model for 1000 millionths of

a billionth of a second, pard.  No, Sarge.

I was just napping by the meteor,

that’s all.  It rolled away

(under the elements, maybe).

Not Hobo, not Pope... Columbus, neither.

Those deep brown hazel eyes absorb

Persephone-phenomena...

monarchs on milkweed... ah,

she weeps.  Who spans her glistening orb?

7.7.17

all manner of thing

LIGHT RAYS

Old Hobo drowses near the summit

of summer.  He sits

in the midst of his nitwit

desires, like Hobo King; he would not

harm a bug, much less a refugee

– plodding to the ports

with worn-out bags, hurt

babies on their backs... ay me!

Corruption is an empty shell

sans floor beneath.

Dons with shark teeth

bowl cannon balls in hell.

He muses on St. Thomas More

& Maximus, a little more;

Susanna’s chaste amour,

the hanging gardens of the Moor.

Lambs in their locality

taste the long grass

while summers pass,

yielding too much reality;

Hobo sleepwalks with the rest,

absorbed in his dream-

sponge.  Every seam

fans rain from peacock-fest –

an early-bird worm-hunters’ realm

inscaped with infinite

abundant life... articulate

splendor from the milky helm

               *

of Wisdom’s gratified delight.

No beast can overwhelm,

no tyrant flim-flam

microcosmic Man’s birth-right,

intones mild Maximus from his

ascetic prison-cell;

all shall be well,

all manner of thing – from fire-fizz

to salmon-grill, from trumpet-vine

to orange safety-net,

all shall be swell.  Get

you, my child, to the heart of Man –

it is no absence in Creation,

but flutter of a smile;

a wing-beat with no guile,

eyes’ icon of ineffable Person.

Draw near.  Hobo is dreaming now.

Rio del Espiritu...

a river-mystery.

Gazes at figurehead upon a prow.

One climbing from the grave.  Jonah?

Eurydice?  Mary

sleeps in the cemetery –

dreams within a dream.  Selah.

Calm-spinning, like a gyroscope,

the Hobo-King advances

toward the tomb of Lazarus.

Her mandorla... light rays the slope.

7.6.17