COSMIC BATTLE
Inching back with my mother down
the nursing home hallway
from dining hall... hey ey
yo. Keep her from falling (too soon).
Sprightly, amnesiac, brave.
We filtered burnt photographs’
international orange (‘70s
epitaphs). Look – you still wave
from chilly distance, eldest one.
Your sister, brothers... your
father, meek & mild... War
obliterates peripheral vision, son.
Like game of hangman (simplified).
Figure out the letter
in the word. Row, Edgar
Poe – enough rope be dangled
like that infamous platform
lifted out of season
like Francis from prison...
only to travel far from harm
along a single beam of light.
Real American creed
spooling through Voodoo
Queen Marie – gonna be all right.
Antithetical Poe held
his ivory casket
in a bird-basket –
row, row, coracle... spelled
*
IONAH on the bow... over & out
for now. The cosmic battle
between Caesar & that
measly songster (Stalin puttin’ Anna
into the hollow double-barrels
mimicking Utopia – everyone
happy in warehouse, hon)
becomes a set of Shaker castanets
or scallop-shells of Aphrodite;
– a skirmish in St. Louis
soars above Cahokia (she’s
us) into a supple Rimini-
design. The poet, poison-pounded
pharmakon, cribbed out
his hazy Paraclete
in limestone layerings – founded
Apollinairy nothings on a pole-starred
pine. Rose horizontal stripes
on snow led wayward ships
to Milky Way, somehow (the bard
might know). Over the river E
(for equal sign) carry
me back to cosmic liberty,
Eurydice – united we are free;
like Sophie with P. della Francesca fan
loving galactic neighbors
stitch their laborious
light-canoe (twin Manitou of Man).
10.21.17
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