most August wind-chime

MIGRANT TABERNACLE

So another August 8th-month

inches toward its close.

Whatever Pilate says,

goes – IN RI, nailed to a terebinth.

Whatever happens, happens, now.

An old man is an oak leaf

skimming like a thief,

going to ground.  & when the winds blow

the silver pipes of Sophie’s chime

go tingle-tangle... melody

of sea-blue cherub, see?

Clasping Columbia, his sweet tame

turtledove.  While her fire-engine chair

waits in my octagon

beneath late-summer sun –

a migrant tabernacle... Amor-

Shalom... transportable to Paradise.

Her father is a recent

immigrant, & citizen.

The Shekinah is mercy for chaste eyes –

unquenchable fountain of pure love

for simple existence, for

its mysterious source.  Our

wisdom, Sophie – like your turtledove –

comes shimmering down... she permeates

all things, & everywhere.

As it was always, my dear –

the mind of Love revives, creates.

8.31.18

the rubles flow from here to there

SAND UNDERFOOT

A mouse ran across a bridge

one winter, in Leningrad –

his name was little Vlad.

He had a key, which was his badge.

He wanted to be Czar one day.

It made things easier.

When life got crazier

he took control – things were okay.

The rubles flow from here to there

in pockets of his underwear –

he makes a face, to scare

the other wolves (the sheep won’t dare).

He liquidated people in the way.

It wasn’t always easy...

Scotland Yard (like Stasi)

fingerpoints (Polonium 1-A).

The light flutes in another realm –

coral reef of seraphim

& monks on mountain rim

(Kievan polyphonic Argo-helm).

A scattershot of goldfinch tunes

or chords of Marian

sis-diva Anderson

lift off cimetière dunes

Pushkin or Berryman would know.

Sparse salty grass.

Sand underfoot, hélas.

A Black Sea seething, as of long ago.

8.28.18

poem in memory of Sen. John McCain

UNPERISHING REPUBLIC

                                        i.m. Sen. John McCain

Politicians are not often poets

though they might be actors

in a denouement of Shakespeare’s

Measure for Measure.  Just deserts

are rarely staged there, in the Senate,

these days – when a thumbs-down

from a stalwart shaken lion

mimes the freedom to be obstinate

against all bullies, liars, tyrants.

When a simple judgement – white

supremacists aren’t patriots,

they’re traitors – damns those deviants

from one magnanimous dream of Union

(human, not partisan;

global, not only Arizonan).

Comanches raided every town

along the Rio Grande, once: Yankee

& Viet Cong slaughtered

each other, martyred

kids; but we transmute reality

by change of heart, by radical

meekness.  With mutual

respect... consensual

advice, consent... our ancient legal

dance of equity, for human dignity...

so might this son of Cain

be able to smile again

in that unperishing Republic of hilarity.

8.27.18

aqueducts for bumblebees

JESTER THREADS

In the anonymous late grass,

among the stray brown

stalks like overgrown

aqueducts for bumblebees

Hobo looks off toward the flesh-

tone Mississippi bridge.

He yearns for the courage

to be like Woodpecker, in his mesh

of stealthy wasps & stolen honey –

I mean that Thunderbird,

drilling his fiery word

dovetailing out of Galilee;

the lightning rod atop the dome

whose inner lining is mosaic;

a kingfisher, whose beak

flings Geryon from his kingdom.

Late August air grows clear, autumnal.

He’ll shed his jester threads

like Hal doffs Falstaff duds

& lie down by the Rio del

Espiritu Santo.  Watch how that firebird

melts hearts into unison –

lifts into comprehension

both Jerusalem & Athens, toward

a chastened & revived Cosmopolis

where neighbor-love is measure

of the planetary future... &

then he’ll mosey back to Minneapolis.

8.24.18

by the teeth of St. Anthony Falls

SAY HELLO

End of summer sounds.  A surf

of crickets & cicadas

swells into the branches.

Phantom cottonwoods (leaf-

hearts pale yellow, dried-out husks).

Anemic light, grown timid

spooked by swollen shade –

August forecast (autumn dusk).

Henry attends to his North Star,

his Union under onion

dome... tending toward ruin

now.  Anger drives the darkness car.

Sleek starlings yoked in harnesses.

Electronic neon

beckoning Power’s iron

catalogs (bright pigeonhole affinities).

He stands by the teeth of St. Anthony

Falls – a Berryman

apparition, a ghastly John

lingering by fish-scale cutlery

(zombie ice-fishing is reviving

local watering holes,

say Twin Cities

polls).  Barely surviving

in professional cinch, Polaris

remains fixed in place –

kingfisher Falcon-Ace

tweaked by that wench in Paris

                  *

out of all shape, except a heart-

scarred origami –

Guillaume or Alexei

dovetailing it to Jordan-sprite.

So helpless Noah watches his waters

subside.  He turn to Hobo –

Hobo turn to her.  So

child become grain – grain gathers

to child.  On the scandalous retina

of Mary Magdalen,

the Earth rewinds again

as Man – wrath spun to mattina.

I have no rage.  The otherness

of your... your mother-smile.

He lay for a while

on sands of Jordan wilderness,

at peace.  Your American motherland

is an adamant green

Everywhere.  A limestone

welcome-mat (with waves of eye-in-hand).

It was here before we all arrived;

it was not to be won quite yet

by war, but by legitimate

befriending – loving everything that lived. 

& only a bum in San Francisco

or homeless reprobate

treated like jail-bait

knows Charity enough to say hello

& happy lovey-dovey Thanksgiving to you

8.22.18

Hagia Sophia with mermaid eyes

TATTOO-BASKET

                                    for Sophie, on her birthday

She shines like a little smile of light,

your happiness.  Shot through

with violets, with rue

of yellow-gold... a sea-green Amphitrite.

She swam from a box out of the bottomland.

Big Muddy concept –

buried in refuse, inept

mentalities.  Blind eye-in-hand,

dread fright of bloody bandage-men.

I stood on my headwaters,

the only Falls that matters –

Mill City, where they grind the grain –

a nauseated Hamlet, dizzy

with green v-vertigo.

Boxed rivers overflow.

He’s Hobo now, or Ishmael, fire-fizzy;

curled up in a tattoo-basket,

floating in the womb

of his own dream-doom

to Gulf of Mexico (Nantucket?)...

where butterflies of poetry

emerge as monarchs

from sea-chrysalides

& sketch fine arcs on pottery

insouciantly, with haunted grace.

Winking tesserae,

unscrambled... Hagia Sophia

with mermaid eyes (each facet-face).

8.21.18

serpent ocarina

FEATHERED WHEEL

The king is carrying his cross

wearing his crown of thorns.

Only his mother mourns.

The restless crowd is at a loss.

So history plays out

on broken banjo string –

scratchy LP spinning

over & over the tethered Scapegoat

Song.  A narrow beam of rust-

red copper, through shade

of rock.  Copperhead

of light.  Serpent mouthing dust.

Tan sand (some Navajo camouflage).

Everyman, eaten

by ants.  Has-been.

Hobo, dreaming in a stream-montage.

Nobody.  Only air, flashing

like feathered wheel –

Thunderbird heel?

Lo, him – Kingfisher, splashing.

In the clay matrix, Morning Star

pirouettes in Paris

for Apollinaire.  Pax

lounges with Liberty, while from afar

twin pillars of a temple rise

in unison – an azure

octave, lifting her

amid dew-glittering, sea-breathing sighs.

8.10.18

all the way to Mt. Moriah

ALMOND-BREAD

This weightless branch of butternut

floats in the August stillness

like palm-frond of Isis

in sky-barge of Cleopatra-Nut.

Earth grown deserted as a pyramid.

Nothing moves in silence

like Lion-Sphinx

crouching with a question on her eyelid-

casket – just for you, Orpheus-

Oedipus.  Your arcane

cane limps against the grain,

gone serpentine... a missing Theseus.

Where’s Ariadne then?  Arise,

light Jonah-seer, sweet

grey-eyed sister!  Meet

him in the wrinkles of the Minotaur’s

disguise, find him in the stone face

sleeping like a Roman guard –

motionless, Medusa-hard,

until your gardener grins in his place.

She’s kneading my clay now, adamantine

mother of amusement.

All the way to Mount

Moriah, she’s dragging my crown.

She’s molding the planet, children –

shaping this loafer into ships

of almond-bread, with those lips.

Those eyes are sparks for tinder-men.

8.9.18