8.21.2018

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

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