mysteries of the oval garage

BENIGN SPECTACLES

Those benign spectacles of the Franklin Bridge

were long frozen over.

Inside & outside were

captured in a mickle mirror (garage

at the edge of Ferrara).  It wasn’t a map

of America, so much;

only Hobo’s tender clutch

(Falstaff) of Henry’s hand (old chap).

He wants to show you something.  Opens

one puffy palm, and there

tattooed in coppery-red scar

– soft oval eye, mandorla lens.

America sleeps in her own green fields.

Feminine Hamlet croons

to her, lit by Hobo-moons...

Turn back to thy La Paix, Ophelia.

That Egyptian Art-Deco monolith

of Roger, stepping off

the cliff – out of his skiff

into a void of air, the whole dream-myth...

– & it was underfoot all the time.

Like a grail-dish, or agate

eye; a lamp on a frigate

or arc of a torch, Lazarus-rhyme

or Jonah-wing.  The harbor’s safety-net

for flowery Juliet –

buoyant, incarnate

Normandie (gilding Henry’s Mayflower signet).

2.26.19

I'm only thinking of you

SIMPLE MUTTER

Snow-canyons decorate the streets

of staid Minneapolis;

sparkling crystals

coagulate in mountains, glacier sheets.

Ripe grain of whole, deep faith,

murmured epileptic

Osip – stamping his shtick

of shaman-Pushkinite (limpid wraith).

Tiny hexagons of Siberian ice.

The glowing eyes of thief-

wolves, killing for life.

Vast evanescent Paradise

in an infinite complexity

of human innocence

destroyed by violence –

Patmos St.-Vitus peripety

of mangled lambs.  I’m only

thinking of you, dear

spark (unknown Shakespeare

pebble-soldier... yearning mystery).

Gemstones of civilization glitter

through the drab darkness.

You are only weakness

squeezed into clay – a simple mutter,

oscillating like a reddish agate

in a muddy kid’s palm

(copper reunion-psalm).

Jamie discovered it – I won’t forget.

2.24.19

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19

La Vida es Sueño

ROLLING DOOR

Henry, magnanimous prince

like Saggy Mundo on his

Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) waits in his chains, listens.

Them animal pelts smell bad,

sez Hobo (Sancho

P. Zee).  Life, my friends – no

dream, declaims Sir Galahad.

The little paralyzed air-prince

like a baby Fisher King

(Guillain-Barré) would bring

last summa out of everything (wince).

Like Adam taking Eve’s advice

he’d melodize the whole

isle to an apple donut

hole – & give it to his son (nice!).

Pallas Athena wore an aegis-skin

with gold palladium-bangles

dangling at all angles

from her circuiting Argo-spin;

it was a sacrifice, like Morning Star

or Igor’s Rite of Spring –

the icon bearing everything

buried in grassy Galilee, in a jar

of myrrh (brimful, for Magdalen).

Lippo Memmi pinxit

(now in Providence).  What

X will mark the spot, Justinian?

        *

What hour marks the lux fiat

when Mary in her pontoon-

boat (sun-gold doubloon

nailed to the keel) will celebrate

the whorl of Theotokos-kenosis-

hypostasis – on a clay

wheel (out of Cahokia)?

Whose eye-in-hand is... Henry’s

sister-cuz?  Whom doth the Grail serve?

I mean the grey stone

hands in that quaternion

of mudstream... – who has the nerve

to lift the lid of Henry’s sepulcher?

In Resurrection Cemetery

(northeast of Pig’s Eye)

Osiris waits for Isis-murmur –

America sleeps in her old nightmare

until that Pussycat (on Easter)

knocks the rolling door

out of the way... & Henry’s there!

Limping from his throne of rosy clay,

his island ocean-ray –

borne on his own birthday

like a faerie Pharaoh (Narragansett Bay)

to the Rose Lighthouse (near Gould

Island), in chariot

of dawnlight (mauve

& violet) – like a Sun Ken (holy fool’d).

2.21.19

all across Minneapolis

RABBI-PATH

All across Minneapolis

the poet’s left evidence

like tracks under a fence

– long fellow’s footprints –

Nana Bozo the Clown, or

Hiawatha in slippers

(snowshoes, Alberta

clippers).  Fella came before,

might hop here again (ghost

dance, dream song).

Sunday stretched so long.

He was with us in the Lammas-host

like lambchild in the field,

a white cloud drifting

bluegrass... otskèn:rha, sifting

right from wrong (at Lammas-tide).

Bozo Lambrogio breaks up

the woolly categories

of our feral cats – Caesar’s

imbroglios, lions of Judah, Egyptian

pups... will skip the rabbi-path

out of the lake of wrath

back into Nazareth

by August 1st (we’ll do the math

later).  Yolk-black Fabergé cracks

in the snow... imperial

theocracies unreel; almond

Vierge Ouvrante gives berth.  Relax.

2.19.19

Dark Lady, mayhap

BRADY SEZ

Near the headwaters of Mississippi

this silver-gray sinkhole

fixed as North Pole

in frozen vortex.  Photography

captures the chill nether-life

of Lethe (Brady sez).

A trestle-bridge passes,

rusty in the distance.  A pocket-knife

of cottonwood unfolds where innocent

Ophelia submerged at last,

last fall.  Her ballast

was a blast of wrath – so violent...

collateral damage of masculine panic?

Mayhap.  Dark Lady

(all Berryman’s study)

of minstrelsy... America’s Titanic

or J. Johnson’s grace (we don’t ship

no coal) exudes black milk

for wild Melchizedek

nested in Erica-barge (molto largo trip).

Jonah-Osiris was a dove, Columbia.

Like a Burchfield winter

or Grant Wood choir

she might emerge, Jesse Ophelia –

she might molt into an Ariadne’s Crown

stars shining down

around your bulbous clown.

Jaybird of Eli, couched over Washington.

2.18.19

beamed into a barn corner

LEVEL PLAIN

When all the structures are dismantled,

the fabulous bright makings

woven by spider-kings

undone, what remains untold?

In Mendelssohn, I handed a dandelion

through the wooden fence

to golden Heidi, once –

old flame of infancy, first Valentine.

Her mop of hair colored like wheat

framing chaste happiness –

Gumilev’s compass,

calm charity for all (transparent,

sweet).  The shadow of the martyrs

like myrtle in the graveyard

darkens, green.  The bard

of America recalls through tears

the gentle captains taken from us

like matryoshka dolls –

god-like mortals

molting in dilapidated silos

like shimmering snowfields of wheat-

crystals.  So their presence

in aromatic silence

weights like ballast of a sea-casket

each holiday – all history

compacted in the oval

trace of one primeval

prophet’s kiss.  O mystery

                *

of your mandorla – crumbling wall!

Like Jonah from the sea

come whispering to me –

dark almond, ministering honey-gall!

Your tiny grain of wheat must die

in the heart of Everywoman,

Everyman... becoming stone;

stone reddened in Rhode Island eye

not purchased by price nor money

but only by love.

So that Liberty-dove

became Columbia, for buried Henry –

Astraea beamed into a barn corner

& Virgo spread her sheaf

of compassionate relief

in a sparkling surf of harvest air.

So your soaring icon in a mandala

hovers over Ravenna;

so Dante’s antenna

transmits in spectral panorama

the rainbow’s interlocking rings

framing that child-king

set upon humbling

all earthly dominion – til everything’s

remolded to a level plain

or playing-field; clay

children romp all day

within your carpentry’s domain.

2.14.19

one copper penny

MAGENTA DUSK

Airless stasis of the Brown Decades.

Peto’s trompe l’oeuil.

Abe’s wound is mortal.

Funeral train; black silk parades.

One copper penny glimmers in a well,

grown moss-green.  Imago

for suffering servant... halo

of ineffable good will.  Don’t break the spell.

Was it for nought this Man of Sorrows

took upon his shoulders

our hellfire – that smolders

while his penny ransoms all tomorrows?

Even Old Abe was an infant once.

Loafing on a ship

of milk & honey, lip

curving over smiling waves... a trance

of Promised Land, a river’s dream.

So Henry’s, Hobo’s path

folds under wrath –

collapses bridges into earthquake seam.

Reminiscences of 1865.

An absinthe memory

of rancid statuary

cluttering the dead wasps’ hive.

Disconsolate, they ramble riverbanks –

until the last light breaks

the sky into rose lakes,

magenta dusk.  Let us give thanks.

2.12.19

Shadrack kicks a crust in Voronezh

WOUND SPRING

Weather here in Minnehahapolis

& St. Paul shudders

through ice.  The rudder’s

frozen to the keel – Athena’s

buzzing through chattering teeth.

Black Sea, Black Sea!  Black

ice.  My friend Shadrack

kicks a crust in Voronezh, beneath

malignant stares of a furnished dome;

he will never budge from that line

pitched on his builder’s fine

honey-gold level-eyed home.

Henry’s poem stays put, doesn’t move.

Like translucent ice cube.

Reflecting flickering rube

puzzles along thread-kelson of love.

The singing keel become great little owl

snug in her oak-bole hole

hoots a banderole

along limb lettered like Hebrew scroll

on papyrus barge – some hieroglyph

for hippogriff (abominable

snowman?) – soon to amble

from his polar desert (living stiff);

the high home of the North Pole poem

takes a bead through mica

on that grain of Spica-

wheat... wound spring from vernal tomb.

2.8.19

in the end zone

MAJOR CHORDS

In the shadow of a song of songs

the anthems are always major

chords.  Mendelssohn... (our

home in Hopkins)... everyone belongs.

Tonight the rival city-states,

the patriots, blow

ram’s horns.  O

say can you see... big potentates’

eyes dilate... Vergo rolls out

Hail Mary feint (over

Washington Monument) –

Crazy Horse Rushmore... Touch-

stone!  The transfixated crowd

explodes.  Ghost dance

in the end-zone – Lance

Galahad will take the shroud!

The mob desires to crown a king,

a king of everything.

Sponsors oblige, with bling –

the glittering circlet is a diamond ring

for nubile Woody Berge Ouvrante

(Cheerleader from the Bronx

Will Marry Uncle Onx

Next Year).  Preview this fête galante!

Apollinaire heard the cicadas

droning in the oak –

of how the wind spoke

dry coracles of wheat to Colchis

                    *

& the streetlight in the snowy dark

zones a frozen cross

against the pavement (Loss

for Brady : Bells Will Boom for Belichick).

We’ll laugh about this tomorrow

(or maybe in 2020).

How the crowd, honey,

decides – & doesn’t care, somehow.

They insist on sacrifice – Sacre

du Printemps, ma chérie.

Tiptoe to thundery

finale... just before the war (nacre

& objets d’art, Guillaume).

Leap to the metronome

over the Metrodome,

Sophie – you will survive this doom

of frightened infants in their uniforms;

Thin Blade Societies

& Rudra puberty

sodalities... unconscious norms

(they know not what they do).  Thread

woven for a future prince –

hearts, purple sequins

imprint Valentine wreath for his head;

he’s singing of an anti-kingdom

where his anti-father

(shedding all that bother)

chords an unquenchable welcome home.

2.3.19