if I walk through this wormhole

LEAN MUSIC

If I walk with Hobo through this wormhole

at the bottom of a zigzag

Mississippi... will I see Cesca Tag

again, when we were young (my soul)?

In Providence?  Et tu, S2?

Picketing the perimeter

of Sagittarius A*,

noting that gravitational tug, you

sense her there, the ghost star...

back of an ecce-crypt

time-vacancy you slipped

through (holeworm, treacherous sailor).

Lean music of the sunflower.

Tall spirit loyal to the sky.

Your gravity a steel gateway,

oar-eye – florescing tacit power.

So this gold Einstein-Rosen bridge

domed by the Milky Way

shines like a lighthouse ray

into a monarch’s heart.  You wedge

there, anxiously, between her wings,

like the child in the blindfold

when a Black Ship sailed...

til tenderly his midnight origami brings

enfoldment to the nth dimension;

Liberty her royal seal

in beeswax, breathing... feel,

Hamlet, soft sunlight’s restoration!

11.19.19

perhaps we are Hagia Sophia

JAPANESE NOTE

Down by Mirror Lakes, in Mendelssohn

Henry collects the silver

trading cards of a younger

self.  Still innocent (the future Hobo-man).

In that Providence springtime,

when we were setting out.

Pure Japanese note

of your own childhood (high chime

of Tokyo folksong).  Your Florentine

round pallor, papery

sheepglow (Butterfly).

Who knew I’d be the priggish Pinkerton

of Rensselaerville epithalamia?

Til that blindfolded boy

waving a Yankee flag (say,

can you see?) – sows stony drama...

Puccini’s on the turntable, at Amiata.

Her spectral Iris-wings

loft LIBERTY (to thee we sing)

unto this microcosm of liublyu stigmata.

Yet, perhaps... we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes.

The crucifixion of surprise

curves down, humbled with apatheia

– still time, still time, to turn

from the spent spirit

to that glad esprit

reflecting oui (edging Ravenna urn).

11.18.19

the sense of being right

GREEN EYE

The sense of being right, said Mandelstam

confronted by the Kremlin

goons.  Gumilev’s vision

of sweet radiance (chaste equilibrium

of morning dew).  The restoration

of all things might not be

some dystopic unreality

but a balancing of earth & heaven –

the way a canoe takes wing downstream

like feathery kayak

or golden bubble-track

across the sky (the Ocean River of your dream).

Kennedy, Jack.  A 4-leaf clover

assassinated every day

along with brother Bobby, &

King, Martin Luther (justice-lover).

A green eye floats, engraved over

the pyramid.  I calibrate

the shifting angles of a late

Atlantis – one heartbroken sky-rover

whose tears will magnify an Iris

in transit, like Venus

(from luxuria to lux

aeternam).  She was born for this –

to be the eye-in-hand of muddy clay

transmitting Jonah to Columbia;

to launch a hallelujah

from Monk’s Mound to D.C. (U.S.A.).

11.17.19

mercurial transit of the Martian sun

GRAND MARQUIS

Armistice Day.  For all veterans.

For memory of an end

to hostilities.  Promised Land

or Providence... high limbs of the ones

who came before, palms lifted (orans).

From martyrs of brave speech,

whole truth, let us beseech

ineffable blessing.  Alighieri stands

nigh frozen Sant’Apollinaire

trasumanare in Ravenna.

Where mossy Giuliana

calls me from her potter’s lair

(soft aviator from a sunken realm).

Like that Tim Taylor, seeker

at Pacific depth (1132

ft. down... USS Grayback graven on its helm).

Project Lost 52 – to bring to light

every forsaken sheep-canoe

& let them float anew

somewhere divine (mercurial transit

of the Martian sun).  She’s calling me.

Like salt-grain in the war-engine,

a kernel from the Corn Maiden

of Grant Wood haunts... her Grand Marquis

a black blind spot across that gilded orb,

Ferrari Rio Santo Spiritu –

she snakes toward you (& you)

from her smile-park (topaz to curb).

11.11.19

Apollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Minneapolis (MN)

SNOW WHEEL

A little snow meanders down in Minneapolis

to cold November earth.

Guillaume, prince triste of mirth

was lowered from his balcony in Paris

two days before the Armistice.

Grandpa packed up his guns

one last time, near Verdun.

Spent rulers carpentered their peace.

Sacre du Printemps set the stage.

Russkaia Neva-sacrifice

summons her apotheosis –

leaps for the holocaust of banal rage

mounting to self-consuming poshlost peak.

Apollinaire was there

that night (under the sulfur-

flare, the guttering of Belle Epoque).

Grandpa field-marshaled the parades

on Armistice Day.  Lafayette,

we are here... the old print

over the dinner table (Revolutionary shades

trippin’ la gigue française, at Mt. Vernon).

My ghosts are here now,

in November snow.

The Rio fleuves inexorably on

down to St. Louee, New Orleans.

Jeanne spins with Jessie

to their Stagger Lee...

my snow wheel hums, Rose (oriens).

11.10.19

I dream a general restoration

CONTRA-DANCE

The early ice on the Mississippi

forms a maze of frozen

eddies, a chaos of cotton-

wood leaves on glass, all dark & ripply.

Somber November drawing on

toward JB’s Janus-mouth.

Slight man, moth-

light, leaf-blown from iron span.

I dream a general Restoration

cousin, cuz.  Because

our love that never was

lies crypted in a deeper congregation

of earthworms... Earth-life...

this pumpkin-celebration

where each seed is someone

like a minuscule canoe (collective

buoyancy, anchored in agape).

Not that Cyclops-utopia

ice-locked with Satana

– imperador del doloroso regno, nay!

Rather a contra-dance of Earth

& Sky, a balancing

of stillness with evolving –

clay vase molded into mirth

by humble presence of the king

(of servant-kings).  A single

molecule of brine (NaCl)

is tabernacle bread & wine (of everything)

                            *

& you will meet her in the ordinary courtyard

of the everyday (she’s Everywoman-

Everyman).  This is a vision

of figure & ground.  She’s walking toward

you, now... like Roger Williams, stepping through

twin pillars on the Terrace...

Providence, a place

of mercy & discretion (fair & true).

I cannot put it into words, this waltz

of swirling time & high

eternity.  It is the sky

spanning the sea.  It is the salt

in everything; it is the molten dove

dive-bombing into clay

who joins you in a sway

of hurtling dancers (Milky Way

a-sarabanding, up above).  I cannot

put it into words.

The brutal violence

(stone-hearted ignorance) surds in a knot

of self-destruction, planetary waste

& You must turn & repent

cries San Francesco, bent

upon his imitatio Christi (feet laced

with scars).  It is the Via Francigena.

You will walk back to the river

sped with such a pulse... her

springing from the graveyard (Magdalena).

11.7.19

essential graphene histrionics

AUTUMN NIGHT

My biographical Brown Decades tumbled

rapidly by, in Providence.

How simply the silence

of these beseeching trees (autumn

at the Arboretum) speaks to me!

Alex Weinstein, in Mt. Auburn...

stood there with Sandy (Grecian

Urn?  Likely committed it to memory).

He played the violin at 91.

Emigré from Odessa –

fruit-fly research @ Columbia –

loved poetry & science... (thread-thin,

stooped, seraphic gentleman

of Cambridge Mass.) –

& so the fleet years pass,

callow Henry, to Thanksgiving (amen,

amen).  I put my faith in one

contextual canoe –

dry tacit Quaker taboo

against unquestioned superstition;

a sort of Boston Personalism

accepting each whorl

of conscience as the real

sign of some ineffable wisdom –

spring, source, coil, J

spiraling beneath a moon

brighter than cogitation

tonight... in a jumbled chaos of hay

                  *

stacked (by osmosis-creation)

across twistronic history

into graphene infinity.

Histrionics of pacemaker nation?

No, kid – it is the equilibrium

of a canoe or gyroscope

emanating (spilling hope)

out of the heart of the Imperium

accosting the Seizer of All Good

with adjusted reciprocity

of infinite mercy –

that normative hearth-neighborhood

established on the everlasting rock

of I & Thou, of eye

& dhou (equality

the ratio of the basic J’nah-Ark).

& so the weird Isis-receptacle

of Mirror-I-Am

fuses in twin-rhyme

with Notre Dame; so the spectacle

of male narcissism becomes unviable

at ordinary crowing

of Rhode Island Red – being,

like palm at the end of the mind, able

to hoot like Owl o’Athena

in the autumn night of

history   (the shadow of love

bending over your cradle)   Ephphatha

11.5.19

the true poem always comes from elsewhere

NEAR KINNERET

This is that ancient harvest night.

You bring a refugee inside

– might be an angel of God –

& find participation is the true delight.

The otherness-&-love of God

deflects the local stream

from its own banks.  A dream

intrudes – disturbs each land of Nod.

Bright Dante, growing gaunt & gray

steps into a seashell

– beached, like him, in exile.

Tall haunted shades of Sant’Apollinare

gaze, raining compassion

from wide almond eyes

like springs, like Beatrice’s...

he feels at home.  O prodigal son!

Poema sacra must be reconfigured.

Maximus in prison

by the Black Sea... vision

like shadow of the Argo soared

– an Easter visitant, come dawning

far above Firenze, or

this rusted blue-red frenzy

ferrying Rubicon (Cain-abling)

& you are weeping, you are smiling

far beyond sacrifice,

climbing that hill-face

near Kinneret (life-reconciling).

11.2.19

an ocean swell

ACORN-RIM

This is that ancient harvest night.

Rhode Island harvesting

the sea.  A Newport wedding

(Jacqueline & Jack) at rocky height

(of Sachuest). & as the whale

harvesting the sea as well

is no less an ocean swell,

& Jonah is his pearl – still hale

& whole, alive from deeps of hell –

so Henry might rise again

from his own carapace of sin

(that shimmery-mirror Minotaur-spell).

Hobo-Falstaff lurks beneath a branch

of raven-wood (Cautantowwit,

Caws-too-much-wit).  Stone-set

into the Seeker’s providential avalanche –

one violet for the junk-jewelry state.

The salt air clears his head.

One Spirit wakens all the dead,

he chants – one Dream outshining potentate

& pyramid.  He nurses Henry back to health

like Whitman with his milky muse;

Abe & martyr Martin fuse

into the circle of their commonwealth –

a coracle or ark of Liberty

circumferencing azure shores,

whose acorn-rim Henry restores

to dappled shade (bright almond eye).

11.1.19