down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

mini-Mississippi meditation

WINDY CURRENT

They found a body in the broken ice

upstream from Franklin Bridge.

Nearby, JB leapt the edge

50 Epiphanies ago.  Minnesota Nice

reminder of mortality, this cold

Ash Wednesday.  & who

shall rescue me from this

body of death?  You, Lord?

Let each one find you, mighty to save.

My own keeled-over Mardi Gras

diversions end Mid-Barataria.

O rheumy battery of barratry – behave!

Half-sunk, in debt to fraud… Old Ironsides,

our near-abandoned Constitution

drifts toward Mars Lagoon –

graveyard of hulking Liberties, Columbias…

I heard Brad Barth, & maybe Latrobe

have shaped a mini-Mississippi

en masse.  Delta recovery

with restoration of the entire globe

– at 1/65th scale, using simulated sand –

in view.  Musk-earthy angel

of Odetta, oversing y’all

sluiceways – my diversions too; your hand

stroking the banjo-strings, your voice…

one grain of sand.

Let not Pharaoh’s demand

deter you from your bitter cross

                    *

– a better choice, for man nor woman

noir nor blank, there be nought

but this flashing pivot –

fiery chariot, all-bearing, San Franciscan

stigma tattoo – all-loving happy ghost

& live-oak everlasting shade

reconciling all things made

& unmade (windy current, whirling host).

Water currents, pressure & flow

(scale-model of congregated

clover coracle, 200’ x 70’)

up to the Chapel of Eternal Now.

You just want to get in & start playing

with it.  We can (she sings)

no longer accomplish things

by damming things off.  What saying,

Great Spirit?  Hwæt?  There was silence

for about six hours

(prelude to thunderblast)

when ailing Alighieri, heart gone quiet as

a babe, asleep upon her mother’s breast

gazed up into the rainbow dome

at Sant’Apollinare.  You come

to me gliding, from Sabbath rest

in your almond canoe, Jessie-Jesu…

out of the gemstone casket

where 4 streams exit

like the Nile, from Ethiopia… O Hallelu.

2.26.20

from G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., Gemstone of Paradise, p. 187

at edge of Gulf, at Mardi Gras

MUSTARD TEAR

So ancient Carnival-time creaks around

Hobo, at winter’s nadir –

up & down the copper

serpent-river, ice to Gulf, from underground.

Seigneur Latrobe & son (masonic

architects) glide on

into their slanted lichen

tombs, below the levee.  Chronic

exploitations, born of lordly guile

condemn brother & sister

to the poorhouse – maybe

forever (never God’s will).  Meanwhile

Mardi Gras Indians from Cajun swamps

tiptoe, sauntering in beads &

feathers, vaunting weeds

beside Big Muddy… spin their vamps,

magnanimous & happy-go-lucky!

As Frazer phrased it once,

the Oak-King was dunce

for a day, scapegoat – to bind three

realms, to decorate the grim

reality of king-dom

(manacled to thrum

of male plumage, sly rhythm

of greed).  Meanwhile us tramps lie in our camps

the ciphered segregation

of a riven nation –

the politic paralysis of frozen clamps

                *

unbroken for a generation

yoking partisans

of limited taxation

with particles of airy explanation.

Yet lo, Hobo! the sleepy sleepwalker

still reigns under the rain…

King Virbius in blue vervain,

Osiris-man of verby us (dumb talker)!

One lone mustard tear of Isis

flowing down the dream;

knit-wit of Union, seam-

by-seam… Columbia, thy hum he is!

& out of one immense unspoken heart

on its wheel of suffering

flies this foam… a sparkling

shield of steely martyrdom – cart

of churl & Charlemagne, Big Bear,

Charles’ Wain – iron hinge

of Milky Way!  Melange

of pipesmoke sacrificial princes, there!

Martin, & Jack, & Abraham…

William & James… lights

winking from Astraea’s height –

sea-foam & flotsam of the cosmic Lamb!

At the edge of the Gulf, at Mardi Gras

Hobo floats to sea, to see…

out of wrath & misery

lamps of justice, liberty – her wings, Noah!

2.23.20

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe

dimensions of Pacific promise

IRON ROOT

It’s possible we understand the common good,

since we are human beings

blessed with intellect, & feelings.

Might we live in the old neighborhood

again?  The narrow streets of Providence

for example – haunted by ghosts

of Roger Williams & his hosts

Canonicus & Miantonomi (his friends,

working out in late-night conferences

the immemorial foundations

of good government).  Nations

& peoples, grounded in the ancient senses

of those words (Pax, Libertas, Justitia)

sustained, beyond the bite

of Mammon (greed & spite)

into a vivid substance of reality –

dream-songe of every poet ever born.

Yea, Henry Acorn King

will of foundations sing,

laid deep before the civil wars began –

of Edw. Coke, bent over Magna Carta

(constitution of our civil rights

before the king, his knights,

were born); of Williams, apple of his eye

& visionary of our liberty

who felt the fiery seed

of conscience, freed

from all coercion, was the key

                  *

that opens up a box of keys –

the iron root of human

dignity (since we are one

with goodness only as we choose

to be).  & how distinct this innocence

from those manipulations

of the Mammonites, evasions

of sadistic Minotaurs!  The silence

of compassionate stars rebukes Caesar

& all his empires, murmurs

Hobo.  His abode blurs

river-mud with gravity (cold graveyard

avatar).  All density of stone

compacted into black hole

rings your somber footstool,

Everyman – refining stokehold of the sun!

& indistinguishable from hopeless hell

until the graceful whisper

of Columbia, your dove-sister,

thunders like lilting from a light-filled well –

like those Latrobes, who journeyed down to Delta

après shaping simple mansions

for America; or Hart’s dimensions

of Pacific promise… Ocean harmonies (selah).

So Hobo’s heart lingers (below the sweep

of salty galaxies, just off

the bridge).  His brooding strophe

coos from orange shadows… azure keep.

2.15.20

Song of Songs in a snow globe

SWEET SNOW GLOBE

The twin foxes & three pine trees

on honeymoon (in a sweet

snow globe, in Norway).  What

use your Solomonic sarabande, these

loopy solemnities?  & the echoes

far into the motherland

Cahokia to maid’s Gravesend

your Adonai, my Adonis   a Memphis

trial by fire (intricate clay bark

buried in salt harbor).

O serious Nile laborer!

Nephthys, Dark Lady, mark

these fathoms of thy bottomland.

Snow was general over Ireland.

Strum the steel mandolin

then, Mary – plectrum in hand!

We climb out of the clay to shape

this Royal Arch, for St.

Latrobe & Son.  See the faint

wave-trace along its rim (crêpe

for a funeral train; flute-song

transcription).  Grain

melts into wine again –

the living man or woman prong

from earth.  We called it love

& swam into the circle

where snowflakes speckle

dark green live oaks (O crooning dove).

1.16.20

to shade the children from the burning sun

my Hobo Code coffee cup

WAVE-THRUMS

I’m coming to the crown of the river-tree

& the mouth of the copper serpent

following Hobo, where she bent

toward the Delta of American poetry.

& there’ll be singing & dancing, each clown 

hootin’-&-a-hollerin’

& dressed up like an Indian

to celebrate the simple joy of Union.

& I’ll trail behind Benjamin Latrobe

the good mason of Washington

taking after his dear son

to build a floating city from mosquito-glob;

I’ll watch that Phoenix-bird arise

like an evening Jonah,

spreading her ghost-persona

wings from Frisco Bay to Providence

to shade the children from the burning sun

& fly them to a new playground

where wave-thrums sound

their steady oceanic Truth for everyone

whose eyes merge in the Sophie-bark

curving over the Churnagogue

(octagonal pine-log

hover-canoe; dynamic-ceramic arc

empowered by the muscled wheel

of hopeful human clay)

– J-stroking toward an Agape

aflow to share, to guide, to lift, to heal.

8.20.19

the stubborn Acmeist

AMERICAN THING

The way a stream flows around a piece of granite

rough gray in the water, winking

with rose quartz, mica (splintering).

So the stubborn Acmeist would honor that

which is, that which exists.  & Osip

would agree with Oscar Cullmann

as to the meaning of Redemption –

it’s already happened.  So right worship

is a thing of joy – ample gratitude

for being, & the hope

of Restoration (its full scope

a celebration, braiding bread & wine).  You’d

barely sense the almost-infinitely distant

echoes of a first Thanksgiving...

everyone hoisting something

to that scrawny picnic table (ancient

light).  So as we J-stroke forward

let’s return to New Orleans

with B. Latrobe, who kens

the old French buildings there (mired

in mosquito nets & drainage swamps);

where he will follow his own son

to his malarial grave (one

body, bread & wine).  Under yellow lamps

like fireflies in the harbor (swaying,

soaring).  Scintillant mosaic

for one lugubrious Republic

(hopeful, Creole).  Clay American thing.

8.6.19

heights & depths

LOVE LEADS

In the phosphorus dwelling-place of the Most High

Dante, murmured Hobo

will I be able to hear

that melancholy train-horn cry

so-so long gone?  His pal Henry

felt that ol’ pulsing flame

of lonesombrero, becomin’

churnagogue (centripetal clay) –

that emerald lichen-moss of Giuliana,

flanking a time-hewn sepulcher

with it still whorl

of tesseratic Emperors & Empresses... ah

Psyche, from those regions which

are Holy-Land!  Smoky

incense signals eye-

in-hand, Galla (yon casket-niche).

The soul is feminine.  The turbulent

churnagogue is melting

galaxies, in buttermilk –

hamlets of sacred discontent;

YHWH, detached from patriarchal kings

unveils a weird Coatlicue-

possessed & epileptic Dante-

muse... Venusian fire – & Jonah sings

Love leads us up like moth to flame

from steel-train Iron Range

down to Delta... strange

diamond, Latrobe (El MLK mandala-frame).

7.29.19

sounds vaguely French

MOSS-GREEN

Benjamin Latrobe – sounds vaguely French?

A British architect

tapped to repair, perfect

the Capitol (amid the stench

of swamp & burning).  Dogged by debt

& selective smear campaigns

sets off for New Orleans

to finish big water-works his late

son Henry had so blithely begun

(cut down by yellow fever

in September).  Ever-

green cypress can withstand the rain.

New Orleans doorways lead you back

in time (Edgar Degas

plein air sketches...

moss-green veneer, live-oak

with levee-wash).  Mississippi

spills relentlessly

into the blue & salty

Gulf.  Her sea-monstro be you & me,

O Jessie O.  L’architecture

de l’Amerique c’est plain

& simple, utilitarian –

only... we’d like to see that azure

Paradis, un jour.  Le bateau ivre

des pirates-frères, Lafitte...

en bas le bayou, sweet

Benjy.  Lisez ton ombreux livre.

6.24.19

moss-green lamb-rock

CHERRY PETALS

Anniversaries, conjunctions... Latrobe’s

bell tower in New Orleans

& a birthday (Walter Whitman’s)

twine reverberations, stellar probes.

This lone outcrop in far north wood

furred-over with green

& phosphorescent lichen

mimes in lime our original Head –

primordial earth-ram (sheepish lamb)

upon the adamant of Time –

Isis, or Miriam –

Virgin bedrock of the bright I AM.

Inexorability of violent history –

labyrinth of Minotaur –

wolf-trap for who we are

spooled out in filmy, rusty tragedy

after tragedy – the pile-up of ’68

the green redhead in Dallas

the blue blackbird in Memphis

& it all seems endless – infernal hate –

O brazen, obdurate Iron Age

of malice toward all!  Only

the slant eye of poetry

mourning on a misty Montauk stage

might warble a different kingdom comin’ –

chaste infant equality.

Your hummingbird infantry,

Walter – your cherry petals, Benjamin.

5.30.19

surfing Delta gumbo

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe, architect

LIGHT DOWRY

On this day, 200 years ago

Benjamin Latrobe won

the municipal commission

for the bell tower in New O. –

St. Louis Cathedral, surfing delta

gumbo (French-Indian-

Spanish-Anglo-American)

on canoe-back of turtle-flotilla.

Oak Apple Day, Restoration Day,

Rhode Island Statehood Day

& many another day

no doubt (not far from Whitsunday).

In the well of the king, of the king who must die

(before time began?) shone

a shade of green pine

grieving... like an old Irish eye.

Luminous melancholy, just a shade

from joy – from the well

of well-being, when all

shall be well (amid all things well-made).

When frost of fright-scorn, the old

icehouse of sacred king

slides into melt... & everything

shines in right splendor of childhood;

when young ones in Rhode Island

or New Orleans lift themselves

to the light dowry of El

Shaddai – her pact of love and understand.

5.29.19

Down the Mrs. Nile

BLACK MARBLE

The slow green river is historian as well, 

moving with time from here

to there, yet always here

same as ever, with detritus of fossil

shells – eroding palimpsest

subject to misquotation,

willful erasure, mistaken

readings...  Observe that anxious,

fretful archivist – thin railing Ez

with his fistful of heroes

impaled on total loss

(a maze of smoking Flanders trenches).

Like a Minotaur in the bughouse

with his Schifanoia grid –

hierarchical, to put a lid

on greed, by force (his Musci-Louse).

What then’s this chaos of bad dreams?

Life’s horror-show?  Not so,

not so.  PAX.  What thou

lovest well...  After the steamboat schemes

Latrobe still floats his capitol design.

Cornstalks, tobacco flowers...

Virgo, with Isis-powers,

on the adamant of time, will shine –

black marble out of Nile (West Branch).

Not abstract or Pythagorean,

but human, Galilean –

shepherd in Ravenna – beaming avalanche.

5.16.19