winter gematria

DEAD RECKONING

Henry drooped with the blues, his head

on his hand, his wings folded.

Gloom gathers the Gould

with something other than ghost dancing –

rustic farm implements, tongs

in a crucible of heavy rain.

He knows Great Congregation

= love x God+neighbor, yet... wrongs!

The prophet speaks goldenly of such

in his report (Jack

Joachim).  He saw black

where the red-squash bore would touch

his tender rib with a poignard – that son

of a coagulated sow! –

but he rests easy, now

in his little room, in the Forest of Ravlin

I reckon.  Jacques & Jules, Jack

& Jill, tumbled off the wall

& down the hill... so we all

fall down, sang the old buried hack

full of Fathom Fifth.  His vanishing pint

fled like a bat, through a gap

in his rainbow tooth; sap

dribbled from his dank sepulchre, his mint

of 43 years (32 + 11).  She was only 17

when she danced the tyrant-

teller – poky little Calabrian haunt

who yet might spread her wings (sweet halcyon).

1.24.20

Mussolini shoals

MARBLE FACT

Long way from stones of Notre Dame.

We haven’t that feudal allegiance

to a field beyond France.

Bright poppies blister over Belgium

where conundrum of Isis in Iowa

came from.  She is, and was

mysterium of Osiris

on the Mississip – Ezra’s mirror-delta;

hard marble fact planted at West Branch

in Herbert Hoover’s memory

(who would not have taken kindly

to any meat-locker Muss avalanche).

Ezra yodeling the alpine Swiss serene

of his muse Circe Clementine

Vichy (& all the swine

she mesmerized, so spotless clean)

erasing all that history of filthy usury

& black boys handing Bibles

through the bars... Abel’s

your bro, Ez – cain’t you see?

Ah... the shudder of absurdity.

Knife-stab in Marlowe’s eye

– over the Jew of Malta,

of all things!  It cannot be.

It is.  Villon grins in your face,

King Flibberty-Gibbet.

Grimace may be safety net

for every reprobate.  O prodigal race...

5.4.19

 

casket from Samarkand

GREAT RECKONING

Crusaders racing to the Tomb,

an historical pinpoint

in 1099.  Where He went

at 33 (a little room

for some great reckoning).  Daggers

in the eye turn every way –

shark swordfish play

for nightmare realms, & beggars

follow San Francisco up a narrow

fuse (to blessedness).

Stigmata (foolish meekness,

humble mulishness).  A wheelbarrow

carries mild infant Majesty

into his palmy kingdom,

spiky Jerusalem

(sea-rose of sandy history,

Rome’s  crabapple).  The viney mind

demands firm scaffold,

grid to climb, hold

fast – casket from Samarkand,

mercurial chasm, golden

kaleidoscope... meanwhile

one half-moon wafer-smile

of blinding white sail’s sudden

eminence rides on gray wave –

the plummet of an eagle

etches his grave seal,

marking 1132 (full fathom five).

7.15.16

Dartmoor pixie cross