emblems of endurance

EARTH SPIRALS

The words are worn & second-hand

because they came to you

from what came before you.

Peaceful silence of that early land.

Spring meadow, showered with gemstones

glinting in the Joe-Pye weed.

Her breathing warmth, your need

to hold.  Her smile, tickling your bones.

What I wanted to say, could I put it in words

seraphic Maximus might get?

Leaning no-handed on his parapet –

a prisoner (two mourning doves his birds

of paradise, his golden fleece, his dream).

Our tacit sense of truth

sleepwalks, like gentle Ruth

into her waking world.  Like a clear stream

running over red-brown clay, where scattered

agates gleam… moss-rose earth spirals

guide us to Gateway walls –

Itasca springs of earliness.  Of all that mattered.

The throne, the chair of adamant obsidian.

Her maze of Mexican onyx.

Coatlicue’s fire-tempered bricks

of wrath & fortitude… that perihelion

of burning sun, her purifying kiln.

These emblems of endurance

frame a turtleshell dance,

absorbing pain – her sweat-salt will.

4.9.20

somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave

CAHOKIAN GIFT

The sun peeks through this February weather

as a frail reed or fluted candle

finds a chink in some Siberian

prison wall.  United States are altogether

in states of disarray today.  Tonight

the President’s speech will

be, no doubt, a veritable

trompe l’oueil – he will not make it right.

Henry too lingers in his fog

of disaffection.  Absent

from his Hobo-tent,

divided from his tiny tree-frog

peeper (cooing like a mourning dove

no larger than a copper penny –

greenish rust, gone silver Jonah

now, somewhere off Pennsylvania Ave).

He hears relentless Ocean River

bend the zodiacs toward clay,

Big Muddy bearing all away

into her coral Nephthys-quiver;

chambers of Coatlicue

like dead bee hives, storing

the crystallized outpouring

(zigzag red-black raven roundelay).

O motionless Greek urn, still turning,

Ezekiel-bones, still yearning!

Redeem Time’s churning

revolutions, Adonai – transfiguring

                        *

North Star!  You mantle humankind

like that Madonna della Misericordia

Piero della Francesca frescoed –

tricolor umbrella-shelter for the blind!

For Agape is a magnetic prong, threads

taconite to one Itasca

lady’s slipper (showy!) – &

drops rusty anchor of Rhode Island reds

into a lambent western window-rose

(mauve, scarlet, violet & blue)

where Hope beams into view –

& from her constant fortitude still glows!

So anchor Henry’s trembling canoe

deep in your heart-of-hearts’

matrix – where timespace floats –

in that classy garage Micòl showed you;

your forsaken Byzantine three-master

beached in parochial nowhere,

ferrying Alighieri into air.

Where the mosaic wave of our disaster

cradles in the love that heals despair

& shimmers there, like Juliet

walked back from fatal plummet

or Henry Bear, helped from his chair

of perilous dismay (to restoration

& recovery).  So lift

my hokey Cahokian gift

up to your Eye of Providence… Union.

2.4.20

her quantum realm

FLIGHT-PATTERN

Hobo retreats to his park bench

on the riverbank... who

he?  The other half of you –

half-man, insufficient mensch

acquainted with the missing hole

of all deracinated souls.

The fever-men, the moles

in Washington... hungry for the dole

of glitz & lucre, hypocritical revenge

for Cain (vain little men

seeking glory in ruin).

Like a swift & mauvais rêve-songe

baseless as those trumped-up towers

Hobo trips his execrable

ghost-dance parable –

a travesty, to fill last hours

verily unto their scarlet brim.

He sees her, off in the distance

beyond the iron bridge.  Trance-

vision of that Liberty (Wisdom)

triumphant in her harbor... crown

upon her brow, torch lifted

overhead, arm hugging tablet

of the law.  Her quantum realm (unknown

Coatliqubits of soul-restoration)

rotates the clay wheel

on its Gateway oracle –

fright transformed into flight-pattern.

10.24.19

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

etched in vernacular

BEEHIVE WITNESS

Dante’s rambles round the tamarack swamps

outside Ravenna.  Beached

hulks of Byzantium reach

toward the sea.  Inside, smoke-lamps

phosphoresce hieratic grandeur

(kind bovine gaze of Empress,

Emperor).  Alighieri’s

impressed – ecco l’ora serale

in those green sheepfold meadows

where Time does not run.

He pursues his martyrion –

Crusader grandfather, circle of Mars.

He etches in vernacular his answer

out of deep parish history

to the welded Roman panoply

(Arcadian melody, Virgilian whisper).

I am a scribe who when Love speaks

hastens after, hearkening

noting everything down.

I haven’t heard from Bea in weeks.

I remember lips set with a grim reproof.

Down at the borderland

(Texas to Samarkand) –

Coatlicue, Tezcalipoca... beetling roof

of squalling Raven years.  Esta

su iglesia, Henrique?

She’ll be coming like Elijah,

not Europa, now (beehive witness).

6.24.19

woodcut by Mary Ravlin Gould

rattlesnakes & wild hogs

woodcut by Mary R. Gould

BLANK MIRROR

Hobo & Henry (mirror lakes of ice)

hunker down by the Miss

in apocalyptic freeze.

Global worming – ain’t nice,

offers Hobo.  Henry stands on a log

of spongy cottonwood,

to speechify.  I would

gather everyone in D.C. – slug

it out with themeny!  Hobo : Who he?

King Henny Gowanabe?

Beware Coatlicue,

m’deer!  She got that panoply

um rattlesnakes & wild hogs,

rootin’ all around –

Iagoons, Macboars... ground

Z for Camazone swamp hellhound dogs!

In the blank mirror of unconsciousness

the stone-cold powers

& the lotus-flowers

collide in a collusion...  Heartlessness,

she mutters.  Hobo sunk down.

Cheer up, old boy,

sez Hank.  My Book of J

opines beneath Cordelia’s Crown;

she shone me that Madonna del Parto

flaring like Indian mound –

high Sophie’s dancing ground

(who shall restore our humane Beneficio).

1.30.19

Morning to Evening Star

CIRCLE LAKE

Blindly, Hobo inches toward

the Keys.  In Florida.

Toward the delta,

in Louisiana.  His handy old

eye-in-hand in hand (light

portable fire-drill).

Ply all your skill,

Hobo.  Hi huraru ra’a,

Hi awari ra’a.  A muddy ray

from cold Atlantic

like some frantic

foundering Santa Maria

threads yarns toward that western

Garden of Evening Star.

Across his eyelid, sure –

like Sire Henry, in his baby coffin

(six weeks encrypted with Guillain-Barré).

Hi huraru ra’a,

Hi awari ra’a.

Autumn leaves of disenchanted

authors, sighing in their libraries...

(the Roger Williams version,

for piano).  Dispersion

through each mental prison (Henry’s,

yours).  Dread of ocean void

spirals up from deep

Le-Hev-Hev keep –

Coatlicue (the cut-up) is annoyed

                    *

& threatens Everyman – her sheep

is black & bloody red!

– Nana, you might be dead

before you know it.  Go to sleep.

The dream song reconfigures all

within its top-spin

in your heart-garden.

Your father was a gentleman narwhal;

your son was dancing on the shore

of Circle Lake, in Midway

Mirror-Land (in Galilee).

The crucifixion of the Evening Star

will not unveil her night-reality.

Observe this family

photograph, Henry.

Miss Padgett’s ancient book quarry –

the massive double-panes of glass,

a mandorla for owlish

Actaeons (Horus,

searching for Columbia?  Atlas,

looking for the moon?)  Nana,

dancing Sophie calls me.

Grandpa.  Hiawatha

had a friend, Hart Ibis Artemis – yah...

yawning from the deep, Jonah.

You must become the dove

still dancing, love –

spun from the heart of things.  Selah.

11.30.18

down by the River Road

Mpls. Star-Tribune, spring 1957

ALTER EGO

Hobo, out there in the wind & the rain

like a shattered King Lear.

An old-fashioned father.

Harmonica squeals – like brakes on a train.

Looks up toward the ridge, where Henry

mimes King of the Oak.

The Knot-King (royal joke).

Spidery threads cross buffoonery

with tacky mute muttering...

clay Eye-in-Hand

from Coatlicue-land.

Anne Boleyn territory (stuttering

terror).  He’s your 8th alter ego

this month, moony Earth –

been angry since birth.

Tsk, tsk.  Some boor’s addled Eddie, yo.

Divided-dividing, fibrillated

fibber... earthquake

salaud in pancake

make-up.  Henry?  Must be related.

Brothers, battling in his head

since Cain was able to kill –

equilibrium still

left out of the equation, love.  Sad!

There’s a buried man on the other side,

sire (near Pig’s Eye).  Emerald

green, her leaves unfold.

Big Muddy catfish will abide.

11.17.18

stone, water, light, fire

DOUBLE RING

The agitations of a stone thrown in the stream

make ripples that become

a smooth continuum

of moving wheels.  One Gothic beam

draws light through stone and water –

blending elements

into high bafflements

of rainbow glass, mind with nature

beyond nature, reason with wonder.

Agnes – her exacting threads

trace Ariadne’s leads

through wilderness of sea & thunder.

Grant – his strange & strict constructions

spin a decussated

dream landscape – fated

black dirt looming beneath confections

of late sunset West Branch foliage.

Why, then, this mirage

of images?  The poet’s rage

wells from embodied fury – & her voice

– Arachne’s, Ariadne’s – is mortal

as that scar-calendar

of dread Coatlicue

unsnagged by force from Mexican corral.

Her poem is cast-iron Poseidon-net

straight from the furnace,

thus : a human face

veiled by the smoke of calumet

                     *

morphing brute fraudulence to peace,

transmuting blank white

voids to violet

& moss-green habitats of paradise.

St. Maximus Confessor, musing

monk, articulated

in theory what unfolded

in reality – fusion of divine choosing

with human liberty in understanding,

in enactment, as the spirit

moves us : radiant

tangle of wheels into a double ring.

All spokes are joined there, in the personal –

as in a room near Golgotha

babble turned glossolalia

& tongues aflame lit one bright coronal.

The poet chants out of that mental fire

& dances like a Nazirite

her intellectual delight

inviting you & me to join the choir

around that altar of a rolling stone –

a living hearth-fire

of the Earth’s desire

for equilibrium, once we throw down

the Minotaur lodged in our hearts.

Malevolent violence & lust

& greed for dominance must

be renounced... & so the dancing starts.

7.17.18

conducting veinous electricity

MUD-ANGELS

These three mud-clay homunculi

hung from pink ribbons

in my tent – lumpy remains

from some Dance of Death?  My

mother must have brought them back

from Mexico (mud-angels

to guard her potter’s wheel).

Coatlicue of Quauhnahuac,

adamant Madre of encrusted Time!

Out of your bottomland

whirls eye-in-hand –

out of Monk’s Mound’s perennial slime...

Clay muscles rolling stone – conducting

veinous electricity –

out of nothing come to be

loaves loafing from the oven (rising,

singing).  A moss-green Isis by the Nile

(or in West Branch) you

rain your rivers blue,

compassionate Magdalen – your smile

lifts Jesús from the grave, raises

Enrique from the cemetery

too (some ordinary

day on Earth).  Hobo Jay cleanses

all hearts, rinses eyes with river-clay –

sighs, EPHPHATHA.  From boulders

God can lift up equal daughters,

equal sons... just look at buried Henry-manqué!

7.10.18

Philadephia harbor

SHADE TREE

Stewart’s old print of Philadelphia harbor

(1821).  The great shade tree

by the shore, so peacefully

imposing.  What’s America for?

The benign bonheur, hovering over

our intricate pursuits

of same.  The one who loots

forcefields of dominance, mon frère,

may never find this canopy

of feathery leaf-

grace, hopeful belief...

for we the people brook no satrapy –

relentless justice of the golden rule

the frame of human dignity;

law’s equilibrium of equity

our guarantee of commonweal.

My own boat pilots back to Mendelssohn

so slowly, through such vast

flat riverlands.  Her mast

a pine tree split from almond Someone –

cloudy shadow of a smile (O shady oak).

Your heavy clay, Coatlicue –

the chilly violence you

still portray – fired to a silver spoke

as fine as spiderweb, becomes a sign.

Your limestone epitaph –

a serpentine & fractal staff

fractured for us, broken for bread & wine.

5.17.18

spring crucible

ASPHALT PATH

Yesterday your birthday, Papa.

92, mild ghost.  Sun-wheel

set at Swan Point... seal

of a woman’s self-extinction.  Ah,

woeful calendar (Coatlicue).

Strife of father & son.

Friday black sun,

aboriginal sin (hey ey

yo).  Here in Minneapolis

snow, interring April

in one wide hexagonal,

preserves a buried man in ice

(Resurrection Cemetery).

Henry ascends the asphalt

path from heart’s tumult

to frozen Father of his Country.

Washington Ave. Bridge.  Yet

(wobbling, wavering

within your shadowy

ring of flame) – dawn’s pale promise!

Man’s faithless diffidence his own

life sentence, we

depend upon your mercy

to raft us into Libertas again –

mysterious Jonah in the “33”

(Mars’ den) whose hum

breaches delirium,

wind-bred to share (Nazarene glee).

4.13.18

Who killed Robin Redbreast?

HAGIA SOPHIA

Already the first snow saunters down

at dusk (All Saints’ Day).

Robins nibble cherry

crabapples; waxwings are flown.

Some gray squirrel (squirreled away

in Book Depository?)

broke the back of Sophie’s

jack o’lantern... strange display

splayed into Dia de los Muertes.

So Jeff the Fireman

crossed into a bar (man

overboard).  Barranca... Beatrice...

man who went to live with Indians.

Ghost dance, compadre;

Dennis Banks (hey ey

yo).  Eagle feathers in the grandstands

quoting LBJ, ironically (“treaties”).

Home, home on the range

(small fry).  My ange

d’or – in the abyss, like Cassiopeia’s

fireball.  Wax melted in the wings.

Hamlet, his father’s vortex

seal – lay off that, Tex.

Untouchable guitar strings

(hellhound on my trail).  The man’s

in jail.  A thin blue line

separates the whisper mine

from outer darkness (someone plans

                    *

ahead ahead).  Pumpkin or Trumpkin,

orange oak bolete...

mushroom cloud.  Yeti...

this is the forest primeval (again).

American robins gather by the fire.

In the Bruegel scene –

where the old women

stoke the blaze with bones (ire

smoke-signals, from Columba).

Globilized indifference

in a culture of comforts

– soap bubbles... insubstantial... ah

King of Pumpkins!  How the wax melts!

My soul leans inward

toward your abject & absurd

reward, Coatlicue – so many wolf pelts!

In the bright snow of Siberia

the cold blue fire burns

through bronze lids.  Eyes

turn in your direction...  Selah,

my friend.  La vida es sueño.

Poetry = transcript.

Out of the drowsy crypt

she glances, see... muy bueno.

The double doves of the peacock dome

resolve the red & blue

to violet... so you

are Hagia Sophia (hippodrome).

11.1.17

my Bruegel panorama

AUTUMN AIR

The little gold galleys of the butternut

navigate through autumn air.

My Bruegel panorama

of proverbial bird-wit is fading out.

The motherland calls Hobo.  Every leaf

a chaste canoe... Rus, Rus.

The enemy be us,

pugnacious Pogo cries – war is grief

between brothers.  Apollinaire

drifts in gray whiffs

of wistfulness... his skiff’s

more tangled up with Minotaur

than was before, sighs Psyche-

Ariadne.  That graybeard

on Ravenna guard

surrounded by gray paint-debris –

he might be me.  Ocean is gray

as wing of turtledove today.

Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw them wheels a’glory

Louis sang (on path LP

somewhere in Tuscany).

Leonardo da Vinci

drew Vitruvian Man like a Kali

on a microcosmic wheel of fire –

he was such a star!

& in the Last Supper

Judas & Jesus in sfumato-mirror

                  *

reach together across girlish Jean –

or do they reach for her?

Shocked faces of the men –

is it betrayal, or espousal sign?

Some knot of gravitational waves

whorls into matrix-vortex.

Beloved spindrift Rex

emergent from that sea of graves –

a eucharist or mystical body

encircled by a palm

inscrutable as that helm

of Jonah, breaching the cloudy

surf of Ocean River – O font

of soul-transfigurement!

So rooted in the fundament

we rise as citizens of Turtle-Tent –

when the Eternal comes, & we

are summoned to a wedding-

feast.  Melodious syrinx

of Orpheus-Nazir... blithe epi-

thalamium from sparkle-profundum.

Wrath of Kali-Coatlicue-

Moloch subsides away

& Leonardo frames his simulacrum

of one vernal smile... Mona Lisa

bubbly as Virgin

on the Rocks.  Come in,

she says; God’s blessing in persona.

10.19.17

like a Balinese cock-fight

FRISCO CROSSROAD

Poets’ business, like a ring

round a Bali cock-fight –

goodbye to all that.

Shake your kaleidoscope thing,

ping your kalimba – your bricolage

a grubby grab-bag

(seven pounds of brag

& rage, mixed up with garbage).

Meanwhile that flesh-tone bridge

(crossing my Mississippi

song-&-dance) will be

morphing some spider’s double-edge

Venn diagram – a stick figure

at hobo train junction

where sunny Everyman

remembers split Coatlicue.

Rumors of an impasse, whispered

through a chain-link fence.

Barbed lozenge of insistence

scarring Rome, Jerusalem... the word

made fishy (west of Galilee,

east of Athens, Georgia)

as a picnic smorgasbord

laid out beneath barren oak tree.

That smell gets into everything.

Like something baked

a week in a canal – like

messy string theories, untangling

                  *

a knotty plot of pots & pans, banging

the human family

to kingdom come (really?)

from seedy tribes to Nero’s hanging

gardens.  Shady Rome, where every

cosmic veil is torn –

& a black rock is borne

upon recalcitrant shoulders of slavery

into the center of a black hole’s

starry honeycomb.

What ass bears the whole

sum?  What shoe of prophet’s mule?

Maybe an offshoot of Coatlicue

wearing a flimsy linen

Joseph-coat.  A woman,

patient Pietà... La Pia, Psyche...

Ariadne or Arachne, raveling

path P... that rugged,

ragged Francine – plugged

at Frisco crossroad – traveling

freight.  Sometimes you meet a person

heavier than time & space.

Rough wind carves well-faces

lined with laughter, hope... pain...

She steps forth from black stone –

stirring bears in her arms,

palming clay amid storms

of adamant love (makar-maid, shown).

10.4.17