irrational Archimedean constant

APPLE PIE

On the cusp of another Ides of March

plague wracks the Republic.

Snubbing his soothsayers, slick

Julius the 4th tees off a crumbling arch.

Henry Hollow glimpses Fenris in the mirror

coyotes laughing in the doorway

the delicate gyroscopic orrery

of light & dark about to shatter –

shards of church & state, the glare

of Lucifer the puppet-master

dark Leviathan off-shore

a wilderness of the sea (whale Jonah’s lair).

But it shall not be so with thee,

you murmur to me…

                O

irrational Archimedean constant

transcendental root of unity.

Mild logos of a fisherman, a Fisher

King, fish-man… your hook

one Magdalenian smile – her look

from nocturne-cave of milky… where?

Before the granary-empire, before

domestication of the slave –

beyond star-winking nave

or curve of Galla crypt (Ravenna lore);

the ratio of infinite circumference

to one straight line.

Guillaume’s trompette marine.

Thanksgiving apple pie (in Providence).

3.14.20

Cordelia in the wasps' nest

AUTUMN RITE

In the car coming back from the memory unit

I catch the tail end of Mahler’s 9th

the slow slow strings’ fading strength

bent like snarly willow limbs into some resonant

sweet culmination (ancient Mendelssohn

elegy in mind).  Autumn’s

rust-blood golden sun’s

quintessence now, O silent one?

Cordelia in the wasps’ nest, at the axis

of the earth... Lear, trembling

like an oak gall wasp – bleeding,

stung by the crypt-keeper (Euderus

Set).  The wasp within the wasp, Osip –

Shakespeare’s quaint acorn-

crown of happiness (shorn

pharmakon).  & shalt thou drink my cup?

The box-within-a-box, the matryoshka

toy?  Like bloody JFK

in Dallas, on a Friday –

Jackie’s pink tiara (autumn leaf regalia)...

The river of violin sound measures time

to its serene delta, my friend.

& the tree (Hagia Sophia with a million

eyes) harbors the wind like a nursery dome –

you hear the sound of it (that waterfall

through twin cities, Berryman)

but you know not whence (my son)

it comes (oak’s Galla rite, imperial).

10.15.19

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

unbreakable chords

HUMAN ECHO

Your nostalgia for the aristocracy

of childhood, Vladimir,

I understand.  So here :

infantile tyrants bear it away

in sappy cerements of innocence.

Galla & her golden boy

& their brief beehive day

drowse in Ravenna, under silence

of mosaic stars; Dante too

sleeps there, still far

from his Firenze mère –

the milky galaxy of midnight blue,

his babble-realm of splendor-joy.

A fluent melody

pours endlessly

from thine ineffable benevolence, Blue J;

a spiral at the cave entrance,

an everlasting sign

of all Creation

(ceaseless, calm, majestic dance).

Those unbreakable chords of Mendelssohn

at the end of the trolley line;

the sound of the violin

lesson, the neighborhood of children...

& the shadow of the Thunderbird

in the immense oak tree

the dark green sanctuary

of Morning Star   dolphin-shepherd

                     *

out of deep-twined memory

by the cistern heard

rose-enfolded Word

out of Ocean’s fond   Jonah-infinity

Instinctive fright becomes aggression,

dominance abets revenge;

since long before Stonehenge

each weak scapegoat endures oppression

& the tantrum of the infant

replicated by depression

each political occasion

filters through both mob & tyrant.

But it shall not be so with thee.

I have no wrath, the Ghost

murmurs; I am the Most

High Heartbeat, mild Invisibility –

indivisible reply

out of the crystalline

& quintessential Union

at the source of Earth & Sky.

I am your human echo, come to be

among you, in my realm

of love, mercy, wisdom –

I am the Nazir, chanting out of Galilee.

& then I saw her, Jonah-Shadow –

wings extending over all

of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Ghost-heart we feel, ghost-bird we know.

7.18.18

agate density

GREEN HILL

Dante nearing the end of his poem

ambled around Ravenna

under cloudy skies.  He saw

the glinting tesserae in the high gloom

of San Vitale, Sant’ Apollinaris,

yet loved best

that older cryptic nest

Galla Placidia (Empress

for a day, exile & refugee)

had plaited long before –

with panel of Jesus-Nazir

styled as Arcadian Orphée

clasping rustic David’s staff,

loafing on a green slope

shared with sleepy sheep.

He loitered, gazing at the roof-

beams, lit with swirly-interlocking

whorls of 8-point stars

surrounding one small cross

like neon phosphorus – marking

their zones of cosmic midnight blue.

The mausoleum held

no body.  The rough shell

hid its agate density from view.

Primitive angel glyphs in caves

across the planet glimmer,

lurking, waiting for her

aria of plummet-stone, through waves

                 *

of spacetime, spiraling in Dante’s ear.

Singing, bringing in sheaves

(while Ariadne weaves

her fleecy oarlocks round one salty tear).

So tesserae reform, like Gospel

beasts into one

M – a beak so aquiline

& sharp to tear the casket lid from Hell –

the shearing blade of sheep from wolf,

of infant innocence

from feral insolence,

scattering bread across a shark-tooth Gulf.

Ariadne lifts her penny whistle sign.

A chartered Paris yearns

toward heaven – burns

for shame... the Minotaur’s declension

stokes the flames, flares orange

for a time (4 times).

In the House of 4 Pines

wind-chimes supplicate one ange

d’or via strange door (subterranean).

The flute still rhymes.

The sunny shepherd climbs

a green hill toward his Galilean

Psyche-Mendelssohn.  Sibelius

ratchets his violin...

geese fly from Ravenn

into Estonian concord (a Finnish Russe).

6.1.17

engr. by Harold Sund (from Ravenna : a Study, by Edward Hutton)

sunset orange

LAST STAND

The grey pebble, the unknown soldier

flung like a meteor

or Pippin to the ocean floor

blazes with spiritual authority (chaired

in the adamant of Time).  Quick

fiery arc of Jeanne,

dove-mild, Columbian –

from sweet Itascan spring to thick

Louisiana live-oak grove (along

a serpent’s labyrinthine

swerve).  Dream-scene.

Microcosm in a hobo’s glass, song-

songe awakened on Rose Island.

In your eye, Henry –

in our eye (INRI).

Crossroad of a king’s last stand.

Royal beyond kings, in their halls

of mirrors (drawing near

like Minotaur, a minor

character in Humpty-Dumpty Falls).

Lightning of intellectual fire

with rattling Thunderbird

enclosing Red Wing – Word

for equal brother, sister – Sire

& Siren in candescent colloquy.

Sheba & Solomon

enfolded in one zone

Galla (octagon vault-canopy)

                *

Placidia (ample, enduring crown)

might set like Orpheus

to shepherd sheepish US

to her clay plateau (emerald, ultramarine)

within Ravenna’s salty limestone

tombs (carted away

to Rimini, Ezra)

Franciscans monitor (Dante’s is one).

Henry-Hobo, ascending from the grave

of buried Berryman

under a Minnesota sun

shrives everything (old beggar-knave)

to thread the needle, so narrow

from Providence hillside

through Julian suicide

& Gateway Arch, to San Francisco

Porta Povertà – the Golden Gate

rimmed sunset orange

to rhyme with that strange

Libertà, shining in every heart...

the Jonah-Dove, or Jeanne d’Arc,

or Jenny Littletree

Corn Maiden, in D.C. –

my Pocahontas statue in the park

veiled by the evening radiance

of West Branch, Iowa.

I am the Mystery-Yahweh

of Life, she say – the dew’s sundance.

 5.30.17

in the zigzag brambles

A GAP

The effect of insight is a sway

of blindness.  Hobo stumbles

in the zigzag brambles.

Fractured fractal frater Francese

camouflaged beneath the Franklin Bridge

(Brownian motion

through a brown mountain

of thorny lozenges & Persian sedge).

The little we see is like a microdot.

A pimple on an eager

pupil – light more meager

in the spokey distance than we thought

– a black hole at its vanishing

girdled with gold penumbra.

His hairs are all numbered,

Galla... fine fit for banishing.

& out of Purgatory rose the diamond

circled by dark chocolate figs

in Sydney.  Wisdom’s digs

are Solomon’s life-shade (moribund

quincunx in the quipu knot);

mild oil of Cyrus

poring shaky chess

wi’ Vladimir, in Paradise (not

Petersburg – Neva). & milky

black, El K arrays

6 ribbons in a Coke display –

the cosmic fizz is finished, Blackie

                    *

Pushkin (Abyssinian catastrophe).

I sense a communion

in an eyelid’s tear-borne

Rimini.  Her ruffled water-symphony,

her Moth Star – bracketed by wagon-

train or Charley-horse –

rose (by reverse Morse

code, or languish tombsk) to fill a flagon

slithered by play claw (dogwood

& oaken twig matter,

merged in a stream-mutter

toward Troezen crown).  Shivered

the Quaker grave.  Some Isis-ghost

of prodigal Ox-Iris lifted

Isaac from the scripted

crumb – some rose Mosaic host,

some chorus of arboreal grief.

Pacific prescience,

aquiline benevolence

ring from that innocence (belief

by kid in Hart’s magnanimous

Columbia-flow).  A simple

crossroad marks the ample

shadow every Geraldine or Uncle

Roger filed, & Dickey bird loves

just this – reciprocal

acknowledgement of all

a gap entails (Thanksgiving doves).

3.29.17

just east of Providence

LAST WORD

Scavenging Raven found a crust

of broken mirror for

his nest above the river,

in a craggy oak (Blackstone, dust-

laden, winding her copper yarn

just east of Providence).

Po (or Eridanus)

glinted in that shard; a purple crayon

traced a spiral crane-dance there,

pinned to a dove-grey water-

wheel (by hand).  The daughter

of Caesar trolled a welded cluster

of rust-rose keys just below the surface –

keys to the worm-riddled door

of haunted Sant’ Apollinaire

in Classe (where Pharos ghost-sails

teem for Stilicho, Galla Placidia).

At his perch, Cautantowwit

reads smokefires lit

from Paris – On 29th of May

Corn Maiden will pirouette

one Final Show (a Waltz

to End All Wars).  Salt

is good, croaks the haunted vet –

share salt amongst yourselves, &

be at peace.  The night bird

oars southwest – his last word

whistled into silence (prairie-land).

8.23.16

Note : on Aug. 23, 408, the great Byzantine general Stilicho was executed in Ravenna.

granite made of air

MOSAIC INTERIOR

Hobo sets his sights on Ocean Sky

the cloud-boats drifting

stately, aquamarine

high-masted spinnakers go by

The rusty syntax of the railroad bridge –

necklace for a queen

Romano-Byzantine.

Galla Placidia, maybe... blown to the edge

of warlord chaos, courtier intrigue;

guarding son & heir

with the pale gold hair

(who will not see the Soo Line zigzag

into the forest, north of here).

The mosaic interior

night-blue with stars –

her mausoleum, like an eggshell ear.

Sea-light filters through pinholes

of gold.  The grey matière

a granite made of air

hides pigeons, ring-dove souls

within its manifold (octahedral

catacomb).  Even

Hobo finds his kin again;

the smile of cousin Jeanne will roll

a tensile thread out of the maze

of time & circumstance –

her light ghost dance

where mountains bloom (sheep graze).

7.7.16

Ides of October

LIPS MONASTERY

This bright transparency of mid-

October Providence –

sweet-sad remembrance

of the princely sun (Caesar’s eyelid,

drooping into Ides).  Boethius,

last of the Romans, slips

away into Sophia-deeps,

drowses beneath dogwood leaves;

little feathery flesh-tone coins

of wild oats dangle, sway

on pale green stalks today.

She’ll plant them with Galla’s remains,

he mutters to himself.  The monarch’s

just a social butterfly;

none need any longer die

in her doctrine.  Light-waves, arcs

of arches, radiating from

a central hearth... archaic

woodland (near Itasca)

where the springing pendulum

of springs is born.  Moss-green Alph

to mauve Omega, vibrant

strings (O most ancient

of lays!) knot Ocarina Everysylph

into her vale of Inca-tiers –

a tinder Lips Monastery,

quicksilver Philosophy

lifts Rome to Mexican cedars.

10.15.15

tame wild oats

Your moon, Apollinaire

LOW RELIEF

Air is mirror-brilliant today, even

shadows cut clean

across Touro slate.

Mid-September, slanting sun,

a New Year for an old people.

Someone plays a flute

off Morris Ave... fleet

foot sails into New World marble.

As in a low relief in Rimini –

an august Agostino

Venus, or Diana

whorled in limestone dithyramb

out of the sea.  The jutting cliff

crusted with barnacles

whittles its pinnacle’s

bowsprit, figurehead – her glyph

(lifted in one hand-wave) twin

scallop-shells, like

castanets (break,

crashing surf...) where time began.

Your moon along the shore, Apollinaire.

Limestone foundations

crest across seasons,

granite castles – seagull’s mother,

feathering horsegrass in your hair.

1321... 1132...

Joachim voodoo;

Jeanne’s grey-eyed icon (Galla’s lair).

9.15.15

"Venus Beats All"