aqueducts for bumblebees

JESTER THREADS

In the anonymous late grass,

among the stray brown

stalks like overgrown

aqueducts for bumblebees

Hobo looks off toward the flesh-

tone Mississippi bridge.

He yearns for the courage

to be like Woodpecker, in his mesh

of stealthy wasps & stolen honey –

I mean that Thunderbird,

drilling his fiery word

dovetailing out of Galilee;

the lightning rod atop the dome

whose inner lining is mosaic;

a kingfisher, whose beak

flings Geryon from his kingdom.

Late August air grows clear, autumnal.

He’ll shed his jester threads

like Hal doffs Falstaff duds

& lie down by the Rio del

Espiritu Santo.  Watch how that firebird

melts hearts into unison –

lifts into comprehension

both Jerusalem & Athens, toward

a chastened & revived Cosmopolis

where neighbor-love is measure

of the planetary future... &

then he’ll mosey back to Minneapolis.

8.24.18

bard owl hoot-yawp

DARK MANDALA

A dark mandala, with its threads of gilt

glinting in sepulchral gloom.

Brown recluse home

or poison farm – Potemkin-built

for subtle, shady beast (forma

tricorporis umbra).

Yessir – USSR – Usura

rapt the hack machine – some worm

robbed all the banks in Hungary

– sincerely, your servant

left with Nada (she went

under).  One black-wreath memory

laurels a World War grave,

limed with gold streaks

of tears.  Leaf breaks

hearts; stubborn moth digs nave.

Infinitely gentle, infinitely

suffering thing... Rabbi,

rabbi, your symmetry

of gravity pulls toward a parapet

or pole-star magnet – anti-matter

mutter at the gate

of timespace (intricate

constellate icosahedron footpad

rabbit-patter).  Yellow gyroscope

for the lad in Ravenna,

wheeling through Gehenna

into turtleshell domicile – Hope

                   *

Diamond southern bells – milky

over Memphis, chanting

out of slave-haunt... (sling

your wide human boomerang, Psyche).

Fraud loops fey pebbles into flagging

factories, for vanity –

haughty coyote-

greed howls babble onto bragging

piles of glare – why do the notions rage?

Out of a quiet well,

a widow’s mite will tell

another rustic peony tale.  Osage

cheekbones of Lincoln-Logos shine

in the fiery human sun –

Rhodos-Colossus Woman

radars an omnipresent beryl-pine

from silver harbor.  The retrograde

cannot delay reality –

their bubble-polity

will burst (too much steel air) – a Maid

of Orleans, or Land o’Lakes

shall lead the ring-dance

in a crayon trance

& sketch a reciprocity

of snakes & ladders, golden eagles

& grey turtledoves.

The peacock fan of Love’s

dominion flares... green acorn-angles.

11.11.16

Walk through the mirror

MINOR TEAR

Bleak winter shades... crows in the trees

beak-gnashing, rasping (caw-

caw, hawk-hawk).  Low

Earth, rotund silentium (dregs, lees).

Stillness of still-life – Brown Decades

(hoist Peto).  The Just Man

imago is just a man –

barely there, through simple glades

of green.  Mirror Lakes liked him,

in Mendelssohn.  Only

an infinitely gently-shivery

Rabbi, Hiawatha Honeybear – bro Jim,

our lunky logos (penny-loafing).

Who bears it all, past

He- or She-Cat’s paste-

up Geryon-masque (a scary nothing).

This maze contains a minor tear.

& through a crevice there

one Ariadne hair

leads you to almond-gold rain-bear.

Earth seethes with ziggurats of fraud

& blind men lash themselves

to violence (selva

oscura mitts gorilla code);

but it shall not be so with thee.

Bunny hikes one eye

& looks for wheeling Eli

to come by (benevolent memory).

3.3.16