fireball parody

META-BRIDGE

October Indian summer weather;

delicate red hands

of sumac & maple pause

suspended, swing through clear air.

A white paddlewheeler like a ghost

glides upstream out of

Lethe – like a church dove

burbling an emerald paternost,

a moody coracle out of Iona.

Who is the master here,

O mini Man o’Tar?

Whose maze is this, Grandma?

Nile Voodoo Queen seeks her Osiris

at the snaky rainbow mouth; &

Henry Churnagogue steams south

to find his figurehead (Columbia’s

Joanna-genesis, out of impoverished

Franciscan waters).  These two

reflect each other – so

your spring-coiled safety net’s accomplished.

So when that fireball parody of Icarus

– no guidance system – lands

a direct hit on Ireland’s

intricate dear vessel (Ick-R-Us?

Ich bin ein Russki, then?) our meta-bridge

of bridges, our Iris beyond 

all arks, will respond –

braiding a human chain of love & courage.

10.8.19

keep on pushkin, straight ahead

RED FOX

Under the silver shoreline of late cottonwoods

the quiet gray clouds

the dry river weeds (wounded

with scattered sumac) Hobo broods

as always.  Trying mightily to bring it all

into focus, under the aegis

of an ineffable Isis-

eye (black West Branch granite, under veil).

Seated on her throne, standing for a Mind

of grace.  The poets’ doctrine

as against the matter-men –

lambent clay mutter-shape (FOR BLIND).

Johnny, we hardly knew ye... Iona

clover, twirling like a dervish

in the shadow of an Irish

Tyche.  Liberté, coulombe, Columbia...

Jeanne, Jonah.  Up from pacific waters

of an Ocean Rose, an Okeanos

Newport oakenship – ceremonious

wedding (chaste prow, beyond all wars).

Like scrape of diamond on a coal-black

door.  Marking your graffiti-

passage, Henry Contumely –

he hath entered the realm of signs (alas,

alack).  You search the scriptures, lil Red

Fox – but do not come to ME.

Swift as cottonwood leaf

her sun-heart passes... (Dion-Isis?  Fled.)

10.2.19

articulated bagpipes

CICADA SHELL

Last night, in the final French class

Charles explained to us

that intricate forest

of thousands of skeletal pieces

under the armor of the vast organ

of Notre Dame, somehow

surviving the late inferno –

a delicate spider of sound, within

the cathedral’s gray cicada shell

of feathery stone light.

Now, in my monkish hideout

of twisted cedar, a mid-May swell

of emerald sheen beyond the doorway

stretches toward Iona

or maybe Compostela

or Jerusalem... & scrawny face of Henry

lined like wood by age & foolishness

lifts to spring brightness

one wee dram of hopefulness,

mayhap – someone’s vernal Inverness.

It is the ordinary light of day

flashing through our human

imago, her chaste design –

what we might be, beyond dismay

in the conjunction of clear consciences

set toward a restoration

of the common good.  One

amid many – octave’s consonance.

5.15.19

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19

a line in the road

GREY BIRD

Sarah found a baby turtle

this morning, inching along

a line in the road.  My song-

salience, or green volcano-yurt

on slow horizontal too... toward

her thorny rose-matrix;

my scrambled pick-up-sticks,

snarled with gold poncho thread

in limpid greys of dawn twilight.

This mutter-dome of whisper-

leaves, of zephyr-vespers

veils an agate lamp (magnet

for Blue Morpho & monarch flight)

pendant amid cedars –

like black-yellow flickers

gathered into marigold (O milky knight).

My abstract worming through its raving

scribble-babble, cartoon

peacock incarnation...

a myriad glancing-whorl becoming

the figure for your beaming face.

O the clear air of this

metaphysical silence!

Whose pause released one Finnish race

to lift her soaring steel mandorla

into lofty grace

planted in pivot-place

of riverine & prairie space – ah,

Psyche!  Sister Persephone!

I feel your sunny smile

now – lifting lilacs mile

on mile into an octave-harmony

                *

of active commonality –

Joy’s hero-trial!

Path P – Indian file –

thread-thin tattoo to Liberty!

So the little tree of J

is ever-living.  So

Jonah bee surfacing

tuned to your buzzing play,

high Sophie – through the fallen timbers

west of gray Verdun,

the world’s war-passion

settled in destruction.  Embers

from a wraith of spring, the sack of Prince

Henry’s royal oak...

one ashen acorn spoke

welded to purple wheel of Providence.

The crayon trembles in my hand.

The palm curves green

circumference – Iona

ray, from Ocean State (to every land);

the grey bird murmurs through the surf;

the Camelot of JFK

& blessedness of MLK

merge in the spray, resolve to turf.

So Thunderbird ruffles the stream.

The turtle is a Phoenix

swelling at the matrix –

agate child skipping (on waves of dream).

5.18.17

beneath gray Bruegel sky

WAVE-CRADLE

Crows ink beneath gray Bruegel sky.

A line from A to B

zigzags spacetime – see?

So raven vanishes in Noah’s eye.

Between two points, a yawning Ocean.

Infinite intensity

of black-hole density

draws yesterday into its spin.

What is your personal specific gravity?

The poem is gray pebble,

obscure soldat (trouble

for no one).  Ordinary Smitty

whose greatcoat pocket holds an agate.

Lodestone of a jay

tracing King’s Highway

into the calyx of a ruse (checkmate).

It is Path P, the chi-rho

branch – diamond

mandala of almond;

Black Elk milk road (ey yo).

Love is the tread between twin pillars –
only a glance of weightless

spiderweb.  Inverness

of vernal tenderness... wind, stars...

when the bow sways in its wave-cradle

& Ithaca, Iona, Eire

lift like green fire

Skye-perpendicular – familiar grail-dreidel.

1.25.17

Solominka in the black gunshine

HENRY’S COULOMBE

Muggy August, month of Emperors

& seizures.  Hobo Henry

lies in Sharon’s Ferry

under the sluggish limestone (worms,

mollusckies, protozoa).  He’s

coming back to Tuscany,

the Bore (some prophesy).

Huffy, bossy Henry holds the keys,

he thunk.  Amid a bole of oaktrees,

under his acorn crown –

like that green Corny Maiden,

one of Igor’s fresh catastrophes

(in Paris, 1913).  High sign

of times – the pharmakon,

the scapegoat, Chosen One –

The barking Kingly Queen

of Carnival, her last crowd scene

(crowing).  Guillaume was there,

too – orphic Apollinaire,

sighing for Minka in the black gunshine

of Dallas.  Jenny, we hardly knew ye –

your sea-cloud camouflage

a fluttery montage

of yellow-black, afloat toward Iona...

America in Henry’s coulombe, now.

The bird croons at the gates

where Francis celebrates

Pacific pipestone... sea-grey Manitou.

8.9.16

This old man goes rolling home

SPRING-STEP

Sunlight glints in flash-of-gold

on blue-gray lashes, curling

sea around each green-

black pupil glancing from cold

Pontus-depths, like lacquered pearl.

Each soul hath such a wild

wee isle – immurèd child

of even-star, whose raven whorl

beams out of everwhirr – bright

innocent prinkster, fleet-

footing the complete

spring-step, so shamrock-intricate;

Tara, Soissons, Iona know

how low she twirls, she droops

before her leaping swoops

a coign... Elijah – let her go!

Light-nimble Columba... thundery-

coot’red Geraldine... – fits

Geraldine, the crown fits

Geraldine!  In a wheel of clay

through the eye of time – in a ray

of light, through a feather-

full of waterfalls... there,

there!  Look there!  A catenary

clover-span!  Four-folded spire,

planted on copper penny-

whistle... one milky-

black Eire-eye rose Paycock-fire!

3.17.16

Remembrances of 1865 (so beginneth Ravenna Diagram Bk 6)

SEA WASH

To turn your glance back, eastward, from

the height of a great orange

pier (Home on the Range

in your ear) – immense Pacific foaming

behind you... like a lookout in a crow’s-

nest – a single burning glass,

a golden eagle-eyepiece

taking in a continent.  Up to Rose

Island Lighthouse (Narragansett Bay) –

to the byzantine capitol dome

in Providence, whose gnomon

is a gold harpooner – looking away

back west, toward you.  Photoshot (still).

As when the sun stops briefly

over Jericho, before they

blow the trumpets, & the walls fall;

as if you stood before a Peto

still-life (intricate

& accurate memento

of complete stigmata-scrimshaw hero).

I hear another sea wash, sighing

round salt emerald shores.

Columba’s Iona (wars

far off, now) laved with dying kings’

repentance-prayers (touch of blessing

for the wounded flutes

of clay).  So lift your lute,

sad Frisco boy.  She’s leeward (glistening).

2.12.16

Upon a tangent in Ravenna

PEACOCK TAIL

Dawn light through circumference

of dome conveys some sense

of dreaming weightlessness

as of infinity & omnipresence

so Hagia Sophia & peacock tail

might meet upon a tangent

in Ravenna   Dante’s ancient

flame a spark, skimming the axle

of a galaxy, loosed from an arrowhead

flint, striking limestone

footprint (Galilean,

Nazirite).  Behold star in its idea

redemptio-solidarity

adamant & diamond

centri-petal (almond

mandate) everybody

Ordinary & Ionian,

the windswept sea-grass

bareness of the place

tombs of sovereign dominion

lean down to green Columba

(San Franciscan)

his poverty of means

reverberating   simple soul euphoria

& an implicit recognition

of immeasurable flow

bread, wine   now

always   (indelible, human)

2.6.16

Where the crooked sumacs are

BACKWARD THUNDER

The Redeye of these freight cars’

heavy backward thunder

over rubidium crossbars’

X.  Where the crooked sumacs are –

their creaky grey akimbo-structures

(rusty caducei).  Amorpho-

phallus Titanium?  No,

not quite... but ruddy, like Osiris-

Oedipus (up 3-Way Highway,

where the pylons meet).

Eddy Parallactic,

relatively paralytic – all that whey

so massive, bending light around

Caesar’s own seizures,

jade embrasures

(pyramidical, tyrannical, profound).

The iron Bruegel earth turns so,

in snowy dunes.  Until

one feathery perpendicular

percolates up (with bleaker crow).

Light eddied, slow (28, 29...)

where a spring coils

moss-green (oeuil

of Bosch, in Kansas City sun);

where Iris plants meek sovereignty

by Eero-Eeyore Gate – &

Eurydice, come late

May, rose... (tiny Iona tree).

2.2.16

MN Arboretum (Jan. 2016)

Big Rabbit & the Can-Canute

TOTEM-GHOST

Winter.  An imperturbable water-serpent

flows smoothly south, under

the presiding MN-arch

(Peace Bridge).  Cloud-blanket (quiet, lambent

silverthought).  Ice-glancing light

of North Star State –

each ray will penetrate

the sixpack hexagons of Snow Rabbit

– that giant Bigfoot totem-ghost

Sophie & Phoebe rolled

to quasi-life (backyard).

Some Hiawatha Teotihuacan (host-

figure, phantom King).  Messiah

is a butterfly.  Love,

Love, and be loved, beloved

Bumblebee – amen, selah.

This glossy lala glossolalia

is like a peacock’s choral

cry, or agate-spiral

Saverin-Canute, out of Iona

(green Columba’s jaybird hymn).

At the spare crossrood

of naked servitude –

Boethius, Maximus, beaten

senseless – there Polaris burns,

& melts into the heart

of summer Ocean.  Start

your laddie-dance, lass – Roy returns.

1.26.16

Life's unwritten history

BRUEGEL SCENE

Summer loses weight, becomes

translucent at the end.

Sunlight slants graveward

with a farewell glance, & autumn’s

trumpet-call is barely audible

amid hilarious

alarums in the circuits

of the starlings (swarming, risible).

& so you wonder where you are

on earth.  John Berryman’s

in jasper, John’s in grey;

Man’s in a graveyard green (so far

from here).  Splat in a corner

one cloud-turtle (from

Iona) lifts her drum-

shell from the sea – almost another

comber, very salt & watery.

I’ll join the starling circus,

friends – I’ll whistle us

to Minneapolis, SE of Rimini.

That raven’s in the Bruegel scene.

His glance is like one

wintry oeuil upon

her apron – by the deep tureen,

at dawn, in the spare refectory;

feathered in soft silence

on a wall of remembrance.

What’s up, Dad?  Unwritten history.

9.21.15

September 21

Iona's Hair

There are many historians who dispense a soporific virtue; a minority will keep you turning the tea leaves, burning the midnight newspaper.  If you want a really good story about the king they found ensconced in a parking lot recently, look no further than Paul Murray Kendall's Richard III.  How the Kendallian image of this chap diverges from the Earl of Oxford version (oh wait - I mean Shakespeare) !  Of course, the Tudors had it in for the Earl of Gloucester.  I think the city of York still likes the guy - as well they should, according to Kendall.  Plus there's a passage in the book which goes thoroughly into fishgarths.

IONA’S HAIR

The s-curved spine of attainted king

snakes up from parking lot.

Not Prospero, not quite

Macbeth.  The plot’s the thing

for knucklebones.  Woodvilles & Nevilles

in the nether woods – phosphorus

Warwick, glowing in the dust.

Someone’s gotta pay the bills

for Renaissance magnificence.

The wolfish gusto of these

alpha bêtes!  Rimini’s

laird, Ezra’s ravening prince –

shades in the hollows of Sherwood,

old artifacts of violence.

How did we survive this?

How will we yet?  Pappy understood,

somehow – head bowed with meekness

to a mud-stained plow.

All yang, no yin, was how

blind stick-up men went down.  No sense

of the spider’s tensile teetering

with dewy tread, on thread...

black widow’s offspring (death’s-

head remonstrance for buccaneering

sports).  Be with me, Columba,

bright dove-bird padre

from cloud-slopes of Eire.

Proud kings lie hidden in Iona’s hair.

7.7.15

Remains of King Richard III