dream song for Mardi Gras

WIDE SWINGS

In the remote silence of your dream

little Ojibwa cowboy,

every word, every sigh

your lips would bend to the birch beam.

Each syllable would lift up smoothly

like wing or wave, to join

the sarabande procession

flashing tiny stars in their night-cloud sky.

The piety of Aeneas or of Abraham

is tinctured with the same

topaz humility; the fame

of Black Elk flares no different requiem;

& Hobo’s yearning in the Bottomland

& Henry’s striving at the source

obey the same bone-flute discourse –

to verify one sweet-tempered command.

& like a low B-flat trombone bass line

out of some Delta funeral-song

the aura of her Don’t-be-long

with magnetism of her Love, B-mine

goes rippling counter-clockwise, from St.-J

to D.C. piles of masonry

& back to Lake Itasca –

& like mustard monarch or viceroy

lifts tender, glancing & reflective wings

to meet your own, brave

Jessie-Isis – clear sea-wave.

Peace pipes over the Golden Gate, wide swings.

2.25.20

at edge of Gulf, at Mardi Gras

MUSTARD TEAR

So ancient Carnival-time creaks around

Hobo, at winter’s nadir –

up & down the copper

serpent-river, ice to Gulf, from underground.

Seigneur Latrobe & son (masonic

architects) glide on

into their slanted lichen

tombs, below the levee.  Chronic

exploitations, born of lordly guile

condemn brother & sister

to the poorhouse – maybe

forever (never God’s will).  Meanwhile

Mardi Gras Indians from Cajun swamps

tiptoe, sauntering in beads &

feathers, vaunting weeds

beside Big Muddy… spin their vamps,

magnanimous & happy-go-lucky!

As Frazer phrased it once,

the Oak-King was dunce

for a day, scapegoat – to bind three

realms, to decorate the grim

reality of king-dom

(manacled to thrum

of male plumage, sly rhythm

of greed).  Meanwhile us tramps lie in our camps

the ciphered segregation

of a riven nation –

the politic paralysis of frozen clamps

                *

unbroken for a generation

yoking partisans

of limited taxation

with particles of airy explanation.

Yet lo, Hobo! the sleepy sleepwalker

still reigns under the rain…

King Virbius in blue vervain,

Osiris-man of verby us (dumb talker)!

One lone mustard tear of Isis

flowing down the dream;

knit-wit of Union, seam-

by-seam… Columbia, thy hum he is!

& out of one immense unspoken heart

on its wheel of suffering

flies this foam… a sparkling

shield of steely martyrdom – cart

of churl & Charlemagne, Big Bear,

Charles’ Wain – iron hinge

of Milky Way!  Melange

of pipesmoke sacrificial princes, there!

Martin, & Jack, & Abraham…

William & James… lights

winking from Astraea’s height –

sea-foam & flotsam of the cosmic Lamb!

At the edge of the Gulf, at Mardi Gras

Hobo floats to sea, to see…

out of wrath & misery

lamps of justice, liberty – her wings, Noah!

2.23.20

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe

on your dark retina

SEA-FROTH

The soft touch of watercolor

like a moist afterthought

on your dark retina.

The comeliness of ballet dancer

uprightness of innocent angel

her glance prematurely sad

– unfolding her fan of mustard

gold (butterfly wings on purple balsa)

beneath rough branches of jack pine

& beside the air conditioner,

a sunless window (in its lunar

TV efflorescence).  With her fine

naiad brow, brimming with thought

& the dignity of her wings

like a daughter of Memphis king

or mother… Isis or Hathor (Thoth

merging with dappled river pattern

yet again).  & in upper

right-hand corner a minor

violet cloud, a miniature icon –

Notre Dame (unburnt as yet?) – or

Statue of Liberty?  Unclear,

inchoate… like right now, here

in this charcoal-smoky, somewhere-

possible America – suffering glare

of phosphor-bomb campaigns

& camouflage engines –

blind canvas (some cimetière

                  *

marin) of noon.  & as the sun descends

west of the granite capital

& you sense (as the ineffable

arc of those feathers, wafting, bends

to rose Pacific horizon) the limpid

gloom of freedom’s evening

then she will be gathering

fragment-limbs of her beloved…

Isis, young dark dancer by the Nile.

Shades of live oaks,

holm oaks, holly oaks…

green Acorn Kings of Hollywood… will

stay awhile.  The restoration of the earth

will be a Morris dance –

as (in his happy trance)

the young king will relight the hearth

under the aegis of that Providence

kind Williams’ hand held forth

over the sea-froth

chasm of an Ocean State (whence

every liberty proceeds).  I mean

the heart’s imagination

of dove-divination,

when prancing St. Jeanne rose again

from dusty repetition of revenge

into a coracle of Union –

her canoe of sun-flotation,

Hobo’s freeway cloverleaf (Stonehenge).

2.21.20

a cornucopia of acorn habitats

UNDOING CAESAR

In this misty February pre-dawn dark

a Snow Moon, over silent

cedars, glows phosphorescent

silver.  Sacred thumbprint-mark

of first king (saturnine, defunct).

& I’m whorling his identity

for the FBI (maybe

some type of Memphis pharaoh-punk?)

in case we need to trace him back

to the source (Itasca

tourniquet? some kinda

hieroglyph?).  Small floaty Hobo-shack

in the heart of mudpie heartland.

Little coracle of clay

shaped for Lincoln’s birthday

maybe (Valentine’s Day).  Unmanned?

nay, manned – like a catamaran

by every air across the sun;

part of carnival season,

a gloss on Pentecost.  Mighty One

coming-forth, like hurricane or tornado

from a whisper, cave-

mouth… out of the south-

bound, multitudinous, incarnito

nexus of brownian river-motion…

out of the roaring flood

of driv-down dust, blood –

wind-sown, windblown clay… spun

                      *

into handmade UNION, like an eye-in-hand;

sliced from the Nile-bed,

bled from Osiris-head,

bricked in a pyramid of mason-sand…

our salt earth… squared beneath an almond

lamp like hovercraft

or hydrofoil (fore-&-aft

in quatrefoil) – little fylfot countermand

(counter-clockwise emerald) out of Iona;

like a coracle of Columba

or Camelot for JFK

her Isis-essence emanates from Iowa –

West Branch of western harmony

amassing trusty Athens

& Jerusalem-to-be (Hen’s

covenant of clear spring… see?

– translucent integral of truth).

& that tall rose window

tossed (like buckets of stone

water) to the skies, is massive, Ruth –

a cornucopia of acorn habitats,

a capital of washing

towns – a Kurbsky sting

against dim Ivan coups-d’état;

or Osip vs. Iosif – MLK

withstanding FBI –

Vindman in vindication (sigh) –

humanity undoing Caesar… Hallelujay

2.10.20

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

translated to an island

SIMPLE IMMANENCE

Constitution Day.  Coke’s legacy,

translated to an island rose –

mother & nurse of repose

on the throne of Imago Dei – si?

Your lambswool, Giuliana – moss-green

through the red-dust desert.

Alighieri’s tomb, in quiet

(such as lie, smothered in grass, by San

Vitale).  Twin peacocks, maybe –

between two almond trees?

In the Ferrara freeze

(Micòl shivering in her garage)... see?

Your solar emblems not for me,

Ezra.  Marble from Ravenna

swiped for Rimini, & gloria –

the simple immanence of meek Marie

shunned like a ghetto-child.  & so

the merry-go-round of sacrifice

creaks back to 1913, Paris...

Ugo, Parisina, burnt to ash once more

for the war to end all wars (before

the end).  A rust-bronze Penny

blackens backward, in Gehenna –

from dim crossroad will she soar

like diamond Southern Cross.  She is

lips’ ghost dance ring-

around-the-rosy... clear spring

Pax-water (your West Branch Isis).

9.17.19

slow boat to Atlantis

archaic Mississippian ware (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

ADAMANT ACORN

The steady quiet of the river leads me,

& these monarchs afloat

toward Mexico.  Mote

of black-orange sail, tacking across a sea

of green... like a jasper flag of Jonah

(flickering calm coral

pinned over equatorial

squall).  Sextant from Alexandria,

sunken Heracleion – lamp from Atlantis

beaming through night sea;

matrix of Milky Way,

your Isis-canoe... assembling Osiris

from slow-roiling flatlands (Mississippian).

So Wolfram’s grail-witness

(ineffable justice

planted in lovingkindness) branches on

through Osip’s, Nikolai’s chaste vision –

adamant acorn of creation

(shining emerald of redemption

framed by buoyant casket-stone).

The red muscle pulses into veins.

A wheel turns versus gravity

rowing time to eternity;

the melancholy of Ravenna cranes,

the mortified forsaken innocence

of flighty Juliet

my filmy safety net

hugs tight – lifts up to cedar salience.

8.29.19

throned upon dignity

MY GROUND

The muse of my Ravenna poem

is secret & silent, hidden

in quiet like that Belgian

Isis – adamant black Mom

throned upon dignity in West Branch

shaded by old oaks

& the whisper of spokes

on a windmill (over limitless green avalanche

of cornfields).  She is my implicit

First Mower – my ground

of whispering midwestern sound;

Hobo, curled by his sprung rivulet,

her loving servant & factotum

& my bosom pal;

we three walk out of Hell

by the glow of one sole lux humanum –

an eye-in-hand, like that manifest

benign donation of a palm

opening from the cosmic realm

above Transfiguration of St. Apollinaris

in Classe.  & as we are three-in-one

in the mode of deification

we mirror that diamond Everyone

dwelling in the well of supernal Union

before, within, beyond Creation –

in the heart of the dream-songe

& the rêve-vision, we plunge

toward Restoration like a green acorn

                       *

& rise like ancient Osiris or Lone Ranger

through the climbing limbs

of an emerald Okean Stream

glowing more human (richer, stranger)

& more alive, as we lift toward that

light cross-tree of stars

where gentle Dante stares

& time & space availeth not

& where the marriage of true minds

is blessedness of spiritual grace

as we become one Falcon-

Ace, or Jeanne-eaglet – who finds

her microscopic lamb-lamp in the grass

just as Maggie spied Jesus

composting the flowers

there, in Resurrection Cemetery... Rise,

Sister-Dove!  Walk, Jonah-Lazarus!

& thus the reunion of the universe

is now our interstellar fire-house –

Maggie a tower of almonds (brown eyes

shaken up to smiling Milky Way

between Jerusalem & Athens)

& my dry diagram begins

to melt into a double Tiger-Lily –

like this one (Hobo showed me)

peeking from the shade-weeds

by the Mississippi – beads

of green, black, orange... a flag (you see?).

8.7.19

mark how red dust leaps

GATEWAY RING

The trickster-shaman & the prickly prophet

frame a stumbling-block

you can’t dislodge... mock

as you may, puffy lectern-puppet.

It is a fundamental moral world

they dramatize, a place

of breathing flames – their science

is conscience, this life a dream unfurled

on stage (his banner over me was love).

On board a fellowship

from birth, we skip, we slip

& slide toward the deep (sky-alcove,

ocean-sepulchre... Osiris-canoe

full of Isis-candles... grave

of MLK, our architrave).

As if returning to our own soul (true).

In West Branch, Iowa (my grandmother’s

home town) there is a dark

moss-green catafalque

of Isis, adamant earth-mother (who remembers).

& the North Star of the martyrs shines

like a seminal spark

over the Iron Range.  Mark

how red dust leaps into lifelines –

how a merry-go-round of American clay

swings toward the gateway ring

upstream, down.  Shaping

newborn, translated children – maize, hay hey.

7.11.19

dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

let us come into your clay-borne presence

LIGHT RIVER

I see the radiant city on a hill

& Liberty in her harbor

& the Gateway... & ardor

burns, like paint – to make a mural,

maybe?  For one of our post offices?

Floppy Hobo in’s gazebo

full of summer, O

& stubborn weeds, ripe frailties...

& who will deliver us from this cauldron

of planetary woes?

Veiled Isis knows,

out there in West Branch – she’s not sayin’.

Her ghost throws a shadow wherever she goes.

O let me come into your presence,

Lord – let me see your face!

Joanie Magdalen grins... Light River flows.

Her uberous figure under Hooverville

remembers slow clay, &

quickens every which way –

warming the shoulders of your chill

& peregrine companions.  & gadzooks!

She spooks even the Tyche

inside Île de la Cité –

tattooing her airy John Hancocks

to every labyrinthine burg on earth.

A little candle in your soul

flickers through mole-

corridors, Mayflower – brightens your berth.

6.18.19

the American dreamwork

NAVE RESTORATION

The American dreamwork seems to grow

of itself, like a vagrant

acorn’s buried descendant

branches roots into veins of air, so –

leaving yourself behind, then

as in a park playground

at dusk, all around

echoing shouts of kids having fun

within the green lamps of those trees

& the circle of daydreaming

grownups, their evening

rest emerging at last – the iron wheeze

of the swing-set beginning to mesmerize

with its creaky metronome –

& you have a premonition of home,

like a matryoshka doll of paradise

or a houseboat nested in a boathouse.

American as they don’t get?

Anonymous as a planet

without name, yet – Isis, Osiris...

A figure stands at the dream door.

They put the body there?

Now it’s not anywhere.

He gone, she gone (to tell them more).

Hobo Ulysses glides toward New Orleans,

St.-Jeanne of the Delta,

Jonah.  Coracle fella,

acorn Cap.  Nave restoration’s what it means.

5.17.19

Down the Mrs. Nile

BLACK MARBLE

The slow green river is historian as well, 

moving with time from here

to there, yet always here

same as ever, with detritus of fossil

shells – eroding palimpsest

subject to misquotation,

willful erasure, mistaken

readings...  Observe that anxious,

fretful archivist – thin railing Ez

with his fistful of heroes

impaled on total loss

(a maze of smoking Flanders trenches).

Like a Minotaur in the bughouse

with his Schifanoia grid –

hierarchical, to put a lid

on greed, by force (his Musci-Louse).

What then’s this chaos of bad dreams?

Life’s horror-show?  Not so,

not so.  PAX.  What thou

lovest well...  After the steamboat schemes

Latrobe still floats his capitol design.

Cornstalks, tobacco flowers...

Virgo, with Isis-powers,

on the adamant of time, will shine –

black marble out of Nile (West Branch).

Not abstract or Pythagorean,

but human, Galilean –

shepherd in Ravenna – beaming avalanche.

5.16.19

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

 

chaired in the adamant of time

GOLDEN EYE

Everything known beforehand, O

my prophetic soul –

fate of gray pebble,

unknown soldier.  Black Sea, Argo...

those towering fig trees outside

the Sydney Observatory.

& inside, the orrery

projecting Southern Cross as diamond

(4-dimensional octahedron, or

great acorn of light).

A blue-green planet,

turquoise, emerald – your

dream-song door (hinge balanced

on a level’s golden eye).

Heirship of carpenter’s high-

beam ballet... tightrope (entranced).

A figurehead, chaired in the adamant

of Time.  Isis in Ohio,

Iowa... your Clover, so

low.  Lift her out of the slough, St.

Joan – lift her out of the grave.

A salience in St. Louis –

upturned canoe... Jessie

Ophelia, mickle gateway (moon-wave).

Behold, a child is born, Virgin

appears from heaven again;

my iron age turns golden

monarch, winged flower (human).

3.7.19

only a sketch : Jozef Czapski

JOZEF CZAPSKI

Only a sketch, a drawing, a cartoon.

Scrawny shivering prisoner

reading a book (Siberia).

This upright Pole, from a dead platoon

survived, somehow (so tall, so

innocent).  Budding artist

from Paris, now of Tashkent –

following Proust into gulag, ghetto.

Somehow.  Like mast on frigate.

Colors mime sky...

Poland, we must die.

Yet he shows up (seraph, implicate).

Survives.  Grows old in Paris,

having kept his conscience

into Moscow (blessed

nonsense... bunks his paradise).

Grace is the sign of something human,

intelligence the trace

of civilization, Falcon-Ace

(O hoary Horus of the hunted men).

Isis (in West Branch) is your mother,

Belgium’s deep divide

the humdrum Hoover prelude

to a splenetic Grant Wood war –

Virgo, we know not who we are.

Speak of the grain of wheat,

Persephone.  Complete

your D.C. scan (Henry’s North Star).

3.3.19

from Jozef Czapski, Inhuman Land : Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 (NYRB, 2018)

& 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