from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

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