Hobo's continental centrifuge

PACIFIC VOYAGE

Hobo, hunching by the great river

in winter’s clamp, peers

like an Okie Okeanos

through the ice-floes’ ripple-shivers –

through the wavy shimmer, down

through faint diffractions

where the light shines

back... a silver mirror-sun,

layering her limestone shells.

A simple madeleine

(stone crumblevine,

gray rock-dove oval) wells

from the giddy stream in limpid echoes.

Raven in Voronezh,

Cautantowwit knife-edge

grips sun in her beak – light glows

like Pearl Harbor in eclipse.

Her lunar lance shall pierce

the mule’s gray hide.  Ears

perk for Jonah’s salty lips

molded like canoe gunnel

to mime Columbia.

Her dove-insignia

frames Sophie-ship – her funnel

rays its calumet of light

above the pyramid

(violent power-grid

of barbed-wire fraud, not quite

                 *

extinguishing that Evening Star

glancing so tender yet

steadfast – a mauve fishnet

looping beneath flame’s Icarus-car).

Hobo is Jonah now, in Ocean River.

The voice beneath the sea

is like a Kievan harmony –

perpetual melody of live-forever;

her flute-throat flickering dusky rings

like rain-drenched iris

round the throne of Isis –

Hagia Sophia in a peacock’s wings.

The river chimes in Hobo’s ears

of many waters, laughing,

crying.  Wingèd seraph,

sister-sibyl, swirl his tears

& yours into the continental

centrifuge (in Center,

North Dakota).  There

the massive gravity of all

Columbia hums into monarch flight –

a raven-transmutation

of infernal nation

to green cedar habitation (night

Pacific voyage of your soul).

Hobo watched the fluttering

lift-off, slowly muttering –

milkweed seed, sail; Ocean, roll.

1.26.17

rowing to Kiev

RAZOR BEAK

The human family of human

families – clay

honeycomb array

in earth-colors – aims for a zone

of radiant plenitude – sustained

chord from a horn of plenty,

hived in community –

a milk-&-honey land, ingrained

along a cedar path of goodness

clear as winter air

warm as Apollinaire

chanting his biplane with finesse

Parisienne.  A Spirit of St. Louis

circling the blazing crown

of Liberté floats down

into the eagle-nest of Chartres

whose rose rim complements that Gate

of soaring human freedom

anchored to the thrum

of one great river’s beating heart.

So pictures flicker in the stream

of Mississippi dream

for one forlorn sunbeam

or hazel-mote, her gypsy scheme...

one footloose soul, one rambler

who would be gone from jail

before the frozen hail

of Hitler-Stalin-Xi-Putin (& gambler

Kim Jong-un) congeals into one

mammoth concrete hulk

of tearful despot-sulk –

one massive Man of Unknown

Snowjobs – Don the Golden Duck-

&-Coverling, the Beast

who gives offense the most

& smears the human face with muck.

So honchos of the earth lift up

their horns, a little while;

they cannot reconcile

their pride with that ineffable fop

who spins the elegant galaxies

here to infinity

              *

right from eternity

& lifts the heart to ecstasies

of fellowship & harmony –

the sparkling of justice

mercy   righteousness

high paths of gentle charity

Saturnian rings of human union

knotting the universe

within one Paradise

plainsong (trompette marine).

The turbid tumult of the beaten-down

rattles the reeds, troubles

the swarming crows – bubbles

explode – all the high-flown

rhetoric disintegrates under

the trampling of grass

by panicked herds (alas).

& yet there is another thunder

gathering in clouds above the oaks,

beneath the sea – low hum

of some beehive continuum –

sun-wheel, whose fiery spokes

feather to wings of Thunderbird –

enormous golden shade

whose raptor-beak’s a blade

of dragon-prow – Norsemen’s weird

serpent-egg on river-tree

sailing to Kiev, now –

St. George’s silver plow

upturning soil to poetry

salting the roots of tyranny

to shrivel them at last

beneath a trumpet-blast

of global human sovereignty –

the almond salience of a union-dome

bright coins of humanism

ringing a cataclysm

for every fraudulent kingdom

& every despot on the earth.

This eagle’s razor beak

has just begun to speak –

a tender rain, wisdom & truth.

1.14.17

Concord, Columbia

KIEVAN ARK

This gazebo’s tilted octagon

of weathered, worm-eaten

cedar holds off the rain

in Minneapolis, again.

Again, Henry will dream his songe

like a train-hopping sponge

& let summer arrange

cloud-peaks of glory (strange

magnet, fourchette d’orange).  Concord,

Columbia – créatif

brain-fever of native

mer-wit – good Will’s three-cornered

cap of happiness (wasp Osip’s

honey-basket on the Hill

of Skull).  A game of skill

is Vladimir’s, & music too – the ship’s

a Kievan ark (turned right-side-up

beneath its choral dome).

Salt-azure breath of wisdom

streams from Maximus (one cup

of simple crumblevine); his prong

is set like Lebanon

cedar beside the chronic

faultline – earthquake birthpang,

epileptic flow.  & now one smile

reverses Golgotha

with OK light – it’s manna-

Madeleine (kneads pain into a grail).

5.25.16