if I could gather all 9 muses

IRON HORSESHOE

If I could gather all 9 muses

around the iron horseshoe

Hobo found along the shore…

a middle C stranded by silted rivers.

If I could loop a thread-corral

around the bullish history

of bardic poetry…

Whitman & Olson, the whole passel

of a thousand Pounds – a ton

of raw American aggression

packed in Julian tin can

of salmon absolute (O prodigal son).

You must bind up the strong man

if you would rob his house,

strums Shep Jesus –

the Son of Man opposes Czar Ivan

K. Trump (& all his lawless minions).

For Moses was an anti-

Pharaoh, & his text a fey

neutrino-trace – reversing their dominions

(anti-matter realms of fearful absence).

Their malice plays for keeps –

the quasi-Reagan creeps

who stigmatize Abe Lincoln’s conscience

of profound Union.  A government

of people, by & for people

whose penny is a steep

L-rectitude – the normative ligament

                   *

of every child of God (my soul to keep);

the stony fundament

that grounds each document

hedging the tyrant (as ye sow, shall reap). 

For this Hobo bent toward St. Louis,

where clays rotate

around an elder potentate;

the foolish king, whose power was on lease

to that familial mutuality

(the kinfolk circle

& the starry wheel)

Jesus displayed in his nativity.

Star of David, hidden in the clouds

like 4-leaf clover

in a rainbow cover –

ark or Argo of celestial crowds.

So history plays out as Tauromachia.

Watch Minotaur succumb

to Ariadne’s plumb,

Man lifted up beyond Monarchia;

that restoration of all things

the servant-son proclaimed,

chanting beside the famed

Magdala Stone (rose of sharing) –

when Clover twirls in Hobo’s fingertips

& Isis-eye looks from his palm;

when JFK comes home

& Venus blooms… & Sophie Coulombe skips.

4.28.20

set to sound

SIMPLE SPACE

Henry was just an American poet,

not well-known, born

in Minneapolis… a plain-

speaking, ordinary place, a cold spot

on the planet.  He had his talents

& his quirks – his great

advantages, pensive disquiet,

the serious focus of his mind, his diffidence…

but none of these things mattered in the end.

Poetry is neither marketplace

nor museum.  It is a simple space

for flighty conversation, set to sound;

a fatal stage, a public theater

where fantasy rings true –

YHWH appears to you

disguised as sister, holy fool, butler…

anything but king (or slave-herder).

King David plucked his harp,

made his obeisance sharp

& clear – YHWH is holier

than I, or any man on earth.

Henry drew back the curtain.

In his poem, all was done –

la vida es sueño… from Fort Worth

to Dallas is but a short drive.

Righteous ones must die

until the message (IN RI) bears

fruit – honey flows from her beehive.

4.25.20

Georges Rouault, The Old King

Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

have you never loved & suffered?

MOON-BEAR

Hobo crawled out of a hollow log

like a moon-bear from hibernation.

The River held him in suspension

between breaths, heartbeats (in a fog).

Have you never loved & suffered, Henry?

Do you comprehend soul-agony?

He was a Man of Sorrows, he –

acquainted with grief – like a lost penny

(Lincoln?) at the bottom of a well.

I have, Hobo.

If you want to know

I too be tarnished imago, two steps from hell.

Like who.  But I carry this flashlight

handed me by Lightning

Littletree one morning

(way back, in Providence).  It all right.

Or going to.  Everything you see

is a fresco-dream,

June-bug – the triple beam

searchlights all round (Imogen Dovie

in your mind).  I see you grinning,

Beatrice.  Bunny Rabbi

and Ignatz O’Lamb, too (hi).

This IGNIS NATURA RENOVATUR thing –

will it spin in the sky?  Little Bear,

Big Bear?  In a sloppy gyre

you may bespiral somewhere

sometime, Hobo... in your underwear?

King David hopped like a rabbi

alongside the canoe.  Micòl

was like... O well.

The pure fire is restoration, Jun-eye.

7.17.19

I am what I ham

NIGHT TRAIN

The night train rumbles like a ghost

of iron over the bridge

over the river.  Sage

Minnehaha, Hobo loves you most.

He’s lying by the muddy bank

trying to clear his head.

Everything he’s read

demands – who am I to thank?

The driftwood spines of shattered books

surge downstream, sink.

Think, Hobo, think –

a deadman’s glancing you posthumous looks.

Twin humps in winter refuse

under the lamp-green

of young leaves...  Scene :

pillars try an almond (Moses, Jesus).

Through teenage foliage coheres

the rust-brown iron magnet

of one (hold tight!)

modal mine of shifting gears –

the rocky profile of a personal friend,

who’s center’s nowhere

& who’s hairline is (look there,

Horatio!) nowhere near the end.

A sibyl croons from the ancient world

whose prince is dancing

naked by the prow.  Sing,

mickle dam... like slingshot hurled.

5.7.18

agate density

GREEN HILL

Dante nearing the end of his poem

ambled around Ravenna

under cloudy skies.  He saw

the glinting tesserae in the high gloom

of San Vitale, Sant’ Apollinaris,

yet loved best

that older cryptic nest

Galla Placidia (Empress

for a day, exile & refugee)

had plaited long before –

with panel of Jesus-Nazir

styled as Arcadian Orphée

clasping rustic David’s staff,

loafing on a green slope

shared with sleepy sheep.

He loitered, gazing at the roof-

beams, lit with swirly-interlocking

whorls of 8-point stars

surrounding one small cross

like neon phosphorus – marking

their zones of cosmic midnight blue.

The mausoleum held

no body.  The rough shell

hid its agate density from view.

Primitive angel glyphs in caves

across the planet glimmer,

lurking, waiting for her

aria of plummet-stone, through waves

                 *

of spacetime, spiraling in Dante’s ear.

Singing, bringing in sheaves

(while Ariadne weaves

her fleecy oarlocks round one salty tear).

So tesserae reform, like Gospel

beasts into one

M – a beak so aquiline

& sharp to tear the casket lid from Hell –

the shearing blade of sheep from wolf,

of infant innocence

from feral insolence,

scattering bread across a shark-tooth Gulf.

Ariadne lifts her penny whistle sign.

A chartered Paris yearns

toward heaven – burns

for shame... the Minotaur’s declension

stokes the flames, flares orange

for a time (4 times).

In the House of 4 Pines

wind-chimes supplicate one ange

d’or via strange door (subterranean).

The flute still rhymes.

The sunny shepherd climbs

a green hill toward his Galilean

Psyche-Mendelssohn.  Sibelius

ratchets his violin...

geese fly from Ravenn

into Estonian concord (a Finnish Russe).

6.1.17

engr. by Harold Sund (from Ravenna : a Study, by Edward Hutton)

the Ids of March

LITTLE ISLAND

                                the fallow air grows milky

The Rio shines in quietness,

mottled by fading ice.

Cato the Woodpecker is

prince of cottonwoods – his highness

tock-tocks like Railsplitter toward

the taproot of Twin Cities’

canker sores.  He’s

whittling his wooden law – a word

scrimshawn against all takers,

all Caesars of commonweal,

in the court of last appeal –

galactic axle of the makers.

Is this a holiday?  The soothsayer’s

a dreamer (pass, tense).

Cinna lost his innocence

mangled among conspirators –

murdering for liberty (the mob

took it another way).

Is this a holiday?

The Ids are on the march – to Nob

Hill, where nabobs are on fire

amid their books.  Moses

threw tomes into a rose-

bush (ruby thorn in rabid empire)

& King David warped his harp

with smooth rushes & grass –

his humble plant shall pass

anthills of Tyre, the minnow tarp

                   *

of Lucifer – the arrogant hare

shall slip behind the turtle

& the dove shall hurtle

like a hummingbird (plum everywhere).

The sea wind washes the shoreline;

she lifts my face toward

her calm sunlight.  The sword

shall pierce your own heart, Minute Man,

little island seeker after Liberty –

her candle glimmers, copper-

green, where grasshopper

& ant both anchor.  Charity

of Chartres, Maid of Orleans,

Spirit of St. Louis

circling toward Paris,

read us what soul freedom means –

infinite mercy & joy

lifting the universe

from snowy ovoidness

into a Shakespeare play –

late Mississippian romance

only the first people

have beheld.  Quadruple

diamond, sapphire expanse,

arc of a Southern Cross above

refulgent rose island –

we expiate... to understand

your ever-brimming streams of Love.

3.15.17

pileated woodpecker

alongside the canoe

SHIP’S EYE

John Slocum fell into a swoon

in the sea-tinged woods

by Puget Sound; his words

of hope shook many Shaker men

out of their sins.  Sparks fly far

from cedar blaze – the sea

booms in a ship’s eye

lashed by yardarm to the polestar.

It’s not the size of the cosmos

but the color of the scales,

gilded when dawn pales

rippling on ice-floes

across the horizon, back to Ocean –

over hide rooftops

sun-parched corn crops

in the jungle (Squaxin, Galilean).

When Davy the Song Prince pranced

alongside the canoe

Maggie saw what she knew

was hers, & grew embarrassed –

yet her almond eye looks to the sea

& the song endures.  A stone

fell from turtle-grey heaven –

the flare of a meteor, a mystery;

an infinite cloud-bank shaped like wing

a feather of ring-dove

signifying love

left brush-marks down by Slocum Spring.

9.26.16