down around Kay-Rho

SALT-LICK

Prince Henry Hal, like a latter-day Latrobe

went surveying his great property

in swamps – following Path P

down around Kay-Rho, mapping his globe.

& he was most lost.  Loster than lost.

His sidekick Hobo sighed.  Said –

this palm at the end of your mind

holds an eye that glows, a wave-tossed

moon.  Pearl, embossed with diamond

& ruby… emeralds for eyelashes.

There, where kingfisher splashes –

a quatrefoil rose window, set in almonds.

Notre Dame burned down today, Hobo.

The blaze destroyed the spire,

almost the whole… – F’ sho.  Fire

will do that.  But there’s another one, y’know.

We already passed that house.  Down MLK

Way, on Black Elk Boulevard

(in Buffalo).  Look hard,

Henry – you’ll see him sign the X-tree

with his finger… mark the six trails

like a phosphor Southern Cross.

His medicine mends every loss –

’twas his last full measure split the rails

like lightning.  Now the brave who give

their lives to heal the sick

come to his green clover salt-lick –

circle the hearth-fire – bright, contemplative.

4.15.20

least coin of Union provenance

WING-BEAT

The American poem makes do with what’s

right there.  Like a penny in a well

or Peto trompe l’oeuil.

Reminiscences of 1865… hook for hats

on an absinthe wall.  Unlike electricate

sweet Alighieri, burbling Italian

honey-rhyme into his Pythian

pylon – a vertical refulgent ziggurat,

as opposed to our stretched-horizontal

(catenary) system of safety

nets (dangling from Frisco Bay

to DC).  Quipu knots of Neanderthal

design – z-twist, s-twist in a 3-ply

twine, spun with dry grass

or pine bark from Abri du Maras

anchoring light matrices of solidarity.

Ah, nested Rose of Dante’s alta fantasia!

Here lies a homely Providence

cresting seven hills, dense

with ignoble Henry’s disjecta membra.

Plain facts of what happened, what was

made manifest in clay.  Bearing

pinned-up mementos (sprung

Ford’s Theatre tickets… Jimi Hendrix

poster?) – cornered in a coign

of copper maize, a corn

maze.  Dropped in a forlorn

well off North Main St. – least coin

                    *

of Union provenance – silver Penny’s

golden meaning (Love

welded to treasure-trove…

chaste equilibrium of all equalities).

The gift that unfolds at the heart of things –

Francesca’s golden poncho (Peruvian)

spun at Sheep’s Clothing (on Wickenden)

for Dave the California bard (who springs

from Rhody roots himself).  Gift

that is already there in the earth,

shining quietly… an Ocean mirth

salted with grief & everlasting life.

In the heart of remorse & gratitude

rose memories well…

the flaming throne planted in Hell

transmuted to Paris park-bench habitude.

I know whom to thank for this Rose Jubilee.

Stony Magdalen, in Galilee

rolled away, set free

the Rabbi of a rescued Julie-bee.  Recovery!

He was already gone, but she showed us

the way.  & the catenary

curve of Argo’s aerie

twinkles with lights, up there – a million eyes

suddenly flash joy from blue-black sky

pouring Milky Way & Ocean Stream.

La vida es sueño – life is a dream;

the wing-beat of Thunderbird only a sigh.

 4.14.20

sketch by Michael N. Gould

so in such straits

GOLD FLEECE

In the blank depths, at nadir of winter.

An acid stain of turpentine.

Peto’s absinthe green

in the still life; drumbeats in the mirror.

Lincoln & Kennedy… Kennedy & King.

Black silk around the photographs.

Time, summarized in epitaphs –

a rocket glare that freezes everything.

& traitors cluster in a mortis-ring

about great Yggdrasil,

composing lizard doggerel

with fangs of trumpery & sting

of fraud.  Shaping a lattice for a type

of self-enclosing anti-Christ,

whose mesmerism none resist –

Rumored Injustice To Be Smashed By Hype.

So in such straits we huddle round the mast.

No longer measure progress

by the steam pipe’s hiss

& whistle of alarms.  It’s in the past,

a memory of island buoyancy

elliptical & calm

we’ll find that palm;

amid light’s brilliance, a transparency

as if an eye looked down from azure dome

as acorn witness for an apple kingdom –

as if the citizens of heaven-home

were you & I… gold fleece of human freedom.

2.12.20

in the Grand Army of the Republic

CLEAR BREEZE

Hank limps onward, like a lost private

in the Grand Army of the Republic

through swamps above Nilotic

Memphis – or plug of gneiss granite

broken loose from Superior shoreline

(euphoric azure of sea air

lifting over the spare

curves of rusted railroad iron).

We carry so much indifferent amnesia,

sleepwalking across Earth.

A measureless unplumbed worth

overshadows our shadows (ecclesia

del girasole… sunflower’s rotation

in the silence of Ravenna

backwater).  Antenna-

headed cave figures, in Papillon

foreshadow these elongate, lantern-

eyed hierarchs of grace –

a shadow ladder, on a base

of basalt (box-within-a-box of Lincoln

logs).  A matryoshka puzzle toy

from Kiev, or Constantinople;

an emerald imago of all people

in mild irises of Maximus (old boy-

martyr).  Matrix, crosshair lens –

vertigo of San Francesco

whorled to the point of zero,

razor-sharp.  Star of St. Stephen’s,

                  *

or the sea.  Is shadow-hero

of millions of shadows, round-

about… perceptible ground

or incarnation of your own heart’s

broken-down ego (melted to music).

Is Jonah of your ocean,

Columba… is feminine

Adonai of Morning Star (mystic

bloom, afloat over Cahokia).  Is

Gateway steel of your

clear breeze, Superior –

Osiris to your adamantine Isis

(Psyche-Amor).  In Ford Theatre

the violence comes to a head.

A Service of the Dead

melds Abraham to one frail butterfly-

phantom – one solidarity of soul.

Whim’s monarch, hoboing

from Mexico, to spring

the news… Pinetop’s True-Loving Honor Roll.

In the heart of the heart of hearts

where all the waters start,

we’re no longer apart –

little acorn coracle sea-charts

mark the almond center of the diagram.

Here the luminous shadow

smiles out of clay wheelbarrow,

& love never ends (warbling I AM).

2.11.20

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

beam against klepto-autocracy

HERMETIC EPISODE

A little portable communion box,

bedizened with a coral reef

of gems (wheatsheaf

engraved on its acacia locks).

Gray pebble – miniaturized

more than a thousandfold

from that rock stronghold

whence it rolled (Paradise

Mountain, milky Jerusalem).

Or tiny grain of wheat

sifted to ground (infant

metropolis), from off the hem

of starry Virgo, Lady Liberty.

Her gown of purple (streaked

with gold) rustled... & sparked

such rays of justice & mercy

that the fickle wind of red & blue

(pushing our pennants back

& forth) fell slack – &

the Janus-faced Minotaur (just you

& I) curled back into his golden urn

within his clammy cave,

& promised to behave;

the strong man was tied up again

with his own silver spiderweb,

& dropped into the Seine –

one convoluted sign

of violence, reduced to tiny nub

                    *

of seedy violet.  Her sea-green eyes

gaze from the bottomland

of human clay, the river-sand

of human time; she is Persephone’s

Corn Mother, she is Cathedral Mary –

with her Sophia-torch held high,

armed with stone tabulae

of wisdom & knowledge, she will be

the restoration of democracy

rooted in human sovereignty;

from calm civil society

bring judgement on kleptocracy

with care for that bright seamless web

of mutuality her Memphis prince

proclaimed, magnanimous –

with love beaming from Mount Horeb

& intergalactic Galilee (a waterfall

of Washingtons... a rainbow

prism of Jerusalems).  So

the cartouche at the foot of soulful

Garfield – on the brow of mournful

Abraham – in the eye

of emerald JFK –

gleams with this glancing parallel :

off the prow of the Ark of Covenant

& the beam of Old Ironsides

shines the light nothing hides –

Beatrice’s look (Thunderbird’s lieutenant).

    1.23.20

an ocean swell

ACORN-RIM

This is that ancient harvest night.

Rhode Island harvesting

the sea.  A Newport wedding

(Jacqueline & Jack) at rocky height

(of Sachuest). & as the whale

harvesting the sea as well

is no less an ocean swell,

& Jonah is his pearl – still hale

& whole, alive from deeps of hell –

so Henry might rise again

from his own carapace of sin

(that shimmery-mirror Minotaur-spell).

Hobo-Falstaff lurks beneath a branch

of raven-wood (Cautantowwit,

Caws-too-much-wit).  Stone-set

into the Seeker’s providential avalanche –

one violet for the junk-jewelry state.

The salt air clears his head.

One Spirit wakens all the dead,

he chants – one Dream outshining potentate

& pyramid.  He nurses Henry back to health

like Whitman with his milky muse;

Abe & martyr Martin fuse

into the circle of their commonwealth –

a coracle or ark of Liberty

circumferencing azure shores,

whose acorn-rim Henry restores

to dappled shade (bright almond eye).

11.1.19

Thunderbird already there

LIVID GRAIL

Late October evening.  Minnesota.

The sky already blue-black,

midnight blue.  Dim speck

of starshine, here & there.  The Hiawatha

sped from Chicago north, May 29

(1935).  Heavy freight train

hobbling across the iron

span, now – screeching, chirping (mine).

Peto, Reminiscences of 1865.

Those mystic chords of memory...

someone to end the enmity

with eloquence (while he was still alive,

and after).  Summon our humanity

into the web of mutuality –

where rootless irrationality

might lose its sway (so hope we).

These chords align their intervals,

octagonal resemblances.

Out of a salty sibilance,

an ocean-sigh (when sea-bell tolls) –

one heave of molten planetary heart

whose Jonah waits, to rise again

out of the chambers of Leviathan

coiling a spring where all the rivers start.

The prehistoric limestone streams

ply on ply, like Schifanoia

allegories in Ferrara –

irenic fossilized life-forms

                 *

of some St. Vitus dance, before all wars;

here a spiral clover-shell

& here an almond eye

gazing from hell up to those stars

with a perennial fidelity.

Maybe it was your canoe,

Micòl – breaching anew

through stinging surf of grief & joy;

for that amor who is always in advance,

arriving before you know

like an eye-in-hand, so –

molded like your clay flute-radiance,

the little bird who sings out of the kiln.

Coulombe, coulombe,

she coos her name –

so simple, waiting at the windowsill;

out of the fire & burning palms

like Phoenix from her tomb

a new America (coulombe,

coulombe) this livid grail exhumes –

ghost dance of the dove who came before

of Thunderbird-already-there

through the black night air

from the dancing bear – shady amor

framing with shimmering wave-wings

milky Melchizedek

& bright ginger Jack

& gentle Abraham (grail-splicing springs).

10.29.19

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

toward the 4th of Juliette

DOUBLE WHEELS

Lone robin yodeling his evening threnody

plaintive, solitary

on June’s last day

what would he intimate to me?

That summer was immense & infinite

beyond the figuring

of our (almost) unerring

memory of planetary things.  That what

our dreaming signified was plain

(glory beyond our ken).

Tomorrow’s now & then

only a ghost might fold again

into the origami of a labyrinth

of Chartres granite, Mary

blue – like this contrary

stubborn root, trapped in cement

blooming, bleu Ming, nevertheless

along an Ariadne thread

signed (calligraphy by Ted

the Mason) in a matrix of finesse

by its ineffable Makar (aye

laddie, on a tear

shed from everywhere –

like Ocean River, or the Milky Way)

& the stone drones below human hearing

it rhythmous b-flat bass

someplace in Memphis

where Osiris met his fate, shearing

                     *

Love from its neverending source

(like Jackie K’s wing

saddled to her hat thing

flying off convertible, in Dallas).

Was it a Lincoln?  Was it a star

mobile, from galaxy?

Something moving in the clay

rotates like Ezekiel wheels – where

Louis Armstrong melted to el P

& X marked the spot

(Montale’s really not

at home – it’s Giorgio who has the key

to the garage, muttered the lovely

Michal of Ferrara dunes).

We don’t recall these tunes!

Ecclesia et Synagoga cousins be –

double-wheels within wheels, sez

Zeke, in Minneapolis.

Where Juliet was, once

before she lost face... fell from grace...

– how tender floats the human form,

ephemeral!  Until

we knot yon safety spiel –

until that lightning robin find his worm

& like a Caliban, or Jordan weed

begin to mold the clay

into slow-moving roundelay

(American)... Cahokia high meed.

7.2.19

egalitarian cathedral

CEDAR HIDEAWAY

In this rough wooden octagon

in the backyard, wrapped

in frayed mosquito nets,

in mid-April, Henry will try again.

The anniversary of Abe Lincoln

rhymes with a shock in Paris.

Notre Dame no longer is

bedecked with lilies for communion.

Entourée de flammes ferventes

Apollinaire, at Chartres

peeks through his bandages

back toward her... makes his lament.

This humble cedar hideaway.

Chaste April light.

The massive stone takes flight

from every heart, with equal sway.

Like a fool in a mystery play,

a cloddish egalitarian

circus, is the Son of Man.

Anti-king, anti-autocracy,

he rides the shoulders of a donkey

(Henry’s stubborn mule

from Berryman misrule

locale) on Muddy journey to the sea;

he’s Jonah, prophet of humility

and poverty, flung to America

to give the motherland a caw –

lift a palladium for Lady Liberty.

4.16.19

transcendental & irrational path P

THIN BANDS

The outer circle of this diagram

is drawing to a close.

The path P we chose

here loops into its ruddy oriflamme.

An old man’s line of numbers,

transcendental &

irrational.  Thin bands,

ketched for riding heavy combers –

sea-path between good & evil.

One people’s destiny

doubled in duality;

twin circles on their parallel

                **

emerge (amid stars & stripes

& iron bars).  History

halts here : between Rimini

& Ravenna (Venice-Paris) overlaps.

The pilot at the wheel of Providence

eyes the prow of his canoe.

Her figurehead (1132)

blooms from the sepulcher – immense

Redemption, like a Stonehenge grail

from 44 B.C. to 4.14.

Melchizedek stands in between.

The plummet-eye of Joachim sets sail.

3.14.19