April is the finickiest month

SMOKE PILLARS

April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall

confusing the fiddleheads.  Atop the bluff

across from St. Paul, three tough-

soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.

A little further down, the buried poet-man

dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.

& further yet, across from Eero’s airy

Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –

vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.

The river moves in swerves… &

doesn’t move.  A copperhead,

unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?

Flanking that rushing flickering stillness

the mounds are more than motionless.

How… curious crowds can only guess.

Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.

Yet these temples are only an analogy.

Even the priests understood

that much.  The man tied to wood,

the woman in flames… perverse apology

in the bloodshed glass – recognition

forsaken.  Of the friend

nearby, who takes your hand…

(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).

These vast mausoleums of bone & ash

frame unwavering grief.

Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.

& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).

4.13.20

whispering the news

NESTED BRANCHES

When the Eternal comes, says the Rabbi,

& what does he mean?

May be the Ghost behind the scene;

the tear with grain of Ocean in your eye.

The truth is whole, the truth is one –

& what does this mean?

That Love’s criterion

is rectitude, in every human situation.

Gumilev, that Petersburg poet,

called it chaste vision –

welded like dew at dawn

to blades of grass, the spark of holy Paraclete.

The infant acorn was King of the Wood.

The leaves bent, whispering the news

through Ariadne’s arbor… (hers

the thread – her nested branches overhead).

The Rabbi is a child of God!

cried Mary Magdalen.

He dies on this occasion

since he bears the prophet’s spiral rod

twirling from heaven as from nothingness.

His smile defies your gravitation;

he will come again

after three days of stony sleepiness

like Jonah sprang from salty Milky Way;

the rule of theft & violence,

of Minotaur’s demonic fraudulence

is coming to an end.  Truth shines like day.

4.2.20

beneath Corona Borealis

BLUE CANOE

While boy-o Henry skipped down Arthur St.

in birdsong Mendelssohn

a few miles up the trolley line

J. Buried-Man lingered on Arthur Ave (complete

Dream Song lament, at 57).  In Paris now

they’ll have to reconstruct the nave,

restore each curving architrave.

This knave goes drifting to St. Lou – his blue

canoe, beached crosswise (by Cahokia)

a kind of compass needle

aimed straight up.  Will weedy

Hobo ever stand erect himself?  Selah,

Ezekiel, Isaiah.  At San Vitale in Ravenna

or at Notre Dame, pilgrims

still stamp across the lurking limbs

of Lucifer – ravel a penitential way

by grace of Mary’s Ariadne-avatar.

It was her love for Theseus

(like Maggie Miriam’s for Jesus)

reeled him out, dis-mazèd – free & clear.

Lone Henry looks straight up, to Pole Star.

Ariadne’s Crown.  The toxic night

a donnybrook for his distraught

Columbia – his ark battered by Minotaur,

his Constitution of chaste liberty

suborned (sat on by Putin’s man).

Look, pilgrim, to the heights again –

whence cometh Thunderbird.  Dove… see?

3.29.20

La Vida es Sueño

ROLLING DOOR

Henry, magnanimous prince

like Saggy Mundo on his

Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) waits in his chains, listens.

Them animal pelts smell bad,

sez Hobo (Sancho

P. Zee).  Life, my friends – no

dream, declaims Sir Galahad.

The little paralyzed air-prince

like a baby Fisher King

(Guillain-Barré) would bring

last summa out of everything (wince).

Like Adam taking Eve’s advice

he’d melodize the whole

isle to an apple donut

hole – & give it to his son (nice!).

Pallas Athena wore an aegis-skin

with gold palladium-bangles

dangling at all angles

from her circuiting Argo-spin;

it was a sacrifice, like Morning Star

or Igor’s Rite of Spring –

the icon bearing everything

buried in grassy Galilee, in a jar

of myrrh (brimful, for Magdalen).

Lippo Memmi pinxit

(now in Providence).  What

X will mark the spot, Justinian?

        *

What hour marks the lux fiat

when Mary in her pontoon-

boat (sun-gold doubloon

nailed to the keel) will celebrate

the whorl of Theotokos-kenosis-

hypostasis – on a clay

wheel (out of Cahokia)?

Whose eye-in-hand is... Henry’s

sister-cuz?  Whom doth the Grail serve?

I mean the grey stone

hands in that quaternion

of mudstream... – who has the nerve

to lift the lid of Henry’s sepulcher?

In Resurrection Cemetery

(northeast of Pig’s Eye)

Osiris waits for Isis-murmur –

America sleeps in her old nightmare

until that Pussycat (on Easter)

knocks the rolling door

out of the way... & Henry’s there!

Limping from his throne of rosy clay,

his island ocean-ray –

borne on his own birthday

like a faerie Pharaoh (Narragansett Bay)

to the Rose Lighthouse (near Gould

Island), in chariot

of dawnlight (mauve

& violet) – like a Sun Ken (holy fool’d).

2.21.19

bottled in an oak-knot

LIGHT SHIVERS

A silver filigree of January ice

atop the Mississippi.

An eye from remote milky

paradise congeals mid-stream.

In the mandorla, the king smiles

who must die.  Rain

wells from Magdalenian

locks, sways down the aisles.

Reality’s an unctuous parasite

whose masculine will

melds to feminine style.

Psyche’s a rose (hermaphrodite).

You search the scriptures, yet

you do not come to Me.

My mother is a refugee,

her kid’s a goldfinch in a net.

Light shivers off the snow, & down

the stream.  Only a dream.

A 3-dimensional scheme

with vanishing pt. in Providence town.

They chased that woman to her grave,

who danced in Paris on the eve

of the Great War.  Her wave

of splendor... Morning Star’s mild sleeve.

La Mancha waits like Camelot

for the happy restoration

of good ship Madeleine –

Marie’s cosine (bottled in an oak-knot).

1.9.19

petit songe du solstice

MASS PLANTING

The soaring voices of the Rose Ensemble

filled the cavernous wooden vault

of St. Mary’s with green light

on solstice night.  Meek humble

faces in a crowd become limestone

architecture of high song –

a van der Weyden throng,

a Bruegel mass planting a cornerstone.

When the tender light falls first

& softly on the muddy fringe

of some new edifice... strange

dewy glinting, where the stone burst

from whale-mouth of the earth

(Jonah-Persephone’s deep

crypt, where ages keep)

with fluttery breath of infant birth.

Jonah... Osiris... buried Man...

little Nutcracker King

solving his Sphinx thing,

finally.  Sibylline Isis (Belgian)

murmuring – I am that which was

& is & ever shall be;

no mortal has ever

lifted the veil which covers me.  Cuz,

tell Henry : Rex Pacificus

has found his mate

beyond the Golden Gate –

Magdalen, her gardener (Jesus).

12.22.18

Election Restoration Day

BLACK LAMB

Henry’s diary for a dying day

saunters into November.

After Wars to End All War

will Guillem find his smoky way?

Apollinaire in a Sikh turban

waits out the head wound.

Carried to the ground

from a Paris window (11/11).

Long way to Tipperary, Gil.

Grandpa in his macintosh

in Belgium rain... gosh,

long ago, Captain.  Farewell.

So long.  Today’s Election Day.

Are we of the electorate

yet?  Like a checkmate

in a game with yourself, aye –

Reds & Blues – rival brothers

in mired mirror war.

Each bears a torch

for her – the midnight soul mother,

those faces of benevolent fathers

children carry deep

into their forests of sleep.

Only the branding iron cauters

its contrary mosaics (through the Age

of Iron).  Black Elk

troubles the star-milk

with one royal touch (smoky sage-

                   *

brush sand mandala).  Soft, Selkie –

blue dolphin from Skye...

this mournful rage to die

sulks in the dark heart, MLK.

You must lift it from us, black lamb.

Forever & ever, light

candle through the night –

mass-vortex Gal of each I am, I am.

She smiles through waves, ineffable

Wisdom – heart’s foundation,

coracle of liberation.

She lifted Jonah (willing Abel)

into eye of hurricane –

the diamond matrix,

Everysoul’s six

ways – your dream song, Hen.

Her word burns like a fire in the Book

of Love, her Testament.

What Maggie meant

when she saw the young Nazir look

from the bright eyes of the gardener

& shouted, He is risen!

Out from your earth-borne

everlasting fire, world-fashioner!

So Morning Star whorls her self-sacrifice

& Guillaume flings another jest

& Henry’s safety net

swings sister-dove from rigor mortis.

11.6.18

banquet at the end of time

PUSHKIN MOVE

The banquet at the end of time,

the invitation read –

the living & the dead

to celebrate.  This pantomime

of solemn feasting they perform

beneath cavernous timbers

(burnt resinous embers)

foreshadows that preternatural storm

of joy, tasting our expectation –

when Eli’s empty chair

so hopeful (floating there)

is overflowing with affection

once again.  As we well know,

observes bright Magdalen –

beseeching, in the garden,

gardener (raw moon of woe).

& what it all may mean for Hobo

Hank, lazing out

his salvation-boat

conundrum (Solipsism, ho!)...

Can it be can-do canoe?

If anyone thinks they

know anything (See

St. Paul!) they’re in Pig’s Eye

sez he.  My inconsequence

is like a Pushkin move;

chess is like love,

government... clear as Providence.

9.16.18

those double doors

DEEP RESCUE

Those double doors of the Baptistery

in Florence, where Alighieri

was restrained from returning.  He

might have admired the mastery

of Lorenzo Ghiberti – that golden river

of perfection, surging from

Eden to Gesthemani... some

inscrutable summa of Prime Mover

spoked in parables of heartbreak

& confusion (Miriam, lifting

both hands in agony).  So bring

what you have to a blindman’s break-

fast, to her Thanksgiving feast.

From the belly of a whale

came Jonah – whole & hale

as dolphin-breach (O swift grey beast)!

The linèd forehead of Leviathan

is like your own... therefore

be not dismayed.  Footsore

mule, flinty thin Prophet Stan,

your Livingstone (still at the Nile)

holds firm against the flow

of time – your steadfast glow

upon the brow of them who show.  Smile,

Indigo!  Passage to more than blue!

– these equilibria

of gyroscape... mute

mutualità, below the soil... deep rescue!

5.16.18

i.m. Don Peppino Diana

SEA-SALTS

Late summer by the Mississippi

yields an agon by the Po.

Fording his Rubicon, Hobo

hunkers by crossroad (at path P).

The stubborn soul, a milky diamond

in the murk, seasons a world

of wounds with salt – hurled

Don Peppino to the ground,

who fell as lightly as a moth wing

to the concrete men of Moloch –

smiling firmly, struck

a blow with kiss of peace (like visiting

ange d’or).  Take him to heart,

Henry, the mirror said;

that mensch you left for dead

leaps like a saltimbanco to his part

bench pressed against each prison wall.

Melchizedek demurred

Don’s invitation to world

domination – orange towers fall;

that milky mutter from a cloudy center

framed Ariadne’s nets

(enmeshed with quipu knots)

into a corn-gold maze.  You enter

Notre Dame like a gray wave

of seamless limestone

turning emerald... bone

by bone, like Jonah from the grave

                 *

her naval spine arches a dolphin

gray on gray – her eye

a waterspider... golden fly

fleeced with fine thread... riverine

almond, flanked by an equal sign.

This acorn fell from heaven;

here it shall remain,

be not removed – a seed from Okean

(Kiev domain).  While the Son of Man

through the murmur of murk

will shine, & do his work –

his echo in green shade, his twin

like Thunderbird flares out her wings

& rustles in the poplar leaves

where Peppy Di conceives,

Maria Retina perceives – brings

everyone to that shade garden throne.

It is a cryptic gravity

1132 feet high

& etched with J, or eagle eye – lone

outline from a deep loom’s frame

(Martin A. might say)

or copper penny for the Day

of Jubilee – ineffable clear cipher-game;

Tommy the Woodpeck’s narrow marrow-

proof; the oakleaf’s laugh,

or Death’s own epitaph –

lifting grey sea-salts into fresh tomorrow.

8.30.17

musing on time passing

OPEN SEA

Hobo lingers in his old hideout,

musing on Time passing

inexorable, unceasing.

Even that Son of Man, no doubt,

is subject to the steady stream.

That He rose from the dead

after the carmine dogwood

petals bled... is like a dream –

when broken Magdalen beheld

Him, held Him tight

as she lay, hid by night

stone still, in sleep – felled

by the noon nightmare upon the hill.

It is a mystery

too deep for Hobo, or for me.

Jesus submitted to the Father’s will –

not on Golgotha, but with every beat

of that red pulsing wheel

of Ocean River (waxy seal

for human honeycomb – complete

sweet sign of infinite benevolence).

My yellowing maroon

& off-white leaf-pontoon...

my Hobo raft snaking past violence,

my dogwood octagon, shaved off

by Time into a simple

convex fish-vessel...

my melting hexagon, snow-staff

                *

of almond blooms, shading a well

in Palestine... stone skiff

leaping Gennesaret – if

only all these metaphors knot in one spell!

The spiral of a fingerprint

in limestone sea-cave

might unfurl a concave

hour-glass – etch kind intent

in pregnant sheets aslant the wind.

Each step taken, each

wave-slap on the beach

will glance to faceted perfection – find

ripe summa in a planetary plan;

the ants have theirs, Hobo

his role to play – go

find her, who unveils the sun of Man!

Magnanimous dome (Emanu-el’s)

on Morris Avenue,

your turtleshell (blue

arc of sky over her Book of Kells)

circumferences a shady tree

of leafy ladders (Jacob’s,

Jonah’s... Honest Abe’s).

We climb together, you & me,

through thunderclouds of poetry –

counting the heartbeats

as we rise... fleets

thread the Gate, to open sea.

7.10.17

sealed by kiss

FUGAL DRONE

This May light by the Mississippi.

Evening radiance

of ripeness – deep silence.

Nature can’t be explained, you see –

just felt.  The invisible sustains

the visible.  The unspoken

bee-silk tread, unbroken

dangling between a line of cranes

(fixed image from a coasting film

of tears, pooling in swamps

outside Ravenna dumps).

The retina, the iris-realm –

trim silence of almond canoe

hung up in dim garage

of old Ferrara (green

mirage).  She’s looking for you.

Calling you.  Her light curves round.

Curves round a pyx

hexagonal (X marks

her).  Regal Em, par exemple   bound

for glory in an Amherst cell

her russet star flames

golden dome   her name’s

a plunging eagle’s parallel

O gram of wheat  slanting to water

where the match strikes fire

in Mary’s   mirror-empire

as   furiously spinning   mutter-potter

                  *

echoes one   light-blazing choir

fluke-blinded hearth-power

of black earth-heart   your

milky diamond   from trench-cold mire

The universe is made of this.

A new world beckons now

from almond soil.  Plow

of the old world, sealed by kiss –

recycling topsoil of time

from Raven-Wife to salt

Ravenna – vernal vault

of Juliet to St. Louis sublime.

Moses – padre of Cleopatra,

stepfather of Jessie O.,

veteran of Shiloh...

he might know.  The river mantra

for the quick & dead (a strong drown-

gong) is fugal drone –

peepers in a mud-cone

warbling (like robins in a round).

Across there, from Monk’s Mound.

The planetary plate

is studded with jagged fate –

but we will make a joyful sound,

O froggy clown.  King Charles 3rd

awaits his guilty crown...

Henry is plastering his own.

His throne’s Columbian (a golden bird).

5.15.17

J. Fisher King

WHAT CHEER

April rain soaks the riverlands.

The cottonwoods are green

with a mossy sheen

(a milky spray).  Giuliana understands

her little boy’s harmonic joy,

winding up his yellow

gyroscope (so

imperturbable, this balance-toy).

Ravenna sifts backwater Time.

The hollow tock of wood-

pecker, carving a shed

for screech owl (minima sublime,

incognito).  Little gray on gray

tree-rings of Okeanos –

oscillating Knossos,

Minerva-maze.  Flute-bird (in clay).

A copper Jonah, lifted from the well.

Dusk-rose, Venusian.

Seal of the Son of Man

like Hamlet’s ring, in wax (fell

Icarus, from labyrinth

– the ship sailed on).

Trials of the paragon,

the paradigm.  Blue hyacinth

of Shaker spirit, trembling

Will   I am

Alpha Omega   home

in my petroglyph   assembling

              *

light stars   on the horizon

Thunderbird ghost-

dance   round pivot-post

of early souls   lifted from prison

At dawn in Providence, the light

gathers gold   atop

the dome   What cheer,

Netop   the independent soul   bright

spear   at petrel summit of

this Camelot   simplicity  

a brave’s priority

to choose the good   be led by Love

J. Fisher King   Ancient of Days

as it was   upon a time

at the beginning (lame

limb   violence bears away   always)

& the smile of quiet eyes & lips

the canoe in the shadowy

garage   Ferrara iron

burgeoning almond   Natasha limps

toward her vault   in Magdala

Gesthemane   April

umbrella   of good will

the given Earth   the rose mandala

a fingerprint spiral   of gratitude

Thanksgiving feast   soul

liberty   constancy   whole

serene   uplifted   Rhody-rood

4.19.17