slow boat to Atlantis

archaic Mississippian ware (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

ADAMANT ACORN

The steady quiet of the river leads me,

& these monarchs afloat

toward Mexico.  Mote

of black-orange sail, tacking across a sea

of green... like a jasper flag of Jonah

(flickering calm coral

pinned over equatorial

squall).  Sextant from Alexandria,

sunken Heracleion – lamp from Atlantis

beaming through night sea;

matrix of Milky Way,

your Isis-canoe... assembling Osiris

from slow-roiling flatlands (Mississippian).

So Wolfram’s grail-witness

(ineffable justice

planted in lovingkindness) branches on

through Osip’s, Nikolai’s chaste vision –

adamant acorn of creation

(shining emerald of redemption

framed by buoyant casket-stone).

The red muscle pulses into veins.

A wheel turns versus gravity

rowing time to eternity;

the melancholy of Ravenna cranes,

the mortified forsaken innocence

of flighty Juliet

my filmy safety net

hugs tight – lifts up to cedar salience.

8.29.19

etched in vernacular

BEEHIVE WITNESS

Dante’s rambles round the tamarack swamps

outside Ravenna.  Beached

hulks of Byzantium reach

toward the sea.  Inside, smoke-lamps

phosphoresce hieratic grandeur

(kind bovine gaze of Empress,

Emperor).  Alighieri’s

impressed – ecco l’ora serale

in those green sheepfold meadows

where Time does not run.

He pursues his martyrion –

Crusader grandfather, circle of Mars.

He etches in vernacular his answer

out of deep parish history

to the welded Roman panoply

(Arcadian melody, Virgilian whisper).

I am a scribe who when Love speaks

hastens after, hearkening

noting everything down.

I haven’t heard from Bea in weeks.

I remember lips set with a grim reproof.

Down at the borderland

(Texas to Samarkand) –

Coatlicue, Tezcalipoca... beetling roof

of squalling Raven years.  Esta

su iglesia, Henrique?

She’ll be coming like Elijah,

not Europa, now (beehive witness).

6.24.19

woodcut by Mary Ravlin Gould

conducting veinous electricity

MUD-ANGELS

These three mud-clay homunculi

hung from pink ribbons

in my tent – lumpy remains

from some Dance of Death?  My

mother must have brought them back

from Mexico (mud-angels

to guard her potter’s wheel).

Coatlicue of Quauhnahuac,

adamant Madre of encrusted Time!

Out of your bottomland

whirls eye-in-hand –

out of Monk’s Mound’s perennial slime...

Clay muscles rolling stone – conducting

veinous electricity –

out of nothing come to be

loaves loafing from the oven (rising,

singing).  A moss-green Isis by the Nile

(or in West Branch) you

rain your rivers blue,

compassionate Magdalen – your smile

lifts Jesús from the grave, raises

Enrique from the cemetery

too (some ordinary

day on Earth).  Hobo Jay cleanses

all hearts, rinses eyes with river-clay –

sighs, EPHPHATHA.  From boulders

God can lift up equal daughters,

equal sons... just look at buried Henry-manqué!

7.10.18

hurrah for the green black & blue

DREAM SONGS

Early cold air makes light more clear

toward Veteran’s Day.

Only whisper a ray

through the Mexican mirror, my hero (here

& now).  Who gave a last full measure

to the metronome of fate –

her solemn bell drones late

over these midnight hexagons (white hair

of graves).  Whisper it back to me,

quietly, quietly.  Dark

wake of Noah’s Cutty Sark,

trailing to Southern Cross, Black Sea.

Your raven circles to the end of speech.

These crumbs will be enough.

Twin shoulders lift the rough

yoke – walk a path to Ocean Beach.

A stone like diamond lost in Voronezh –

gray pebble, agate

hidden in the gate...

forged fate of Man as Uncle George

the Unknown Soldier... gardener

outside her smithy-cave,

their humus-world to save.

Come in.  These stones weather

Siberian winter – like Finnish sauna

finished in Hyperborea;

out of Lake Victoria

or Sydney, Australia (hurrah

                  *

for the green black & blue)... faint echo

out of Mexico,

where all the monarchs go.

The earth will be redeemed... but very slow.

Up the street from your view of heaven

in another neighborhood

hearts hard for good

pitch darkness toward Pacific Union –

money grooves & spectral hates

congeal in orange ogre-

hats... scared morgue-

hacks... guile of guppy hypocrites...

All politics is local, sez.

In Minneapolis

black is really less

skin in the game (the realtor biz);

up at the lake, the fishermen

cash in their walleyes;

hunters in disguise

carry the venison for Uncle Ben

(Rice Lake).  The joker’s going wild.

He’s up by White Bear –

FBI got there?

Over near Mound – which bullets?  Piled?

Dream songs must leave behind the fear,

greed, hate.  Earth clay is one,

& Manitou is

done (for today).  Help with the bier?

11.9.17

the river is a strong brown god

AZTEC ALPHABET

The brazen serpent of the Mississippi

runs through my veins,

cantinnas Hobo (in vain).

How to tell my own (con version) story?

The antic disposition of these shelves

of incunabulae (obscure

revoluminous curious lore)

ripples off Norse keels – revolves

around my cranium (son of

McCain I am) – the worm

a canker, iced like berm

at Sutton Hoo (& strong as

love).  He will lift himself up

into his father’s affection

(this child of deflection)

at last, & be first in the stirrup

at the gates of his sly enemies –

he will be the son

who twists there (frozen

image of abjection) underneath greed-

seas of rifle-toting angels

(Cuzco school).  Spleen

of Hamlet, by the bedroom

screen – cunning de Kooning angles –

that Master of Gray, backed in a corner

of Ravenna – or raving

Coatlicue, stoning

the Consul in the dog-ravine (here,

                  *

Fido)... someone lurks in a mirror

with double doves (tin-

whistle Hobo-child of sin).

Abandona-donna’s abbatoir?

Some Aztec alphabête of yesteryear?

Hazel the moth-goddess

flits into brown recess

of brown recluse... (the spider’s... her).

The sacrifice of sacrifices –

hunters’ offering,

a shiny golden ring –

is like this image from ice-fisher’s

thing (icon of everything);

is like this light bread

Moses left for dead,

or Aaron molded into iron Sing-Sing –

a memory of Psyche-crimes

no one can heal,

nor break the lead seal

from the dark backyard (abysmal

time) until the flutter of a wing

like a mind from the sea

Hobo’s thirsty misery

slakes   or forsakes   a palm, circling

through the gray salt latitudes

like blistered sword

blessing   like sunshade

père-sol   ultramarine   (beatitudes)

9.25.17

Matiere de Bioluminescence

TABLE GUEST

The green orbs of the butternut tree

land with a soft clunk

in the August grass.  Monk

Hobo absorbs their summer gravity.

Like that statue of Roger stepping through

his doorway on the cliff

into a wavebent skiff

drifting west – like Jonah, into

the gate of Leviathan... an inscrutable

gray brow of cloud, swimming

like dove or seabird... everything

swallowed up into transparent fable –

Columbia, emerging from the ocean mist.

An infant newness in

the soul’s old wilderness,

new-resurrected as a table guest.

The feast was all prepared beforehand.

Lips fuse like the sun’s

corona.  That Smiling One’s

your sister-dove, wafting to land

her sea-rose air.  Wings overhead

shadow the dark gold

& the blood-red wax – old

regal seal (Day of the Dead).

Beneath twin doors of tin-cut mirror...

out of the cave, volcano,

hurricane... a deep-sea glow

of luminous grail-fish.  Draw near.

8.23.17

in my style of raven-squawk

OVER AMERICA

America, replete with stories,

bursting with tales – I’ll

tell you another, in my style

of raven-squawk (Cautantowwit’s

oblique rescue-directions, south-

southwest).  Narragansett

wraith of Afterlife – what

zigzags from the smokehole (mouth

full of shade).  Ink-echo of an Incan

Thunderbird, or bald eagle,

or maybe owl.  Feel

the light gray prickling your human

scalp, Columbia.  That Mexican

tin double-dove mirror

frames Aztec cult of fear

& violence (Dia de Muertos, Halloween).

The Consul, slobbering mescal,

muttering William Blackstone...

Went to live with Indians...

With Narragansetts.  Harboring all

refugees – all troubled, exiled souls

(Rog Williams testified).

& so we double back to Rhode

Island, to Providence.  My school’s

a bit of Brownian motion, drawn in

toward indomitable diamond

by Love’s invisible almond.

As magnet gathers scattered iron

                * 

into a Magna Chartres wheel

her beautiful dove-wings

breathed into lungs

inured to painvine (coal dust, steel)

& lifted Life up wholly from the ground.

That green palm held by Alighieri

circuited grey orrery

spun from high Ocean River State – profound

light fiery water vessel made of clay

wrested from death-cave

to quintessential grave

transfiguration – your soul’s dancing ray.

It is Love’s interlacing hands

figuring a catamaran

or Manitou two-woman

womb-canoe – crossweaving islands

in a cat’s-cradle (a fleecy safety-

net).  You may not

recognize the US yet

in such pre-Cambrian confetti –

Ezra Caw-Caw Ezekiel, on his harsh

bark, wandered, insane

with hatred.  All began

in 1913, he would cuss – poison marsh-

land of the War to End All Wars...

Yet Henry’s hobo mule

mutters an older Yule

under his breath.  Open the doors...

                *

those silver mirror-doors of monarch-land.

Roger’s canoe banks in Ferrara

shade-garage... Alleluiah.

A little almond planted on good ground

blooms to Eternity.  Thanksgiving

magnanimity, sweet William

sings; the grey I AM

flickers in flocks of overshadowing

lightness.  The one who made himself

perfect transparent acorn

octahedron – he was born

at end of May (ancient festival

of restoration).  Like evergreen

King Arthur... JFK

or MLK... Melchizedek

emerges from his tent of welcoming.

The doom that Jesus faced on Golgotha

he had prepared for, long

before.  Green prow or prong

of spiritual Power, he bent like Uther

Pendragon into the beggar-skins of men;

he smiled, & shared the bread

& wine; made his last bed

a sepulcher of victory, beyond our ken.

Over America, the clouds roll by.

The curling fiddlehead,

the milkweed pod... float

on your way, Monarch.  Souls never die.

7.18.17

to the Open Road

PINE-SAP

Hobo took to the Open Road,

from Minneapolis

to ancient Providence.

Like Mark Baumer, or Johnny Appleseed

or Pippin, off the deck of Pequod

unto lustrous ebony

of kings (their feathery

full fathom five... old sacred wood).

Gray tintype of elder Whitman,

stiff lead butterfly perched

on his hand.  We searched

for you, O monarch soul – your Plan

a prairie zigzag into Mexico.

Across the Rio Grande

to feathered-serpent land

pacing a shadow like raven-arrow

(Narragansett shade).  Crumbs

for Elijah-bird, Joachim-

eagle (from the seraphim).

Who plummets (wings like snare drums

thundering).  A way of traveling back

into deep green earth,

Hobo – measure your worth

for cedar berth (from Hackensack

to heavenly Jerusalem).  Transfiguration

chicken shack – here Hen

gathers his brood again

into the spare refectory (Franciscan

                *

cornerstone) where Piero limned

an emerald almond branch

lit by a thread (match-

fuse flaring) like sun-skimmed

honey-milk.  So Hobo burbles home

downstream.  The Gulf beckons.

Blue radiance of suns

(YHWH, YInMn) out of Pacific foam...

& in RI, in San Francisco Bay

orange arcs of rainbow

(mulitocular O-show)

fan skyward Hagia Sophia spark-display.

A yellow-black viceroy wavers

from Petersburg, southwest.

Grave resurrection, chaste

Akme-vision... dark cherry life-savers

Persephone crane-dances

limping to the spring.

Natasha’s creaky swing

for Julietta 484   rusty romances

when we dead shall rise   ghost-dancing

circling into the cloud

of dust   meek now, not proud

Frank Muleteer   Jennifer Sing-Sing

abracadabra... Alcatraz

rock flung from sky

become canoe   your eye

be dew   pine-sap    river to Paradise

5.31.17

that river road to Memphis

CLEAR LIGHT

Again the baby crocuses

peek from the clay.

Blue as those starfish Mary

Ravlin molded, bright as seahorses.

The cottonwoods lean by the river,

hearkening to milder

time.  Spring child, your

mother flows to Memphis, where

one milky King came to his end

willing to walk that road –

real prophecy, he said.

Against our triple-headed fiend

(entrenchèd greed, malice & war)

to shape his earthy will

to one kiln-fired good Will

& forge a worldwide fellowship – soar,

mighty Martin, to that eagle’s lair!

Let your green trumpet sound

until a safety net is bound

with international orange there –

strong as titanic span & pillar

soft as a catenary

wing   shadowing gray

Ocean   in the sky’s wide azure

where twin doves from Mexico

open their double doors

hid among cedars

on a high hill   where monarchs go

                 *

so blinding sunshine grant us   second

sight   when we gaze upward

& behold   lenticular cloud

of mauve & rose   afloat   profound

over the wheeling ground   & fold

ourselves into that solid air

relinquish pride & fear

for spring’s renewal   as of old

your web of mutuality

yokes unknown soldiers trudging

to the Somme   frauds pledging

sacrifice   for unreality

just as they had in Vietnam

your solitary   freedom

walk   into Jerusalem

tattooed with beatific stigma   I am

coming like a thief, he said

so keep awake   the day

draws nigh   one April   Day

of Jubilee   when   rising from the dead

we’ll be that crocus   Kingdom Come

a long time coming   freedom

train   of joy & wisdom

supernatural glee   from heaven   home

to Earth   again   soul liberty

as promised in the whisper-

cave   of Galilee   your

clear light   ever-afloat   Eternity

4.4.17

when the Eternal comes

AUTUMN DRUMS

Shards of a spectrum scatter flashing

by the old twin-doored

twin-dovetail mirror

out of Mexico.  Light faceting

(from purple candlestick, late

afternoon, October).

All Souls’, beyond Tiber

or Po, where goat-sheep congregate

beneath the tiny pumpkin lamps

of Chinese lanterns.  We

lift them with you, Psyche –

4-dimensional temple!  Clamps

of copper from an iron ribcage

breathe out now with you

your Scattergood milieu,

egalitarian Link-o-pen; rage

cannot stem your dissemination,

nor malevolence

of Minotaur silence

muted trompette marine.  O nation

sowing disintegrated diamonds

of personhood – like rain

of milkweed seeds!  A grain

for monarch feathers (Solomon’s)

or living stones, or silver pennies

American .925

recursive light from hive

2 dozen bronze lamps from your base

                       *

Rick Stocks has gathered in 3 warehouses

brass railings from the stairs

for climbing to the Bears

who dance around your Ariadne’s

Crown, Leviathanic brow;

soul liberty, she said,

& rising from the dead –

these hieroglyphs tattoo my prow.

The lamp lifts in an evening light.

The crossroads (dying –

living – loving – giving)

focus, like a lens (Hittite

or Italian – Roma, Ethiopian...)

how my heart emigrated

toward your implicated

face (memory of Raphaelian

grace, nested in Providence).

So the quiddity of soul

shows Psyche (personal);

how you live, what happens

gradually fold to perfection

when the Eternal comes

& autumn drums

refracted through her leafy prison

echo under circling stars

the Three Bears dance

beyond Pacific romance   &

La Paix rises   from Venus, Mars

10.20.16

light gleams in Colchis

ANCIENT KEY

                                No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?

The spiral molluscs from Precambrian seabed

in the limestone facing by the door

remind me of you; the bent lyre

of the cottonwood by the riverbank led

me back to you too – bent over your clay

wheel, shaping the river-mud

into a smiling imago.  We tread

your maze toward home, thread-spun Ariadne.

That Mexican Last Supper diorama –

chipped clay bread-&-wine feast

you repaired... bones of a beast

lifted from bloodlines, toward a panorama.

Light from a distant prison window

gleams in Colchis.  Maximus

knots three bright strands

beneath a keystone arch – mingled so,

they mark a brow with perfect diamond,

one spark of dancing flame.

Perfection is the frame

of right accomplishment – the ripe almond

of what thou lovest well.  Well-founded

Gateway Arch, the light flows

east to west – what Rhodos grows

for liberty, for justice (lightning-grounded,

here & now).  Crossed in St. Louis

by Rio del Espiritu – & there

one eerie soaring flare

of Raven passing through (southwest)

                    *

inks the last answering quipu

to that sweet hypothesis

of sea-blue Maximus –

the imago, a kind of kindly Manitou-

insignia.  Seal of copper Penny

gleaming from the bottomland;

Columbian wish-well (one hand-

eye palms its moss-green rim... see?).

Southwest, southwest... Cautantowwit,

drawn like a Malcolm, like

a black-orange monarch

through the double dove-doors of that

moonlit mirror, into Mexico –

to touch the orange checkmate

of an azure Golden Gate.

Stubborn, impoverished, soft Frisco

mule!  Lifting the ancient key

of human harmony

again, for you, for me –

netting the breathing sail of safety

there, at last – for Juliet,

for John, for Weldon,

Malcolm, Hart... for everyone

yearning, unreconciled, disconsolate;

& across vast timespace hollows

her winged hands & face

stir courage to embrace –

Grace penetrates the Gates (& Rose).

8.24.16

Dragonish paradigm

Ravenna Diagram, the continuous poem-in-progress, slithers along in its dragonish way through the clouds.  These lines of Stevens' come to mind :

The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,
But he that of repetition is most master.

That master theme of his - to consider the imagination, as it shapes the "First Idea" (or ideas) by which we live, is also an unavoidable subject for me (& any poet)...

How is it that "representative persons" become part of the landscape (seascape?) within which we navigate?  What is this shuttling back & forth between the verbal model, the paradigm, & the actual here-&-now?

The question of the icon or image, & how it might be interpreted...

Confess I'm not saying much here.  Just trying to open a door on this thing, which seems to have its own idiom.

SHY COLOSSUS

In the events all around you

at this moment – like

that cabbage moth taking

a hike around the arugula –

there is one Event, like the breeze

cooling your sultry end-

of-summer haze.  Send

to Gilead for news – release

those carrier pigeons from the rooftops!

Take a message to Garcia!

Summon our immune

militia (Firecracker Pops

& Marty King to lead the way).

None shall die in vain.

The long day wanes.

Like Max in Mexico, the monarchs play

hide-&-seek behind bronze pillars,

Lebanon cedar.

One beloved figure –

footnote painted in a corner –

shy colossus in Rhode Island

pasted with primary

color – Hurricane Mary

(Maggie to her friends) will stand

for every cyclone & dust-storm

of tears.  Here’s looking

at you, kid.  Bring

apples, Rosie... comfort Everyworm.

    9.9.15

Tin Mirror

All my poems are local, parochial, topical, occasional, & universal.  I can't resist the temptation to hawk & honk them from the rooftop, hot off the grill.  Por favor, please share if you like.  Xerox them.  Paste them on your mirror.  Gracias!

TIN MIRROR

The color of those clouds, above

that soaring pine (her arms

flung wide, green Miriam

bedecked with cones) – vague echo of

El Greco, Michelangelo –

a bit marmoreal.

Disconsolate King of Coal,

Concrete... former Numero Uno,

about to send tears stumbling down

again...  So we sketch the local

monarch.  Him we all

know (Only-Two-Well).  Then someone

in Michoacán – Rosario Ocampo,

maybe – fashions a fine

tin mirror, sealed with twin

doves on double doors (closed, now)

& mails it to a mountaintop

in Galilee (just north

of El Grotto). The earth

is in travail, he murmurs – ope

mi puerta – up periscope, Jésus!

Stormclouds part for a flint

moment (lightning) – slate,

smile!  El rey ha muerto, vivez

le rêve!  From grassland salience

(Tower Hill, or Mount

Zion) her milkweed font

purls into sylvan stream (pine-sense).

    6.25.15