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

like a gouache by David Jones

LITTLE GROTTO

Day like a gouache by David Jones.

Diaphanous vision, muted

by sea-wind, raincloud.

Mountain, meadow, rust (earth tones).

The nightmare of the Great War

like sulphur tuning fork

or buried line in Eden Park

commingles its dilemma in a metaphor

like rose in steel dust (Roger’s compass,

pointing NNW).

& Image of the Beast is

emblem for the matrix of that enterprise

encrypted at the center of a corn maze

where Satan & his Minotaur

(ICE-bound, possessed) are

snared (handcuffed in their own cold glaze).

The Man of Lawlessness, like Terrible

Ivan – he makes his own desire

the absolute measure;

he’s lost to caritas (in his own bubble).

Imagine Ghiberti’s golden doors

at the Baptistery in Florence

with angels forced to dance

to the lash of demonic matadors…

imagine Eugenio, alongside Clizia

locked in the library

with Mussolini – her sturdy

sun-glance, over the chessboard… ah,

*

bright wings!  When Everyman & Woman

breathe in the heartland

of their living temple… &

Joachim’s eagle plummets through the Plan

of Ages!  Providential restoration, O

downglide of Holy Ghost!

Multitudinous host

of human happiness – blue emerald glow

of soft & silent cat’s-eye revolutions,

roll!  & be the planetary

hearthland, wide prairie…

deep swell of Thunderbird flute sessions!

Because all the world’s a stage, coach;

the play’s the salty verse

for catching Eddy the Perverse,

who suckles his Corona like a roach

out of the Minotaur’s bleak heart –

rotten as… who can say?

God knows.  Only way

’s to pinwheel back where we start,

Pocahontas – up to the swirling

origin of springs.

A little grotto brings

its whisper of clear water.  Everything

draws near.  Pleroma for Fisher King

(little lad in oak tree)

shines, golden, leafy.  His

mother smiles… rainbows from nothing.

3.28.20

like an unremarkable cup nest

SLOW CHANT

Brown river, in a transept of browns.

In a gully of mid-March.

She slides by Arch

to Gulf, to be engulfed (drowns).

A scrawny bird scrapes overhead.

Plain sea-gull?  Or

some magpie pio-pio –

newsy jailbird finch (last heard

in 1938)?  What about Mudpie Robbins,

the St. Louis Cardinal?

Pitches his meta-material

nested steady state hysteresis (spins

on clumps of slag – chaotic shmush

of paired radii

with reversible pi

slippage).  Camouflage whoosh

like an unremarkable cup nest, filled

with grass & rootlets…

one a them twig safety nets!

Jams into stadium – an emerald,

mobile stable of staple u-particles

crowded along a spectrum

between sand, cotton… some

aleatory compass… (see Hunter King articles).

Over the chained bay waters –

rhumb line of pilot-bird.

Oscillating upward

into a faery 4-leaf clover’s

             *

earliest, minuscule sward…

as a Newport plover’s

nimble track veers

o’er sand waves (Ocean bard).

So from the lifeless mineral heart

of Minotaur, a green

sprig, emerald gemstone

springs.  With Nestorian art

(Eugenio’s grin) all the birds of the air

assemble in the palm tree;

a mustard seed (tiny,

fiery) molts to canoe (in her Ferrara lair)

& branches crossways, into quatrefoil; 

the remote & royal midnight

blue of Southern Cross (right

up there) hovers over river-soil,

& the Firebird (that sole Pentecostal

scorching glossolalia

slammed into orb-regalia)

skims from our Mater Dolorosa

biomimetic widow Rose… bent

beneath rose window

(Apollinaire’s slow

chant out of humbuggery, resilient).

So the nesting instinct of the Nazir,

the mother Hen of Rabbi

Rooster-Crow, will sigh

& spring an Easter egg (O Chanticleer).

3.18.20

Dante caught the bug

FORSAKEN MINOTAUR

Somewhere between Venice & Ravenna

(Rimini?) – on an errand

for Lord Guido, friend

& host – Dante caught the bug (malaria?).

All those goat-paths of exile

all those curial corridors

mostly meant chores.

The heart stays just a brief while.

A trembling bird unfurls wing-feathers

in the still woods of March;

hear her voice catch

racing through the final chapters

of winter.  While every ghost of Alighieri

clusters by the Rubicon…

that stream of lethal human

fish-traps (Caesar-veins of slavery).

Henry, his curly churl, would stalk

through the rose cloud

of his quatrain (loud

quarantine) to sit upon his dark

& Rheingold throne (where Caesars reign).

The desolations… how

to begin?  Let’s start now.

Assemble palms to ease real pain.

Clap him in irons, or set him free.

Exiled from sybil-sylph

the rage becomes himself –

forsaken Minotaur of you & me.

3.15.20

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

a woman in a hammock

DROWSY SONG

The earth waits, like the source of the Nile

on the periphery of the capital.

Behind its porphyry wall

princes perform their tragedy of control.

The earth sleeps, like a woman in a hammock

dreaming of a happy home.

Crowds gathered in the New Rome

to print their great seal on a marble rock.

The Minotaur strode back and forth

sleepless as a pumpkin seed –

his labyrinth a putrid gourd

of fireworks orange (Julius the 4th).

He fought the dragons in his nightmare sea;

he clutched the basket of his swollen

head; his world was stolen

from a woman’s arms – bound to tyranny.

Hobo droned his drowsy song in unison.

The earth still turned for him.

Saturn & Venus, in their stream

of light, grew calm.  Night was for everyone.

The enormous clay wheel spun her sarabande.

The great ship shrank into the distance.

A tiny needle in its compass dance –

the apple of the capital (in Hobo’s hand).

Her shadow was a cloud cast on the evening sky,

a handful of benevolence.

A mystery of loving Providence

instilled in hearts by art, with eyes from Aye.

1.18.20