Hagia Sophia with mermaid eyes

TATTOO-BASKET

                                    for Sophie, on her birthday

She shines like a little smile of light,

your happiness.  Shot through

with violets, with rue

of yellow-gold... a sea-green Amphitrite.

She swam from a box out of the bottomland.

Big Muddy concept –

buried in refuse, inept

mentalities.  Blind eye-in-hand,

dread fright of bloody bandage-men.

I stood on my headwaters,

the only Falls that matters –

Mill City, where they grind the grain –

a nauseated Hamlet, dizzy

with green v-vertigo.

Boxed rivers overflow.

He’s Hobo now, or Ishmael, fire-fizzy;

curled up in a tattoo-basket,

floating in the womb

of his own dream-doom

to Gulf of Mexico (Nantucket?)...

where butterflies of poetry

emerge as monarchs

from sea-chrysalides

& sketch fine arcs on pottery

insouciantly, with haunted grace.

Winking tesserae,

unscrambled... Hagia Sophia

with mermaid eyes (each facet-face).

8.21.18

anyone know your knots?

SHADE-CANOE

The lowly starfish, neither fish

nor star.  Rather

fish out of water, or

spark from Ocean River.  Wish

upon which?  Empty choice, perhaps –

like this rickety cedar

gazebo door, spannered

over the void for mosquito apse

(fine Roman iron).  Door always open.

Natural Bridge – sublime,

like Jefferson’s government;

only supporting vault, for all men,

women, are created equal.

Contracted limestone

hieroglyph, whose one

whole marbleized body-spiral

corkscrewed like Nut – bolted

to high arch-campanile.

Mostly invisible.

An Arctic burg (igloo-solid).

The hollowness of raven-beak –

scars like tattoos for Cain;

Jonah from Spanish Main

become Columbian Mayflower (seek

& ye shall find Canonicus, O

jolly Roger).  Darkest

camera oscura (west

of black hole, near Tasmania)

                *

filled with simple cave-sketches –

a wave-curve with a graphene

heart-keep (anyone

know your knots?) nyet – catches

hermaphrodite french wombat stray

(whom-batt to you) – punished,

burnished bronze, banished

by Moi (Great Man Two Hernee)

for coming naked from the sea

right into Nineveh

(some Who-She-Whooshee

mania).  Like Mirror Lakes, see –

glass bifocals, in Mendelssohn.

Reflective retina

bent through Ravenna

or shade-canoe of rusted iron

in Ferrara (almond mandala)

whose double curve

lets light swerve,

portable & potable.  Some farfalla

redbird’s bedrest (or robin’s nest)

you carry like pemmican

for Father Hennepin;

some amphora from Galilee (the best)

floats into harbor on a buoy

bobbing with airy Ariel

corked in oak barrel –

Jonah ex machina, sailor’s ahoy.

6.28.17

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

its talons are for real

RAPTOR-SEAL

We moved through a smog thicker than coal-dust

filled with angry cries.

I couldn’t recognize

my guide, only her humming through a gust

of wind.  The moon was a copper disk

printed faintly rust-green

over that desolation –

like a hovering fingerprint, a mask

for Queequeg, Abraham – a penny

for Liberty, glinting

from the dark well (hinting

freedom, good will, where there wasn’t any).

A doubloon for Mammon flickered so

below shrouds of the Pequod –

many an aching tattoo would

echo in blood that talent for woe.

Marine Corps taps (trompette marine).

Memory shapes emblems

like coral wreaths... drums

weave light fleece mandala, copper green

& gold.  Like an iron spring wound

taut into infinity,

one Mendelssohn memory

emerges from my swampy ground –

the ancient plow we found, Heidi

& dragged back home together

through April weather

(iris blooming like a peacock’s eye

                    *

out of dead bulbs that never die).

The tarnished metallurgy

Iron Age surgery

some Raven-shaman shall (with high

& fluting Light Warlpiri) bring

might lift our eyes again

to one galactic common

wheel, that voices in Ark-Argo sing –

Hagia Sophias in Yezidi throng

to harmonize their peacock

tongues, & nations flock

to chime each footnote of a brazen gong.

The Word flies backward so, before Babel.

Its talons (like a raptor-

seal of olive-arrows) are

for real – to carry us from Hell

to Paradise, fledged by free will;

its almond eye (above

the pyramid) is Love –

forever fair & kind & true, until

the splendor of infant Creation

shines like Sacajawea

from green Equadoria –

justice & liberty combine

in meek Franciscan poverty

to weld the planetary

flora into Primavera

sunlight-gold... bright solidarity.

3.21.17 

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 3.21.17

The power vacuum is a shell game

LOVE-TEMPLE

There’s a power vacuum now

below the Black Sea.

Miriam, a refugee

gives birth at stern of carrack (dhou)

& when Rachel picks up Ishmael

off the concrete salt

an angry orphan (Baltic

pattern?) flings his own skull

at sociable Medea (Simmering

Mother-of-Pearl Revolver

Hid Woeful Moonstar).

& this is just the Evening

Mirror (ravening Wolf-

Mammon).  Somewhere near

(gray whisperdame’s here,

now) Jonah will surf from Gulf –

stubborn mule of humility,

his meek almond eye

only echoes her sigh

(Mary’s blues... welling salty

humanity).  This continuum

of mother-of-pearl, on

the inner lining (onion-

dome anchoring heavy ouragan-

glissando) shapes a simple

turtleshell rainbow –

twilight will bestow

pink robin’s-egg Love-temple.

2.3.16