O for a muse of fire

YOUR VALENTINE

From your Valentine, scratched the prisoner

in Rome, young martyr-to-be.

To daughter of Asterius – maybe

a Morning Star? – love to configure

with philosophy, so (269 a.d.).

Skull crowned with flowers

along with more & divers

relics (Santa Maria in Cosmedin)

– & some of them in Dublin, too

(Whitefriar St.).  Ante-

dating troubadours & Dante

with his severed head & body (rue

the day with smoke of juniper, acacia)

he died young, for liberty

of conscience – thought is free;

fled upon wind, Asterius (Astraea).

The epileptic heart dances offbeat.

Dante & Beatrice

found simplest way

to unity – their cosmos whole, complete

in charity.  So ran my Yeatsian effusion

from the green island;

these pipes, my steely friend

summon her countertop restoration

in the green night of Dante’s neighborhood

where phosphorus gleams

amid Franciscan tombs

like camouflaged green acorn (woo’d

                        *

from wood) to be kingdom come

in your creaky dreambed

Ophelia (Juliet, Cordelia…)

– O rondure of love’s gentle realm!

& poetry burbles of it night & day

to multitudes in their sleep

compartments, while the creep

of despotism creeps from sordid victory

to victory (absolutism corrupts

& empowered absolutism

corrupts with most extreme

prejudice).  So the public servant sups

alone in his cold cell, & the journalist

languishes for speaking truth

in cellars of Pharaoh Badnooth

& enemies of human happiness request

your presence in the Furious Throne Room

where kids die miserably

every day, for lack of liberty

& prison sing-song will pronounce your doom.

O for a muse of fire, cried Hen’s herald –

who solders every soul

with mettle from the molten

whole.  Who clears the air, to yield

a solidarity of understanding

in the sheepfolds of Jerusalem

& Greece… Gregorian hymn

with ocarina harmony (Cahokian thing).

2.14.20

Neva serpent ocarina

AT VLADIVOSTOK

One might say mathematics is a matter

of cascading functions,

with parenthetical canyons

in canyons (as at Vladivostok, or the Matter-

horn).  Rivers flow this way,

then that way, back,

forth, clattering

from Hackensack to Housatonic (May-

November).  So the game of numbers

is a mode of streambed too –

your Itasca-sprung Rio

del Espiritu (time-numbing mine of hours)

whose ceaseless surge bends past the prong

of Louie’s Gateway Arch

that budgeth not (March

to September), stills the monotone like a gong

of bronze.  Thus Mrs. Slippery, crowned,

extends her clayborne banks

beyond New Orleans... her phalanx

of ‘gators flanks her onward, azure-bound;

so the analogy of brazen serpent

lures this goldfinch dream

into Leviathan trireme

wreathing America in mist, unspent –

as when a dervish Morning Star

raveled Guillaume into her web

grappling Jonah (fledgling pleb)

into the shimmer-seine of River R.

12.27.19

Osip Mandelstam's final i.d. card (internal emigre)

come here, baby Minotaur

SEA-SAND

Love is the end & the beginning.

Cave-artists in Sulawesi

drew pigments from red scree

for their wild pigs, dwarf buffalo (zing

go the arrows of the sacred hunters,

therianthropes).  44,000

years in burial mound

(palm-prints on wooden posts for pointers).

Desire in soggy adolescent clay

molts to perversity

or rises to chaste clarity;

smiles of mothers & fathers slay

the stony-hearted Minotaur

with a burl of soft air

(light for the maze-lair).

Love circles back to where you are.

Come here, baby Minotaur,

you’re going to dance with me.

Concrete comes from the sea-

sand; this milk is from a star.

I’myeh spirit helper, Jonah Raven.

Take this clay, spit

into your hand, & roll it,

mold it to your eye.  There’s Ocean-

Ouroboros, glowing in the deep.

That’s Milky Way, that’s

Morning Star... your heart’s

a coracle, Cordelia (wake beyond sleep).

12.12.19

scribe's tattoo

RIVER WAVES

I miss the mourning doves of Providence

at the end of September

amid these amber

sheaves of wheat (gleaned evidence

of Morning Star).  A new immigrant’s

landed in Minneapolis

light gray, with neckpiece

of black-white bands.  Postulant’s

collar, mayhap?  Or a scribe’s tattoo

ably marked upon the neck

like Isaac or Melchizedek

or some Eurasian collared coo-coo

hums b-flat from the fiery furnace

of her supernatural

affection (international

orange toucan, maybe – or Falcon-Ace)

& so transfigures frozen Everyman

out of his callous armor

into another feathered Amor

winging like an arrow back to Magdalen

& turning to golden almond in her hand

like the sun beheld by Ondine

underwater (bright, serene).

As river waves lap softly overland

her clear tone modulates the earth

back to its mended origin

within your warm all-human

clasp (chastened Columbia’s rebirth).

9.30.19

I stir the Pythian gumbo of Apollinaire

BRONZE ANNALS

The Palladium forsook Byzantium

on a Black Wednesday

near Pentecost (hey

yo).  In the old Orpheum

Theatre (off Hennepin) Stravinsky

leads Ballet Russe

to rude cathartic truce

around the bonfire of a galaxy –

a human maypole (at the end of May).

She’s only Morning Star.

The young Apollinaire

is debonaire... they waltz away.

Salt sea-wash on another shore

throws up a Kennedy...

Melchizedek?  O, he

will pass through temple walls before

bronze annals of the oak tree close.

A little emerald windlass

winds your thread, Theseus.

A Selkie off the Newport coast,

a water-sprite from far-off Ocean...

laving heart of Berryman,

& salty Hart (Ohioan);

lifting Juliet from self-destruction.

Ineffable ark of Vierge Ouvrante,

imperishable human smile –

Love’s gentle campanile,

lofting aforesaid acorn-infant.

1.21.19

Watch Night

LAMBENT GHOST

A satellite streaks past Ultima Thule

at the rim, beyond Pluto.

Starlight, emitted long ago

marks the limit of what we know, Julie.

You took it to the limit, too –

plummeting on his birthday

into San Francisco Bay.

The scar on my heart stays blue.

A lifeline in my palm... tracing

your twirling halcyon-

descent.  Eccentric swan-

dives of deflected passion swing

the human pendulum to no return –

so you became my silent

witness to an absent

safety net (grave spirit-urn).

In a backyard garden, in Montrose Park

(on Avon Place, off R Street)

a weathered zodiac (fleet

beam for sailing time) still makes its mark.

The evening sun at vernal equinox

touching its circumference

sends streaming photons

in array, toward Washington’s matrix –

that sleepy apple tree, the founder’s

fault (first gentleman

surveyor’s lie-of-land).

& will our prime star, speaking, founder

                     *

backward, under night-sea sand?

The morning star, the pole

star’s mate – your sister-soul –

whose flickers lead our sarabande?

Hobo lumbers after Henry’s shade,

lugging the telescopes.

Who drowns their hopes

might lift them up again.  Maid

Marion, or Liberty, Virgo-Columbia

(the various nicknames

for Jonah-dove)... dream’s

figurehead for Watch Night... hallelujah!

Ice gathers on the Mississippi.

River-flow & starlight

comprehend Time’s might,

rewind the spring, recall the sea –

Pacific now, beyond the redwood tree;

beyond eld oak grove

where an infant strove

with Roundheads... & a maypole (merrily)

spun feet toward Pentecost;

beyond Sons of Liberty

into a whorled Equality

wrapt, spindled on a lambent ghost –

that quipu-knot, that safety net,

that weaver-coracle

from Galilee.  Slight miracle-

Thunderwren... walking on water, Juliet.

12.31.18

Morning to Evening Star

CIRCLE LAKE

Blindly, Hobo inches toward

the Keys.  In Florida.

Toward the delta,

in Louisiana.  His handy old

eye-in-hand in hand (light

portable fire-drill).

Ply all your skill,

Hobo.  Hi huraru ra’a,

Hi awari ra’a.  A muddy ray

from cold Atlantic

like some frantic

foundering Santa Maria

threads yarns toward that western

Garden of Evening Star.

Across his eyelid, sure –

like Sire Henry, in his baby coffin

(six weeks encrypted with Guillain-Barré).

Hi huraru ra’a,

Hi awari ra’a.

Autumn leaves of disenchanted

authors, sighing in their libraries...

(the Roger Williams version,

for piano).  Dispersion

through each mental prison (Henry’s,

yours).  Dread of ocean void

spirals up from deep

Le-Hev-Hev keep –

Coatlicue (the cut-up) is annoyed

                    *

& threatens Everyman – her sheep

is black & bloody red!

– Nana, you might be dead

before you know it.  Go to sleep.

The dream song reconfigures all

within its top-spin

in your heart-garden.

Your father was a gentleman narwhal;

your son was dancing on the shore

of Circle Lake, in Midway

Mirror-Land (in Galilee).

The crucifixion of the Evening Star

will not unveil her night-reality.

Observe this family

photograph, Henry.

Miss Padgett’s ancient book quarry –

the massive double-panes of glass,

a mandorla for owlish

Actaeons (Horus,

searching for Columbia?  Atlas,

looking for the moon?)  Nana,

dancing Sophie calls me.

Grandpa.  Hiawatha

had a friend, Hart Ibis Artemis – yah...

yawning from the deep, Jonah.

You must become the dove

still dancing, love –

spun from the heart of things.  Selah.

11.30.18

like variations on a theme

FIRST SNOW

It was a first snow falling on your birthday, Alex

38 years ago.

Cesca’s labor so slow

& painful, there in Miriam Obstetrics

under the klieg lights & the surgeons

she took the C-section

at last (proud, stubborn

mother) while the soft newborn

stars sloped across the parking lot

in silent counterpoint.

The time was out of joint –

your father, too.  Every hamlet

screens its circular pilot plot

through every heart;

Henry left his hearth

to wander Cain-like into Camelot

(his Ars, his land of Nod).

The story is familiar.

Eros sparks war

for Adams unwilling to plow the meek sod,

buster.  Adonis was a narcissist.

Henry plucked his Clover

(tuneful Faustian lover)

& spun the wheel no heel resists –

the veils of Isis & Osiris (masonry,

mummified fire).

Venus, Morning Star

shone pallidly, across the whole country

                  *

a kind of Cairo-Poe magnet (wherever

you are).  Middle C

on the piano, tenderly

(Ravlin Princess, Ravel).  Life-saver

played out to Juliet, by Hart.

Like Bach, young Alex –

one sea-tempest X

along path P (where all the tempers start).

Grief comes in waves.  These little ripples

echo from the pangs

of Providence (where swings

a cosmic jewelry show).  Dilated pupils

merge in swarms of busy drones

(watch-birds for smoke-

signals).  Go for broke,

the Iago of the capital intones.

Unleash the dogs of war.  They hated

me without a cause...

Faust is no Santa Claus;

the raging boar will not be sated

‘til the last woman on earth

flees with her child

into that desert wild

nursing one lonely human birth.

11.14.18

Mediterranean or middle C

WOODEN WHORL

A Mediterranean or Middle

C – see?  Fulcrum

tempered on kingdom

come.  Providential soul-paddle.

Twin clouds of mist will frame

a motionless Morning Star.

Twin mares in a mirror

churn in her glory (lightnin’ flame).

Like Jonahs – brother-&-sister doves

chasing from dawn to dusk

their emerald cornhusk.

A linen cosmos-veil of mazel tovs

lips fashioned like coral canoe

skim swiftly upstream

to your veritas sunbeam –

Shakespearean headwaters (J-blue).

The wooden whorl of the knot-king,

skipping his safety net

around Gennesaret.

The one the crowds exalt... fling

into cauldron of Viking thing

(Odin’s raven, circling

– no, three).  O tree-ring

spiraling up from sea – sing,

C, for me!  The murky river

bottoms out past Memphis,

Cairo... (chi-rho, Isis) –

Mark Twain, sounding... forever.

10.8.18

serpent ocarina

FEATHERED WHEEL

The king is carrying his cross

wearing his crown of thorns.

Only his mother mourns.

The restless crowd is at a loss.

So history plays out

on broken banjo string –

scratchy LP spinning

over & over the tethered Scapegoat

Song.  A narrow beam of rust-

red copper, through shade

of rock.  Copperhead

of light.  Serpent mouthing dust.

Tan sand (some Navajo camouflage).

Everyman, eaten

by ants.  Has-been.

Hobo, dreaming in a stream-montage.

Nobody.  Only air, flashing

like feathered wheel –

Thunderbird heel?

Lo, him – Kingfisher, splashing.

In the clay matrix, Morning Star

pirouettes in Paris

for Apollinaire.  Pax

lounges with Liberty, while from afar

twin pillars of a temple rise

in unison – an azure

octave, lifting her

amid dew-glittering, sea-breathing sighs.

8.10.18

the poem is a sort of Edicule

MODEL DOME

So then, the poem is a sort of Edicule?

My allegory’s all unglued.

Runny gouache, stewed

river clay.  Some no-count school.

The building, trembling in devolution

shored up like a veteran

with iron-rivet skeleton.

Metamorphosis by desperation.

My babble-model of the cosmos –

molded on a mini-dome

within a dome (Jerusalem-

fond matryoshka doll).  The keys

to a box, where lie a bunch of keys.

Over meleki limestone

slab, one forest olive-green

icon.  Your madre of collapsing gaze

rains down (with her clay ointment jar).

He is not here, he

is not here.  She’s

muted as trumpet, or Morning Star –

an eye-in-hand, an ocean tear.

Light blazes (calmly

coruscant undying day).

He is not here, he is not here.

Wind mews in muscular oak tree.

They’re up in Galilee,

maybe Cahokia... you’ll see.

Inventing deeds of agape – live poetry.

7.2.18

looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17

Path P in six directions

ROSE CIRCLET

The immeasurable quiddity

of a point in spacetime.

An icon turns on a dime

flashing silver corona (so free)

– as green almond eyes shine

with smiles of recognition

a beloved face is one

whole star – 4-dimensional mine-

shaft to the planetary helm

or meteoric stone

no one can own

coming down from sea-grey realm

of milk & honey (Northern Lights

a mirror for a horn

of plenty).  So being born

thus, river-clay triangulates

Path P in six directions

diamond octahedron

finished in the sun

like plates my mother hexagons –

weathered oak-leaf hands (brown

in the round, rolled

out of clay, from old

dishevelments of tumble-down

autumn).  & where the tree-rings

circulate the marrow

spacetime’s arrow

coils into chestnut Sphinx

                  *

whose crumbled wine one drinks

out of the Nile-delta –

steps northeast  selah

toward the dome (when nobody thinks

one will) resembling a bronze acorn

of evergreen holm oak.

One ruddy spoke

upon a node of blinding sunshine –

ice-hewn clarity of Everyhon

beside the glowing hearth

of agape – the earth

in equilibrium – Son

& Father & the Holy Ghost

waltzing a crane-dance

to the drone of Magdalen’s

accordion (hale Mary’s host)...

& once the orgulous organ’s

dismantled, & the light

flows through violet

rose circlet (there in Jacqueline’s

seatown) – a naiad will emerge,

a sundance figure (on

the prow of Lincoln’s own

logos).  Sophie her demiurge,

love-waves her rite – La Paix

or Buffalo Woman,

Morning Star... pine-

green majestic Liberté.

10.19.16

Along Path P

INFANT BROW

At the crossroads, the just man suffers

just for being just –

Job, or Boethius,

or Jesus – carrying a load for others.

Dante whispers in Ravenna dusk

near his exile’s end.

Beatrice, penned

in a rose window, sets his task –

to sing the icon that he sees

breathing through granite

as turtledoves through light

gray feathers tune the breeze.

Stillness in time.  Iron history

crowns an infant brow...

the Son of Man, now

turning evergreen (in Maggie’s

almond eye).  The desolations

of a nightmare fade

when that rusty parade

sinks into brown decades (stations

on the prairie).  Mary Morning Star

signals her six ways

along Path P...  Praise

Manitou & Manitou-Child, our

big-eared Bunny Rabbi – he

of the octave melody –

which we sang, Adonai,

before dawn, one Epiphany...

4.11.16