Mussolini shoals

MARBLE FACT

Long way from stones of Notre Dame.

We haven’t that feudal allegiance

to a field beyond France.

Bright poppies blister over Belgium

where conundrum of Isis in Iowa

came from.  She is, and was

mysterium of Osiris

on the Mississip – Ezra’s mirror-delta;

hard marble fact planted at West Branch

in Herbert Hoover’s memory

(who would not have taken kindly

to any meat-locker Muss avalanche).

Ezra yodeling the alpine Swiss serene

of his muse Circe Clementine

Vichy (& all the swine

she mesmerized, so spotless clean)

erasing all that history of filthy usury

& black boys handing Bibles

through the bars... Abel’s

your bro, Ez – cain’t you see?

Ah... the shudder of absurdity.

Knife-stab in Marlowe’s eye

– over the Jew of Malta,

of all things!  It cannot be.

It is.  Villon grins in your face,

King Flibberty-Gibbet.

Grimace may be safety net

for every reprobate.  O prodigal race...

5.4.19

 

speaking the poetry of dense & difficult

GOLDFINCH APTITUDE

In the late afternoon, old Emperor

Henry the Ghoul lies abed

beneath the wallpaper’s red

roses (spread by his late father

for his mother).  The sun is not a god

nor is his Uncle Ez,

despite the pitchmen on the rez.

Frayed tribes will not succumb; Benito’s rod

is not benign, nor ever shall be.

The motorized dream, from

vortex of survivor-shame

after the panoramic slaughter-sea

of Ypres, Somme, & Meuse-Argonne –

like a neoplatonic fantasy

of utopian autocracy,

with phantom Isis Medusa-icon

wailing like siren out of Empyrean

over the shattered spectacle

of your culture-chronicle,

Ezra – so who shall have the succession?

The special providence of a sparrow...

the goldfinch aptitude

for simple gratitude.

& when the Eternal comes, you will know,

Osip (along the axis of the earth).

The covenant of love

donated from above

for good – so we might share it forth.

4.29.19

ledge of regal limestone

HUMAN PLEDGE

The cool dry tesserae congeal

in Sant’ Apollinaris –

dance, coalesce

into high figures of a royal seal.

Exalted features... recognizable.

Your neighbors (Limentani).

Riding bikes to the sea

to get away from scent of stable

(Mussolini’s racehorses).

That was then; this

is placid Minneapolis.

We’re not like them, of course (off-course).

The constitution of a human pledge

blazons these images

from pencil-boxes... pages

scratched out.  Natasha’s ledge

of regal limestone – living rock,

streaked honey-colored

marble.  Moss-layered

icon, limpid under chopping block.

Our covenants of disputation

rest on implicit ground;

Rhode Island in the round,

an Ocean State of transmutation.

The bond of love is clean as salt,

as plain as day.  We are

redeemed by holy fire.

The one you seek has left the vault.

6.30.18