all across Minneapolis

RABBI-PATH

All across Minneapolis

the poet’s left evidence

like tracks under a fence

– long fellow’s footprints –

Nana Bozo the Clown, or

Hiawatha in slippers

(snowshoes, Alberta

clippers).  Fella came before,

might hop here again (ghost

dance, dream song).

Sunday stretched so long.

He was with us in the Lammas-host

like lambchild in the field,

a white cloud drifting

bluegrass... otskèn:rha, sifting

right from wrong (at Lammas-tide).

Bozo Lambrogio breaks up

the woolly categories

of our feral cats – Caesar’s

imbroglios, lions of Judah, Egyptian

pups... will skip the rabbi-path

out of the lake of wrath

back into Nazareth

by August 1st (we’ll do the math

later).  Yolk-black Fabergé cracks

in the snow... imperial

theocracies unreel; almond

Vierge Ouvrante gives berth.  Relax.

2.19.19

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

slow crane-dance

SQUARE DANCE

The beech, a symphony of copper & grey

shimmers her palimpsest

of summer light.  Her host

of rust-green leaves filters the day

with fleecy shade.  In Providence

her hidden rings girdle

a slow crane-dance, a Gödel

harmony (irrational coherence)

stepped on the diagonal, a zigzag

pattern toward the center

while her limbs counter

equivocal winds.  Like a limping stag

the Minotaur (a forsworn king)

marks ink-scratches in concrete

with his third (wooden) foot.

They cannot be erased – the bee-sting

on the tongue of that stung beast

is like a humming bumble-

bird, bearing his humble

master on a mule (the least

shall be the greatest in your midst,

Great Scot).  When fair

is foul, weird sister,

and a hole is in the wholeness,

& the onion odor of this Union

hovers through the orange

facade of rough strange

battlements... the regal One

                   *

comes drifting like an eagle-sun.

Immaculate integrity

of breathing Truth will be

the seal on that bright Lincoln-coin –

of the people, by the people, for

the people... after the .44

that brings black milk before

the beech flowers (in Mendelssohn).  Our

infinitely gentle bunny Rabbi

– sire of reconciliation,

smiling Sun of Man –

shall stand again in one rose eye

of green & copper Liberty

whose burning torch will come

to this dunce inane – wisdom

will shine from Bozo Nana (dotty

Henry with his dancing bear,

jaded whit-knight from

Column B) despite him-

self : because a solidarity there

glows like green limestone from the depths

a city of straight pines

out of the matrix shines

where Jason is plowman   & Jonas

mans the prow   & merry Magdalen

raises her almond lens

yodeling earth-&-heaven’s

rhombic square dance (Topsy Ravenn).

4.3.17

hen hides under blanket

LITTLE RINGS

In the muted Bruegel colors now

a raven’s-eye view circles

round twin Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, so long ago.

Heidi & Holly, Jamie Freeman –

kids in a panorama

skate across my retina

from a Flemish Ice Age (Union

Pearl, foundered in frozen cup).

Laertes, will you drink

with me?  I think

not, yet... & so I take it up.

How gravity spins round the Sampo,

Longfellow – how Minnehaha

eddies through Edina

like a maelstrom over Nanabozo

– silly wabbit in the old cartoon

of Manitou & Redman –

stormcloud, lightning (Hen

hides under blanket, ‘til monsoon-

tornado trundles off to Canada).

Rabbi, Rabbi... Raven-

priest, Melchizedek... when,

O Wind, will this wallowing miasma,

lethal raincloud, lift?  A voice

from hurricane murmured –

when the agate here immured

in North Sea tears, as in a vice

                    *

floats into primeval Paradise

upon a simple kayak-word

out of the lunar hoard

of acorn-candelabra : REJOICE.

The train rumbles over the bridge

in the iron night, in the rain.

I won’t be back again

until Ferrara meets the Iron Range

in a poem coming down from winking

Starry Night.  Those whorls

are fingerprints – pearls

whispered out of Ocean, drinking

planets, orbits, icons, emblems

drawn from infinite thirst

for a milky source (first

taste of infamous black diadems).

Bears navigate a starry circle

over Berryman.  The stone

crypt glows in the bone-

castle.  Jessie Ophelia will

step down from the riverboat

beaming for Minneapolis.

The sky is gray, is

Minneapolis, St. Paul... c’est tout.

In Mendelssohn the Mirror Lakes

are ripples ever-new.

You’ll understand... you

live there (little rings an iron makes).

11.26.16

bard owl hoot-yawp

DARK MANDALA

A dark mandala, with its threads of gilt

glinting in sepulchral gloom.

Brown recluse home

or poison farm – Potemkin-built

for subtle, shady beast (forma

tricorporis umbra).

Yessir – USSR – Usura

rapt the hack machine – some worm

robbed all the banks in Hungary

– sincerely, your servant

left with Nada (she went

under).  One black-wreath memory

laurels a World War grave,

limed with gold streaks

of tears.  Leaf breaks

hearts; stubborn moth digs nave.

Infinitely gentle, infinitely

suffering thing... Rabbi,

rabbi, your symmetry

of gravity pulls toward a parapet

or pole-star magnet – anti-matter

mutter at the gate

of timespace (intricate

constellate icosahedron footpad

rabbit-patter).  Yellow gyroscope

for the lad in Ravenna,

wheeling through Gehenna

into turtleshell domicile – Hope

                   *

Diamond southern bells – milky

over Memphis, chanting

out of slave-haunt... (sling

your wide human boomerang, Psyche).

Fraud loops fey pebbles into flagging

factories, for vanity –

haughty coyote-

greed howls babble onto bragging

piles of glare – why do the notions rage?

Out of a quiet well,

a widow’s mite will tell

another rustic peony tale.  Osage

cheekbones of Lincoln-Logos shine

in the fiery human sun –

Rhodos-Colossus Woman

radars an omnipresent beryl-pine

from silver harbor.  The retrograde

cannot delay reality –

their bubble-polity

will burst (too much steel air) – a Maid

of Orleans, or Land o’Lakes

shall lead the ring-dance

in a crayon trance

& sketch a reciprocity

of snakes & ladders, golden eagles

& grey turtledoves.

The peacock fan of Love’s

dominion flares... green acorn-angles.

11.11.16

down to St. Lou

SLATE PANOPLY

Henry’s Chair is in the woods,

beside the Rio del Espiritu

Santo.  Hobo to you,

mayhap – lost in his darker moods;

drawing a diagram in river-sand

of Ursiana’s barer pillars,

moss-bound Giuliana’s

pines (forlorn Ravenna swampland).

Emblems of spiritual epilepsy,

moon friar.  Lame lone wolf

Dante, crying for a proof

of integral radiance (nay, nay

sobs hunchback Leopardi).

Hiawatha whistles there –

follow the tripping Hare

Whirlaway to Itasca – see?

The spring.  Mammoth drone of stream.

Down to St. Lou,

where airs axle true –

bloodveined grey sponge, clay dream...

tuning-fork in the river road.

Wheel, innocent rabbi,

through your Galilee

of primary colors – lift the load

from Henry’s sloping shoulders.  Bend

a prism to Columbia,

slate panoply of Jonah-sky –

who lights the harbor at grave’s end.

9.15.16

Henry's Chair