May-time

ALMOND FLING

Palmers wayfare toward Jerusalem

& Holy Sepulchre –

empty signifier

for an Easter hymn (they’ve taken him

away).  A grail of ever-floating joy –

love’s Pentecost

fire-fizz Ghost

Dance for 50 stars (Old Glory

stitched anew from burial shroud).

Rivers of Paradise

(Tigris, Euphrates,

Nile, Big Muddy) circle back to cloud

of Ocean-Stream – source of sky-waters,

like round limestone

beaded with ripple-shine

to emerald gleam (through grisaille shutters).

Hobo, fish-eyed Fisher King,

beheld this vision

through a wavy octagon

of old gazebo planks.  & sinking

down upon his quaint Vienne étable

his head (like Bran of Grain

Elevator) made moan

for Miriam, or Marian, as in the fable.

Until your May-time dawn refulgence

metamorphosed everything

into one almond fling –

Oak Restoration (eye-in-palm, perchance).

5.20.18

Abe's in the Gulf

TROMPE L’OEIL

Peto, Reminiscences.

Such silent stillness

in a wooden door.  This

repressed memory (forsakenness).

The mottled copper green, absinthe.

Like curdled Liberty.

Coins, ticket stubs... three

paths into the shredded labyrinth

of old glued paper notes.  Almost

erased, some calculations –

sums, additions...

within the mandorla (Abe’s

photo-ghost).  Abe’s playing golf

today, down at the Gulf –

in Florida, with grimacing

elf.  By the marred lake, full of pelf

& flattened tires... distended Brown

Decades of gaslight shadows,

drilled by torpedoes

into stunned prey (pressed down

under demented mansions).  Still

there is another window

clears this reified view

(black coral reef of sacrificial

scars).  The solidarity of living

stones is leaping light –

scaled from a dragon-fight

like trompe l’oeil Thanksgiving

                *

or hologram of humming bird

circling the whisper dome

of spiritual freedom.

Ghost Dance, suspended word

hung from the apex of the tent –

a veil of murmuring linen

around the target sun

of a salty human sacrament

of joy, shipmate!  Ahoy, Jonah!

Cresting the deep wave,

smiling palm-wave

circumference hailing hurrah

for the red white & blue!  Old Glory

spangled by Love!

Columbia, dove

of Liberty... Emancipation story!

So the battle lines are drawn

at last.  Maid Marion –

trampled onto a plane

with Jack & Jackie, by the Lion-

Tooth (orange-tan phony-booth) –

you loose one gray thread

from the bleeding head

of Apollinaire... qui chante... the truth

shall make you free.  The limestone

wrinkles beneath clear streams.

Sovereign of human dreams,

arise like Francis to your servant throne.

2.12.17