only Osage land

WHAT SMILE

July... all the baby flags.

Every bright young lamb

tuck to torment in Vietnam.

Lyndon moon-face – how it sags.

Hubris... alien, demonic force

unhinged from humility

(vomitgreen parrot pity).

Folds bomber-wings in remorse

after all.  Neither national

nor international;

only irrational

(November’s double coronal).

I’ll finish off this work in progress

now, Columbia –

OK?  Oklahoma’s

only Osage land (but I digress).

& poetry?  Is just a conversation

among singed beans.

You joint it, Henrythin,

to ease U-Haul into elation

(somehow).  That OK.  The heart

is made of meleki limestone

(royal).  43 lamps shine

down upon them groove.  What

now, Henry?  What hum?  What ghost

flit as yum turtledove

‘bove fry Friday pirate cove?

What smile lightum up (coruscant host)?

7.1.18

O day-song of a day

MINUSCULE EDIFICE

Some ancient Oklahoma sage

knows life as integral

& whole.  A round corral

of circle dance (light wind on stage).

One heartbeat, straight from Manitou.

John in the river, calling

each to prayer, & fasting –

washing clean (life to renew).

The little red plastic lawn chair

Sophie uses catches

the sun.  Minuscule edifice

subject to ridicule, she will suffer

small kids to be comfortable here.

Her persecuted refugee

will be your judge someday –

the heart of old Bluejay casts out fear.

Some perfect day in June, she’ll come

for you...  Shine, raving dove

from Resurrection grave!

She’ll ask what you have done, she’ll sum

you up.  And it’s not too late

(amid these arcs of oak

& pine) to add your spoke

to the wheel of penetrating light –

to hear Natasha’s whispered promise

in the ear of Mandelstam

& join the rapture of a psalm

clasped in her kiss within a kiss.

6.13.18

tutelary loon

MURAL CROWN

The river rifles arctic blue today

beneath nippy April wind.

Hobo his way will wend

downhill, ahoy, with the current, hey.

His notebooks stew in crumpled chaos,

like a Burchfield swamp in June –

half cricket calendar, half jejune

palimpsest (July stinks Janus).

Bleak melancholy in Ohio.

Spooks in lean eaves.

Storks bundling wet sheaves

across the ‘30s.  Good material, O.

Hobo looks up from bottomland.

He holds an eye-in-hand –

muddy Cahokia (one grain

of sand).  Just Clay’s j-jug band.

These bricks are 28 feet thick.

A pyramid, almost –

only Hunky Ghost

(Ho-Chunk) could make this stick-up

stick.  Like Killers of the Flower

Moon.  Getch’r Manitou

(just one gris dollar few)

before she get you.  Evening hour

now.  Mire-flowering almond tree

out of Voronezh (or Galilee) –

your mural crown, Tyche.

Hyacinth madeleine (waiting for me).

4.6.18

bleak side of oblique

THREAD SHADOW

The long flat barge, the tugboat

pushing a pile of dirt

upstream – the delicate

reddenings of autumn trees... what

was Henry saying? – up Big Muddy...

Onshore, the back of Hobo

bent like wheedling oboe.

Imago of male failure (Osage hey ey

yo).  Autumn moon... they smoke

& dawdle out the sunshine.

She was a figurehead of mine,

Miss Posy; felled with a single stroke

(of either oar).  Nobody you’d know.

Besides, was long time ago;

sort of a dream-show.

Some tormented buried Poe-ego (Pogo)

traveling unraveled down Path P.

Nominated Henry

(domestic amity

is key to what-y-call happy).

Something between a rat-mensch

& Minotaur.  All entrailed

with entitlements, failed

fatherhoods... sweats on the bench.

Mercy of a rude stream, somebody

said.  Children of want

want what they, but can’t.

Have.  Le-Hev-Hev, spidery

                 *

black hole of the cannibals...

Only a drawn-in breath,

inhalation of death.

That’s all, folks (snaky nuptials).

Hollywood, Kali-Kali-fornia.

The sacred woodpecker’s

your twin prospector –

gold-digging Theoria, Inc. (wing

of raven feathering from cloud).

It’s a Pacific mist,

mister – a golden twist

on Vertigo, for crying out loud!

Shapes of a familiar otherness...

someone you know.  Her

scent (don’t bother

to ask).  As from the wilderness

of the sea (or out of a bath).

Not Venus, exactly –

not even Aphrodite...

maybe antipodal Sheba,

Queen of the South?  Or maybe Johnnie

of the Ark, or Jeanne,

or Mary Magdalen...

under cedars of Lebanon (selah).

Sometimes you see a faint rainbow

on concrete sidewalk.

& someday somebody will talk

to you (smiling wave thread shadow).

10.8.17

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

like a walnut brain

SKIN-SWIRL

Wide lonesome chord of milk-train horn

across an Osage plain.

Lilac & star, American

crowd... shy bird calling the not-yet-born.

The microcosm of a Maximus

is like a walnut

brained by teeth.  That

worn brown face, in Omaha bus

lounge, spoke quietly.  “I am Dakota.

I’m a man.”  The poem

lifts a sign toward home,

that’s all.  The sum of Ariadne-

maze, malevolent eye of Minotaur

is in the skin-swirl

of your fingerprint.  Roll

back into the vault then, sailor –

shed each blow of monster violence

until you find the mild

eye of the typhoon-child –

immaculate origin of Providence.

I see her hero stepping through the gate

of stone, one hand held out

on a wave of love.  Light

scout, scouring the root of hate –

defanging that lamprey of predatory

malice, hostile cruelty –

injustice clamped on history.

With Coke & Blackstone whispers : Now be free.

6.28.16

India Point, Providence