snowflakes on Presidents' Day

SPLINTER-WORD

George III was buried yesterday

200 years ago.

The mad King Bluster-Tyro

pressed New England into granite liberty.

Ceremonies of the royal tomb

reverberate across a nation

scarred by assassination.

Abraham, Jack… William, Jim…

framed by wide wings of Martin

(& Bobby too).  They stand

elongate, with palm frond –

archangels in a nave-cavern

of fluted oaks.  Stone tears well

from republican cenotaphs

when that Ant-Leader laughs

who foments red-black wars (from home

to hell).  So long waves coalesce

magnificent Pharaoh & Osiris

in theopolitical impasse

with alien slave throngs – witness

the fissure of Red Sea by their God!

Tyrant & people, king

& kin… a knotty kenning;

Agnes Martin might trace a grid

to simplify ratios of power & myth.

A single snowflake amid crows

of winter, in the beginning was

the splinter-word.  Her spark was in the pith.

2.17.20

dialect of high & low

CLAY NAVEL

Literature might be political.

The dialect of high & low,

the pyramidical Pharaoh

& Erich Auerbach in Istanbul...

slaves muttering (familial)

athwart the exaltations

of regal Lion-Suns

& River-Moons (extra-terrestrial)

their jocular contra-dance lingo.

Dantean, obsolete

vernacular (obsidian);

mosaic featherweight, grave Galileo.

Everything formed from nothing... out

of a pinhole in the universe.

Clay navel – Osiris hearse

called up by current, cattail flute.

Whorls of tree-rings mantle each mortal eye.

Isis in Iowa,

Blackstone of raven-sigh –

Cautantowwit, under the Milky Way.

The tacit origin.  Your motherland,

O King.  Incipient

restoration, air apparent...

transparent equilibrium (beatitude).

Near the steel vault of St. Louis.

In the seine of the fishermen,

over the Mississippi.  Sign

from tree-logs, Jessie Ophelia... always.

6.23.19

the family woodpecker

STEEP RAVINE

Quiet today along the river.

In the steep ravine, only

the Morse drum-talky

of the family Woodpecker

interrogates the oaks with hollow

query.  Where are you,

worm?  Job’s blue.

Ice-packed for the long, Nile-slow

Egyptian winter, thick with Pharaoh-

dolour, pyramidical –

ridiculous cyclical

suffering, encased in snow.

It’s not his fault, & he will tell you so.

O, if these canyons were

only in a book!  We’re

leaving – desiccated, delicate.  Don’t go.

The poet has her humors – she’s

devoted to them, wholly.

Lear’s wise Fool, she’ll

follow Boaz carrying the heaves

out loud, in sheaves.  The polis, too,

be uncobbled knowledge.  What

vaguely familial knot

of rivals, bickering horseshoe

favors for grubs, is this?

Not Man-Eat-Too-Much

or Minotaur – no, such

rapacity’s reserved for the abyss

                *

of Pole Star Netherworld (Étoile

du Nord).  Little Crow

stood there, y’know –

with the Red Wing clan, in a potted bowl

of leers.  Stood with the scapegoat

as a prophet should – charisma

whirling in the twister-eye

(magenta bronze, the serpent-calumet).

Who sees him sky-hole in this mess?

Light imperturbable

as Mississippi burble

through a transparent lamb-lattice –

the holeness of that holy garment

parti-colored Joseph wore,

shellacquered semaphore

way under limestone sediment

of painful jealousies & wounded hate.

Her singular vocation,

musing on desolation

til scarred earth-pangs abate –

bored by a dream of early days.

Canoe of Camelot,

Lake-Lady’s thunder-knot...

the old bare dance, woodpecker maze

of placid Oak-Gal Day – a writ of spring

(St. Vitus 1913

Paris Corn Maiden)

that joins Creation to Thanksgiving.

3.9.17

Jonah was a fisher of men

NO THING

Hobo couched on his frozen bench

& felt the dream of summer

flow through his mummy-

shroud (cocoon from Danish trench).

Everything from no thing,

mused the broody dagger-

raven, plastic bagger

limping toward immortal spring.

Must mean some one looking out

from furled oak leaves.

No one conceives

how close a whisper knits the plot.

Poverty’s a hollow ache.

Lento, lento, the fast

approacheth – one last

Sabbath before Easter break.

The one I love’s an almond slip

between Pharaoh & Laius.

An airborne edifice,

the bubble in the level’s grip;

the fisherman’s égalité –

gal from Gesthemane

surfacing lambent sea,

coulombe crooning Liberté.

One blinding black diamond

clothed in octahedron.

Orange junk lantern,

Hobo’s caravel flamande.

2.4.17