a gargoyle versus Mars

ROSE EYE

Henry, Seeker, trails Hobo down.

Molting to Hobo in his sleep.

A baby spring flows deep...

soft ripple, brimming delicate renown

amidst angels, & water nymphs.

His almond lens mists over

out of focus (blurred,

all out of blue red).  His eye limps.

High in the dark sky chant the stars

above distraught Columbia.

Arcturus, Regulus, Spica –

framing a gargoyle versus Mars

(opposing men-o’-violence, that Man

of Lawlessness); a trio

in the Dragon’s Head (O

money jungle, African fleurette).  Tin pan

for Paris ghost-dance gold... your own

damn note, hunchback Igor

(boom boom Guillaume, poly-

poilu).  Viol sez, follow me down.

A purple prince from Minneapolis!

Adonis of grain elevators!

Lapped into clay (all yours,

A-frame).  A rose eye came – his sis,

Iris-Sophia.  Whorled full of vertigo,

gaunt San Francisco...

floored in the adamant, so

grand.  Your sky-blue motherland, Hobo.

1.27.20

in the shadow of Notre Dame

TO YOU

To you who have walked with me

all along this many poem.

I would translate my diagram

of raven wing into quick algebra.

As daylight stretches into spring

I would head to Beltrami

a worn-out refugee –

Itasca hearts to weld by wring.

The Iron Range is as our life,

cold for sunrise, fire

by dusk.  Evening Star,

Dove-Bird, be thou my wife

                 *

whose effigy is coppery Peg

centered in Big Muddy silt

at Pentecost, green to the hilt.

Cahokia palm (with Easter egg).

She danced in the shadow of Notre Dame

a firebird, on 5/29

with flammable cardboard mural crown

for Apollinaire to remember (at the Somme).

& she wheeled across flat American clay

from West Branch, a circumference

of byzantine raven-sense...

to lift sad Earth toward the Realm of Day.

1.8.20

from a painting by Phoebe Gould

Neva serpent ocarina

AT VLADIVOSTOK

One might say mathematics is a matter

of cascading functions,

with parenthetical canyons

in canyons (as at Vladivostok, or the Matter-

horn).  Rivers flow this way,

then that way, back,

forth, clattering

from Hackensack to Housatonic (May-

November).  So the game of numbers

is a mode of streambed too –

your Itasca-sprung Rio

del Espiritu (time-numbing mine of hours)

whose ceaseless surge bends past the prong

of Louie’s Gateway Arch

that budgeth not (March

to September), stills the monotone like a gong

of bronze.  Thus Mrs. Slippery, crowned,

extends her clayborne banks

beyond New Orleans... her phalanx

of ‘gators flanks her onward, azure-bound;

so the analogy of brazen serpent

lures this goldfinch dream

into Leviathan trireme

wreathing America in mist, unspent –

as when a dervish Morning Star

raveled Guillaume into her web

grappling Jonah (fledgling pleb)

into the shimmer-seine of River R.

12.27.19

Osip Mandelstam's final i.d. card (internal emigre)

Apollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Minneapolis (MN)

SNOW WHEEL

A little snow meanders down in Minneapolis

to cold November earth.

Guillaume, prince triste of mirth

was lowered from his balcony in Paris

two days before the Armistice.

Grandpa packed up his guns

one last time, near Verdun.

Spent rulers carpentered their peace.

Sacre du Printemps set the stage.

Russkaia Neva-sacrifice

summons her apotheosis –

leaps for the holocaust of banal rage

mounting to self-consuming poshlost peak.

Apollinaire was there

that night (under the sulfur-

flare, the guttering of Belle Epoque).

Grandpa field-marshaled the parades

on Armistice Day.  Lafayette,

we are here... the old print

over the dinner table (Revolutionary shades

trippin’ la gigue française, at Mt. Vernon).

My ghosts are here now,

in November snow.

The Rio fleuves inexorably on

down to St. Louee, New Orleans.

Jeanne spins with Jessie

to their Stagger Lee...

my snow wheel hums, Rose (oriens).

11.10.19

translated to an island

SIMPLE IMMANENCE

Constitution Day.  Coke’s legacy,

translated to an island rose –

mother & nurse of repose

on the throne of Imago Dei – si?

Your lambswool, Giuliana – moss-green

through the red-dust desert.

Alighieri’s tomb, in quiet

(such as lie, smothered in grass, by San

Vitale).  Twin peacocks, maybe –

between two almond trees?

In the Ferrara freeze

(Micòl shivering in her garage)... see?

Your solar emblems not for me,

Ezra.  Marble from Ravenna

swiped for Rimini, & gloria –

the simple immanence of meek Marie

shunned like a ghetto-child.  & so

the merry-go-round of sacrifice

creaks back to 1913, Paris...

Ugo, Parisina, burnt to ash once more

for the war to end all wars (before

the end).  A rust-bronze Penny

blackens backward, in Gehenna –

from dim crossroad will she soar

like diamond Southern Cross.  She is

lips’ ghost dance ring-

around-the-rosy... clear spring

Pax-water (your West Branch Isis).

9.17.19

photo from Ballets Russes

ALMOND ARGO

Old Hobo-&-Henry, down by Big Muddy.

Hobo lounges in cottonwood shade.

Twirls a bright curving blade

of tiger-lily, so orange & black, idly

between finger & thumb.  Henry

thought of mossy Giuliana

walking away from her pottery

shop, entering the gloom of Sant’Apollinari –

high frieze of majestic virgin martyrs

carrying their crowns.

The photo from Ballets Russes,

Paris, 1913 – spring maids, en fleurs...

& the black dot of Juliet in the distance

crossing the tensile spine 

of orange tiger-dragon

one last time (beneath frost-cobalt silence).

Strange oak, epileptic, near the shore.

Bent like a lyre before

a cluster of cottonwoods – your

humble servant, it seems.  Kingly no more.

Hobo eyed it.  Washing their leaves

with hers, maybe, he said.

Like San Francesco & his bride,

his sister, Povertà.  Humility cleaves

to the pivot of this world, the matrix –

to the crossroad, to the tree

of life.  I look into you, Henri –

to your salty heart.  I read the asterisk

                        *

you scribble for a star, approximately –

I scan the fresco-sketch

you offer for a spirit-potlatch

replica of New World Galilee.  It’s funny.

Earth is in its birth-pang death-throes,

Hobo.  Hope is hard to find.

Yet... the kingdom’s in your mind.

Your heart, my friend.  The Shadow knows.

& you were right to shape the Southern Cross

surrounded by Sydney fig trees

into a diamond-figure Paradise –

to stem four rivers from St. Louis

like emerald casket for the Eucharist;

for Micòl in her black canoe

& MLK in Memphis too

sustain that central martyrdom of Mars

just as Dante foresaw, in his basilica –

where little sylvan J

circumferences her almond tree

delightfully... & the grail of tears (Ephphatha)

opens broken hearts across the globe

to each one’s almond Argo

Isis-eyed Hagia Sophia...

see, Henry Church?  & like a strobe

light suddenly unfolded, Henry felt

what Osip felt – accompanied

the rapture of the universe (sighed

with bold Marian... watched iron melt).

8.8.19

serpent in the clay

SLOW WHEEL

Henry leans on Hobo, stumbling along

the river path.

Sullen serpent of wrath,

her mud-green bronze glistening

mutely as she goes, her banks

tight-lipped, angry with Man,

older than Man.  The sun

barely registers on shady flanks

slipping by, tongue flickering.

The plot thickens.  Clouds

darken where crowds

hearken – listen! – princes, bickering...

& who shall have the succession?

A cast of characters –

kings, clerics, warriors –

mime St. Vitus in scared possession –

sleepwalk their sacrificial totem

for a perennial repetition

of the same (again, again).

& armies marshal around Bethlehem

to protect the kingdom from its violence;

a convenient woman shall

be found, to dance the ritual

in their place (a chosen princess)

& her cacophonous Parisian Rite of Spring

will set the keynote for a war

to end all wars (for

a while).  Meanwhile the black spring

                     *

of Rio Mississippi coils in anger

on the Iron Range, under

the North Star.  Thunder,

Hobo, Henry says.  It’s Woodpecker

come back – alight near Red Wing,

so they say.  What

does it mean, old mutt?

He muttered back : it don’t mean anything

to many, Hen.  She walks beside you

like an iron canoe,

the spiral J of Synagoga –

like that Micòl in Ferrara, like a shadow

of Our Lady.  Spiritu – loving you,

who don’t deserve her –

sacrificed for Minotaur

on every altar, from Cahokia to now.

Then Henry saw a little emerald

almond leaf, shaped

like a boat... wrapped

in a river-whorl, spun, twirled

downstream.  The Delta beckoned,

where dark Mère Lousine

grinned from the deep.  Lean

over some more, Henry, Hobo intoned.

There’s Benjamin Latrobe & Son,

sunk like a foundation

in the Gulf.  An American

sun blinked, dark.  A slow wheel spun.

7.21.19

the water-works in New Orleans

CROW-TRACKS

Old Hobo by the river again,

old mule, old Lear, old man.

Ponders the coiled span,

the tension in the plot called Heaven

Versus America.  Indifferent violence,

violent indifference...

What took you into silence,

Julie, at your blossoming – hence

into the shark’s eye of the Bay.

Like an arching jaguar-lunge

of International Orange

claw-marked with irreversible tragedy

your Bridge – hypnotic Taj Mahal

whose lambent shadow hums

of nut-brown kingdoms,

steep ravines for Solomon, Sheba...

The span tracks a continuum

he scans with tentative

crow-tracks.  To live

or die.  From the will’s ultimatum

of despair, your cul-de-sac of self-

slaughter – to the other pole

of faith, serene & whole;

with Stravinsky’s branded Sylph

leaping her epileptic scapegoat pyre

(in Paris, on May 29th)

– O Juliet, my May-month

sister-dove!... my black North Star

       *

– his limping meditation takes him far

upstream, & down.  The dream-

songe, rivery-rêve, beams

her constancy, an equilibrium (wave-mère).

Her source, an Okean of galaxies,

a murmuring Milky Way –

your sempiternal Day

that never dies, your tree of many Jessies...

open your eyes, Hobo, & see!

This kingdom of canoeing

almonds pours – outpacing

Death with fins of Galilee-Ferrari!

Her mickle water-sprite keeps murmuring

like your sibling ghost,

shady elfin host

who climbs from a mandorla, humming

beside you (ahead of you, within you);

& like Latrobe the architect

following his own son to inspect

the water-works in New Orleans, renew

yourself – restore yourself, American! –

in that strange French-Spanish-

Cherokee dreamland.  Swish

go the eucalypus paddles... the plan

of Heaven is a restoration, so –

not slavery, but liberty –

your soul’s birthday.

Love Kingdom’s galaxies begin to glow.

6.24.19

in the end zone

MAJOR CHORDS

In the shadow of a song of songs

the anthems are always major

chords.  Mendelssohn... (our

home in Hopkins)... everyone belongs.

Tonight the rival city-states,

the patriots, blow

ram’s horns.  O

say can you see... big potentates’

eyes dilate... Vergo rolls out

Hail Mary feint (over

Washington Monument) –

Crazy Horse Rushmore... Touch-

stone!  The transfixated crowd

explodes.  Ghost dance

in the end-zone – Lance

Galahad will take the shroud!

The mob desires to crown a king,

a king of everything.

Sponsors oblige, with bling –

the glittering circlet is a diamond ring

for nubile Woody Berge Ouvrante

(Cheerleader from the Bronx

Will Marry Uncle Onx

Next Year).  Preview this fête galante!

Apollinaire heard the cicadas

droning in the oak –

of how the wind spoke

dry coracles of wheat to Colchis

                    *

& the streetlight in the snowy dark

zones a frozen cross

against the pavement (Loss

for Brady : Bells Will Boom for Belichick).

We’ll laugh about this tomorrow

(or maybe in 2020).

How the crowd, honey,

decides – & doesn’t care, somehow.

They insist on sacrifice – Sacre

du Printemps, ma chérie.

Tiptoe to thundery

finale... just before the war (nacre

& objets d’art, Guillaume).

Leap to the metronome

over the Metrodome,

Sophie – you will survive this doom

of frightened infants in their uniforms;

Thin Blade Societies

& Rudra puberty

sodalities... unconscious norms

(they know not what they do).  Thread

woven for a future prince –

hearts, purple sequins

imprint Valentine wreath for his head;

he’s singing of an anti-kingdom

where his anti-father

(shedding all that bother)

chords an unquenchable welcome home.

2.3.19

I stir the Pythian gumbo of Apollinaire

BRONZE ANNALS

The Palladium forsook Byzantium

on a Black Wednesday

near Pentecost (hey

yo).  In the old Orpheum

Theatre (off Hennepin) Stravinsky

leads Ballet Russe

to rude cathartic truce

around the bonfire of a galaxy –

a human maypole (at the end of May).

She’s only Morning Star.

The young Apollinaire

is debonaire... they waltz away.

Salt sea-wash on another shore

throws up a Kennedy...

Melchizedek?  O, he

will pass through temple walls before

bronze annals of the oak tree close.

A little emerald windlass

winds your thread, Theseus.

A Selkie off the Newport coast,

a water-sprite from far-off Ocean...

laving heart of Berryman,

& salty Hart (Ohioan);

lifting Juliet from self-destruction.

Ineffable ark of Vierge Ouvrante,

imperishable human smile –

Love’s gentle campanile,

lofting aforesaid acorn-infant.

1.21.19

bottled in an oak-knot

LIGHT SHIVERS

A silver filigree of January ice

atop the Mississippi.

An eye from remote milky

paradise congeals mid-stream.

In the mandorla, the king smiles

who must die.  Rain

wells from Magdalenian

locks, sways down the aisles.

Reality’s an unctuous parasite

whose masculine will

melds to feminine style.

Psyche’s a rose (hermaphrodite).

You search the scriptures, yet

you do not come to Me.

My mother is a refugee,

her kid’s a goldfinch in a net.

Light shivers off the snow, & down

the stream.  Only a dream.

A 3-dimensional scheme

with vanishing pt. in Providence town.

They chased that woman to her grave,

who danced in Paris on the eve

of the Great War.  Her wave

of splendor... Morning Star’s mild sleeve.

La Mancha waits like Camelot

for the happy restoration

of good ship Madeleine –

Marie’s cosine (bottled in an oak-knot).

1.9.19

ballet russe

SANS SEINE

Along a cinder pathway

through November woods

Hobo, in one of his moods

murmurs a Mississippi lay.

Under his arm, his matryoshka

maiden – his mater within

mater, painted, wooden;

on his head, folded like Chippewa

canoe, an old felt hat

crimson as pileated

woodpecker.  Belated

prophet from Yehoshephat,

brown Mississippi of decision!

He mutters a woman’s name

under his breath (same

as under his arm) : Marion,

Miriam, Magdalen... Jessie,

Juliet... Beatrice, Jeanne...

Natasha... each one

enclosing the other (ballet

russe).  Sacre du Printemps.

1913, at end of May.

Pirouette, grand jeté...

Juliet, sans seine.  Lamps

are going out all over Europe.

Hobo yet knots his woolly

safety net – the glory

of the Lord, letter & envelope.

11.2.18

curious Winter's Tale

FRAIL FOLIO

Tell us a curious Winter’s Tale

before October ends.

This cottonwood sheds

flagship – by remnant sail,

from crown of flimsy raven nest.

Berryman’s birthday.

Not a block from here... hey.

Fold him he water music (final test).

Pledge of confirming intellect

spurs poet to sole deed.

Life’s halcyon meed.

Plum plummet (kingfish dialect).

Not that yellow-gold & blacken’d

leaf, cornered in eddies

keyed to cotton levies,

blackface parodies... Huck reckon’d

not.  Rather this lightweight,

ineffable lovelight –

staging for drifting wight

her leaf-romance (it’s not too late,

Hermione).  Tale told by idiot

king, floating everything –

how twin brothers ring

the mirror lake of Camelot,

& Guinevere & Lancelot

surface (Gennesaret)

Stravinsky trance-daughter

by prairie vortex... oaken chariot.

10.25.18

O more than moon

LITTLE ROOM

90 years ago today

Papa was 5 weeks old.

Lindbergh took off, bold

Icarus... Spirit of St. Louee.

Daedalus built his labyrinth

to keep the Minotaur

at bay.  OK so far.

Only minor casualties – 8 millionth

civilian, 1913 (unknown

poilù).  Our engineers

built expensive tears

into delicate ships, Apollonian

on combers like phosphorus, behind

the shining cranium

(a sort of No-See-Um

mosquito zone).  Dear blind

(icky) Eddy posed this question

to himself : Who’s my father?

Phoebus compiled a rather

complex artifice (Olympic Stadion

to be Demolished Tomorrow)

in order to swim again

beneath Shoshone moon –

just 8 light-years away (somehow

we’ll get there, Apollinaire).

She’ll do her zephyr flute-

dance (Bonfire En Route)

as lithe fiery planetary star

                *

Stravinsky set for 8 août

– he had to settle for

the 4th (Madame Bouvier

demand) – juillet, or thereaboot.

Guillaume bowed to the plumèd crowd.

Jesus on autopilot

rose... began to float

over la Tour Eiffel (meek, not proud).

Lindy surrendered all his clothes,

like Francis (to his father

dead) – rose further

in mondaine esteem – only to close

that gap between our earth & moon.

Bright mother of reflection,

pearl of intellection

(pupil Christ within your black hole zone)

my jottos ink into Francescan gloom,

your caved-in grotto

on my kitchen plot.

Light tenders mercy in that little room.

O moon, your melancholy face

reminds me of my lost race

to perimeter of grace.

Mayflower, constant Falcon-Ace...

paternal covenant of trust.

O arrogance of youth!

To jettison the truth

like so much ballast (bursting dust).

5.20.17

a line in the road

GREY BIRD

Sarah found a baby turtle

this morning, inching along

a line in the road.  My song-

salience, or green volcano-yurt

on slow horizontal too... toward

her thorny rose-matrix;

my scrambled pick-up-sticks,

snarled with gold poncho thread

in limpid greys of dawn twilight.

This mutter-dome of whisper-

leaves, of zephyr-vespers

veils an agate lamp (magnet

for Blue Morpho & monarch flight)

pendant amid cedars –

like black-yellow flickers

gathered into marigold (O milky knight).

My abstract worming through its raving

scribble-babble, cartoon

peacock incarnation...

a myriad glancing-whorl becoming

the figure for your beaming face.

O the clear air of this

metaphysical silence!

Whose pause released one Finnish race

to lift her soaring steel mandorla

into lofty grace

planted in pivot-place

of riverine & prairie space – ah,

Psyche!  Sister Persephone!

I feel your sunny smile

now – lifting lilacs mile

on mile into an octave-harmony

                *

of active commonality –

Joy’s hero-trial!

Path P – Indian file –

thread-thin tattoo to Liberty!

So the little tree of J

is ever-living.  So

Jonah bee surfacing

tuned to your buzzing play,

high Sophie – through the fallen timbers

west of gray Verdun,

the world’s war-passion

settled in destruction.  Embers

from a wraith of spring, the sack of Prince

Henry’s royal oak...

one ashen acorn spoke

welded to purple wheel of Providence.

The crayon trembles in my hand.

The palm curves green

circumference – Iona

ray, from Ocean State (to every land);

the grey bird murmurs through the surf;

the Camelot of JFK

& blessedness of MLK

merge in the spray, resolve to turf.

So Thunderbird ruffles the stream.

The turtle is a Phoenix

swelling at the matrix –

agate child skipping (on waves of dream).

5.18.17

we were there at the opening

Minnesota Symphony (head in the dear lights)

SACRE DU PRINTEMPS
                                                  if a Greek could see our games...

Stravinsky, Sacre du Printemps.

We were there at the opening,

brimming Finn conducting

momentum – thunderclaps & stomps

revive   tired 20th century

Apollinaire   in wings

puffing peace pipe rings

heart-knots   knock-knock (really

Thunderburnt acceleration).

Sacajawea, limping

the cornfield, keening

high lonesome   milky halcyon

mother-of-pearl   a sacrifice

of Mendelssohn   &

pirouettes   rose islands of

melodious romance   (deep ice

instead).  The violence inbred

in Gothic bones   Poe’s

charnel House of Horrors

under clerestory lines   All dead,

alas   Jessie   Ophelia

sweet dark-eyed river-

daughter   (Prospero,

Moses)   a scent   selah

shelled corn   shellacked

by hangrin’ guilty guile

in lime   hid   laid   Ile

fit you   Why?   Hack’d

               *

be the hackers   ice cracking

at the end   some munster

python swallowing your

Sonny Man (ut one thug lacking)...

Little mote, little penny, tiny

splinter in your eye

Ford Theatre   The King

Must Die   in Memphis   on a balcony

lowly motel   or mangy inn

It had to be done, someone

must’ve said   musty felon

or gypsy   jew-boy   coon

& we all in on it   even FBI

even Adlai Stevenson

some historical person

Hubert Humphrey (or I’ll be J)

– the pressure-cooker of The War

to End All   Wilson   Geraldine

Fitzgerald   Cymbeline

or Everybud   the boar-hound or

the bore   deflect the arrows of

your .44 (or .45)   Merved

orange Grifter   Vertigo

(the movie)   someone’s flic’v love

home run   9th inning   must be

some kinda way outa here

I don’t want to be the deer

in the headlights, Maggie   help me

3.30.17