like Frisco shepherd

SOLID AIR

Our Lenten season creaks along.

Involuntary shut-ins

calibrate their sins

or contemplate that deep-time throng

still singing songs through solid air

(celestial City on a Hill).

Who loves like Roger will

yet see Rose Isle, past baleful stare

& power-grabbing guile.  Meanwhile

Prince Hal will follow Hobo

like Huck Jim, & go

where currents flow (deep Delta style).

That Sleeping Lord of David Jones

dreams watercolor landscapes

old as Magdalenian apes,

bright as Justinian gemstones…

they glow with compassionate faces

beneath shimmering raven-stars

across midnight blue

while drowsy Hobo rolls a smudge of clay

(Pipestone maroon) into an eye

anchored in leafy palm (ala

Cahokia) – de son bateau c’est clé.

The King looks from his mandorla

like Frisco shepherd… mild

as forest mint gone wild,

sweet as nursing nightingale (selah).

His mother is the Queen of France,

his father is invisible

whose whispers out of Israel

ignite Prince Hal’s American romance.

4.6.20

train to Boston

FATE-LINES

Hobo follows his instinct to the river.

A serpentine circulation,

labyrinth – heart’s burn.

Romans might haruspicate the liver

of an ox, or note the forays of a raven

like smoke-signals overhead;

Hobo lingers with his own dead

Providence photos – train to Boston

or that old blind man who walks the plank

straight off the cliff (at Prospect

Park).  Ghosts intersect.

Eurydice in San Fran hits a blank

wall of blue salt water.  Prince Henry Hal

uproots the better part of soul

to be the bard imperial –

shelving himself with racks of Fleurs du Mal.

To be refuge for troubled consciences,

Rhode Island was.  & was.

Hobo works with materials

by eye-in-hand (fate-lines, hunches);

commissioned for a wedding-song

of earthen pots (Cahokian)

& Morning Star – where one

Virgo-conjunction plants her Gateway prong

the Rio del Espiritu Santo will merge

St. El with Muddy Waters

& Ravenna’s virgin martyrs

with a N’Orleans fanfare... cosmic splurge.

12.10.19

on six directions

CLAY CUP

I will not rival Dante’s double

spiral (from depth of Hell

to heart of Love) but spell

a complementary bubble-

rêve, mapped on the horizontal.

Infernos of damnation,

sparks of elation

harbor here – my guide no Virgil,

only turtle-speed Hobo;

not Beatrice now

but one blithe ocean-dew

rainbow (her smiling Jonah-brow).

Like that mercurial Micòl in Ferrara

she lights my imagination

with X-S creation,

aslant from Providence to Frisco –

a river, crossing at the Gateway Arch

like some switchback, Pawnee

Missouri – molding a key-

stone at Cahokia (ten fingers’ kiln-torch).

Where slowly, slowly, the potter’s wheel

with shaping eye-in-hand

rotates the whole land

counter-clockwise – churns against the keel;

casting her clay cup on six directions

like Black Elk diamond –

firing her mandala-almond

amid each human hearth-rose (Hobo reckons).

8.5.19

upon St. Swithin's Day

MONARCH MILK

‘Tis hot & muggy in the octagon

upon St. Swithin’s Day.

& will it rain?  Say.

St. Emperor Henry’s (Holy Roman)

also, once upon a time.  It’s stifling.

An unreal toad usurps

the garden throne, & burps.

His orange tongue is mean, & trifling;

his fire-red refuge-chair is for a child

who hasn’t come home

in 33 years.  Christendom

conquered the Holy Sepulchre... wild

slaughter & rejoicing on this day,
1099.  But will his Ghost

lift from that gloomy host?

Joachim daubs a fingerpaint contrary

blindly, with bare feet (a cave-fresco

for San Francisco).  & Henry

plots his own obscure & minatory

figure : double wheels.  Of milky glow

& river-clay – Cahokia, North Star.

To turn the Great Year

5 29s... & spin from here

some monarch milk (a little almond to restore).

7.15.19

like San Francisco vertigo

PAINFUL CORNS

Henry’s inching toward the center

of his poem – bright high gyre

like William Golding’s Spire

(splintered, keening, full of ire).

In the Cathedral at Rodez, we saw

its balsa-wood replica

(like seedling, or amoeba-

virus) – Jocelyn’s vanishing awe

lifted to depths of infinite regress

like San Francisco vertigo.

Yet it shall not be so

with you.  Your realm is humbleness.

Your solar crown, a crown of thorns

your aureole a poor halo

picked up (after the show)

by crotchety vets (painful corns).

Somebody tell me where we’re going

with all this, Henry!

The acorn in an almond tree

makes not much sense; canoeing

(not a major sport in Italy) is

unlikely to resolve the fight

between the mining money’s might

& piping pioneers of wilderness

(attainted Oz).  Henry dozes

in his miniature oak tree –

a mythological Charlie...

& will he wake?  Check JB’s glozes.

6.29.19

serpent ocarina

RED RIVER

Dante calibrated to the nth degree

the classic perihelion

of medieval civilization

simply to retrieve the smile of Biche

out of nine coils of Cerberus

& that sulfurous pit

known to Cautantowwit

who cauterizes death with raven caws.

More things in heaven & earth, Horatio.

We’re all caught up in this

wrestling match with the abyss;

there’s no detachment of the mind from woe

nor from the body’s final strife

– breathing with agony

at the crossroads (in RI) –

where Red River meets Sargasso Gulf.

So the poem of America embodies

Juliet upon the parapet

Ophelia with hairnet

(download Vertigo for double-whammies) –

the tensile span of every suicide,

waiting for someone to reach

them (eye-in-hand) – teach

HOPE to hollowed-out children (pied

serpent, surging back to Mendelssohn).

Observe the valiant

canoe, she said.  Plant

almonds, quincunctial.  Amen, amen.

6.27.19

no one will judge it

Bang Hai Ja, Naissance de la Lumiere, 2015 (part of a stained-glass project for Notre Dame de Paris)

BIRTH-SIGH

Light-waves pulse from primordial Ocean State

from a weightless blazing stone

fallen to our temperate zone

from heaven – & no one will judge it

murmured Joseph, ye blessed stem;

the Word’s articulation

is well-water’s spoken

wheel (from Nowhereland to Bethlehem).

Our history, a contentious dream

scrolled on Möbius tape

pivots its bleak landscape

panorama on a polestar theme :

the plummet-stone, a river-pilot’s guide.

Her name is Providence.

She is each local habitation’s

hopeful capital – ghost by your side;

she is the sister-dove of Mandelstam,

rock-dove of gay Stevens;

she is the Jonah – Berryman’s

& Crane’s last lifesaver (she says I AM).

I see the shadow of gray wings of stone

stretch like a whisper now

from East to West, Glasgow

to Golden Gate; lifting each broken bone

from Frisco shore to some imperishable joy

like Hummingbird lancing the curse

& labyrinth of Homo Tyrannos

with one birth-sigh... her FIAT LUX... that Day.

6.15.19

oracles from the Henry Couch

LOVE NEIGHBOR

While the planet bakes, heats up

like the moon... Henry,

like Winnie the Puer

Aeternus, idly rotates his kaleidoscope

full of little bits of brass cymbal.

Hibernal, he turns

this way & that; his urn’s

an ointment jar from Mary Magdala

full of tiny frozen stars of royal

palm oil.  His screech-owl

habitat’s a cypress bole,

an Erica-tree (washed up by Nile).

Osiris is a long brown river

searching for the sea.

A muddy throne for Henry,

couched like round-headed Cavalier

in the living room of an argot Argosy.

Whose vessel wavers

on the waves, & shivers

when the keel spokes (glossy Lady) –

a buoyant kind of synagogue-canoe

or pileated coracle –

high honeycomb cenacle,

multiocular almond (with ox-eye prow).

The Golden Fleece dangled in Providence

like a unicorn in a cloister;

in Sheep’s Clothing (her

murmur nest) Francesca wove the dense

                     *

gold poncho for young Dionysus

out of San Francisco.

Light moves now

through the window, Theseus;

Ariadne is a widow, & young Helle

sleeps with the shellfish

south of Phrixos (Frisco);

all shall be well, & all thing shall

be well, &... who shall lift up

the great acorn of light?

Not Henry, with all his might –

but Grace (who bears the Bear-man cup).

That donkey-man of Apuleius,

cousin to St. Francis,

steered the figurehead of Isis

to the throne of Henry’s soul-crisis.

Pressure from the Left to dispossess

the thriving bourgeoisie

leads (see 20th century)

to misery.  Children, beware forgetfulness!

Pressure from the Right to still maintain

luxurious plutocracy

leads (see 21st century)

to misery.  Children, beware unrighteousness!

Old Coke & his disciple, Williams

joined ancient lawful right

with each & all – O passionate

recognition!  Love neighbor, & be happy clams!

1.25.19

sumac muse

AUTUMN SUMAC

The new Solomon will show

a spirit of discernment.

No more time spent

on wastes of shame, Sheba – no.

He might see the Parousia

if he takes care.

His friend Hobo (where’d

he go?) will likely not carouse

far, yah.  He’s by the river,

as per.  Autumn sumac

beads along railroad track.

Dry cotton bones, monsieur.

François might join him there,

under gibbous moon,

Paris monsoon...

cornered at the bridge of the stair.

Amigo Frank – piano soul of Frisco,

tempering tomorrow.

Palming witness so

to stigma of twinship, boy-o.

Thunderbird collects herself

over Red Wing swamps.

Imperial affliction stamps

[available in lobby]. Guelf

to Ghibelline, Dante wit Beatrice...

Moses and Elijah frame

their thorny throne (slim

acmé of suave pillars).  Touché.

9.24.18

like a Balinese cock-fight

FRISCO CROSSROAD

Poets’ business, like a ring

round a Bali cock-fight –

goodbye to all that.

Shake your kaleidoscope thing,

ping your kalimba – your bricolage

a grubby grab-bag

(seven pounds of brag

& rage, mixed up with garbage).

Meanwhile that flesh-tone bridge

(crossing my Mississippi

song-&-dance) will be

morphing some spider’s double-edge

Venn diagram – a stick figure

at hobo train junction

where sunny Everyman

remembers split Coatlicue.

Rumors of an impasse, whispered

through a chain-link fence.

Barbed lozenge of insistence

scarring Rome, Jerusalem... the word

made fishy (west of Galilee,

east of Athens, Georgia)

as a picnic smorgasbord

laid out beneath barren oak tree.

That smell gets into everything.

Like something baked

a week in a canal – like

messy string theories, untangling

                  *

a knotty plot of pots & pans, banging

the human family

to kingdom come (really?)

from seedy tribes to Nero’s hanging

gardens.  Shady Rome, where every

cosmic veil is torn –

& a black rock is borne

upon recalcitrant shoulders of slavery

into the center of a black hole’s

starry honeycomb.

What ass bears the whole

sum?  What shoe of prophet’s mule?

Maybe an offshoot of Coatlicue

wearing a flimsy linen

Joseph-coat.  A woman,

patient Pietà... La Pia, Psyche...

Ariadne or Arachne, raveling

path P... that rugged,

ragged Francine – plugged

at Frisco crossroad – traveling

freight.  Sometimes you meet a person

heavier than time & space.

Rough wind carves well-faces

lined with laughter, hope... pain...

She steps forth from black stone –

stirring bears in her arms,

palming clay amid storms

of adamant love (makar-maid, shown).

10.4.17

Hobo's dream-sponge

MILK-CRATE

The pearl shines at the bottom of the harbor

as a lamp glows in the darkness.

Color of St. Francis’

donkey (silver-grey, St. Thomas More).

Henry’s church is in the grey-scale too;

a weathered pebble, like

an unknown soldier (Psyche-

cloud, veiling the ocean’s blue).

Bright pennants of the jungle world

(green, orange, black) are

silky glass, refracting back

primary triplets of an orb unfurled –

gold sun, red clay, & midnight sea.

Her mouth is milky ivory

from Santa Giulia, in Brescia...

her parabolic harmony dovetails for me

into a grail from good grey Elephant

(whose queen is dark & comely

Africa).  So Henry’s comedy

plumbs bottomland; its hierophant

is Hobo in disguise, pearl-diving

from the Golden Gate;

his Beatrice-Juliet

is Orpheus-Eurydice – is every living

soul, sleeping to swim the wake

of Lake Victoria.

Birth-rite of Jonah –

rock-dove sparked for Zion’s sake

                *

& all Creation’s sign of Noah.

Suddenly, like lightning

we are made – brightening

kids from adamant stone – Aloha,

planet-people!  Welcome to Providence!

A grey Rabbi heeds

my mumbling... new needles

green the stems of an immense

Jerusalem spear-flower... Juno

to Juneteenth, July to Jubilee,

the fallow air grows milky

& the Glory of the Lord will show

petals of pink & indigo

before too long.  Behold

the twin mirror-doors of bold

St. Thomas – he who was slow

to believe.  Now the dream-sponge

out of Resurrection Cemetery

sucks Lazarus like Henry

into a mystery play.  Plunge,

Cautantowwit-Raven, into the deep

Black Sea.  A Thunderbird

breaches your salty word

in spumy clouds of Neva-Sleep,

& Woodpecker hammers out Twin

Oak’s mandorla-canoe –

a Restoration Day, for you.

Casket of Lazarus – a milk-crate tin.

6.19.17

sunset orange

LAST STAND

The grey pebble, the unknown soldier

flung like a meteor

or Pippin to the ocean floor

blazes with spiritual authority (chaired

in the adamant of Time).  Quick

fiery arc of Jeanne,

dove-mild, Columbian –

from sweet Itascan spring to thick

Louisiana live-oak grove (along

a serpent’s labyrinthine

swerve).  Dream-scene.

Microcosm in a hobo’s glass, song-

songe awakened on Rose Island.

In your eye, Henry –

in our eye (INRI).

Crossroad of a king’s last stand.

Royal beyond kings, in their halls

of mirrors (drawing near

like Minotaur, a minor

character in Humpty-Dumpty Falls).

Lightning of intellectual fire

with rattling Thunderbird

enclosing Red Wing – Word

for equal brother, sister – Sire

& Siren in candescent colloquy.

Sheba & Solomon

enfolded in one zone

Galla (octagon vault-canopy)

                *

Placidia (ample, enduring crown)

might set like Orpheus

to shepherd sheepish US

to her clay plateau (emerald, ultramarine)

within Ravenna’s salty limestone

tombs (carted away

to Rimini, Ezra)

Franciscans monitor (Dante’s is one).

Henry-Hobo, ascending from the grave

of buried Berryman

under a Minnesota sun

shrives everything (old beggar-knave)

to thread the needle, so narrow

from Providence hillside

through Julian suicide

& Gateway Arch, to San Francisco

Porta Povertà – the Golden Gate

rimmed sunset orange

to rhyme with that strange

Libertà, shining in every heart...

the Jonah-Dove, or Jeanne d’Arc,

or Jenny Littletree

Corn Maiden, in D.C. –

my Pocahontas statue in the park

veiled by the evening radiance

of West Branch, Iowa.

I am the Mystery-Yahweh

of Life, she say – the dew’s sundance.

 5.30.17

the Ids of March

LITTLE ISLAND

                                the fallow air grows milky

The Rio shines in quietness,

mottled by fading ice.

Cato the Woodpecker is

prince of cottonwoods – his highness

tock-tocks like Railsplitter toward

the taproot of Twin Cities’

canker sores.  He’s

whittling his wooden law – a word

scrimshawn against all takers,

all Caesars of commonweal,

in the court of last appeal –

galactic axle of the makers.

Is this a holiday?  The soothsayer’s

a dreamer (pass, tense).

Cinna lost his innocence

mangled among conspirators –

murdering for liberty (the mob

took it another way).

Is this a holiday?

The Ids are on the march – to Nob

Hill, where nabobs are on fire

amid their books.  Moses

threw tomes into a rose-

bush (ruby thorn in rabid empire)

& King David warped his harp

with smooth rushes & grass –

his humble plant shall pass

anthills of Tyre, the minnow tarp

                   *

of Lucifer – the arrogant hare

shall slip behind the turtle

& the dove shall hurtle

like a hummingbird (plum everywhere).

The sea wind washes the shoreline;

she lifts my face toward

her calm sunlight.  The sword

shall pierce your own heart, Minute Man,

little island seeker after Liberty –

her candle glimmers, copper-

green, where grasshopper

& ant both anchor.  Charity

of Chartres, Maid of Orleans,

Spirit of St. Louis

circling toward Paris,

read us what soul freedom means –

infinite mercy & joy

lifting the universe

from snowy ovoidness

into a Shakespeare play –

late Mississippian romance

only the first people

have beheld.  Quadruple

diamond, sapphire expanse,

arc of a Southern Cross above

refulgent rose island –

we expiate... to understand

your ever-brimming streams of Love.

3.15.17

pileated woodpecker

unfurling Providence

ANGE D’OR

Pythagoras & Aristotle

felt both stars & sun

move (by persuasion

of love) around the atlatl

of the Pole – slow sarabande

of heart’s desire (my soul

pines for your solo Yule

just so, trompette marine).  &

though we scoff now, Harry,

your wedding dance is just

a veiled illusion – dust

on cosmic rewind, arbitrary –

yet those ripples on the strand

projecting gracefully

sound waves of sea

through particles of sand

put me in mind of relativity,

so that behind this mesh

of silken crossweave rush

soft murmurs (hush little baby,

don’t you cry)...  & a kind face

beyond divisibility

windy invisibility

ghostly ellipse of human race

gathers in gravity & mass

like a cloud-pebble

or magnified Hubble-

infinitesimal, lifted by windlass

                 *

into a masque of morning glory

from the outer darkness

with a rose compass

to inward salience (galactic story

of grave milky equilibrium

outlasting mirror-war

of swollen Minotaur

to bind the wounds with honey-balm).

The Earth’s unfurling Providence.

Slow-forming pearl

beneath the gray whorl

of a clay-worn shell – immense

agate of Agape, threaded

with light gold fleece

around a centerpiece

of Paradise (salt bread

& wine out of a stone casket).

Indomitable almond

branch, a blooming wand

cut for a lilac shoot, whose trumpet-

vine leans like a flinty mule

against vain headwinds

to Pacific ends –

vast azure of a wingspan’s rule,

bright Gate of international

ange d’or (meek door

for lambs, forevermore).

So sighs your shell, antiphonal.

2.9.17

Hobo's continental centrifuge

PACIFIC VOYAGE

Hobo, hunching by the great river

in winter’s clamp, peers

like an Okie Okeanos

through the ice-floes’ ripple-shivers –

through the wavy shimmer, down

through faint diffractions

where the light shines

back... a silver mirror-sun,

layering her limestone shells.

A simple madeleine

(stone crumblevine,

gray rock-dove oval) wells

from the giddy stream in limpid echoes.

Raven in Voronezh,

Cautantowwit knife-edge

grips sun in her beak – light glows

like Pearl Harbor in eclipse.

Her lunar lance shall pierce

the mule’s gray hide.  Ears

perk for Jonah’s salty lips

molded like canoe gunnel

to mime Columbia.

Her dove-insignia

frames Sophie-ship – her funnel

rays its calumet of light

above the pyramid

(violent power-grid

of barbed-wire fraud, not quite

                 *

extinguishing that Evening Star

glancing so tender yet

steadfast – a mauve fishnet

looping beneath flame’s Icarus-car).

Hobo is Jonah now, in Ocean River.

The voice beneath the sea

is like a Kievan harmony –

perpetual melody of live-forever;

her flute-throat flickering dusky rings

like rain-drenched iris

round the throne of Isis –

Hagia Sophia in a peacock’s wings.

The river chimes in Hobo’s ears

of many waters, laughing,

crying.  Wingèd seraph,

sister-sibyl, swirl his tears

& yours into the continental

centrifuge (in Center,

North Dakota).  There

the massive gravity of all

Columbia hums into monarch flight –

a raven-transmutation

of infernal nation

to green cedar habitation (night

Pacific voyage of your soul).

Hobo watched the fluttering

lift-off, slowly muttering –

milkweed seed, sail; Ocean, roll.

1.26.17