mark how red dust leaps

GATEWAY RING

The trickster-shaman & the prickly prophet

frame a stumbling-block

you can’t dislodge... mock

as you may, puffy lectern-puppet.

It is a fundamental moral world

they dramatize, a place

of breathing flames – their science

is conscience, this life a dream unfurled

on stage (his banner over me was love).

On board a fellowship

from birth, we skip, we slip

& slide toward the deep (sky-alcove,

ocean-sepulchre... Osiris-canoe

full of Isis-candles... grave

of MLK, our architrave).

As if returning to our own soul (true).

In West Branch, Iowa (my grandmother’s

home town) there is a dark

moss-green catafalque

of Isis, adamant earth-mother (who remembers).

& the North Star of the martyrs shines

like a seminal spark

over the Iron Range.  Mark

how red dust leaps into lifelines –

how a merry-go-round of American clay

swings toward the gateway ring

upstream, down.  Shaping

newborn, translated children – maize, hay hey.

7.11.19

from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

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

yodeling in Mendelssohn

LITTLE MIRROR

The mind is like a little mirror

& the word is like

a mirror in that lake.

We skated there, one ancient year –

across the icy glass, Heidi.

In Mendelssohn, sweet

neighborhood (complete

Garden of Cyrus now, in memory).

A melody of day-lilies cheers Henry

Hobo (by the Mississippi).

He might be somebody

you know – booked into penitentiary?

Sol.  Solo.  Absent Sheba

browses in another aisle

(archived in old Rhode Isle).

Her ship’s in search of Colchia

lambswool – seamless gold web,

mute mutuality –

griot reality

lofted to laughter (on Mount Horeb).

Square triangles of pyramids

fit into portable log

cabin logarithms, Mag.

Your stone’s a tiny tablet, hid

beside that lake, in Galilee –

a solidarity

sodality, a party

writ on water.  Fountain, artistry.

6.27.18

Vladimir's Mnemosyne

FLINTY SEAL

The little height of land, pasture

behind the slough, Heidi,

in Mendelssohn – where we

hunted fireflies together

as on a giant turtle’s back

in the dark – like sparks

or bees on a gloomride

puppy stars under the black

sky – sidling, sidereal

in sympathy, friendly

affinity, & simply

love (centripetal

North Star).  Vladimir’s Mnemosyne

within the hazel wood

only pure good –

Time the shady tall ash tree

that leaves its paw-print on your brow

today.  Miniature

meteor, or sepulchre

in microcosm, negative snow-

flake, flinty seal of Solomon;

emblematic passion-

flower, heart’s icon,

salt for a matrix-flame... O Queen

of the South, nightingale’s

bridegroom, at peak of

deep star-well – Love’s

rose-nest (crowning pregnant sails).

2.10.16

California lovebeats

MELODIOUS EMBLEM

Dante paced the perimeter of Florence

with mumbling gravitas

& halting step.  He was

building a grainy microcosm, dense

as diamond, light as linden leaf;

light as this Minnesota

snowfall (speechless alpha

blanketing state fairgrounds beef

– bandstand omega).  Orientation

toward North Star becomes

entangled with kingdoms

of heaven, world – a mule’s way station

to a Gold Rush claim, staked down at last

in San Francisco (keystone

of stark orange span).

A vortex (raven-blonde, vertiginous)

immurèd round painful iconic pair;

a song of songe (statute

of liberty) no more astute

than any lovebeat California dreamer

in midsummer.  Melodious emblem

for those deeper waters

(azure heights) that course

around foundations... Jerusalem

temple under Roman beams, arch

that forms the tensile wing

of eaglet eyrie (singing

scroll)... knife-edge of Raven-church.

12.28.15

See you in September

A poem in which I manage to condemn, in the space of one quatrain, both ISIS & Miley Cyrus.

(Some background : my maternal grandmother was born in West Branch, Iowa.  There is a statue of the goddess Isis in a park there.  Herbert Hoover was also from West Branch; the statue was a gift from the Belgian government for his services to their country after World War I.)

LACUSTRINE CIRCLE

This delicate native wanderer

like a dusty monarch (rusty-

orange) might just be

traveling incognito somewhere –

on white-winged moccasin, from

flower to flower – her agate

glance like Grandma’s (great) –

in West Branch, near the Iowa farm.

I dream of a different Isis there,

no punitive Hooverville;

another Cyrus too (there will

be no clicking Mileyhahas to prepare

with die-cut revelry your family’s

despair).  She will be veiled

only with cloudy knowledge

of the bright round pearl; salt seas

will anchor plumb her understanding;

Solomon will test

& be tested, & she

will best him (at the Ontario Fling

& other things).  A whippoorwill

accompanies their evening;

Caroline will be singing

like a wren from the oaks, a royal

Charlie... like a gal you met once –

Cal? – along the shore...

– that lacustrine circle where,

of yore, the monarch floats, hunts...

    9.1.15

"Isis.  Goddess of Life"

Jesus Thoughts (23) : Song(s) of Songs

A quick follow-up : another facet of this riddle of gender & the Bible.  To proceed from what we said in #22 : if God's personhood includes a capability to act out gender roles & sexuality (as humans tend to do)... what further can we say?  Well, as is true with a lot of things, but maybe especially with eros & sexuality - once you start looking, you see it just about everywhere.

Sacred symbols of Sky-father and Earth-mother originated long before Biblical times, back in prehistory.  Many were the archaic cultures organized by religious concepts like this, centered on seasonal rituals of sacred "weddings" - hieros gamos - on hilltops and temple-tops.  This background can be heard also in the Bible - though Yahweh was also careful to emphasize his cosmic transcendence and invisibility, his difference from the other gods.

Yet the sexual dimension and the erotic imagery are there, in both Jewish & Christian texts.  Israel is the "spouse" of Yahweh; the Church is the "bride" of Christ; the (feminine) soul espouses Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  Jesus both reigns and is expected as the coming Bridegroom; the Song of Songs - Solomon's lyric paean to erotic desire and wedded bliss (to summarize reductively) - is a key book for both faiths.  I think of the erotic terms with which some of the saints, like St. Bonaventura, San Juan de la Cruz, or Teresa of Avila, expressed their "spiritual ravishment" in meditation. 

In fact if one looks at Christian doctrine and the sacrament of Eucharist in this light, one could say that, at least in traditional terms, the pre-existent, spermatic Logos - the Word, which spoken, generated all creation - becomes Man, and marries His Spouse, the Church (and the individual soul) : and out of this spiritual marriage are re-born into "new life" the offspring of this union - the spiritual children of God.  Thus, the bread & wine of the sacrament take on an almost Dionysian aspect, and the Church becomes the site of an ongoing, vital hieros gamos - a spiritual seduction, epithalamic and "fruitful" in every sense.

This whole view of things sounds less strange when we remember that the first story in the Bible - in Genesis, of Adam and Eve - is the story of Man's fall from grace through an abandonment of God, a forsaking of God through the temptation of the flesh.  The Song of Songs was attributed to King Solomon, "foremost in wisdom" : perhaps we can understand all this as part of the wise (unfathomable) providence of God.  Since men & women fell through Eros, then perhaps God's most effective means of redeeming them might be through the "erotics" of the Logos.

"Wise as serpents, innocent as doves."  This interpretation illustrates St. Paul's theme, that when Christ became Man, he plumbed the "heights & depths".  But I believe that Paul would also reiterate - along with the other fathers & mothers of the church - that it must be a part of God's wise providence to harness (by means of the "song" of scripture) human eros to the ends of agape and caritas : these more profound and universal forms of love.  For, as Jesus says, "unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God."  Agape and caritas are the fire-tested foundation of that deeper communion, which transforms us, alchemically, from creatures of mere need and selfish desire into imago Dei - children of God - capable of radiating love, freedom & affection : a spiritual fire of pure, self-giving generosity.