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

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

gash of a calm current

CALM CURRENT

The daggers of the sumac (plum-

red, maroon) accent

the gash of a calm current

between these knotted forks of autumn

cottonwood.  The knot itself

an ellipse, like bole

of oak (hollow hole...

screech owl?) – for an emerald elf.

The Green Man in the green glade.

Prehistoric American?

Or an Irish cousin.

Gardener in the garden (maid

Magdalen’s Gesthemane).

The river is a strong

brown Gould.  Unstrung

out of New Hampshire (Alleghany?

Ohio?).  Or maybe Negus, Ravlin...

leading the flock mesmerized

to Iowa (West Branch, 

shepherd).  Buzzing a Quaker violin.

We have dawdled long enough

in Babylon, children.

The labyrinth (Parisian)

folds Theseus into a trough

much like a Mississippi mirror

dreamscape, umbilical

(& smoothly paradoxical).

We mumble into the interior.

10.29.18

plastic leaves & bottlecaps

SALTY DEW

This autumn wind-chime Sophie made

like El Anatsui (African

weaver spider-man)

from plastic leaves & bottlecaps, tied

with bright ribbons – a key, a table knife,

a silver keychain ring,

a crystal ball... everything

needful for the voyage into afterlife

(October & November, winter

ice).  I hear it now,

an echo from the prow

of gray stone mothership.  Your

Notre Dame of infinite mercy,

villain François.  Or Chartres,

Hen – where light chartreuse

rhymes with sky-blues, calm sea

of sunset rose.  On the scarred floor

a labyrinthine feedback

loop speeds Argo-carrack

by umbilical thesis to Ari’s door.

Arachne, Ariadne...in Rhode Island?

One subterranean Ocean

Stream, Atlantean

where every son of J sails home again

across Medea’s Méditerranée – &

where Medusa’s stone frown

melts, to gleaming crown

of salty dew... grail of compassion.

9.11.18

all the way to Mt. Moriah

ALMOND-BREAD

This weightless branch of butternut

floats in the August stillness

like palm-frond of Isis

in sky-barge of Cleopatra-Nut.

Earth grown deserted as a pyramid.

Nothing moves in silence

like Lion-Sphinx

crouching with a question on her eyelid-

casket – just for you, Orpheus-

Oedipus.  Your arcane

cane limps against the grain,

gone serpentine... a missing Theseus.

Where’s Ariadne then?  Arise,

light Jonah-seer, sweet

grey-eyed sister!  Meet

him in the wrinkles of the Minotaur’s

disguise, find him in the stone face

sleeping like a Roman guard –

motionless, Medusa-hard,

until your gardener grins in his place.

She’s kneading my clay now, adamantine

mother of amusement.

All the way to Mount

Moriah, she’s dragging my crown.

She’s molding the planet, children –

shaping this loafer into ships

of almond-bread, with those lips.

Those eyes are sparks for tinder-men.

8.9.18

concrete Cleopatra

RESURRECTION CEMETERY

The river is calm, like a brown mirror

on the vernal equinox.

Moving through bifocals

of that lovable double oval (dear

Franklin Ave. Bridge).  Gliding

from Ojibwa marsh,

a trickle out of harsh

winters... a fluent continuum (abiding

parchment years, the tides of March).

On this sparse Minneapolis

spring morning, under clumps

of woolly cloud-cover, her twin M-arch

might make a 2-seat kayak for a monarch

(Manitou, Big Wind) –

swelling from wing-finned

goldfish to a whale (or Jonah’s ark).

The flimsy grey wool threads a quipu

knot.  Stravinsky’s right

to be so wrong : the lights

are snuffing out all over Europe...

the little gypsy girl must dance

to death (so we might live).

The crowd roars, GIVE.

Ariadne’s thread enwraps the lance

of Theseus, the hunter.  MINOTAUR

IS RUST (feed him tar-cakes

until he bust).  Stakes

are high – each gets an equal share

                     *

or else.  It’s the American way.

So speak plain English.

Royal myth be not the dish

we wish for now – try testimony.

They killed the King of the Milky Way –

lofty Melchizedek

(& his Irish sidekick,

his brother).  Sacrificial hay

for infinite Corn Goddess, maybe?

Don’t think so.  It is

& means to a dead end (his,

theirs, ours)... rewind the anthropology.

Anonymous shadow tilts toward sundown.

Ghost dance under trees.

He coming back, in threes –

the buried man, with his Papillon.

The guy in Resurrection Cemetery

(never gone, still here).

Can’t kill someone who never

died – so let’s undo all this necessary

violence (stand your ground, Hamlet

– until Ophelia’s dead gone).

The Shadow Knows (someone

whispers – my Dad?).  The blood is let.

It’s an old warped story, on the loom

of Time.  Peruvian lamb

sandwich, taken for a ham... a

concrete Cleopatra (equal to her doom).

3.20.17

green grows the rusty O

GREEN RATION

Mighty Theseus was stuck in Hell,

strapped to a chair by Pluto.

Persephone’s no go.

Pennies clink in the wishing well.

The Blarney Stone’s a backward stretch –

cold kiss from pale ghost,

silky diner hostess

off the Isle of Man (unfinished ketch).

Snarled in the Underworld, Ariadne

warps him her cocoon...

a wee mummy pontoon

bridge, of air (soon, soon).  Erinye

Medea’s in the murk of crime,

stark raving grief –

Death offers no relief;

meek mercy must unspool this time,

unbind expiring rhyme.  Raven

Cautantowwit – wrathful

Coatlicue – skull-

wound knitting Golgotha-maven –

I ken your reddening woodpecker pate

all round our Oklahoma

home (green aura

martyrdom for scapegoat fate).

Because we won’t agree to disagree

we have to pick on somebody

small, like a refugee –

some poor kid cornered up a tree

                      *

who doesn’t sound like you or me.

Somebody will have to pay

for our settlement today –

it’s worth more dough that Proserpine

Hollow, or Bohemian Grove –

& that’s a fact.  Leaven

with mite of muddy heaven

this Martian clay of ours, O Love!

For the wars plainly disturb our sleep

& the mushy copper mirror

shows nobody anymore

way outa here.  Grave is the deep

wherein my friend is laid.  The blue

moth scatters, the monarch

flitters from the ark,

& they will not return until you

say : Blessed be he & she

who come to live with us

escaping strife, as guests –

may we tender hospitality

like theirs.  The whole Indian nation

has done as much for us.

When Thunderbird appears

as thunderstorm over the dry station

the rain might ease this drought

of reason & compassion.

Share the green ration;

pipe-skip the chilly serpent out.

3.10.17

Sur le pont d'Avignon

SUNSET ROOM

The cutthroat sun over Minneapolis

leaks light into many

dark corners.  Rimini

in mind (a limpstone palimpsest

beneath shellfire).  Go & strike

the tents, men – long way

to Tipperary.  Say,

Francesca, if you can – how to make

things new.  Peer into womb

of earth-cavern, Ezra –

all the way to Ravenna...

At far end of Pontus rest him tomb

where Theseus stole them golden fleece

Maximus   whose sea-blue

eyes of   geomatrix   (thrum

true)   abstract chamber piece

like waves reiterating   into nautilus

the human sum   reframed

from steel teeth (Somme

bad dream)   the whole shark armistice

To turn   from bull’s-eye bulletins

down a narrow corridor

or trench file   war

in the hand, in the mind   sin’s

armature   in the marrow   Guillaume

& Jesus   the   steamboat pilot

metymorfs   the whole plot

in a forest   of masts   high sunset room

5.16.16

Palimpsest of legends

GRAY THREAD

Out of gray matter of clouds & sea,

matter of Bran or of Bretagne,

slow combers of the brain

surface a fresh conception... see

your own shadow cast by sun

on flesh-tone limestone –

hear the whispering drone

in wave-beats from an unseen iron

spring.  Echoing, the king must die...

as the palimpsest of legends

from which everything depends

layers the storm with its pearl panoply

in coats of gray... & the first murmur

of the galaxies is almost

silence... & the gray ghost

of Jonah wheels one palm-feather

through the circumference of Time...

& a slight gray thread

drawn from Ocean riverbed

dangles in a cat’s-cradle (a smiling

rhyme) – emblem of unbreakable

immortal grasp of Love...

as one sea-breached dove

wings its immaculate cable

from far-flung farfalla world

to world (your only monarch).

O cedar-scented arc!

Almond diamonde – O salty pearl!

5.14.16 

Dark backward & abysm of time

RUSTIC HAY

Like a Prince Hal of the Iron Age,

surrounded by a full staff

of devices (every gaffe

in the book) Henry took a page

from Stealing Drums in Trinidad

as they slubbered through the murk

of a flood plain, like turkeys

in a hurricane.  It was that bad.

Had to go, blind fool, from Addis Ababa

to Babylon – from Lake Tana

to Concrete Cavern (ah,

Bull-Dance of Hummy Blah-Blah!)

& recapitulate his fancy

infancy – in a shed

built of old dry blood

& scarecrow straw, with Nancy

the Cow & Her Yodeling Shepherds

making rustic hay.

He lived a year & a day

on all fours – eating grass, curds

& whey, locusts, honey, in a swamp

by the Jordan, in Judea...

It’s all there, Maria –

in Miriam’s mandorla (under the lamp).

Henry wandered thus through drowsy realm

plucking mandolin...

one silver star over dark green pine,

one cirque of gold at the Argo helm.

4.19.16 

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there lived a Mississippi riverboat captain, named Mr. Lawrence, who had two daughters, Jessie Ophelia and Cleopatra Desdemona (not kidding)... Jessie Lawrence married my great-grandfather, George P. Gould.

DELTA QUEEN

The hobo-poem stumbles out of Itasca,

a somno-ambulant mutter

just west of Superior

like a Nile-canoe in Minnehaha

or Thesée-en-Argo, lost at sea

in a maze older than time.

A stone-barrow, or lime-

burnt spacetime spruce-vortex (little tree

Apollinaire chased down in Paris

listening to Stravinsky

on the 29th of May).

Distant thunder... blessed senseless

mote.  What acorn happiness

coils beneath necrolithic

Moscow?  What lithe

Pocahontas limns Potomac offices?

Lightning rives gnarled raven limbs.

One glint from gold iris

shakes the paralysis

from icebound Neva aisles – low hymns

drone from limestone fish-caverns;

there is no place on earth

where Psyche’s sighing hearth

cannot ray lamplight (ask Jules Verne,

or Edgar Allan – ask St. Joan).

My Delta Queen glides on

toward perihelion

engulfing sorrow in her zephyr-zone.

4.18.16

White Rose sets in the west

SHADOW-WELL

George Washington was born today;

Sophie Scholl was killed

as well.  Her cup was spilled

in order to brim up the bloody

mystery of iniquity that is

our history – an epic-

georgic bio-pic

or tragicomedy (blind Theseus

meets Ariadne in a maze

of corn – assumes she’s

golden Taurida... FINIS).

Wings waft into a purple haze.

The moon belongs to everyone.

She set this morning through

a window shade (pale blue

the air, drawn up from Galilean

shadow-well).  This labyrinth

contains a Minotaur

indeed – his name your

own.  The light is very thin

within retaining walls of iron

chicken-wire (chain link);

quincunctial conjunction

for plowman (Sir Thos. Browne).

Wisdom B. Justified (in all 

her children).  Madre moon

sheds rain upon human

travail... silvers the plow (selah).

2.22.16

Moonset, 6:35 a.m. (Minneapolis)

Papa touches down

MAZY SIMONE

Equinox : a bridge between seasons.

Nay, no night-mare;

articulate as horsehair

& as serviceable.  Musique de balance,

équilibre – night & day,

reason & faith.  Of summer,

d’automne... (mordant humor,

luminous grief)... Hey-hey,

giddy-up, Old Paint!  We galumphin’ to see

the Pope touch down, in D.C.!

Strait o’ Columba, maybe –

where turtles kick through tough gray

curves – like a mess o’ limbic pigeons

decorating limestone

from the air.  Everyone

behold her, now – mazy Simone’s

the River Queen.  Like Ariadne

with her golden seine,

or murmurous Magdalen

of sunburnt feet, she will meander

underneath each Maximus

(from Po to Eridanus,

Neva-Neva to the rusty

Don)... O Theseus, she’s mulish US!

Chart the way-way back now, Mary.

Through this labyrinth

of dinosaurs, a kitten’s

coracle will bless – make merry.

9.22.15