when the players are packing up

OFF PLYMOUTH

In the beginning was the Word, &… there is

never an end to the writing of books…

the Gospel according to Borges.

Ouroboros (in a whirl of discourse).

Hamlet with Mousetrap shattering the frame

cannot escape his web.

The python in the grass… aye

there’s the rub (poison in the game).

& yet a fresh wind flows off Plymouth

of a morning… Mayflower

or Normandie.  Your

sister-dove Hermione fluttered her moth-

wings, molted to monarch, starry swallowtail;

the Constitution of your dream

became a Greek trireme (☧)

shrouded in sunny spray like fiery hail.

& at the end of the song, & the late Romance

when the players are packing up

when the ferris wheel slows to a stop

& flickering stars turn in remote silence

then the word grows simple   salt

shines in its Voronezh barrel

your father Truth walks parallel

beside you   & from a dim-lit vault

in that Ravenna sepulcher, a Jordan

river-god accompanies the Dove

the Baptist solemnizes Love

on Earth   anoints a lowly serving-man

4.23.20

your barbecue of fibs

WORDY COVENANT

& how could that heart-shaken man

(Jay Berryman-Osiris) dive

from a bridge, the eve

after Epiphany?  Say, Jack Ravlin –

Granddad – 3 blocks from your house?

& on your birthday?

How?  Evil holds sway

as dream molts into parody (inverse

remorse, or nightmare fallacy).

Estrangement reigns

when Minotaur maintains

the lie that makes untruth reality.

Demonic hatred be the coin of death.

The grass stuffed in the mouth

was greed gone south –

coffered Osiris longing for mere breath.

That auctioned ship, Old Ironsides –

the Constitution of a rifled

dream – must she be stifled

by unruly piracy?  The manger hides

her refugees in the hull of your ribs,

old mothership.  Your heart

where 13 adders start

is like Coatlicue – your barbecue of fibs

is just begun.  Your John Paul Jonah

swings his wordy covenant

over his head (adamant

evening, stony crossroad... hallelujah).

12.20.19

season of myths

AUDACIOUS FRIGATE

Yearnful melancholy Hobo ambles

through the cool autumn air

beside his ancient river.

The stately ship is in shambles –

audacious frigate, Ironsides;

the man of lawlessness

fills sails with loopholes,

fraud & force cloaked in bromides.

The mellow colors by the Mississippi

figure a buoyant hearth

where a woman might give birth

amid flame-tongues of domesticity –

like these nests of bold maple leaves

mingled with cadaverous hearts

of cottonwoods (Hart’s

premonition, Berryman’s Osiris sheaves).

& Henry, patiently delving like a wasp

through its oak-apple shell

or a worm through the skull

of a defunct Lear, will suddenly gasp

like an infant breathing her first air –

where oak-leaves chitter

beneath Roundhead October;

a restoration from crypt-keeper’s lair.

Hobo, following the copper shoreline

bends toward St. Louis

& his bark of Jessie, O.

Light churnagogue (twin trees becoming one).

10.16.19