north of Pig's Eye

ERICA-TREE

Giuliana opens a pottery shop

in Red Desert (the film).

Destination of the earth –

Slim Pickens, Strange Love (stop!).

The mystery of desolation.

Calcified lava

Under the Volcano.

Monarchs, Mexico (extinction).

Henry’s buried north of Pig’s Eye

inside an Erica-tree.

Come back for you & me,

someday.  Maybe.  I don’t know why.

He’s Osiris, in a hoary

Hobo boot.  Isis

is us.  She’s

barely there (yesterday’s story).

Somebody’s Mom no doubt, planted

in Cahokia clay (naturally).

The river is a lonesome bee,

rolling honey-balls out of decay (putrid!).

Henry strays onto mountain, in the sun

shouting, we’re Everyone!

Lightning jets down

lighting whole plateau (goodbye, platoon).

In the heart of the burble-stream

Hobo-prospector

strikes a vein, in the ore.

Honey bleeds from lava dream.

12.12.18

Who killed Robin Redbreast?

HAGIA SOPHIA

Already the first snow saunters down

at dusk (All Saints’ Day).

Robins nibble cherry

crabapples; waxwings are flown.

Some gray squirrel (squirreled away

in Book Depository?)

broke the back of Sophie’s

jack o’lantern... strange display

splayed into Dia de los Muertes.

So Jeff the Fireman

crossed into a bar (man

overboard).  Barranca... Beatrice...

man who went to live with Indians.

Ghost dance, compadre;

Dennis Banks (hey ey

yo).  Eagle feathers in the grandstands

quoting LBJ, ironically (“treaties”).

Home, home on the range

(small fry).  My ange

d’or – in the abyss, like Cassiopeia’s

fireball.  Wax melted in the wings.

Hamlet, his father’s vortex

seal – lay off that, Tex.

Untouchable guitar strings

(hellhound on my trail).  The man’s

in jail.  A thin blue line

separates the whisper mine

from outer darkness (someone plans

                    *

ahead ahead).  Pumpkin or Trumpkin,

orange oak bolete...

mushroom cloud.  Yeti...

this is the forest primeval (again).

American robins gather by the fire.

In the Bruegel scene –

where the old women

stoke the blaze with bones (ire

smoke-signals, from Columba).

Globilized indifference

in a culture of comforts

– soap bubbles... insubstantial... ah

King of Pumpkins!  How the wax melts!

My soul leans inward

toward your abject & absurd

reward, Coatlicue – so many wolf pelts!

In the bright snow of Siberia

the cold blue fire burns

through bronze lids.  Eyes

turn in your direction...  Selah,

my friend.  La vida es sueño.

Poetry = transcript.

Out of the drowsy crypt

she glances, see... muy bueno.

The double doves of the peacock dome

resolve the red & blue

to violet... so you

are Hagia Sophia (hippodrome).

11.1.17

the river is a strong brown god

AZTEC ALPHABET

The brazen serpent of the Mississippi

runs through my veins,

cantinnas Hobo (in vain).

How to tell my own (con version) story?

The antic disposition of these shelves

of incunabulae (obscure

revoluminous curious lore)

ripples off Norse keels – revolves

around my cranium (son of

McCain I am) – the worm

a canker, iced like berm

at Sutton Hoo (& strong as

love).  He will lift himself up

into his father’s affection

(this child of deflection)

at last, & be first in the stirrup

at the gates of his sly enemies –

he will be the son

who twists there (frozen

image of abjection) underneath greed-

seas of rifle-toting angels

(Cuzco school).  Spleen

of Hamlet, by the bedroom

screen – cunning de Kooning angles –

that Master of Gray, backed in a corner

of Ravenna – or raving

Coatlicue, stoning

the Consul in the dog-ravine (here,

                  *

Fido)... someone lurks in a mirror

with double doves (tin-

whistle Hobo-child of sin).

Abandona-donna’s abbatoir?

Some Aztec alphabête of yesteryear?

Hazel the moth-goddess

flits into brown recess

of brown recluse... (the spider’s... her).

The sacrifice of sacrifices –

hunters’ offering,

a shiny golden ring –

is like this image from ice-fisher’s

thing (icon of everything);

is like this light bread

Moses left for dead,

or Aaron molded into iron Sing-Sing –

a memory of Psyche-crimes

no one can heal,

nor break the lead seal

from the dark backyard (abysmal

time) until the flutter of a wing

like a mind from the sea

Hobo’s thirsty misery

slakes   or forsakes   a palm, circling

through the gray salt latitudes

like blistered sword

blessing   like sunshade

père-sol   ultramarine   (beatitudes)

9.25.17

in my style of raven-squawk

OVER AMERICA

America, replete with stories,

bursting with tales – I’ll

tell you another, in my style

of raven-squawk (Cautantowwit’s

oblique rescue-directions, south-

southwest).  Narragansett

wraith of Afterlife – what

zigzags from the smokehole (mouth

full of shade).  Ink-echo of an Incan

Thunderbird, or bald eagle,

or maybe owl.  Feel

the light gray prickling your human

scalp, Columbia.  That Mexican

tin double-dove mirror

frames Aztec cult of fear

& violence (Dia de Muertos, Halloween).

The Consul, slobbering mescal,

muttering William Blackstone...

Went to live with Indians...

With Narragansetts.  Harboring all

refugees – all troubled, exiled souls

(Rog Williams testified).

& so we double back to Rhode

Island, to Providence.  My school’s

a bit of Brownian motion, drawn in

toward indomitable diamond

by Love’s invisible almond.

As magnet gathers scattered iron

                * 

into a Magna Chartres wheel

her beautiful dove-wings

breathed into lungs

inured to painvine (coal dust, steel)

& lifted Life up wholly from the ground.

That green palm held by Alighieri

circuited grey orrery

spun from high Ocean River State – profound

light fiery water vessel made of clay

wrested from death-cave

to quintessential grave

transfiguration – your soul’s dancing ray.

It is Love’s interlacing hands

figuring a catamaran

or Manitou two-woman

womb-canoe – crossweaving islands

in a cat’s-cradle (a fleecy safety-

net).  You may not

recognize the US yet

in such pre-Cambrian confetti –

Ezra Caw-Caw Ezekiel, on his harsh

bark, wandered, insane

with hatred.  All began

in 1913, he would cuss – poison marsh-

land of the War to End All Wars...

Yet Henry’s hobo mule

mutters an older Yule

under his breath.  Open the doors...

                *

those silver mirror-doors of monarch-land.

Roger’s canoe banks in Ferrara

shade-garage... Alleluiah.

A little almond planted on good ground

blooms to Eternity.  Thanksgiving

magnanimity, sweet William

sings; the grey I AM

flickers in flocks of overshadowing

lightness.  The one who made himself

perfect transparent acorn

octahedron – he was born

at end of May (ancient festival

of restoration).  Like evergreen

King Arthur... JFK

or MLK... Melchizedek

emerges from his tent of welcoming.

The doom that Jesus faced on Golgotha

he had prepared for, long

before.  Green prow or prong

of spiritual Power, he bent like Uther

Pendragon into the beggar-skins of men;

he smiled, & shared the bread

& wine; made his last bed

a sepulcher of victory, beyond our ken.

Over America, the clouds roll by.

The curling fiddlehead,

the milkweed pod... float

on your way, Monarch.  Souls never die.

7.18.17

poet goes to the movies

TWILIGHT WING

                                  It must be abstract.

The trees grow slowly in the sacred wood,

quietly, unnoticed.

Oscar night I missed.

The little gold-plated crusader stood

on his black pentagon of film

(the royal Real reeled in).

I recall those figures hidden

in moonlit home movies – Requiem

for Camelot – Jackie & Juliet

on the beach in Manchester,

Henry falling off the fence (Her

See-Saw Trap) – traipsing all wet

from Gull Lake (North of Galilee)

– the memory’s a blur.

Something about her –

Mary?  Rose? – abstracted, free...

like a cousin from Cuzco, nested in quipu

with bow & arrow.  This tall

old Norway pine, with her small

sibling cedar... standing close to you,

like a hamlet in Denmark... old foundations

digging down deep, old roots

in raven-dark red deserts,

old Incan knots of sacrifice, old bones.

As if the moss-grey Italian movie

were projected onto two

dimensions – the hollow

curvature of holy lapis lazuli

                   *

a flickering shadow in the sybil’s leaves.

The shadow of a red wing

echoed in a lapsing

thread of golden fleece, or sheaves

in limestone lattice, out of ultramarine –

the scar it sang from the ravine

(Quauhnahuac, Afghanistan)

like Night Sea waves (remote, Martian)

emerging just at early dawn.

Methodical crossweave

of whirling squares... conceive

this integral chart – piñon-spun

vernal thread leaping an orange span.

Maid manifest beyond

this world... my dark fond

twin, eye of Medusa-hurricane...

O double knot-rosette of Providence!

Of Maximus theoria

the illustration – mirror-

W lacing an iron fence

like glinting fleece out of Black Sea –

divine & human being

whispered into seeing

as if east of Eden rose again, to be

grey sheltering twilight wing

of Jonah – shell, whale,

Ocean – bird & sail –

one lambent mauve (living, loving).

 2.27.17

Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

SMALL EMERALD ELEGY

                      Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

Light at dusk across the grass

salted with white crosses,

poppies... graph of losses

rounding up the Somme.  Mass

for the mass of young men gone.

On Cemetery Ridge

the plowmen made a bridge

of bone, unbreakable – and won

the day.  Coraggio, amigos.

Somnolent River

Time will shiver silver

when the last full measure flows

from infant veins, against the grain

of human servitude –

that dominant X (rude

chi-rho, nailed up in the brain).

In the barranca (by the monarchs’

den) the battered Consul

penetrated to the well

of Golgotha.  His mind sparks

like the last firefly of evening meadows...

a small emerald octagon,

or 4-leaf clover – moon

over Eire, over the raging shadows

of the nations.  Clue vero, Ariadne-

yarn.  A catenary

arc, or smile – an airy

rack of clouds, threading the Neva R.

7.2.16

George Bellows, Rain on the River (RI School of Design Museum of Art)