on the North Shore of the North Star state

SOFT KISS

Not far from Berryman’s Witch’s Hat

in Prospect Park, off Arthur Ave

Henry beholds spring showers lave

his plague-burnt Vale of Josaphat

(in Minneapolis).  It is a hard Lent

& shrunken plain to see –

April trundling mournfully

to graveyards.  Brash head bent,

hobo Henry Hal recounts his crimes

(near Purgatory Chasm,

in Newport).  Hopes a chrism

helps redeem his own end times

along Humility Way – the icy treason

of a lodestone heart.

His mother’s art

pierces also, beyond reason –

those 4 unsoldered quarters of clay tile

where Henry & Francesca swim

below a swirling rim

of Gooseberry Falls (old Ravlin file)

in the blithe innocence of marriage

unbetrayed… unmade,

not yet.  Like Longfellow glade,

or negative of Dante’s personal stage

(Circle of Lust) the two of us

will splash, forever smiling

in that riverine, beguiling

clay lost Paradise of faithfulness

                   *

& O the hubris of Superior Prince Hal!

To think he’d play the alpha male

to Berryman, beyond the pale –

snow-bent J. Beerust, in his dream-corral!

My clay ticks slowly on its glitter-wheel

toward kiln of Judgement Day.

But you might take another way,

Kidron – follow the foamy V of keel

into that Ocean River of the galaxies;

gaze up into the Royal Arch

where smile-canoe arcs

over candescent happiness... frees

hearts & souls into the wholeness

they were meant to seize!

That Charity of charities,

that source of every brimming goodness...

the grace of Miriam-consent (to give)...

true North Star of the Sea!

Friend Berryman would be

beside me here, in this infinitive

to live – an evergreen, emerald

eternity of growth –

an exponential for a moth

(or butterfly) to find – New World

born from the Old, as wings from chrysalis

when Spirit strokes like Thunder

through clay rings… & under

your rose aye of Providence (soft kiss).

3.25.20

near the pin of the spoke

ALMOND BOAT

Love & harmony are the spring of song

murmured the little holm oak

near the pin of the spoke

& sanction of same, she sapped along;

so I task you, febrile Henry Hobo,

tiny A-grade acorn, flow.

So down to Gulf of Mexico

adrifted on the current, shady Penny-O

& me.  Time was an arc of aquamarine,

with cloud-ships for dreaming;

transumptive Ocean, circuiting

the galaxies, checkmating history (unseen,

almost).  Our boat was an ovoid ovum

chicken-coop (Rhode Island

Red) ruddered by hand –

she wove you liberty & welcome

for your immersive infancy of joy –

sails belling with sweet air

of solidarity & friendly care,

infinity of each one in our eye.

& Penny dreamt alongside, inside me

in the same language, dark

& light – Lady of the Ark

closer than whisper, vaster than sea.

Like Beatrice or Eurydice or Mary,

she’s Iris in her almond boat –

shimmering beyond this moat

gripped by the Minotaur, to set us free.

2.7.20

beam against klepto-autocracy

HERMETIC EPISODE

A little portable communion box,

bedizened with a coral reef

of gems (wheatsheaf

engraved on its acacia locks).

Gray pebble – miniaturized

more than a thousandfold

from that rock stronghold

whence it rolled (Paradise

Mountain, milky Jerusalem).

Or tiny grain of wheat

sifted to ground (infant

metropolis), from off the hem

of starry Virgo, Lady Liberty.

Her gown of purple (streaked

with gold) rustled... & sparked

such rays of justice & mercy

that the fickle wind of red & blue

(pushing our pennants back

& forth) fell slack – &

the Janus-faced Minotaur (just you

& I) curled back into his golden urn

within his clammy cave,

& promised to behave;

the strong man was tied up again

with his own silver spiderweb,

& dropped into the Seine –

one convoluted sign

of violence, reduced to tiny nub

                    *

of seedy violet.  Her sea-green eyes

gaze from the bottomland

of human clay, the river-sand

of human time; she is Persephone’s

Corn Mother, she is Cathedral Mary –

with her Sophia-torch held high,

armed with stone tabulae

of wisdom & knowledge, she will be

the restoration of democracy

rooted in human sovereignty;

from calm civil society

bring judgement on kleptocracy

with care for that bright seamless web

of mutuality her Memphis prince

proclaimed, magnanimous –

with love beaming from Mount Horeb

& intergalactic Galilee (a waterfall

of Washingtons... a rainbow

prism of Jerusalems).  So

the cartouche at the foot of soulful

Garfield – on the brow of mournful

Abraham – in the eye

of emerald JFK –

gleams with this glancing parallel :

off the prow of the Ark of Covenant

& the beam of Old Ironsides

shines the light nothing hides –

Beatrice’s look (Thunderbird’s lieutenant).

    1.23.20

what child is this

HOLIDAY MUSIC

The empty duplex is quiet tonight

though not completely silent.

Drumming in the basement –

Khaled rehearsing our old duet.

From different corners of the same planet

immigrants & refugees

hasten to the Twin Cities

as to gemütlich haven or warm magnet.

& history is like a palimpsest of pelts

trapped in somebody’s woods

before there were neighborhoods

or streetlights – only raw scalps, rotting guilts.

When we were that City on a Hill

of our imagination –

special paragon of Creation,

establishing law-&-order by God’s will

on earth.  But it wasn’t so beautiful.

The Magi rode by camel

across a parochial hell

subject to Herod & his trumpets (terrible);

the angels remained invisible, mostly;

& both the Ark of the Covenant

& ironclad Ship of State

came to resemble that drafty, mangy

manger itself.  Where Mary lay

& her shivering baby sighed

& Joseph almost died

of inhumanity.  Hush little baby, don’t you cry.

12.24.19

disenchantment of the sacred wood

 SECOND CHILDHOOD

This is that ancient harvest night.

Hobo curls deep into his nest

of old leaves, with his ghost

of a motherland... everything all right.

The Middle Ages were a second childhood

for homesick gentlemen, broken

by the gears of modern men –

the disenchantment of the sacred wood.

That light-filled limestone in the towns

offered to Mary Theotokos...

or the tart fervor of François

Villon!  Guild banners, pennants, clergy gowns

blazed with a commonality belied

by profiles of sad Synagoga,

goad for theological amnesia.

Her crown askew, her flock must hide.

Mum Quaker Hobo snores now

in a pile of aspen leaves.

Canada poplar sheaves,

he mumbles, to a sunflower (somehow).

She’s Pando in Italian, he dreams.

Largest clone colony

below the surface... maybe

the universe.  A raven-glance beams

at prow of her canoe, slips by.

Your motherland is endless,

someone whispers.  So this mass

of dead leaves limns one breathing aye.

                                                            10.31.19

where the wheel pivots

VIA FRANCIGENA

My path of J, my Via Francigena.

You can read it on the Q-

line train, between St. Lou

& Monk’s Mound (clay Cahokia).

Choo-choo, J-J, Joanna, Giuliana...

on the milk train way,

your dewy morning ray –

autumnal hoot of helmeted Athena

(hooya-hey).  Fled with her child

from rude dragon.  Nightmare

tyranny (unveiling there

the root of human woe).  So the scald

burns his tattoo into each trumpet call –

the empty mirror of the king

crowns him equal to everything.

So gather him weird into your iris squall,

milky Sophia – gold sunflower

stretched into an almond

ark of mustard limbs (wand

blooming with abject surrender).

Because I love, because I love...

Behold, my child, I have

no wrath.  & in the hive

of clay lips, trace her architrave –

tacit surrender to a violet

sown by storm (below

these wars of villain & hero).

Where the wheel pivots, my river-pilot.

10.26.19

toward the 4th of Juliette

DOUBLE WHEELS

Lone robin yodeling his evening threnody

plaintive, solitary

on June’s last day

what would he intimate to me?

That summer was immense & infinite

beyond the figuring

of our (almost) unerring

memory of planetary things.  That what

our dreaming signified was plain

(glory beyond our ken).

Tomorrow’s now & then

only a ghost might fold again

into the origami of a labyrinth

of Chartres granite, Mary

blue – like this contrary

stubborn root, trapped in cement

blooming, bleu Ming, nevertheless

along an Ariadne thread

signed (calligraphy by Ted

the Mason) in a matrix of finesse

by its ineffable Makar (aye

laddie, on a tear

shed from everywhere –

like Ocean River, or the Milky Way)

& the stone drones below human hearing

it rhythmous b-flat bass

someplace in Memphis

where Osiris met his fate, shearing

                     *

Love from its neverending source

(like Jackie K’s wing

saddled to her hat thing

flying off convertible, in Dallas).

Was it a Lincoln?  Was it a star

mobile, from galaxy?

Something moving in the clay

rotates like Ezekiel wheels – where

Louis Armstrong melted to el P

& X marked the spot

(Montale’s really not

at home – it’s Giorgio who has the key

to the garage, muttered the lovely

Michal of Ferrara dunes).

We don’t recall these tunes!

Ecclesia et Synagoga cousins be –

double-wheels within wheels, sez

Zeke, in Minneapolis.

Where Juliet was, once

before she lost face... fell from grace...

– how tender floats the human form,

ephemeral!  Until

we knot yon safety spiel –

until that lightning robin find his worm

& like a Caliban, or Jordan weed

begin to mold the clay

into slow-moving roundelay

(American)... Cahokia high meed.

7.2.19

moss-green lamb-rock

CHERRY PETALS

Anniversaries, conjunctions... Latrobe’s

bell tower in New Orleans

& a birthday (Walter Whitman’s)

twine reverberations, stellar probes.

This lone outcrop in far north wood

furred-over with green

& phosphorescent lichen

mimes in lime our original Head –

primordial earth-ram (sheepish lamb)

upon the adamant of Time –

Isis, or Miriam –

Virgin bedrock of the bright I AM.

Inexorability of violent history –

labyrinth of Minotaur –

wolf-trap for who we are

spooled out in filmy, rusty tragedy

after tragedy – the pile-up of ’68

the green redhead in Dallas

the blue blackbird in Memphis

& it all seems endless – infernal hate –

O brazen, obdurate Iron Age

of malice toward all!  Only

the slant eye of poetry

mourning on a misty Montauk stage

might warble a different kingdom comin’ –

chaste infant equality.

Your hummingbird infantry,

Walter – your cherry petals, Benjamin.

5.30.19

just a particle of grit in the poetry gears

PAVEMENT SLIP

At the Arboretum today, the lightest

waves of pale green &

pink float over the barren

hills.  Pasque flowers make their violet

& furry nest.  Soft spring.  Far west

the Golden Gate flings waves

of steel over sea-caves.

A safety net shall be our rest –

all-purpose, drifting down from heaven.

From the Mother of Lights, from

Abba-Zero – coral hum

of Orizaba requiem (all the lost men

the sea shall render up again).

Ezra in the bughouse eyes

his Alexandrian apotheosis.

Spews hate & spite – riptorn

Osirian comedian, on glitter-stand;

& Henry has his Memphis

milkman : buried blackface

Pip-Pip (colonial ampersand).

The gravity-slide into darkness

is not so unavoidable.

Non spatio, sed sapientia

Anselm whispered; heaven’s kiss

is like a speech balloon, or Nile airship.

The kingdom’s for my child,

not for the Emperor, wild

Mary piped (basilica pavement slip).

4.27.19

you seek your inner Notre Dame

LUMBERING FLIGHT

This April sunset behind the trees,

like a rose & phosphorescent

robin’s egg.  Fundament

of natural radiance; architectural breeze.

On Île-de-France, in the river Seine

a throng of men & women

flung boulders toward heaven –

to celebrate the feast of their communion

& the miraculous feat of that

lumbering flight.  The chill

granite yawn in the hill

where the dead man lay (requiescat)

like a counterweight to their primordial

joy – its hollow barrow

(familiar dank & narrow

room) will serve as reconciling grail

when we have gathered for the wedding

in the flowery vale of Cana,

& amid the hubbub-haha

Mary murmurs – Now, my son, bring

out the wine...  We will not build

another Notre Dame.

& yet our rivers are the same.

The Rio del Espiritu Santo is filled

with rosmarine passion of light –

invisible, unchanging,

radiant, enlightening

fiery indomitable apex bright.

4.22.19

Good Friday poem

AMBER GLASS

The oak we put into the ground

last fall is budding now.

& on the third day... how?

On this I muse like Uncas Pound

here in my octagonal hut

of scrawny cedar. 8’s

for Easter, numerates

relate – Creation’s è finit;

when the dark goggles of infinity

stood upright (a snowman

merging into green

spring cloverleaf).  Might be.

They say they saved the high windows

in Paris.  Where simple light

grows warm, exfoliate

around the Lady of the burning Rose.

Wheels, wheels... the suffering peoples.

Is Providence intangible?

Life but a negligible

haze, wisping stark silo-steeples?

These sprinklings of amber glass

are darkened with maroon

shadows.  Limbs of someone

hovering so close... a beaming face.

Then I shall know, even as I

am known.  Even as

this acorn opens, grows...

sturdy communion of a melting sigh.

4.19.19

La Vida es Sueño

ROLLING DOOR

Henry, magnanimous prince

like Saggy Mundo on his

Tower Hill (the Witch’s

Hat) waits in his chains, listens.

Them animal pelts smell bad,

sez Hobo (Sancho

P. Zee).  Life, my friends – no

dream, declaims Sir Galahad.

The little paralyzed air-prince

like a baby Fisher King

(Guillain-Barré) would bring

last summa out of everything (wince).

Like Adam taking Eve’s advice

he’d melodize the whole

isle to an apple donut

hole – & give it to his son (nice!).

Pallas Athena wore an aegis-skin

with gold palladium-bangles

dangling at all angles

from her circuiting Argo-spin;

it was a sacrifice, like Morning Star

or Igor’s Rite of Spring –

the icon bearing everything

buried in grassy Galilee, in a jar

of myrrh (brimful, for Magdalen).

Lippo Memmi pinxit

(now in Providence).  What

X will mark the spot, Justinian?

        *

What hour marks the lux fiat

when Mary in her pontoon-

boat (sun-gold doubloon

nailed to the keel) will celebrate

the whorl of Theotokos-kenosis-

hypostasis – on a clay

wheel (out of Cahokia)?

Whose eye-in-hand is... Henry’s

sister-cuz?  Whom doth the Grail serve?

I mean the grey stone

hands in that quaternion

of mudstream... – who has the nerve

to lift the lid of Henry’s sepulcher?

In Resurrection Cemetery

(northeast of Pig’s Eye)

Osiris waits for Isis-murmur –

America sleeps in her old nightmare

until that Pussycat (on Easter)

knocks the rolling door

out of the way... & Henry’s there!

Limping from his throne of rosy clay,

his island ocean-ray –

borne on his own birthday

like a faerie Pharaoh (Narragansett Bay)

to the Rose Lighthouse (near Gould

Island), in chariot

of dawnlight (mauve

& violet) – like a Sun Ken (holy fool’d).

2.21.19

bottled in an oak-knot

LIGHT SHIVERS

A silver filigree of January ice

atop the Mississippi.

An eye from remote milky

paradise congeals mid-stream.

In the mandorla, the king smiles

who must die.  Rain

wells from Magdalenian

locks, sways down the aisles.

Reality’s an unctuous parasite

whose masculine will

melds to feminine style.

Psyche’s a rose (hermaphrodite).

You search the scriptures, yet

you do not come to Me.

My mother is a refugee,

her kid’s a goldfinch in a net.

Light shivers off the snow, & down

the stream.  Only a dream.

A 3-dimensional scheme

with vanishing pt. in Providence town.

They chased that woman to her grave,

who danced in Paris on the eve

of the Great War.  Her wave

of splendor... Morning Star’s mild sleeve.

La Mancha waits like Camelot

for the happy restoration

of good ship Madeleine –

Marie’s cosine (bottled in an oak-knot).

1.9.19

under the sign of the Virgin

WRITING HAND

Herod the Great is out hunting tonight

to make himself great again.

History, all over.  Hen

clucks in pigpen.  Overhead, bright

Star of Stars yet hovers (esoteric,

weightless).  Invisible world

of worlds to come – squirreled

away in a barn (near Bethlehem, Pa).

Maximus, transfixed by history,

his writing hand severed,

still corresponded

with his nephew (far end of Black Sea).

Hen’s fishing for sense, like Hobo

the limp lamprey (curled

on the riverbank).  Churl?

Fisher King?  Overhead – Virgo.

Not the Twins, but something like.

Twin sitters.  Throned

drones, long retired

from hive (72 bricks of...).

Not trying to be obscure here,

that f’sure.  Innocence

dances through the universe

unfathomed on our faithless sphere.

On her Milky Way.  Here Grace Ravlin

sketches a summer evening

at Mt. Vernon – fingering

the treasure map (Pennsylvanian)

                  *

tracing a quiet constellation

echoed on the ground.

Her wisdom is profound

through purity.  Just perfection

mirrored in frame of Providence;

sunlit warmth of hearth

stirring Pig’s Eye from death

to life (St. Paul to Minneapolis).

The artist makes an eye with fingertips

at edge of scabbard.

Ariadne-thread.

Clue to labyrinth.  Slips

into Gloucester (blind man’s buff)

to paint twin boats

nestled in soft coats

of emerald.  Grace is enough.

Ceres, under Sirius... sparrows,

hysterica passio...

madness of Angelo

or any other tyrannos

threatening an alien child

(warped in labyrinth

of jealousy).  Absinthe,

minted at Fort Knox – wild

wrath of slighted boar (the king’s

own Fury).  Here’s the church,

here’s the steeple – open

the door... (where the sea-choir sings).

12.28.18

Grace Ravlin, Overlooking George Washington's Garden, 1922