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

curious Winter's Tale

FRAIL FOLIO

Tell us a curious Winter’s Tale

before October ends.

This cottonwood sheds

flagship – by remnant sail,

from crown of flimsy raven nest.

Berryman’s birthday.

Not a block from here... hey.

Fold him he water music (final test).

Pledge of confirming intellect

spurs poet to sole deed.

Life’s halcyon meed.

Plum plummet (kingfish dialect).

Not that yellow-gold & blacken’d

leaf, cornered in eddies

keyed to cotton levies,

blackface parodies... Huck reckon’d

not.  Rather this lightweight,

ineffable lovelight –

staging for drifting wight

her leaf-romance (it’s not too late,

Hermione).  Tale told by idiot

king, floating everything –

how twin brothers ring

the mirror lake of Camelot,

& Guinevere & Lancelot

surface (Gennesaret)

Stravinsky trance-daughter

by prairie vortex... oaken chariot.

10.25.18

still life life still

STANDARD MODEL

So summer, Susanna, slowly, slowly

decelerates, among the weeds

& celery, the radish seeds.

&, painted into a corner, quietly

arrives full stop.  Like Peto

still life.  Or Adagietto

seeping on the Lido.

Gradually.  More things, Horatio,

than are dreamt of...  Plumb pleroma

if you can, Hobo –

speak what we feel we know,

somehow.  Premonitions (like a

wind-blown pennant toppling

at Little Big Horn).

Do not compare, Son

of the Morning Star (glass tippling);

you are the only one of a kind

Wakan Tanka.  To come

back from the grave... some

stretch, Hermione.  Out of your mind?

The Blue Morpho of Vladimir

eludes his abstract net –

yet he’ll catch a Hazel.

Bet.  Meet your double in a mirror

(is good luck, not bad).  The way

a doubting Peter folds

a king of hearts, & holds

the diamond.  One homing ray

                *

unlocks the elephant casket (gold-

lined interior, with keys

to inside story)

figured by Jonah, Susanna – double

coracles conveying chronicles

to Finland, now, for you.

Finis.  He’s us, too.

With eyes like Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, down Arthur Street

(the once & future thing).

Two heavy charms, making

an up-quark reddish baryon, Snoopy –

hiccups of a Higgs bison, maybe?

Concerns which we cannot

discern at CERN, just yet.

Professor Nyet beside the Neva...

– Knock it off, Nobby.  That Large

Hadron won’t bunt the Standard

Model for 1000 millionths of

a billionth of a second, pard.  No, Sarge.

I was just napping by the meteor,

that’s all.  It rolled away

(under the elements, maybe).

Not Hobo, not Pope... Columbus, neither.

Those deep brown hazel eyes absorb

Persephone-phenomena...

monarchs on milkweed... ah,

she weeps.  Who spans her glistening orb?

7.7.17

Shakespearean marzipan

THREE BEARS

Behind fine axe-hewn basalt

of the Incan hive, an eye

like Aaron Siskind, maybe –

quick, delicate, alert.

Mortised ramparts of any state

mark its mandala-border;

stone blooms of order

warp twisters of love & hate.

Only this human heart of flesh

harbors invisible diamond –

petal-scent of almond,

marzipan snowstorm (baked fresh).

Imagine one simplified snowflake

in three dimensions, spinning

like a gyroscope (one wing,

one leg) after one thunder-shake

of glassy dome – Will’s trident, maybe

in a late romance (Blackfriar’s

globe).  King Henry sires

trouble for himself – falls into sea

pursued by Bear.  Near Normandy,

flagship goes down – she’s lost,

it seems – until at last

Hermione steps forth, sleepy...

La Paix (familial, civil, global)

breathes yet, to dance once more.

It was Sir Thomas More,

lapped in bearskin, at the North Pole

                 *

who played the bear, who played the fool;

who played Disoriented Lamb

bleating I am, I am,

who flit the snowflake (melting soul);

his mother (Everywoman, from

Mulberry Street) wept

for the shame; she slept,

& it was glory in the end.  Hum

flickers (pictures in a whisper gallery).

The cranium of Unknown

Soldier wears the crown.

Empires of high frozen sophistry

shudder beneath an infant’s smiling

gaze.  It’s not the wise

who find the way (surprise!)

but every lovey-dovey Sing-Sing

resident – repentant heart, meek

mule.  Chaste planetary

hearth, Psyche-egalité –

bright thunder-akme... slant, oblique

world-pirouette... Hagia Sophia

in a peacock’s fan.  Tango,

barefoot kid’s fandango

under the sky-vaults in Ravenna –

light of my light & yours,

Waltz of Three Bears

by Mendelssohn.  Flares

Franciscan, by Pacific shores.

6.14.17

Hermione's return

MAYPOLE CALCULUS

The park bench by the Father of Waters

is Hobo Henry’s throne.

Where he comes to his own

like Leontes (late to his daughter’s

recovery, Hermione’s return).

That sidewinding father

plays hide-&-seek – with another

voice, another fleece.  Like someone

you met once, on the road to Emmaus

or St. Petersburg – sly

Queequeg, tricksy Bluejay...

warbling red Robin in burnoose

of raven-ink.  His tattoo labyrinth

the cave he trails from –

a smoky-flutey hum

folding the whole into a ninth

symphonic inning (end-beginning).

This personal boomerang

widens your gyre, bright Milky-

Zed – like a shadow slowly shrinking

toward your noon.  Come back again.

Global res publica

out of Exodus.  A prairie

equal sign, Mississippian –

grass salience across the river (Monk’s

Mound) still reminder

we were slaves once, here

(Dred Scott & Gateway Arch plunk

                     *

side by side).  Slaves kept by others,

& slaves to ourselves.

Whose arrogance resolves

into a Minotaur of rival brothers

(orange vs. black – harsh prison stripes

mirrored across scarce

monarchs, dense cedars).

Vlad in Kiev?  One of them types.

Or Nabokov, in camouflage.

A Frisco safety net

might bolt this Nut

who stretches out her flamande bridge

into an arch, over the Nile –

osprey transfigurement

of J to fundament

(her spirit flaming into smile).

This late romance, Leontes-Hobo –

some Pygmalion’s design –

lifted La Paix from Brooklyn

mud, with Liberté (moss-emerald glow).

Her incarnation of a crocus rose

& spun gold gyroscopes,

kalimba-periscopes –

around a Maypole calculus

of loving fingerprints, & penny-clues.

The Earth, in shadow of

one flighty Jonah-dove...

your arc of fellowship (King of the Blues).

5.1.17

 

facet of the grey sea

WOOF DAWN

Now vales of Maia give away

to peaks of June, plains

emerald after rains;

gold Ghana-threads of yesterday

(encircling Hermione,

her Perdita) are knotted

in one polyglot,

shade-silvered whisper-crown.

The dream-song of that melancholy

painter in the corner

(Henry Coroner,

or Richard Parking-Lot) might be

a facet of the grey sea’s matière –

portion of the human

globe (octagonalmond,

arched like Nut over the pearl-

sphere of the earth).  Hearth-sign

of futurity, through sleep

to an oasis – leaping

Minnehaha (Hobo river-mind).

Someone smiling in an acorn cap

shadows his Georgia garden.

Some apple-orchard man,

repairing limbs... his milky map

renews the face of day.  All things

woof dawn, old Prospero –

it happened long ago.

Her cartwheel (spun of gold bee-stings).

6.15.16

& the ship sails on

CAUTANTOWWIT

The sweet old pussy willow’s gone

that once o’ershadowed Pushkin’s

backyard grave (great Russian

cat).  Leaves not a leaf behind –

only an empty space (alas, 

alack) anchors a magic

carpet o’ masticated

stump.  So we hung up our lyres

on the bow of that stubby caravel,

Acacia – stuffed to the gills

with incoherent motorings,

burbling Barranca Straits – with Mal

& Papa consulting the cabinet

non-stop... coat, liquor...

What have I left her,

now, here?  These were all spirits,

veering toward Prince Eddy’s Island.

Wracking my brains... hollow

ravine in the pupil, valley

so low... black hole of Depression

Inlet.  Perdita, somewhere in

the safety net, under

the ark at Porta Aurea –

dear lightsome daughter!  Ravlin,

unraveled so.  Now rainbows flash

Medusa-shells, O

Mountainous Sad Shadowship –

to wit, to woo... (by Narragansett ash).

9.25.15

where was the willow once

Pushkin