IRON HORSESHOE
If I could gather all 9 muses
around the iron horseshoe
Hobo found along the shore…
a middle C stranded by silted rivers.
If I could loop a thread-corral
around the bullish history
of bardic poetry…
Whitman & Olson, the whole passel
of a thousand Pounds – a ton
of raw American aggression
packed in Julian tin can
of salmon absolute (O prodigal son).
You must bind up the strong man
if you would rob his house,
strums Shep Jesus –
the Son of Man opposes Czar Ivan
K. Trump (& all his lawless minions).
For Moses was an anti-
Pharaoh, & his text a fey
neutrino-trace – reversing their dominions
(anti-matter realms of fearful absence).
Their malice plays for keeps –
the quasi-Reagan creeps
who stigmatize Abe Lincoln’s conscience
of profound Union. A government
of people, by & for people
whose penny is a steep
L-rectitude – the normative ligament
*
of every child of God (my soul to keep);
the stony fundament
that grounds each document
hedging the tyrant (as ye sow, shall reap).
For this Hobo bent toward St. Louis,
where clays rotate
around an elder potentate;
the foolish king, whose power was on lease
to that familial mutuality
(the kinfolk circle
& the starry wheel)
Jesus displayed in his nativity.
Star of David, hidden in the clouds
like 4-leaf clover
in a rainbow cover –
ark or Argo of celestial crowds.
So history plays out as Tauromachia.
Watch Minotaur succumb
to Ariadne’s plumb,
Man lifted up beyond Monarchia;
that restoration of all things
the servant-son proclaimed,
chanting beside the famed
Magdala Stone (rose of sharing) –
when Clover twirls in Hobo’s fingertips
& Isis-eye looks from his palm;
when JFK comes home
& Venus blooms… & Sophie Coulombe skips.
4.28.20
