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

from Agate Rock

WHITMAN BREEZE

A pink drift of crabapple petals

lights the rust-brown bricks.

Hobo sniffs lilacs

through your gazebo’s flimsy walls

of ragged cedar.  Transparent air

& Saturday quiet;

a tiny spider’s lucid net

shines like platinum from here to there.

His soul’s invisible as God.

His heart beats slowly.

Time in the Family

of Man sways over Land of Nod.

His hammock is a green hummock

where hummingbirds & robins

warble, strum... Someone’s

calling you, Hobo (from Agate Rock).

You loved the looming sweep of limbs,

the creaky oaks in autumn

storms... quick, winter’s come.

The columbarium of paper hymns,

a windy wasp’s nest in your heart,

the melancholia

of sentimental sigh,

chilly memorial... you play the part,

poet.  These lilacs will not last.

Odysseus, in the Sirens’

grip, resists – sharpens

his ears – clings to the swaying mast

                  *

shuts eyes against his blinded sense.

Light tiptoes through, at last.

The shrouded cosmos (vast,

remote) circles a pilot’s evidence;

the pole star of his meditation

lifts into incarnation

(ark of a nation

anchored to her own grave station).

So Hobo’s apple petals scatter

in a spring chaos.

The Minotaur lurks close.

Greed splits matter from anti-matter,

rigid red from angry blue.

These violet bowers

dangling sweet flowers

bend over you in vain, Hobo.

Your dark twin leans from Golden Gate.

Her black hair beckons toward

the deep.  Only my Word

is closer to your heart, shipmate –

your heart, & hers.  A violent order

is a knot of pain, a riddle

of ingratitude.  They fiddle

while my planet burns, smolder

in contemptuous hate (for neighbors

not their enemies).

Mauve Whitman breeze...

salt loveliness of tide’s martyrs.

5.13.17

bard owl hoot-yawp

DARK MANDALA

A dark mandala, with its threads of gilt

glinting in sepulchral gloom.

Brown recluse home

or poison farm – Potemkin-built

for subtle, shady beast (forma

tricorporis umbra).

Yessir – USSR – Usura

rapt the hack machine – some worm

robbed all the banks in Hungary

– sincerely, your servant

left with Nada (she went

under).  One black-wreath memory

laurels a World War grave,

limed with gold streaks

of tears.  Leaf breaks

hearts; stubborn moth digs nave.

Infinitely gentle, infinitely

suffering thing... Rabbi,

rabbi, your symmetry

of gravity pulls toward a parapet

or pole-star magnet – anti-matter

mutter at the gate

of timespace (intricate

constellate icosahedron footpad

rabbit-patter).  Yellow gyroscope

for the lad in Ravenna,

wheeling through Gehenna

into turtleshell domicile – Hope

                   *

Diamond southern bells – milky

over Memphis, chanting

out of slave-haunt... (sling

your wide human boomerang, Psyche).

Fraud loops fey pebbles into flagging

factories, for vanity –

haughty coyote-

greed howls babble onto bragging

piles of glare – why do the notions rage?

Out of a quiet well,

a widow’s mite will tell

another rustic peony tale.  Osage

cheekbones of Lincoln-Logos shine

in the fiery human sun –

Rhodos-Colossus Woman

radars an omnipresent beryl-pine

from silver harbor.  The retrograde

cannot delay reality –

their bubble-polity

will burst (too much steel air) – a Maid

of Orleans, or Land o’Lakes

shall lead the ring-dance

in a crayon trance

& sketch a reciprocity

of snakes & ladders, golden eagles

& grey turtledoves.

The peacock fan of Love’s

dominion flares... green acorn-angles.

11.11.16