Dante caught the bug

FORSAKEN MINOTAUR

Somewhere between Venice & Ravenna

(Rimini?) – on an errand

for Lord Guido, friend

& host – Dante caught the bug (malaria?).

All those goat-paths of exile

all those curial corridors

mostly meant chores.

The heart stays just a brief while.

A trembling bird unfurls wing-feathers

in the still woods of March;

hear her voice catch

racing through the final chapters

of winter.  While every ghost of Alighieri

clusters by the Rubicon…

that stream of lethal human

fish-traps (Caesar-veins of slavery).

Henry, his curly churl, would stalk

through the rose cloud

of his quatrain (loud

quarantine) to sit upon his dark

& Rheingold throne (where Caesars reign).

The desolations… how

to begin?  Let’s start now.

Assemble palms to ease real pain.

Clap him in irons, or set him free.

Exiled from sybil-sylph

the rage becomes himself –

forsaken Minotaur of you & me.

3.15.20

glare attracts birds

MIGRANT ZONE

      “But,” she added, “a tribute that kills thousands of birds?  Is that really 

                what we want?” – NY Times, 9.11.19

Little Alex was in love with them.

Would run out to the “woody

area” (floored with heavy

twisted vines) & note their thrum

of peregrine wing-calls; run back, report.

He was 20 when the Towers

fell.  Now he’s in the painters’

guild – swings from scaffolds out

in Portland (surfaced a new public school

this summer).  Everyone

knows someone so, dangling on

the perimeter of gravity (lead’s rule).

Edgar Brightman says, each body

is an etching of God’s mind –

that Personage who’s fond

of persons that we are (might be).

It is some Berryman-Osiris dream

of emerald Ireland, or

Mannahatta... out of mire-

bleared violets, one twin-beam

(ineffable, 4 miles up into night).

The glare attracts birds

(like glamorous words

of bright adhesive poem).  Raven, kite...

– bad omens, harnessed by our own

self-heightening memorials.

Yet... all my trials,

Lord.  DOVE LIBERATES LOVE’S MIGRANT ZONE.

9.11.19

New York Times, 9.11.19

from something I'm working on these days.

3

 
Walk with me through the jungle, whispered the voice.
The silence seethed with malice.  Bluebirds fled
to the Appalachians.  It seemed he was quite dead
to the world (asleep, perhaps).  He had no choice

 
but to rise to the occasion - otherwise.
There were jays in the trees, and twirling
vireos; there were empty sounds, hurling
hurly-burly Death into his eyes;

 
and the hollow tock-tock of the woodpecker
presaged a resolution at the crossroad
(if he could find that mysterious crossroad).
Nature was judgement.  Truth - very particular

 
(you might say).  In other words, the jungle
was a torture chamber of misunderstanding -
everything got everything else.  Wrong
(suffering the sum of all that wrangling).

 
Back, forth, back, forth... the old swingset
swung so calmly in the morning green.
Do you remember how it whispered, then?
Creaked and whispered, like a crooning pet

 
or paradisal tourniquet.  Sound was sound :
what more is there to say? or might be said,
she murmured (in an undertone) - and led
you down the inarticulate and droning

 
trail.  And so it was.  The jungle thunderclouds
boomed and passed - the sky grew grey, grew light.
Symphonic morning (slow Sibelius) : from night
to day, processional (with cloud-parades).