quirky rustic poet battles orange Goliath

MEMPHIS FLOOD

It was the winter of our ill-advised

& misconsent.  Embouldered

Julius the Quartered,

housed within his wanton witness,

raged (a savage orange walrus

full of fetid fire) against

that bad news feminist

in flight from Rus (hilarious!) –

while he, with his false staff, embarked

upon a cross rubes’ con

(some matryoshka manikin!)

against Old Ironsides... which worked!

– for temporizing (time... & two times

at a time).  The war was on.

“Where is the server, then?”

barked Julius again, again.  Crimes

filtered down like snow from Kremlin

gremlins.  Stark treason,

trickling out its own raison

d’état, took aim at Mississippian

Columbia.  One fiery wheat grain

in her heart – one star-

quintessence of her

pyramid – opened its eye again;

the child she harbored in her arms

across the Memphis flood

cried – “Human brotherhood!”

– & smiled.  Light pierced the storms.

1.25.20

serene enchantment

ROYAL SEAL

Springtime earth bears a secret promise

for that unknown child

somewhere, today – mild

summons of the midnight stars

foretell the coming of her Magi, too.

May burgeons toward her

flowery grand fanfare

beneath its vault (red, lilac, blue) –

a royal seal of lilac coronation;

within that dome’s one

multiocular panopticon

prophetic voices merge in exaltation –

serene enchantment of perennial life

blooming toward light itself

(O fragrant almond staff

sprouting sweetness – beyond all strife).

The infant nested in a great oak’s shade

smiles in soft seaborne air.

Ocean will prepare

her Restoration Day – as you were made

in the beginning, so shall you be again.

Shining in Paradise,

where all the rivers rise;

gemstones of blazing men & women

awakening from mind’s blindness.

Under an azure-orange arch

they sail... grail-search

fulfilled – Love’s everflowing happiness.

5.24.18

rivers keep on rolling

BRIGHT SALT

A clear day toward Thanksgiving.

Light on slight mantling

of snow, along the slanting

Mississippi (wave of returning

gravity into the mouth, the Gulf).

There is a magnet

in the heights, a great

Pole Star, that rotates over Beowulf,

Black Elk; there is a matrix point

for all our muttering,

for crazy flotsam drifting

to the sea... a limestone font.

A child climbed from a light-lapped cave

along a spiral trail –

a thread from beryl-burial

to emerald grail (one sea-swell wave).

Beneath grey-wingèd clouds she rose,

called forth by whisper-smoke

of Earth’s holm-oak.

Her name is Imago, her echo flows

into the planetary sarabande –

stately processional

(spring, summer, fall)

to Morning Star, at seasons’ end.

Her name is Liberty, she rides the prow

of every soul – bright salt

of gaiety – the glistening vault

of Ariadne’s crown gracing her brow.

11.21.16