I have a dream

PLAIN CLAY

I have a dream, sang the buffalo-

voice, I have a dream –

when the will to redeem

lifts a heavy soul, bent low

amid murky murmurs of lost

innocence, out of the lake

of fire (nightmare). Take

my hand, come to this Pentecost –

harvest of kid from lambent cave

(wick drawn from water

up to Pharaoh’s daughter –

firefly corn-blaze, flickering in nave).

Lean petrified wraiths gaze, wingèd

through Ravenna gloom.

Dante walks home,

his lesson fin (carving INTREPID

into night’s milky ark of galaxies).

A net resolves to surf;

a seine makes common turf

out of plain clay – paradoxical

Francisco-mule, clip-clop clumping

until he climb the octahedral

keystone of the cathedral –

orange Chinese lantern, miming

remote & lonely lighthouses

(Rose Island Light, for

Narragansett raven-shore).

Sun in your beak (Cautantowwit’s).

8.28.17

in memoriam Liu Xiaobo

SAND-CASTLE

                                                i.m. Liu Xiaobo

The workmen are building a great new wall

beside my octagonal turtle-

hermitage – where Sophie’s little

ruddy chair sits patiently, for one & all.

Another chair remained in Stockholm,

waiting for a noble prince

to win his prize of Peace.

His prize is won.  He’s going home.

He held his vigil by Heavenly Gate.

Hatred can rot a person’s

wisdom & conscience,

enemy mentality poison the spirit

of a nation, inflict brutal life & death

struggles, destroy a country’s

tolerance, humanity...

They want to bury him deep in the earth

yet verily I say to you, unless

a grain of wheat falls

into earth & dies,

it remains alone – but if it dies

it bears much fruit.  I remember

the orange Chinese lantern

peeking its bright octagon

out of green shade.  Welcome glimmer

with hidden crimson berry – lamp

of mountain sheepherder

marked by the torture

cell like turtleshell (or scarab stamp)

                *

only to grope toward pine-green Liberty.

My beetle’s modest haruspex,

the ideogram for pontifex,

key row-your-boat for Vera City –

check the N-trail labyrinth.

This liver between Earth

& Sky was micro-moth

or Maximus (locked up til 44th

of July, by Bureau of Injustice).

His wounded knee, his tender

foot, his gentle mind were

furrowed brow, for cultivating scholars...

Thrones are made for serial tumblers.

You can demote King Tubby Lou,

kill Voodoo Queen Marie – so

what?  Arrestocrats come back in numbers

juggling for electric chairs.  Polly

Pound says so, the mystical

Apologist of Tyranny; she’ll

sow you Uncle Ez’s grapes – see

how they make great yappy whine!

(& his chinoise Confusion

still bakes a mean Rune

Cake.)  He not the Way, sez Hen.

The blot thickens.  Blue Emperor Mon-Ki,

with his twin princelings, Rude May-Hem

& Gilt Moon-Eye... descended from

Lord Me-Man, Minotaur of Die-Nasty...

                *

[sludge on the honey-scroll, I guess]

We circulate by arrow-

glance, the human sorrow

of disharmony (each creepy-eepy instance);

only the gentleness of Manitou

the windy sheep-liver

& fleet   lamb-giver

who stands   magnanimous & true

blue cedar (melodious   rainbow

of royal   Reality)

is King.  So let her be.

Your soul, sealed so, dear Liu Xiaobo –

your spouse, waiting by prison-house,

will flex her wings, & spread

your word – rise from the dead;

her torch (inalienable human justice)

shines from copper harbors & green hills;

over harm & over hate,

ever-flowing   light on light

descends   like turtledove   on twisted wills

to straighten ways   streams merging

into concord   toward the sea

Ocean of Charter 8   mercy

& fellowship   in gratitude   Thanksgiving

Day   after the battlefields are still

& Liberty beams   far & wide

her smile   across the tide

& turmoil of the mind’s   sand-castle jail

7.14.17

your whiskey mule

IRIS-ARCH

The bulb in a wild Chinese lantern

is a bright orange berry,

edible, tart (very).

Little octagon amid the fern-

pine forest, summer Halloween

memento mori; lamp

in Thanksgiving pumpkin,

blood-orange earring for a queen.

My cedar gazebo in the rain

magnifies your painted

facets.  I’m your slanted

saint, beaming gray Bretagne

matière, like old Guillaume d’Orange

in his gelato-cool

Gellone prayer cell –

the armored ape (‘tis passing strange)

grown peaceable & rocky-mild.

Repentant berry-man

in shady homespun

camouflage (as orange span stilled

leaping crag to crag – a frisky

beggar-stag in Frisco

Bay).  My Lady, O

high-hearted votary!  Your whiskey

mule I’ll be – show stigmatized

tattoos you needled through

cliff-jagged river-scars to

radiant Pacific blue... baptized

                *

in Minnehaha Falls – by Manitou!

Her figurehead (surmised

miraculous surprise)

bobs like green fiddlehead, unfurling You!

Blue-green pine haze of Tian Shan,

whose snow-cone peaks

harbor bright lightning streaks

& pure transparency of oxygen...

be like her molten meteoric smile

my natal cog upon

whose wheel of rose spun

hurtling through light’s peristyle

into galactic congregations

sharing pain et vin –

Melchizedek’s Come in,

my wounded daughters – prodigal sons!

The berry, man, the berry lives,

though crypted in the cradle

of an origami grail –

sun of Manitou, sum of beehives!

That copper moss-green Lady

in the harbor lifts her torch

as an intelligible iris-arch,

so read the sign : her rainy-shady

smoke-signal, pine-scented candle

of a little tree – her fiery

omnipresent Amor, mirrory

agate Agape, all blumen (mandel).

5.17.17

light along the river

ALMOND FAN

Morning light along the river,

where naked cottonwoods

lean toward the sun.  Ides

of November.  Hobo will shiver.

Still the grand yellow-green crown

of the willow sways in the wind.

The golden fans pinned

to the gray sidewalk (Egyptian

gingko sails) are royal palms

& roses strewn before

the laird of Jonah-lore –

coaxing his leathery alms-

mule into Jerusalem.

The weather is a kind

of global newsstand;

clouds mass like seraphim

to hear the briny sailor’s pipe

screel far & high at last

its elemental blast –

solo trompette marine, for ripe

world-winnowing crabapple-fall.

Thanksgiving’s on its way.

Manxman’s great Day

(Pink-Orange International

pi-squared to double you)

is hallowed with a lantern

glinting in the quern

of every hamlet’s plummet blue

                *

eye of ocean-grey curlew –

Atlantic ouragan,

Pacific clockhand

spinning from the deep toward you.

An octopus?  An octagon.

A Chinese lantern, great

icosahedron.  Agate

lamp of Psyche-Libération –

who lifts from indigo Rhode-harbor

morning threads, to Porta

Aurea – jasper Jenny

with a sprig from Davy Jonah’s arbor

(locket of bright copper hair).

The deep drone is no longer

doom.  Heart grows stronger

in the stars’ high midnight lair.

The child who moseyed to the shore

of Memphis Nile is borne

upon an Isis-horn

along the Milky Way, & more –

the red-white-blue American

turns black-orange-green

& back again (foreseen

by Queequeg on a slick oilcan)

& we will celebrate a Turkey Day

like peacocks in bald eagle’s

nest – Hagia Sophia’s

almond fan, one tout-monde roundelay.

11.16.16

like Don in Key West

milkweed palms

DOUBLE-DECKER

Hobo lounged by the great gray Ocean

River, his old hide detached

a little from his mind,

like Don in Key West, his one-

time winter host (at the Q Motel).

Distanced a little from the

whitecaps, red & blue,

that molder to a stucco frieze of Hell

sometimes.  He remembers wild violets

that peek beneath gray toes

of an elder copper beech, whose

crown shades Providence; those roots

drill deeper than the black & white

of shaky party platforms.

Down beneath worms

mining resentment & indifference, the bite

of greedy centipedes, the slugs

cold as a winter street

in Minneapolis, whose neat

chewing fattens themselves alone (bugs

do not think about their neighbors).

Whose murmurous gray arms

have framed the milkweed farms

of metaphysical Hope, that anchors

Roger Williams’ canoe –

Love’s almond chariot

that smiling Faith built

out of flocks of can-do

monarch wings, green palms

circumferencing the gray

scallops of yesterday –

twin limestone radials (emblems

of spousal harmony, e pluribus

unum).  Whose tap sinks toward

the center of the gourd,

the hearth Love stokes, wells tears...

& where a voice from her grey mirror

sang in Hobo’s ear –

Behold the Platonic Year

revolve at last, aboard my double-decker

Greyhound!  When the game of suits

& spades & royal clubs

gives way to hearts purple

& ruddy diamonds – twin 52s

orbit an orange origami octagon,

one Chinese lantern, standing

in the night garden – bring

Hobo to the table, then!  It’s done!

He pondered pumpkin murmurings,

& mooned there, by the muddy

banks.  The breeze of poetry...

only a feeling (sighed).  Our burdenings

borne by that humble muse, whose trust

in some deep loving cloud

grey Manitou’s abode

will wave back (Noah’s buoyant crust).

8.15.16

Hoboland

Icon Man

Note to reader : some of these poems are pretty darn obscure.  If you peruse this blog's web version (as opposed to mobile-phone version), you will find links, at the bottom of the page, to subject entries (labels) - which might be helpful in tracking down my footprints, or other footprints.  This holds true for all the Ravenna Diagram posts on this here blog.

MOSAIC SHEPHERD

The knot in the heart is a universal

wedding ring, wherever

you are.  Heavier

than iron, ce diamant mondial

de l’amande.  Bright orange lozenge-

mandorla, shedding leaves

of tears – vicarious

miniature trees (strange

fruit).  Like the shady crossroads

with the Dead End sign –

a little Chinese lantern

(glass by LaFarge).  Six nodes

in one honeycomb eye – melodious

riddle of light & shade.

Henry & John, a cannonade

off Sydney Harbor... looming ficus

guarding Southern Cross.  They sought

a figure for relief –

hoopoe... cloverleaf...

barely-veiled grief.  Stray mote

of dark December.  Henry looks up

through rose window.

A rim around the chi-rho,

hint of shining salt.  Red stop

sign on the dynamo, outlined

in cedar-glow (Mosaic

Shepherd Stands in Lake).

What the heart seek she shall find.

4.5.16

Henry's Sheba (down south)

RORSCHACH FIGURE

This gaunt, towering, aged pine,

adorned with a scattering

of obsolete Christmas

lights, draws a straight sober line

lifting its crow’s nest to point

of perihelion (invisible sun

behind galactic one).

My ghost-ship creaks with accent

grave along her seventh wave

(sky-reckoning) – southern

constellation, borne

on Magellanic surf.  An octave

mutely unfolds – an origami

Chinese lantern, spun

outward (on tiny silken

struts) into a diamond Chi-

Rho maze – Rorschach figure

of raven, or monarch

brain (Venn-Neva wreck)...

my spider-path, or Chartres lure.

Eurydice of Dream Song,

Henry’s Sheba down south.

Proceeds by word of mouth –

transfigures saturnine keening

to hopeful whistle.  Chickadee,

junco?  Woodpecker –

rousing Ravenna nature

morte (ligneous crucifix-aubade).

1.15.16

Quiet river scenes

Some of the chords in this little 2-finger exercise (for Ravenna Diagram) came from a recent article in the New York Times about the Yulong River in China.

LITTLE STEPS

Halcyon late summer day

in the ancient yard.

Soft came the word

from kayak lips... like one stray

Chinese lantern, swinging orange

over weedy greens.

Quiet river scenes –

Yulong threading bamboo (drafty ange

d’or fisherman) between karst hills

& water buffalo –

bull’s-eye, ground zero

for the monsoon spring.  God wills

fish from such limestone streams.

The way to Promised Land runs

through your heart, O branded

Everyman.  Job’s hook redeems.

A living soul talks back to hieroglyphs

until they come to life. 

Osiris in the loosestrife

with French polio – Ravenna stiffs

in sketchy skiffs, rafting a mossy

Giuliana to her sunny

son – sweet honey

from a shack smokehole, in Galilee.

You won’t get it right away.

The flags are thick

with gold encaustic –

targets flip like livid hay

in a tornado eye – the limp

thread hangs from one

thread or another in

a Mandan sundance.  Nails crimp

crumpled limbs beneath a cloud

of starlings... when one

raven, crowing, spun

through your aching pupil – proud

oculus of Solomon,

Galla’s ripe acorn

crown of sylvan

horn – an evergreen

Ravenna Pinetop, skipping 88s around

your retina.  The iris

in her sheaf of cornea is

larval now – pupa plummets down

octagonal, folded to ground –

Hero in milkweed,

featherweight... freed

fiddlehead wing, cedar-bound.

The mountain lurks above the trees.

Imago flies to her source.

Monarch wafts a deft Morse

code in air – needles sing breeze.

A message-smudge, still incomplete,

yet untranslated.

Fisher King... checkmated?

Will fly again lambchild.  Beat?

Through bearskin smokehole, near

the North Pole, Glenn

plays baby Bach again –

so grand, these little steps!  So dear.

9.17.15