like a dream

BLIND EYE

Like a dream in the womb, in the mind of a maid

before all things were made.

Came naturally, she said

when the foundations of reality were laid.

Providence, burnished by smoky November.

Like a canoe on the edge

of the cataract of knowledge...

at Prospect Terrace.  You remember.

Roger Williams, sturdy son of man.

Dark grayish blue

Hope Diamond, you

whisper (below junk jewelry scams) your plan

for Providence.  Triangulated eye

over the Mammon-pyramid.

Re’s Eye, long hid

in our blind eye – to crucify,

Henry (in RI).  That woman in the wilderness

of last things (Chinese vase

still circuiting her stillness).

French, blue, Jeanne.  Fiery duress...

Only a child’s distress.  Cordelia.

Le coeur de Lear, de l’ear...

Coeur de Lion, here.

Skinny crane-bag (of ocean spray)...

St. Paul’s most blazing eloquence

out of heart’s Pig’s Eye.

South of the city –

Mississippi limestone (fossil evidence).

11.16.18

a place in your mind

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE

Providence is a place in your mind.

And also a town.  Like

the sun rising over the lake

be burnished benevolence – &

also a solar systemic fact,

dawn’s chilly weather.

& if we dream together

rather than apart... the intellect

somewhere outside the movement of

these moons, planets...

Now what you grinning at?

You wilna guarantee supernatural Love?

But I am what I am, & I am, I am

a wondrous thing (after

10 a.m.). O ye rafters,

rise!  O ye gates of Jerusalem!

Providence, funky old town.

With a history.  Roger,

under killing weather

in a warm wigwam.  The plan

for the planets, the calm creation...

like a vase whirled in milk,

a home for Black Elk –

at the door of six directions,

where the sheepfold meets the sea.

A little oaken Okean.

A microcosm, spinning,

Jen.  Dream, le songe, where you meet me.

10.26.18

conducting veinous electricity

MUD-ANGELS

These three mud-clay homunculi

hung from pink ribbons

in my tent – lumpy remains

from some Dance of Death?  My

mother must have brought them back

from Mexico (mud-angels

to guard her potter’s wheel).

Coatlicue of Quauhnahuac,

adamant Madre of encrusted Time!

Out of your bottomland

whirls eye-in-hand –

out of Monk’s Mound’s perennial slime...

Clay muscles rolling stone – conducting

veinous electricity –

out of nothing come to be

loaves loafing from the oven (rising,

singing).  A moss-green Isis by the Nile

(or in West Branch) you

rain your rivers blue,

compassionate Magdalen – your smile

lifts Jesús from the grave, raises

Enrique from the cemetery

too (some ordinary

day on Earth).  Hobo Jay cleanses

all hearts, rinses eyes with river-clay –

sighs, EPHPHATHA.  From boulders

God can lift up equal daughters,

equal sons... just look at buried Henry-manqué!

7.10.18

be manifest, be imminent

TUSCAN HILLS

Nestled in his city of rivers & bridges,

hidden in his cabin

of Lincoln logs, alone

like that baby screech owl (wedged

in his cozy cottonwood hideout)

Hobo will contemplate

his May-time temperate

zone, his mild creation, riverine, remote.

Knotted by Amor – like an Incan quipu-

net, like a ruby bud

of that burbling Word

afloat so murkily nearby (his Brook of Q).

Ahav-be-manifest – be imminent

as hale touché-scapegoat

whose royal honey-kismet

soldered Okean to oak – bent

light to leaden doomroad (East

to West).  Jerusalem

gleams in the sun – shalom,

shalom to the returning one!  A feast

for the soul of yon American

blindfolded rambler.

Holy fool, shambler-

yurodivy, from Voronezh to San Fran

you’ll meander, like an old river

& mumble of a Union

equable & all-human –

soft Tuscan hills, moss-green forever.

5.3.18

rolling logos contest

SWAMP SEASON

Like the 1001 Nights, or a man

facing a firing squad

who just keeps talking (odd

bird – Cassandra in a coal mine,

prophet without honor) so

I go on.  Smoking

bloody forest of broken

ships – keening keel of Argo...

who can lift the great acorn

model Constitution?

Strong whiff of glue,

my son.  The safety net is gone.

Impalement of the nations

on Stalagmite 17.

Thin poets bleed between

the cracks in their creations.

Somehow the acorn is a lightweight

coracle.  Behold an order

older than disorder –

Aurora Borealis, lifting slate

steps up to bonfire (Milky Way).

Your molten magnanimity

from nothingness – to be...

becomes a Minotaur’s nightmare (hey

yo).  The absence of a Someone,

croaks Crow (Solomon

anti-authoritarian) –

presence of a maze (swamp season).

4.26.18

elephant fig tree

TWISTY CALUMET

The grey matter beneath the gray dome

over the elephant’s

great brow.  Intelligent

murmur through muted horn, become

flute-sound of turtledove – a rose-

gray granite labyrinth

in miniature (by mouth

of elephant-gate) whose lid will close

this casket blossoming with images.

A concordance of old & new,

the synagogue-ecclesia

of you & me (through corny stages

of a mystery play).  Tall gnomon

of a totem pole (Raven

shadow in the grim ravine,

the wooden idol in its barren

cul-de-sac) points toward the sun.

It is Cautantowwit,

testing your trickster-wit,

lifting his twisty calumet (smoke, son).

Ineffable infinity of Manitou

embodied now – made

manifest in mode

of neighbor Nazarene, addressing you.

Come into my garden, urges he;

the Magdalen has found me,

so shall thee –

her almond eye’s polarity

    *

seeps Providential clarity

as clear as spring rain,

clear as tears.  Enter

my garden, friend – you’ll see.

My Providence was like a field

where Hobo limped through

wildflowers, bumbled into

common day – let childhood yield

to manhood, womanhood – O bright

ripe liberty to keep

sweet civil peace (a steep

ascension to the morning light).

The message of the good grey elephant

is like an invitation,

then – to taste Creation

as a gift of vine & wheat... sent

from grey clouds like rain, or as

a green palm spokes its wheel

with light.  Let it reveal

itself – ultramarine, topaz,

gold, diamond.  In articulate shade

of elephant fig tree

cresting azure Sydney,

reckon the pattern starlight made –

an octahedral Southern Cross

lifts through your heart

transporting human light

to everlasting dwelling-place.

6.22.17

one common wheel

YELLOW TOY

Snow mantles the outstretched granite hand

of Roger Williams, floating

with benevolent feeling

over Providence.  Understand

this pioneer of liberty –

a spark from Edward Coke

whose Temple accent spoke

one common wheel of dignity

the lawful root of sovereignty

beyond despotic whim

in a vibrant realm

of transparent equality.

Within the wigwam of Canonicus

wings of Cautantowwit

Whitsun tide-light

new sign from lofty Okeanos –

Manitou beyond the earth.

Life of Miantonomi

lost on Path P

Christos   locked on Golgotha

the bread cast on the salt waters

returns as octahedral

diamond   of every soul

the living ground.  These gray matters

of galaxies   our origins

in chaste velocities

of Raven-sighs

are reconciled where Time begins

      *

in mid-most mind (O Adonai)

where gyroscopic spins

of corny gold Whitmans

drift from mosaic cupolae

Ravennas of ecstatic joy.

O lift the everlasting

Gates!  The iron spring

gives way – unleashes yellow toy

across the planetary warp –

Ariadne’s shuttle flies

arranging swift surprise

in Chartres maze, her fleecy harp

sounds rustic harmony

(rose choral wreath

of unison, beneath

mild luminous clerestory).

The ancient pattern of the whole

reflects an irrepressible

adoring Psyche – able

to melt each calcified soul

& mend the fractured skeleton

all shattered out of reason

to dehumanizing treason

(haughty deflections of half-men

swept up into strange self-defeat

by heart’s amnesia)...

Help them, Columbia!

Mercy makes Providence complete.

1.10.17

alongside the canoe

SHIP’S EYE

John Slocum fell into a swoon

in the sea-tinged woods

by Puget Sound; his words

of hope shook many Shaker men

out of their sins.  Sparks fly far

from cedar blaze – the sea

booms in a ship’s eye

lashed by yardarm to the polestar.

It’s not the size of the cosmos

but the color of the scales,

gilded when dawn pales

rippling on ice-floes

across the horizon, back to Ocean –

over hide rooftops

sun-parched corn crops

in the jungle (Squaxin, Galilean).

When Davy the Song Prince pranced

alongside the canoe

Maggie saw what she knew

was hers, & grew embarrassed –

yet her almond eye looks to the sea

& the song endures.  A stone

fell from turtle-grey heaven –

the flare of a meteor, a mystery;

an infinite cloud-bank shaped like wing

a feather of ring-dove

signifying love

left brush-marks down by Slocum Spring.

9.26.16

A lot of claims are made for poetry. Poetry is made the vehicle for every memory, passion, ideal and value under the sun.

I've been one of the worst dabblers in that pursuit, I know. (I wrote, for example, about how poetry's special form of representation allies it with religious vision.) But today I'm focused on a notion of poetry's uniqueness, its separateness.

Poetry does something unique to words, shepherds them into its own aesthetic field. Poetry is essentially an art form, the art of language per se (as opposed to the "language" of visual art, or music, or film, etc.).

Aesthetic response - that is, response at least to some degree self-conscious - begins here, in the recognition of poetry's proper, independent sphere. All poetry, in a sense, creates its own world ex nihilo. When we approach it thus on its own terms, we can respond to what it does with the materials of the ordinary world which it absorbs and remakes - harmonizes into its special poetry-materials. And with this recognition, maybe we can moderate some of the magic thinking which sometimes asks too much of poetry (politically, spiritually, intellectually, etc.).

I guess all this is pretty elementary & obvious. As per.

But I like the idea of looking again & again at the most general, universal concepts about it. Because this is a way to make what is most ancient, foreign, and different, appear close and familiar. I guess this is an acmeist, a Mandelstamian idea (or proto-Mandelstamian), a Bergsonian notion - discovering anachronistic, cross-cultural affinities.

The sense of working in a timeless, universal medium, with long views & deep traditions - doesn't this affect how we speak verse, how we make lines? Where we try to stand in this playground?

I left out the most basic "structural analogy" between poetic language and theism : the fact that a poem or work of art is a "creation from nothing" : somewhat autonomous and complete-in-itself.

Thinking unsystematically (that's for sure) past few days about these issues. Keith Ward leaves out feminist perspective. The maleness of the Trinity (at least in most of its representations, which admittedly are only representations, but same are powerful).

Theology of Dante, pivoting cosmos on his memory of girlfriend Beatrice. Joyce in Ulysses & FW.

The poet, the artist, seeks happiness(?) in state of equilibrium which only creative process itself provides. And this process hinges on emotional resonances, love & desire, which are at least as much feminine as masculine.

Jesus (imagined) from psychological perspective. Man without an "earthly" father. Orphan.

(Presence, role of "J" or "Juliet" in Forth of July.)

"Enarees" were the effeminate soothsayers of the Scythians (cf. Herodotus).

Effeminate image of "poets" in American culture.

(Giving birth to a poem. The 3rd vol. of Forth of July is titled July.)