pavane pour une enfante

LIMESTONE FRIEZE

The river’s running high.  A tattered

linen cottonwood leaf

would lief be drifting

down the bronze serpent, toward

New Orleans.  January ice

will buckle on the iron

bridge – kids’ tongues on

frozen playground bars (cruel vise).

Hobo’s pal, Billy Apollinaire,

will mime an Orphic flute.

Satie, Ravel... sweet

astringent melody (pure air,

unseeable).  Pavane pour une

enfante défunte.  Meanwhile

male bondage is in style.

Our Master fabricates jejune

disgust for all things feminine;

his orange bonfires meld

fright into towering shelled

walnut eyries... flight from Someone

unaccountable (strange, uncontrollable).

Within a bomber’s O-range

now (I will arrange

accommodations for my sable

granite safety crypt) some Bluejay

whistles like a soloist

through sea-pine mist

sparse knotty blue-green (sotto voce)

                 *

memory.  The threads are fractal,

earth-quick.  Escapees.

Some limestone frieze

of Aphrodite, out of Rimini (or Hell)

feinting assaults above Sault Ste. Marie

(Lawrentian divides

shift icebreaks, tides...)

until the copper icon of green Liberty

lifts torchlight like Hagia Sophie –

her living harmony

of agape, for you

& me, enthroned (Okean-sea).

So like the sun lifting from azure salt

the fellowship of wisdom

born of mute charism

(Love’s lightning catenary vault

of steadfast blooming adoration)

lifts healing rescue-signs

for desolate young queens

& kings of darkened mind, O Solomon;

the little princess Shining Star

pirouettes all morning

in her stone-circling

agate labyrinth (somewhere

near Chartres, Oklahoma) – Ariadne

slips the woolen thread

around your wrist – dead

spring to life (Magdala, Galilee).

10.11.17

bleak side of oblique

THREAD SHADOW

The long flat barge, the tugboat

pushing a pile of dirt

upstream – the delicate

reddenings of autumn trees... what

was Henry saying? – up Big Muddy...

Onshore, the back of Hobo

bent like wheedling oboe.

Imago of male failure (Osage hey ey

yo).  Autumn moon... they smoke

& dawdle out the sunshine.

She was a figurehead of mine,

Miss Posy; felled with a single stroke

(of either oar).  Nobody you’d know.

Besides, was long time ago;

sort of a dream-show.

Some tormented buried Poe-ego (Pogo)

traveling unraveled down Path P.

Nominated Henry

(domestic amity

is key to what-y-call happy).

Something between a rat-mensch

& Minotaur.  All entrailed

with entitlements, failed

fatherhoods... sweats on the bench.

Mercy of a rude stream, somebody

said.  Children of want

want what they, but can’t.

Have.  Le-Hev-Hev, spidery

                 *

black hole of the cannibals...

Only a drawn-in breath,

inhalation of death.

That’s all, folks (snaky nuptials).

Hollywood, Kali-Kali-fornia.

The sacred woodpecker’s

your twin prospector –

gold-digging Theoria, Inc. (wing

of raven feathering from cloud).

It’s a Pacific mist,

mister – a golden twist

on Vertigo, for crying out loud!

Shapes of a familiar otherness...

someone you know.  Her

scent (don’t bother

to ask).  As from the wilderness

of the sea (or out of a bath).

Not Venus, exactly –

not even Aphrodite...

maybe antipodal Sheba,

Queen of the South?  Or maybe Johnnie

of the Ark, or Jeanne,

or Mary Magdalen...

under cedars of Lebanon (selah).

Sometimes you see a faint rainbow

on concrete sidewalk.

& someday somebody will talk

to you (smiling wave thread shadow).

10.8.17

the river is a strong brown god

AZTEC ALPHABET

The brazen serpent of the Mississippi

runs through my veins,

cantinnas Hobo (in vain).

How to tell my own (con version) story?

The antic disposition of these shelves

of incunabulae (obscure

revoluminous curious lore)

ripples off Norse keels – revolves

around my cranium (son of

McCain I am) – the worm

a canker, iced like berm

at Sutton Hoo (& strong as

love).  He will lift himself up

into his father’s affection

(this child of deflection)

at last, & be first in the stirrup

at the gates of his sly enemies –

he will be the son

who twists there (frozen

image of abjection) underneath greed-

seas of rifle-toting angels

(Cuzco school).  Spleen

of Hamlet, by the bedroom

screen – cunning de Kooning angles –

that Master of Gray, backed in a corner

of Ravenna – or raving

Coatlicue, stoning

the Consul in the dog-ravine (here,

                  *

Fido)... someone lurks in a mirror

with double doves (tin-

whistle Hobo-child of sin).

Abandona-donna’s abbatoir?

Some Aztec alphabête of yesteryear?

Hazel the moth-goddess

flits into brown recess

of brown recluse... (the spider’s... her).

The sacrifice of sacrifices –

hunters’ offering,

a shiny golden ring –

is like this image from ice-fisher’s

thing (icon of everything);

is like this light bread

Moses left for dead,

or Aaron molded into iron Sing-Sing –

a memory of Psyche-crimes

no one can heal,

nor break the lead seal

from the dark backyard (abysmal

time) until the flutter of a wing

like a mind from the sea

Hobo’s thirsty misery

slakes   or forsakes   a palm, circling

through the gray salt latitudes

like blistered sword

blessing   like sunshade

père-sol   ultramarine   (beatitudes)

9.25.17

a little more from My Siena :

10

                         The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth.
                         A woman shall compass a man.
                                                        Jer. 31:22


 
In the quiet womb of what shall be
The estranged, homesick word flies back to its nest
Of abiding peacefulness.
                          Alighieri and
Ezra circle home again, through the door
Beneath a bookstore's rocking sign
For Wisdom (coracle) - touched
By patient, penetrant
Forgiveness - lifted
From the jaws of Leviathan.

 
The womb absorbs their eccentricity.
An unexpected equilibrium takes hold.
The empty wind and the words it carries
Ruffle the water and reflect unspoken things.
What was justice for the High Commissioner
Becomes a pathway for the downcast immigrant -
That baby refugee, whose throbbing wail
(Still untranslateable) will parse
The future tense.