only Osage land

WHAT SMILE

July... all the baby flags.

Every bright young lamb

tuck to torment in Vietnam.

Lyndon moon-face – how it sags.

Hubris... alien, demonic force

unhinged from humility

(vomitgreen parrot pity).

Folds bomber-wings in remorse

after all.  Neither national

nor international;

only irrational

(November’s double coronal).

I’ll finish off this work in progress

now, Columbia –

OK?  Oklahoma’s

only Osage land (but I digress).

& poetry?  Is just a conversation

among singed beans.

You joint it, Henrythin,

to ease U-Haul into elation

(somehow).  That OK.  The heart

is made of meleki limestone

(royal).  43 lamps shine

down upon them groove.  What

now, Henry?  What hum?  What ghost

flit as yum turtledove

‘bove fry Friday pirate cove?

What smile lightum up (coruscant host)?

7.1.18

O splendiferous butternut

SALT-CUBE

September butternuts bombard the ground,

soft lime-green globes a-burst

with rich black compost-

muck.  By genealogy of sound

they must descend from Milky Way

on high; from some black hole

of fiery Moloch-El

shifting the gravitational display

plummeting like an otfe-stone

out of St. Peter’s burg

to vertiginous epilogue

(Akhmatova-agate, or Pushkin-

bone).  Sealed with a raven-knife

tattoo, absinthe still-life –

l’Affaire Dove-Sister-Wife,

mired in a faro-game of civil strife.

Her smile’s invisible as air.

Now Phoenix is on fire

& flooded Lone Star Empire

waits for Milly the Kid to appear;

up here in Minneapolis, Frank Gehry’s

fishtail art museum

harbors Hartley’s muse.  Glum

Crane surfacing as white shark – hairy

situation! & out the window, there’s

Berryman’s burnt span –

marooned sad son of Man

abridged to riveted soul-tears.

                   *

Some autumn in King Lear, mayhap

(John’s doggèd copy?)

may Heav’n shed mild mercy-

milk through these blind spokes, old Pap.

It’s waiting for you, Cain, McCain –

open your magnanimity

to gratitude!  See

to the superflux...  She comes again

light-feathered through your heart –

Cordelia, Columbia;

unscrolls the epigraphia

footnote on warped LP (dappled 8-part

harmony) – spectrum of a weedy

Jonah-flag.  Within gray

scales, smoke-signals (hey

ey yo) her hand waves complimentary

colors – black earth, jungle green

& orange flaring yellow-

gold (passage to indigo);

red, white & cinder (ultramarine)

complete the ashen diamond

salt-cube of Manitou

(that Hiawatha 1-3-2) –

whose handspin sets a table ronde

for Pilgrim as for Wampanoag

& etches mene mene tekel

onto Minotaur’s tough Jekyll-

hide (only a promise, Nadia-Mag).

9.7.17

Willow River twilight

ANOTHER YULE

Civilization is a natural good.

Valleys are honeycombed

with anthills – tombed

with moral titans (Lincoln would

live up to his Memorial).

Government’s innate,

then – our pleasant fate

to be so compagnevole,

says Alighieri (after Harry

Woodpecker).  D.C.

marbled with majesty

will have a double Jubilee

this year – May 29th (the K

of Camelot’s birthday);

crowds cry hurray

up to the pint of vanishing

& glory glory hallelujah.

I love my country too.

But pride, you know,

leads oft to suicide – King Saul,

alas, fell on his sword, & Henry’s

Clover (sad antithesis

of photosynthesis) was

mortised into concave penury

(her veil of Isis hoovered out

of Iowa).  Her star

twirls like Ishtar

above a Willow River twilight

               *

where gold prairie meets the far

horizon (at the green

mountain, where shriven

penitents climb to the door).

Pride be the world’s blockade.

Banners of orange black

& green (by Jasper Jack)

are complementary, not made

for nought.  Pete? Smoky Pete’s

still lively, though John’s

jotting paper crayons

with encaustic slivers now.  Wheat’s

blonde for Brother Jim’s Great

Purple Hairstreak – what

a butterfly!  Yet

there’s no sketchy moral shortcut

to self-centered celebrations

for a nation, in this world

of woolly worms curled

into cottonwood canyon-

cocoons.  No idle soul-solace

– an oxymoron in

the China cookie tin.

True penitence proceeds apace,

slowly, like Frank’s old shaky mule

inching to San Francisco.

Sorrow made your child go

sailing.  Grief tacks up another Yule.

3.16.17

South Carolina occasion

Every now & then (occasionally) my infinite knit-parade project (Ravenna Diagram) intersects with current events, and then we have an occasional poem.  This one has to do with the terrible sadness which took place at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.  I am deeply impressed with how that embattled congregation spoke with one voice of courage and forgiveness after what was done there.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

This poem, as with most things I come up with, has its obscurities.  I'm thinking of the "Old Glory" as opposed to the Confederate flag, and of Jasper Johns, who lived in South Carolina (where I once saw an exhibit of his work at the Greenville Art Museum).  Johns layered encaustic over his U.S. flag icons, and shrouded scraps of old newspaper columns and images under the paint.  His figures of hands, circles and seemingly drowning men (see Hart Crane's poetry) connect with the image (in this poem) of a deep whale-hum or humming bird (Jonah means "dove" in Hebrew) - sending a different, more substantial message (of love, not hate).

The poem was composed at my temporary work-station (see photo), on a ridge overlooking the Blackstone/Seekonk River (while my house is being painted).

OLD GLORY

The tiny whiz-bird hums & floats,

hovering over my rose

pontoon, her paradise.

A flint blade chimes bell-notes

out of Grime’s Graves (neolithic).

By the grey Blackstone

Hilario J. Robin

snake-charms knotty hillside oak –

dauntless redbreast, passionate

Guillem d’Orange.  Whose cell

is gathering mass (black

wholeful o’moss) in triplicate

like an Old Glory spun of Greenville

jasper – caustic wax

to burn each switchback’s

cussed fer-de-lance (eternal

jail) into a trillion spangle-tiers

of morning (milky spider-

barn).  Haul it down before

nightfall.  The soul in tatters

seeks a deeper, quieter call –

Jonah’s Pacific hum

from whale profundum – bee-

balm croon for Memphis Emanuel.

Will set you free.  Sweetly now

the offspring of the sun

are fielded, droning, into

one (farfalla-Gaspee... rain bough).

6.23.15