searching the pipeline

GREEN FLEURETTE

With a guttering cigarette-stub candelabra

planted on his tin pan rim

old Hobo H., yea verily him,

sets off, vagrant pilgrim, on his last hurrah.

& recalls that fond octagonal gazebo

where many a summer

found him (quizzical plumber)

searching the pipeline for Cy Manitou.

High & low, & up & down the river

led by that whistling flit

of Ray Caw-somuchwit (tight

Gansett smokehole, domed in Ravenna)

Hobo went on, a-glide like some water-bat

round that chartless labyrinth

amazed with gold, & crème

de menthe – a little green fleurette

upsprung ‘mid scattered fallen leaves

& spinning like a gyroscope

cross-threaded by Hope

so’s to balance what him heart conceives.

For that whisper-caw of Wakan Tanka

cries – all the temples of Solomon

& all the domes of Justinian

are but the models of a living Anchor,

planted ‘twixt the temples of your mind

beside the hearth-fire in your heart.

O speaking brook, where rivers start!

Handy RI aerie (in your eye to find).

3.26.20

articulated bagpipes

CICADA SHELL

Last night, in the final French class

Charles explained to us

that intricate forest

of thousands of skeletal pieces

under the armor of the vast organ

of Notre Dame, somehow

surviving the late inferno –

a delicate spider of sound, within

the cathedral’s gray cicada shell

of feathery stone light.

Now, in my monkish hideout

of twisted cedar, a mid-May swell

of emerald sheen beyond the doorway

stretches toward Iona

or maybe Compostela

or Jerusalem... & scrawny face of Henry

lined like wood by age & foolishness

lifts to spring brightness

one wee dram of hopefulness,

mayhap – someone’s vernal Inverness.

It is the ordinary light of day

flashing through our human

imago, her chaste design –

what we might be, beyond dismay

in the conjunction of clear consciences

set toward a restoration

of the common good.  One

amid many – octave’s consonance.

5.15.19

egalitarian cathedral

CEDAR HIDEAWAY

In this rough wooden octagon

in the backyard, wrapped

in frayed mosquito nets,

in mid-April, Henry will try again.

The anniversary of Abe Lincoln

rhymes with a shock in Paris.

Notre Dame no longer is

bedecked with lilies for communion.

Entourée de flammes ferventes

Apollinaire, at Chartres

peeks through his bandages

back toward her... makes his lament.

This humble cedar hideaway.

Chaste April light.

The massive stone takes flight

from every heart, with equal sway.

Like a fool in a mystery play,

a cloddish egalitarian

circus, is the Son of Man.

Anti-king, anti-autocracy,

he rides the shoulders of a donkey

(Henry’s stubborn mule

from Berryman misrule

locale) on Muddy journey to the sea;

he’s Jonah, prophet of humility

and poverty, flung to America

to give the motherland a caw –

lift a palladium for Lady Liberty.

4.16.19

May-time

ALMOND FLING

Palmers wayfare toward Jerusalem

& Holy Sepulchre –

empty signifier

for an Easter hymn (they’ve taken him

away).  A grail of ever-floating joy –

love’s Pentecost

fire-fizz Ghost

Dance for 50 stars (Old Glory

stitched anew from burial shroud).

Rivers of Paradise

(Tigris, Euphrates,

Nile, Big Muddy) circle back to cloud

of Ocean-Stream – source of sky-waters,

like round limestone

beaded with ripple-shine

to emerald gleam (through grisaille shutters).

Hobo, fish-eyed Fisher King,

beheld this vision

through a wavy octagon

of old gazebo planks.  & sinking

down upon his quaint Vienne étable

his head (like Bran of Grain

Elevator) made moan

for Miriam, or Marian, as in the fable.

Until your May-time dawn refulgence

metamorphosed everything

into one almond fling –

Oak Restoration (eye-in-palm, perchance).

5.20.18

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

the wind-chime found

FIFE-HUM

The gazebo is an octagon

of peace & quietness

this morning.  A salience,

a turtleshell (on gray-green

surface of a Sunday plane).

By the tumbledown back

fence, buried in black

soil & leaf-remains (rain-

soaked), I found a mysterious

old wind-chime.  Slim row

of silver pipes, bow-

tied to tangle free by turquoise

winged cherub (with turtledove

nestled against his chest,

like a kid’s cherished

carrier pigeon).  Bell-tones hove-

to in the air, by the furrowed brow

of weathered cedar gazebo-

door.  We’ve all passed over

the red, & through blue forest now

ring the tiny silver seraphim;

your carmine car is here

from emerald whispershere

cry the whirl-a-wings, that skim

in ferrous rings’ unmoving flight

above elongate coracle

of almond lips...  One coal

glows from steep well of night

                 *

like North Star in vast Ocean State

– one double rose wheel

swelling out of two – seal

of Elohim! – Love to consecrate;

the union of the subtle One

who hums through everyone

across creation – sun-

dance of manifold children, spun

by tread of Ariadne-gold –

maize ring of Chartres

frisbee’d to Paradise

atop oblong St. Louis mound

by monks’ naval arc-sheepfold.

As in shady Ravenna once

forecast of Providence

uttered by clay beseeching, rolled

from dusty lips toward dark mosaic;

fast prayer of Alighieri

bent by Beatrice

via sigh of starlight...  On a windbreak

east of Voronezh, quick beak

of finch-tuned Mandelstam

corrals her sweet I AM

within a limpid rill of spring – a streak

of black-gold monarch wings

slant toward akme

of octave solidarity –

whose fife-hum resurrection brings.

7.9.17

cosmic Sing-Sing

WHEAT-BLADE

Gold catkins dangle from a twisted birch

like those heavy earrings

Empress Theodora strings

into mosaic (grey papyrus bark

afloat above Ravenna choirs

of San Vitale). The canoe

of state is lighter now –

only a woven fingershell or

chorale, a threadbare catenary

smile strung like a veil

from cosmic pole to pole

(north, south... from sunny Sydney

up to autumn-grey Paris).

There’s no place like home.

Kansas... or Burchfield foam

of leafy wind, of writhing tree...

unheimlichkeit unleash of slings.

Lincoln... King... JFK.

World-axle with Ojibway

wing-nut (rust of bee-stings).

Hexagons, unraveling.

The 6 paths of Black

Elk – diamondback

seal of universal Spring

shedding bright tombs of tattoos

into a gathering

of cosmic Sing-Sing –

prisoners in liberation blues

               *

& grays (old Frederick Douglass

understood the sinuous

ways of shifty US).

Let Egalité ring, sang Liberty lass.

So the cedar gazebo of the Word

(a flexible oracle

or circular coracle)

swims in a spiral toward the absurd

happiness of the whole creation –

the chaste eye of Union

at the heart of the onion-

dome of humanism (egalitarian)

welds in its molten planetary core

the future of affectionate

recognition.  Incarnate

octopus of Chinese lantern, your

Guillaume d’Orange Franciscan gate

frames solidarity

amid ecstatic charity

whorled in a fiddlehead agate

or Ariadne labyrinth

(primordial Spring).

Blue Vermilion thing

with stubborn terebinth

or almond flower (ancient

indomitable people-

bloom) – tall steeple

wheat-blade, waving, lambent.

4.24.17

Concord, Columbia

KIEVAN ARK

This gazebo’s tilted octagon

of weathered, worm-eaten

cedar holds off the rain

in Minneapolis, again.

Again, Henry will dream his songe

like a train-hopping sponge

& let summer arrange

cloud-peaks of glory (strange

magnet, fourchette d’orange).  Concord,

Columbia – créatif

brain-fever of native

mer-wit – good Will’s three-cornered

cap of happiness (wasp Osip’s

honey-basket on the Hill

of Skull).  A game of skill

is Vladimir’s, & music too – the ship’s

a Kievan ark (turned right-side-up

beneath its choral dome).

Salt-azure breath of wisdom

streams from Maximus (one cup

of simple crumblevine); his prong

is set like Lebanon

cedar beside the chronic

faultline – earthquake birthpang,

epileptic flow.  & now one smile

reverses Golgotha

with OK light – it’s manna-

Madeleine (kneads pain into a grail).

5.25.16

Of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov

TEEMING ORBIT

In the old octagonal gazebo

shaded from sunrays

screened from mosquitoes

I think of Marcel Proust, of Oblomov;

of the haze of tranquil summers

in an equilibrium

of nature.  Let it come.

The books fade into memoirs,

epics filigree life’s borders

with remote heroics

while the housecat licks

his fur, & children play recorders.

To live life on the edge

of the petunia patch.

To bandage every scratch,

wipe every tear...  sea-azure pledge!

Noah’s flute-compass – a pilot’s

Providence – the homing

pigeon’s purple ring

of ocarina nostos-pivots...

Deep down in the teeming orbit

of the clay, a blessed

favor lifts each nested

creature into intricate

brush-feathered limestone – emerald

fresco, where white-

haired eagles congregate –

floresce into the parchment (gold).

5.18.16