essential graphene histrionics

AUTUMN NIGHT

My biographical Brown Decades tumbled

rapidly by, in Providence.

How simply the silence

of these beseeching trees (autumn

at the Arboretum) speaks to me!

Alex Weinstein, in Mt. Auburn...

stood there with Sandy (Grecian

Urn?  Likely committed it to memory).

He played the violin at 91.

Emigré from Odessa –

fruit-fly research @ Columbia –

loved poetry & science... (thread-thin,

stooped, seraphic gentleman

of Cambridge Mass.) –

& so the fleet years pass,

callow Henry, to Thanksgiving (amen,

amen).  I put my faith in one

contextual canoe –

dry tacit Quaker taboo

against unquestioned superstition;

a sort of Boston Personalism

accepting each whorl

of conscience as the real

sign of some ineffable wisdom –

spring, source, coil, J

spiraling beneath a moon

brighter than cogitation

tonight... in a jumbled chaos of hay

                  *

stacked (by osmosis-creation)

across twistronic history

into graphene infinity.

Histrionics of pacemaker nation?

No, kid – it is the equilibrium

of a canoe or gyroscope

emanating (spilling hope)

out of the heart of the Imperium

accosting the Seizer of All Good

with adjusted reciprocity

of infinite mercy –

that normative hearth-neighborhood

established on the everlasting rock

of I & Thou, of eye

& dhou (equality

the ratio of the basic J’nah-Ark).

& so the weird Isis-receptacle

of Mirror-I-Am

fuses in twin-rhyme

with Notre Dame; so the spectacle

of male narcissism becomes unviable

at ordinary crowing

of Rhode Island Red – being,

like palm at the end of the mind, able

to hoot like Owl o’Athena

in the autumn night of

history   (the shadow of love

bending over your cradle)   Ephphatha

11.5.19

the crumbling infrastructure of democracy

TURTLE-DOME

On Coney Island of the West

in Lake Waconia

some paraphernalia

of archaeological interest

has surfaced.  Shards, arrowheads

of prehistoric hunters

peek from beachcombers’

pebble-piles, a gravel shed’s

debris (shale chips, random limestone

scrap).  America

was born of such disjecta

membranes.  Origins are alien.

The poem is gratuitous.

Nature is useless too –

a toy made out of blue

marble, flotsam, detritus.

Ocean is grey as morning twilight.

Clouds, frail shells, gull-

feathers.  Breakers roll

the whole toward a more perfect

Union (not quite).  The whole thing

needs but the slightest

nudge to knock the rest

into a nest of lovable, hurtling

good will... like Roger Williams’

Rogues’ Island – Rog’s

Island – paradox

of durable Rose Lighthouse beams

                     *

outlasting slander & contempt

spilled from sharp fork-

tongued human mark-

of-Cain mistrust.  None be exempt,

Pilgrim.  We all fall in the ditch

led by Venetian blinds men.

We have to clamber again

toward mutual forgiveness (each

to each) if we would be free, just

free (happy).  Restore

the crumbling infrastructure

of democracy – liable to rust –

with a sense of gratitude... play!

This is the order of the day

quadratic creatures cry

mounted on the fiery rim of a sky-

born Thunderbird.  Red Wing

was where she landed –

one cosmic six-handed

octahedral diamond bling-a-ling

like a yellow gyroscope   spinning

from the calyx of a rose

aubade   the center glows

with its own light... the winning

smile   an Okie restoration

out of an almond shell

riding her great sea-swell

vast   turtle-dome   Reunion

3.13.17

Iris was a messenger

ROYAL FLUSH

This winter light is innocent,

salted with snow.  Downstream

from Franklin Bridge, steam

lifts by gawky crane, afloat

like nautical giraffe (all finished

now).  Henry Hobo

seeps his moonshine so

far down... devoutly to be wished,

that well-being.  Dante was agile

in the Tuscan sun, seeking

also – her flame leaking

through trumpet vine (light, fragile

grace).  Men search for causes

& neglect their ends.

Ophelia’s betrayal bends

into a sea of stinging roses

where Earth replies with Mendelssohn

& Paradise was felt

before her deck was dealt

(52 weeks of sun – Apollinairean

royal flush).  She seeks you too,

his glinting Beatrice.

Iris on her way

from infinite mercy (blue

rondure, flecked with gold, aswirl

from blazing central star)

brings home to where you are –

in thicket night, a glowing coal.

2.6.17

Primeval Spring

TRACERY

They leave a track across time,

the sea-salt souls – faint

& delicate as painted

tracery of April birch-limb

shoots under a pale blue sky;

massive as meteoric

stone flung from the thick

of heaven (dark as a raven eye).

Unreadable profundum – yet

a trace of what they loved

remains (as in an alcove

names are tapped in cloudy granite

for a terse echo of foregone delight).

Then centripetal gravity

sheds all formality

& mutters from the depth of night

the soul’s original, L-mast

uprightness – earliness;

birchland of quietness,

in boreal Aurora dressed.

Blackstone & Williams, Edward Coke...

such men of merciful Law

& lawful Mercy... & I saw

the matrix of your Liberty – who spoke

with spokes of fire upon her brow.

Psyche, Persephone...

Cana, in Galilee...

primeval Spring, welling forever now.

3.9.16