your fluent kingdom

NEW LESSON

Old river the color of rusted iron

you beckon me back before

shell-shocked histoire

humaine (long nightmare drill).  When

we were as flint people in limestone

hideaways, under

the glare of Viper-Vulture

in his ice-eyrie.  The repetition

of trauma exudes a pearl-shell

palimpsest (le Roi

est mort, vive le Roi) –

one slight Gennesaret wave-swell

is laved to Pietà massif, circled by Rome,

lapped by typhoons (of bursting

tears).  We are thirsting,

River, for that fluent kingdom

where Ebionite & Nazarene,

snake-handler & Sioux

shaman – every blue

highway mutt, sadsack has-been –

every humiliated woman, each

weakling sissy-boy

undone by bully

chants of dominance – might teach

a new lesson.  How once that marble

lifted into cloud...

one dove-grey noeud

vitale (breathing AMOR into dead fable).

7.19.16 

Dreamsong heads downstream

FRAIL SKY

The sheep in the mosaic, in Ravenna.

Ravens in the scroll,

in the temple (Emanu-el,

off Morris Ave).  & in Siena,

Lady Pax, lolling like Jenna

on the couch, beside

Justitia.  Wide

open, now, your Burchfield scena –

wind, grassland, heartache.

What brung them blues, O shy

bird bro?  Frail sky

disintegrates in Birdy’s eye, beak

cradling bright penguin soot of Man.

Handing his crozier

gently to its heir

a sheepish Father Also-Ran

smiles, mild as any lambkin

Pontifox.  Herder-

gypsies circle ferder

into desert places.  Julius Putin

frescoes chimp dominion, over

stalag mites hiked to hell –

old human story (well,

there goes the antelope).  Clover

for meadows, cottonwood for bison...

Amaranth? – or pick

your poison, Hobo Dick.

I’m rippling a dreamsonge Union.

2.29.16

wedding ring-structure

FINGER-DAB

These sibylline papyrus leaves,

so many shades of raven-

ink, scribe-feathered Ocean

etched with moony mesmer-waves...

The earth’s a musty limestone book

Psyche a palimpsest

charting gilt-emerald quest

through eerie oreille (slant rook

to woody isle, Macbête) – a flickering

archaic pain-matière

or wedding ring-structure

spring Geraldine Fitzgerald flung

for blue-eyed boys & one grey heir.

The old man frets in dust

& stone; his ferryman

(Rouget Blackstone) fins through the air

from northern Iowa to Eire;

the turtledove they seek

has grown so pigeon-meek

her flutings barely skim the lyre-

string.  Once in Calabria

flint-hermit Joachim

pictured a raptor-flame

plummet through time (vera-

mente Kiev-pointing).  Gentle

Columbia, please ravel up

my rusty finger-dab...

lips’ labyrinth, rose-granite mantle.

2.25.16