Dante caught the bug

FORSAKEN MINOTAUR

Somewhere between Venice & Ravenna

(Rimini?) – on an errand

for Lord Guido, friend

& host – Dante caught the bug (malaria?).

All those goat-paths of exile

all those curial corridors

mostly meant chores.

The heart stays just a brief while.

A trembling bird unfurls wing-feathers

in the still woods of March;

hear her voice catch

racing through the final chapters

of winter.  While every ghost of Alighieri

clusters by the Rubicon…

that stream of lethal human

fish-traps (Caesar-veins of slavery).

Henry, his curly churl, would stalk

through the rose cloud

of his quatrain (loud

quarantine) to sit upon his dark

& Rheingold throne (where Caesars reign).

The desolations… how

to begin?  Let’s start now.

Assemble palms to ease real pain.

Clap him in irons, or set him free.

Exiled from sybil-sylph

the rage becomes himself –

forsaken Minotaur of you & me.

3.15.20

plague stalks the King

PIN OAK

When the great cities are covered in grass

& nomads return, to forage & hunt

will they remember President Blunt

who saved them from civilization?  Alas!

President Blunt is anonymous too

his towers demolished

where servants once polished

his golden doorknobs, his superb statue.

What happened?  A corona followed him home

from the golf course, one day…

did his nation betray.  Now

his dogie named Money no longer will roam.

Plague stalks the King, going blind

as of old.  Old Oedipus

(our homo sapiens rebus) must

die for the herd (driven into the blind)

& civilization, our slave-driving hub

must await the next trickster

to merge at the mixer

& shatter the wiles of absurd Beelzebub.

Thus time-gravity, suffused with vertigo

informs our animale compagnevole

how pride goeth before a fall.

The voice you heard (long time ago)

out of the cave, whispering low

was your own ghost, human.

Soft-yodeling Robin, on

pin oak branch (before Cahokia).

3.13.20

guarding the garden

painting by Phoebe Gould (ca. 1992?)

GREEN CORN

Half-moon tonight, like a silver flask

of molten lava.  On this date

George Washington was translate

(1799).  Here’s his life-mask :

fine profile.  Merging in white clay,

like a peaceful moon.

Landlord, when all’s said & done.

Valley Forger, sensing Californ-i-ay

in the green corn of his plantation

garden.  Grace Ravlin

etched that evening scene –

sweet Virgo in Virginia (dawning nation).

The myth rides with the Indian.

Scars limbs of slaves.

Everyone behaves.

A raven-crumb plummets into ocean.

Something’s lugged back, out of clay...

the lunar wilderness.

Innocence, blessedness –

Sophia twirling in the calm of day.

Like young Hal emerging from a golden egg

(his father’s legacy).

Attainted crown, see –

buried bones in Resurrection (Pig’s

Eye) Cemetery.  Across the river,

on Lakota Bluff.

Two swords – it is enough.

Gesthemane is haunted, Indian-giver.

12.14.18