ice-breaking spring

SMOOTH FAN

This simple cup of Red Wing clay –

I thought it might be cracked.

A thick dark zigzag tracked

the rim.  Some dragon gone astray?

Quickening lightning, heavy thunder…

power of ice-breaking spring.

The bursting-forth of everything

in moss-green gold & violet splendor.

Or something darker, circuiting its wheel.

Cold-blooded Serpent, shattering

Anansi’s web (her glittering

fishnet, awash with dew)… to steal,

to kill.  Ouroboros-pelt of power

peeled from its fountain (O

omnipresent sweet communion

threaded like planetary Venus-flower).

The poet’s voice lurks with the refugees.

Exiled flint mirror, casting back

the shadow of one seamless lack

of liberty, justice – life’s guarantees.

It is a tool, a sharpened raven-knife

polished in Voronezh.

That river-town, at edge

of steppe.  O Evening Star, O sister-wife…

The river sways its coppery smooth fan

from forest spring to Okeanos.  One

willowy limb of oaken

mast… grounding the flash where it began.

4.29.20

& Miriam will dance

DRIED SAP

You can sense the salient resistance

of this old Norway pine

like a mast from Lebanon

in each crust of dried sap.  Straightness

of its upright stance.  Simplicity

of sea-green yearning

toward such bright-swelling

moon… half-dollar of Apollo mission (JFK

smile).  Our SUPERMOON, shedding a silver

reminiscence of sunshine

across crepuscular decline.

Rippling resistance.  What we were

reversing what we are (black sun

of trumped-up emperors

gnawing like rodent-raptors

at the heartwood of the law – treason).

The Song of Miriam, the hymn of exodus

out of the red waters

red white & blue tatters

your sister-dove murmured… passed over us.

My penny in the well, my dark reverberant

exile – the king of Israel

Melchizedek his trial

in Memphis, by the muddy Nile (our

hierophant).  Somehow the 4th of Set

rainbows a seventh 4th

& Juliet comes forth

& Miriam will dance (a Jubilee grande fête).

4.7.20

snowflakes on Presidents' Day

SPLINTER-WORD

George III was buried yesterday

200 years ago.

The mad King Bluster-Tyro

pressed New England into granite liberty.

Ceremonies of the royal tomb

reverberate across a nation

scarred by assassination.

Abraham, Jack… William, Jim…

framed by wide wings of Martin

(& Bobby too).  They stand

elongate, with palm frond –

archangels in a nave-cavern

of fluted oaks.  Stone tears well

from republican cenotaphs

when that Ant-Leader laughs

who foments red-black wars (from home

to hell).  So long waves coalesce

magnificent Pharaoh & Osiris

in theopolitical impasse

with alien slave throngs – witness

the fissure of Red Sea by their God!

Tyrant & people, king

& kin… a knotty kenning;

Agnes Martin might trace a grid

to simplify ratios of power & myth.

A single snowflake amid crows

of winter, in the beginning was

the splinter-word.  Her spark was in the pith.

2.17.20

a minuscule Mt. Everest

DEEP BREATH

Woke up this mornin’ with m’mind

set on freedom…

– & why Cahokia, hm?

Why this iron spring, set to unwind

primeval intuition of first peoples?

Perhaps it’s simple logic –

some high One, past magic;

Wakan Tanka, speeding on wind (eagles

& lightning, shattering the oak).

Faint scent of acacia

anchored in Ogygia.

Sophie Lightfoot, before anyone spoke.

So, in Australian wilderness

& Abrahamic villages –

among Socratic sages

in desert Siberian fastnesses –

with recent atheists, even

– who contradict themselves

if they refuse to delve

into this question… (re the unbroken

unity of truth itself).  The wind

goes rushing thru the room

in a gust of life… boom!

While over on Monk’s Mound

one handful of cruddy clay whorls

into centripetal J

beneath the Milky Way.

A mundus sprinkled with corals

                   *

or small hill – minuscule Mt. Everest

tattooed with a J

for Jonah, Juliet, or Ariadne…

signum of Persephone-thesis – quest

to rectify kerygma-proclamation

past this wind of madness

overwhelming Loch Ness

with malicious Minotaur (declares U.N.).

So take a deep breath, cries Roger,

stepping forward, forehead

like a hatchet, hand

held outstretched (some blind codger).

The tyranny of the Man of Sin,

the Man of Lawlessness

seems universal – nonetheless...

like an acorn made of lead, woven

into the ruddy branches of the human-

strung quartet (Beethoven)...

132… 1132… – how Magdalen

comes running from the limestone

sepulcher!  & how Natasha limped

up to the poet’s temple…

felt knees crumple…

when the continuum of limpid

violins prepared a shroud for Love

& Guillaume wept, also

under the droning falsetto

of Villon’s smoky crossword (O vvv)…

2.5.20

quirky rustic poet battles orange Goliath

MEMPHIS FLOOD

It was the winter of our ill-advised

& misconsent.  Embouldered

Julius the Quartered,

housed within his wanton witness,

raged (a savage orange walrus

full of fetid fire) against

that bad news feminist

in flight from Rus (hilarious!) –

while he, with his false staff, embarked

upon a cross rubes’ con

(some matryoshka manikin!)

against Old Ironsides... which worked!

– for temporizing (time... & two times

at a time).  The war was on.

“Where is the server, then?”

barked Julius again, again.  Crimes

filtered down like snow from Kremlin

gremlins.  Stark treason,

trickling out its own raison

d’état, took aim at Mississippian

Columbia.  One fiery wheat grain

in her heart – one star-

quintessence of her

pyramid – opened its eye again;

the child she harbored in her arms

across the Memphis flood

cried – “Human brotherhood!”

– & smiled.  Light pierced the storms.

1.25.20

a woman in a hammock

DROWSY SONG

The earth waits, like the source of the Nile

on the periphery of the capital.

Behind its porphyry wall

princes perform their tragedy of control.

The earth sleeps, like a woman in a hammock

dreaming of a happy home.

Crowds gathered in the New Rome

to print their great seal on a marble rock.

The Minotaur strode back and forth

sleepless as a pumpkin seed –

his labyrinth a putrid gourd

of fireworks orange (Julius the 4th).

He fought the dragons in his nightmare sea;

he clutched the basket of his swollen

head; his world was stolen

from a woman’s arms – bound to tyranny.

Hobo droned his drowsy song in unison.

The earth still turned for him.

Saturn & Venus, in their stream

of light, grew calm.  Night was for everyone.

The enormous clay wheel spun her sarabande.

The great ship shrank into the distance.

A tiny needle in its compass dance –

the apple of the capital (in Hobo’s hand).

Her shadow was a cloud cast on the evening sky,

a handful of benevolence.

A mystery of loving Providence

instilled in hearts by art, with eyes from Aye.

1.18.20

on the 3rd of July

DREAM-WORK

On the 3rd of July, looking out of this

rain-soaked gazebo into

the yard, I’d like you,

cameradi, to digest my curious

thesis.  Because every moment is a choice

on an axle of light and dark,

& who knows?  Some dream-work

might lead a soul to Paradise.

Out of the Iron Age of infantile aggression

where malign honchos rule

by gun; out of the school

of bully shocks & clinical repression

locked tight by rapacity & fraud;

out of the surly tank parade

Czar Minotaur has made

his own amazement... into the wide

milk-meadows of a Golden Age.

But you have to recognize –

these lightning-bug sparklers

kids wave over mosquito grass image

some more graceful & inexplicable

coherence.  Someone breathing

nearby, in your ear.  A thing

beyond abstraction... elementary table

of an I AM dream-cosmos.  Someone – 

Brother?  Sister?  Mary?

– calling you by name.  See?

Here.  Hearth-dance of Daniel.  Be reborn.

7.3.19

no one will judge it

Bang Hai Ja, Naissance de la Lumiere, 2015 (part of a stained-glass project for Notre Dame de Paris)

BIRTH-SIGH

Light-waves pulse from primordial Ocean State

from a weightless blazing stone

fallen to our temperate zone

from heaven – & no one will judge it

murmured Joseph, ye blessed stem;

the Word’s articulation

is well-water’s spoken

wheel (from Nowhereland to Bethlehem).

Our history, a contentious dream

scrolled on Möbius tape

pivots its bleak landscape

panorama on a polestar theme :

the plummet-stone, a river-pilot’s guide.

Her name is Providence.

She is each local habitation’s

hopeful capital – ghost by your side;

she is the sister-dove of Mandelstam,

rock-dove of gay Stevens;

she is the Jonah – Berryman’s

& Crane’s last lifesaver (she says I AM).

I see the shadow of gray wings of stone

stretch like a whisper now

from East to West, Glasgow

to Golden Gate; lifting each broken bone

from Frisco shore to some imperishable joy

like Hummingbird lancing the curse

& labyrinth of Homo Tyrannos

with one birth-sigh... her FIAT LUX... that Day.

6.15.19

I'm only thinking of you

SIMPLE MUTTER

Snow-canyons decorate the streets

of staid Minneapolis;

sparkling crystals

coagulate in mountains, glacier sheets.

Ripe grain of whole, deep faith,

murmured epileptic

Osip – stamping his shtick

of shaman-Pushkinite (limpid wraith).

Tiny hexagons of Siberian ice.

The glowing eyes of thief-

wolves, killing for life.

Vast evanescent Paradise

in an infinite complexity

of human innocence

destroyed by violence –

Patmos St.-Vitus peripety

of mangled lambs.  I’m only

thinking of you, dear

spark (unknown Shakespeare

pebble-soldier... yearning mystery).

Gemstones of civilization glitter

through the drab darkness.

You are only weakness

squeezed into clay – a simple mutter,

oscillating like a reddish agate

in a muddy kid’s palm

(copper reunion-psalm).

Jamie discovered it – I won’t forget.

2.24.19

Meditation on a funeral

HONOR GUARD

Soft muted early winter light

outside the National

Cathedral.  Great whorl

of reds & blues, at dazzling height

O rose window, still glowing bright.

The honor guard (Marines,

Army, Navy) forms lines

like intricate toy soldiers (boy’s delight) –

maneuvering, in wonderful coordination

powerful precision

beneath the boom of cannon,

brass band’s hopeful invocation.

The dignitaries have assembled.

Paired front aisles unveil

in allegorical detail

old icons of authority (kings trembled

once, when they beheld such signs 

of a succession crisis).

On the right, witness

the mourning son & heir – thin lines

of tears streak from his hawk’s eye,

flank his aquiline profile,

his anxious beak.  Meanwhile,

on his left, an accidental guy –

the crown-usurper (with a face

like a disgruntled frog).

Even Sully the dog

got more headlines than such disgrace,

the preacher said (speaking in tongues).

Haunted, defunct princes,

princesses acquiesce...

the fatal, dominant thug belongs

                 *

to us.  Chief executive,

or executioner?

Headsman (for our

gentler Republic)?  How can we live

in a democracy, ruled by despot?

We cannot.  Our choice

is clear, as once we faced

when Lincoln gave it voice – the violet

is trodden underfoot by hate.

What’s at the root

of all our discontent?

Man’s thirst for domination, set

in place since his umbilical was cut;

rage at the shrinking womb.

Like Jonah’s boat-turned-tomb

of alien Leviathan, the doors of Night

close, flooding, overhead... the child’s

unconscious & primordial

nightmare (abyssal

mystery).  Note each tyrant’s wild

psycho-disgust... the fluttering hands,

the flickering deceit

– detached from all sweet

reconciliations, lawful bonds.

The flag-draped casket of the patriarch

squares with the glowing rose

window.  Still hearth glows,

somehow – Wisdom’s scintillating ark.

12.6.18

from light snow-years

COPPER RING

Snow tumbles into Minneapolis.

Twin Cities.  Meanwhile

the InSight capsule

settles onto Mars – whose promise

is to probe beneath the surface,

appraise the molten core

of our God of War

(riddle of the Minotaur).  Space

beckons insight down path P

toward planet X –

our dream of PAX

curled inside violence (a middle C

unrolling from the Lake of Galilee).

O Beast from Ocean,

dread Leviathan –

a void between two notes... blank lee

of the abyss!  The infant’s misery –

missing her heartbeat

once, with her complete

Oneness... whorled... into infinity?

Where Martian drones attack Queen Bea

(just being Bea, around

a crater in the Netherlands)

by orders of omnipotent Pharaoh

whose eye is like a palindrome

(kayak in garage)

from old (Ionic age)

Emordnilap – our catenary home

                   *

a long-suspended violet bloom

breathes hope, & yearning

for some answering

anemone (your cypripedium

reginae).  Orange-azure M-bridge

for an owlman... almond

OMO... woman-bond

of wisdom... dancing G-bride...

light between J-pillars, Okean-trees!

Out of the twomb

you spiraling come,

@tlantis – Jewel of July, high C of seas!

A copper ring from Palestine

incised with simple krater

& the name, PILATE

recalls the one whose sign

for “heart” breathes from the swing

of time (your twin, Julie).

Rose, rowing from the key

called PAX, which passeth understanding –

yet from each ordinary tent

of refugees, each family,

once forced to flee

from the mad king (sad infant

Minotaur), will come to bear

a normal world again –

out of the dream of man

& woman (breezes flowering the air).

12.1.18

down by the River Road

Mpls. Star-Tribune, spring 1957

ALTER EGO

Hobo, out there in the wind & the rain

like a shattered King Lear.

An old-fashioned father.

Harmonica squeals – like brakes on a train.

Looks up toward the ridge, where Henry

mimes King of the Oak.

The Knot-King (royal joke).

Spidery threads cross buffoonery

with tacky mute muttering...

clay Eye-in-Hand

from Coatlicue-land.

Anne Boleyn territory (stuttering

terror).  He’s your 8th alter ego

this month, moony Earth –

been angry since birth.

Tsk, tsk.  Some boor’s addled Eddie, yo.

Divided-dividing, fibrillated

fibber... earthquake

salaud in pancake

make-up.  Henry?  Must be related.

Brothers, battling in his head

since Cain was able to kill –

equilibrium still

left out of the equation, love.  Sad!

There’s a buried man on the other side,

sire (near Pig’s Eye).  Emerald

green, her leaves unfold.

Big Muddy catfish will abide.

11.17.18

unbreakable chords

HUMAN ECHO

Your nostalgia for the aristocracy

of childhood, Vladimir,

I understand.  So here :

infantile tyrants bear it away

in sappy cerements of innocence.

Galla & her golden boy

& their brief beehive day

drowse in Ravenna, under silence

of mosaic stars; Dante too

sleeps there, still far

from his Firenze mère –

the milky galaxy of midnight blue,

his babble-realm of splendor-joy.

A fluent melody

pours endlessly

from thine ineffable benevolence, Blue J;

a spiral at the cave entrance,

an everlasting sign

of all Creation

(ceaseless, calm, majestic dance).

Those unbreakable chords of Mendelssohn

at the end of the trolley line;

the sound of the violin

lesson, the neighborhood of children...

& the shadow of the Thunderbird

in the immense oak tree

the dark green sanctuary

of Morning Star   dolphin-shepherd

                     *

out of deep-twined memory

by the cistern heard

rose-enfolded Word

out of Ocean’s fond   Jonah-infinity

Instinctive fright becomes aggression,

dominance abets revenge;

since long before Stonehenge

each weak scapegoat endures oppression

& the tantrum of the infant

replicated by depression

each political occasion

filters through both mob & tyrant.

But it shall not be so with thee.

I have no wrath, the Ghost

murmurs; I am the Most

High Heartbeat, mild Invisibility –

indivisible reply

out of the crystalline

& quintessential Union

at the source of Earth & Sky.

I am your human echo, come to be

among you, in my realm

of love, mercy, wisdom –

I am the Nazir, chanting out of Galilee.

& then I saw her, Jonah-Shadow –

wings extending over all

of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Ghost-heart we feel, ghost-bird we know.

7.18.18

stone for bread, bread for stone

ANCIENT DATE

The soupy heat slouches toward

July.  Flesh sags &

drips, we’re breathing und-

erwater.  Jonah’s gone overboard.

A billion fins of fans rotate,

create more heat.  Hobo

lies flat under a willow.

He daydreams of an ancient date

by Highland Water Tower; the whole town

spread before them, just

beyond the graveyard.  Lost

her name somewhere.  Don’t drown

me in false memories, he begs.

Canova’s statue (broken)

of George Washington

writes its own ave over his crossed legs.

Farewell, Columbia.  Guard well

her statue in the harbor.

Beggar not they neighbor.

Muzzle Nero, tripping up from hell.

That shimmering seine, the veil of Isis

shrouds the face of Henry’s

Clover.  Out of bleakness

of the grave, young spring may rise;

beyond the azure of the Golden Gate

one facet of euphoria –

one artophoria

of stone – revives... brings light to fate.

6.29.18

Philadephia harbor

SHADE TREE

Stewart’s old print of Philadelphia harbor

(1821).  The great shade tree

by the shore, so peacefully

imposing.  What’s America for?

The benign bonheur, hovering over

our intricate pursuits

of same.  The one who loots

forcefields of dominance, mon frère,

may never find this canopy

of feathery leaf-

grace, hopeful belief...

for we the people brook no satrapy –

relentless justice of the golden rule

the frame of human dignity;

law’s equilibrium of equity

our guarantee of commonweal.

My own boat pilots back to Mendelssohn

so slowly, through such vast

flat riverlands.  Her mast

a pine tree split from almond Someone –

cloudy shadow of a smile (O shady oak).

Your heavy clay, Coatlicue –

the chilly violence you

still portray – fired to a silver spoke

as fine as spiderweb, becomes a sign.

Your limestone epitaph –

a serpentine & fractal staff

fractured for us, broken for bread & wine.

5.17.18