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

beam against klepto-autocracy

HERMETIC EPISODE

A little portable communion box,

bedizened with a coral reef

of gems (wheatsheaf

engraved on its acacia locks).

Gray pebble – miniaturized

more than a thousandfold

from that rock stronghold

whence it rolled (Paradise

Mountain, milky Jerusalem).

Or tiny grain of wheat

sifted to ground (infant

metropolis), from off the hem

of starry Virgo, Lady Liberty.

Her gown of purple (streaked

with gold) rustled... & sparked

such rays of justice & mercy

that the fickle wind of red & blue

(pushing our pennants back

& forth) fell slack – &

the Janus-faced Minotaur (just you

& I) curled back into his golden urn

within his clammy cave,

& promised to behave;

the strong man was tied up again

with his own silver spiderweb,

& dropped into the Seine –

one convoluted sign

of violence, reduced to tiny nub

                    *

of seedy violet.  Her sea-green eyes

gaze from the bottomland

of human clay, the river-sand

of human time; she is Persephone’s

Corn Mother, she is Cathedral Mary –

with her Sophia-torch held high,

armed with stone tabulae

of wisdom & knowledge, she will be

the restoration of democracy

rooted in human sovereignty;

from calm civil society

bring judgement on kleptocracy

with care for that bright seamless web

of mutuality her Memphis prince

proclaimed, magnanimous –

with love beaming from Mount Horeb

& intergalactic Galilee (a waterfall

of Washingtons... a rainbow

prism of Jerusalems).  So

the cartouche at the foot of soulful

Garfield – on the brow of mournful

Abraham – in the eye

of emerald JFK –

gleams with this glancing parallel :

off the prow of the Ark of Covenant

& the beam of Old Ironsides

shines the light nothing hides –

Beatrice’s look (Thunderbird’s lieutenant).

    1.23.20

only a sketch : Jozef Czapski

JOZEF CZAPSKI

Only a sketch, a drawing, a cartoon.

Scrawny shivering prisoner

reading a book (Siberia).

This upright Pole, from a dead platoon

survived, somehow (so tall, so

innocent).  Budding artist

from Paris, now of Tashkent –

following Proust into gulag, ghetto.

Somehow.  Like mast on frigate.

Colors mime sky...

Poland, we must die.

Yet he shows up (seraph, implicate).

Survives.  Grows old in Paris,

having kept his conscience

into Moscow (blessed

nonsense... bunks his paradise).

Grace is the sign of something human,

intelligence the trace

of civilization, Falcon-Ace

(O hoary Horus of the hunted men).

Isis (in West Branch) is your mother,

Belgium’s deep divide

the humdrum Hoover prelude

to a splenetic Grant Wood war –

Virgo, we know not who we are.

Speak of the grain of wheat,

Persephone.  Complete

your D.C. scan (Henry’s North Star).

3.3.19

from Jozef Czapski, Inhuman Land : Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 (NYRB, 2018)

all across Minneapolis

RABBI-PATH

All across Minneapolis

the poet’s left evidence

like tracks under a fence

– long fellow’s footprints –

Nana Bozo the Clown, or

Hiawatha in slippers

(snowshoes, Alberta

clippers).  Fella came before,

might hop here again (ghost

dance, dream song).

Sunday stretched so long.

He was with us in the Lammas-host

like lambchild in the field,

a white cloud drifting

bluegrass... otskèn:rha, sifting

right from wrong (at Lammas-tide).

Bozo Lambrogio breaks up

the woolly categories

of our feral cats – Caesar’s

imbroglios, lions of Judah, Egyptian

pups... will skip the rabbi-path

out of the lake of wrath

back into Nazareth

by August 1st (we’ll do the math

later).  Yolk-black Fabergé cracks

in the snow... imperial

theocracies unreel; almond

Vierge Ouvrante gives berth.  Relax.

2.19.19

beamed into a barn corner

LEVEL PLAIN

When all the structures are dismantled,

the fabulous bright makings

woven by spider-kings

undone, what remains untold?

In Mendelssohn, I handed a dandelion

through the wooden fence

to golden Heidi, once –

old flame of infancy, first Valentine.

Her mop of hair colored like wheat

framing chaste happiness –

Gumilev’s compass,

calm charity for all (transparent,

sweet).  The shadow of the martyrs

like myrtle in the graveyard

darkens, green.  The bard

of America recalls through tears

the gentle captains taken from us

like matryoshka dolls –

god-like mortals

molting in dilapidated silos

like shimmering snowfields of wheat-

crystals.  So their presence

in aromatic silence

weights like ballast of a sea-casket

each holiday – all history

compacted in the oval

trace of one primeval

prophet’s kiss.  O mystery

                *

of your mandorla – crumbling wall!

Like Jonah from the sea

come whispering to me –

dark almond, ministering honey-gall!

Your tiny grain of wheat must die

in the heart of Everywoman,

Everyman... becoming stone;

stone reddened in Rhode Island eye

not purchased by price nor money

but only by love.

So that Liberty-dove

became Columbia, for buried Henry –

Astraea beamed into a barn corner

& Virgo spread her sheaf

of compassionate relief

in a sparkling surf of harvest air.

So your soaring icon in a mandala

hovers over Ravenna;

so Dante’s antenna

transmits in spectral panorama

the rainbow’s interlocking rings

framing that child-king

set upon humbling

all earthly dominion – til everything’s

remolded to a level plain

or playing-field; clay

children romp all day

within your carpentry’s domain.

2.14.19

Shadrack kicks a crust in Voronezh

WOUND SPRING

Weather here in Minnehahapolis

& St. Paul shudders

through ice.  The rudder’s

frozen to the keel – Athena’s

buzzing through chattering teeth.

Black Sea, Black Sea!  Black

ice.  My friend Shadrack

kicks a crust in Voronezh, beneath

malignant stares of a furnished dome;

he will never budge from that line

pitched on his builder’s fine

honey-gold level-eyed home.

Henry’s poem stays put, doesn’t move.

Like translucent ice cube.

Reflecting flickering rube

puzzles along thread-kelson of love.

The singing keel become great little owl

snug in her oak-bole hole

hoots a banderole

along limb lettered like Hebrew scroll

on papyrus barge – some hieroglyph

for hippogriff (abominable

snowman?) – soon to amble

from his polar desert (living stiff);

the high home of the North Pole poem

takes a bead through mica

on that grain of Spica-

wheat... wound spring from vernal tomb.

2.8.19