like a Balinese cock-fight

FRISCO CROSSROAD

Poets’ business, like a ring

round a Bali cock-fight –

goodbye to all that.

Shake your kaleidoscope thing,

ping your kalimba – your bricolage

a grubby grab-bag

(seven pounds of brag

& rage, mixed up with garbage).

Meanwhile that flesh-tone bridge

(crossing my Mississippi

song-&-dance) will be

morphing some spider’s double-edge

Venn diagram – a stick figure

at hobo train junction

where sunny Everyman

remembers split Coatlicue.

Rumors of an impasse, whispered

through a chain-link fence.

Barbed lozenge of insistence

scarring Rome, Jerusalem... the word

made fishy (west of Galilee,

east of Athens, Georgia)

as a picnic smorgasbord

laid out beneath barren oak tree.

That smell gets into everything.

Like something baked

a week in a canal – like

messy string theories, untangling

                  *

a knotty plot of pots & pans, banging

the human family

to kingdom come (really?)

from seedy tribes to Nero’s hanging

gardens.  Shady Rome, where every

cosmic veil is torn –

& a black rock is borne

upon recalcitrant shoulders of slavery

into the center of a black hole’s

starry honeycomb.

What ass bears the whole

sum?  What shoe of prophet’s mule?

Maybe an offshoot of Coatlicue

wearing a flimsy linen

Joseph-coat.  A woman,

patient Pietà... La Pia, Psyche...

Ariadne or Arachne, raveling

path P... that rugged,

ragged Francine – plugged

at Frisco crossroad – traveling

freight.  Sometimes you meet a person

heavier than time & space.

Rough wind carves well-faces

lined with laughter, hope... pain...

She steps forth from black stone –

stirring bears in her arms,

palming clay amid storms

of adamant love (makar-maid, shown).

10.4.17

flesh-tone bridge

MAZY CHARTER

The wistful twirling of a yellow leaf

falling from a book of leaves

by the big river.  Waves

of leaves, infinite beyond belief

slanting down through a universe

beyond fall’s azure,

through its perfect mirror

of ineffable air.  The woodpecker’s

not waxwing, but a twin-bird –

matching Thunderbird

like third wing, or word

thing – in Red Wing, we’ve heard.

& they’ve buffed the naked concrete

of the Franklin Bridge

to warm flesh-tone (Wedge

whistling to Jay : almost complete,

they say).  Like hands arching across

the tingling serpent below

someone signals so –

right, all right.  The frail cosmos

is built of moss & dogwood leaves;

made like a dream-song

on a thread so long

from inner lining of young Osip-sleeves.

Hid in a nightfall of Apollon-wrath.

The child-heart trembles

when the chief dissembles –

ice winking in the barrel underneath

                   *

encompassing a land in shambles,

wasted by Behemoth

& Metheboss (cloth-

of-gold twin skimlords, crashing cymbals).

El-Moloch asked for the heart of your son.

For your son the king,

the bloom of everything –

Aztec football in place of the sun.

Apotropaic sign or mirror-pharmakon,

the murmured word of love

becomes a catcher’s glove –

inside-out Osip net (for rescuing someone).

You search the scryptics, yet you

do not come to Me.

Gold almond cider, see?

Where Mendelssohn defeats Deep Blue.

She’s by your side, a kelson, smiling,

spinnaker through gray wall

of seamless cloud – whale

of light fog, swallowing Jonah – a ring

of stone, becoming breathing feathers

for a child of Ocean River,

borne downstream from Neva-

Neva-Heavenland (all-planetary weathers).

Her green eye walks through doors, through gates.

That crossroad in the mirror

overwhelms birth-terror –

seals mazy charter (Liberty checkmates).

9.28.17

at the local cinema

GREEN MOUND

I met the surviving Saarinen,

Eric (from California)

at the local cinema,

showing his film about those Finns –

Eero, Eliel – who competed

to complete a monument

at navel of a continent.

Congratulations E. Saarinen, stated

the telegram.  Nobody knew

which one had won...

uniting father & son

in gratifying mystery.  Eric, too –

the latecomer, the odd man out.

Hurt psyche of a boy

forsaken for his father’s toy,

dream, rest.  Took roundabout

lifetime to ravel up & down

that furious steel arc.

Papa went into the dark

before the triumph of its dawn

upsoaring vault over St. Louis;

yet the late film follows the

mammal-forms – waves, hollows –

Eero spread across that Fifties

U.S. gridscape, breathing curves

& ribs so delicately

bearing gravity

they lift the heart out of its grooves

                  *

toward self-transcending levity –

high tensile alcoves

where swirly flocks of doves

shape octave-looping solidarity –

a wider vista of the whole

concordant cosmic good –

a brother & sisterhood

of green, rose red & lilac soul.

Her intricate diamond quipu knot

rays out in six directions.

An acorn salience,

an Oklahoma holm-oak plot.

An atom from a honey-bole.

A seed rooted in sky.

(Suzuki harmony

sounds deep Hiroshima bell-toll.)

Wayfaring Eric, leftover grandson

remembers his abandoned

mother, at the end

of the reel.  Displaced... the unknown

child.  Sculptor of turtleshell

glide-shelters... curling

strands of hair, unfurling

chords of clay (who softly swells

a lightweight matrix).  Tender tower

of color, glowing through

the fading film of you

& me... green mound, light-freckled bower.

9.27.17

the river is a strong brown god

AZTEC ALPHABET

The brazen serpent of the Mississippi

runs through my veins,

cantinnas Hobo (in vain).

How to tell my own (con version) story?

The antic disposition of these shelves

of incunabulae (obscure

revoluminous curious lore)

ripples off Norse keels – revolves

around my cranium (son of

McCain I am) – the worm

a canker, iced like berm

at Sutton Hoo (& strong as

love).  He will lift himself up

into his father’s affection

(this child of deflection)

at last, & be first in the stirrup

at the gates of his sly enemies –

he will be the son

who twists there (frozen

image of abjection) underneath greed-

seas of rifle-toting angels

(Cuzco school).  Spleen

of Hamlet, by the bedroom

screen – cunning de Kooning angles –

that Master of Gray, backed in a corner

of Ravenna – or raving

Coatlicue, stoning

the Consul in the dog-ravine (here,

                  *

Fido)... someone lurks in a mirror

with double doves (tin-

whistle Hobo-child of sin).

Abandona-donna’s abbatoir?

Some Aztec alphabête of yesteryear?

Hazel the moth-goddess

flits into brown recess

of brown recluse... (the spider’s... her).

The sacrifice of sacrifices –

hunters’ offering,

a shiny golden ring –

is like this image from ice-fisher’s

thing (icon of everything);

is like this light bread

Moses left for dead,

or Aaron molded into iron Sing-Sing –

a memory of Psyche-crimes

no one can heal,

nor break the lead seal

from the dark backyard (abysmal

time) until the flutter of a wing

like a mind from the sea

Hobo’s thirsty misery

slakes   or forsakes   a palm, circling

through the gray salt latitudes

like blistered sword

blessing   like sunshade

père-sol   ultramarine   (beatitudes)

9.25.17

equality knocks

FLIGHT-PATH

The heavy freight cars clinky-clunk

across the iron bridge.

The fright none can abridge,

tribes’ crimes, no matter how deep-sunk

beneath Big Muddy waters of oblivion...

a heap of birds, still footloose,

shoeless (moccasins,

not lady-slips) – each alien citizen

from Cloud Man Village (in mirrors

near Mirror Lakes).  The DNA

gets even with Edina,

Adam – eidolons of Mendelssohn longeurs

gone wilder now, gone weedy, native.

Your nimble paeans, flying

yeast to west, are tying

knots of soul pain into silos – jive

dives backwards (ortus/porta) –

Heidi skips Handel

by hand – O almond

rod of generations!  Your vice-versa

treads of controversy flipper

the dial upon a human

(orant) golden mean.

Gaunt sundance of elderberry skipper

deep within the pilot-whale

of Jealousy – hurt pride

taken for cane-ride

through hell-hole, pole to pole

                 *

until you turn a new triangle –

in Bermuda, Berkeley –

by the Western Sea,

where Empire meets the salty shingle.

Reverse the langish!  Scrape the jam

off the doors!  Behold

What-th’Dicken’s-Son would fold

into an origami florilegium!

Cloud Man Village lasted one decade

in Minneapolis, where we

ten-thousand-century

people have planted roots – jewelweed

4th of July parade, indeed!

– a Black Elk hexagon

or hazel moth, gone

in the wrinkle of a wavy diamond.

Systole, diastole... orange arcs

repeat heartbeats,

where azure shelters fleets

of sails... flight-path of firefly sparks.

In Cloud Man Village, where the theft

& violence are felt,

are lifted with a grain of salt

to taste the bread of silo pain – deft

metamorphosis of Yahweh wrath

to steady charity –

calm spun-gold chariot,

cedar Melchizedek love-bath.

9.22.17

Hobo's New Year Address

VENETIAN GALLEYS

The gentle adagio of these

yellow butternut leaves

like Venetian galleys

cantering down into the grass.

The slim ribs & spine of each

a gilded replica

of that emerald armada

still tethered to its summer beech.

Prophetic microcosm, georgic

farewell speech.  The poem

wavers down to home

so... some big moody Amerique

or bottomland Berryman mound.

Hobo will mutter her.

He misses her forever

sunk by fratricidal wound.

We cannot remain free unless

we recognize each other

in ourselves, bro – so your

Uncle George cries in the wilderness.

Hobo would touch the iron swing,

its rust-corroded spring,

chi-rho, chi-rho.  Wing,

Raven, down to Mexico – sing

autumn’s monitory mirror.

Minotaur must turn anew.

Like Rosh Hashanah, you

shall too.  O Planet, hear.

9.21.17

just beyond my window

John Gould (U.S. Navy) with root beer, Minneapolis, ca. 1946

DEEP BREATH

September crickets in the darkness

just beyond my window

harping seasonal sorrow

elegize their summer quickness.

Cassini in her pure remoteness

plunges through the rings

of Saturn.  Airy things

(that fiery opera house in Venice,

flammatory lance of Beatrice)

coalesce toward autumn,

build a nest of flame

for rangy Thunderbird (eagle-Bice).

& is it only Ouroboros?

Boreas, recycling?

The ancient iron swing

Granddad assembled (90 years

ago) still creaks its aching 2-

note plaint (see-saw,

curse-us)... as though

the Iron Age were never through.

Someone must bear it all (above

rusty Titanic murk).

My father squared his cirque

on his last day.  His eye on Love,

one grip in mine, his other hand

traced a clear circle

over that whirl-debacle

with one thin finger... with one bound

                  *

beating the bounds of that vast realm

where Jesus & Black Elk

go roamin’ (with Melchizedek).

& if a 6 turn out to be 9... at the helm

6-wingèd seraphim feather the font

of Holy Wisdom.  Little well

of do-well... purling from hell

of trompe-desire, of chaine-ressentiment;

Alighieri’s checkmated yearning

tree-hum-yuled to heart’s

lightness... O sullen art’s

deep-harrowed aim – O desperate learning!

When men fall into Minotaur’s embrace

& Ariadne’s thread

snaps at the nail-head

one slight Rabbi-hair, O Falcon-Ace

might lift you from the corral waste

into fellowship

of Primavera soul-skip;

where lovely Manto-lips taste

intelligible everlasting bliss –

a porpoise laughs at death

& with one deep breath

huffs cobwebs off God’s gold telos :

that gardener of souls at dawn

lifting a toiling Job-

of-all-work by his nob...

Rachel out-sailing Ahab... Queequeg’s fin.

9.14.17

human with human, clay with clay

Bde Maka Ska, 9.1.17

GREEK GALLEY

Now as high summer light ripens

for departure, I remember

how the slight high-wire figure

teetered with tinker shuffle – he bends

his magnetic pole like a long-legged

water-spider, concentrating,

pursuing path P (humming

under his breath) – like a ragged

American robin yodeling, like Francis

the mule on his slight dogwood

perch – so Mayflower would

not sink to sea-floor, so helpless

crowds not tumble from twin towers

to be men not destroyers

his mind moves with those powers

preternatural, avian – showers

of coruscate sparks   from Night Sea

mind   of Okean-reality

heart of   gratitude-mentality

a rustic Thanksgiving   Massasoit will see

to it   along with Black Elk   &

that woodpecker   Thunderbird

a red-streak   flute-word

seeking the common factor   grain

of sand   salt   the personal touch

her hand moves   back & forth

her footsteps   north, south

with his   east, west   in a torch-

                  *

song dream   a melody of Sabbath

silence   invisible liberty

simplicity of   soul poverty

& touch of palm   Grace   have no wrath

So you enter the fiery mind-hearth

of heart-mine   the flame

that never dies   who came

from Sky-Whale   to the earth

Jonah   turtledove   blinding Phoenix

so that disconsolate disunion

of father & daughter be undone

with mother & son   a catenary

parallax   twin for twin   tower

for gate   dark green Atlantic

azure-tangerine Pacific

primavera robin   in woodpecker bower

raven & bluejay & eagle   looking on

all these old threads   a nest

or safety net (good, better, best)

for wounded souls   yearning for dawn

So take firm hold   like little Philippe

the water-spider’s   shaking   handlebar

& skip   like Juliet   there

on the sandy shore   where Okean-Ship

embarks for a feast   of reconciliation

human with human   clay

with clay   like a Greek galley

with smiling eye   aye-aye   cosmopolitan

9.11.17

What cheer, Netop?

WESTERN STAR

Words gather round you, little tree

of Providence – little pine

of memory, blue-green

as the sea.  An Itasca task for me,

to reckon the source of poetry –

freshwater Ocean State

from a spring so shy, so late!

– in the heart of Hobo’s Mississippi.

Like a calm symmetry between

twin Mirror Lakes... maize

mazes, where she stakes

me down (tied at the bow to green

apple root)... under the granite gate

at Prospect Terrace – Roger’s

benevolent dream-sponge,

soaking up querulous fear & hate

& wringing them out upon a font

of Narragansett friendship.

What cheer, Netop?

hails the raven-tested testament

of human fellowship – fond canoe

of rational amphibian,

this turtledove Leviathan

who swallows all to bear Jonah anew.

Buoyant almond of my soul... you are

that copper-penny Liberty

harboring everyone for free –

between Caesar & God, one Western Star.

9.8.17

A few flords after long filence

O splendiferous butternut

SALT-CUBE

September butternuts bombard the ground,

soft lime-green globes a-burst

with rich black compost-

muck.  By genealogy of sound

they must descend from Milky Way

on high; from some black hole

of fiery Moloch-El

shifting the gravitational display

plummeting like an otfe-stone

out of St. Peter’s burg

to vertiginous epilogue

(Akhmatova-agate, or Pushkin-

bone).  Sealed with a raven-knife

tattoo, absinthe still-life –

l’Affaire Dove-Sister-Wife,

mired in a faro-game of civil strife.

Her smile’s invisible as air.

Now Phoenix is on fire

& flooded Lone Star Empire

waits for Milly the Kid to appear;

up here in Minneapolis, Frank Gehry’s

fishtail art museum

harbors Hartley’s muse.  Glum

Crane surfacing as white shark – hairy

situation! & out the window, there’s

Berryman’s burnt span –

marooned sad son of Man

abridged to riveted soul-tears.

                   *

Some autumn in King Lear, mayhap

(John’s doggèd copy?)

may Heav’n shed mild mercy-

milk through these blind spokes, old Pap.

It’s waiting for you, Cain, McCain –

open your magnanimity

to gratitude!  See

to the superflux...  She comes again

light-feathered through your heart –

Cordelia, Columbia;

unscrolls the epigraphia

footnote on warped LP (dappled 8-part

harmony) – spectrum of a weedy

Jonah-flag.  Within gray

scales, smoke-signals (hey

ey yo) her hand waves complimentary

colors – black earth, jungle green

& orange flaring yellow-

gold (passage to indigo);

red, white & cinder (ultramarine)

complete the ashen diamond

salt-cube of Manitou

(that Hiawatha 1-3-2) –

whose handspin sets a table ronde

for Pilgrim as for Wampanoag

& etches mene mene tekel

onto Minotaur’s tough Jekyll-

hide (only a promise, Nadia-Mag).

9.7.17

i.m. Don Peppino Diana

SEA-SALTS

Late summer by the Mississippi

yields an agon by the Po.

Fording his Rubicon, Hobo

hunkers by crossroad (at path P).

The stubborn soul, a milky diamond

in the murk, seasons a world

of wounds with salt – hurled

Don Peppino to the ground,

who fell as lightly as a moth wing

to the concrete men of Moloch –

smiling firmly, struck

a blow with kiss of peace (like visiting

ange d’or).  Take him to heart,

Henry, the mirror said;

that mensch you left for dead

leaps like a saltimbanco to his part

bench pressed against each prison wall.

Melchizedek demurred

Don’s invitation to world

domination – orange towers fall;

that milky mutter from a cloudy center

framed Ariadne’s nets

(enmeshed with quipu knots)

into a corn-gold maze.  You enter

Notre Dame like a gray wave

of seamless limestone

turning emerald... bone

by bone, like Jonah from the grave

                 *

her naval spine arches a dolphin

gray on gray – her eye

a waterspider... golden fly

fleeced with fine thread... riverine

almond, flanked by an equal sign.

This acorn fell from heaven;

here it shall remain,

be not removed – a seed from Okean

(Kiev domain).  While the Son of Man

through the murmur of murk

will shine, & do his work –

his echo in green shade, his twin

like Thunderbird flares out her wings

& rustles in the poplar leaves

where Peppy Di conceives,

Maria Retina perceives – brings

everyone to that shade garden throne.

It is a cryptic gravity

1132 feet high

& etched with J, or eagle eye – lone

outline from a deep loom’s frame

(Martin A. might say)

or copper penny for the Day

of Jubilee – ineffable clear cipher-game;

Tommy the Woodpeck’s narrow marrow-

proof; the oakleaf’s laugh,

or Death’s own epitaph –

lifting grey sea-salts into fresh tomorrow.

8.30.17

in the acorn dome

GREEN HOME

This August light is equal everywhere

& tender in its knowingness

of time & our faiblesse.

Impartial good is manifest to share.

The little boy with yellow gyroscope

hugged tight by Giuliana

on a sidestreet in Ravenna

sketches balance, equilibrium – her hope

the son grows like a sunflower

to soar into some wide

limpid Italian countryside

(gold into golden sunshower).

A rooted pine on point of land

or evergreen holm oak,

each invisible spoke

of living soul is regal, understand –

an incognito King or Queen

en masque as servant

on this earth, blent

in a bond of I with You (unseen,

but felt).  Substance of the sole command

of natural law (to love,

to love, to love) – above,

below – from Providence, Rhode Island

to an anchored grandeur on Pacific strand.

Whispered from acorn dome –

cherished green home

whose restoration here is promised (planned).

8.29.17

I have a dream

PLAIN CLAY

I have a dream, sang the buffalo-

voice, I have a dream –

when the will to redeem

lifts a heavy soul, bent low

amid murky murmurs of lost

innocence, out of the lake

of fire (nightmare). Take

my hand, come to this Pentecost –

harvest of kid from lambent cave

(wick drawn from water

up to Pharaoh’s daughter –

firefly corn-blaze, flickering in nave).

Lean petrified wraiths gaze, wingèd

through Ravenna gloom.

Dante walks home,

his lesson fin (carving INTREPID

into night’s milky ark of galaxies).

A net resolves to surf;

a seine makes common turf

out of plain clay – paradoxical

Francisco-mule, clip-clop clumping

until he climb the octahedral

keystone of the cathedral –

orange Chinese lantern, miming

remote & lonely lighthouses

(Rose Island Light, for

Narragansett raven-shore).

Sun in your beak (Cautantowwit’s).

8.28.17

light grows lighter

CATLIN WATERCOLOR

Late August light grows lighter.  Wispy

between extended shadows.

The cricket chorus has

a song for this, by Mississippi

banks – that bronze sustaining bass

in parallax of plaintive

high-pitched creel.  I’ve 

got to plead the crickets’ case,

quizzical Hobo mumbles to himself.

What good’s that Easter

Resurrection, if there

be no faery morn, silkworm to elf?

That is, no general coming back

to life... old Yeats’s sense

of unquenchable experience?

Manitou pipes at Fond du Lac...

as in a Catlin watercolor

along shores of Great River

life-lines   etched forever

in raven-ink barge Seine-trawler

or in a summer garden   with Apollinaire

our flimsy smoke lifting above

rooftops   & fading   eve of

war   Christ the Pilot in the air

over our heads   the gentle hero

retiring into poplar-voice

grey Hobo   warbling rejoice

inscrutable Holy Wisdom   flutters near

8.25.17

Matiere de Bioluminescence

TABLE GUEST

The green orbs of the butternut tree

land with a soft clunk

in the August grass.  Monk

Hobo absorbs their summer gravity.

Like that statue of Roger stepping through

his doorway on the cliff

into a wavebent skiff

drifting west – like Jonah, into

the gate of Leviathan... an inscrutable

gray brow of cloud, swimming

like dove or seabird... everything

swallowed up into transparent fable –

Columbia, emerging from the ocean mist.

An infant newness in

the soul’s old wilderness,

new-resurrected as a table guest.

The feast was all prepared beforehand.

Lips fuse like the sun’s

corona.  That Smiling One’s

your sister-dove, wafting to land

her sea-rose air.  Wings overhead

shadow the dark gold

& the blood-red wax – old

regal seal (Day of the Dead).

Beneath twin doors of tin-cut mirror...

out of the cave, volcano,

hurricane... a deep-sea glow

of luminous grail-fish.  Draw near.

8.23.17

eclipse for equal lips

LOWLY COIN

Twilight at mid-day, then rain

after the eclipse.  Little

Sophie’s 4th.  A medal

made of bronze; a lowly coin

of copper green.  Absinthe air

around the monuments.

The sickly shade of dense

black sun... Monday’s gone Friday

everywhere.  Whisper it back

to me, slowly, slowly.

Parallax of late Dante,

his painful feet beneath a wrack

of Roman marble, winking tesserae...

only a rain in Voronezh.

Profile of a Chaadev pledge

to 4th estate – soul freedom, aye.

Vladimir – that other one, with

the unpronounceable name –

wanders Wyoming

(motels, mountains).  His Monarch myth,

his Morpho blues, his regal soul

from coal-speck diamond –

a parabolic almond

subtext (Rorschach mirror-bowl).

Lincoln-ghost, Vallejo cheekbones...

chaste sign of equal lips.

Sophie’s green foot trips

through her basilica’s midnight sunstones.

8.21.17