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

winter gematria

DEAD RECKONING

Henry drooped with the blues, his head

on his hand, his wings folded.

Gloom gathers the Gould

with something other than ghost dancing –

rustic farm implements, tongs

in a crucible of heavy rain.

He knows Great Congregation

= love x God+neighbor, yet... wrongs!

The prophet speaks goldenly of such

in his report (Jack

Joachim).  He saw black

where the red-squash bore would touch

his tender rib with a poignard – that son

of a coagulated sow! –

but he rests easy, now

in his little room, in the Forest of Ravlin

I reckon.  Jacques & Jules, Jack

& Jill, tumbled off the wall

& down the hill... so we all

fall down, sang the old buried hack

full of Fathom Fifth.  His vanishing pint

fled like a bat, through a gap

in his rainbow tooth; sap

dribbled from his dank sepulchre, his mint

of 43 years (32 + 11).  She was only 17

when she danced the tyrant-

teller – poky little Calabrian haunt

who yet might spread her wings (sweet halcyon).

1.24.20

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

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

Song of Songs in a snow globe

SWEET SNOW GLOBE

The twin foxes & three pine trees

on honeymoon (in a sweet

snow globe, in Norway).  What

use your Solomonic sarabande, these

loopy solemnities?  & the echoes

far into the motherland

Cahokia to maid’s Gravesend

your Adonai, my Adonis   a Memphis

trial by fire (intricate clay bark

buried in salt harbor).

O serious Nile laborer!

Nephthys, Dark Lady, mark

these fathoms of thy bottomland.

Snow was general over Ireland.

Strum the steel mandolin

then, Mary – plectrum in hand!

We climb out of the clay to shape

this Royal Arch, for St.

Latrobe & Son.  See the faint

wave-trace along its rim (crêpe

for a funeral train; flute-song

transcription).  Grain

melts into wine again –

the living man or woman prong

from earth.  We called it love

& swam into the circle

where snowflakes speckle

dark green live oaks (O crooning dove).

1.16.20

sketchy star-map

GREEN PYRAMID

The idea of Janus.  Osip is born;

war saw.  The tiny hexagons,

whose bite is bitterness

& valediction, zigzag down

here, in our Cerealian Capital

(Pillsbury, General Mills).

Grandpa, in Saskatchewan

wills grain elevators toward the pole.

Above these winter clouds, invisible

Venus the flower-star

describes tobacco-petal arcs –

Gravesend’s Dark Lady – indelible

cartwheeling Corn Maiden – springing

& sovereign rite of way;

dewy washerwoman, our MVP

lifting the horizon over D.C. (washing

everything).  Verily... except a corn of wheat

fall into the ground & die...

Over the green pyramid, an eye;

red rose for Memorial Day (complete

now, finished).  Elvira, out of Ravlin

opera, spins toward blue clay

herself.  We go that way

with snowflakes, with January’s frozen

squeaky violin... we go together.

At our reed-muddy center

she alights on the perimeter –

Adonai cornucopia, our milky tether.

1.15.20

from David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of the Nation's Capital, p.190

so Pocahontas might emerge again

PONTOON BRIDGE

The timid sun blanches behind these clouds

of January dim.  The miniature

ice-floes speckle the river

as they move south.  Chilled Hobo nods.

Yes, Henrah, there’s sleep-work to do

in this hibernation.  Dream-

boats a-building.  My trireme’s

a ship-in-a-bottle (of Irish brew).

See through the glass?  A beauty she is.

A bloom of almond petals

like a round of Grumman metal

canoes (nickel-dime aluminum Kris-

Kraft, maybe).  Like a micro-tuned

pontoon bridge, bent

from Iron Range to Ghent –

gildered from Gravensteen to Gravesend.

Henry slumped on a frigid cottonwood

stump, stumped.  The lantern-

bark in Hobo’s paw turned

green... little nef of oaken holly wood.

Cathedral Mary mine... he intoned.

Turn back the puny gangsters

of the bleak – these drugstore

Minotaurs – high Fraudulence enthroned.

So Pocahontas might emerge again

& roll Rebecca out of Gravesend

lifting her golden wave of corn

enchanted, vertical... toward Washington.

1.13.20

in the shadow of Notre Dame

TO YOU

To you who have walked with me

all along this many poem.

I would translate my diagram

of raven wing into quick algebra.

As daylight stretches into spring

I would head to Beltrami

a worn-out refugee –

Itasca hearts to weld by wring.

The Iron Range is as our life,

cold for sunrise, fire

by dusk.  Evening Star,

Dove-Bird, be thou my wife

                 *

whose effigy is coppery Peg

centered in Big Muddy silt

at Pentecost, green to the hilt.

Cahokia palm (with Easter egg).

She danced in the shadow of Notre Dame

a firebird, on 5/29

with flammable cardboard mural crown

for Apollinaire to remember (at the Somme).

& she wheeled across flat American clay

from West Branch, a circumference

of byzantine raven-sense...

to lift sad Earth toward the Realm of Day.

1.8.20

from a painting by Phoebe Gould

one foolish man & three Magi

TURTLE-SHELL

Henry wakes from an old man’s nap

with a child’s sense of space

& time.  Heart’s relentlessness.

Here be the river; here the wide gap

between whispering grassland, distant sky.

Epiphany.  Three Wise Men

camel out from high Tehran

to find one homeless king, in a spare pig sty.

Tonight the belligerent intelligence of war

sent guided Minotaurs

heat-seeking vengeance.  Stars

were collateral damage (kids no more).

The ragged tent-flap & the drafty stall

are Henry’s flimsy turtle-shell.

His mind & heart a broken spell –

a wasteland shack, no longer fit for Grail

or Calabrian hermit-monk, or Parsifal.

Only bring me the gift, Melchior

of your toy myrrh-nef – your

river-sense, emerald, mercurial;

like a 4-leaf clover made of almonds

interlaced... like 4 canoes

bent to the whirlpool’s

mandala (Itasca spiral of palm fronds).

This Providence of tight-coiled J

anchors the Pacific Ocean.

Knots its rose-clay revolution

to a bottled ship – ensign of Milky Way.

1.7.20

in the entrails of the nation

RIVER-SCOW

So Henry hearkens to the sea-wash

over his meandered house.

From District C to Minneapolis

his terramara whorls, to Washington

& south to Frisco, lap after lap

of wave on wave, sea-green,

serpentine.  A Berryman

for Julian’s Bower (Juliberry nightcap,

mayhap)?  Osiris, in the entrails

of the nation?  Sleep, now

microcosmic river-scow –

everything grows smaller in the whale’s

rib-cavern, everything a miniature,

dioramic Minnesota (at the

end of the last knot, minute-

man).  Cold as a Viking vulture-

sepulture.  These bricks might save

the planet, Henry mumbles

to the museum baubles

in his sleep.  & then her hand will wave

to him, from waves of his dream;

Columbia the sister-dove,

his Tyche-tyke from above...

over the Father-of-Waters with a beam

of smiling light.  & suddenly the vermilion

shades atop Sunset Mountain

& the orange orangutan

threatening our rusty tub of human

communion (Old Ironsides to you)

are dissipated shadows

in a rosy dawn... & Henry’s

crown rests in her ark (shalom, J-rue).

1.6.20

lingo & experience

SMOKING PYRE

O the glittering golden champagne world

the sparkle of human Honigwein!

& Henry skulking on the margin

ever – shy & sluggish, owlish Thunderbird.

At the intersection of Congdon & Morris

in the Honig house, in Providence

whereat Berryman lay, once

with his books, bourbon & cigarettes

a smoking pyre of lingo & experience

where the poet stands – a matrix

Jessifying the cosmos (X

raptor).  & Henry maunders after... silence

& gravity his only friends, he thinks

(1132 feet down, beneath

132 6th St).  Bequeath

his Sloop John B. to them steeply drinks,

drafts of your Ocean State, O bookish

Cesca-Fay!  Where Cautantowwit

calumeets Columbia, knit

together in your Seine – sweet swish-

mel Arno-Androscoggin – rosy net!

As the planet in the distance,

like an intricate replica, spins

its miniature J (illustrious Celt)

you cut your figure on the dancing floor

(smooth sliding all-akimbo

smile) like a capital C, or O

out of Jericho – my Tosca to thy Carib shore.

1.3.20

at the close of a year

JOVIAL STAR

The weathered flesh-tones of the Franklin Bridge

her twin brows arched with wonder

in the imperturbable splendor

of the winter sun.  You give me courage.

Not the one or the other, only

but the concord of the two

in three.  What ravels you

& me – kindling of Dove, or Bee.

Sophie brought me a handful of shells

& an acorn, from Rhode Island.

A child’s gift, out of sand –

at the year’s end, from sea-swells.

& it came to me, at the close of a year

that Earth itself is the ball of clay.

Your mother’s wheel, for a day

& a night... Time unfolding, free & clear.

That fortitude of Roger, in his Providence

was planted by one adamant law –

the human well of love & awe,

the infinite heart, your recompense.

The jovial star beams on its balance-point.

The sense of rightness Osip felt

comes like your sister-dove; eyes melt

frost with twin rays of hearth-fire.  Scent

of your presence, walking beside me, Hobo

intuits, hearkens, turns –

out of these graven Grecian urns

quick water voices, chorusing.  Lamps, glow.

12.31.19

your glance will not be replicated

Nadezhda Mandelstam

FOR HARRIET, FOR LIDIA

          to Lena Archer & Barbara Swanson

This falling snow at end of year

seals all our doings

& rememberings

with soft imprint of upper atmosphere.

Each snowflake is a face, or signature

disintegrated from the sky

from Ocean’s continuity

come down to live, to die – to melt, unsure

back to the common spring (indifferent

& all-encompassing).

Watch generations passing

with the calendar.  Grandma, bent

to join her friends again (under

the ground).  & we are left

to plow along... to heft

the load she bore, so bright & clear.

Your glance will not be replicated

nor your smile rehearsed.

The gentle ones, who nursed

each flower into breath, are translated

beneath an arc of sapphire sky

into their immortality –

embrace each earthy

being-born, each learning how-to-die.

There are these women... limping

over the frozen steppe.

See how they leap

now!  Lifting off... (on seraph wing).

12.30.19

like an 8-ball in a canyon

HELIUM BALLOONS

Thus the poem is a free agent,

loosed from its cannon

like an 8-ball in a canyon.

We could go on – what they meant

you know.  Dante was getting on

when he stopped by Sant’

Apollinare.  The slant

of loneliness caresses its panopticon

of painterly rainbow eyes & forms,

afloat overhead

like a Macy’s parade

on Thanksgiving Day (enormous

helium balloons of adoration

under an umbrella

of matryoshka nesting-

dolls, like an infinite function

in rose granite aegis, arcs-

over-arcs).  In her eyes,

the grace of God buys

time with molten agape-caritas.

Jesus emerges from the cave.

Mary faints in the garden,

dream bent back again

to Gödel (his suspended-7th grave).

Her incompleteness theorem

is like Easter in 2020,

always there already

(gleaming ring, undying diadem).

12.29.19

the mural crown

HIDDEN LIFE

This silvery light of a rainy day

in late December.  Neutral,

nested in its gray scale

along a standoffish Mississippi

(little Big Muddy).  Icons of vagrancy

are history.  Only

tell me, who is Tyche

now?  Who wears her mural crown of clay?

The mural crown is a martyr’s crown.

Seared semaphore of Liberty.

Tom, within his sanctuary

clocked by King Hank’s automaton.

& you, speechless ancient mother

of my tongue... Oaxaca pot

with 4 legs & 4 faces, hot

from kiln – my sis Jonah (there is no other).

A hidden life, in high green alps

of loving consciousness.

Where our union of Succession-

Restoration comes in great gulps

of transparency (over gnarled rivalries,

distempered lunacy,

frustrated tyranny...

Narcissus in the burnt oak trees).

All history now, Henry.  We drank

life’s Honigwein

with Weinsteins, in

torrid Odessa... felt unfathomable thanks.

12.29.19

Neva serpent ocarina

AT VLADIVOSTOK

One might say mathematics is a matter

of cascading functions,

with parenthetical canyons

in canyons (as at Vladivostok, or the Matter-

horn).  Rivers flow this way,

then that way, back,

forth, clattering

from Hackensack to Housatonic (May-

November).  So the game of numbers

is a mode of streambed too –

your Itasca-sprung Rio

del Espiritu (time-numbing mine of hours)

whose ceaseless surge bends past the prong

of Louie’s Gateway Arch

that budgeth not (March

to September), stills the monotone like a gong

of bronze.  Thus Mrs. Slippery, crowned,

extends her clayborne banks

beyond New Orleans... her phalanx

of ‘gators flanks her onward, azure-bound;

so the analogy of brazen serpent

lures this goldfinch dream

into Leviathan trireme

wreathing America in mist, unspent –

as when a dervish Morning Star

raveled Guillaume into her web

grappling Jonah (fledgling pleb)

into the shimmer-seine of River R.

12.27.19

Osip Mandelstam's final i.d. card (internal emigre)

Ravenna is a potter's wheel

painting by Mary R. Gould, born 12.26.1927

SPIRAL HUT

Hobo moseys down his usual shore,

thinking of the finish line.

Plays with his river-sign,

his spiral hut of shoreline lore.

Someday there might be an algorithm

for the eyes in the mirror,

the project of the logosphere

curved beneath Beatrice-smile... leaf-skim

fluttering in Pentecostal glossolayea

round those pillars of Diana

stolen for Hagia Sophia

by Justinian (Solomon, I have outdone ye).

The builder’s signal of completion, the flag

of a little pine tree

planted like perfect akme

at the apex.  Unknown Soldier’s Rag

of worn linen.  Shakespeare’s cap

of happiness, he said,

that buried pot – not dead,

not even sleeping; where rays overlap

into a solid beam (centripetal matrix

of a million eyes).  It is

finished, this Poe-biz –

seraphic wayfaring Eureka-box

of pinecones, green acorns.  & the canoe

of flowering almond ribs...

your singing coracle of orbs,

suspended in accord from sapphire-blue.

12.26.19

what child is this

HOLIDAY MUSIC

The empty duplex is quiet tonight

though not completely silent.

Drumming in the basement –

Khaled rehearsing our old duet.

From different corners of the same planet

immigrants & refugees

hasten to the Twin Cities

as to gemütlich haven or warm magnet.

& history is like a palimpsest of pelts

trapped in somebody’s woods

before there were neighborhoods

or streetlights – only raw scalps, rotting guilts.

When we were that City on a Hill

of our imagination –

special paragon of Creation,

establishing law-&-order by God’s will

on earth.  But it wasn’t so beautiful.

The Magi rode by camel

across a parochial hell

subject to Herod & his trumpets (terrible);

the angels remained invisible, mostly;

& both the Ark of the Covenant

& ironclad Ship of State

came to resemble that drafty, mangy

manger itself.  Where Mary lay

& her shivering baby sighed

& Joseph almost died

of inhumanity.  Hush little baby, don’t you cry.

12.24.19

your barbecue of fibs

WORDY COVENANT

& how could that heart-shaken man

(Jay Berryman-Osiris) dive

from a bridge, the eve

after Epiphany?  Say, Jack Ravlin –

Granddad – 3 blocks from your house?

& on your birthday?

How?  Evil holds sway

as dream molts into parody (inverse

remorse, or nightmare fallacy).

Estrangement reigns

when Minotaur maintains

the lie that makes untruth reality.

Demonic hatred be the coin of death.

The grass stuffed in the mouth

was greed gone south –

coffered Osiris longing for mere breath.

That auctioned ship, Old Ironsides –

the Constitution of a rifled

dream – must she be stifled

by unruly piracy?  The manger hides

her refugees in the hull of your ribs,

old mothership.  Your heart

where 13 adders start

is like Coatlicue – your barbecue of fibs

is just begun.  Your John Paul Jonah

swings his wordy covenant

over his head (adamant

evening, stony crossroad... hallelujah).

12.20.19