Little big congressman

So we keep on movin' on, into the second Chapter of the second Part of our grand picaresque adventure Stubborn Grew.  Henry our Hero still pivots on his faux Fox Pt., his Pushkin pinpoint.  The whirring motion of his nervous windmill begins to take on a distinctly Ez Poundian tincture (Ezra Pound, another damaged Dantesque bard).  In the effort to integrate his personal turmoil with his epic ambitions, he finds new avatars - like Ignatius Donnelly, the midwestern populist firebrand and eccentric scholar of Atlantis(!) and the "Shakespeare authorship question".  Donnelly, a staunch defender of the Common Man against Big Money, unfortunately exudes the old-fashioned Poundian/populist skunk-odor of anti-semitism too.  So in a sense we are back inside "Shakespeare's Head" - and we are looking for a way out of the waterlogged deep-sea shipwreck island where Henry's psychic journey seems to be perpetually marooned.  It's a jambalaya of Hart Crane, Vachel Lindsay, and Ezra Pound - three haunted millenarian Americans.

In the background, like a mournful coyote howl, you'll hear the refrain of a Shoshone ghost dance song.

1

W.  M.  W.  ms. O.  Raven.  Ravine.

Start over.  The pen seemed to move on its own 

over the blackbound memo pad.  Go on. 

Personal trivia.  All farmland then,

up around Summit Avenue, near the Miriam. 

The hospital.  Henry sipped his wake-up call. 

[God, this is so lame.]  An uncle

of the owners before us–at 132 [damn

these rhymes!] – drowned in the '38 hurricane.

Worked for the city – carried in a whirlpool 

down a sewer hole.

Coffin

man underboard.  Guy full of wormholes, 

starboard hazy, green, tornadoish. . .

all black and blue [Jeesh,

Peatie-boat, c'mon, where are you?  What?  Moles?]

rose dusty out of the stolen contraption

beating his drumguitar, smoking cigar – some 

politician!  Clinton, wondering how to hum

about slavery while in Africa – lowly, with contrition.

If you stand over the manhole cover downtown,

in the dusky light the East Side is swiss cheese –

mountainous, with anonymous accounts – countless 

caves underneath, where the underground

railroad hid the runaways.  Earth Quakers, 

making freedom face the coppers of the realm. 

Still hollow there, under a. . . well, a spoken dream. 

[I love good scotch whiskey with crackers,

Bluejay.]  A dead man in a coffin – what

does he dream about?  Like Dorr at Swan Point? 

[East Side.  Go left at Rochambeau, right

at Blackstone Boulevard.]  Ghost dancing! – try it,

why not?  Because what a beautiful land

has the red man lost and the white man won. 

With all this there was the most un-

compromising impudence planned, unplanned.

[Unmanned? That's another rhyme for it. God,

this is sure gooey, Henry.  Think.  Try some 

history?  Evoke – Vico?  pp. 264 – Rome?

No time–Cesca going – take the kids

back to the library soon – 1. return books. 

2. call Ed.  3. do taxes.  4. write home. 

Donnelly did all that – while running farm!

Giants in the earth – Minnesota nooks,

brainy grannies –]  To build the city

of Nininger    lift the great little light acorn

even if one should be a Sour Kraut and

the other a Paddy

"hot house" techniques for town planning

Dost thou know how to play the fiddle?  No,

answered Themistocles, but    raising a little

village into a great city    lots on paper selling

Bill Mallen on the boat with his marked cards,

and Ingeneous Doemly with his city lots

Engaparai    yuwan    Wainaiyo    he yo

waina, Wainaiyo    he yo    wain.

Young Falstaff, with a round, chubby face, a round

well developed body, and round chubby hands

but with a mind    single, sequestered    upon diamonds

snowed in mini-Siberia under    crypto-mound

Verbally honed at Central High, City of Brotherly

Son of deceased Doc and serious "Scotch" Irish Mom

out of peddlar crowd of polite letters ambitious came 

for I am not one of those who believe politics is a mere

. . .base struggle for place and plunder   although   Fortunes

dropping out of the skies   those who would not gather them

were but stupids and sluggards   and   I can recollect 

in my boyhood Philadelphia was afflicted with

many riots   whites and blacks   natives and 

foreigners   churches and   fire companies.  All this 

has passed away.  The public schools have cured it all. 

With uncapped rim of honeyed oratoracles

I have a dream    Why should we weep to sail 

in search of fortune?  Cheer for the West

Dago donzi aiyo    wa ye wa    bangovia

sogovi     yaiyowain

       

Every man goes [West] on his own hook,

if you tired of your trade you could pre-empt 160 acres 

– steam on the prairie, steam on the mountain–across 

high buildings in a single–hissing, screaming–look!

It's – Ignatius Donnelly!  I.D. – the very witty best,

in persona!  Cheer one and all, stovepipes sky high now! 

Gonna wash that town, Congressman – and how!

We who come, Mr. Speaker, from the far West

have not that deep and ingrained veneration for State power 

State lines, State names, State organizations    creatures 

of accident    Our people move into a region of country

and make the State   off-shoots of the nation   [little lower

than Los Angeles subdivisions]  Nana suyage hombi

nana suyage horn    sinam bogombi engana    todowaina

sinam    I have drawn your salary in advance for a year, 

and am consequently flushed with funds    Ramsey hombre

raised up 1st Minnesota on the run for Lincoln 

fustest with the almostest    to Gettysburg it all 

comes down to    last full measure    a cupfull 

runneth over, before it's over, over their    conjunction

With nearly one billion [acres] of unsettled lands

and many millions of poor oppressed people

let them organize the exodus which needs must come 

and build, if necessary, a bridge of gold across the chasm

lectured before lyceum groups on non-political subjects 

Minnesota's "Indian Mound Builders"

– miserable thing this dignity without money is! –

reading included Anatomy of Melancholy    projects

for Ramsey    rum deals    acquainted with wire pulling

railroad the Chippewa commissions    lots for sale 

lots and lots for sale    everything for sale

now that Lincoln's gone    railroading

Ignatius on the outs at home again    forlorn in Nininger

reflects on the great waters of knowledge    Atlantis 

drowning    full fathoming    his cryptic galleys 

Damen    nuwitsi     zani-suano-ve    gemano

2

Damen    nuwitsi    zani-suano-ve    gemano    They only 

deserve success who are equal to the exactions of misfortune 

round man at homer node    seen it all wax and wane

out in field stubble    D.C. pump-handle parties    lonely

farms    and the sound of the railroad train

blows over the sound    of wind in the pine trees

a cold and naked wind    Grand Forks    Mississippi

bottomland toward    each rivulet    of rain

Ye    va    varuke    ye    va    varuke-penji

Water    water rising    water    water rising

It is all ancient forms and ceremonies

with a republic underneath    Queen always consents

dynasty would not last forty-eight hours    dismay 

of one usher when I got out of line of procession 

During the evening of May 31

Donnelly debated the authorship at Oxford    LLrnd.

[save the Bacon for later]  There are really but two parties

 in this state today–the people and their plunderers. 

Shall the people keep the fruits of their own industry

or shall the thieves carry them away?

Farmer's Alliance     Union Labor party

Donnelly's 7 rights:    1. to the full fruits of their labor 

2. to education     3. to rise & go forward

4. to acquire all forms of property

for property is comfort, peace, plenty & civilization 

Dave    bauwah    doiyave    dave    bauwah    doiyave    ena 

5. to obtain from this world all blessings benefits and 

beauties that are in it    6. to be esteemed a gentleman

even while he labors with his hands.

7. to combine to reach these results.

Donnelly now particularly hostile to the railroads

introduced severe regulation measure    granted

special shipping privileges to Minnesota grain producers 

Legislature wasted whole session attempting to bury one man 

defending the people from robberies of railroad corporation 

the Yankee blue blood of the Twin Cities

never tolerate that a damned Norwegian without boodle 

the men who encourage you will do nothing for you

only be reformed from the outside    yellow

oriental cunning Jew Caesar's Column of blood-

curdled whey for the voting pablum

vox populist    ghost dance

Ba    buhi    buhi–mande    ba    buhi    buhi-mande

Caesarean Rome

deal    very very rough and tumble Washington soaked

in graft    monopoly games     This continent

is the last great camping ground

of the human race    completely blood -sucked

base metals into gold    Ephraim Benezet

in a bottle    yet    unable to combine rural and urban 

working people reform groups    Beaten!

Whipped!  Smashed!  Our followers scattered

like dew     he goes back to his beloved cipher 

worth more than all the governorships in the world

greenbacks    gold & silver    coal combines    100

percent profit    rat-headed gang of reformers

peculiarly Donnellian    political lumber jugglers 

bribes    anonymous slander    bimetallism 

1890    latent [latent?] anti-Semitism

others are moving into the woods, building shanties,

reverting to Indian conditions

Buhi    wa    n-doiyavi    buhi    wa    n-doiyavi    yaiyowainde  

There are no more Minnesotas on the planet 

rat-tailed slant-eyed Mongolians

[or maybe Siberians?]   I am not a candidate 

for office and never will be    I am growing old 

and the grave is not many years ahead

best religion in the world is that

of doing good to our fellow creatures 

wooden buffalo nickel lndianhead penny 

all the rage    gloomglittering eyes

in the wall of Gehenna    a vast array

of starving men becomes a terrible thing now 

organized by Mr. Coxey and advancing on Washington 

capitalistic class of New York and London

45 cents a bushel    who's gone into

this conspiracy? No man has a monopoly on wisdom.

Sihivi    winogande    sihivi    winogande

Dugai -e ogande    dugai -e ogande

Go on, Mr. Bryan, we are with you!  Boom-boom

Bryan Bryan Bryan Atgeld Bryan Bryan Bryan and it's

 [Henry, by George, too!]  tenting tonight

on the old camp ground    can anything but

Divine Providence prevent the swarming idiots

from wrecking themselves [he noted pessimistically

in his memo]    Minnesota Pure Election Law

of this 60 cents was for railroad fare

I am 69 today    if I had not had a partial stroke of palsey[sic]

On July 4, 1900 [G'ma Gould's b'day] Donnelly 

had a novel sensation    when I came to speak 

my powers went back on me    I made a faux pas 

of it    dead failure    but my nerve held

had suffered a mild stroke    shortly after midnight 

January 1, 1901    fatal heart attack

Bagana-via    bagana-via    bagana-via

Dugum    bagana-via    dugumba    wanekinora

Ghost dance    swarms of hungry men    Falstaffs

afloat    in a porkbarrel    a railroad line to the

golden West    and Donnelly brings home the bacon 

round, chubby, bullish    reefs in

the sales    of the sinking Atlantean bark

one will all one of hungry desire under Northern

Star or    steadfast other one    [Venusian?]

and to the feast they come    ghosts    wind in the dark

"132"

Ignatius Donnelly

The long way home

As with the first part of Stubborn, the second part (Fox Point) is divided into four large chapters (unnumbered this time).  & to reiterate, the feeling, the atmosphere is different.  Spring is in the air; memory & nostalgia too.  We are in the old Lenten season, heading toward Good Friday and Easter.  The passages are longer, looser, more ruminative.  So this is a lot to share on a blog, but bear with me, I beg you.  It helps to go with the flow.

Maybe this is a late addition to the stream of American "confessional" poetry?  Yet the voice of Bluejay still interrupts now & then.

3

Old panes blur the light, the budding limbs.

Open the window – spring air blows in, 

scent of earth and scent of ocean

salt.  Moist precipitation.  Dreams.

Spring is a rewinding, like the wheel turning. 

The pottery wheel.  Your feet spin,

hands toss whatever comes to hand. 

Minnesota clay, remembering

earth.  Your breath thrusting into your lungs, 

the air, the wind like a wedge

toward your heart – savage

wilderness, or just a forest full of wings

– hidden, warbling in the cedars. 

And everything gathering momentum 

under the near sun now – thrum

of bees, flies, mosquitoes. . .

these particular syllables only a tendency 

toward an inexpressible

indelible

multiplicity of

memories.  Ineradicable pastness, 

forgettable, but indestructible, because past –

anchor for these most tentative and moist 

exploratory buds (pussy willow. . . birdnest).

Buried deep in a northern dark blue-green forest. 

Memory Point (node or bud of rewound

iron ore) springs out of snow and

frozen icebergs (greenblack. . . with rust).

A point or trivial notch of branches, whorled. 

Cedar – iron spring's myrrh-box, scented –

borne on a mirror lake pointed

toward the circumference (gnarled

hands).  A pottery wheel like the bicycle

I fell off on purpose once for you

back there by the greenhouse, Coatlicue. 

Buried back there, in the teeming receptacle,

in the tomb of eternal springs, edged

with endless banks of bright roses, azaleas, 

bumblebees hovering all around us.

Or like a seashell, salvaged

from all that droning blue curvature 

like a Viennese liner over a grain elevator, 

or the two gunwales of a birch canoe, or

the shadowy concave at the bottom of a crater.

Or like the old pain of a lie broken open suddenly 

shattering the fIxed order of a routine world;

into the rotten hollow of an oak tree poured 

your heartbeat, everything sullenly

leaden, dropping fast; breathing slowly,

the full weight of it coming on only gradually, 

the black stone held at arm's length barely 

visible–an arm, lifting you carefully

back onto the desolate sand at Horseneck Beach. 

Or like the sound of your husband's poetry 

becoming more implausible and petty

like shells crushed underfoot, a moldy peach.

Every grain of sand. . . one grain of sand. 

One drop of water. . . on the deep blue sea. 

One grain of sand. One little you, one little me. 

And nothing went as planned, understand,

because nothing was planned.  The line 

wavered along the shore as the waves came in,

woven with too many soggy threads, unraveling, 

unrelieved.  Hear them, still roaring, sighing.

The waves keep moving toward shore,

blown by the wind, but steady like these thoughts. 

Rounding Cape of Good Hope, rats

in stowage, pulsing (old poison, old fever).

They found the dead blue whale at Sakonnet Point 

(bird sanctuary).  Buried him in sand

with a backhoe, until the bones are picked 

clean–pretty soon he'll be hoisted

in a museum.  Look through the glass, children –

there's where his heart was, in that crib

like a houseboat of giant ribs

132 feet long or so, I reckon!

Square tail could crush a cathedral!

The heart was fibrillated – fuzzy logic – it's

a problem for every submerged marine biologist! 

Flotation?  – no question about that, pal –

some sink, some float, but this guy was buoyant 

long after he was dead.  That's how they found him. 

Sort of a Huck Finn and Jim

situation, except this whale was redundant!

So why'd he die?  Heartbroken, I guess –

he floated ashore, and that's it.

They'll make a lifesize clay model on site, 

you bet – Leviathan Quest

at Mystic Aquarium, or some such thing.

But what he thought about while he was singing 

those lonesome whale-tunes – ringing and booming 

across the arctic stretches – sleeping,

dreaming, all 200 tons of him – that's a good question. 

A whale comes on shore, at the end of winter.

Only 16 years old or so, remember –

dreaming of – hoping for – blue whale resurrection?

                                  *

Transit was the borderline for Cape Verdeans. 

On one side, a triangle of po masonic Gees;

on the other waspy aristocats and kitties.

Transit of Venus was the etymology (Ben Franklin's

visit, to set up his lubber's quadrant, make

his calculations).  Lend you my blurred arithmetic? 

My hand, I hold it toward you.  Some trick, 

Bluejay – crafty, illegible, ledgerdemaniac.  It's magic.

My main book.  A Janusface janitor, or bibulous 

nowhere manx.  Pushkin?  Peter's puss –

nightmare tale, twirling, afloat – Oedipus 

horsing around at flood-tide – he is US!

Felix the Cat!  Falls through his tall black

Dr. Zeus hat – a white Bull (caesarean) in heaven 

with a heavy black hole for coracle – eleven 

doubloons shining continuously where the slack

line wavers across a sleepy Mexican hat trick! 

Bedded down among basketry.  The sun,

all murked.  The harness was broken.

The bull was loose among quick

bees, the frayed rope wavered in the cosmic wind. 

When we were young still, and young Henry 

gravitated downward, toward the clovery 

sheepshank, his gardener's bullpen, his lucky-found

fylfot.  Twirled the stalk between thumb and forefinger. 

Reclining (perpendicular) on the community loam. 

Mountain of an Aristaeus solar plexus – groom

for soiled wormdemocracy.  Dead ringer

for a rolling stone – pure fatherly Gould.  Your harvest, 

caesarean.  Only the scar remain.

A line, a line, a lyin' lion line.  From

purebred, streamfed vitality – one broken nest.

The sextons slowly passed, pierced with strange pud-

dingstone astronomy, petrified in a bottom-

less pit.  Life, unwoven golden poncho – condom,

harpoon – played out and queued up,

gnarled at the summit – a bus stop. 

They've closed off the Point Street Bridge –

have to go around for two years.  Edge 

become cloverleaf – a fruitless end-stop.

Pots and pans, potted plans, talk talk

and walk walk down to Wickenden. . . ended. 

Why then I'll fit you for it (unmended, 

unmanned).  Fate lifted the forking stalk

for you, and for many, for the remission 

of sins, handed on through the Venetian 

Blind King.  Quaternion.  Equestrian, 

bronzen – a charnel corporation.

The bull, unleashed, rushed for Siberia, 

entranced.  White nights, metallic, 

streaming (milky) toward – Mexique. 

Wolf shamans in sheepish paraphernalia

haruspicating trivial constellations, 

entrails full of liveried air. 

Ambervaglia. Square

one, always, again.  Nations'

patients, springing toward delivery room.

Midwifery – severe, umbilical –

deep tonnage of emptied black hole –

ribcage, heavenly irises, rolled into the gloom. . .

Babylon, King Starlight.  Daniel's

lyin in the den, by the fireplace, over the black 

sheepskin, tickley, tacky.  Hasten back

to Hackensack, well-done quixotic spaniel!

Jealously the jalopie jolted back headwards 

toward Governor Street.  Henry

came back to me –

frozen, in a petrified forest.

And oh, the blue gardener in the tall cedars, sighing! 

This wind, wounded, winding down, out of yeast

of yesteryear!  Those days were the beast

of our lies, cried Blackstone – hiding, bullish, dying!

The wind blows through the tops of the pine trees. 

Cedar-scented, salted, from the delta –

the fir trees, masted for London – a welter

of chained (triangulated, strangled) memories.

Bottomland. Dark splinters, drifting. 

Where Pushkin fell, into the song.

One grain of sand. . . prong

of eddies. . . in the greenhouse. . . burning.

                         *

Your cathetureen on a wheel of photogramus memory

 – molto freddo.  Frozen wires, veins in the desert. 

Your charred, fIled, floating, ghettoed yurt.

Your gippered Geppetto.  Your Roman V

in the snow.  The dyed crystals and 

negatingle twine of the darkroom 

– your L-shaped V-room.

Your dead groom (horseshoe'd) saddles

his rude hoss (animated heartbeat) –

hollow O.K.-corralled holy May-King-Ed 

shotgun wed can-o-pea'd

avid Indian sweat

logistic – I eva ketch yup-aroun-my-dhou–

remember (O Sire) issue pappy Rus

done loon dis Puss. . . – thus

charity purse Sinai-o-nary a one-two. . .

                                                           3.30.98

                               *

Three squared twice again as many days looking. 

Out, out from the triple plaid Indian terrycloth

Terrace – where the retread threads lapsed off a moth-

eaten granite statuette – a Mrs. sipping a

gulf-white caddyfull of a cargo of gold-rimmed toilets. 

Roll on, Muddy! Roll on easy! – how can I roll

when the wheel don't go?  Stucco in a telephone poll, 

petered out again, twain some Adamsize duets.

Roger on the horsedrawn carousel exhales another 

marriage-go-round, with a canker in the anchor 

and a sea-worm in the planetarium – your neighbor 

boring, his weight hidden under your coracle. . .

looped around an elopement with unraveling rope. 

Creepin, gropin, the inchworm struggled along,

the holetown turned out for Lanford-Highway-Strong 

the Firewheeler and his Army Jeepers spilled out – Hope.

Ruling along in a monetiferous alarmbox 

like a loco armtwistocrat or filibusterstein, 

the crusty old rustlers addled their twine

dealer trunks on the housebusted fox

furnished louseholdupleft mortregurgitato 

misterfry pandempedimental prezerfurbishing 

finassoloimprovizidential dusterflusterbing 

rehancementissue landlardial relocato

process of urban renewal.  While Henry nursed 

his floss, his thinness, into the gummed-up works 

and limping down the badly half-lit Turk's

Head building, sideways, he cursed

his fleet.  Row, row, row your butt!

he hollowed out of his own scull toward

the goose-fed brownian twitchcraft – hard,

a star, aboard the pyre, amidships. . . some nut

in dire duds, in need!  Third legs rolled up

like an Ahab rehab repropertied forever to some

veridical spermicidical spirelease conixdom-

estical horde of unwashed-for dim-sum gypsum

collidal undercollagic. . . pups!

Dark horde-it auld-rich Aldrich underturfed 

everything – with his folderol resurfetid

forever rock-a-bye-bye prestidigisenatorial one-ups

– he was doubloon white sellerboy if there ever! 

Pellifluous, chaffeureed raucousfeeler was he! 

Gildered his Power-Lip – mit Goldencalf und we! 

Smoothacious and trueblood, screwtimberme jiver

The door ever open, the green islands 

anchored.  The freeway troubled by children –

tear, tearing it down, slyly – undone

by seasalt catacombers–slow, steady sands,

flags, reeds.  And that striver on the hillside –

where the wind flows over his bent palm –

motionless – grows dizzy – his dream

afloat, untethered, circling by itself. . . we'd

done our best, some were calling up to him –

without a line, without an anchor –

voices adrift now too, on the air 

currents – slim

draft sketch ultralight – while

the heavy civic gondola began to rotate 

aimlessly (circling in black velvet 

around the pockmarked campanile)

carry me back to ol Virginie 

Love is Strong as Death

po sho have strong breath

an b.o. afloat plenty heavy now,

a festive scent of springtime, heaven-sent 

lost in the midmost everglide, the boat 

spins hypnotized mote by mote 

(and the arctic spell will not relent)

as (sea-worms calling) he

plows the American 

Dream – one 

circling

pair of 

stars

scar 

le

vent 

eg

ri

o. . .         

                            *

A warm spring day. Another sketch at the Terrace. 

Henry's divided by a perpendicular from the civic spiel. 

Drones with his incoherence though – a ferrous wheel 

where Roger steps off his canoe shooting over the cliff-face.

His lines tied in the knot of himself, what goes on 

in the urban breeze below no longer breaks through 

his metal grid – the whaling, wailing, wheeling, J-

whirling canoe's empty whorls.  Wheeeeee!  Fun!

Meanwhile the three of them – Cesca, Alex, Phoebe–

circle Mount David, gradually . A last trip

to the summit.  A spiralling thread of purple

wool, a line stretched out slowly upward, maybe

continuing down again, another way. . . Henry 

won't know.  He's divided from the apple orchard 

(except in his mind).  Absurd

the sad waste before, after these dreary

regrets.  Thinly, thinner, the black line, snarled. 

Wrought iron grates between them all – all below.

 An eagle eye M–inverted hand-trick – W?

– or Q-notched O? The lock, the key? World

compacted, then – in a dismal V – divided 

from itself?  Or is that the focus – figured 

in a splintered box of myrrh,

a crumbled madeleine – eroded

rood?  Henry sighed, and sighed, immovable. 

Absconded Blackstone.  Holed up in his heart, 

disabled.  Suddenly the heavy clay began to start 

revolving – Coatlicue, torn calendar, a sable

sheepskinned wolf, began to turn. 

Not yours, not mine, she was

a subway gravity.  Draws

your studied sketchbook down.

A frisbee drifted down the stream.

Fylfot.  Freefloating broken glass, bloodstained. 

B1938 + 666 on the radio map. . . do you read 

me, Jodrell?  Maybe Jodrell is off the curving

beam of light, the ring around the warping 

the broken thread bulled-up in Manchester 

the missing Manman (hubbled babbler) ,

the crystallized bad luck, the warbling

yellow-black oriole (golden now, ballooning 

guardian in the back of his head)

or levitating oscillating obsolete red 

roses tubbed on high, rolling

along now on a tellurian diurnal tell-all 

trajectory toward major harmony

on the cusp of the cloverleafy

[why did they have to build that wall

across the harbor?] freeway – sunny 

enough for a LaFarge barge or a Berkeley 

barque or the piercing call-regularity

of a rhody canoe, this glossy money

marker nailed to the mast at the equator. . . or. . . 

floats off humming toward Mendelssohn, an earlier

day.  Floats off, shadowed.  On foot.  Before, 

always.  And Voronezh caws.  Nevermore.

Gone.  Like those spousal geese, too far overhead 

in the high blue.  Smile, after mile, after mile. . . 

wings put behind. Invisible strings or catgut guile. 

Woven, this pattern of returning.  Forever, Ed!

You're naked!  In the Coffee Exchange!

An enterprise, lost in space!

Lost the whole race,

humanovoid!  Odd bull, always – on the range!

Stalled for the branding iron – a perfect zero!

A triple-played-out by-passed gummed-up crown-

bridge decayed fan ghoul-struck down-and 

outsider – swish!  No leg – no go!

If you lean sideways at the very edge of the picture

you can see where the double Ds of the jawline 

meet in a double embankment of dried bone

to form the venerable smile of a skull [factor

in your parallax and Einstein rings].

It's only Henry, between his velveteen 

ambassadors – these two times thirteen

unlucky characters. . .lined up for a killing.

Over his circular sawn circumference,

his coffeestained pale scrawl sheet.  The 

geese have flown. . . seems almost complete 

now.  Divide by six you get double eleven

hexed agons, rewound forever from here

to Jerusalem and back to eternity, under

providential skies – riven now, flown asunder 

like the V across his templed fore-

head – notch of sugarcane.

His city flown, his artifice is gone,

his wife is none.  He's in the hollow spine.

He's Edgar in the masquerade, insane–

he's in the poetry.  He's in 

the earth.  His number's up 

(a threesome).  Drop 

through a wormhole, you lyin'

lion – de day's yo own. 

Pussue yo Ali bye-byes, 

lies, yo phantom size –

an fool yo self alone.

                            4.1.98 (April Fool's Day)

Transit Street

"Venus Beats All" #2

Under the bridge (near Point St.)

Lake Vermilion