When Lonely Stands

I.

From last night’s perch did they thus cast
by blinding crash and clapping clash
Gulf thunderheads like gleaming rings
that onced a-round the pious crowns of saints and kings
and webbed their grip astride the sky in
splintered cracks that groaned the vault by dreadful roll
like hungry hands that ached to break the swollen egg of God awake
to spill His yoke, the milky lake.

Rumbling, grumbling, roaring then
in ceaseless peals from dusk to dusk
brought no mere ink of Him
but Him as thus when Lonely stands
a-front the canvas vast of mirrored moon
do I transfix, transfig, transmute
toward all His fears, His hopes, His wants,
His know-not-knowing why or what our brilliant show
of thoughtless blow which there possessed by
quarreled Muse our Man to stoop
in pain to choose
His pen or brush to render all the ways He felt He must.

II.
Grief, ‘Gret, Grist

How soon do I forget,
amid the rage of normal day
and biting cling of needy ways
that snuff the strive of star in me
and rests the moan of every ghost
by lame content of happy bowel and easy bed
and sturdy roof above our head
that shields the soul from glancing blows
that never gives the heart to know
the grief, the ‘gret, and grist
which forces man to count the cost
of all that sacral weight we’ve lost
by which a soul might take and mold
a myth renewed should be so bold to
begin again a renewed begin that always begins
the myth renewed once more despite its end.