March 31, 2014

Looking for a random
prompt generator
for poetry month,
I discovered story cubes.

Shaped like dice,

each face has a pictogram,
a story line, perhaps,
a part of a poetry prompt.

Six faces to a cube

nine cubes to a set

three sets
(actions, voyages, original) –
nine cubes to a set
six faces to a cube

162 possibilities…

to say nothing of probabilities,
and permutations,
and combinations,

and group theory…

Each day in April I'll select
four cubes at random
and see what unfolds.


 

March 29, 2014 – Maka grande na senzala (big trouble in the slave quarters)

 

Posted on March 29, 2014 | Leave a comment

When I was in high school, the big current events event
was Watergate. We (the nerdy ones) watched the hearings
every day during lunch. Our North Carolina senator,
Sam Ervin, led Freedom’s charge against a corrupt administration.
I remember writing a paper about how the slaves had no privacy
and how that lack of basic privacy was their greatest freedom loss
in the land of the free (a seventeen year old cares a lot about privacy).
I described in detail the fundamental lack of privacy of the slaves
and tried to make a case that denying them any notion of privacy,
enshrined in law, insured that one day, the government might try
to deny privacy to free citizens of the republic as well.
I thought it was a clever argument, but one that was closed
with Nixon’s resignation the next year. Little did I know
just how prescient I may have been at seventeen.

March 27, 2014

On Frank’s birthday I drove to Northern Maryland
to meet with a client about a marketing project.
I left late enough to miss the really bad traffic
on the interstate, and I was headed out of the city
anyway.  After about an hour and a half, part beltway,
part county road, I reached the highest hill
of the small town and entered the nested campus.
It was quite a dream.  The client had implemented
some of the improvements we discussed previously.
But there was a new delay on approval of the survey
instrument. So in the interim we talked about
other options, anecdotal evidence, observer effects,
community engagement.  “Social media works because
the students need validation.” But marketing it was not.

March 15, 2014

Today was the running of the Rock N Roll Marathon.

I had no idea, for me it was just another Saturday morning walk.

The first three runners zoomed past as I turned up Rock Creek Park.

Dark, Kenyans, no doubt.  A fourth zoomed, a definite Ethiopian.

And then the masses, throngs of runners, minutes and miles

of runners, marathoners of all shapes and colors passed me by.

I had a momentary flashback to the USA/Pan Africa Track Meet

I attended in Durham in ’71.  A recent middle distance devotee,

I was in awe of the American runners I saw, Frank Shorter,

Steve Prefontaine.  But I was in triple awe of the African runners

who dominated the field that weekend:  Kip Keino, Mirus Iftar,

Ben Jipcho, Robert Ouko.  Kenyans, Ethiopians, black like me.

African. And I so wanted to be African like them at the time.

Key Bridge was full of runners, crossing over to Virginia

and returning to Chocolate City.  I stayed on the DC side

and did 10 repetitions up and down the Lincoln Memorial steps.

All 41 of them. As my legs wearied and my knees ached I recalled

the speech at Gettysburg and thought about a new birth of freedom.

Sonnet for HF

I found the Dylan Thomas poem you mentioned

in your letter. I read each line aloud,

and when I reached your favorite part,

I wished that you were here.

But that is not to be.  You are, I am,

afar, apart, in ways precise, diverse.

I wrote the poem in long hand, as I said

I would, the words traveling from the page,

through my eyes, down my arms - muscle memories –

to fingers that held my favorite pen,

and onto the pages of my notebook –

and though I’ve never seen your face, nor touched

your smile, nor tasted the sound of your approach,

I hear your voice across the seas of time.