April 2, 1014 - A favorite book

Prompt: title of your favorite poem, book, or film.
story cubes:  stool, knocking at the door, straight arrow.

 “The legends say something happened in Chaneysville.”

And legends don’t normally lie, though they may embellish,
just a bit.  A big city history professor returns to his rural roots
when he learns a father-like figure is dying.

A transference occurs, a passing of the seat of authority

Now is his turn to sit on the leadership stool.
Truth knocks at the door, the scales of justice
are unbalanced – a historical wrong must be righted.

The old man taught him in his youth how to track game

through the woods.  He used those tools in his new field,
a sleuth tracking information through layers of noise.
But now his sense of direction must be straight and true.

Leave the self-perpetuating baggage in the city.

Discovery and redemption require a certain resolution.

April 1, 2014 - An Ekphrastic poem

Prompt: Ekphrastic poem
story cubes: a slipper, an open book, a bent arrow

Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne

 

Daphne is fleeing Apollo

and her face is an open book of terror.
She’d rather become a laurel tree
than live the captive life
of an object of once passionate pursuit
Apollo’s hand slips around her waist,
her abdomen already transformed to bark,
yet through the wood he feels in her gut
her beating, throbbing heart,
and he, his passion a misdirected vector,
could not care less.  Look at his face.
His focus is the hunt, the game,
her fingers leaves, her arms now laurel branches.
The transformation is itself a meditation.

 

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.

 

Sonnet #8 For Valentine's Day

Sonnet #8

Unclothed we come into this world, possession-less, alone,
The odyssey to reach each goal acquaints us with new pain,
Each stumbling block, despite the odds, becomes a stepping stone,
And every loss, a predecessor to a greater gain.
Our meeting was revealed to me when I was but a child:
A revelation of a form, a loveliness, pristine,
Yet planted in my heart was that pure vision, undefiled,
Someday to manifest itself just as it was foreseen.
I found you when I lacked the wherewithal to make you mine,
Distressed, perplexed, I felt compelled to spell my love that June.
That summer’s love was but a glimpse into a world divine,
A harbinger of better days, of times more opportune.
We’ll meet again and then we must decide upon the hour
When we’ll allow our destinies to intertwine and flower.

Mayport, FL March 1990

 

January 22, 2014 #smallstones

smooth white snowflakes coat
the algae build up inside
the glass fishbowl –
the crystal ball:

the head of the Beast is
drunk with malaria
from mechanical mosquitos –

standing water still stinks,
festers, breeds ten plagues –
green and brown scum stains
bleed through winter’s whiteness –

pure as driven snow,
sinking deep, deeper –
rotted to the core.

January 21, 2014 #smallstones

quick shave
with a dull electric razor –
preserve that just-got-back-
to-the-boat-at-the-crack-of-dawn-
from-a-late-night-in-a-liberty-port
look –
white whisker stubble…

look, no snow yet.
Everything closing down
this side of the river.
Polar vortex spinning in –
again…

January 20, 2014 #smallstones

There are all sorts of things
that poetry experts will try to tell you,
about stanzas and line length,
about word choice and prosody.

But most of the experts
don’t even write poetry
and have never felt the rush
and surge of the creative process.
They have never truly “been in love.”

Real poets have told me,
“just keep on writing.”
”You will find your voice
and your path.”
That’s what I pass on.

Try to write something everyday
and keep it all together,
in a journal, on a blog,
or just in a word document.

Then, look back on it as it grows
and you will see something truly beautiful,
almost a mystical experience!

January 19, 2014 #smallstones

January 18, 2014 #smallstones

a roof-top shot –

full moon over the city

the monument peeping at us

watching us with those beady eyes

won’t make it to New Ark today –

wasn’t in the stars –

bus and train schedules wouldn’t fit,

didn’t want to drive:

don’t like to drive long distances

these days, roads are not safe

for a man like me

but we have his books here,

poems, plays, short stories, essays,

plenty to read and ponder –

and we have all these obituaries –

a thousand plateaus to climb to

to see a full moon rising

on an urban night

January 17, 2014 #smallstones

be-bop

hip-hop

don’t stop

let it pop

words and notes

lines and quotes

antidotes

ships and boats

dreams and hopes

deeds that inspire

thoughts that catch fire

minds that inquire

hearts that desire

be-bop

hip-hop

don’t stop

reach the top

January 16, 2014 #smallstones

The same Spirit that haunts me, guides me –
same dude, although sometimes he shows up
in drag, wearing a wig, and lipstick –
talking ‘bout “Will you light my cigarette?”

This same Spirit appears infrequently,
but just often enough to remind me
that he is both my rudder and my anchor.

He often warns me about the Muse
and her sisters.  “Those women are no good,”
he says, “all that flattery and inspiration.”

The same Spirit used to frighten me when
I was a young pup.  We are old friends now,
able to dismiss one another’s excesses.
It is, how shall we say, a mutual appreciation?

January 15, 2014 #smallstones

It’s a cold night in the bottom:
a deep fog has crept up on us
from the swamp below –
so thick the street lamps
look like little moons in the distance –

And my legs are tired, man,
my knees are aching so bad:
from walking too long –
too far – too late – too often –
to meet too many obligations –

But soon I’ll be home –
hot soup simmering on the stove –
a pair of loving arms awaits me:
to hold me and to listen to my story.

January 14, 2014 #smallstones

MOOC class notes

the transformed, empowered mind….
(mystical processes)
…is capable of more possibilities….
(can transform our perception)
…than the ordinary mind…
(and thus grant us subtle abilities
that we previously did not possess.)

January 13, 2014 #smallstones

meeting last night
at Starbucks
to plan our strategy

Gotta bust outta this old groove
and break out a new thing

here are the assignments:
M: logistics/space planning
A: evidence/artifacts
R: database aggregation
S: overall in charge

Maybe Sun Ra was right:

January 12, 2014 #smallstones

What if poetry is speaking in tongues,

and tomorrow – the tomorrow of our dreams –

is really yesterday, or the day before?

And what if time dislocates itself

from time to time, like water,

always seeking its own level?

And what if we live and love inside

a closed box, where freedom and justice

are just optical illusions,

dream-like holograms of hope?

And what if poetry is speaking in tongues,

and homeless shelters and prisons

our true condition, an accurate depiction

of our feeble, temporal existence?

And what if poetry is speaking in tongues,

and pure information our medium of exchange,

transmitted exclusively by a holy kiss?  

January 11, 2014 #smallstones

black ice - 
slipping and sliding
and stumbling and trembling
and smiling and grinning
and aiming and missing

and slipping and sliding
and tripping and gliding
and aimlessly riding
and falling and falling
in love with Just ModPo

January 10, 2014 #smallstones

when a great poet/
griot/spirit passes on –
you can’t just go to bed
at the normal time,
as if nothing special happened,
as if the routine is the same,
the same old routine…

you gotta stay up late,
read his work out loud -
invoke his spirit,
let it come inside your house -
sip some scotch with it,
smoke some weed if you got some,
and take a pause,
and take a pause,
and take a pause…

January 9, 2014 #smallstones

“The Poet is a faker who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain of pain he feels in fact.”
-Pessoa, Autopsychography

no need for an apology -
it was I who over-reacted:
obsessed with non-existent privacy –
trained with a double fiction:
never who I am,
never where I am,
always hiding the truth –
even from myself –
and mixing justifications -
until I lose the ability
to distinguish contrived reason
from complex reality -
but that phase of life is over:
and I need to break away.

January 8, 2014 #smallstones

when I write about Emily
behind the scenes I am thinking
about my sister Phillis,
kidnapped and brought
to Colonial America from Africa,
enslaved, she mastered English
and blossomed as a writer of verse.
She died a free woman, a poet,
but her husband destroyed all her work.
Chained to a bad husband
might be worse than slavery.

January 7, 2014 #smallstones

a pleasant Sunday afternoon
on a cold January day
eight people with a common love
for poems and poets and poetry

we finished the chat on Pessoa
and stood around, talking Netflix binges -
not caring about rushing off
to the next big thing –
absorbed by and absorbing
the atmosphere around us,
that we created, together.

January 6, 2014 #smallstones

Poetic race

enter the dark horse,
DC Poetica:
exotic, enticing,
post-modern,
yet reminiscent
of a bygone classicism –
DC Poetica:
I could be persuaded

January 5, 2014 #smallstones

Fortune cookie:

You will travel 

to an African country 

that you love

and meet with an old friend 

about a business prospect.

January 4, 2014 #smallstones

reflections on the Yoga exhibit at the Sackler

walking before dawn is my Meditation –
writing poetry is my Austerity –
prayer on bended knee is my Asana –
and the Beloved Community
is the landscape of my Practice

January 3, 2014 #smallstones

It’s 7pm Thursday and it’s snowing 
in Washington but not sticking, yet.
If this continues through the night 
we’ll have a good accumulation by daybreak - 
the temperature is low enough
the night is long enough
the snowflakes are small enough
the snowfall is steady enough - 
good enough to guarantee a white Friday.

January 2, 2014 #smallstones

after all the parades and football games

and shopping sprees and pundit prophecies

what does it mean, this changing of the year?

Janus has two faces, east and west, alike,

or north and south – choices and decisions

we must make, obligations, promises

to keep.  And if the film is one we’ve seen

before, we have to change the narrative

or at least switch out the soundtrack

change the rhythm and the beat

throw some popcorn to the ceiling

clap our hands and stomp our feet.

January has two full moons this year -

where moon rises at sunrise, and sets at set.

January 1, 2014 #smallstones

a few notes from my morning walk - Rock Creek Park

a man playing a harp on one side of Pegasus,

on the other, a man carrying sheathes of wheat

over one shoulder with a scythe in his hand,

a turtle at the harpist’s foot (percussion, maybe,

or just slowly but surely wins the race?)

“Music and Harvest” is says at the base

a man carrying a large book on the outside

of the other Pegasus (it is a gate, after all!)

and an archer with a taunt bow on the other,

the all-knowing serpent at Pegasus’ rear quarter,

“Aspiration and Literature” at the base.

the copper of both is green with tarnished disregard

but truth shouts out despite the dirt and dust