ModPo

From the archives Tuesday, April 2, 2013 – The Raven This morning I watched videoed readings of The Raven.
 Great actors like James Earl Jones read the poem’s lines to music, almost as if it were a film script with a musical score. I fear they missed the point, rushing through the inside words to make them fit an outside melody and rhythm. With Poe, the music already lives, inside the words and lines.
 Poe’s words are to be read slowly, deliberately, intentionally. One word should stumble into the another, like a drunk man walking, like Poe, bobbing and weaving his way through Baltimore. My father would read The Raven as it should be read, slowly,
 with drunken slurs, and sharps and flats. “Don’t fuck with Poe!
 Forgive me son, I didn’t mean to say that word.
 But Poe is not a joke.” I learned that lesson well.

They say there’s a moon Overhead at night. I couldn’t tell you truly As I haven’t been outside at night Since the lockdown came. This poem’s about the moon In theory. The prince is dead. How did he die? He died like this. A waxing crescent moon guides A lost navy man back home. The queen is now alone, With her lady in waiting, smiling, and bank accounts galore. But the Beatles already told us Money can’t buy me love. I could never be a royal. Their lives are open books. Except when there’s an eclipse, and darkness and cold surround For a passing moment in time.

Our (optional) prompt for the day is to write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character.   It may not be true for everybody – My story has beginnings that don’t end. So a proper to-do list must include Going back in time and picking up balls I dropped. Not many and not all the time, Mind you, but often little things, not small Enough to be inconsequential, add Up to many over time, so they say. My temporal to-do list would include: continuing to play the viola; staying with Scouting to reach Eagle rank; writing more poetry and song lyrics; joining the Navy sooner, not later. I’d spend less time pining over lost love. —————————————-April 9, 2021

  The prompt invites us to examine liminal spaces. I didn’t like the photographs so I did an independent search and discovered the Sony game Echochrome. This sonnet resulted. Echochrome dreams I never played Sony video games – But I recognize a good string quartet When I hear one – all those years of playing Viola were not for naught. Music moves, One learns so much from its forward motion – Pathways that touch form continuities, And if you jump from one path you will land On another. The gap that’s blocked from view Between connected paths should not be feared; A hole that’s blocked from views may not exist – Until you step in it, of course, and then You fall to lower levels. Closer things Overlap things more distant – you see more Detail in near objects than those afar.                                   ...

Prompt was the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken." The cherry blossoms are in full display today. A gift To perpetuity from the Japanese. We didn’t have to end that war the way we chose. I can’t make up for what the people lost but still I feel their pain. We fought another war that both sides lost: A sacred cause that should have been resolved by Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton over dinner in New York, not on battlefields. (How much might it have cost To cut a deal? 620,000 lives lost Is a price we cannot fathom, a mortgage that forever haunts us, a note with no maturity date.) Dogwoods remind me of cherry blossoms, white petals, not pink. The tree that formed 
 the cross where Jesus died – A passing Easter thought not inappropriate. Too much is lost in war, too many lives foreclosed the fruit of labor spoiled on the vine. I think about their roads and choices lost.                    ...

  Today’s prompt is the animated version of SunRa, Seductive Fantasy Sun Ra, man, Our prophet and guide Saint of inner space In painting and music – And growing flowers – There is no finiteness, Only infinity, he tells us. Shapes and seeds Abound – a never ending Increase in variation – Alternating generations. LIke a trombone’s slide Or a trumpet’s valve Or vibration of strings Across a bridge. Every moment is An improvisation – A riff on a theme, Removing the top layers And building again. – April 1, 2021