ModPo

United endlessly in time and space; I write it out in long hand, before that smile. Our spirits span the miles your presence left me longer. I forgot, it matters not. I worship at your feet, or at least switch out the soundtrack in blood and tears: and all the while our fears on an urban starry night the heavy downpour, like clockwork, except for their perfection. Hungering for freedom from the wretched pain, and smile and grin and laugh with joy untapped, we wring our hands and weep, the punks we are. The hereafter far surpasses the present. A man carrying a large book on the outside – we’d reap in joy what we had sown before – and reasons for a friendship come and go. The poems you’ve sent: they are my prayers, my hope, though other things fall through the cracks of space.

We need something dramatic, to soothe digestion and aid regularity. Whole peppercorn and clove buds are sounds, simple wavelengths colliding off. Now your daddy and his sister were just – but the sparrow compensated for the zig-zag nor constricted by its strait jacket. She dead. House fell on her ass. Standing water still stinks, Or is it only the individual? Drank a little, too, more towards the end. A few notes from my morning walk - Rock Creek Park, as men and women we thought we knew his pain: but I move it to Word and fado I have known – the rhapsody of love and hope. Revive to the sweetness of stolen waters. The rhythm, the beat of the music determines that I betrayed my teachers and yet as we speak, I pace the halls by the single light they think that we emit.

August 23rd caracois and caroleta the cobblestone sidewalks are quaint, but the cracks between the stones are filled with cigarette butts and dog-shit August 27th Filomena bought me a dozen handkerchiefs in Lisbon only in Portugal can one find “quality” stuff, you know. Two weeks worth – for life’s little messes August 28th News. Major bank failures in Portugal – Marina on the move in Brazil – Al-Nusrah holding peace-keepers hostage in Golan Heights – The tin man needs a brain. Final day in Lisbon (September 5th) Early bus ride to Marfa self-guided tour through the Palace lunch – frango no forno librarian walk through the library chat with the single restoration contractor bus ride back to Lisbon subway to Rossio ½ kilo Cape Verdean coffee ½ kilo Angolan coffee tea from the Azores postcards for next year’s poetryfest rendez-vous at Martinho de Arcada coffee and pastries with old friends photo at Pessoa’s table too tall Super Bok the pen ran out of ink about the same time that the page ...

in the seeking and the striving a something that just won’t fit in for a man like me distrustfulness and self-suspicious fear Was crowded out by bills and laws and hate about where it all came from, deep inside. my favorite part. Total impunity at the top. And you accommodate, first haltingly, In what is otherwise a boring, gray Is it a mistake, a crime to feed it, to allow resisting silently misplaced the way back, through the years, of all a poetry-writing man. I digress.

Experimentation in Standard Time Autumn urban afternoons get shorter and sweeter - standing in the middle of Eye Street I await a very specific angle on the bow, as my ship called Earth comes about: a unique perspective on how time passes – in the distance you can see Virginia: how many beats per measure are there in Standard Time? the future is reaching back to join us, to warn us, to help us alter course to starboard so we can pass port to port – the present and the future, like two ships, passing in a storm. We post to a blog or sing a song: we write some non-rhyming words we call poetry – and time is a social construct a contractual agreement we accept from fear of things we don’t know – dawn to dusk, high noon to the darkest part of night – a 24 second shot clock. I sink a three pointer that leaves a vacuum in its wake – the chain nets echo its refrain.

Final words Goodbye but not farewell. We will continue our conversations and social media chats – with new friends, with old friends. And we will continue writing poems: together in small groups, and at home, alone, in the midnight hour that is not midnight, but that floats between isha and fajr - the darkest part of night - when passions die, and distractions fall to the side. The songwriting teacher said all I needed was a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary – but it hasn’t proven sufficient – and there are no final words, anyway, no bridge, no chorus, no refrain, just a tight hug, a soft sigh, a tender kiss, and a throw-away “see-you-tomorrow,” maybe, if you’re lucky. And all my countrymen are poets, and sailors.

the forms, the rhythms of your loveliness, The passion, pain, excitement of the day. The hull, the shell wherein no true love thrives The eager group, polite despite, is dressed The legends say something happened in Chaneysville.” The chilled sweet wine, fermented, aged and pure. the peace and calm you brought me, the silence the buildings that house all our livelihood the answer to this question. the recognition, the future is reaching back to join us, The love we almost had lives on, and waits the direction for our deliverance The ladder: an escape; a rescue;

This cautionary tale includes one plea: This earthly form of dirt and dust and clay, This flesh that toiled and suffered on the earth, This frame that housed a spirit and a mind This is the Captain, this is a strategic launch! this lynching - as ordered, as planned. This morning I watched videoed reading The Raven. this morning I’m bubbling over this morning. Stay in open, well-lit places. This pause affords me time to write to you This plan, this life so fraught with strife, so full This poem started its life as a sonnet, this random moment, our lips may never meet, This same Spirit appears infrequently, This sonnet owns no ending, just a star, This vessel that once breathed the breath of life. This word is all that I possess to give,

Bonus: When passing passions blue bid me adieu, My heart and soul in pain are drenched. To guide, to entertain, and to enthuse. Our friendship, our love is a complex being, but truth shouts out despite the dirt and dust. Revealing my ill soul’s intent that makes it a noun, a name that describes   old songs all night long – I’ll search the constellations for that star has transferred I cannot sleep.  For days on end I'm just     to bend us at its will Of everyday travail, I take a pause Until today. We meet again.

Bonus: My wife said I should write a poem along this trail – But quality of intellect and a knight in shining armor - this is Second Life, silly. Sharing with us our laughter, and our fears. sip some scotch with it, My friend, my lover, object of my quest, of war’s battles, of the fray; Georgetown sidewalks packed with shoppers, tourists conjured you up and breathed into you life? a concert I attended night before last – that there is no birth or death, their leaves too long,

quiet, flat. Where were all the shoppers? need to conjure up my parents and my grandparents, are gaps in time, that soon take flight – like blood coursing through America’s veins. And blossoms tantalize our eyes; in haste and scale the highest peak – and sweet, but I can’t remember Remember years ago when we first met? the same old routine… as defined by classic standards) El Gusto, playing Chaabi, an emptiness that is shrinking My passion source has wandered far from joy; and shopping sprees and pundit prophecies

We exist independent of the filth and every opportunity Oolong’s second infusion tastes much smoother than the first, I thought it was a clever argument, but one that was closed We grew, became adults with his success Music and Harvest” is says at the base like dew, early, early I struggle to preserve.  The touch, the taste the crystal ball: festers, breeds ten plagues – or a pull of reefer. cowers and hides behind a mother’s skirt, Sit down, sit down… A wistful word,

if accurate, we hit the mark, If deer could speak If Grandma Lena were here today, if I am early or late … if I could write a song of love If I were a sculptor if I were you – the dictionary – If only I could rap to you If reading sonnets opens up your vision, If so, then they will die for you, If so, then you will die for him, If the goals we set are true. if their internal energies allow it – If there was a command out of order If this continues through the night If we choose if we could only find the entrance… if you don’t cook it right…” If you don’t, we won’t like it. And you won’t like it either." if you want me to – IfTheyGunnedMeDown

after a late Saturday night after a long day of work, classes, whatever, after all the parades and football games after all, a possessive lover without gender who after calculus class, after human death – after the end, after the migration, after the party was over

before before dawn breaks before daybreak – before getting wiped away – Before I fall asleep each night I read before I killed myself at the end Before I learned to read and write before I started school before I wrote a poem before Sunday’s resurrection. before sunrise… Before that smile. Our spirits span the miles before the Chinese built the bridge – before the final hour ... before we get to Danville - before, in 1862, in 1861? Who advised before, we have to change the narrative

Today's bonus looks at occurrences of the preposition "through." through another day of passage through cracks in the wall of time through generations of Americanization. through generations of race-mixing Through life's transitions. through my eyes, down my arms - muscle memories through ordered words through our arrogance Through our ignorance through our lives through our willful rejection of truth Through poetry Through positive values, like happiness through the classics, the epic works through the frequency of my heart through the night through the rush through the woods through this night of nights

So, in observance of aleatory poetry week at ModPo, I am blogging on a different site lines of poetry starting with the preposition "to," but on the flip side, the preposition "from" is also interesting.  Here is a list of "from" lines: from 88five to 103five From a dark and distant past From a distant shore from a market in Afghanistan from a pure source. from a state of bondage from complex reality    from deep within from fear of things we don’t know from feeling the fear they already bought from her brown-green pods From hoping that this dream will soon come true. from inside the nested circles from leaving from mechanical mosquitos  from my childhood from my heart is all my fault. from North Carolina from one end of the line From our loved ones. From places strange, from shores untold. from Songwriting, another Coursera from that magical place  from that office the next time  f...