a travelin light poem

-at times our endgame dreams & visions get slowly compromised and blurbed aside from our best intentions.... when faith looks more like insurance policies opposed to inspired liberation.........

there is a travelin light poem:

suitcases aside

Las vegas or bust?

Jerusalem bound?

the Forum Romanum bug?

two branches diverge

in a solid trunk

One trunk

no journey is ever

linear....and the difference is

where grace

is

found

hole punched ticket

A future memoir of my past half decade

-Half a decade of cobble stoned and row housed, on this eastern sea-board of charming Baltimore and classic DC and our train pulls into the station, a few hurried steps, on-board and onwards towards the next. It takes moments to say goodbye,..............................................................................................goodbye?!
-That drafty marquee smiles back upon our sun drenched reflection as the final boarding call is herald.
-Time, that play by play analysis falling mainly into the sublime, with sharp peeks and deep valleys forever imprinted in permanent marker. The births, rebirths, lessons learned, unlearned and relearned are etched on the walls and stalls of life's small histories and laboratories.
-A student, a wise etudiant, knows that history will keep repeating herself, tripping, stumbling, slipping over her own follies if not revised, edited and refreshed.
-It's always that same reflection casting off that same window, under that same azure sky, in the same rail-car, station after station, stop after stop; yearning to understand the narratives sewn into this long journey, desiring to know the lessons taught by the mountaintops and valley floors and all those tumbleweed moments in-between.
-'And all the trophies posted on my wall, on my wall, on my wall..................are all just that......motionless posting, collecting cosmic static and dust....What was left behind that can stand on its own??'.......I murmur to myself.............
-I know that sooner than later, there will be a fresh patch of grass waiting to be trampled on by my wanderlust sole. The crackling from the train's exhausted intercom and the splintering of its words are incomprehensible to know the exact name of the upcoming town; but each looks remotely similar to the last, back alley debris, manicured plots, to that smell of fresh cut grass, and all the tumbleweeds there in between.
-Wonderment and hope seemingly take a backseat to fear most of the time. That driving wheel leaves one mumbling in monotone all the various plan b's and angles edging towards that perfect and eternal safety and security. Religion has it right that fear is the most powerful force and its prettiest of persuasion for us second tiered, halo tilted angels. Despite my mumblings and murmurs and feeble strategies, the sun pierces this innocent and rather nondescript visage of what looks like the outskirts of Durham N.C. or maybe perhaps Bozeman, Montana.
-I remember once seeing an awful accident, a year or so ago, offering me a glimpse of just how frail and fragile it all is-this has struck with me. To be conscientious. period. And grateful, comma. Alive! exclamation point.
-Perhaps it all comes down to this one hardly noticeable,quiet daily quiz. One suitcase full of selfishness and the other selflessness, both with heavy laden leather handles. The screeching of the brakes, the roaring of the train, anticipates another arrival and departure. As we angle west, the sun greets us blindly. At this point of departure, which do I carry on??

marriage's many metaphors are all high on a Saturday night's fever....

Here is the homily that I had the honour of delivering for my beautiful family-Rachel and Buddy
.....it was truly Royal

Dance Me To The End Of Love
by Leonard Cohen


Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love





marriage's many metaphors are all high on a Saturday night's fever....

-metaphors are constantly running.......or shall we say dancing the razor sharp risk of either shedding additional light onto a subject or falling completely flat, like a worn out cliche onto the floor......
-So..............................................marriage, is like an invitation to dance. Now, some people just love to dance, with or without an invitation!!!! But marriage is dancing whether you feel like it or not...........it's a constant invitation to the dance floor!!!!!!

Now, the dance is love's alchemy of blending two unique rhythms into one harmonious and sweeping motion.......please don't fixate on the iconoclastic scene of two properly clad lovers sauntering in circles in fancy formal attire to a slow dance as the Only proper image of The dance............NO........................think bigger, bolder, crazier...think flash dance meets fame, think beach blanket bingo meets billy ray cyrus' line dancing, imagine James brown dancing to the latest Bollywood rock opera...............................................

…………………You got the twist, the shake, break dancing, line dancing, the electric slide, the boogie woogie, the moon walk and much much more....

-Buddy, you sure have your own unique rhythm........soulful, funky, sporadic, reggae meets new vague Grand Ol Opery thing, bohemian bongo meets Merle Haggard, and you carry an extremely good humored, smooth, hip, elevator jazz'd beat- that beats and beats and beats.................. and by the way, you would make a terrific square dance caller.......

-Rachael....you too have a beautiful, unique rhythm that pulsates from your being.....a passionate, raw, acoustic blend of ambition, admiration and drive........a guitar tote'n, lyric lavishing, country boot'n/4 wheel driving melody....that roars loudest in 4 wheel drive through the mud, rain, and sunshine.....

-when your romance began..... these two rhythms began joining & probably occasionally conflicting, to find that unique and original step, leading to your own various dance combinations and moves... and...........................hence, the dance began..............................2 dynamic rhythms mixing into one dance.........

-marriage, Oh.................perhaps it IS that ingrained image of the beautiful sweeping couple sauntering across the dance floor...........fluid, electric, stunning, grace, Yes gracefully..........................Rachael, Buddy............this can happen and needs to happen every day, over and over.

Yes, it's a calling in the realest sense of the word......And, it all hinges entirely on the two of you, the dancers....and your willingness to commit to this grand invitation to dance- that we call marriage......this practiced ability to arise to the dance floor at any given moment.....a call and response of sorts......
-marriage has so much potential energy......only made kinetic when activated....activated by 2 people willing to sync their individual rhythms and persons into one.....one fluid moving motion..., the dance..........

-this might sound like pious poetry....reserved for the inside of hallmark cards but in
truth it is where joy, peace and happiness within a marriage and raw love reside......

-dancing can be loud like the driving clap of thunder; pounding.............. as well as soft and gentle, like the tip of a ballet slipper kissing the smooth wooden floor........
-the calling to join in the dance, is beckoning You each and every moment in life, this sacred invitation- to rush the dance floor, arms wide open, an open heart willing to constantly learn the others' rhythms and a heart felt desire to boogie woogie like mad with your loved one, whether you feel like it or not...

-now, don't get me wrong, these calling to the dance floor come at all times and hours of the day.......................the callings come in the form of,
'Honey, could you please help me with the dishes?, or cleaning the bathroom?, or making a meal?, or changing the baby's.....diaper...............or to that tender delight of catching a good laugh with the other, sharing a memory or a loving meal together.............these are ALL calls to the great dance, together....

-Now, before going any further I’d like to emphasize and highlight that this entire metaphor balances on one fine point.

-That being, You have to continually and constantly be renewed and refreshed by the Fountain head of this All-The Lord of the Dance.

-To be able to love the other more than yourself, like Jesus told and showed us, You must turn toward and become like the Divine, through looking more and more like Jesus and breath more and more of that Holy breathe.

-The only way that fruit ripens is by directly nurturing your inner soil, embracing the seeds of God’s love and grace and spending lots of time in God’s beautiful SON.

-Rachel and Buddy-Here is where this invitation to the dance begins-Harvesting these fruits of the Holy Spirit…Being full of Holy love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control (Galatians 5:22).

-These are the sirens calling, elevating You to give your love in all ways and forms..........as implicit as a metaphor should be, this whole dance invitation thingy....marriage..................love and its commitments..............................is about letting go of self, rising to the others' needs...........love is other-centered.........love is arising with empty and open arms and lifting the other as high as you possibly can............loving another more than yourself.........yes, that is the calling, the invitation to this Big, funky, jammin, jiving, jittery dance.................

Of hearing the dance call-of love and marriage, be prompt in tightening your slickest dancing shoes and hitting the proverbial dance floor full of your unique rhythm and spunk, ready and willing to sway together through each and every song that life has to
offer.

Oh, And one last thing, resounding gongs and clangings cymbols...means your just making lots of noise...instead of making lots of love...........

So rachael and buddy, this open invitatiion to the dance today also servers as a remimder to your fellow dancers to also rise and rush to the dance floor...may we All start anew in this moment of celebration and bliss, on your holy wedding day, as selfless loving dancers committed to love, love and then, love some more...........amen……

-At this moment, I’d like us now to place our attention towards Rachel and Buddy as they exchange their vows of holy love and union……

topography poetry for the senseless

Here are a few poems that I wrote a few months ago.....
me, a table sized Atlas, a pen and a pinch of vitality
here ya go...

The sighing of Atlas

the First sigh

The Pyrenees

Of the moment

Momentarily,

Sliding into the sahara

…there’s independence

Once, within the borders.

Independently,

Traversing the heart-land….

A pristine Himalayan stream

Floods the plains..

Plain and ordinarily

cycles

the unexpected sigh

Appalachian exhaust

Crumbling in longevity

Erosive impulses

Alive in proximity

A robin returns

To these low low lands

A cross section of our heart-land

Leveled into a weathered,

Aged,

Jagged,

Flat,

Rock-solid

Stubborn thickness.

The final sigh

The continent of my divine

Can witness to the purity

Of our soils…

Witnesses to the gospel of the

Grain,

the succulent sweetness of the fruit needs no

pulpit to testify…

Two new spring poems in bloom.......

Here are two new poems written this morning by our 'resident' homeless poet James Preston Jordan. These poems have been submitted to the local homeless newspaper, Street Sense DC.
Here are the poems:



Sex. Sugar. Carolina. My mind.



Royal blue like Miessen,
Dresden or pretty good china,

Kentucky blue, not Carolina. Thirty-six
Views of blood (stop) sugar (stop) sex.

And Carolina. She was from Hanover,
Not Virginia, nor Bruges, where

China is particularly fine. In Old Tokyo
Not Edo I left not my heart but

Other parts of my anatomy much more dear to me.
China blossom, cherry wood, or even

Cherry blossoms that catch a heaven-bound
Breeze and fly all the way to California,

Hollywood, I mean. I seem to remember
All My Bridges being burnt in the rain. Not sighs,

But Vecchio, Vecchio as the direction from Venice
To Tokyo, North by Northeast but almost always

East. Orientalize, certainly, but almost always
While looking inb the bluest of blue Oriental

Eyes, most beautiful in Tokyo.





Ode to Beisbol



Pelota, perhaps, if you are
Orlando Cepeda, not Furiouso, just regular
Muy bueno, or with a build like
Josh Gibson, thumping hides sides deep
Into the St Loo night, and hearing the blues
Later, like Miles
Could play,
Or
Country Slaughter.

A Gooden enough, certain enough
Curve ball, bound to remember you of St Loose
Other Bob, Gi bson like the drink or guitar, honey,
Might even still be breaking,
Twenty years after in the crisp effortless determination
Of an outer borough night. Welcome.
In New York a Strawberry daiquiri

To those who knew, cognoscenti who will bring to mind,
Still stirs a drink that strikes well into the November knight, high above
The game board, hi outside in right. Nineteen eighty-six.
The fastball didn’t fit at ninety. Flylife measured C squared.
A collision was forthcoming, unmeasured the Strawman
Loosed a moonshot way deep into Houston night.
Swordsman Mike Cuellar might remember. Admire Doubleday too.
Still publishes?

JPJ's new poems enter local DC literary contest

-This week we entered 3 new poems from Jimmy into a local DC literary contest. I tried to attach a beautiful photo of Jimmie typing his poems literally from scraps of paper & napkins onto this blog, but technology?! prevented me for showing you the pix.....(perhaps later)

-So here are 3 freshly baked poems for your diet.

-Eat slowly and digest entirely.

nathanc

1. Reparation Song

(in the Marlywinds surrounding le tombeau of Langston Hughes)

You wronged me now; did it again

Back in 1910. Promised a path

the deliquescence, then and again,

in 1810. And in 1911 sheltered me

from the tree of knowledge; I built

a hi-road for you, high up among the ash

and fir trees, where snakes and smokes and spiders

made their homes. My fear, I

got over it. So rivers

of gold

and rivers of silver flowed like honey

among the promist redemptions, for songs

I have yet to commit. Under

the tree of knowledge. Two sisters sat:

the check clicked on the clock. What

brothers I have who are still not dead yet,

the unincarcerated mellow like tobacco leaf

in prison. All that’s left is to languish, Lang.

Prepositorily all that’s left is the song.

You tell me and I’ll sing it.

2. Highway Song

Dodgson sang

to a Spanish guitar

and a Brazilian beat

The Church is always the Enemy of the State.

Gershwin sang

to a French guitar

with a Calypso beat.

The Church is always the Enemy of the State.

Nevada sang

I mean Neruda

he hasn’t stopped singing yet

Away he ran

he hasn’t stopped running yet.

3. On Looking into the Eight Ball

It’s not an odd thing, not odd at all;

even, in fact, if you’re thinking about the eight-ball:

in whose sacred precincts all futures revolve. Mine,

it says, may not be so sunny after all:

“Thou liest,” sez I, for I’ve been deep and long asleep

in the life of Shakespeare’s favorite creep:

Richard III. Also Poe,

who destabilized literature

(the world was his winter, the world his discontent)

penned like a lotion

to the ears of devotion

poison, his poison in the porches of mine ears.

Shall I worship,

like baudelaire on reading poe?

I think so;

stain’s darker half.

But this modern oracle

holy eight-ball, like a Shakespeare fool

full of holy fire

vessel which Richard read at Ganymede

pulls up better lives than egg’s albumen;

“you’ll never do it!”

“Thou liest,” quoth I, in echoes of the hubraical lament

down the dark and endless centuries.

3 more bright gems from JPJ: our 'resident' homeless poet

Jimmy wrote these three poems the other night with the themes of prison, homelessness and other quotable quotes.........
Enjoy:



Alma Mater

If you went to Harvard,
you're probably on the Supreme Court right now.
The Oval Office, if you went to Yale.
If the Columbia Lion is your stamp,
you're probably in jail.






Carpentry


I slept last night
in a bed that Jesus made:
You know he was a carpenter.
The board was shaped
upon his lathe
He planed it with his blade.

And I dreamt I saw
Duane Allman's ghost:
You know he was a Brother.
He'd misplayed his Sacred Acts
and he signed out for his brother.

I slept last night
in a Georgetown church,
Before I slept I prayed:
You know I'm not a child of God,
but this was what I said.
Dear God, deliver me from prison.

I wept last night
in a Georgetown church,
In a bed that Jesus made.
He planed it with his snow-white lathe,
He smoothed it with his blade.







Adventure Tourism


I was thinking about redefining myself.
Homeless is a humble word,
not house-proud, you know. In better
homes and gardens
you might call us
Gentlemen between Lodgings,
for instance,
harking back top angelic ages
notable for eschatological sages
if not exactly eloquent
or even more elegant
that tried a little harder. But

Adventure tourism's
all the rage. The
lodgings ain't spectacular
and there's a lot of tricky vernacular
you'll be wanting to learn.
Guap is money
and the food, it ain't funny
the grits at the shelter're kind of runny
and a turkey wasn't made
for bacon.
The clothes

Are mostly hand-me-downs
And what girls there are've
been passed around
but are all--every single one--
good at heart.
It I was smart I'd've stopped before
I started but
just one word
from Foggy Bottom to Johannesburg--
Adventure tourism's all the rage.







History, a contretemps



By now we were well into the epoch of the epic.

The epic is not only permissible, but admonitory in times of great social stasis.

Changes were in the offing.

All through this period the electric toaster was being invented, and the bicycle.

Social ferment; symbolism in nostalgia; kitsch; and faith: three graces, cornerstones and sisters, cardinals thrown overboard. Below decks. The hill was removed of standing stones. Celtics/barbarians/syphillitic Iberians (see cf.) lost in the storm

We cannot all be great at the same time.

(fifteen seconds)

succeeding the epic, the lyric and laryngal phases, either/ether of which may prove fatal, if swallowed internally.

Voices were raised in opposition to the status of Q.

The status of Q was never in doubt; X, Y were factors and unfailingly treated as such.

Delta denoted rate of change, most particularly in the delta, where change was constant. Among the southern peoples, who were raised and mixed and looked on time differently.

It was all about the pepper: a whole race of people stood security to the deposit of the pepper. The Pope was brought home in one piece, with half an ear missing. Peter picked 'em.

More than most epochs require time, proportionally, more than Egypt. Without support of the military, and most particularly in the absence of time, epochs are neither made nor mended. Happiness becomes moot. Overland by Khyber. Results, however, may not materialize, especially in light of data that keeps disappearing.

The populace was entranced by a pandora of conspiracy theorems, great bards of people johnstuarting about. Dressed in the livid colors of a Greek phalanx, brandishing cat o' nine tails.Singing songs and such.

The center falls apart: things cannot hold.

In this time of dying...in this...who kilt John Bonham?...the crowd waited, until, having plunked down good money, while the good died young.

The honorable, horrible Heinrich Schliemann was a giftless amateur, who nurtured a higher love for Homer, and all other Simpsons. This did not prevent Chronos, a chamois, aka Saturn, a dead auto, who ate all but Juppiter. Mars succeeded while Venus is said to have wept.

Eve & Newton fell out of a tree. K-I-S...devil/double take it, the rest. Is history.

Some poetic yeast for our daily bread, by JPJ

As part of our everyday experiment called life and how to live it, I have been trying to find a vehicle to carry some of the voices here at the Georgetown homeless drop-in center. One of my fellow travelers on this journey whose Woody Guthrie lyric meets Goethe's rhyme in the dry corn fields of Van Gogh, sheds some poetic yeast to our daily bread:
Please enter:

Mr. Jimmy Preston Jordan

3 poems as seen in the Street Sense (DC homeless newspaper):


As I Lay Down on St. James Green

It thrills me to think that Falstaff, too
May have slept one off here, English beer
Is not for sissies, London drinking habits of the
very rich
And derelict. But I'm happy to think
that Falstaff
Might be my pillow on this balding, balmy,
sunlit, rotten day.
I say 'rotten'; of course, personally, I couldn't
be more ecstatic,
Though it's true that the city (all cities) have
a way of
Burying themselves. Successive layers,
demon-sifted, stratified:
There's a world of
Concepts to go absolutely bonkers with.
I could shape this
Into a sonnet, if I tried. Really, I could.
Isn't it
The implication of free verse>
That we work smarter,
When the fact is we just work less?
Let Falstaff be my pillow,

Then, ninth ring of soily hell beneath me.
There is a way,
In English literary
History,
for James Joyce to have been Gogarty's friend.
As I
Lay down on St. James Green.



Blacker than the Pot, for Sure


Blacker than the pot
For sure, for me to take issue
With a fellow prisoner and poet
Over a bag of lost toiletries. I
Lose thing:
A name, an identity, a pair of pinking shears,
A lawnmower, a raison d'etre, a nation,
A universe, an entire Biblical people
Full of pride and trust. Mea culpa,
But while we're at it, if it is true at all
That the putative pot did once call the aforementioned kettle black,
If these housemaidens are to be believed in the least,
What did the kettle say in return? If
The right hand doesn't know what the left hand
Is doing, what does the left hand know?
It all? Or only everything? This, by the way,
Is the sound of one hand clapping: whupwhupwhup -
My sorry bad self bitch-slapping you
Across the yard for reasons.
Milkshake, indeed.

Return to the sheep, as the French, for
Reasons so inscrutably theirs, sometimes say.
We needn't confuse an adage with a cliche:
The one is good for being tired with, the
Other has been known to open tin cans in a pinch. It doesn't
Do to confuse an angry gorilla with a crossword
Puzzle, but if you find yourself in this desperate
Situation, try doing what I did: blow a heaping handful
Of cayenne pepper in his face. PETA will be at
your door. Paul and Mary will be home.
So, for that matter, will Simon and Garfunkel,
And whatever sorry mess is left of the Byrds.

In conclusion, we say, under the circumstances -
Why under? Why are we forever under
The circumstances? Are we to be oppressed
By a mere preposition? Can't we for once be
Over them? I myself am over the circumstances.
I reject the circumstances. The circumstances are
Dead to me. I bitch-slap the circumstances
All around the yard, up the stairs and then down again.
True, "under" is a beautiful word. As prepositions go,
It manages to be at the same time sleek,
Slender, and fulsome. It behooves us
To remember God made this preposition.
And who (it is not He), by the way, is accountable
For prepping the prepper of the position?
And what if racer Danica Patrick assumes the pole position?
I cannot believe
I am the only one out there
Sleep-deprived nightly
By these life-as-we-know-it-endangering
Insane linguistic anomalies:
Shout out if you hear me. Please.



Lamenting the Deplorable Condition
of the Poetic Bureaucracy
(With Apologies to Regis Philbin)

Damn me, Oprah Winfrey; so you're the poet laureate.
No, that's not right. Is it Anne Rice? It changes
Oftener than the weather. Damn me, David Berkowitz - no, that's not
It either. Didn't it used to be Billy Collins?
And what the hell was all that about? It's like
Awarding the Nobel in medicine to some half-baked
Quack with a bedside manner. No offense,
Billy Collins. You don't have enemies. Oh,
That was what that was about.

Let's face it. Nowadays everybody and his brother-in-law
is the poet laureate. That guy mowing the grass
In the public park with the orange vest and
Mismatched socks, he's the poet laureate.
A carful of Mexicans high on tequila and the cult
Of the virgin, busting out colorful with sweet andeles-
They're the poet laureate.
If Kid Rock were suddenly the poet laureate, then
Things would change. Somebody has to feel it.
Passions would ignite. People would throw moon pies
From festively colored hammocks
And pull each other's hair out,
Gouge out each other's lyin' eyes.
That's what I'm all about. Change.

OK, so T.S. Eliot hated Whitman, despised every
Little thing he stood for, projectile-vomited every time
He heard the other's name. Now that I've won my own
Palme d'Or at Cannes for Very Best Actress in an
Undertaker's role, I feel I can say these things. Let loose. Get it
Out in the open. But in his infirm old age, the man who'd penned
"Geronition," then forgotten what he'd written, relented Whitman?
He ain't so awful. So then suddenly everybody liked Whitman again,
But now they despised Eliot. Go figure. That's history. That's
The history of our literature. If it doesn't make you sit down
In the middle of a crowded urban sidewalk and set the world
Right afire with the magnitude of your righteous lamentations,
Not to mention your wrongful terminations, then you'll
Probably just go to work tomorrow. Quick: Who's the poet laureate?
I'll have poet laureates for 600, Alex. That's right! You
Win the trip to Bermuda! The charming, Canadian-born host
Of Jeopardy is our one and only poet laureate.

Wading through the undertow

Here is another introductory piece in hopes of comprising a collection of tales, talks and walks of life between those borders of home & homeless, going & coming, lost and found.

Wading in these waters you’re bound to get a little wet. It is from this current that I want us to gaze. The old question of who consoles the counselor, who pastors the pastor and who heals the doctor deserves more than a cursory glance. An innocent by- stander can simply turn away from the yellow tape disaster scene while those frantically involved are intimately torn between flight and fright. Those of us treading in the waves of each other’s heavy seas should to prepared for both its beauty and force of when its comes a’ crashing.

Bad advice is one thing, no advice is another. The best advice is entering into the other’s life with full compassion and understanding. However, this commitment takes vulnerability and the willingness of walking head-on into the snarled and twisted carnage of the others lives.

We all carry round parts of each other, whether we are cognizant or the fact of not. The size of our suitcases and bags display how well we process our inter-being with the rest of our world. When these bags start tripping us up, where do we unload all this stuff?

The brilliancy of AA is its simple ingredients of transparent honesty within yourself and the strength of committed community. Whether we are the ones carrying the load or the one clearing space/time to place all the extra baggage, we will need both honesty and group strength. Pioneers will quickly find themselves white knuckled behind bars or belly up at the bar.

It is through these conversations that expose just how much I yearn for a risk-free, safe, routine life divinely beamed down through that huge satellite of love & order. All this is scattered the moment I enter the life of one less fortunate. Before quickly trying to gather the shards of my once glass-clean existence, I’m forced to hold our broken edges of life up to the light. All these fractured, twisted, desperate tales beg an answer or some solace. That is when letting go of your shattered pieces of life and embracing the other, as a work in progress-happens. Entering the stories of others you must let go of the security of your own life, walking straight through that white picket fence and know that that divine satellite beams love, compassion and companionship to all; step one.