Literary Drifters

December, 1969.  Working in downtown Baltimore, attending Johns Hopkins at night, spent many lunch hours doing research at the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. Research from the books the primary agenda, but observations of people started me on a quest to record what I saw.  This and future Blogs will, on occasion, include some of these observations

Literary Drifter

Bleak, marrow stiff, winter.

Ragged cuff wanderers become conveniently literary

Pratt’s Public Library offers warm sanctuary

The vagabond nods behind an unread book, randomly chosen

The old guard, per chance a former wanderer

Chooses not to notice the feigned intellect of his fellow

Undisturbed, the drifter dreams of summer.

FAR

Call Yourself a Poet?

OK, then are you:
A word painter? Language photographer? Phrase potter?
Sentence sculptor? Gerund gardener? Composition chef?
Emotion masseuse? Brain yegg?  Metaphor mechanic?
Simile surgeon? Allegory acrobat? Alliteration aviator?

OK, then can your:
Words make me see the world?
Phrase bring a tear?
Rhyme bring god into focus?
Couplet blur reality?
Sonnets freeze time?

Ok, when you write your words:
Do I know you?
Do they get in my guts?
Do they make my brain gears mesh?
Are they stronger than your foundations?
Are you a time stretcher reliving the past?
Are you a time cruncher inventing futures?


Words went to other planets before Hubble's lens opened the window for a peek!


Every answer deserves another question!


FAR

When humans landed on the moon few failed to notice the schism created between humans here at home on the blue planet.  First heavy thoughts put on paper.  (For posterity?  To assuage my own guilt feelings?)

FAR

Random Thoughts Recorded During the Week of July 20, 1969 During the Flight of Apollo 11

The LEM touched down on the lunar surface

A commercial pilot, stacked over O’Hare heard the news and was glad

All men on Earth witnessed as the Eagle landed.

Nearby, Luna 15, on an unexplained mission, also landed.

Armstrong and Aldrin placed their footprints in the dust and their names in the history books,

While 240,000 miles away, earthmen watched every step.

69 miles away, Cooper, flying Columbia, didn’t have a video monitor.

The whole world watched, awe struck, and waited.

Many Americans missed their regular TV programs, and complained.

The crime rate was down.  Criminals became interested viewers.

The AFS students at Lindenbaum’s called a recess to their love-in, and for a while, they too were interested.

While the Astronauts work on the moon, five ghetto children sit with their mother in a bare flat (third floor rear) watching on a color TV.

They do not understand.  Their fathers are not there to explain it all to them.  They are bored.

They go to bed ----- hungry!

Eagle came “in peace for all mankind”.

Both sides counted their dead in Viet Nam

Over a million in tools is left on the moon.

Another child starved to death in Biafra.

The return cargo, a priceless box of dirt, rocks and secrets.

Another rock, bearing the secrets of a black man’s soul, smashes a window in York Pa.

The Hornet crew earns their “E” for a flawless recovery.

During reentry and splash down, had a crisis arisen, would the crew or the cargo be saved?

A family in a hospital waiting room watches through wet eyes, the elaborate decontamination process to protect the earth from possible lunar bacteria.

Nearby, in a clean darkened room, one of their own, numbed by drugs, quietly succumbs to cancer.

The door to the universe swings open, and rushing to go through, man stumbles on the clutter of his world

Here We Go

So what is the meaning of Breffni to Baltimore?  Starting a search for roots, I was born in Baltimore. Close as i can tell, my Irish ancestors were of the tribe, clan, sept of the Prince of Breffni, "The O'Ruaric" in County Leitrim.  So the branches of my family tree spread far and wide.  This blog will be an outlet for what has flowed from my moods, my passions, my hopes, my fears, some of which found its way to paper, and of late to digital files.  Most of my poetry has never been seen outside the family and a few intimate friends, but, over time, it will appear in this blog.


So here we go!


FAR