The Lines, part two

Pick any two spots and connect them, you get a line,

so you read and paid attention, learned some new words.

Unremarkable in itself and only brought up

to determine the proper path to point you

towards lines that can help you get your verses caught up.

Oh, you can be smooth enough, often times be clever,

with almost silent comments perfectly timed.

You know how little separates always right from never,

how the two are rarely perfectly aligned.

That is not a good angle your head seems to be leaning,

it is dangling too far down and off to the right

because the angle of the line you have been spooling in

is too little of today, way too much of last night.

It is what the lines the gypsy saw in better hands can tell,

it is where the house of serious eloquence fares well,

it is where I found myself when the city named Arrogance fell.

It is what the lot of us pretend we are here for.

Wishing to be a clever gentleman

with measured humor, careful voice, an easy wit;

while revealing and explaining and advising.

Square shouldered and well centered men,

knowing how to squeeze a word and make it fit;

without making it more than mildly surprising.

He finds it right in front of him in other people’s faces,

right where the shape of things first defines the time.

Alongside plagiaries and bungled quotes,

in carefully bundled piles of cliche notes;

he always knew he would never cross that last line.

Back where storytellers’ logic cannot be wielded;

where the slanted ray of manufactured sunlight shines.

Finding poor rhymes in thin cold alphabet soup,

arranged like triplets in the double’s group,

trying to avoid such poorly engineered lines.