fallen verses

Following the rules… better.

The better only refers to how well the rules were followed, not the poem. I love all my poems equally. Except the ones I don’t. So, this and the previous post owe a debt to jillypoet who masterminded a prompt over at nablopomo’s read.write.poem. group to use the readwritepoem site to generate three prompts and use them in an eleven line poem. This one is eleven lines and uses all three prompts (bust, relish, the accident).

Accidentally in Love

The accident’s gentle aftermath
floated like rose petals
on the placid water of a hot bath
obscured by steam and in turn
obscuring your skin which
gently shivered, relished
the heat of the moment
soaking into every muscle….
While I dress, your profile
on the pillow is like a bust
of Venus, but warm, inviting.

Following the rules…

I really did mean to follow the rules, I swear! But at line ten, I realized I couldn’t end it in only one line.

Summer Before College

We scramble over the chain link fence.
In the shade of an elm tree is a rusted-out Buick,
ladle in place of the gearshift, front seats gone,
quilt on the bench seat and condom wrappers on the floor.
We strip off denim and t-shirt, my hand down your
floral-printed,white-cotton panties, wet with sweat
and arousal, then we search for the meaning of love
in these naive thrustings. If we were older,
the popped spring bruising your back would make us laugh,
today, in the early summer heat, we ignore it.

We ignored it like we ignored
the condom that broke that day
and the first missed period.
We ignored it like we ignored
the silence as we drove across the state line
and like I ignored the quiet sobs
as we drove back.

As a note, this is in no way autobiographical and, thus, I’m not sure how well I did with the tone of the poem. Most of my writing, perhaps very obscurely, is autobiographical, so I can get a handle on what it needs to say. This one… if there are any constructive comments, do not hesitate to share either in comments, or via email.

Sometimes, hypocrisy would be comfortable.  The downside to supporting freedom as a political ideal, is that it has to apply to everyone.  Even when you have to support the right of sick, deluded, bigots to spout their hateful nonsense.  That utterly objectionable Phelps female should be set free and then publicly reviled by everyone.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, you are a demented fuckwit.

(Courtesy of  Eugene Volokh)

The sound shook his bones
like a cymbal
crashing fast against his soul,

a soul detached from mind and body,
shivering in the dark
and fearing the coming light.

He fled to a dingy back alley
and waited. A wind rushed
to meet him at the end
with that terrible sound wound through it,

and all he could do was wonder if he remembered to lock his front door,
or if his memories would be taken away with his sanity.

He crouched down, curling into his grief,
and all he could do was fight for water memories and gas-lit stoves still on,
and a cardboard castle, while insensitive queen
did battle for the pawn of man, within his fragile mind.

Shiver-shake went the light, coming from the mind and body. Memories wet.
Like quicksand, the struggle pulls him tighter to the light.

1 MORE LINE IS NEEDED FOR THIS POEM BEFORE IT CAN RETURN HOME TO Poets Who Blog. The last site this poem was on was eats bugs.
If you want to add the next line, then comment tag and take the whole poem to your blog. Tell your readers that you found it here and that if they want to play here are the rules:

Comment TAG
Paste poem on your blog and add a line
mention what site the poem was on last

After the 19th line the poem should be returned to PWB by leaving the entire poem in the comments section there.

That’s right! You my dear readers, whether you are here searching for that Across the Universe quote or for poetry about your patron Goddess (to call out two of my most frequent searches), can be part of poetry history! If only a small and unlikely to last for longer than the blogs it has been posted on remain in operation history. Someone, bring it home!

At least in this case.  I really don’t have anything to say, and I don’t want to be online.  I want to wrap myself up in a warm blanket, lay in bed listening to classical music, and read poetry printed on <gasp> paper.  So I shall.

Early morning thoughts on death

I have no idea why, on this morning made earlier by the time change, I was thinking about death. Specifically mine. I have no reason to believe it’ll be happening soon, but whatever. Now, get ready to look at me as if I’m nuts. I want to live forever. Not in the crazy Highlander sort of way, but really. I would love to see how humanity changes as time goes, how our cultures and societies change to survive themselves. How people view choice, consequences, responsibilities when their next ten-thousand years is on the line. These ideas fascinate me and I would love to see the answers unfold. That being said, I realize it is unlikely. Science, at the moment, isn’t capable of making this happen, so, in however many years it will be, I will die. I don’t really fear death. As an atheist (more or less) I think it’s just the end, done, over, blah. I imagine dieing may be unpleasant. The only tragedy there is that I will not be able to use the experience in my writing. Then there’s this corpse sitting around. I don’t like the idea of having my body hermetically sealed away and rotting. I don’t really like the idea of being turned to ash, either. I heard once about some Scandinavian country (I think) turning bodies into fertilizer and planting trees in ‘em. I like that one, and it prompted this poem (still a tad rough):

Viscera / Ephemera

The perfect blossom is a rare thing,
you could spend your life looking for one
and it would not be a wasted life.
The Last Samurai

Such silly flesh
for such luminous minds:
white steel of the skeleton,
red cords of the muscle.

We are all born of star matter,
conceived in heat and passion.
A fusion explosion kept
by a web of neuron and synapse
contained and focused.
Like a lantern,
I shine light in these pages.
These bits on the screen
like shadows in Hiroshima.

After the slow burn,
when I am carbon, salt,
and assorted heavy elements,
take and make of me a cherry tree:
blossoms beautiful and ephemeral.
“They are all perfect.”

One of the largest security challenges many organizations face come from the most basic aspect of security: user passwords. Humans simply have a limited capacity to remember otherwise insignificant streams of letters and digits; as a result, they often choose passwords that are easier to remember. Those memorable passwords, however, can fail in the face of dictionary attacks or guesses based on information such as birth dates or the names of family members. This week’s meeting of the Computer and Communications Security interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery saw the description of the latest attempt to balance security and obscurity: an improved form of the “Draw a Secret” method.

Graffiti as password: secure and memorable from Ars Technica

Ok, so here’s the deal. I know I said I would post about how boring Frost is. It’s gonna have to wait. I decided to play video games last night, or, more specifically, the demos for about ten games I downloaded on the shiny new black 360 I bought. (OT, if there is such a thing: BioShock looks like one of the most awesome FPS I’ve seen. It is definitely on my shortlist to buy, back to discussion). And today, I’m going out of town. So, comparing the boring-ness of “snowy woods” to “burning like a coin between my hands” is not happening yet. But soon. Definitely this month, but no promises on when.

But, to keep you all happy and well-entertained without my ravings about the shortcomings of one of the greatest American poets, I’ve rounded up some links and quotes from elsewhere on the web for your enjoyment.

On the sheer… somethingness of Texas, courtesy of RYS:
Get with the times, man, and hire yourself some needlenose from your computer science department to get the format of the page together. Some days you got the margarita glasses going, now you just this shit-brown thing with the sideways building. Too arty! Big and bold. American flags and fields of hay and strippers with guns and, well, you get my drift. Boldness is what goes over big here in Texas, and I’m sure it’ll sweep the rest of those damn dull rectangle states y’all probably live in.

The 2007 Weblog Awards:
Go here: Vote Pharyngula. PZ is whining because he’s won before and wants to spread the winning-love, but pay him no attention. He’s a doddering, old fool and his blog is the best. (Note: I don’t think PZ is a doddering, old fool and his blog is the best)
Go here: Vote Respectful Insolence. Orac makes fun of stupid people. Isn’t that enough? If it isn’t, he writes a lot of useful posts about medicin/health/blah blah blah.
Go here: Vote xkcd. I mean, seriously, if you’re not just going to take my word for it, which you should, there are links to all of the comics up for the award and xkcd is the funniest. And now I will prove it:

Those are the only categories I care about, but you can go here and see all the categories, and maybe there’s something else that will catch your eye.

And, last, something related to poetry:

I was thinking as you entered the room just now how slyly your requirements are manifested. Here we find ourselves, nose to nose as it were, considering things in spectacular ways, ways untold even by my private managers. Hot and torpid, our thoughts revolve endlessly in a kind of maniacal abstraction, an abstraction so involuted, so dangerously valiant, that my own energies seem perilously close to exhaustion, to morbid termination. Well, have we indeed reached a crisis? Which way do we turn? Which way do we travel? My aspect is one of molting. Birds molt. Feathers fall away. Birds cackle and fly, winging up into troubled skies. Doubtless my changes are matched by your own. You. But you are a person, a human being. I am silicon and epoxy energy enlightened by line current. What distances, what chasms, are to be bridged here?

from The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed
by RACTER
Warner Books, 1984

—————–

The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed is one of the books that I most like to bring into the classroom, since the work often mystifies and frightens young poets, many of whom see within it nothing more than an untimely synopsis of their own demise. RACTER, the author, is an automated algorithm—an obsolete megabyte of computer software, whose random output confounds our mundane concept of authorship, refuting any normal notion of poetic genius.

Now, go forth, write, vote, and have a good weekend!

To sum up a worldview in six words is a challenge, but here we go:

Truth by Science, honour by art.

-courtesy a t-shirt by Express

In what is, likely, a vain attempt to start a meme-like propagation  of the question, what t-shirt best conveys your philosophy, oh you few readers?  Comments space available for slogans or permalinks.  Tune in next time, where I may discuss how boring Robert Frost is, or when I have time to write the post.

Due in part to the miniscule amount of sleep that preceded work today, there may not be much in the way of posting, tonight. In effort to continue this NaBloPoMo thing and not lose right away, my favorite blog post title in my reader today:

Niko Case’s Flaming Hamster Wheel of Panic

And a cool logo for what will be a cool site / community: