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More than one person posted What resembles the grave but isn't, Anne Boyer, and I can be another.

( Read more... )

Things said in the darkness in bed, where you can say things that are true, tonight:

"Remember, Noodle is in the truck."

And, much less seriously: ( That Guy, flippant )

https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/restless_leg_syndrome_13040

After the burial
we returned to our units
and assumed our poses.

Our posture was the new posture
and not the old sick posture.

When we left our stations
it was just to prove we could,
not a serious departure
or a search for yet another beginning.

We were done with all that.

We were settled in, as they say,
though it might have been otherwise.

What a story!
After the burial we returned to our units
and here is where I am experiencing
that lag kicking syndrome thing.

My leg, for no apparent reason,
flies around the room kicking stuff,
well, whatever is in its way,
like a screen or a watering can.

Those are just two examples
and indeed I could give many more.

I could construct a catalogue
of the things it kicks,
perhaps I will do that later.

We'll just have to see if it's really wanted.

Or I could do a little now
and then return to listing later.

It kicked the scrimshaw collection,
yes it did.
It kicked the ocelot,
which was rude and uncalled for,
and yes hurtful.
It kicked
the guacamole right out of its bowl,
which made for a grubby
and potentially dangerous workplace.

I was out testing the new speed bump
when it kicked the Viscountess,
which she probably deserved,
and I was happy, needless to say,
to not be a witness.

The kicking subsided for a while,
nobody was keeping track of time
at that time so it is impossible
to fill out the forms accurately.

Suffice it to say we remained
at our units on constant alert.

And then it kicked over the little cow town
we had set up for punching and that sort of thing,
a covered wagon filled with cover girls.

But now it was kicked over
and we had a moment of silence,
but it was clear to me
that many of our minions
were getting tetchy
and some of them were getting tetchier.

And then it kicked a particularly treasured snuff box
which, legend has it, once belonged to somebody
named Bob Mackey, so we were understandably
saddened and returned to our units rather weary.

No one seemed to think I was in the least bit culpable.

It was my leg, of course, that was doing the actual kicking,
of that I am almost certain.

At any rate, we decided to bury it.

After the burial we returned to our units
and assumed our poses.

A little bit of time passed, not much,
and then John's leg started acting suspicious.

It looked like it wanted to kick the replica
of the White House we keep on hand
just for situations such as this.

And then, sure enough, it did.

(I can never remember the title, but searching for guacamole, ocelot, poem got it to me in the first hit.)

This spring day
A uniform grey
It's nice

Kitten, kitten: full of yells.
Kitten, kitten: full of smells.

Electrician arrived, looked inside the box, pointed out the problems. Said that turning off the breaker saved this from being a much more expensive call. Replaced three? five? switches (the two three-ways and the dining room dimmer, the back door floodlight, the indoor garage three-way), and the face plate for the box with the new dimmer. It's a slider and switch now, instead of a push-turn knob with the very green custom 3D printed part to accommodate the extra thick wood look (wooden?) faceplate.

Importantly, it wasn't a small fortune, and he had Thorts on how to accomplish our "rewiring" for a smaller fortune: add modern wired circuits, and leave the old outlets to the lamps. This is a good idea and I support it. Also I'm having organizational thoughts about how to make the General Chaos slightly more manageable when it comes time.

( Read more... )

... in the workplace, including at least two significant traumas, after the poem "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon.

I am from the supply closet
fine-tipped pens and highlighters
I am from the IKEA bag under the desk
stuffed with post-its and painter's tape
I am from the spreadsheet
untitled.xls, untitled(1), untitled(4)final
untitled(4)final_really_truly

I am from the telephone
from your dinnertime
from my nighttime
answering your computer questions.

I am from the five thousand
separate
CSS
sheets
one for each page
one for each endpoint
in the helpdesk software

I am from the wiki
Going to the wiki
Coming from the wiki

I am User:Alunatic/Office
still used ten years later
full of useful links
holding up where the helpdesk crumbles
into little grains
of nonthinking sand

Context: someone in 2019 thought that writing a poem about your background including things that make you cry a little when you dig up the memories, was an appropriate workplace bonding activity to then be read aloud at a meeting. The internet was not kind. https://agonyaunt.dreamwidth.org/502747.html

I have FOUND
the STUD FINDER
that was in
the LAUNDRY BASKET

and which
you had carefully
put
in the corner

underneath
several nightgowns
with a bottle
of dark rum

Unrelated
the new one
much worse
but trop cher

One brave green shoot pushes through the muck;
more will soon follow.
There will still be storytime at the library next week.
The librarian will still be found wearing a plush ladybug.
Somewhere, a child will move from baby to toddler
in pursuit of that bubble, just out of reach.

(Mostly written in early February.)

kaberett brought to my attention Pablo Neruda's Love Sonnet XVI, and I found this translation.

I love the handful of earth you are.
Because of its meadows, vast as a planet,
I have no other star. You are my replica
of the multiplying universe.

Your wide eyes are the only light I know
from the extinguished constellations;
your skin throbs like a streak
of a meteor through the rain.

your hips were that much of the moon for me;
your deep mouth and its delights, that much sun;
Your heart, fiery with its long red rays,

was that much ardent light, like honey in the shade.
So I pass across your burning form, kissing
you—compact and planetary, my dove, my globe.

azurelunatic and

deathbyshinies

Fuck the links on Facebook! They are fucking bad!
Please don't fucking read them! They will make you mad!
They're mostly posted up by folks who haven't got a clue,
Someone will teach them better. But it won't be fucking you.
If you should click a fucking link, try not to self-destruct:
Have some tea and pet a cat, give not a fucking fuck.

Twenty years from now, we may not remember that it was tonight that we talked quietly over cups of tea, watching the light in the ginkgo leaves fade from golden to merely green --
two horrible broken couches
family stories from the depths of time
the colors of the 1970s
culinary adventures, love/hate relationships with vinegar and spice
a three-year-old's limited palate and the betrayed wailing over a stray fragment of jalapeno
the subtle difference between turkey and cranberry, and turkey and grape
-- sipping from cups long grown cold.
When you bite into a cube of Brie and savor the bitter richness across your tongue
I want you to remember my wicked grin:
it tastes of semen.

Current Mood: creative

Tue, 19:11: Building my little empire with @TheOneTar http://t.co/O9jinAj1zE
Tue, 21:02: About damn time. RT @newsyc20 Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance for Offenses http://t.co/DQjfFpHnAa
Wed, 01:01: My fitbit #Fitstats for 12/03/2013: 5,381 steps and 2.3 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
Wed, 03:03: Sir, are you in truth so craven that you'd yell and beat this raven, dark and solemn Huginn from the Norsemen's ancient lore? #nevermore
Wed, 08:36: @Eveandriss Headed to work now! I will be in the car for a bit, whee

The seismic retrofit

protecting you and other commuters from
the hazards of the earth beneath your feet
turning traitor

as you always knew it someday will,
(but not today)
causing several tons of stone to fall
(crush your hopes and dreams)

unless we fix this now

-

will be completed no sooner than two years hence
and incidentally destroy
everything

about this building
that you ever would or could love.

pauamma jokingly proposed to attempt to puzzle out Hungarian grammar from notes from a spammer.

This struck me as a poor idea, for the following reason:

The thing about spammers
(she stutters and stammers)
The thing about spammers, I say:
The thing about spammers:
Their execrable grammars
Is keeping the shoppers at bay.

A glance down at the map reads:
Here There Be Dragons.
Nothing about rocks or terrain
Nor even the sort of vegetation.
Just dragons.

In these times, it can be a comfort
to possess a guidebook containing
Dragons.

Length, markings, wings;
fire or no fire?
These things help
when walking through dragon country.

A 8rown-8looded troll of Nantucket
Happened upon an old 8ucket--
tHIS POEM IS MEAN,
aND ITS RHYMES ARE OBSCENE,
Oh, honestly, Pupa, go suck it.

cleverthylacine pointed out that I was using the wrong character to object, at first. Much obliged!

Feather of the Albatross

I have picked my battles --
rushed into them -- any fight is a good fight
and a good fight is worth fighting well.
I have called others to the fray
Called for others to make a farewell to arms
Fought on one side, the other,
both at once.

I have tallied up the ills
and singular misfortunes inflicted
in what came before in the heat of the moment
then sniping, sullenly protecting our wounds,
hearts hid in Brutalist bunkers:
waiting for a dystopia that never quite unfurls.
Are we now frogs? Is this our kettle?
Is it boiling yet?

Too long, too many injured
The same war-torn ground we've marched for years
A war of words, for words, on words.
The blood is real.
What possible gain?
There is no victory, only loss.

( Commentary. )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: home
Crossposts: http://azurelunatic.livejournal.com/6614706.html

D found some spam sent to Webmaster@. (I can wait while you read it.)

I saw something struggling to get out, so I let it have its head.

Frederick, my Sundays are yours.
Let us converse between our meetings;
traverse the ancient roads.
Rome and Athens, England and Geneva --
Europe shall be ours.
We incline toward each other
as naturally as the willow and the walnut:
you, standing sensible and strong;
I in my premeditated descent.
Let us make reparation for this
our sanguinary war upon each other.
Love has made us passionate, persecuted.
My proud exile is at an end.
Let me make some reparation and be, once again,
your Rand.

There are no birches in the desert, but this is a sad rain
of birch seeds on melted snow
wrung out from the clouds.
They lie limply on the air,
not done weeping yet
but too tired to rain down more.

The scent of water is a promise
made and broken long ago.
"Someday soon", it seems to say
but so soon someday
dries up
and blows away

(transcribed from the current paper journal)

Originally posted 2008 01 28

Fault

Blue-veined cream unscrolls before the twitching ink,
subtle curves and jagged patterns.
Lines trace history from side to side,
relentless, every way but forward.
Underground, there is a rumble
Rocks shifting as the world sleeps.
With pen on paper trace what could be words.
They can read between the lines, they with eyes to read.

Heart and soul submersed in city;
Home is driven deep in ancient glass.
Coffee-cup canary in a coalmine deep as death
Sing signals on your wires.
Jitter, catching, scratching,
dip your pen in poison laced with ink.
Mechanical Cassandra
Reading of the rocking, roiling earth.

O, seismometer, which of these foretells our doom?
Your hand adjusts the scales.
Write the spikes.
Which of us will wake the sleeping dragon?

Nine Things about Oracles

1. Her sister played at sending her into trances and asking what she saw there. Then the things she saw happened.
2. At first, it took three hours past her bedtime and five cups of coffee to go back there.
3. The first deck of cards folded into her hands so naturally.
4. She didn't mean to invade anyone's privacy. She'd just been asking some questions, and the deck was answering them.
5. She tried reading from a pack of children's illustrated flash cards as a joke. They started out laughing. They weren't laughing by the time the reading was over.
6. It took an effort to stop seeing the answers to questions she didn't know she was asking when she walked onto the bus or opened a book.
7. Once she lost her favorite deck of cards. She was upset until she realized that she didn't need them anymore.
8. She never remembered what she said when she read to someone else. It was between them and the universe.
9. "And what do you do?" "I tell the truth."

Inspired by

elisem.

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Location: 94044
Current Music: Johann Sebastian Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F: Allegro

(not polished, but not locked either)

Rome wasn't sacked in a day, so it won't be rebuilt by tomorrow's deadline.
The bedrock beneath our fair city is unshaken, and the cellphone towers stand unfallen.
It wasn't for lack of weathermen -- it was lack of faith in the broad clear warnings. How do you fight willful blindness?
Business as usual in the aftermath. Consider carpentry as an avocation.
Point the way to our gathering hope, still shaken but drawn together. Here: here is where the corner turned.
There's no mistaking this as reckless: our weather eye tracks all instruments, lest we be surprised again.
Never again.
Point the way to those willing to see. There are new eyes willing to see disaster in the making, to avert or prepare.
We won't slide into the sea today.

Current Location: Alternatives Health & Wellness Center

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Entries tagged with poetry

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many holes within holes

International Poetry Day - Restless Leg Syndrome, James Tate

Poems of the moment, electrical update (good)

Poetry exercise: I am from

I Was Just Cleaning The Basement

Sustain, persist, ascend.

Love Sonnet XVI

A catchy jingle about some of the links to terrible things that people post on Facebook

Say Cheese

My tweets

The bright blue placard says:

Finely Spun

Geological Hazard Mapping

a very naughty limerick

Poetry: Feather of the Albatross

Frederick (spam poetry theatre)

(from 2007 01 30) (untitled)

Fault

Fault

Nine Things about Oracles

Mountain

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