Spring

The crows are back,
Cawing in the rain-beaten morning.
Black heralds of spring.

After Lunch in Llay-Llay

It sits well and good,
Lunch in Llay-Llay.
The sun sidles down, soaking
Leaves, roof tiles, walls, and road.

Dogs lie down after eating
Lunch in Llay-Llay.
Their sides heaving up and down, panting
Looking to find a place to nap.

In the cool office after
Lunch in Llay-Llay,
I look to a side street that borders a plaza,
Sandias y melones are for sale.

Women's voices chat over
Lunch in Llay-Llay.
In sideways discussion over the town's life,
Noting, examining, judging, and moving on.

Life rumbles to a halt during
Lunch in Llay-Llay,
And the repast is a side-effect of this daily event,
Reaping smiles from what was sowed.

Stopping by MIA on a mid-August Evening

Whose flights these are I don't really know.
They're taking off for international points, though;
People all see me stopping here
To watch my gadgets fill up to go.

My little laptop must think it queer
To stop here with my own gate so near
Between Starbucks and Sushi-make
The darkening evening of mid-year.

It needs some time for the wi-fi to take
Like my laptop thinks there's some mistake.
Concourse sounds through my head sweep
Noises and announcements of raucous make.

Miami International is hardly lovely or deep,
But I have promises (and a flight) to keep,
And thousands of miles to go before I sleep,
And thousands of miles to go before I sleep.


(Apologies to Robert Frost.)

Writing dilemma

Sitting and working does not stir creation, but gets work done,
Walking and reading gets no work done, but stirs creation.

What to do?
Which to pursue?

Dilemma.

----

Admittedly, I was able to write a page or two yesterday, and I'm looking at writing another page or two today (mostly integrating information from a key paper into my dissertation). However, one piece of advice that my brother gave me about dissertation writing seems to be definitely true: it's just bloody grinding away at it, page by page, revision by revision, comment by creativity-crushing comment.

Urgh.

Where is...?

Where is that fresh flush of life?
Wherefore stolid complacency stagnant in my gut?
Where went the cold edge pulled from a sheath,
Shining proud in the sun, ready to cut?

How dull it is now, tarnished red with age,
Unoiled and unsharpened, naked to the sky?
How much cold iron is left below the rust?
What mettle is held in that core?

Shall we burnish it and see;
Rasp the edge until it is once again sharp?
Reveal the cold beauty of the sword:
Serene and archaic symbol of ancient times.

Can it slay our modern creature comforts,
Cut through the Gordion knot wound about us?

(Yup, I'm in a funk once again: writing bad poetry in between bouts of practicing martial arts outside.)

Spring morning

Waking up today,
I catch the first morning song.
Birds sing in the spring.

Measure twice, cut once

Technology:
Our salvation, our bane;
Our servant, our master.
Our muses, and Aergia
Apollonic, Athenic;
Dyonysian, Priapian both:
A modern Janus is technology.


Gadgets and programs,
Hardware and software,
Inherent and learned knowledge,
Conspire at every turn
Against the unsuspecting:
Closed the gates to the unbaptized.


How can we translate the world
Into a computer; rationalize
Motes of sunlight and greenery
Into lines and boxes on a screen;
On paper? Points-of-interest marked
As Xs against space...
Making sense only to initiated eyes.


GPS gadgetry mixed with opensource software,
Information-age technologies mixed,
In a cauldron of invention; intention;
And will out -- one can hope -- a tincture of truth;
Lines on space, signifying knowledge,
Skirting anguish and frustration
Through plastic clicks at laser speed.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
It's lost. Gone without a trace:
Sequences of ons and offs;
Arcane numismatics, that
In context
Can pay the gatekeeper to enlightenment;
But are now just lost to the ether.

I must again cover the same ground,
Click the same plastic laser clicks,
Collect the same sequences of ons and off,
Attempting to bribe enlightenment's keeper:
Sisyphus or Tantalus? I don't know which I am,
But repeated action appears to be my task.

Shit.

Credo of those with strong convictions

"Judge those who you think might judge you.
Hold preconceptions that you know have worked.
People are dumb, except for those that aren’t.
Don't restrict civil liberties, except when people are dumb.
Things are never black-and-white, except when they are.
It’s okay to kill people, except when they were not meant to die.
Stereotype all the time.
Remember that I’m the victim here!"

One problem of listening to too much news

No, I'm actually not going to focus on the problem of becoming too depressed from listening to the news. This one is more insidious, but might well be only an issue for me: writer's block.

I don't know why it happens, but I become more "verbose" in my writing when I'm not listening to so much radio or television news (I don't always watch the screen when the news is on - it doesn't always add that much more to the discussion of events). This being National Poetry Month, I had thought to myself, "Self, why not put together a poem or two? You know, something to do with wind, sky, air, water, spring, life, etc.?" Well, it is now the last day in April, and I just realized that the implication of that was that I had not composed a single poem for this month. True, I did post one poem, but that was one I found online.

So what should I write about now that the end of the month is so near? Should I not worry, and try and throw something together really quickly? Should I be angst-ridden and worry over each line? How does this all relate to writer's block (and should that be the subject of my poem)?

Well, to answer the last (non-parenthetical) question first. I have found that I've been suffering from a massive case of writer's block. I've also realized that I have these when I am listening to a lot of NPR and watching a lot of BBC. I've just now turned off the Beeb and am listening to the flowing water of my housemate's large fish tank. The sun is setting, and the light is shafting in through the front-door window. I'm sitting, thinking about going out in an hour to Leopold Bros - getting in a last couple of visits before they up-and-go to Denver, CO.

So, here's my thrown-together, semi-thought-through poem:

The end of this month arrived so fast.
Through many weeks of work and celebration,
It sneaked up on me.

The end of this month looms ahead.
And I realize now, with a warm setting sun,
It will slip softly by.

The end of this month is so easy to see.
A campus devoid of stressed scholar-students,
Lies recovering in the sun.

The end of April, the cruelest month,
Will flow out with a soft, cool, breeze;
A sylph's caress upon the brow of Time.

Anticipate May.
May Day through and past Memorial Day.
Sunny, warm, and May.

A statement about America on Valentines Day.

On America: . . . . . . . . Loving Coffee

The average American likes to drink a cup of coffee.

The average American likes to drink a cup of joe.

The average Joe likes to drink a cup of joe.

The average Joe drinks a cup of joe.

The average Joe drinks joe.

Joes drink joe.

...

A difficult little haiku.

Sometimes the Sun-Times
Runs a story on some tines,
At times, on the Tyne.

Apparently, the word "sometimes" is difficult for Mandarin speakers to say clearly. This little haiku turns into a diabolical tongue twister for them.

Here comes the rain!

Looking outside my window, I see
Rain.

Large gouts of rain.
Spouting, souting rain.
Pouring, roaring, rain.

Looking outside my window, I see
A magnolia tree bent by
Rain.

Bowed double,
Limbs in trouble,
Soaked in rain.

Looking outside my window, I see
A shallow lake of puddled
Rain.

A future birdbath,
A path for Peter,
And where I will soon walk...

Without an umbrella!

No rain.

No rain today, and little indication of rain in the near future, however, gray skies go on and on:

Gray Skies (apologies to Irving Berlin)
I was happy, just as happy as I could be
Ev'ry day was a sunny day for me
Then good luck went a-charging out my door
Skies were clear but they're not clear anymore

Gray skies
Crying on me
Nothing but gray skies
Do I see

Corvids
Cawing a song
Nothing but corvids
All day long

Never saw the clouds building up high
Never saw things going good-bye
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're all gray, my how they fly

Gray skies.
Sunshine is gone.
Nothing but gray skies.
From now on!

Anyway, there were a few students this morning playing on a large see-saw, raising money for charity. Also, I saw some fungi growing on the side of some railroad ties that used to form the platform base of an outdoor art installation (see below)

Grand Central Observations

The vaulted ceiling of G.C.
Hold the starts in a turquoise embrace.
Aquarius through Cancer
Grace the man-made firmament.

Although of a limited nature,
As compared to limitless night,
The saccharine starts above still dwarf
The giant American standard.

Walkways behind and between glass
Are discovered when a worker walks it;
A mundane addition to the
G.C. observation.

The milling movement of many
Remind me of ants near their hill.
Occasionally one sees a red jacket or green
In amongst the black drab.

Removed from Light on Wall Street and Front

Light streams from the North
With shadow all around.
Courtesy of a skyscraper.

The Old Blarney tenement
Stands as time's testament
To this City's history.

An anonymous tower
Shades fur-wearing women
Trudging back to their work.

This part of the city is removed
From sunshine and light
But for brief building reflections.

Tantalizingly close,
Where Wall Street ends
Lies the sunny river.

So far, though from the hearts
Of the people walking here
That it may as well be
Martian ice?

Greening of S.T. Dana

Gazing out the lab window
Across the gap
And through the other window
Sits Wendy.

Through emptiness
Of that cool gat
That filters downward light
Sit desks in offices.

An empty courtyard
Has become grown over
With soaring infrastructure
Of our second nature.

Back to airy naturalness
Of geen plant-filled gaps,
Soft corners of comfort,
And another tamed wilderness.

-- Can we, dare we, ever return?