Today was another funeral for someone I know and love. There have been entirely too many of late.
At a loss
who doesn’t want to believe the rain
may be sharing their grief
or recognize in cloud cover
denial reflected a hundredfold
or understand the thunder
shudders at their own pain?
This was inspired by September 1 Picture Prompts photo on Twitter.
Alight
the heart is a red lamp, fist-sized, fragile
and glowing among the rocks
a beacon to the dark-wandering
mind and a source of warmth
for the soul at home
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30 in 30, @pictureprompts, Picture Prompts, poetry practice, prompted poetry, writing challenge
A final found poem from Gary Shteyngart’s “Thinking Outside the Bots,” in the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (pp. 78-80).
The cult of perfection
will extend to every part of us, and the cosmetic-surgery bots
will chisel us
and suck out our fat
and give us as many eyelids as we desire.
Our grandchildren will be born perfect; all
the criteria for their genetic makeup
will be determined in utero.
We will look perfect, but inside we will be
completely stressed out and worried
about our place (and our children’s place)
in the pecking order, because even our belt buckles
will come equipped with the kind of AI that could beat us
at three-dimensional chess
while reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets
and singing the blues in perfect pitch.
And so our beautiful selves will be constantly worried
about what contributions we will make to society, given
that all cognitive tasks will already be distributed to devices
small enough to perch at the edge of our fingernails.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30 in 30, found poetry, Gary Shteyngart, poetry practice, poetry writing, Smithsonian Magazine, writing challenge
Gary Shteyngart’s “Thinking Outside the Bots,” from the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (p. 80), once again provided the material for this found poem.
As the great rush of technology envelops us
and makes us feel as small as the stars used to
make us feel when we looked up
at the primitive sky, we will be using our Samsung
NewBrainStem 2.0 to send out streams of emojis
to our aging friends, hoping to connect
to someone analog who won’t beat us at Go
in the blink of an eye, a fellow traveler in the mundane
world of flesh and cartilage.
Others of us, less fortunate, will be worried
about our very existence, as armies of Hubos, built
without the safeguards developed by kindly scientists
like Professor Oh, rampage across the earth.
And of course the balance of power will look nothing like
today; truly, the future will belong to societies – often small
societies like South Korea and Taiwan – that invest
in innovation to make their wildest techno-dreams a reality.
Can you picture the rise of the Empire of Estonia, ruled by a pensive
but decisive talking toilet?
I can.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30 in 30, found poetry, Gary Shteyngart, poetry practice, poetry writing, Smithsonian Magazine, writing challenge
Everything seems to shift in September. The angle of the sun is distinctly different, the amount of daylight is perfectly balanced, and the temperature and humidity become once again bearable. Everyone is in school and we can settle into a productive routine.
To that end, I’m setting myself a writing challenge for the month: produce 30 poems in 30 days. This year’s NaPoWriMo was a terrific warm-up for Lexington Poetry Month, and I hope to use this month to do the same for NaNoWriMo in November (though I have no intention of working on a novel). I even created my own logo!
So here is the first poem, a found poem from “Thinking Outside the Bots,” by Gary Shteyngart, in the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine (p. 80).
Seonbawi (Zen rock)
a weather-eroded rock formation that looks
like two robed monks, said to guard
the city – where women come to pray
for fertility, often laden with food
offerings for the spirits (Sun Chips seem to be in abundance
on the day I visit) the women bow and pray
intently – one young worshiper, in a thick puffy
jacket and a woolen cap, seems especially focused –
squarely in the center of her prayer
mat she has propped an iPhone
later I ask why – one tells me
the young woman was recording to prove
to her mother-in-law that she went to the fertility
rock and prayed for hours
another suggests that the phone belonged
to a friend – the woman is creating
a connection between the timeless and immortal
spirits and her childless
friend – this explanation I like the most
the young lady journeys from her city of 25 million to spend
hours on a mountain in the cold, promoting
her friend’s dreams, hands clasped
tightly in prayer: in front of her, a giant
timeless weather-beaten rock and a small
electronic device steer her gently
into the imperfect world to come
Posted in Poetry
Tagged 30 in 30, found poetry, Gary Shteyngart, poetry practice, poetry writing, Smithsonian Magazine, writing challenge
After weeks of what has felt like swirling around in the giant toilet bowl of life, there was yesterday: the closest I’ve been to a total solar eclipse. I gave my entire day over to it and annoyed everyone on Facebook by posting the whole time. Here’s a summary of the day:
First, I hooked my laptop up to the TV so I could watch the live stream from NASA on the big screen. There were more than a few production hiccups, but I don’t think any seriously geeky folk minded much.
Here was my own setup for watching the eclipse. The cat provided invaluable assistance, as always.
After making sure everything was working, there was nothing to do but wait for the moon.
The beginning!
It may be hard to see, but a thin layer of cloud passed overhead.
About this time I had a sudden realization: why hadn’t I bought some Moon Pies and Sun Chips to snack on?
Ten minutes later, the clouds had moved on.
Another ten minutes later.
Real life eclipse disasters: when you’re so distracted you put too much water in the rice cooker. 😕
The dog also helped with the eclipse watching.
This was about fifteen minutes after the previous eclipse photo.
More clouds passed through.
A friend on Facebook asked me where I was watching, to which I replied, “From my living room!”
Five minutes later.
At this point, the sun was clearly shining outside but it had gotten dim enough that my daughter turned on a light so she could read.
Getting close to the 95% of totality we were supposed to experience.
This was it.
I stepped outside. Everything was slightly dimmed, like I was wearing sunglasses. Except for human activity, everything was very still. The cicadas stopped singing and I could hear crickets.
Even the trees showed the eclipse.
The cat got a little weird and started racing around like she sometimes does in the middle of the night.
As the moon moved on, the day brightened back up to normal. The cicadas started ramping up again, and the crescent sun shadows cast by the leaves changed direction. That was curious and very interesting.
My youngest sister has been visiting, and it was delightful to share another eclipse with her. Her recollections about watching the 1979 eclipse together were invaluable in setting up for this year. It’s the same telescope, which is kind of cool.
And lots of love to my daughter, who gave up most of her afternoon to indulge me in my nerdy fangirlness.
An unspeakable tragedy has befallen a friend, and I nevertheless find myself groping helplessly for words to fling into the void.
Unspeakable
I am a box with the lid
removed, unable to hold
thought or feeling or will
for motion. Voices rattle and the wind
tears through me: funeral
and four-year-old do not belong
in the same sentence.
This passage is from the essay “This Dog’s Life,” in Anne Lamott’s book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (pp. 81-82).
Bumping up against it
you want to protect your child
from pain, and what you get instead is life,
and grace; and though theologians insist
that grace is freely given, the truth
is that sometimes you pay for it
through the nose.
Here’s another tidbit from our July journey. I fear I may have taken some liberties in it that I hope my fiber artist friends will forgive.
Roving
the sky is getting ready
to spin: see how she cards
the clouds on the teeth
of the ridgeline, drawing them out
in strong, straight lines
I’ve been off the grid for a few days, which has left me lots of time with pen and paper. This poem riffs on things I saw while traveling and does not necessarily reflect any actual geographic location.
city of bridges, you dangle from the neck
of the mainland by spider
webs and steel, a jewel on the breast of the bay
as it rises and falls, breathing
with the moon
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