DOMETHU, hanh, ha. : a silliness

I've found a new game.  I love the security words created for facebook and twitter postings.  Each sounds like a word, or a complex affix: pritimbl, grasista, tierdo, menesti.  Putud, yopfomi.  Guplinta, and upldent. Porducai-- and D O M E T H U!!!

These are no simple randomly generated words, roots and affixes. Consideration of their forms, spelling structures and variance reveals a pattern, Chthulic in appearance, ancient, old.  What nefarious purpose do the authors of these services hold for the American People?  Like that short story, "Irtnog", where all the writing in the world was daily reduced through a complex mathematical process into a six letter word, allowing every reader and writer to come into balance of supply and demand.

Good thing DOMETHU wasn't called in 1984.  Or maybe it wouldn't matter.

DANH Danh dannnnnnnnh!

Anyway, I like me them security words.

April 19 Poem: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Pt. Three

My Old Friend Jack

I slice his eyes; he looks surprised.

I hack his twisted grin.

And what else goes?  I pierce his nose,

Knock teeth out, punch teeth in.

Cut carotid, scalped, quick gutted

Twinings inside out.

Deft razor lace, I slash his face,

Scrape hollow, raw, mute shout!

The seed comes next, and I'm perplexed:

Need heat! Need Fire! Need Light!

And with his head, I'll guide the dead

On this Halloween night.

Roast honeyed seeds that pumpkin bleeds

with sugar coated treats

to every child, both tame and wild,

Princess, zombie or beast!

No, I'm not cruel, nor am I ghoul.

My or'nge skinned friend is daft.

What makes us pain, and sounds insane, 

makes Jack O'Lantern laugh!

April 18 Poem: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Pt. Two

A Poultry Loss

The chicken danced, his best friend pranced

across the barn dance floor

With feathers white, as cold moonlight,

She drifted out the door

Her beak was wet, she'd lost her pet!

The loss, it made her cry.

She mourned in tears, torn by her fears,

Her heartbreak made her sigh.

For help she looked, while lunch she cooked,

but no one volunteered

To help her find her poor lost mind;

"Too bad," the doctor feared.

"You take a rest, sit on your nest,

and lay yourself an egg.

You must relax; your heart you'll tax,

O please, don't make me beg!"

And so she went, her heart was spent

never recovered, she.

No pup nor kit, did she find it.

She ended so sadly.

April 17 Poem: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Pt. One

I tormented my eighth graders relentlessly by writing these like water goes downhill.  So here come three of the the best, worst, and least attractive; you decide which is which. Edit HTML

Draft of Imitation on Scary Cheese

The scary cheese, it makes me sneeze,

it knocks my knees afraid.

I slice it thin to serve a friend;

My hands shake on the blade.

All filled with holes, dug by cheez moles,

It threatens from the plate;

Its yellow guise appalls my eyes;

It looks at me with hate!

It's good with chips, to melt in dips,

and I would eat it, too;

But it sits there with holes that stare;

I don't know what to do.

The deadly snack, if it comes back,

I'll race to get away!

I'll melt it down, I'll make it frown,

This dog will have its day.

Such soured milk, I hate its ilk

Intolerant Lactose!

 No cheese I'll buy! Cheese I'll deny!

I hate it and it's gross!

April 16 Poem: No Mourning

Wake up! Wake up!
The light comes!
The world keeps turning round.

The flowers yawn and birds complain
In floods the dawn, Sun's amber mane
Spills golden light from molten veins
It warms the flesh and feeds the grain

Wake up! Wake up!
The beehive hums!
A new King Day is crowned!

April 14: Tool

I hope that I can someday be
At tool of great utility
form follows function one two three
I have a purpose, meaning, me

You say you think I am a fool
To wish to be a common tool
A hammer, axe, a saw, a mule
But I know what I am, do you?

A tool has reason, value, use
It keeps the world from coming loose
When called upon will not refuse
and lives its life without excuse

I'll be a tool and thankfully
Glad that I've lived productively
and in the ground sleep peacefully
A tool is what I choose to be.

April 13 Poem: Blue Jays

You listen to the Jays shriek at cats and you'll know what I mean.

Now the Jays won't put up with ya,
The Jays won't leave you alone.
Now the Jays won't put up with ya
If you're standing on their lawn.

Day One of Thirty: The Citizen submits microfiction.

So, the Devil walks into a Bar...

            “Just water,” the devil told me, and he lit a cigarette.

            My eyebrow, right one, twitched in question as I polished the bar and set the glass.

            “Temptation ain’t what it used to be.  Tired.  No mood to drink.”

            My job traditionally requires a bit of companionable conversation, and though he’d initially made me nervous, Satan had become a regular.

            “If it helps, I hope to fuck some bar-bait after my shift.”

            He tipped his head, profiling a smooth-pointed ear, the corner of his mouth fluking into a glimmer of appreciative smile.

            “You’re too kind.” 

            His cool grey voice sidled out between even, sharp, white teeth.  A few too many for me to stare.

            “Hardly a challenge,” he added.

            I smiled back, feeling, suddenly, foolish and inadequate.

            His eyes scrolled down to the clear glass of water, condensation beading its flutes, and watched one heavy drop slide down and disappear into the orderly white absorbance of barnap.

            His slender reddish fingers draped the glass like a caress, stroking lazy curls of steam into the atmosphere between us.

            His eyes moued shut and he sat like a sleeping viper.

            A moment.

            Two. 

            Swelling discomfort stirred my stomach, diaphragm, and lungs.

            “Hey,” I offered, “you okay?”

            The red fingers slid their evaporating caress down the fluted glass before him.

            “No,” he half whispered, “no, I am not.”

            I went home alone that evening, claiming remembered study for non-existent exams, accepting a phone numbered napkin decorated with a suggestive lipstick kiss from a smoky eyed doll who nursed a Sex-on-the-beach for the half hour she sat at the bar.

            At home, I opened my laptop, stuffed and lit a bowl, and clicked on “my favorites.”  I scanned three or four stories with my hand in my lap, but my heart just wasn’t in it.  I think the Devil was giving up.  It made me ashamed.

            Maybe I’d call that girl— I fished out the napkin; Janice was her name — and invite her for a walk in the park on Sunday afternoon.  We could take some bread to feed the ducks and have a coupl’a Hawaiin Snows on a bench under the cypress.

            Janice.  She had a nice smile.

April 12: Screw You if You Don't Like Poetry

I play grammar like a music
and its standards are my scale,
Puctuation makes percussion
staccato mace and flail.
I'll caress you with a murmur,
I'll seduce and I'll offend.
My license is poetic,
and now you're at the end.

(Ha ha.)

April 11 Poem: Flight!

Steel boats
Iron sky
Change our weather
We try, we try

fleeing trouble on demand
but still it's with you when you land

April 15 Poem: For Shawn in San Antonio

Each day you stay away is dismay gray.

April 10 Poem: On Looking Down

As always in airports, my sketches and associations help wile away time.  After reading through some entries during flight, I built this poem with its strict formality reflective of consciousness on the planet.

The language of aliens laid out below
  iterate shadowed cloud an interruption
of the glyphs of bird's-eye-view

A fog, a nimbus, white wet snow
  far from the sad corruption
of peopled green, its hues

Like spinnered tracks of dominoes
  spell natural disruption
of the planet that we use

From savage to savage still we grow
  depending on our gumption
and ability to schmooze.

This message, a sign, it's all we know
   a humanity eruption
some history's clues.

April 9 Poem: A Moment of Weakness

Dedicated to my good friend; you know who you are.

My Jew, there is a terror
     that runs deep in my heart
The fear I'll make an error
     that keeps us, friend, apart.

The genius burning through you,
     your surety of right,
Your confidence and parvenu
     of which I oft make light

Will choke on shards of commerce
     in casual interplay
Of opinion, right perverse,
     from my naivete.

What force or charm returns me
     to research day and night
To prove I'm not unworthy
     to stand with you and fight?

As apparent, your disciple
     my Peter to your Christ
Our freindship archetypal,
     I hope not compromised,

Is all I have to offer
     and I guess I'm karma, too
Or at least I hope and proffer
     a trade in joy I glean from you.

April 8 Poem: Not a Hike-oo

the bus kneels for age

and walking steps on and off

swallowed and disgorged

April 7 Poem: Twinkle Twinkle Oscar Stars

Twinkle twinkle Oscar stars
We-love A-ca-de-my A-wards
Camera eye and light of God
Graceful acts and graceless clods
Politics and tears good greif
Make your thank yous
Keep 'em brief.


Sung to the tune of the alphabet song.

April 6 Poem: Tribal

What I refer to as Automatic writing requires the author to dissociate meaning and grammar from sound and to create as pure a collage of sound and rhythm as possible with little or only slight regard for content or subject matter.  This collage was written in response to that moment when you realize youve contributed to an antagonistic crowd or a flock of grackles!  Hit and miss, but fun to write.


   Sher Khan
   Peck-a-way
Shhhh!  The coven's comin'
   Deep drums bassin'
Bumble gumbo drumroll
   Pedal back, pedal back, pedal back words

Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard
Kings in the yard

April 5 Poem: What's a Man

Ooo, that's it! I'm crazy
What's a man made any more
So many lost and lazy
with MTV girls dressed like whores
Heroes and morals upsy daisy
And their careless spreading spore
Our role's become so hazy
We play in, die in, war
If we take these as our precis
Men cannot be held much lower

Not I, alright, I'll make a man
Citizen, proud in freedom land
I'll find brothers, loyal band,
No evil will come from my hand
Control temptation in my glands
Have no children unless planned
I'll have to be what makes a man

April 4 Poem: Post-Apocalypse Me (a sonnet)

It's me, I'm lost, no Compass sees my way
A Ship, wrecked wracked and ruined upon the Strand
Alone through cold I'm numb, un-feeling spray
My Grave waits in a strange and foreign land
Remains I know have washed up on this Shore
the Salvage of the ways that I once knew
My Nineveh, my Mission is no more
Revenge will leave me empty, now where to?

These talents spilled in sand, what can they buy?
Don't mourn for me, for that old man must die.
 
I'm built anew, exotic, fortified
From stuff of Wreckage splintered in my Heart
I'll build a Treehouse high up in my Mind
From broken Days, forgotten Poems and Art

April 3 Poem: Golden Headed Haiku

Chatter impatient

Scarlet thumbprint on your brow

Yellow hammered awl

April 2 Poem: Kickerville

I drive a four by four

With a gun in the rack

A toolbox in the bed

For a dog in the back

 

Can o' Skoal on the dashboard

With a cup for my spit

Stinking dirty floorboards

From the s--- I kick

 

My jeans ain't ripped

And my shirt's tucked in

I'm a kicker, M----- F-----

And that's all I've ever been

My girl's a barrel rider

And she's gotta stay with me

'Cause she's gotten a lot wider

Since she let me spread her knees

 

My jeans ain't ripped

And my shirt's tucked in

I'm a kicker, M----- F-----

And that's all I've ever been

 

If you love dogs and chickens

And you won't dance with your wife

If your relatives are "hick"-en

You can have a kicker life

Day Zero of Thirty

Welcome to Citizen Humble. 

Every super-hero has an origin story.  I have never found myself a hero, but I know what they are.  I will be no Kick Ass, no Batman.  I will be unsung.  What kind of hero is that?  Doing the rotten jobs anyway; taking responsibility and power; leading Destiny.  This will be my chronicle of becoming a citizen.  Like it or not, I must accept the world as it is before I can remake it as it should be.  Join me in this experiment for the next thirty days of simple journey in an attempt to meet my own standards so I can practice what I preach.

I have picked thirty days to echo Supersize Me, and "Thirty Days", and because anything I do thirty times becomes a habit.  My first priority is to establish these habits.  To others, they seem mundane, but for me they represent a baseline of behavior I can respect and support.  Aside from addressing health, livelihood, chores and personal obligations, I intend to write three to five hundred words here each day, journaling my journeying. 

I intend to master these behaviors through systematic repetition and checklisting.  I am determined to reduce spending to near zero, to develop web skills, and to pursue writing, painting, creating as an avocation.    I don't know what you will think, but I have to begin, so here it is.  Come back every few days and see how I have progressed.  Maybe I can be a bit of inspiration, as others are to me.

April 1 poem: Tok Tok Tok

Tok

Tok

Tok

What makes you tick?
Golden-headed rap-tree

Yellowhead
Ladderback
Peckerwood

Flirt! Bring back dead wood,

Firehead!
Phoenix!

In Spring you flame, summer in soft grey ash, a married pair

The-world-turns-
Gone-again-
When-winter-warms-
Then-born-again