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One too many cups of coffee
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2047
One too many cups of coffee and the ideas flow. But flow in a meaningless, disconnected way, that flow only after standing, sitting, surfing, pacing, that flow in that interrupted - start-stop-start sort of way, a trip to 7/11 as I'm hungry and there's no way I'll make it until work, the diet of processed sugar and simulated protein makes me pace even more until I finally decide that maybe some whiskey will help to take the edge off....
These half days of work, they're dangerous. Whole days are worse.
From the current work in progress: "Chalk Circle":
"Her suspicions implicate me;
She first chides and then berates me;
She binds then interrogates me
Curses and imprecates me;
Her tongue raising welts
and blisters on my skin.
She conjectures gross transgressions
she imagines indiscretions
She conjures every vile unpardonable sin;
And while I'm wholly innocent
Her unholy tirade circumvents
Any attempts to placate her,
this fury won't abate and
frustrates all efforts to sedate her
Her wrath is senseless and drips drips driveling from her chin
Her opinions have secured my conviction."
Given that I had only planned for the entire poem to run a couple of dozen lines you can see how things get out of control. Blame it on the caffeine? Certainly I need an editor, but on the other I think I've somewhat captured the personage, the spirit, the natural language and reason of the jealous lover. And so I'll leave it for the moment, there are other verses, poems to be worked upon, and funny how problems will just solve themselves the moment you leave them alone and stop worrying them...
Brief flashes of inspiration
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1904
And so the night is spent hacking at poetry.
There are brief flashes of inspiration, illumination - a clever reinterpretation of similar sounding words, a line that trips off the tongue, but that's where it ends.
Otherwise there are long lists of words and ideas that have to be integrated into the whole - a sentence isn't a stanza, a stanza isn't a poem...
The 99 % perspiration.
Flashes of illumination that might encompass, say, 4 or 5 lines, they're rare. Rarer than poems. And so you take the little flashes and assemble them like pearls on a string. There are gaps, sure, but they can be filled in, it's important that things are in order.
It's still gold, these little gems and epiphanies, but the process needs to be worked upon so it becomes more consistent, simpler.
The big flashes, they'll come, I'm new to this, or if not new it's been a while, and so the flashes so far are brief, they'll get longer, long enough to write entire verses, poems, in a sitting, for the moment I have to be patient.
The Prometheus Tree
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1480
Listening to radiolab, inspires at least one link of the day: The Prometheus Tree, the oldest living tree in the world.
Sunday, July 4 - 2010
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2068
Another day squandered, too tired to go out, the rain justifies my laziness.
A couple of feeble garage sales yesterday, not on a mission but stumbled across in the neighborhood, a pair of speakers and subwoofer for the computer, great, these should give me the ability to sell my stereo....sadly, despite reassurances from the seller they didn't work.
A trip to the dry cleaners, sign "On Vacation until July 12...", handy, all my clean clothes are imprisoned, I do laundry and pay the roommate to iron my shirts for me.
Then work, slow but time passes and there are now a mere 4 weeks left.
The owner, he shows me his copy of National Geographic, it just came in the mail, there's a picture of some Muslims eating in a communal area, he's amazed because he thinks that they're eating with the same hand they wipe their ass with and I explain that there's a very strict etiquette about that in Muslim countries, he's doubtful, and somewhere inside I'm amazed that he purchases it, it's more-or-less as a reference to endangered animals he hasn't yet had a chance to kill, a throwback to the days when seeing a tribeswoman without a shirt was a big thrill, hardly their target audience....
The urge to go out last night, quickly thwarted by the grim bus trip home, the thought of a shower and another change of clothes is sufficient deterrent to keep me in. I'm getting older than my years at this job.
Today, flea market, thrift shops, played some more with the speakers and subwoofer *(it really doesn't work), multiple naps, late coffee, and now it's time to work on outstanding projects. So time passes.
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