(Poem #264 on new numbering scheme)
The cactuses have sown dissent debating cats at talks, whose doubts are drawn entangled from Schroedinger's litter box.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Category: Ballad
Caveat: Quatrain #72
(Poem #263 on new numbering scheme)
The words just shivered on the page, The verbs in disrepair. The pronouns were disconsolate, The nouns limp with despair.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrains #66-71
(Poem #262 on new numbering scheme)
"Philosophical zombie" is a concept you may know. I'd like to now propose a twist to how those stories go. Most typically these zombies are like strange automata. They act like people, react too - but it is just data. So nothing's felt and nothing's hoped; there is no inner spark. These zombies might seem like humans, but their sad minds are dark. Now here's the change I'd like to make: let's add a soul inside, but not connected to the flesh - it will only reside. Like those sad paralytics who stare helpless and afraid, this second mind lacks any link, must wait for any aid. So here's the first, with agency, the second with the why, together they must walk the earth, as we do, you and I.
– six quatrains in ballad meter – an essay on phenomenology in six stanzas.
Caveat: Quatrain #65
(Poem #261 on new numbering scheme)
The future will be subject to inspection here and now. Please heed this declaration, kids - this rule you must allow.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #64
(Poem #260 on new numbering scheme)
Con chupe de pescado, pues, soñaba sin querer. Al despertar, me estremecí ¿cómo pude saber?
This is my second attempt at a quatrain using English ballad meter, but in Spanish – for which ballad meter is quite awkward. Still, this more or less works, except how it reverts to trochees in the last line. Don’t ask me what it means, exactly. A prose paraphrase: about fish chowder, then, [I] dreamed without wanting to. Upon waking up, I shivered – how could I know?
This is actually a dream I woke up from this morning: nothing complicated or surreal – I was just eating Peruvian style chupe de pescado at a certain Peruvian restaurant in Newport Beach, down the road from where I used to work in 2005-2006. I used to go there for lunch with coworkers fairly often. That fish soup is some of the most memorable food in my life, for some reason. I’m sure if I had it now, it would seem a poor shadow of its former glory – but that would be because of the changes to my own physiology of taste, post cancer.
Caveat: Quatrain #63
(Poem #259 on new numbering scheme)
A flowering, dystopian land is found at empire's edge: the north looks south; the south looks north; near Ilsan, there's time's ledge.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #62
(Poem #258 on new numbering scheme)
The language sings itself alone with writhing contours bared, emerges into empty rooms its inclinations shared.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #61
(Poem #257 on new numbering scheme)
By vortices we wend across the demon-strewn collage, with useless metaphors in hand, lamenting: c'est domage.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #60
(Poem #256 on new numbering scheme)
A moon's orangeness scaled the night and trailed the mere dark disks of recollected memories and contemplated risks.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #59
(Poem #255 on new numbering scheme)
The trees are all in blossom now - it seems that spring's arrived. Each year the best I'll say for spring: "At least I have survived."
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #58
(Poem #254 on new numbering scheme)
The space just at the edges, where my vision shades to blue, there dwell the ghosts of angels, who attempt to speak what's true.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #57
(Poem #253 on new numbering scheme)
Two stones sat down with plans to talk beside a path. The grass tried listening and bent its blades alert like kids in class.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #56
(Poem #252 on new numbering scheme)
The surreptitious movements made by mice in windblown leaves reveal the clockwork of the world to passing birds, like thieves.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Quatrain #55
(Poem #251 on new numbering scheme)
Can madness be a game we play? At first we dance and shout. The moon might help us find a style; we'll let our crazies out.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #54
(Poem #250 on new numbering scheme)
The emperor stepped out one day to meet his citizens; they pointed and they laughed at him; he couldn't trust his friends.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrains #52-53
(Poem #249 on new numbering scheme)
The hungry alligator sat. He looked at many things: a tree, a boy, a dog, a boat, a famished bat with wings. "What shall I eat?" he wondered. "Boys. can be delicious, true.... and dogs in boats have lousy taste, and trees are hard to chew."
– two quatrains in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #51
(Poem #248 on new numbering scheme)
Just take a moment to reflect on what a monkey be: a human with a smaller brain, a spirit brutish, free.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #50
(Poem #247 on new numbering scheme)
The truth, enclosed in shells of myth, like stones unbreakable, we craft in order to survive, but sense, unknowable.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #49
(Poem #246 on new numbering scheme)
Imagination is no more than ways of seeing stuff as if you were a demiurge who's had it kind of rough.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #48
(Poem #245 on new numbering scheme)
Some people like to predict doom. They think there is no hope. But actually things aren't that bad. It's just... they tend to mope.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #47
(Poem #244 on new numbering scheme)
The sofa doesn't just get used - it gets abused instead: all beaten down by laundry, junk, and output from my head.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Caveat: Quatrain #46
(Poem #243 on new numbering scheme)
Some pines that lurk along the path might make a plan to lift off Earth like dandelion seeds, but then the wind will shift.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #45
(Poem #242 on new numbering scheme)
In melancholy, time goes slow. It's like a rocket ship: in freefall, after stage three drops... a parabolic trip.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #44
(Poem #241 on new numbering scheme)
I had a dream in which I was about to be chased down. The trees raced past; I could not stop; I fled the dancing clown.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #43
(Poem #240 on new numbering scheme)
The teachers bring doughnuts to work which makes me feel real sad. You see, I used to like such things... now, eating them is bad.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #42
(Poem #239 on new numbering scheme)
A typical Korean rain will smell just like sea's needs; but spring we sometimes taste a storm that reeks of desert's weeds.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #41
(Poem #238 on new numbering scheme)
I waited for a poem to come, but nothing ever came. I wracked my brain and tapped my hands, but what I wrote was lame.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #40
(Poem #237 on new numbering scheme)
I wonder why the monkeys fly But fly they do each day. My students throw them through the air they like to laugh and play.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km]
Caveat: Quatrain #39
(Poem #236 on new numbering scheme)
"My ego trumps my neighbor's needs," the patriot believes, sincere, perhaps (in fact, malign) but to those ends, deceives.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #38
(Poem #235 on new numbering scheme)
Korea has these feral chairs: they rest beside the roads; they wait, unloved, unsat upon; they bear no human loads.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #37
(Poem #234 on new numbering scheme)
The ocean's arms can grasp the mind; recursively ingrain small chunks of memory and dreams into the seething brain.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #36
(Poem #233 on new numbering scheme)
A certain magic she had learned allowed her some success: some spirit of the rainbow, first... a copper green headdress.
– a quatrain in ballad meter, about a character within a certain mythologized history I’m creating for a city called Quelepa (aka Comala).
Caveat: Quatrain #35
(Poem #232 on new numbering scheme)
You know that spring has now arrived: the air, it makes you cry; Korean spring's a lousy time; the grayish, yellow sky.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.