(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.
Category: Ballad
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.
Caveat: Quatrain #34
(Poem #231 on new numbering scheme)
The clouds patrol the sky, adrift Then aliens arrive who scoop the clouds up like some bugs, because they want them live.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Quatrain #33
(Poem #230 on new numbering scheme)
He lies awake, and counting sheep... those sheep are saying stuff: They're telling him about the fact that anger's not enough.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Quatrain #32
(Poem #229 on new numbering scheme)
Ponder the foolishness of faith in light of so much pain, and yet decide to still believe... inspired by the rain.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.