Saturday, February 6, 2010

Spring At My House

The dates are getting closer, though a year apart. Do you notice? I am nearly caught up with myself, not even two months behind now. The dates will start to get confusing, maybe. It is not yet spring but it is really close now. The trees are thinking about budding out. I am no longer writing enough poetry to replace what I use. I have posted 638 poems to this point, this being the 639th. I have 377 in place waiting, including this one. I have 53 poems stored in the not posted folder. That is 1068 poems in less than two years. If I never write another poem that is still a credible portfolio. I wrote three poems this week. I imagine that I will continue at a rate a little like that. Right now work is too much to allow taking the extra odd fifteen minutes out to write one of my nine liners. I still get around and read you guys, just don’t have the time to comment so often. :(

Spring At My House
The crocus came out
again, a weedy color splash
beneath the dogwood,
itself beginning
to stretch out above lilies
who are waking up,
and the gold finches
never left but their color
faded in winter.
The boys are growing
brighter now, bolder, louder,
calling their mates close.

March 29, 2009 8:16 PM

9 comments:

  1. :O I must say you are a humble man to call it just a 'credible portfolio'

    I am impressed.

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  2. Vinisha, you open the gate to a tangled yard bringing in the concept of humility.

    When I think of my ranking I am terribly inconsistent, thinking of myself as a master and a beginner all at the same time. I like how the poems almost never take long to write, though I may tinker with them more than once in short bursts whenever I encounter them again. I like how I can connect some prose to each poem when I post them either by narrative or structurally most posts. Sometimes I don't find much to say. I like how I often read others work and feel like mine is of similar quality. Every once in a while I run across someone so luminous that I know I am just a beginner.

    Most of the time though, this is all beside the point. This writing comes so easy, I know it is a collaboration. Others are doing a bunch of the work. I write most often in a kind of dialogue (again sometimes in narrative and sometimes structurally) with my blog friends. It can come even easier. I believe I am often also in dialogue with the deeps of me and through the deep with God.

    To survive such an encounter, one needs to know and keep one's place and take the right shape as well. One may be blown away or burned up otherwise. The far side of this dialogue is very large and energetic. This may look like humility but it is really self preservation.

    Do you notice how close to madness this is?

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  3. Christopher! What is all the numbers? You worry too much.
    You think the birds and flowers, think about it, if their colors will show when the time is to be?
    Oh, i see, i read now that you already see your own madness.
    Love you! :)

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  4. Jozien, But I have the math. I use it everyday. I use numbers intensively everyday. I keep them accurate everyday.

    Engineering is like accounting that way. We keep track of expenses. We keep track of items. Right now for me it is equipment and wire numbers of instrumentation on a dough dumping and machining line so that we can keep track of and pass on to maintenance a system of location and identification which is usable and understandable. Numbers everywhere. Numbers matched to names. Numbers then embedded in computer programs to make automated equipment work by running computer programs. Not only the equipment but the documents I am handling themselves must be ordered and numbered very much as a librarian orders and numbers books so they can be retrieved.

    That's my life. It is second nature to chase simple numbers like these. That I do it accurately, that is why I just took four months off and still get my job back. It is a valuable skill, one of the ones the mainstream pays a living wage for. The only numbers I am giving here are numbers that the computer keeps track of for me. There is nothing hard about it. That's not the mad part. :)

    That I would seriously discuss talking with (not to) God, that's the mad part. :D

    And you'd better be grateful for guys who do numbers like me. Without us you would not have any computers. Computers don't do anything that isn't translated into special numbers.

    IF IT CAN'T BE QUANTIZED, IT CAN'T BE COMPUTED.

    This means every poem and photo you ever see on the computer screen is turned into numerical instructions and equations on the way to the display. And each of these numbers were devised as a possibility by some human team manipulating numbers in a special way called a code.

    Poets on the internet are supported by the engineers of the internet. People who eat Ritz Crackers and Chips Ahoy! are supported by people like me who keep track of the numbers. Oreos too...all supported on a sea of dynamically shifting numbers.

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  5. hrmmph i write pomes for my own self aggrandizement and to appease my narcissistic nature.

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  6. Well, that too...I hesitate to think what over a thousand poems says about my narcissism. I may not be much but I am all I think about...

    You know, some days it hardly seems worthwhile to gnaw through the leather straps again.

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  7. Okay! i get it. Maybe that is what's lacking in my life, numbers. You know, i do have knack for math. In dutch we say a feeling for math. Being an emotional person i guess i have left the numbers out and kept the feeling.

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  8. It is exciting to look at the numbers, to boggle in detail at such an intense outburst of creativity. But if you slow down and only produce a poem now and then, it'll still be something to treasure.

    I love this spring poem, it's a little bejewelled thing, and crocuses and goldfinches are dear to my heart.

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  9. Well, Lucy, I do have a cartoonist's view of things. Do them short and pithy and keep the schedule.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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