DAILY PHOTO: Autumn Glade
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Monthly Archives: March 2022
The Raging River of Human Nature [Free Verse]
Human nature is a raging river which a few shitty sandbags of common sense will not detour. Some people stand on the bank and shout at the river. I will admit, I've done the same. But those words neither soak in nor bounce off that raging river -- they're made silent, dying in air. Some people try to steer the river by splashing at the lapping waters near its edge, But none of them is Moses, not one can dam a river by force of will. And - even if one could -- eventually, that person would have to let go, leaving a backed up and angry river to rage onward.
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BOOK REVIEW: Karmen by Guillem March
Karmen by Guillem MarchMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out: May 17, 2022
My tagline for this book would be: Neil Gaiman’s “Death” [i.e. from “The Sandman”] meets Paulo Coelho’s “Veronika Decides to Die.” For those unfamiliar with either of those points of comparison, the former is a character that subverts the traditional scary Grim Reaper, replacing the faceless hood with a personable and endearing lass, and the latter is the story of a young woman whose actions force her to learn the lesson of that old chestnut: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
While it’s convenient for me to present the book in this “X meets Y” summation, it’s a unique story, diverging from both of those tagline references in many important ways. For example, the model of the afterlife is not Judeo-Christian like Gaiman’s, but is more Buddhism meets bureaucracy. [There I go again with the X meets Y.] I found the story captivating, and thought the character development was skillfully presented, particularly as regards the character of Cata.
I struggled with whether I liked the tone of the ending, but I’ll say no more about that to avoid spoilers — except to say that it grew on me. The art was beautiful and I found it to be an all-around entertaining read. Highly recommended.
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Pollen [Haiku]
tiny tousled stalks release a pollen plume hush: here; hush: gone
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Mud [Kyōka]
the mud patterns carved in the tidal zone beat any work of art by Andy Warhol
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DAILY PHOTO: Sunrise in a Rocky Bay
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Suicide Slide [Free Verse]
One burning moment -- taffy-stretched to the edge of reason: stretched so broadly that one can't fathom escape - like Monkey on the Buddha's palm One burning idea -- cloned, and then carved to make infinite variants, and painted infinite shades: the dark tone of each darker than the last Burning ideas populating the vast expanse of a burning moment, until the urge to escape insists that one carve a hatch into living tissue But what is it that does the stretching of the burning moment & the cloning of the burning idea? Can't that stretcher and cloner be wound back, scaling all to proper proportions? And can't it be done before that terminal instant is carved in jagged stone?
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Billion Bee March [Haiku]
DAILY PHOTO: Saigon Blossoms
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I Read the News Today, Oh Boy! [Free Verse]
I A young man set his ex-fiancé on fire. (Or, so the story goes. [He claims she self-immolated.]) She succumbed to third-degree burns... but not right away. She lived long enough to know the agony of third-degree burns. They'd met in college, both studying to be engineers -- I mention that because at the heart of the issue was caste. It seems absurd enough to murder a fiancé over some imaginary mark of superiority, but even more so when one considers that they would have had the same qualification -- possibly similar jobs -- but for the boy's bigoted parents, who insisted he call off the engagement, and the boy, himself, who took things that extra murderous mile. So, it wasn't even about who the couple were, it was about what their grandfathers did for a living. What a world. II The war is still burning. Among the latest questions are: Will Belarus be forced to join in the fighting? & If so, will having another set of soldiers who are completely uninterested in the war -- other than as a trial to be survived, that is -- help or hurt Putin's position? A related question is whether Putin would rather watch the world burn than to lose face? What a world. III The Pandemic said, "Psyche!" This means America will roll the odometer on COVID deaths. We had things almost back to normal, and then the virus caught its breath, got it's footing,... whatever viruses do. What a world. *** I think I'll check the news, again, maybe sometime next year.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 