PROMPT: Time

Do you need time?

I believe I prefer the order of a sequenced life rather than a life of “everything, everywhere, all at once.” But having never ventured off my worldline, I don’t have sound basis for comparison. If you know of how I could experience atemporal existence, I would be happy to give it a try and get back with you.

Water Swap [Haiku]

the falls are thin.
 the rains are hard. soon,
  fortunes will reverse. 

PROMPT: Favorite Subject

What was your favorite subject in school?

Depends on the year. In twelfth grade, I remember enjoying Physics the most. In Eleventh, Psychology was the best class I attended. There was a year when I got the most out of an English class that focused on Creative Writing. I guess my most longstanding preference was for classes like Geography and Social Studies, wherein we learned about the world outside our world.

Rain Song Tempo [Common Meter]

I hear the rains accelerate
   From the lightest sprinkle.
 Soon the streets are aflood; mere sound 
   Makes my fingers wrinkle.

The rain continues to ratchet
   Up: faster & faster.
 'Til it's maxed out at a speed that
   Spells certain disaster.

How can it keep up this dire pace?
   What sponge this cloud must be
 To hold on high, up in the sky,
   The contents of a Sea.

But, in time, the downshift begins
  Towards just drips & drops.
 No matter how boisterous the band,
   The song, it always stops.

DAILY PHOTO: Beijing West Rail Station on a Rainy Day

Image

The Daffodils by William Wordsworth [w/ Audio]

Source: Wikipedia [Pub Dom Image]
I wandered lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
 When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
   Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the milky way,
 They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
 Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
   Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
 A poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
 I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
   What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
 They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
 And then my heart with pleasure fills,
   And dances with the daffodils.

PROMPT: Three Years

What will your life be like in three years?

Who can say? I could be dead. I could be one of the last humans alive after the next pandemic or a nuclear Holocaust or a solar flare that sends humanity back to the Stone Age, or some combination of these and / or other disasters. I could be sitting where I currently sit, doing what I’m currently doing.

I’m no fortune-teller. (If there’s one thing my time as a social scientist taught me, it’s that people think they are much better at making predictions than they are.)

Green Fairy [Free Verse]

Bohemians
   gathered around 
   the absinthe bottles,
  the light hitting 
   the bottles shone
   a radioactive shade
   of green.

That green light
   threw blotches
  against walls &
 floors & people &
  anything else there
  was to illuminate.

The more they drank,
 the less green the mottling --
  not because the empty glass 
   was clear, &
 didn't refract, or spray green,
   but because the splotches
  turned every color --
   every color there is --
  and the colors danced
   around the increasingly 
  amorphous surfaces.

 Until, at last,
  everyone was asleep,
 and visions of Green Fairies
  danced in their dreams. 

Autumn Rust [Haiku]

the year shows its age,
 a coating of rust flushes
  the hilltops.

DAILY PHOTO: Autumn in North Carolina