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Tag Archives: life
Wine & Song
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DAILY PHOTO: Closeups of Earth
Strange Planet
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PROMPT: Outdated Technology
We’d be better off if the bleeding edge of weapon technology were the pointy stick — not just because of atrocities averted. Also, we’d all have to be more capable in such a world — there is no imposter syndrome among people who have to kill a deer or fish with a spear they hewed themselves. Also, if you are cheesed off with one or more people (or the world,) it is entirely different (and more calming) decision space if one has to go out spearing them individually than if one can spray them with automatic fire from 50 feet away. You’d still have the option, but you’d have to want it more and to accept the inevitability of consequence more fully. Finally, it is quite hard to run an authoritarian dictatorship if your army has weapons of similar capability to any random person.
I don’t know for sure whether “an armed society is a polite society,” but I suspect it is if the pointy stick is the pinnacle of armaments.
I know this makes it sound like I was around in the pre-Bronze era. I was not.
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Relentless [Free Verse]
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Hoosier Discovers the Deluge at a Distance [Free Verse]
I’ve been caught in
many a sudden downpour.
And I’ve been warned by
the sweet scent of corn,
swept in though a
screen door,
or over the pasture.
But nothing in my flatland youth
prepared me to look down upon
the underside of a cloud —
to see its neatly-edged opaque
wall, defining the area
of deluge.
It wasn’t until much later that I’d
see the massive cloud columns
rising above the base layer
of a cloud floor —
warmly lit as seen from a
jetliner, though I knew it must
be brutally gray to
ground-dwellers.
The deluge closes slowly,
and yet I can’t escape it.
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PROMPT: Lifelong Learner
I aspire to be, but in the immortal words of Monty Python, “I am not dead yet!”
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PROMPT: Habit
Getting up every morning.
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BOOKS: “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues by Langston HughesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available online — Lehigh University
Langston Hughes was one of the greats of 20th century American poetry, and The Weary Blues was his first collection (1926,) containing some of his most beloved (and anthologized) pieces, including: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “I, too, sing America” [a.k.a. Epilogue; which plays off Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”] I’ve always loved how Hughes used the rhythm of repetition and the technique of standing in for the everyman (as he famously did in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” but in other of his poems as well.) He also had a gift for concision.
These sixty-nine poems deal in a wide range of themes including race, travel, love, etc. Music, be it Jazz or Blues, is an ever-present force in Hughes work. In addition to the aforementioned classics, among my favorite pieces from the collection are: “Winter Moon,” “March Moon,” “‘The Night is Beautiful'” [a.k.a. Poem,] “When Sue Wears Red,” “Water Front Streets,” “Long Trip,” “Seascape,” “Suicide’s Note,” “Songs to the Dark,” and “Lament for Dark Peoples.”
I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 