Paradox

Smile that disarms
yet lights the fuse
with ruthless charms
Ignites maddening muse
and fans the flames
strong and strange

heart jumps twice
when it hears the name
and then skips thrice
in fear of same
runs away
in fear of shame

Stays that way,
For want of tame

Automotive woes, part the second

Okay, so now I have guilt. I felt a little stupid putting in that plea for comments, much for the same reasons that everyone so rightly threw it back in my face: Write it and they will come. Returning to a site that doesn't update is boring. So, my apologies- BUT! It worked. I didn't have to analyze the logs to figure out who was hanging around. So my plan worked, even if it was pretty stupid.

Alright now- on to the second story. And since you all have been so good to me, I shall deliver it in rhyming verse.

Once upon an interstate
Once upon a time there was a boy named Zed
Who was given a truck not at all very red
This truck came to him as if heaven-sent manna
But was oddly colored as if a banana

One morn our hero rushed off like a riot
His engine roar breaking the still morning quiet
He had to get to a parking lot and get there fast
To pick up his friend, so he wailed on the gas

His friend would be waiting for Zed to come
To help work for Zed's client and not be a bum
And help Zed he would, but not quit on time
And not even as planned on Zed's Gasoline dime!

This fateful morning on interstate 93
The one thing all drivers hate happened, you see
"What could that be?" you beg as you ask
Well tell you I will, for that is my task-
To tell you the tale of what happened so fast
When poor boy Zed pressed down on the gas.

The truck shuddered and sputtered,
It whined and it cried
And some swear it muttered
"I wish Zed had already died"

Long story short, Zed pulled over his truck
Tried to start it again, but no luck- it was stuck
He called and got help from Anders mother so Kind
He called the client, and they did not even mind!
Zed had the truck towed to a lot then went on with his day
To later drop in on the shop, to talk and to pay

"So there he is" the mechanic said in a jest
"Do you think its the tranny?" Zed asked, not suspecting the best
"I think its something simple, not something big for the most...
I don't think its serious. I don't think that its toast."
When this beam of light landed on zed, he had a new hope
That he would not have to drop 2 grand for a used truck like a dope.
At any event they were just starting to close for the day,
So Zed's was told to call him tomorrow and they'd figure the pay

The next morning Zed dialed the number and waited with out-held hope
Only to hear the mechanic laugh out what happend-

"You ran out of fuel, you dope!

-_----_-_-

True story.* In my defense, I was calculating my fuel consumption off the tripometer (the fuel gauge broke some months ago). By my calculations, I had 30 to 40 miles left. Thats why the thought of running out of gas hadn't even crossed my mind. I did run it in 4 wheel drive a bit during one of the snow storms, but I didn't think that would throw off my calcs that far.

I think its because my fuel tanks leaks fuel when you fill it up all the way. Yup- I started paying more attention and found out it drips gas if you fill it all the way. So I've started refueling it in smaller doses and more often...so far, it seems to be working.

But just in case, I now always carry about 3 gallons of gas with me in the truck. Never again I say!

------------
*Sort of. The events are mostly true, but not quite verbatim. For example, Zed's mechanic does not actually call customers "dopes", and cool as he is, he does not talk in rhyme.

Poetic musings

Free Fall

Life starts in the womb
A tower so strong and so tall
And from birth to the tomb
We are all in free fall

We all fall different
And we all fall the same
We fall in unique and predictable ways

Depending on season
And our number of days
Sometimes our life falls together
Sometimes we fall away

But we all fall-
This is the one "Same"
Sometimes we think we are static
But it is never that way

-_---_-__-

Mental Vental Beta

A breather from the triumph
A lull in the break-neck pace
I need to take my doughy lumps
Less the soup be to sweet to the taste

But sour I can not make the soup taste
Even if I tried, I can't wipe this grin off my face
And no one would for this show me hate
But I shouldn't be reckless and cause an opposite state

I watch and read the lines alive
With unspoken meaning they ebb and dive
Like the waves of a dangerous ocean
Taming with meanings not yet spoken
A rough yet true field where hearts are broken
From nebulous meanings bestowed in token

Sit I there with a distracted concern
Not quite sure of what I've learned
But knowing still that trouble lies
In the admiration of innocent eyes

Sit I again with face aglow
From phosphorus light I do well know
Reading posts and drinking in
I feel attached but distant from my kin

Reading and weighing whats before me
I choose to pass on a possibility
A possibility to do good but with high risk
Of commiting greivous error if I miss

For my words are not arrows trimmed so well
They fumble in my hands my friends will tell
They sometimes maybe hit the mark
But but are dangerous enough to kill from afar

And this reason I choose to wait
And air my words at a later date.

(The post is crud; I know it well
but please do not to the world this tell.)
---_--_-
Eighh... so the mental vental is just a sort of random thoughts and reflections on things thinly veiled in crude poetry with sloppy composition. It was fun to write though.

Free Fall was inspired basically from the talks around K's blog about the deep questions and what not, especially as I've felt a sort of subtle transicion myself as of late.

And yes all; I WILL blog about my new job soon. I kinda want to average out a few days of what its like so I can more accurately tell you what its all about. Its for the good of the content here, folks. Honest.

Heh.. maybe I do take these posts to seriously. Anyway... It is a fun job I'll let you know that and I love it so far, but it does keep me a bit busy. Allegedly though, when I get into the routine, it slows down quite often which means I might have actually MORE time to blog and what not. We shall see.

More later.

(And by later, I mean an undetermined, non-defined stretch of time.)

Second poest contains the moest woeds.

Yes, I know. It’s been a bloody while. I should have known that I set myself up for a fall when I committed to do a two part post. Stupid eewah.

I know nobody really cares, but I feel as though I should explain my delinquency. On the one hand, I wrote this towards the tail end of vacation, when I knew my window of free blogging time would be closing. Stupid Eewah. On the other hand, I decided to say that my next post would also be poetic in nature. Stupid Eewah. I hadn’t gotten the time and inspiration to finish this post until just now, but I HAVE had several other ideas for posts that I set myself up not to develop. What where they you ask? I don’t…remember. Because I didn’t make them. But I bet they were genius and would have improved the world. Oops, sorry.

So…now to the meat of the post. I suppose that last bit was the gravy… I am stepping out of the serious for a second and introducing you to

Gregory K, from gottabook.blogspot.com

This man I recently found by watching a vidcast that mentioned a new form of poetry he invented: The Fib. More on that in a second- first allow me show you some of his other material:

HOLD MY BREATH

On Monday at the swimming pool,
I acted like a total fool.
“Hold my breath? No way!” I cried.
Then little Joe came to my side.
“I’ll hold it for you,” Joe did say.
So I gave him my breath... and he ran away!
Now I can’t speak or sneeze or cough.
I can’t blow the fluff of a dandelion off.
I can’t call Mom or Dad or you.
There’s really nothing I can do.
So if you see Joe somewhere, somehow
Tell him I want my breath back NOW.

I think this piece is one of my favorites. I was going to do another one of these little funny ones, but I think in the interest of brevity (ha! Riiight…) I will move on. You can get more at his web site.

Like I mentioned earlier, he also has invented a new form of structured poetry called the “Fib”. Fib is short for Fibonacci, a simple mathmatical sequence in which the pattern consists of the last two numbers combined. A fib applies this to how many syllables each line has- clever, eh? So the pacing goes like so: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. They are a lot of fun and he suggests that they are good for warm ups for getting yourself in the ability to rhyme and match rhythm in your poems. From what I can tell, it seems it really does work. But enough of my jibber jabber- lets here some by him:

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.
---
Ants
Can’t
Wear pants
When they dance.
Plus I’ve heard the news
They never put on dancing shoes.

There a lot of fun- and now you know what I was doing 2 posts ago! As you can see, Greg K. has only takes his to 8 syllable lines. I think I went to 20 something- of course, my friend GreenDragonRider had to not only 1 up me, but out do me by about 30 syllables. Her amazing achievement in literacy can be viewed here.

I’ve thought about this and my imagination was sparked- the flame caught a small flash fire of paper and I came up with a whole bunch of different schemes for poetry: Mirrored Fibs, backwards fibs (other people have also thought of this though), and Pi poems (poems written in 3, 1, 4, etc.) The flames quickly died down however, though they did not go out until after I had produced this ‘mirror fib’.

Math,
Art-
The two join
To create beauty
The syllable count ticks to eight
Then hangs gracefully in mid air
Falling once more down
It dissolves
And fades-
Art,
Math.

For some reason the balance really makes it cool for me.

Ok, now back to the serious…
Previously on uttereast.blogspot.com I asked my readers to give their interpretation of a song. Well some people at least said they tried, but I'm still waiting, lol. So here my humble interpertation of the song BLEED SEASON. I believe this song is all about a man who becomes a believer and is experiencing the struggle of maintaining a holy life…In my oppinion, if you read the whole song it follows a man from becoming a christian to dealing with the fact that there are still life issues to be dealt with even when Christ is with you. The title Bleed Season is about the times of peril or struggle in our lives-

“Is this my time to feel? Is this my time to breathe? Is this my time to bleed? Change the season”

For is not their coming as sure as the changing of the seasons?

Here is my interpretations for the verses I posted earlier:

Trace the tree and the veil will flee me <--Think of a crime scene- when someone dies, they trace the position in chalk. The tree obviously here is the cross. The veil- the infamous veil in the temple that separated the holy from the holy of holies- and symbolically, us from God.
And now I see with salty eyes <--Seeing through his tears
Consistent tragedy persisting in me
This disability's my soul's demise
Deaf to self and mute to mind
Muddled wallowing nebulous blind <--Something’s still wrong in him…

My crippled confidence is chafed away <--Its getting to him
With the answers I'm pulled astray <--He now knows what is wrong and right-
The habits laced embrace me <--Yet his old patterns are not broken
With a cold, chaotic flinch
Kiss of old deaths erase me <--Love this line… the things he thought he had killed are coming back to him…
Soft, subtle, inch by inch <--Baabbby steps…. But very EVIL baby steps, lol.

Awesomeness…. You gotta hear it. It rocks really hard.

OK.. moving on number B... Though not officially a ‘poet’, while we are on the topic of hard bands with amazing lyrisicsts, I think I should mention Bean Bag.

Bean Bag
By the time they had gotten to only their second studio released album, Bean Bag had obtained a polish and artistic maturity that is not seen in many other bands in their entire career. Their last album, Well Adjusted was a masterpiece. Unfortunately, just as they were hitting their artistic stride they were not hitting their business stride. They dissolved the band and, as sure as I know, all went to get ‘real jobs’. Check out the lyrics to the song These Stains off of their last album:

I am shame, can I enter?
I hold your name on my placenta
it has fame to see adventure
call its name to find dementure

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

sold my peace for anarchy
it took me to the sea
holding all I have to be
I shook the rug out so delicately

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

if I had just listened to you
if I had just focused in on you

oh, why did I leave you? I am
here but shame told me
'always' and it is soldering out these stains

oh, these stains

Hahaha, tell me what THAT one means… its probably even harder then the last one. I didn’t get it until I was depressed enough. Then it sort of snapped into place, and that made me happy and I haven’t solved any Bean Bag songs since then. What do you folks say?

Poetry post one, take two. Action.

Some of you are looking at the size of this post and going “oh lord, that’s a big post” (or something to that effect). First of all, allow me to congratulate you on your observational skills. VERY GOOD!

Second- uhh, Sue me, I guess. Yeah. I’ll take a Leah approach and say “This is my blog, I don’t care if you don’t like it” even though that is total hogwash since I get a lot of satisfaction from the comments area. But wait! I am a considerate blogger- that’s right! You see, this is actually a cut version. Or rather, a sliced version. I have decided to slice up my poetry post- hereafter referred to as my “poest”- into smaller, more digestible mini-morsels or poest perfection.

This poest I supoest, (sorry) will include (I)ntroduction through (S)hwab… I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it made me laugh. Anyway…

Like many things in life, I respect, admire and attempt poetry- but I usually end up being too distracted by other things to do much of any of those verbs. And so, like most everything else, I will go on a binge, or a mood, and just take in or write poetry. This is basically how I operate; I do the same thing with computers, movies, electronics or anything that fascinates me. It is probably a blessing or a curse, but more likely a mix of the two- but alas, that is another topic altogether. This is a poest after all.

My current poetic kick probably started with lit class- We were to get some 20^th century poems to read. I chose my friend, Mr. Frosty. I decided to do In a Disused Graveyard.

I heard a lot of good stuff, including some pieces by people with weird names like E.E. Cummings, and people who’s names half of us mistook for the wrong gender. Next class is 21^st century American authors. We are supposed to bring our own poetry or short stories. I of course, am not intimidated by this; I have a good poetic arsenal I can draw from as you can see by the new link on the right side bar to my poetry and prose page. But there are so many other people I wanted to share that I am fighting hard for the ability to show case their work as well… In case it doesn’t make it, here are some of the contestants:

Andrew Shwab

First the lead singer from the hard rock band Project 86, Shwab has recently self published several of his own short books. If you were a fan of his lyrics, it would seem a no-brainer that he would cross over to poetry; his lyrics have always been amazingly poetic, despite his hard-edged aggressive vocal style. As I have seemed to misplace my book of poetry by him, I will instead give you this example from his song “Bleed Season”. See if you can spot the symbolism:

Trace the tree and the veil will flee me

And now I see with salty eyes

Consistent tragedy persisting in me

This disability's my soul's demise

Deaf to self and mute to mind

Muddled wallowing nebulous blind

My crippled confidence is chafed away

With the answers I'm pulled astray

The habits laced embrace me

With a cold, chaotic flinch

Kiss of old deaths erase me

Soft, subtle, inch by inch

You can find the full lyrics here.

I will go into some more, cooler yet poetry in my next poest. Until then, discuss! Comment like you care. Humor me. What do you think the song is about? (Read the whole thing for context). I think I've cracked it, but I'm interested in other interpertations.

I just lost a billion words... give or take.

I was about one or two sentences away from finnishing a HUGE post. It was all about poetry, and I had it formatted beautifully, with exerts I had gathered from everywhere. It was LONG. It was probably coming up on three pages, at least. Then firefox crashed. BLOODY BROKEN BROWSER!!

I'll see if I can recreate it tomarrow. I can rebuild it. Better, badder, stronger. More better. Betterist. Dang, its late. Dang, I just lost a big post.

I will close this post with a type of poem called a 'fib'. I am not going to tell you what it is tonight (cause I just did, and then lost it), but here is a little 'teaser' if you will (and I hope you do):

It
Is
so late
All work lost
My sanity gone
Where, blogger, did it all go wrong?
The big bit bucket in the sky has ate my data

----

One
More
Strange Verse-
A poem.
Spot the pattern, try!
Perhaps soon now you will get it.