Scribal Terror

Aurora Borealis, 1131

 

--This is a poem I wrote as a reflection on an 1131 AS Chronicle entry:

This year, just after the Lord's own feast,
On a winter night, at our first sleep,
Was the northern heaven all as it seemed
A burning fire; Dismayed, we dreamed
Of an end to our dreaming, our time.

 

Reflections From the Daily Commute: Part Threeby Jake Holmes

It's a rare thing. To see an attractive woman. At least one that's less than a hundred feet away or not on the pages of some glossy magazine.. It's a rare thing. You see I work at the phone company and most everyone is old, like me.. Victims of a lifetime spent sitting behind a desk; the only exercise being a waddle to the street to suck down a couple smokes and grab another cup of bitter Starbuck's foglifter.. To say that beauty is at a premium is an understatement..Aesthetics have no purchase at the phone company. My life is pretty gray.. The same day repeated over and over like a bad dream you just can't shake...A condition unique to the modern world, I think.. or perhaps slavery. I wake in the damp chill before dawn. Dress. Wait in line with scores of other urban automatons... worker drones for the most part, with a few bums and schizophrenics thrown in to convince us that things could be worse.. to cram into a bus that takes us to jobs we hate... That hatred stamped in the flattened, vacant affect of the commuters as clearly as if it were chiseled there. Regular and perpetual. Wash, rinse, repeat in reverse.

Today was no different.. Gray faces radiating anxiety.. A day passed in a blur of numbers, a sea of paper, caffeine rush and feigned civility.. By quitting time I was exhausted and ready to drop into a twilight sleep for the ride back to the suburbs. Pulling my cap down over my eyes and wedging myself into a back corner of the bus I began to melt into the steady thrum of the motors.. Then something very unusual happened. A few stops into the trip something disturbed me.. Not the babbling of the mentally ill arguing with a tormentor only they can see.. not gangbangers rapping out loud with a voice on their iPod.. Those are everyday and don't even register anymore.. This was subtle.. A disturbance to my reality. Something out of balance. Peeking out from under my cap nothing looked immediately amiss.. The same people in the same places making the same noises.. Then I saw her..

She came sauntering up the narrow aisle in slow motion as if the world had been rendered a Hollywood movie and she was Scarlett Johanssen making her debut.. I say 'sauntered' because it wasn't the walk, or rather the shuffle, of the dead that I'm used to.. She walked with purpose and a .. je ne sais quoi.. savoir vivre..An angel.. perhaps twenty.. Golden blond with over-sized blue eyes.. thin but curvaceous and feminine..Nordic.. maybe Russian..Dressed stylishly in the proverbial little black dress that made the best of her assets. She came to within a few feet of me.. I thought for one fleeting moment that she was going speak but at the last second she turned and took a seat a couple rows over... crossing her legs properly.

Not wanting to alarm her or draw attention to myself I studied her through half closed lids from the shade of my bill and the anonymity of my corner.. As my eyes surveyed her smooth lines I felt something for the first time in a very long time.. not lust.. nothing so base.. It was the feeling of awe.. of the presence of beauty.. a feeling there's no word for.. the long graceful neck...Full lips.. the creamy white skin, unblemished.. Toenails blood red... It was a hunger.. and with it came a sense of bitterness, sadness and loneliness.. and an excruciating sensation of invisibility as the thought seeped into my mind that the three feet or so that separated us might as well be a million miles.. It was the feeling of a ghost hovering around the living, drawn like a moth to a flame, to something beyond its reach.. Something lost and never found.

As this thought overwhelmed me the bus stopped abruptly and flung its mechanical doors wide.. without a word the woman gathered her things, rose and ran out to be swallowed by the crowds..

Bitching loudly to no one in particular about her latest employer as she does everyday, the mannish dyke construction worker, trailing a cloud of chalk dust, shambled on board and into the newly vacated seat.. pulled her hardhat low over her eyes.. and hunching her shoulders, settled in for a nap..

The balance had returned.

Part One; Part Two

Jacob's Ladderby Locust Eater

Jacob's Ladder
On Genesis 28:10-19:

In the desert all alone
beneath his head he laid a stone
the stars looked down upon his face
in this dark desolate place.

In his dreams a ladder shone
let down from heaven to his stone
beside him holy voices spoke
out of fire and out of smoke.

"Where you go there I am too
I will always be with you"
-every place, a place of God
if floored with sand, gold, wood, or sod.

Coffee Haiku Poll

And the winnah is . . . JWebb's enema haiku:

As dawn's perked nectar
Coffee should be your best friend
Not your enema

with four votes. But honorable mention to Jake who garnered SEVEN points spread among four haikus, of which my favorite is:

(Taylor's Lament Haiku)

Get down Goddamned apes
Get your filthy paws off me
You'll spill my coffee !

So JWebb has the overall win, but Jake ends up with the most Scribal points. It's sort of like the last presidential election if you think about it.

. . . .

Vote for your favorite coffee haiku here. Contestants are identified by name and haikus by number. Scribal points for each vote you receive, but please don't vote for yourself or vote more than once.

Rhymes with silver

Kudos to Stan for this one:

I admire the blog "Scribal Terror,"
Which posed the question if there're
   Any words rhyme with "silver"
   So I offer the uncommon "chilver" -
That's a real word (not an internet error).

Chilver (see the O.E.D.): a ewe-lamb.  The stem word "kilv" is related to "kalv" and thus to "calf." -- Stan

Rhymes with orange

There once was a young cad with an orange
Whose remorse caused him nary a sore twinge
Said cad threw said fruit
At a poor prostitute
Which made that unfortunate whore whinge.

Submitted by Philip Chapman-Bell

OK, sez I, now do silver. Anybody like to give it a try?

Well, ask and ye shall receive:

On Delancey, young pickleman Silver
Sold his wares to a toothless ditch-delver
"It took him two hours,
To gum down that half-sour --
What on earth can he want the huge dill for?"

    Philip Chapman-Bell 

There was a young fan from PA
Wore his Pirates togs every day
The fan's name was Silver
His favorite was Wilver
And he'd watch him hit homers all day

    CraigC  

Oranges poranges, who says,
oranges poranges, who says,
oranges poranges, who says?
there ain't no rhyme for oranges!

    Witchipoo, H.R. Puf'n'stuf (c. 1970) via Jake

There are no rhymes for orange or silver
Unless liberties you pilfer.

    Ogden Nash via   C.G. Hill

"The mirror crack'd from side to side"

Lovely setting of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" by Loreena McKennitt. Via Unlocked Wordhoard

Pet poems

John of  FYE :

Jessie's my dog
and friend to the meeces
She'd like to catch one
and love it to pieces

Come on, who else writes poems about their animals? No secrets here.

Me:

The Look

Don't you think I'm awf'ully cute?
Give me your Mint Milano.
It must have been some other pup
Who peed on the piano.

FilthyCommie

tasha was a dog
afraid of wee meeces
she spent her days
snacking on feces

Ana:

I did not eat your Simple clog.
It was the other household dog.

He does bad things. It is not me.
And on your bed? That's baby pee.

My paws are clean. You can't deny.
It must have been the Daddy guy.

There is so much that happens here.
It's good to have alibis near.

Erin (on a dog that refused to come home for his neutering appointment):

The dog is Maki
Isolation, Castration
He is so grounded

Craig (on a cat who ate a flip flop):

I'm a happy little boy
Who thinks he's a goat
Your flip-flops were there
So they went down my throat

iamnot's son (7) on the loss of their dog Payson:

The Night Poem

Payson has brown floppy ears.
I love Payson and his gentle paws.
I love Payson.

Priapus:

I'm just a happy little boy
Who thinks he's a randy old goat like Silenus
You bent over to pick up your flip-flops
Sorry.. I couldnt control myself.
I had my way with you... or would have if that ass hadnt been braying to high heaven.. Jeez.

What do you expect.? Hera cursed me with this freakin thing and I cant turn it off...

Funny, that last line doesn't scan. Couldn't you find a word to rhyme with Silenus?

Our old dog

This is our Sami. She used to be all black except for a white blaze on her chest. She's 17 years old, the same age as our daughter, but much, much older in dog years. The picture was taken last summer. She doesn't go out for walks in the park anymore because she's blind, deaf, diabetic, and just plain decrepit, but she still enjoys eating, sleeping, and occasionally getting her tummy rubbed.

She is no longer particularly housebroken. She remembers to go out about one time in ten, so we've put down heavy gauge plastic sheeting over the carpets and covered those with old bath towels. When she makes a mistake, the towel goes into the laundry and the plastic gets spritzed with cleanser. We do lots of laundry and lots of spritzing. And our house looks like a house with rumpled plastic sheeting and frayed, mismatched bath towels over the carpets could be expected to look. But we love our old dog.

"Be Lost in the Call"by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi Rumi

Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.

Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw,
and a mirror might be revealed.

Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.

My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?

We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.

-- From Love is a Stranger

Rumi lived from 1207 to 1273. He was called Rumi, or "the Roman," because he lived in an area of Anatolia which had been part of the Roman (Byzantine) Empire before the Seljuk conquest. After that it was called the Sultunate of Rum.