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.

 

Why dogs' lives are shorter than humans'

According to a six-year-old, as told by his family vet:

People are born so that they can learn how to live a good Life -- like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right? . . . Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long.

The Vineby Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

I DREAM'D this mortal part of mine
Was Metamorphoz'd to a Vine;
Which crawling one and every way,
Enthrall'd my dainty Lucia.
Me thought, her long small legs & thighs
I with my Tendrils did surprize;
Her Belly, Buttocks, and her Waste
By my soft Nerv'lits were embrac'd:
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seem'd to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curles about her neck did craule,
And armes and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir,
(All parts there made one prisoner.)
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts, which maids keep unespy'd,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took,
That with the fancie I awook;
And found (Ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a Stock then like a Vine.

This John William Waterhouse painting is based on a Robert Herrick poem. Scribal points to JWebb for identifying it as "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May."

Geological haikuby Rob B.

pahoehoe flows slow
tendrils of light on basalt
terra firma; born

Gneiss one, Rob.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little BatLewis Carroll

 

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle—

Scribal points for explaining what made hatters mad.

JWebb responds:

I do not know from hats,
or their millinery mental vapors.
Nor do I know of mercury gas
but for compact fluorescent tapers.
But I do know a bit about bats,
and their nocturnal feeding capers.
For their copious digested gnats,
require sharp guano scrapers.

LED haiku

This from Rob at FIU:

Semiconductor,
high tech narrow-spectrum light.
Now in our sex toys.

For context, visit link.

A Decade by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

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.

From the catacombs of Paris

The Catacombs of Paris are not particularly ancient, unlike the Roman ones. In fact, they are a seventeenth-century repurposing of some old mines, but they are known for their creepy atmosphere, their creatively stacked bones, and their interesting inscriptions. Murray Battle of Infiltration photographed his favorite:

My translation is as follows:

Fool that you are, why do you promise yourself long life, you who cannot count on a single day?

But as an unsigned Wikipedia commenter correctly observes, this is itself a translation of a Latin line from Imitatio Christi by Thomas a Kempis:

 Ha stulte, quid cogitas te diu victurum, cum nullum diem habeas securum? 

Although I would translate "Ha stulte" as "Hey stupid," the following translation is a bit more sober if no less correct:

Ah, foolish man, why do you plan to live long when you are not sure of living even a day?

The rest of the paragraph reads:

How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched away! How often have you heard of persons being killed by drownings, by fatal falls from high places, of persons dying at meals, at play, in fires, by the sword, in pestilence, or at the hands of robbers! Death is the end of everyone and the life of man quickly passes away like a shadow.