New poems

+15

Chicken and Mushrooms

Made from this recipe (I added the potatoes).

Man on the moon

Comic by Tom Gauld.

Rapid aging

Stress is a killer.

Just a reply (Moore)

Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

Opinion

Everyone manufactures opinions—it's what we do, perhaps all we do—but they are not all of equal quality or value.

Spades (de Quevedo)

Azadas son la hora y el momento
que, a jornal de mi pena y mi cuidado,
cavan en mi vivir mi monumento.

The hours and seconds are spades,
by pain and grief well paid, digging
my grave in the midst of my days.

Francisco de Quevedo, from "Signifícase la propria brevedad de la vida, sin pensar, y con padecer, salteada de la muerte

Redaction Comics #1, Assertion, Wanna-Be

Three of my poems, "Redaction Comics #1," "Assertion," and "Wanna-Be," have been accepted and will be published in the next issue of Otoliths: A Magazine of Many E-Things. The issue is scheduled to go live on August 1.

On tradition

Tradition means only that people have been doing something the same way for a while. It doesn't imply that that way is a better way, much less the better way.

Something (Limón)

I want to give you something, or I want to take
something from you. But I want to feel the exchange...

Ada Limón, from "How Far Away We Are"

Every Day (Bachmann)

Der Krieg wird nicht mehr erklärt,
sondern fortgesetzt. Das Unerhörte
ist alltäglich geworden. Der Held
bleibt den Kämpfen fern. Der Schwache
ist in die Feuerzonen gerückt.
Die Uniform des Tages ist die Geduld,
die Auszeichnung der armselige Stern
der Hoffnung über dem Herzen.

War is no longer declared:
Just continued. The unheard-of
has become the quotidian.
The hero weasels out.
The weakling is at the front.
The uniform of the day is simply patience,
the highest decoration is the pathos of a star
of hope above the heart.

Ingeborg Bachmann, from "Alle Tage"

Irish soda bread muffins

From this recipe.

A work of art (Wilde)

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson.  It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Oscar Wilde

Gougéres

Tasty cheese puffs! From this recipe.

The error

The error is usually in the premise.

Of cause & consequence

Causes are contentious;
consequences, constant.

The news (Stefans)

We know the news when we refuse the headlines...

Brian Kim Stefans, from "The Screens"

Failure & age (Caldwell & Thomason)

The two hardest things to contemplate in life are failure and age; and those are one and the same. Perfection is the natural consequence of eternity: wait long enough, and anything will realize its potential. Coal becomes diamonds, sand becomes pearls, apes become men. It's simply not given to us, in one lifetime, to see those consummations, and so every failure becomes a reminder of death.

Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason, The Rule of Four

The past

You best honor the past by learning from it, not by emulating it, not by enshrining it.

New poems

+15