4/9/2011

3/5 stars

This is the meat-eating side of Mango Grove. It's ok, and apparently the best for quite some radius. Well, the *only* for quite some radius.

We invaded as a large, boisterous group and took up most of this side. The servers didn't quite seem to get that we wanted the chefs to make what they enjoy making. They seemed to want a list of what we wanted.

The food was good. Nothing too heavily spiced, which is kinda a shame, although I'm glad they're light on the cilantro. The lamb naan was a great, glutenous treat. There was a lentil dish I quite liked on top of the onion naan.

At the end, though, we felt somewhat overcharged. Perhaps it's partially our fault for not keeping track of what's served.

Yelp tags: Indian

4/9/2011

3/5 stars

It's airport food. At least it's a local group. The food is exactly what you expect: fried yet still somewhat flavorless. The beers are local brews and a bit more interesting. I think my favorite is their red beer, but I don't recall any of the names. They rotate a seasonal brew through. All their beers are more malty than hoppy, even the high-gravity "Serum." I haven't seen a wide variety in flavors in their beers, but that's not a bad thing in itself. All of them are quite smooth and pretty satisfying.

One good point is that the people here are quick with the check when you ask. Many airport workers dawdle and run you later and later… DuClaw's outside security, so keep an eye on your time. BWI's lines can grow long quickly.

Note that the Boingo hotspot here *never* has worked for me. There are low-level wireless association errors; likely either the hardware of firmware of the router is busted. Been this way for over a year as of April, 2011. I end up hanging off the free AT&T hotspot just within range.

Yelp tags: Seafood Burgers

4/9/2011

4/5 stars

The salsa. Seriously. Bright, moderately hot, fresh-tasting salsa made there. Good stuff. Our neighbor turned us onto this "dive." My wife brought home the salsa, and I was hooked.

The food is good, cheap, and plentiful. The tacos (both soft and hard) are as plain as you expect without further instruction. The enchiladas are quite good and a touch smokey. the burrito wasn't quite what I expected, but it was ok. The ground beef ingredients are full fat, so… The refried beans made me happy, particularly once I start mixing them with the beef fat drippings and scooping it up in chips with (yes!) more salsa. And no one around me had reason to be unhappy afterwards.

Good corn tortillas are available (no gluten), and my wife likes them.

Yelp tags: Mexican

4/9/2011

4/5 stars

A "LEEDS-certified" eco-advertising hotel that actually walks the walk? Neat.

Normally, these places still have the full array of throw-away items. This hotel didn't. The bathroom had one plastic-wrapped item, the face soap. The other soaps were in dispensers. Not the most elegant, I admit, but also not wasteful. The kitchen had the typical powdered mud packets for that morning put-you-down, but otherwise there were no disposable items. The room even had a recycling bin. They highlight the one local food item they serve, an ok granola. And they warn you about stink bugs rather than spraying with kill-em-all-icide. I had none up on the fourth floor, but I know of one appearing on the first.

Great service. Ekatarina (likely misspelled) rummaged around late at night to find the right cables so I could correct my typos up on the big screen. Very useful for work and not just "play." The network (both wired and wireless) isn't reliably fast enough for streaming videos; download before you arrive. (They don't want to cut into their on-demand sales, I bet.)

Reasonable price, comfy bed, etc. The room also had pots, pans, and induction stovetop, a microwave, large refrigerator, dishes… This would be a good place should you be stuck in long-term meeting hell *AND* have a rental car. There's nothing grocery-related within walking distance, and nearly nothing non-hotel within walking distance.

Getting a shuttle from the airport is a tad tricky. The "courtesy phone" service does *not* exist, despite the web site's claim. And there are two TownePlace Suites by BWI. The BWI information desk may give you the wrong phone number. And then the Marriott group shuttles may speed past you without bothering to pick you up. That doesn't seem specific to this Marriott property.

The woods right outside make me think of mushroom hunting… Doubt if I'd eat any found there. They suck up all the heavy metals that fall from fuel remnants, etc. If there aren't mushrooms out there, someone should start some for cleanup… hm.

Yelp tags: Hotels

4/9/2011

4/5 stars

This place received the mother-in-law seal of approval. The pasta earns that magic "toothsome" description. The gluten-free menu is quite complete. Last time I was there, we had a pork pasta, fried leg-of-Daffy, and a fish plate. Each was quite good, although the pasta was the clear winner to me. The dishes seem like great variations on comfort food to me. No brains when I've been there, alas.

And Ecco garners an eco-bonus for a green roof and not having a dumpster. Many greens are grown on their roof, and they compost as much waste as possible.

The mix-and-match meat and cheese plate would be a great patio date snack. We keep intending on getting folks together, but life is nuts. (And not pine. Maybe more pistachio, or at least pistachio shells. Like in For Your Eyes Only.)

Beer and wine is as pricey as you might expect; go a few blocks away if you're looking more for drinks. But dodge the dealers who hang out nearby. sigh.

Yelp tags: Modern European

And a quick gratuitous shot of my wife’s ketchup along side Picnic at Irwin Street Market’s booth for the Midtown Market. It’s good ketchup. Wish we had more at home, but it always seems needed elsewhere…

as the mercury rises
    canned windows hold to the corner
    street music threads through doors
    wandering a street map never feels confined
    just laborious this time

birds gathering favor
    what’s left right along the inside
    outside the collaboration of footsteps
    drops tattooing the powdered ground
    angry notes left in wet music

the temperature’s a number
    just a quantity cupped within
    everyone’s favored commitment
    that clones a desire going down
    shrugging breath under loamy air

heartbeats misread a poem
    into the number
    into the quantity
    into the wet
    into the labor
    into the breath
we love for no reason at all

I’m from the South, except really from a bit further south than the South. We hate the summer, but it’s a part of us. Faulkner, Twain, Williams, Mitchell, Percy, Hurston, Lee, O’Connor, and so many more find their pages bound by humidity. And no, I haven’t read works by all of them. But I should.

I’d claim no prompt, but the wonderful use of wordles in many existing prompts serves as a prompt itself. By far the most interesting wordle I managed today was from Dana Guthrie Martin’s page. And this was before I realized she and Nathan Moore are committed to an extraordinary task: Working on a single, unique, all-encompassing, collaborative poem over thirty months. (My hyper-analytical side screams that the mental transpose is one poem over thirty days, but, well, I’m silly and trying to stick to one a day.)

Also, we had no luck finding morels last weekend. I have little idea where to look here, and the sheer amount of leaf litter makes me doubt if I’ll see any. hm.

Studying social networks at scale often runs into a bit of a problem: available data is tiny. Data is locked away in silos. I’m not going to repeat the larger issues, but having to deal with lawyers for any research use makes approaching the “big sites” unrealistic.

But the open social web, built on protocols like OStatus and Salmon exists and keeps growing. One particular platform, status.net, has a flagship central site at http://identi.ca with over 420 thousand registered local accounts and 71 million posted messages. Note the use of local above. identi.ca is part of a distributed, interlinked network of social network sites. Each site can be configured a little differently. By default, the software emulates a Twitter-like system. Change settings, and it works as bookmark sharing service. With settings and some plumbing, users can agglomerate all of their on-line profiles (up to “open-ness” of the data source). With styling changes, the status.net backbone can serve for photo-sharing, Facebook-like notice sharing (but without multiple levels of pseudo-privacy), or others.

Really, I’m more interested status.net’s federated and well-licensed content aspects. Those open the door to plenty of social network analysis research approaching real-life scales. There are other platforms, but I’m not as familiar with those and don’t treat them here.

Social network analysis

Social network analysis is a rather vague term. I’m considering a computational and statistical side and not classic, sociological social network analysis just as statistical mechanics is different than simmering a sauce on the stovetop. Both address similar issues from different directions and can learn much from the other. Perhaps one day our numerical, mathematical analysis will help better understand social networks. We’re still trying different things to see what fits.

There’s reasonable hope that the current computational tools can help analysts and researchers. Work between our group and the group at Pacific Northwest National Labs analyzed some canned data from the T-world and managed to stumble on a somewhat forgotten outbreak of H1N1 as well as a few “private” T-world accounts that passed along important, timely information during the Atlanta 2009 floods. So there’s value in the data and analysis, but we are not able always to predict what value in which analysis.

To see how complex the field is, consider Fortunato’s survey of different community detection methods. Fortunato gives a glimpse of how many different methods exist for a “simple” task: determining groups of similar items in a social network. We have to objective way compare these methods on real-world data at large scales yet, so there is no known right answer. Simultaneously frustrating and interesting.

License and structure

Instead posting into a locked-off silo, users of the flagship identi.ca site license their posted content with the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. The site claims the data also is licensed under CC-BY, although that may not be a concert in many jurisdictions. Other federated sites encode their licenses, and the protocol includes a check for license compatibility. So long as you give credit in an appropriate form, you can use specific dents in examples without worry. I still twitch over including Twitter messages in our ICPP10 paper.

The open API emulates Twitter without the restrictions on use. Naturally, if you’re going to crawl the whole site, it’s wise to ask the developers and admins. They do respond, and they’re quite willing to help with nifty uses. They’ve even given me an open invitation to using a data dump, which I have no doubt would be extended to other researchers.

And the data is rich with semantic annotations:

• Subscriptions are directed, and users subscribe either to other users or to groups.
  • All subscribers see everything posted by a subscribed user/group, which makes data modeling a bit simpler.
• Messages have timestamps for some streaming work (don’t think they keep deletions around).
• Conversations group the messages by Reply-To functionality. It doesn’t catch everything, of course, but inferring missing links would be an interesting project.
• Users can mark messages as ‘favorites’.
• There are ‘repeats’ similar to re-tweets.
• Messages can have attachments as well as extra-service links.
• Tags galore on everything, although many doubt their use.
• Many messages have an associated location, although the location rarely works for me.

If you’re interested in exploring just about any semantic aspect or just the user graph, identi.ca makes the data available. Sites cross-posting also make their data available under a compatible license, so identi.ca works well as a central hub.

Active

Even the single, central site keeps growing. While nice for expanding the data set, status.net sites also are active in the sense that people are investigating better methods for implementing and analyzing the data already. Luke Slater has described identified a local core + fringe community model and is investigating use as a spam detector.1 A flour-covered, football-addled zombie is poking at recommendation heuristics.

Active developers means active code. There are deployed applications with API examples ripe for re-use. Luke Slater has prototype code for his analysis and crawling. So there’s no need to start from scratch. The developer’s community is quite active.

Distributed / federated

And using the federated sites provides data useful for emerging research areas. Different domains may provide different visibility, although most have the same license now. Treating the domains as opaque lets you compare methods on full data to methods on partially obscured or forcibly separated data. The federated social web is a great source of data.

For a motivating useful example, consider analyzing medical data and research coming from different countries. Each has its own privacy laws. You cannot simply copy data to one system and analyze it. You need to pass the least specific aggregate data possible across the legal boundaries. There is very little relevant research in this direction, but it has immediate application both in useful research as well as in multinational medical companies like Merck.

The twisted thing is that succeeding in this research direction could enable tighter private data silos. Ugh.

Drawbacks

As with any data source, there are drawbacks. identi.ca includes posts from just about every country. The location data is not correct enough for accurate filtering. So some projects may not be able to use the data. Some funding agencies are rightfully nervous about the public perception of monitoring citizens of their own or particular other countries. One useful project would be to fit the de-facto standard R-MAT generator to aspects of identi.ca data.

Also, identi.ca is a real, active, evolving social network. It’s complicated. There’s no demonstrable ground truth for any real question. However, many users are friendly and may respond to survey requests.

It takes no effort to find many existing uses dating well before this century, so the question becomes how the term is used. Historically, raising crops was an expected usage of a homestead.

Urban v. rural is a matter of categorizing location. Using a homestead of either kind for food production is a long-standing tradition. The idea that “urban homestead” is a non-generic term for raising crops within an urban border is absurd.

I haven’t had much spare time to collect materials on the phrase “urban homestead.” This is a snapshot of my notes. Many of the sources are tertiary at best. Unless otherwise noted, my focus is on the United States. Citation styles are somewhat random, and I’m somewhat displeased with ikiwiki’s footnote handling.

Pre-HUD survey of usage

Homestead:

“The home and appurtenant land and buildings owned by the head of a family, and occupied by him and his family.” – Collaborative International Dictionary of English1

Essentially, a homestead is a home. Shockingly enough, there are both rural homesteads, those outside city-like borders, and urban homesteads, those inside city-like borders. Homestead laws exist to protect property owners from forced sales to satisfy creditors. The totals and specifics vary from state to state. The distiction between urban homesteads and rural homesteads is related only to their location and not use other than being a home.

At some point in history, growing food on a homestead simply was assumed regardless of its location. The Law of Homestead and Exemptions2 from 1875 discusses urban and rural homesteads but makes no distinctions between them for farming. A Treatise on Homestead and Exemption Laws from 1878 outlines differences between what is and us not a homestead in different urban and rural jurisdictions entirely separately from how to dispense crops grown on either type with respect to liens. In Waggener, et al. v. Haskell, et al., 1896, the Texas Court of Civil Appeals considers how to treat crops on a homestead when the homestead becomes urban because of urban border growth.3

The New Deal set up “subsistance homesteads”4 to relocate unemployed urban workers5 and try to jump-start rural-urban industry. Again a “homestead” is assumed to include food production, and “urban” simply is a location. Apparently, much more history is given in Hughes & Bleakly’s Urban homesteading,6 but out library does not have this book. A critical review focuses on the HUD-style urban homesteading that began in the 1970s.

At least one city study states that homestead traditionally implied some cash crop production.7 In Schneider’s usage, urban homesteads are centers of consumption rather than production. This is rather the opposite of other claimed uses but emphasizes the relationship between urban homesteads and farming in some direction.

The HUD usage

The US Housing and Urban Development has an explicit “Urban Homestead” program established in 1974.8 This program attempts to reduce urban blight by offering reduced prices and loans to low- and moderate-income families if they repair a property. This is modeled on the 1862 Homestead Act that opened up vast Western public domains to settlers and required farming the claimed rural properties.

“Similarly, urban homesteading programs, which are quite self-consciously modeled after the homesteading programs for nineteenth-century farmers, encourage low and moderate income people to fix up old housing and impose resale restrictions to ensure that the rehabilitated building continues to provide housing for families with low and moderate incomes.” — “Inalienability and The Theory of Property Rights” (1985)9

The Homestead Act was effectively finished in the continental US when President Theodore Roosevelt turned public domain lands into national parks and officially ended in 1976 (except for Alaska, 1986).

Modern, HUD-style urban homesteading still is used in some cities. Of note is the UHAB in NYC. One write-up following the founding of the HUD program pays specific homage to raising crops on an urban homestead in NYC.

“On the Lower East Side of New York, they raised a first crop of peanuts and sent some to the White House in the Carter administration as a public relations gesture.” — Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American dream: the future of housing, work, and family life10 In the context of urban redevelopment, the phrase urban homestead was used in popular media.11

After the HUD Urban Homesteading program began

The HUD’s emphasis on repair rather than raising crops did not separate the traditional usage from the term “urban homestead.”

In 1975, Booklegger magazine mentions “food coops”, “urban homesteading”, and “victory gardens” as “facets of urban survival”.12 “Urban/Rural Homesteads” are mentioned in other publications during the 1970s.13 Use of variants like “backyard homestead” in farming and gardening resources implies that farming is a natural use of a homestead regardless of other adjectives.14

Common linkage of homesteads to food production is not limited to the US

A United Nations report15 doesn’t use the phrase “urban homestead,” but makes clear the use of urban properties to produce food, and refers to those properties as homesteads. A Canadian report on urban food systems16 considers “homestead cultivation” an important aspect of “self-reliant urban food systems.”

Existing use in commerce within the US

These do not count for trademarks. Trademarks are granted on a first-registered basis regardless of any sense.

• An apple farm in Bristol, Virginia is named Urban Homestead and used that name in commerce at least by 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=ljNHAAAAYAAJ&q=urban+homestead+crop

• A Richmond, VA urban agriculture community founded in 2002 offers classes including urban homesteading. http://tricyclegardens.org/about/

down the grocer’s aisles
shelves lined so tightly neatly
ruin the middle

Mega-marts are scary. They encourage rampant eating things that are not food. Pollan’s rule of “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” is wise. I’m sure she would have recognized Nutella.

Rivulets merging
along asphault roadways,
pebbles commuting.

It felt odd not writing a stone today. I need to hold onto some of the smaller pieces, roll them together in my palms, and see if any stick together.

The harsh cold wind cuts,
exposing the skeleton
of harsh cold words.

I should note that this isn’t directed towards any particular incident. It just feels appropriate. That alone is unfortunate.

the same lightning strike
flickers down on every block
a crack in the glass

I happened to have something like this in mind, then a Big Tent prompt about a broken window appeared. And we had another large thunderstorm last night. Our part of East Point seemed spared the worst of it.

We’ll see if anything more substantial appears once I’m in my hotel room, but I’ll likely work. Plenty of writing to tackle there.

I had a sonnet idea relating two Big Tent prompts and Robert Brewer’s third PAD prompt, but it stubbed its toes on useless weight.

So here’s a little frivolity from Big Tent’s “Write about making a phone call” prompt:

Eight interruptions immediately appear
Six seconds into my fingers’ dance.
Seven of them really don’t matter.

Five bursts of voltage pulse a
Three lettered FXO sitting beside a bed.
Oh, um, hello?
Nine times out of ten, I chicken out.

And NaPoWriMo.net has an interesting little toy: pwoermds!

• theraptathesaurus: helping, terrifiying, and creating together
• windgoes: as in those shuttered windgoes
• quadrambling: which I want to use sometime

I’m sitting my yard surrounded by chickens and dogs, drinking a home-roasted Equadorian Zumba Microlot, listening to WWOZ and the breeze while wrangling a few hundred processors around the country. Over all, a very thanks-inducing day.

Now for Nathan to come home tomorrow…

A metronym, oddly enough:

I always move better under water,
never mastering the art of breaking
tension with a minimum of fuss and spray.

From down below shapes sway around each push;
you can sculpt what’s above, within limits.
And all sounds’ meanings form waves of pressure.

But eventually I still must breathe, sigh.
Staying under so long spreads worries out,
a second spash to those who caught the first.

I like skimming a bunch of the prompt sites and waiting until something catches. This started without my realizing it follows Shanna Germain’s prompt. I’d love to push this into a longer form like a sonnet, but I never seem to return and edit any of these.

Unaddressed post, *Where are you*? Sitting before my office window
watching an adolescent pup
taunt an unadjusted rooster
into some form of play
new to them both.

Ahead the highway is pounded, bituminous particles running to the horizon.
Along side rolls snow printed by thin deer hooves and long rabbit feet,
darting along the forest.

Thin leaves preserved between the snow and ice show the speckling of frozen rain. The sunward ice sits perfectly smooth. The snow-ward ice breaks into new crevices waiting to crack open with the thaw.

A wild strike at a Mad-Lib prompt from Sage Cohen:

Chichen Itza, in my imagination

Because I am not practical, I have the skin of an anvil
that has spent its life yearning for caress. Inside the body
I am wobbly. I cannot tell when a puncture reaches in
and tickles the atoms of the heart. Sometimes
a pump bring the gods my favor.
Or the yellow strikes falling on the gentle floor are confused,
beginning to rustle each other out of their drifting fences.
All the hearkenings I have known have been distended by fog
and the waves’ crossing the perimeter at night.

I have no idea yet if I like this, but I couldn’t put it away and sleep. One pup’s downstairs in her crate, one pup’s curled against me, and our kitty is giving me his displeased look. Now they can be more happy.

glistening veins piled
into rubbled dusty bone
metal and space smelt

Now
here in
line waiting
to squeeze myself
within the small space
of old expectations.

Taking off involves a drop
down in the pit of my stomach.
Exhilarating leaving that fear
tarmac bound and idly waiting pushback.

Thanks to Mountain Poet for reminding me of the Etheree form.

Chickens intently watch sweeping,
utterly sure the motion conjures
new things on the old ground.

Pause at dusk.
Trees burst with noise.
Air changes subtly
to silence.

As an aside: There still is snow and ice on the ground in Atlanta.

‎”I never saw a wild thing / sorry for itself. / A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself.” DH Lawrence, relayed by Doria Roberts

emboldened by the sky
perched among sweet blossoms
one old little bird looked
beyond the dawn’s tendrils
dreamed off to another bliss
with one last kinetic kiss

Double prompt from the quote and Christopher Luna via Not Without Poetry.

I suspect it’ll take a bit to regain my mojo. Too much spent towards what ultimately was an unnecessary loss. One cog was too bored? Uninterested? Inconsiderate? Unthinking? Unable to push, and I invested too much in trust and hope.

tired of people
as a whole and not, mind you,
all individuals
i find myself sleep-walking
through inconsequential crowds

Yes, tankas are easier even than haiku or senryū. And one last bit:

No one screams compassion into the night, so the night learned yearning.

(Oh, and our taxes? Long finished.)

all these traffic cams
showing cars, crowds, all-way stops
should occasionally
just every once in a while
switch over to a bird’s nest

Shards strewn everywhere,
glittering on the smooth snow.
Not accident, thaw.

On being sick during a day so gorgeous it attracts wolf-whistling breezes through bare branches and rustling leaves while the sun warms the singing chimes:

Yuck.

Less whiny writing to commence soon. (Hear that, cold? Soon. Go away.)

Ok. I’m in. I had a few good ones last year, and many short forms. We’ll see if I can keep up this year. Almost have my email inboxes under control…

Somedays the world shrinks out of necessity
to a puppy at your feet gnawing on her bone.

Sumatran coffee, dark roast.
Hazelnut biscotti, white chocolate.
Frozen slab, speckled feathers.
Disappeared day, grey sky.

Carolee Sherwood’s polished stone woke me to the river of stones project for January. Daily writing helps keep me warmed up.

grey streams groundward bound
performing sullen, even
ritual cleansing
for a new page beginning.
good thing we cleaned the gutters.

Better dead than red,
so the early blossom said,
excusing its loss.

Partially inspired by an image from a coffee run last week, partially by the utter governmental ineptitude in the news right now, partially from Bill Noble’s prompt as relayed by Shanna Germain’s organizational site, and partially from a lack of spare mental space for more. I’m simultaneously at a project review meeting and sprinting for a technical paper that must be essentially complete this week. Huzzah.

the next season’s flash:
leaves flipped up immodestly
by a soft cool breeze

Snow keeps its modesty
between the footsteps
of passers-by.

Too much to learn all at once,
too much to do all at once,
barely a moment to observe,
barely a moment to reflect.

(Ok, perhaps this is more an excuse than a stone…)

Ok, this snow is serious and unexpected. We’ve had at least two inches so far tonight, and it’s still coming down. I was scoffing at the storm when I took the left-most photo around 9.30pm. The photo to its right was taken about fifty minutes later. Our proximity to a hospital means we’re not likely to lose power or suffer long waits for clear roads.

Nathan started throwing snowballs for Spike to fetch. She really tried. They never held the whole way back to us. But our little groaning tauntaun now has an authentic coating of ice.

Next month (April) is National Poetry Writing Month. There’s a yearly challenge to write some poem each day for the entire month. I’d love to see more people jump into the fray. The Poetry@Tech attendance makes me hopeful for an ever-larger participation.

Last year I managed despite having just acquired a mortgage and still being beyond my depth in a thesis. This year I’m scared. I’ve managed another writing-a-day challenge, but I don’t feel the same connection to April.

Or perhaps I feel too much of a connection to everything else that’s going on. I feel like much of my field is in a mess. There’s a mountain of personal work to accomplish at home, physically and emotionally. I feel even more underwater than I did last year.

I’ll try. I haven’t “submitted my site” yet, so I may chicken out. Particularly after having experience with actual chickens. We’ll see.

The oak’s progeny reigns on the ground,
coaxed by the wind;
the moon’s fan dance behind the clouds,
moved by the wind;
the leaves stretching out, down to their end,
coaxed by the wind;
and all the feelings coarsing outward,
brought by the wind.

I quickly fell out of poetic practice after NaPoWriMo. There’s more to this fragment, but I haven’t made it work yet. Decided I should post the partial draft.

Puppy’s tail circles.
A paw raised, two noses bump,
the yard blurs away.

a constellation
sifting down through storm-flashed clouds
keeps its cold distance

Tired. Was around many people today in a social setting, and I never handle that well.

Neat thing learned during the Fox Theatre Atlanta tour (thanks to Yelp Atlanta): Much of the wonderful tile work has an interesting link to a “practical” thing: spark plugs. I think the company involved was the Flint Faience Tile, started by Champion to keep the kilns going between spark plug runs.

this sprinting across
other peoples’ lackadais
leaves no room for breath

I refuse to allow others’ courtship of failure to lessen me.

Yup, (well) after midnight and they’re still playing. sigh. At least Dexter’s feeling better.

Unwell, unrested eyes see a dawn
greeted by four playful squirrels
glad the dogs still sleep.

forgetfulness
sits in the mug
left on the desk

(via Wordle)

broken tiles
fit together
more tightly
than do those
perfect squares

We live on tightropes
with naught below to catch us
except each other.

Likely nothing more today. I still haven’t had a chance to cook dinner.

Some race their ripples and
dance across the surface sending
patterns against far shores,
while those less artfully tossed
succumb to their own weight
(although with a satisfying plunk).

Spines both cracked and firm
bearing their own upright weight
keep aloft my dreams.

For the first time in nearly four years, my books are unpacked.

one paper per minute not being read
one paper per minute finding frontiers
one paper per minute novel idea
one paper per minute hope of skimming
one paper per minute even in my field

one paper fills top to bottom
one paper lurks behind deadlines
one paper serves proof at the border
one paper yellows in a wallet pocket
one paper shades before pulping

one paper cradles four tiny pages
one paper masks naked desire
one paper mâché Cassanova crushes
one paper clip holds it together
one paper crane collects dust

one paper plane gyres about
one paper cut, please hold the lemon
one paper torn to frustrated bits
one paper crumpled and tossed
one paper crucified for its sales pitch

one paper fliped in mid-speech
one paper seen from both sides
one paper challenged by the wind
one paper turned to further note
one paper folded, spindled, mutilated

one paper returns in deinked 10% increments
one paper in a lifetime may be remembered
one paper alight quickly inspires a crisis
one paper agreement flimsily settles a crisis
one paper drifts down the road, forgotten.

No prompt other than daily life, my walking commute, my riding commute, the news, experience, memory, imagination… And all the washed up yellow.

A revolution
while I watch comfortably
sitting in my chair

What can I say? The revolution in Egypt potentially can change the world.

There are many inspirational photos, including this one at BoingBoing. Peaceful revolutions are inspiring. This revolution has been astoundingly peaceful after thirty years of repression.

Peaceful revolutions can occur every day. They need not involve anyone other than yourself. All you need to do is keep your eyes open, keep your ears open, and keep your mind open.

Regardless of where these stones land, see searches like jan25 on identi.ca and the t-world.

ugh.

those of us in back
appreciate little things
even a slight breeze

I knew my flight to the meeting was too comfortable.

squashed inwards three ways
do I pass the same fortune
to the nameless one?

I also think my little haiku, senryū, and any other short forms are cheating, because that’s how I use them. I have fewer good short forms than full poems, so… But I’m tired, fried, and have fresh new deadlines.

And to all the assholes who ignore instructions, shove your seats all the way back, and take up far more than your seat, kindly jump out at 30k feet. We won’t cry.

I realize this is a trivial complaint in the world’s larger context, but damn it’s big in my immediate context.

ugh.

Work at work; home at home;
new to me. My old habits
want to penetrate old roots
and ignore upward growth
and embrace rotting growths.

We’re going to lose a gorgeous old tree to Inonotus dryadeus. The oak has lived a long life, and the root rot is natural, but it still makes us sad.

Mutual information describes
the difference from what is expected overall.
The KL divergence? From what is in hand.
Mutual empathy? Oh, that’s another matter.
An eye’s look or an implied thought is
empathy’s domain.

But a quick nod
or a quick yes
says all you need

to keep your own afloat.

Clear ice is exacting.
Freezing must be slow.
Water must be flat.
A slow, slow, slow thaw
and a slow, slow, slow freeze
fly in the face of modernity.
Everything must be now.
Right now.
Except clarity.
That takes time.

Wiry ball of energy barrels across the room.
Spying her smaller big brother huddled cold in a chair,
she pounces
into one big calm puddle of warmth.

Sleep is well earned
by an afternoon free
of concern or worry,
all just play.

Empty bird nests in empty trees
wait on the return of modesty
to cover bare limbs
and bared passions.

“Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending cycle of destruction.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

I try to maintain hope on Egypt. Hope in all directions. But I run into my own depressions in each direction. Violence erupts in defense of a peaceful demonstration. Media pushes buttons to find exciting responses and talk of “battles” beginning all night. People world-wide appear to expect us (the US) to demand things of other countries’ leaders and expect those leaders to listen.

But I remain hopeful. The core of the demonstrations are peaceful. The demonstrators are holding their ground. Egyptians will carry themselves forward on the shoulders of being right.

The colonial and “post”-colonial forces are not in charge. The opposition parties are not in charge.

People are in charge.

Hope will not be tazed by charge. Hope survives.

The sun is rising in Egypt again, just as it always has. Many people have banished fear. And beyond fear there is freedom.

facing the steel tense direction braced back to back
gazing down misty vanishing points spiked stike then strike
guiding agnostic horizon to firmament tied side by side
wanting the regular chugging motion linked hand in hand

A slow start to National Poetry Writing Month, but still a start.

Tee-hee. Pwoermds make me kinda happy. But I can’t leave it at that, so I took the prompt and went further.

BTW, if the pwoermds include boxes, your font system sucks. You probably also think that revolutions are being carried out in boxes. Well, some aspects are. Those aspects are stuck in tiny proprietary boxes rather than pushing out through the autonomous world.

}ings{ or ∃ingsE, I can’t yet decide

These lint-less appendages
serve some purpose far removed
from their haughty appearance.
They don’t serve to terrify
rodents searching for a bite,
temporary nourishment.
They don’t serve to widen doors,
one is expected to turn
just to scoot inside sideways.
They seek escape.
Upwards. Away. Now.

str≣pes

Might as well have them
for all the looks we gather
in a moment’s joy.

taiļ

Without balance toppling happens
but not sheet-mussing enjoyment
of an afternoon encounter
but just the everyday kind
that leaves no one the happier.

reflections simmer
on a brazen horizon
asking tomorrow

reflection echoes
through a deep, booming crevasse
split open above

scattered reflections
ensconced in softly flowed mud
gathered up the rain

reflections alight
pricking the skin to drink red
while their wings glisten

lingering reflection
regardless the day before
touches words softly

this one reflection
glows itself into starred dreams
stead-fast once a month

Modern life pauses
only once the power’s out…
Winter’s fangs soften.

I’m frustrated with a lack of interesting other both here and in daily work, so I tried something other. I took an interesting wordle based on Feminisnt, chosen because it was the first interesting one from many feeds I follow. Then I decided to work left to right until the end, then bounce somewhat up and down. The result started well but leaves me less than pleased.

something just needs, the way the facts glitter
deep into people, women first, of course
unorganized highly through email turns
thanks to industrial, sexual morse

codes of workers’ conduct many option
and place as much into as Scottish rites
or some sort of criminal ablution
reaching to become best over-booked nights

needing depth and viewing heights all thankful
for much sorted in places where sordid
has its way with peopled facts and awful
criminal how unorganized are courted

as people so often need facts and sex
just something sorting up their own complex

Slightly better are a pair of American sentences that popped up.

This gnat outraces my cursor wandering across my work’s busy screen.

Those with much to gain should pay attention when the wind whips up a storm.

I have a bunch of “saved up” prompts from Brenda Nichols’s photography. When this paper’s done, and when I’m less frustrated with one involved party, I need to think about those.

Fungi are physically safe. wow. Then I like playing footsie with their current model.

The credit goes to http://thatcan.be/my/next/tweet, and to James Hsiao for directing me that way.

doors slam loudly within their frames
potential of tree heights sliding in air
cat lazes on a sewing machine 103 years old
103 turns with slams and seeds and winds and cats
and now a sprouted avocado
and now a stretching cat
and now a curious puppy
enjoying the warm blue sky
moving just enough no stills
capturing a moment grasp this
feeling

Based on Robert Lee Brewer’s prompt on Poetic Asides. He mentioned making this personal. Not sure I’ve managed that (or, honestly, much of anything). Going to be difficult this month. I’m not good at switching out of technical writing mode, and I have a mountain of technical writing for two deadlines coming up fast.

Oh, and Godfrey’s a cat, so of course he moved before I could take a photo.

The storm’s coming when the chickens spread out,
searching for breached worms,
then gather tight between the wind and fence.
Checking the scratched earth,
the squirrels scurry with one eye upward.

Update: This appears in Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita, editors, pay attention: a river of stones, page 77. http://lulu.com, March 2011.

I picked up a pair of Dockstars, little low-powered ARM-based devices, and managed to brick them both. One has a broken OS install, the other has a full-on dead bootloader.

My original plan was to place one Dockstar just inside the DSL gizmo (no longer just a modem, alas) to use for DNS, authentication, VPN endpoints, waking ethernet devices, etc. The second’s to become a read-mostly photo and music server and backup host. Right now they’re just taking up space.

One bricked Dockstar just needs a serial console. Not RS-232 but rather a direct 3.3v, three-line UART. The second will need a full JTAG adapter. I actually bricked them a few months ago, but I haven’t had time to consider them until lately. Along comes Sparkfun Electronics’s “Free Day,” and I manage to reach their server just often enough to cover their Bus Pirate clone, a nifty gizmo that has such a UART, supports reconfigurable JTAG, and many other things over a USB connection.

This seems perfect considering the only other affordable JTAG dongles seem to require a parallel port. None of my machines have one. (Progress? sigh.)

Initial pass? Not so good. Something strage was happening just talking to the Bus Pirate. Too many characters were being dropped… but only over one particular USB port on my laptop. Great. Found a possibly busted USB port.

I’m rather out of practice with low-level serial goo, so it took a few hours to upgrade the Bus Pirate’s bootloader and firmware. I also was working with a jury-rigged jumper situation. The Sparkfun clone lacks the easy jumper pins. So I went with the classic paperclip and tape solution. That did make flashing the bootloader a bit worrisome, but now I no longer need the jumper.

Now I’m facing dropped and mangled characters coming from the Dockstar. I’m not entirely sure which Dockstar I played with today, so that might be a symptom of a corrupted u-boot on the Dockstar’s side, or it might be a problem with the Linux USB tty driver in my rc kernel. But there’s a similar report in the Bus Pirate support web goo thingy that looks unresolved. We’ll see.

It’d be nice to turn off my desktop when I’m not home while still being able to start it when I need it.

I keep forgetting to write this up, but it’s related to static pivoting for symmetric indefinite problems. Existing work forms a weighted matching on the log of a matrix’s elements as in Schenk and Gärtner, 2006 and Duff and Pralett, 2005.

Both report limited success, but they’re using the wrong weights and making the problem far too complicated.

Don’t use the matrix’s elements, use the potential pivots. In the symmetric indefinite case, that means replacing the off-diagonal elements by the 2x2 determinant of the respective submatrix. Element A(i, j) with i ≠ j is replaced by abs (det ([A(i,i), A(i,j); A(j,i), A(j,j)])). Element A(i,i) is replaced by abs (A(i,i)) and is treated as a self-loop. If a maximum-weight matching pairs i with itself, use a 1x1 pivot. Otherwise use the respective 2x2 pivot. No need to find cycles, break loops, etc.

I haven’t tested the idea thoroughly, but I can’t see how it possibly could be worse than the more contrived contraptions. This feels like the natural analog, and also could map perturbations of small pivots directly to original entries.

Once upon a time, we considered using simple GMRES to fix an \( LU \) factorization perturbed along the diagonal. More specifically, you sometimes need to perturb a tiny pivot when you’ve chosen them statically before factorization.

The previous SuperLU perturbation heuristics sometimes produced perturbations too large for iterative refinement to fix. Applying a few steps of non-preconditioned GMRES appeared to work, although it’s more expensive.

However, non-preconditioned GMRES cannot fix an arbitrary perturbation in few steps. Consider an \(N\times N\) unit-entry, lower-bidiagonal matrix \begin{equation*} A = \left[\begin{array}{lc} 1 & 0 & 0 & & & 0 \newline 1 & 1 & 0 & \cdots & & \newline 0 & 1 & 1 & & & \newline & \vdots & & \ddots& & \newline & & & & 1 & 0 \newline 0 & & & & 1 & 1 \end{array}\right], \end{equation*} and a system \(A x = b\) with \(b = [1; -1; 1; -1; \ldots]\). The true solution is \(x = [1; 2; 3; \ldots]\).

Perturb the first diagonal entry of \(A\) to \(\tilde{A}\) and every component of the computed solution \(y = \tilde{A}^{-1} b\) differs from \(x\), but the residual \(r\) is non-zero only in its first entry. (You can play with the entries to render all calculations exact; I just don’t have the worked exact example handy.)

The first iteration of GMRES searches the space \(\operatorname{span} \{ r \}\) for an improvement to the computed \(y\). That alters only the first component of \(y\). The second iteration searches \(\operatorname{span} \{ r, A r \}\). Because \(A\) is upper Hessenberg, this space only affects the first two components of \(y\). In general, the \(i\)th iteration of GMRES only affects the first \(i\) components of the computed solution \(y\).

The computed \(y\) differs from the true solution \(x\) in every component, so plain GMRES requires \(N\) iterations to fix a single perturbation.

If you use the perturbed factorization as a preconditioner, however, the behavior is more difficult to analyze. I don’t have a clean example of failing behavior handy, nor have I proven that it works for sufficiently small perturbations. Definitely something to consider further. Avron, Ng, and Toledo (2009) show that preconditioning with \(R\) in a perturbed \(QR\) works for least-squares problems.

The light of venus
beautiful on the horizon
is just an airplane.

I
love poems
so much that
I keep trying
to entice them with
the utmost flattering
pretending imitation
hoping that perhaps one
might glance in passing
eyes alight with
that twinkling
flirting
smile.

A riff off the Poetic Asides prompt, with a Public Image Ltd. pseudo-title, rotting out teeth and selling out life not included.

We’ll see if I can tackle last year’s RWP prompt for Not Without Poetry. I couldn’t come up with phrasing for lightbulb moments last year, either. The ones that I remember are mathematical. Maybe.

A prod at last year’s RWP prompt, a year later for for Not Without Poetry. These are moments over a long, long time. Only one obviously related to mathematics.

Otherwise, playing with a style that grew on its own.

bases and prisons
hold the next generation
fully manicured

flickering puddle
exposing itself
as pure open fire
casts ferocity
off over dinner

A posting calling forth a lit candle from Big Tent Poetry in five syllable lines from the Book of Kells (although I really suck at titles).

I like my girls to have some backbone in them
so that their strings keep some fun play in them
when I ask to drink one more round with them
and then believe I care of things with them.

I like my girls with spirit but that much
might put me off my tip knowing that much
about the world and our import too much
dumped on history’s ignorance, too much.

I like my girls to leave preference to me
rather than show their lovely strength to me
I prefer ignorance, bar facing me,
over weak reality facing me.

I like my girls to like what I offer,
inked muscle draping cover to proffer.

As usual, I like how I start but feel my delivery falters while my attention wanders. Short forms dodge my own shortcomings. I have sudden unexpected calendar-scheduled progress reports due, unexpected amounts of work for paper deadlines, etc. Short forms are my refuge. They reflect my diurnal life.

The first line was overheard (NaPoWriMo.net) someplace random at some random time in the past week. I can’t be more precise without revealing too much about people from whom I haven’t asked permission. There actually is a bit of Earth Day in this, but you’d need to know one subject to realize it. While this isn’t so much recycled from other work, I do repeat myself intentionally.

And I realize this is only roughly a sonnet yet more structured. Odd. But even? It’s time to remember that the Doctor returns to mass consumption tomorrow. I should blame them for my prior obsession with the letters r and d…

If anyone’s still reading, I recommend reading Dana Guthrie Martin’s notes on dyslexia.

pointilistic green
smeared with passing impressions
of flash-shattered brown
sharding crackled towards the sky:
here still do I hold my ground

4/24/2011

5/5 stars

The Sunday afternoon at the Fox was wonderful. I'm not sure what to say other than encourage others to take the tours when available. The Fox is full of delightful details you might miss when attending events. Imperial Fez's food was fantastic, too. I need to check on their catering radius.

(We had to flake on one other event, which makes me sad. Fitting for missing a comedy.)

Yelp tags: Local Flavor

4/25/2011

2/5 stars

If I were judging solely based on the staff, this would be a comfortable four stars. Anyone who treats our fluffballs that well while coping with road-addled questions while keeping everything from blowing away in the wind deserves recognition.

If I were judging on my wife's Cuban bowl, a nice combination of pork, yellow rice, and plantains, this would be three stars with an option for more. The plantains were perfect, the yellow rice was nicely flavorful without any medicinal hints, and the pulled pork was let to its own good flavor.

But my dish… Oops. I decided not to order the same thing as my wife. I poached far more from her plate than she was willing to try from mine. I had a dish labeled as "cocoa-drizzled pork tenderloins." I'm not even sure where to start… The steamed vegetables were fine. That's a good place. The plantains were as good as my wife's and definitely the highlight along with some nifty fried root things. The white rice tasted like cheap Oriental take-out. The wafer-thin pork tenderloins had, um, rather more "mouth feel" than appropriate. You could pretty much hear them rip apart. And the "cocoa?" Maybe my brain has been too trained by mole dishes, but I wasn't expecting Hershey's syrup. Maybe they ran out of ingredients and delivered the tourist special. I'm Florida born and raised, so I shouldn't complain when others pull that on me, but… Oops.

I get the feeling that the traditional dishes here are solid. When the chefs branch out, well, perhaps they should try their ideas on a few people first.

Yelp tags: Cuban

4/25/2011

2/5 stars

If I were judging solely based on the staff, this would be a comfortable four stars. Anyone who treats our fluffballs that well while coping with road-addled questions while keeping everything from blowing away in the wind deserves recognition.

If I were judging on my wife's Cuban bowl, a nice combination of pork, yellow rice, and plantains, this would be three stars with an option for more. The plantains were perfect, the yellow rice was nicely flavorful without any medicinal hints, and the pulled pork was let to its own good flavor.

But my dish… Oops. I decided not to order the same thing as my wife. I poached far more from her plate than she was willing to try from mine. I had a dish labeled as "cocoa-drizzled pork tenderloins." I'm not even sure where to start… The steamed vegetables were fine. That's a good place. The plantains were as good as my wife's and definitely the highlight along with some nifty fried root things. The white rice tasted like cheap Oriental take-out. The wafer-thin pork tenderloins had, um, rather more "mouth feel" than appropriate. You could pretty much hear them rip apart. And the "cocoa?" Maybe my brain has been too trained by mole dishes, but I wasn't expecting Hershey's syrup. Maybe they ran out of ingredients and delivered the tourist special. I'm Florida born and raised, so I shouldn't complain when others pull that on me, but… Oops.

I get the feeling that the traditional dishes here are solid. When the chefs branch out, well, perhaps they should try their ideas on a few people first.

Yelp tags: Cuban

chasing butterflies
exhausts even the hardy
puppy in full bloom

I’m elsewhere, mostly unconnected, and pretty much exhausted

little energy
even for the biggest things
much less the smallest

the sharply tattered
gunshots ricocheted across
airwaves slink deeply
into the background of days
spent with little else in mind

I know I’m running out of NaPoWriMo days for something else substantial. Days are too full, and brains are too empty.

I have a partial draft of something with a germ of a good idea and a couple of crumbs of crusty phrasing that fit a prompt, but I’m stuck on the words I want. Placed in the file along with about eight others this month. None of them break free the way others dance with language.

two leaders meet here
between their poles a flashed trail
where followers charge

Leaders and followers thanks to Poetic Asides and the weather.

4/27/2011

4/5 stars

The pulled pork was rich with a touch of smoke *without sauce*.

The rest of this review is gravy. Any smokehouse that delivers tasty meats without sauce is worth the wait. And if you show up after 11.59am, you *will* be waiting. They guy in the bow-tie said so. He also said the corn pudding was great, and that we must try the blueberry chipotle sauce on the ribs. Three for three. Then the people immediately before us who were utterly baffled by the concept of a menu and using their wallet contents became involved. I felt sorry for the bow-tied ex-Decaturian. He drew attention to himself. The blue-haired tour bus horde smelled "authenticity" and converged. We had carefully pulled around the tour bus conveniently parked across one parking lot entrance and deftly deflected their questions by noting that we're not locals. The bow tie? Not so lucky. I think I heard smacking noises. yikes.

We scurried off, found a table, and proceeded to gorge ourselves tick-like on the succulent sauces throughout. Oh, there was one other bit before the gorging: vetting dishes and sides for gluten. The fine folks at the counter have laminated lists of possible allergens in each along with overall notes of "gluten-free" and *gasp* "vegan". In a smokehouse.

Ok, so we sat down… Wait, I'm forgetting another thing. They have multiple sauces just waiting in their nondescript metal squishy delivery devices for you to try them. The nondescriptness was well complemented by descriptions placed next to each. I only tried three of the four on my pulled pork. The spicy vinegar sauce is exactly what we've wanted in a vinegar sauce. The sweet tomato sauce? Yup. Sweet. And tomatoes. Truth in advertising. The spicy mustard sauce was liquified to barbecue sauce consistency. Alas, not with warm gooey delicious pork fat.

After all that, and while dodging the blue haired hordes, we snarfed. Relatively quickly. Our dogs were in the car. Looking at us through the window. Noses a-flare. They knew. They also knew someone else had their loved one with them in the outdoor patio area. We were a tad chilly and sat inside. This did not meet with our pups' approval. Hopefully the rib bones will assuage their annoyance.

Snarf snarf snarf. Ribs? Yummified. Plenty of meat, just the right amount of sauce already on them. Pulled pork? Just enough fat (woo-hoo!) to catch the smoke and coat the tongue. The sauces are a much appreciated bonus. The corn bread's the moist cakey style. I tend to prefer the dry crumbly style, but that's almost like discussing if an Irishman prefers green or orange underwear. Mashed sweet potatoes are exactly that. As are the green beans. It's nice to count on the simple things in life (unless they're your co-workers). The corn pudding was quite corny. I kinda giggled while eating it. The baked beans were fine. Mixed with the spicy vinegar sauce, they were great.

Why four stars? Because we'll be back for more. And, well, the tourist factor. I really have no right to be annoyed at tourists. I'm Florida born and raised. Tourists paid for everything via hotel taxes, luxury taxes, tickets, restaurant taxes, etc. But they still make me twitch. But the locals love this place, too. The local discount may help. Good, cheap butt indeed. Oh, yes, that's another bonus.

Apparently some supposedly famous people have been tourists here, too. That's has zilch to do with the pork's quality. What's better? A WALL DRUG STICKER! I knew they *must* have one, and I spotted it. muahahahaha. Ice water and mechanized Tyrannosaurus FTW!

Yelp tags: Barbeque

In the starred eyes of the quick-passed day,
the clouds take shapes and spark rumbling worry.
The night now sends hard squals in to assay
respect that tempests do levy is paid.

I have a cool idea. It’s not this quatrain from the Poetic Asides prompt (I’ve lost rhythm). The idea is from Pressman’s Home. It’s not done yet. I like the images, but still need to tie it all together. Maybe tomorrow.

Also, an oddly American sentence popped in for a visit from Not Without Poetry, although not quite grammatical.

Red, white, and blue rests in leaves, tattering seat over sprouted green.

(And we’re still trying to decide if two of our hens are Old English Game or American Game. Crazy.)

4/28/2011

5/5 stars

This review is *cough* years out of date (2008), but I just can't resist. Wall Drug keeps popping up in the most likely of places. Any restaurant covered with stickers has a Wall Drug bumper sticker *somewhere*. I don't expect Wall Drug has changed substantially.

Basically: ice water + mechanized Tyrannosaurus + historical photos + nickelodeon = WIN!

This is a tourist place. Has been since they first offered ice water to travelers during the Depression. But if you pay attention, you can learn a bit about the region. The back building has both a T-Rex and photographs. Many photographs. You easily could spend days just studying these snapshots of South Dakota history. Everything from the clothing to the interaction to the cultures are worth it. Among all the fake, this is real.

We experienced Wall Drug just before passing through the Badlands. I suspect that's the best route. The excess of Wall Drug makes the Badlands even more beautiful. You go from children bouncing on everything to a mountain goat perched atop an impossible rock. People tossing money and coins to prairie dogs tossing chunks of mud. And when the sun sets, the colors dance with the shadows.

I imagine dawn is similar. We really need to return. Excuse me, but now I want a glass of ice water.

Yelp tags: Drugstores Art Galleries American (Traditional)

The chimera my arch moral
smells a concealed superb view to escape?
Smell, caring not it’s decency or termination of I, an appendage, oh extermination toward light of the vista, intensional, without placation, spreading death.

Smell not sinking to deceit under the eye rebels, carving a crescent for departure.
Under its care a rat-a-atat. It lept-to-that: a farce of parts to all that cares
forgiving his captain, temperate and autonomous and boring. Caring entrances in
cap, tic-toc tip-hat, charring puta existence of a singular, charred puta trail
is moored for captain light.

Smell sunk down to lacrimal caring so intuitive,
so condensate,
a crescent
is faked cut by barbers
so solid it cannot indicate incited declension or statues of sorrow,
unblind it plunders more to
within luminary lore
than its odor so bizarre.

Without tumbling into care of crescents nefariously multiplied
without accumulation into more sites hoi polloi
cares without coming forth, money without feminine trysts for moding
more morning replicants
without accumulation today.

This is a transmogrification of Mihail Gălăţanu’s Umblînd prin lumea morţilor. Last year I swore I’d try this. I didn’t. This year I won’t delay. Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt reminded me of neglect. Not that looking around or within doesn’t, but being reminded anonymously and in an utterly different context has much more strength. Others had a better term for the form, but I’m failing also in remembrance.

By “not delay” I also mean I won’t overly edit. I’m not sure. There are subtexts in my mind but not necessarily in my text. I also didn’t listen to the reading. My eyes heard the words in their own way.

Some phrases here I really enjoy.

encouraging so
little an aspect as breath
reflects little real

tomorrow’s still there
as is the day after and
after it waking
is soundling somewhat pointless
when our bed is so comfy

A Big Tent prompt regarding a bad idea: getting out of bed.

Today’s the last day of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo).

Rhythmic pulses over clattering cups
just a few days after another storm.
We were lucky only show erupted
not the sky wholely plucking fragile warmth

as children who kick at dandelions
(and adults, too), but they send tomorrow
loosed expectant from supportive siphons
not scattered scared from grasps all too hollow.

Our steadfast world inures itself to risk,
of course we always roll with any punch.
And then the world’s leisurely pace grows brisk.
I have heard that roar physically but once.

Somewhere a tortoise pushed itself upright,
found grass, and noticed the sun again bright.

Luckily, the storms became hot air and beautiful light in East Point. Luckily, we don’t yet personally know of casualties near our in-laws or elsewhere. I always have wondered how people move on. I feel lucky I’ve never had to find out. The scenes being relayed from Tuscaloosa are frightening.

Somewhat inspired by P. F. Anderson’s Erosion series, hence fitting Not Without Poetry’s prompt. Erosion brings to mind storms, tempests, and utterly moronic land & shoreline management. She also touches on personal reactions and ongoing storms in the world with their personal impacts. And writes neat narrative sonnets.

Oddly enough, the events fit Poetic Aside’s “after leaving here” prompt. We drove from Southwest Virginia to East Point before the storms hit. We rushed, assuming they’d not bother the mountains but would slam our home. As far as I know, everyone was surprised by the weather’s turn. We really understand so little about our world.

I’ve been horrible about not reading other peoples’ works this year. Finding my own time while still on a computer is growing more difficult. So I’m sure there are many other great things written this month.