What the River Told Me

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”

― Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"

Eastern European Influences

They call it night,
they call it night
and I call it mine.

West Texas Special...

A Song for Nicrap...

Not Quite the LHC Rap...

- classic particle physics rap always beats its' imitators!

Russian Moons

Oh, Sputnik, iron star, keep on playing
that pop tune, spew notes into the ether.
Let your clock-hands glow above mountain ranges,
let midnight be announced form beyond galaxies,
millions of years as the rain traveled across the empty ocean
and out of it steaming stalagmites rose.
Let gastropod shells hum their tale of a time
when the cloud cover began to fray,
when molecules began to form chains.
And crustaceans gnawed messages into stones.
Let them tell how mussels wove armor
around themselves, how they carved
a rock to so resemble a brain.
Oh, Sputnik, iron star, protect our sleep,
sprinkle your rust mixed with snow on these rooftops
as they rise and fall
in the rhythm of breathing.
Light up the streets. Signpost the roads.
Guide the seafarers – as if they ever
needed it – toward the harbor’s photoelectric cells
spilling their honey on the water.
Guide the traveling fair as it proceeds
from town to town, its ferris wheel carried in containers,
dismantled. And guide me
along that track made by the wheels of their carts
past the roundabout creatures, the tiger all swollen in the rain,
to the fragrance of popcorn and spun sugar.

- Olli Heikkonen

Chicago

Ah green, I love my green.
It's the traffic light's nicest scene.
Green is a traffic dream.
You can always keep driving, driving, driving.
And you can keep going in life, whatever you're doing,
Your favorite project, your favorite dream.

And orange traffic light,
In my life, I've had to a slow down when I was skiing,
A slow down of whatever I was doing.

And oh red light.
I had to stop being in so much strife.
I had to stop my bad habits.

- Vera Sidhwa, "Traffic Light"

Darwin's Revenge

Suffering Fools

For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.

2 Corinthians 11:19

Alienation

“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”

― Henry David Thoreau, "I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau"

Soul 4 Sale...

Washed Ashore Again

I love the smell of the sea
All around gulls fly free
Waves rolling lazily in and more
Breaking spreading right along the shore
Seaweed uprooted after a bygone storm
Flotsam about in many a form
Floating broken and torn
Even old husks of an empty ear of corn
Bottles many a shape and size
What they contain, sometimes a surprise
A note from a distant land
Thrown there by another’s hand
Smells so fresh and clean
The smells of mankind have never been
Walking along the sandy beach by night or day
Leaving footprints only along the way
Gritty sand between my toes
The wind nipping at my clothes
Bracing myself onwards I go
What will I find next, I do not know
Sometimes at night the luminescent lights
Twinkle and glow in the waves delights
Ships in the distance passing by
Those gulls in the air they still fly
Oh what a glorious sight
Out here on the beach, both day and night

-Gordon D Wilkinson, "Flotsam"