21 July, 2008

Box Label

I'm moving, so I've got a lot of packed boxes. I have one small box, labeled, simply, for it's miscellaneous and unrelated contents:


"Pogs, Wigs, Viking Helmets."


That is all.

20 July, 2008

Bug-Inspired Poetry

These two poems were written awhile back, set in motion by an encounter with a live scorpion inside my friend's house. Their current posting, however, was inspired by a litter of baby praying mantises (mantisi?), crawling, adorably, around my mom's front porch. They are the cutest thing!

It's my first attempt at poetry! How novel!



Untitled ("Mona Lisa never swatted a fly, so far as I know." ?)

Mona Lisa never swatted a fly, so far as I know.
Her hands are--of course--too virtuous
(notice the absence of a wedding band!)
to be soiled by the guts of a hairy shit-eater.
But did she ever have a picnic ruined
by a swarm of bees or ants or locusts?
Were her delicate, enigmatic features
ever contorted in disgust or anger or flippancy
by her accidental penetration of a lacy spiderweb?
Could she ever have been put at peace
by the gentleness of a butterfly or the incongruity
of a caterpillar's breached cocoon?
To show her these things now would be an insult,
of course, to beauty, to her, and to the bug.



Still-life, With Obstruction

When he spotted the spider, nimbly crawling
Over the apricot, the painter had a choice:
Preserve the integrity of the moment
And include the wayward creature
On the canvas, among the stationary fruits,
Inviting critics to establish it's meaning
Beyond the magic of it's arbitrariness,
Or admit the impermanence of it's passing
And excise it's cursory, scrambling self
From the art of inanimation.
He was ensnared, he thought, aptly.




Well, what did you think? Were they okay? Were they lousy and amateurish? What's up with the weird connections to art & painting? Did you get lost in all the unnecessarily indulgent "thesaurus" words? (Don't be afraid to say you didn't "get" it. It's not your fault.) Do you love (and, simultaneously, loathe) bugs as much as I do? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?