Bottom dead centre

A bauble, earlier today.

I've posted this before but it is, as far as I can work out, my only viable Christmas poem.

OK, like Down time this is also in part a solstice poem, but it references enough Christmas paraphernalia to be acceptable.

As you may have gathered, it isn't the religious aspects of the season that matter to me.  It's the overall celebration of family and friendship and broad-spectrum humanity in general.

So happy festival-of-choice to all you broad humans out there!

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Bottom dead centre


Intake

Ice-path uncles, sliding, come
to top-up stockings, sip sherry,
be knocked unconscious by the Queen.
The old year has been dripping
through the cracks in December,
now only one festival remains.


Compression

Fewer and smaller,
the uncles left for us to visit
dribbling in their rest-homes.
What troupe remains to get festive?
To turn up, unexpected? To decorate the tree
and give you socks?


Combustion

I give you socks
to wear outside your boots
wending from the crematorium
with the path caked in icing, decoration
a drain-pipe dribbled through its crack.
We spontaneously scatter Uncle Clive.


Exhaust

All the uncles scattered once,
when you aced and raced the new sled
of younger years. Now the pagan tree
is baubed with tears, as you tear the ribbon-paper.
Another pair of socks—useful. At our age
the ritual differs. The engine hesitates,
one year unsafely dead, and drawing-in
one drawn-out breath we wait
to long-live the new.

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Also, as a festive treat, I've fixed the Search Box, somewhere up and to the right.

This box has been broken since the day I created the blog, so a certain lack of function has become traditional, but I've broken the tradition of respecting traditions and fixed the works up with a bent paper-clip, a nail and some sunflower seeds (don't ask).

So, if you've long harboured a pressing desire to know how many time I say "atom" (once) or "time" (all the time) now's your big moment.

Happy Christmas one and all.

Ian

Down time

A black hole: far, far away...

It's Christmas time and there's no need...

So here it is, merry...

So, this is Christmas, and what do I think...?

Well I don't think I need formal religion to make me gather my loved ones together and hand out presents.  Midwinter is upon us and ice-giants roam the borders, muttering behind rime-encrusted beards about climate change and the rising price of air-con.

Why wouldn't you get everybody around the fire to sing and laugh and eat and drink?



To explain the same thing in a different way: a singularity lurks at the end of December, a zero-sized, zero-temperature point of infinite density, with Janus packed into it—like one of those joke canisters of spring-loaded snake.  Except it's an ancient god of narrow doors, instead of the snake; and we have to pass through to reach the verdant, sun-lit pastures of 2016.

So hold your drink in both hands, strap your mince pie into the padded receptacle, specially built into your acceleration couch, and hold your breath as I gun the engine and point the pointy end of life straight at that tiny point of rapidly approaching darkness, because here we go again...



Best Wishes Everybody!  I'll see you all, safe on the other side.

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An ancient Aztec calendar:
long, long ago...

Down time

And I travelled in a bald and freak October
—the rubbing of the wind and the chafing of the skin—
where clothes supposed to keep the warmth
got soaked around my wrists and ankles.

And I have travelled via plaintive, sleek November.
I fell cold upon the empty hill, with eyes
drawn to the gaps between the stars—
even such hollow space can't chill me now.

And I did travel, solitary, through December;
deliberately I spiralled round and down—
there's a nothing-point at the centre of the maze,
an absolutist's zero, the boundary of days

—and in the ice-crystal, breath-held silence,
I waited for the calendar to turn.

Slight change of mission...

It's very hard to correctly count the page hits here on the blog, because I get so many from bots.

However it has occurred to me that if bots are most of my audience, maybe I should target my output more at bots.

But then the question becomes "what do bots like?"

Well fortunately in the site statistics I can see what site it was that referred the reader to me...  e.g. what they were browsing before they clicked something that brought them here.

For a long time it was mostly porn sites, and I was almost ready to go with that theme...  however you'll be glad to know that as of this week, most of the bots have calmed their hyperactive groinal regions, and now they're mostly interested in wallpaper and this: horoshieokna.com a Russian site devoted to all sorts of double glazing.


Even bots grow up.  So knock yourselves out guys...