NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 24th - Cassini explains perspective

The (alternative) prompt I followed for this was "a place you've never been".

Cassini was an Italian "mathematician, engineer, astronomer and astrologer".  He discovered the gap in Saturn's Rings and it was this photograph which I saw today and which inspired the poem...

Cassini explains perspective


Everything you know;
everyone you know, have known, will ever know;

everywhere you've been;
everywhere you've never been;

everywhere you could be,
including even, if NASA would only play along,
the Moon;

every song that sticks in your head
all through some rainy afternoon;
every balloon, released accidentally
by any toddler;

every toddler;
every teen;

every thought you ever think;
every meme, you cut and paste on Facebook;

every face;
every book;

every member of the appropriate sex,
who has that certain style—all in

        In the sixteen hundreds, Cassini explained --
        for those travelling a long way --
        how to measure longitude with two clocks,
        the Sun, and careful observations
        of eclipsing Jovian moons.

        Cassini also observed
        the gap in Saturn's rings
        through which we today fling
        a careful dart and have it, looking back,
        photograph

that one pixel : this island Earth.


So I say: stuff your rather pointless election campaign,
pour your new recipe hair conditioner down the drain,
smoke or do not smoke, if you keep it away from me
because none of that matters—
let me tell you about perspective.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 23rd - A spell to prove there is no magic

The official prompt for this day was a double elevener, which didn't grab me.  One of the alternative prompts I'm following said:

        "Must rush!  Do whatever you like!!"

(I'm only paraphrasing slightly...) So I dug this out and finished it.

I really believe there really isn't any magic, folks.  A Universe of this size and incredible complexity genuinely operates on automatic with no sort of mumbo-jumbo at all—which is real magic.


A spell to prove there is no magic


The eye of the newt, a lens of half a billion years
making; drop it in your stew, and I
shall never bow to you, the charlatans
who do not know. So...

this graveyard dirt collected by what light
and on what date, and in whose reference frame?  The stars
behind that ball of rock are many cold light-years
away and this dirt here is just the same
as it would be by day, or be it colder.

Of course there are some quite cool microbes here
but I see you've boiled them.  So much
for bacteriology, and for geometry
while your circle here with pentangle inscribed
is topologically complex, for all of that
I had one on my folder back in school--
nobody turned into anything.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 21st - So, I said

The prompt here was a poem with overheard speech in it.

Sonnet again.  It is my default setting when I do a form.

Interestingly I have known people like this, not diplomats, but who use rudeness as a form of affection, and who even use it to test new acquaintances — if anyone takes offence: well you don't want the effort of people that difficult anyway...



So, I said


So I said: you are a diplomat, are you?
Because I had by chance happened to hear
him call the Finish Attaché a weird-
arsed hybrid of a reindeer and a shrew
and he said: I'll tell you, since we have a while.
My brand of statecraft is my very own
and amongst the cognoscenti I'm well known
for slandering my best friends with a smile

and I can never change because all like
me how I am.  I can't be too correct,
except... just sometimes when I want to crack
their composure, well then I need to go icily
polite -- never fails.  I know he'll be a chum
'cos as he went he said I was plain dumb.