2021-04-18

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - XI - An ontology of everything (excerpt)

 An ontology of everything (excerpt)


the wind; the wind in rushes; the wind in rushes
at low to moderate speed;
the wind; the wind in corn; the wind in corn in fields
where rabbits were born;
the wind in burrows; the wind in earth-dug tunnels in general;
the wind past irregular entryways, heard from within;
similar, but felt; similar, but seen (c.f. leaves; litter);
the wind; the wind when breezy;
the breeze in willow trees; willow trees in spring;
willow trees in autumn;
the breeze across water; the breeze through trees
onto the water; ditto but in reverse;
places beside water; docks, boathouses and jetties;
the wind on water when it is more than a breeze;
the wind making ripples on water;
large bodies of fresh water,
where the wind leaves a long still wavy stripe 
along the whole length;
similar at sunset; similar under moonlight;
or when any sort of light source aligns with the stripe;
subset of this when alone; when in a crowd;
with one person; 
with a particular person; 
with you.





2021-04-17

NaPoWriMo - 2021 - X - Dierdre Frank, writing as Bernard Mane...

Dierdre Frank, writing as Bernard Mane

reviewed by

Edmund Drake, writing as Elizabeth Loften



A book-like book of wordy lines I read
it on the train in Leicester signalling
my great cerebral worthiness to all
newspaper readers in my view.  I will review
this for the TLS because I know
it's a pseudonym of the Prof who supervised
my Ph.D. and he will broadly blow
his gasket the moment that he reads
the words I'll write.
I have already listed certain phrases
not damning in themselves but from which
certain words -- "commonplace", "quotidian" -- will jam
right in his unswallowable craw, or more like
caltrops beneath his -- there's another
"pedestrian"...

...but really this is wasted effort here
spending my time to damn a new-wrought book
which before I pick it up already spends
longer on

"About the typeface"

than on
the author's
bio. 





2021-04-16

NoPoWriMo - 2021 - IX - Reasons not to kill everything...

Reasons not to kill everything...



There have been mass extinctions before. They're not even that rare: moments in the fossil record where everything disappears, one Friday afternoon, and mostly never comes back. And yet here we are. Living. So life may not be that easy to kill. It may not even lie within our power, not a thing we can actually do: to crash the world so hard not even bacteria in the bedrock survive. Which is not to say we can't lose everything we care about: elephants and parrots and squid; not to say it cannot only be in one billion years, when the bedrock bacteria finally invent palaeontology, that they look at our particular stratum and say "Bloody hell! That was a harsh one..."