Guest Google poet: “Why is the”

Google poem by Maayan Pearl

 

Why is the sky blue

Why is there a dead pakistani on my couch

Why is the ocean salty

Why is the sky blue short answer

Why is there fuzz on a tennis ball

Why is the ocean blue

Why is the world going to end in 2012

Why is there a barcode on google

Why is there a worm in tequila.

Poem (DF): “What happens when”

This poem by Google:

What happens when you die

What happens when you lose your virginity

What happens when you quit smoking

What happens when we die.

 

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object

What happens when you crack your knuckles

What happens when you swallow gum

What happens when you have a miscarriage

What happens when you file bankruptcy

 

What happens when you sneeze.

The Difficulty of Writing Smells: A Hypertextual Manifesto

Serena Sutcliffe, on Penfolds Grange (a famous Australian wine):

The 1960 showed the great drive of peppery Shiraz, with orange, coffee and peppermint, all of which are Grange signatures. We had the usual discussion as to whether the 1962 or 1963 was ‘better’, but it is a pointless exercise as they are both show-stoppers. I found the melting aniseed of the 1965 seductive, the liquorice-filled 1966 a mite drier, the plumy 1967 redolent of candied tomatoes, the stellar 1971 all black truffles, the 1975 reminiscent of peaty tobacco, the 1976 full of mint and bitter chocolate and the 1978 evocative of Cuban tobacco and log fire.

Although ordinarily I don’t pay much attention to wine writing—it’s easy to find less, shall we say, “readable” examples—I think what Ms. Sutcliffe writes here is kind of wonderful (even though, to readers who don’t encounter much “wine writing,” it may appear stuffy in quite the ordinary way).

I got fired so I went to the park

There are times when I look at this city from within itself and see nothing but a ghostly empire—luminescent, haunted, already fading. The views of grand palaces that dwarf Versailles; the limpid ponds and vigorous squirrels; the dancing sunlight; the autumn coolness in the air; the lethargic tourist families, collapsed on each other, eating hot dogs and ice cream, nestled under subway maps.

And something in me leaps a hundred years ahead, or back, and I become a traveller from a different time—some kind of cosmic voyeur. And to see leaves turn red from the tips as though dipped in blood, to hold chestnuts, smooth and fragrant, in the cool cup of my palm. And to watch an endless procession of persons marching past, all missing the view; I am alone here, hidden in the dappled shade, hidden in the notebook on my lap, hidden from the day and the night in this middle kingdom of evening.

Wu-Tang Clan and Thomas Pynchon

These are the lyrics to “Triumph,” from disc 2 of the Wu-Tang Clan album “Forever.” I was listening to the song and saying as many of the lyrics aloud as I could, and I got to wondering about the ones I didn’t know. I looked up the lyrics on Internet and here’s what I found. What’s surprising is how much it reads like Thomas Pynchon. I’ve included a couple haphazardly-selected sample passages at the bottom for purposes of comparison, and noted some of my observations.

I included the entire song because I didn’t get around to editing out the parts I was thinking of in particular, but feel free to skip to the end if you’d rather get to the point.

“Triumph”

[skipping ODB's intro]

[Inspectah Deck]
I bomb atomically, Socrates’ philosophies
and hypothesis can’t define how I be droppin these
mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits
tremendous, ultra-violet shine blind forensics
I inspect you, through the future see millenium
Killa B’s sold fifty gold sixty platinum
Shacklin the masses with drastic rap tactics
Graphic displays melt the steel like blacksmiths
Black Wu jackets queen B’s ease the guns in
Rumble with patrolmen, tear gas laced the function
Heads by the score take flight incite a war
Chicks hit the floor, diehard fans demand more
Behold the bold soldier, control the globe slowly
Proceeds to blow swingin swords like Shinobi
Stomp grounds and pound footprints in solid rock
Wu got it locked, performin live on your hottest block

Trauma as a Force of Liberation (DF)

I noticed that in my favorite movies and TV show, the main character is often a person leading a double life—”The Family Man,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” any of the Bourne thrillers…

The internal life and external life–or secret life and public life–intersect, or collide, to create drama. But as a trope, why is it so effective at creating drama? 

Option: Because I identify with those characters. And why would I do that? Because I feel like I’m leading a secret life? That could make sense: there is the ever present internal life that everybody struggles to express, with or without knowing, through personality. But I don’t think so. It’s because I don’t feel like I’m leading a secret life. I love, as all audiences love, watching a timid character find strength in the traumas of his secret life (his alternate identity has allowed him to assume a different personality without appearing schizoid). It’s even more thrilling to watch the character apply his new strength to his public life–watching him be liberated from his old timidity, as though the real fantasy was not of secrecy, but of exposure. Not that the secret be exposed, but that the hidden personality be exposed. Anger, frustration, violence, profanity–all suppressed according to a gentler, social code of conduct. It signifies the emergence of the Id, I guess. 

The fantasy is that trauma leads to liberation,

Hemingway (DF)

If life is a rehearsal for which there is no performance, as Kundera says, then every moment that passes represents a missed opportunity. And the loneliness of that sentiment forms our capacity to be nostalgic for our own dreams, for times we didn’t live in.

Stories give us the opportunity to reclaim some of those moments—not by analysis, since to look is to touch (as Camus and Schrödinger would have it)—but by reliving them. We benefit even if the moment is relived in exact duplicate, since there’s no risk of a meaningful moment passing unnoticed. This time, set down in a more permanent medium, the moment is preserved. We can relive it endlessly and at will. The more accurately is it is preserved, the more directly it can be experienced, and the more satisfying it is to do so.

Which is probably why stories exist: as handholds by which we cling to the fragility of an ever-passing life.

Train station ghosts at the (DF)

The train comes and goes
and leaves the station empty.
Water drops from the street above
plink in puddles they’ve created,
and the sound speaks down
dark tunnels.

The doors close, the train kisses
this stop goodbye and whistles
off into the black tunnel.
The doors close and the train
takes the young with it.

old poem, still untitled (DF)

Disaster doesn’t “strike.”

It waits until we find it.

 

We hold banisters

To keep from floating off—

We commit television interviews.

Somehow, we are sucked into that cabal

As part of a vague promise,

          lurching forward until we’re

Incarnated in our own vicious dreams.

 

Guest Google Poem: “How does”

how does it work

how does solar power work

how does the human brain work 

 

how does it feel to die

 

how does the thermometer work

how does fluoride work

 

how does it feel to be loved

how does this work

how does a kite fly

 

 

-Erin Wexstten