Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Bird of Darkness

Breathe from the moon, my friend the swan,
And stretch thee till the night.
See how the windows, shades tightly drawn,
Accentuate our fright.
Thy honk might awake or anger the fay,
But worry not thy head;
The walls of eld hold tight thy prey,
Who slumber as though dead.

so take to wing
lift thy beak and sing
let the valleys ring
with all you bring

Cross the night, thou alabaster fowl,
And send to us a breeze
To wash our slaty rooftops, while cats prowl
Beneath the wine-dark seas.
Snag a fish that leaps above the waves,
But lettest never lose
The sight of what a broken beggar craves:
A blanket and some shoes.

so take to wing
lift thy voice and sing
let the mountains ring
with all you bring

Nak mid alle tunge fen dem veld,
Und okos nu subet.
Di vorde fen di hen tabun behelde,
Dei kri mid alle yet.
so take to wing
lift thy voice and sing
Da ga uta di mid ander breke tri,
Boot da de shira be
nit di

Then reste thy wearie head, and falle to erthe,
And close in slepe thyne eyes.
Close thy beake, reste thy song, untill the byrth
Of glowynge sunnes rise.
They who hearde thee well, atop the skye
Where fyre makes hys marke,
Perchance shall dance anewe, and soone may flye
To joine thee in the darke.

Lil Mugi

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Facebook Blues II

Last night finally I agreed to make a
Facebook, answering all requests I'd gotten.
Certainly it is nice--connecting me to
People, getting a bunch of e-mail every
Time a person should change a little something--
But although I concede it has its merits,
Already it's an academic roadblock.
Now it's 6:27--all my binders
Lie unopened within my sealèd backpack.
With all heart that may lie within my ribcage,
I shall start on it once this poem is finished.
But already I've guessed that once it's over,
A cause, pettier still than what assailed me
Before, roaring shall come and take me captive,
Squeezing all of the juice within my brainbox
Into places where all I know to do are
Write on walls, or perhaps I'd count my friends' list.
But I shouldn't complain the way I'm doing--
This hendecasyllabic headache halts my
Work as well as does Facebook and its cousins.
But through writing this poem, my friends, I've learnt that
I should never again attempt this meter
In English; you'll agree the sound is awkward,
And the force that it carries when in Latin
Wholly dies when you move it o'er to English.
But I tried! Let you know, Catullus, that you
Have a friend who would gladly play in numbers.

Lil Mugi

grippe

I've been out with the flu this whole week, and supposedly I'm still contagious, so I'm not coming to school tomorrow either. I felt awful on Monday and Tuesday, but today I feel pretty good. In fact, my life is awesome right now. I haven't gone to school in six days, I can stay home for another four, and I don't even feel very sick.


EXPECT MORE POSTS
BODO

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Letter to the Editor from December 27 Hampshire Gazette

To the editor:
In a recent Gazette article, someone who was interviewed said, "you kill two birds with one stone." While I'm all for participating in one activity that has several positive outcomes, I dislike this saying that celebrates the killing of birds for no apparent reason. I realize that this phrase is part of our language and our culture; and that we often use this saying without giving much thought to the violent image that it evokes. There is so much violence in our world. Could it be that some of that violence originates in our language, in the words we choose to use with each other every day?
For the past several years, I have used the phrase "feed two birds with one seed." I have noticed that when I say it that way, both the person I'm speaking to and I smile in mutual enjoyment both of the transformation of the old phrase and of the new, nurturing image. Basically, it makes us feel good. And so, I offer this new saying to my community in the hopes that some of you will use it because you resonate with what I'm trying to do: to bring more consciousness, more peace, and more life to the language that we share.
A friend recently said to me, "It's no skin off my back." I've been working on transforming that one, too. So far, all I've come up with is "it's no snow off my igloo." It's a work in progress. I'll keep you posted!

Sharon Rudnitzky
Haydenville


BODO

Monday, January 14, 2008

Cousin’s Market

 That lady with the checkered shirt

            only has five white teeth the

others are blackened; not with soot, or grime, or

wax—just black.

 

I assume

They were once white

            or barely yellow, like a duck’s

underbelly—repelling water

 

until the duck, dead,

            floated angularly in the water

and sank (unnaturally, impossibly) into

            the murky depths.


An oldie. Bootsie

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Seatime Funk

We were a layer of dolphins, a
Slick mess tucked tight into
A terrific tangular of tuna.

We were dolphins caught
In a net of tuna, adolphin'
Our sorrows, adolphin'

Everything we couldn't 
Get slimy. We were
Out to get out; we were

Feelin' claustrophobic, just 
A hot mess of upturned flippers
Waiting for scum.



Bootsie

Friday, January 11, 2008

Poetica Latina

Catullus faber et poeta maior,
sed illi numeri ioci videntur.
Certe talia pulchra multo amo, nam
versus tanti hominis mihi Latina
e lingua melior poeta non est.
Verum qui bene nec loqui potest, nec
Latine hendecasyllabos potest ut
magni scribere, verbum identidem omne
per densos equidem libros petendum est.
Ergo, si celeber poeta sis, nunc
cave! cum melior poeta fio,
cum versus numerique simplices sunt
mihi, quod ego tum creavi in amplis
cartis quin tibi opus perenne mittam.

Lil Mugi

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Resolutions

It's been too long since I've posted, and I've been in circumstances pretty similar to what BODO described: free, but, for some unfathomable reason, simply not posting, and that leads me to my first resolution. I'm going to post more in here. Bootsie and BODO, my fellow 'blisterers, I'm not doing this because it's fun. I want fame. I want glory and prestige. I already know I'm going to have that later in life, but what's it going to be like when I'm sitting around a mahogany table in a fire-lit living room discussing Vergil and Kawabata with my fellow pompous scholars when one of them says, "You mean you didn't even have a blog in high school?" I would probably be consigned to life on the streets for eternity ever after. So, for the sake of my reputation, which is as intricately beautiful and as fragile and transient as an ice sculpture, I'm going to write more entries. I mean, I'll try.

Self-improvement, of course, need not always entail such grand commitments, though. Sometimes there are little things we can change that may change our lives and the world ever so slightly, but still for the better, so I'm going to make a list of such things now:
  1. When I write dates at the tops of papers, from now on I'm going to write only the last two digits of the year rather than the last three (in other words, "08" rather then "008"). I already told BODO about this, but I figured the rest of the world had to know.
  2. I am going to make a conscious effort to use clichéd alliterative collocations as little as possible. In other words, if everything goes as I hope it will, you shall never again see me use such solidified constructures as "hale and hardy," "vim and vigour," or "might and main." Rather, I will make an effort to create fresh, new compounds, such as "vernal and verdant" or "slag and slate."
  3. I will always include the two little horizontal bars on my capital Is.
  4. I will invent my own poetic meters and use them well.
  5. I will expand my vocal range.
  6. I will learn how to pronounce Chinese tones... backwards.
  7. I will write something awesome.
  8. The Red Sox will win the World Series again.

I think that just about covers it. Peace in the year of the mouse.

Lil Mugi