Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

I met a Stranger yesterday,
his house was esoteric and his way was strange.
He asked if I was buying,
I told him I was visiting a friend I'd only met moments before.

He showed me through the door.

My bare feet touched the stone,
and breathlessly I stepped without a sound;
He said, "Come inside and look around,
the best view's six feet underground."

Raven met a Rabbit,
fixed his beady eyes upon the shiny face of Rabbit's pocket watch.
Rabbit knew his time was near -
all he could hear was the tumultuous sound of Daddy's ticking clock;

and upon the door he knocked.

He was greeted with a groan,
and hand in hand we danced the circle 'round;
He said, "Come inside and look around,
the best view's six feet underground."

The Root of All Evil

A crying woman, water-soft,
was clinging to a lamp
to hold her from the grasping hands
that tugged to pull her pride away.
She wept for naught, the morning clear
cared not for both her cries or fears.
‘Twas only me, upon the street,
that witnessed hateful lust of man.

She glimpsed a worried glance and turned,
to rake it with her pleas;
it turned its face to walk its way away,
and never looked again.
Now ‘oft I wonder what took place,
behind that sallow frown and face;
I beheld this terrible thing to see
and gained my lack of empathy.

Second Year of Suffering - Juliet, you Heartless Bitch

Within a tangled web I lie,
ensnared, and in the spider’s eye
I see a glint of pride; and I do wonder
why I led me here.
A gentle tug against the web
proves unmatched by the strength of thread;
I lie, ensnared, and wonder whyI ever led me here.

A gleam of light both penetrates
and intrigues like a burning flame
that burns a moth to shame while dying,
brightly lit in candlelight.
A gleam in spider’s eye I see,
a gaze transfixed onto me
bringing sharp, painful reality
into clairvoyance wrought by ash -

I taste it in my burning mouth,
I smell it in my burning lungs,
I feel your sting through all the veins
that run dead cold from blood now gone.
Provoke me, implore me,
ignore me, seduce me,
but shame affixed on what you sow
will reap it’s death on you for woe.

Your misdeeds will not find me here.
Your web I will escape.
Your foul-mouthed chattering -
a craft of which I won’t partake.

Fie, fie! foul creature of spite!
I hold you unto home, the like
of which I care to spit upon
and might, perchance, transform alight
into dark candles.
Light the night afire with holy aftermath!

You shan’t escape, your tangled web
will prove a trap in bitter end.

My groggy fire burns it out.
I wake myself with scream and shout.
I struggle with the lamp, and beneath
a tangled mass of sheets espy
a morbid form, so finely wrought,
a prize I shan’t hold forth again;
the pillow squeezes breath from me,
alike to you at tragic end.
Your fire, quiet now, I snuffed.
Your bosom now I quiet clutch.

I’m sorry, babe, so sorry.

A thief caught in the act could not
provide a better motive just;
turmoil ends with single thrust,
and softly do I die akin
to morbid form entangled thus.

Mother Courage Musings

Feel your pulse and rise up out of bed
wake up now and live outside your head
the city street, it calls you out,
strut the beat and walk about, saying
shove the rest and come with me instead.

Crawling down the Avenue one day
looked around and smiled at what people say
kept your laughter to yourself,
siftws the crowd to see what's left,
and said shove the rest and come with me instead.

Give your mind to you and no one else
show them it's okay to be yourself
screw the street and walk the road
less traveled, come and let me show you
how to shove the rest and be yourself instead.

It Won't Do: In the Spirit of Bobby Dylan

It won’t do no good to carry on and smile, babe,
since you’ve done it all before.
And you’ve spent all your dimes calling early,
but I won’t answer anymore.
I’ve been sitting and contemplating thinking ‘bout the past,
looking through our photos wondering why it didn’t last,
it all happened just a little too fast,
but now we’re back to where we’re at.

And I know you’d hate for me to pity you, babe,
but you know I really do.
and I know I told you that I really loved you,
you know I really meant it too.
But in the end there’s nothing left for me to feel but used,
you came and went so fast you left me dazed and confused,
your love is pretty strong, but pain’s the only tool you use,
and you’re the reason why I write the blues.

So long honey babe,
here’s to what we’ve said and done.
I realize now there wasn’t much before this,
and I think we’ve had our fun.
I wish you hadn’t left me alone in the rain,
I thought this time was different, it was the same old thing,
no regrets from me, but never again,
and no song for you’s been written since.

Escape from Binary Land

When you found you could leave your problems
you conjured thoughts of soaring, free from everyone,
wide delight as your sky
and I found myself looking up at the bright clouds
staring at the wake of your passage
left behind.
I’d sacrifice my perception to
join you in your sublime conception,
your Escape,
but to my feet the ground is unyielding
clinging casually with strength unmatched

Thus a dismal reality of time, this doleful reality of mine
Abides.

I used to wait on the hilltop from whence you took flight
to linger till your return to our lives
plucking at grass stems that sighed in the winds
giving voice to my thoughts.
As grains of sand trickled between my fingers
counting the seconds we were apart
I’d watch the light glinting off the solid stones in my path
weighing them in my mind against the starlit clouds
and think of your departure…
the solidity of Earth to me
was plentiful reality,
not to be deceived by me.
How you see if for yourself
remains, to all but you,
a mystery.

Since that day when down I toiled from rocky pinnacle to cold, damp soil,
I lift my head not to moon or cloud, fallen star or blazon sky.
And when the morning sun arises, its glamour diminished through a haze of morning fog,
‘tis down I cast my sight upon the streets of stone
and raise up not my eyes.
Yet when I chance to risk a glance upon a bird of flight
my thoughts cannot elude thoughts of you
and upon the bird I do espy
that wings of fancy are given at birth
not freely granted to meandering minds
and hence I cast my eyes down cold
to walk this granite path of mine.

An Invitation

In a world of walls and barriers, people are overlooking out simple connections. We are consumed by our fear of what is different. We have a long history of fearing the unknown. Douglas Adams said something along the lines of "...it's a sad world when you suspect a neighbour's wave."


I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.-You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.-You come too.

-The Pasture, Robert Frost

Frost

The creator, the artist, the extraordinary [person], is merely the ordinary [person] intensified: a person whose life is sometimes lifted to a high pitch of feeling and who has the gift of making others share their excitement. The ordinary [person] lives by the creative spirit. [They] think in images and dreams in fantasty; [they] live by poetry. Yet they seem to distrust it. [They] cling to the notion that a poet is a queer and incompetent creature, a daydreaming ne'er-do-well, an eccentric trying to escape the business of the veryday world, a soft and coddled soul.

Almost the opposite is true. History is the record of [people] who were not only poets but workers, [beings] of action, discoverers, dreamers and doers...

[A]ny account of Robert Frost's life must being with its curious contradictions. Descended from a long line of New Engalnders who were rooted in the region since 1632, Frost was born in California. The most American of poets, he was first recognized not in his own country, but abroad, and his first two books were published in England. He has never entered a competition and does not believe in prize contests, yet the Pulitzer Prize for the best poetry of the year has been awarded to him four times.

Robert Frost's ancestors were Scotch-English. His mother was of a Scottish seafaring family of Orkneyan origin, a scho0olteacher whose name appears in most records as Isabelle Moody. Frost was more than fifty when he learned the correct spelling from a distant cousin in New Zealand; the relation from down under informed him that the proper spelling was "Moodie." A few years later the poet acknoledged the correction in a poem which serves as "mottoe" for A Witness Tree, a poem playfully signed "The Moodie Forester."

-Excerpt from Louis Untermeyer's introduction to "New Enlarged Pocket Anthology of Robert Frost's Poems"

Everything Must Go

You left me with some things:
a spoon, a tie, some socks.
I kept the old shirt you'd wear at night
when we'd climb into bed and turn out the light.
They're all piled in the corner now,
and everything must go.

You made me mighty blue,
so I'd used to look around at day
and see what'd take this hole away.
Your favorite color poking through
the sheets would drop my spirits low;
now everything must go.

I kept your letters and your face
embrodiered on a sleeve of lace
as memories of happy times
and shallow grace;
but now they feed a hungry fire,
and everything must go.

My Friend Dab

"Sleep Paralysis (SP) condition in which someone, most often lying in a supine position, about to drop off to sleep, or just upon waking from sleep realizes that s/he is unable to move, or speak, or cry out. This may last a few seconds or several moments, occasionally longer." (http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html)

A sensation of not being able to move, even in the slightest manner, your muscles. Sometimes a twitch is accomplished. Sometimes I lie for several minutes trapped inside my own body and completely aware of it. Whether this is a fully concious or semi-concious state is something I'm struggling with defining - I'm concious in the sense that I can look out through my eyes and perceive color, recognize my surroundings, and focus my attention, but it feels like I'm caught halfway between The Dreaming and The Wakening.

"People frequently report feeling a "presence" that is often described as malevolent, threatening, or evil. An intense sense of dread and terror is very common. The presence is likely to be vaguely felt or sensed just out of sight but thought to be watching or monitoring, often with intense interest, sometimes standing by, or sitting on, the bed. On some occasions the presence may attack, strangling and exerting crushing pressure on the chest. People also report auditory, visual, proprioceptive, and tactile hallucinations, as well as floating sensations and out-of-body experiences (Hufford, 1982). These various sensory experiences have been referred to collectively as hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences (HHEs). People frequently try, unsuccessfully, to cry out. After seconds or minutes one feels suddenly released from the paralysis, but may be left with a lingering anxiety. Extreme effort to move may even produce phantom movements in which there is proprioceptive feedback of movement that conflicts with visual disconfirmation of any movement of the limb. People may also report severe pain in the limbs when trying to move them."
(http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html)

Borrowed

The following quotes are often attributed to Mandela, but in actuality have been borrowed from another source:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Actual Source: Marianne Williamson [1994 Inaugural Speech]

The Preying Mantis - Nature's Abomination

Okay; fun animal fact #1.

The female Preying Mantis (Mantis religiosa) has been made infamous for it's cannabalistic tendancy to consume the head of the male prior to, during, or post-coitus. While previously thought to be a manic method of nutritional input (which it is regardless; brains are high in protein!), it is now understood in some circles that it may be a vital part of reproduction.

The male mantis has several sexual inhibitory censors in its head that limit/repress its sexual behavior. Upon consumption, these inhibitors are removed. Normally, you'd think that this would present a problem for most species, but the amazing curve ball of nature foils even the most expectant of expectant expectators...yeah. Turns out the mantis is still able to successfully reproduce AFTER THE HEAD HAS BEEN EATEN. Apparentely it's worth it to get that rushing orgasm. Not something I'd normally think with insects, but hey! all males are alike.

How many words are there in the English language?

There is no single sensible answer to this question.

It is impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it is so hard to decide what counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (dogs plural noun, dogs present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since we might also find hot-dog or even hotdog?

It is also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Youth slang? Computing jargon?

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

--Reference: www.askoxford.com