Evilrooster

First Frost

2009-10-14T19:32:53Z

The first frost, whitening the grass today,
Surprised the summer's final cloverheads
And scattered them with diamonds as they lay
Like amethysts beside the cattail beds.
The mist moves like the Lord upon the face
Of silver waters ruffled by the wake
That trails an onyx grebe. The pearly lace
Of clouds drops sunbeams on the waiting lake.
But still the rows of indecisive trees
Stand dithering between the green and gold,
As if they've months to go before the freeze.
So, muddy-leafed, they watch the fall unfold
And wear this day the way that little girls
Play dress-up in their mother's finest pearls.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Setting Pastiche 2

2009-10-14T19:18:46Z

Red these deserts - and free at last we roam;
But we are exiles from our fathers' home.

Listen to me, as when you heard your father
Sing long ago the song of other sands -
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
On this frequency, as we cross these lands.

From lone oases hid in sandy canyons
Atmospheres divide us, and cold of space -
Yet still the blood is strong, my dear companions,
And we in dreams ride at a camel's pace.

We shall not tread again the wide and sandy plain
Where naught but night protects us from the sun
Nor gather in the souk to bargain once again
Returning to our tents when trading's done.

When last from great Damascus we had banish'd
The infidels crusading through our lands
We did not know our peaceful time had vanish'd
Corrupted by the oil beneath the sands.

And so we fled, and insha'Allah have found
A desert world where we may roam at last.
But still we turn, when calls to prayer sound
To Mecca, to the homeland of our past.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Setting Pastiches

2009-10-14T19:11:15Z

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That we in dark and deeply mined
Chasms of black Moria find.

And we will sit beneath the ridge
And watch the Balrog keep the bridge
Above the fiery pit whose smoke
Makes even orcish fighters choke.

The watchmaker
Who rigged for me
The warp drive flange
Out of space debris
Has given my crew
A working ship
So we'll make it through
From this scouting trip.

We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

Rocannon has windbeasts
And hilfs who act like lords.
But you just might, if you have to fight,
Be spitted on their swords.

To ice-encrusted Gethen
Our coming was foretold.
But who'd have known we'd sleep alone
And wake up twice as cold?

The dusty moon Anarres
Is home to anarchists
Who can only live because they give
And by gifts their world exists.

While rich and fertile Urras
Is plagued with poverty.
The poor all cry looking at the sky
That the moon's the place to be.

On peaceful settled O
The Night and Day are wed
Sedoretu build on the vows fulfilled
Both in and out of bed.

The Hainish sent out ships
For many a planetfall.
But changeling breeds in time have needs
To be Ekumenical.

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the friendly skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Because I really am a geek

2009-10-05T20:36:29Z

A sonnet on Google Wave.

The sea has depths in which no net is cast,
With trackless kelpine forests where great squid,
Like Sasquatch in his mountains safely hid,
Dance dreaming with the fishes swimming past.
And human interaction is the same.
Beneath an email surface lies the deep:
Unmodeled work and social patterns creep
And spread in ways existing tools don't frame.
If all that data made a single stream
(Instead of tossing users to and fro
Among their applications), it could flow
To ever-mounting heights: Hokusai's dream.
It sounds like fun. I must confess I crave
To grab a board and surf the Google wave.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Byron and Hubble

2009-10-05T20:32:30Z

So we'll go no more a-scrying
So deep into the night
Though the comets still are flying
And the stars are still as bright.

For the software troubles grow
And the hardware fails on test
And the current halts its flow
And gyros come to rest.

Though the sky was made for flying
And the night has more to show
Still we'll go no more a-scrying
And fall once more below.

Originally posted on Making Light

The sonnet muse is back from her vacation

2009-10-05T20:31:13Z

In reply to a recent sonnet by fledgist:

To make a thing, to bring it into being
Is intimate, like making love. The verb's
The join, for making either one disturbs
A universe where knowing comes from seeing.
I dream a thing that doesn't yet have form
Is risky as I love you. Both require
A trust that one's interior desire
Is strong enough to make the world transform.
But reformations of the universe
Alarm a fair few folk. My age is cause
To say I mustn't meddle with what was.
And thus they have a reason to reverse
That instant when I took the world apart
And re-assembled it to match my heart.

Originally posted on Making Light

Five Things

2009-02-21T22:46:01Z

kouredios tagged me with five things she thinks of when she thinks of me. Here's a brief explanation of how each of them looks from the inside.

1. bookmaking
I started binding books in December of 2001. I bind mostly in leather, using both traditional and modern methods. I am a member of the British Society of Bookbinders (though I kind of weird them out because I'm self-taught).

Now, I grew up around printing (my father has two printing presses in his basement), and I married into a printing family (my in-laws own a company that manufactures and sells printing chemicals). So, naturally, I started binding books so that I could have blank ones to write in. I learned mostly from books, and documented what I learned on my (hopelessly out of date) binding blog, http://bookweb.sunpig.com

I rebind published books as well as making blank ones. Most of my bindings are given away, or find their way onto my shelves. I sell blank books on occasion, for fairly small sums; this pays my materials bills and not much more. I am content with that, though one day I would love to be the science fiction bookbinder. (Accept no substitutes)

Binding books, for me, is about craftsmanship. But because it competes with the rest of my life, sometimes it's about being good enough rather than being perfect. The perpetual tension among all of the pressures is difficult to balance, but, in the end, good for me.

2. Dutch
Dutch is the fifth language I have studied (English, Spanish, Latin and Greek being the others). I've never managed true fluency in any language but English; my Spanish was good for a while, but not completely there.

Secretly, I am not convinced I can really become fluent in a second language. This is, of course, nonsense, but it's very powerful nonsense.

I have to overcome this mental block. We moved to the Netherlands with the intention of raising bilingual, multicultural children. But, of course, this move requires me to become bilingual and (even more) multicultural as well. (Martin is already fluent in Dutch, having grown up in the south of the Netherlands.)

It helps that I love the language, which is quirky and cranky in many of the same ways that English is. The word order is completely bats. And I love the sound of it, because I heard it when I was falling in love. (I am particularly fond of Martin's accent.)

3. poetry
I never think of myself as a poet.

I wrote sonnets during high school--dreadful ones--and decided that my muse sang only in doggerel. When I joined Making Light, it gave me someplace to post my doggerel, but I never took it seriously.

It wasn't until John M (Mike) Ford, a regular on Making Light, died that I started writing them again. He was always the master sonnetrist; poetry slams then were races for the silver. (I wonder now if that bothered him.) I was just scrambling to fill the aching hole that I could see in the community. Then, of course, the other poets came out of the woodwork, many of them much better at the craft than I am.

Sonnets, really, are a habit of language taken to formal extremes. When I was in practice I could write them in as few as sixteen minutes (good ones took longer). But at the moment, I can't seem to write any at all. I think that Dutch has taken over those parts of my brain. I miss them, and I regret that everyone but fledgist has stopped with them as well. I feel it's my fault, somehow.

I have written one poem in Dutch, a "Sinterklaasliedje" (St Nicholas' Day song) for a colleague. I enjoyed it; maybe next year I'll write more.

4. pastiche
I do a lot of pastiches on Making Light, particularly for parlour games.

But my favorite pastiche exchange is actually a tiny one with just a couple of people at the tail-end of another thread entirely, as we wrote and rewrote the same passage of "On the Death of WB Yeats" to relate to space, time and science fiction. It's only about six comments long, but I found it stretching and amusing.

My problem is that I'm flying blind whenever I try to do pastiches of writers. What ear I have for tone is unreliable with my own prose. I can sometimes hear when I strike a false note, but more often, I can't really tell when I'm on-voice or not.

I'm also appallingly ill-read. I'd never run across the plums poem until I came to Making Light and saw it adapted by all and sundry. The literary game threads are as much recommended reading lists for me as they are puzzles ("Oh! I wonder how that sounds in non-LOLcats!")

But, you know, the only real requirement for pastiches (and for poetry, for that matter) is that both I and the reader have fun. On that basis, I'll probably continue to do them.

5. motherhood
I've been a mother figure for longer than I've been a mother. I have a brother 12 years younger than me, and a sister 2 years his junior, and I spent much of my childhood and young adulthood "playing on the grownups' team".

But now I'm a reallyo trulyo mother, and it's strange to me. I'm always bemused and baffled that my children love me with such devotion and affection. I don't see myself as deserving it, really. I don't manage the transcendent elements of parenthood that well; I just bumble along.

I do try to tell my children that I love them often, frequently in detail. I'm a great believer in the value of physical contact, and make sure that we spend some time each day cuddling. And every night, when they're asleep in their rooms, I creep in and kiss them one more time, and whisper good things in their ears.

I don't know if this makes any difference to their dreams, but I can hope.

- o0o -

So that's me. If you want tagging, say so in the comments and I'll tell you five things that I think about when I think about you.

Why I don't get involved in extensive, tangled online discussions: a case study

2009-01-29T21:27:17Z

When the method that we use to determine the norms of a community is conflict, then only that subset of the members who can effectively survive the process end up deciding the rules. The mechanisms that emerge frequently require one to be able to spend enormous amounts of time and undivided attention picking through complex, nuanced and angry arguments, at speed and under fire. After all, everyone who lasted long enough to agree them has that skillset in common. That's how they got there.

This is why I like web moderation. The point is to build a conversation where a thick skin and infinite free time are not required to participate, where...

Aw, nuts, the five year old just barfed all over her bed.

(Text posted unchanged, appropriate title added; I had not expected life to make my point for me so dramatically!)

Principal Damage

2008-04-19T22:01:09Z

The cloning table holds me half-reclined
And wraps the scanning visor round my head,
Recording me. I try to clear my mind,
But grief remains. My alter self is dead.
A roadside bomb went off; his whole squad died.
Like all the other soldiers grown before
From memories and tissue I've supplied,
He died. As will the next, and many more.
I knew that he was gone before the call—
I felt the bomb explode, and tasted blood.
I can't explain, but I've died with them all,
Been burned and shot, been stabbed and drowned in mud.
Sometimes I wish that I were just a clone
So when I die, I die just once, alone.

Originally sent to Asimov Magazine; posted on Making Light after rejection.

Beware the Inexperienced Expert

2008-04-19T20:52:53Z

The road beside the river tends to flood
When autumn storms bring rainfall to the hills.
Your wagons and your horses, mired in mud
Are trapped until the water rises, and it kills.
The mountain passes close with winter snows,
The desert's parched in summer's white-hot days.
The road that looks the safest often goes
To nothing but a hovel, thick with strays.
A canny guide is worth her weight in gold
When maps are not enough, and no one knows
When caution suits and when you must be bold,
And when to give up on the route you chose.
You wouldn't trust a guide who'd never been
Along the road, and learned from what she's seen.

Originally posted on Making Light.

A Kink in the Tail

2008-04-19T20:07:28Z

Tyrannosaurus Rex comes thumping in,
At least an acre's worth of latex on.
His dom, a Microraptor with a grin,
Is eyeing up that cute Iguanadon.
Triceratops is green with envy for
Velociraptor's corsetry and tights,
While cosplay Stegasaurus at the door
Keeps riff-raff out. Our Mesozoic nights
Begin like this, but often end in pairs
Among the club-ferns, just two dino guys,
The costumes off, no longer after stares,
Embracing till the sun begins to rise.
You mammals look surprised? You know there's none
So strange as love, or new beneath the sun.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Eventide

2008-04-19T19:41:54Z

It's hard to pry the schoolboy from the Wii
Or his admiring sister from the couch
(She likes to watch him play). For me,
To make them move means being Mama Grouch.
But up the stairs and out of clothes they go
Then run and hide, one giggler per bed,
Until the tub is full. It's then, they know,
I'll come and pull the duvet off each head.
The bath is soothing, time to settle down,
Then brushing teeth and choosing one book each.
He fidgets, but she listens with a frown
And wants the book left close within her reach.
A kiss, two kisses, and two hugs goodnight
A last shared smile, and I turn out the light.

Originally posted on Making Light.

evilrooster @ 2008-04-18T16:44:00

2008-04-18T14:50:25Z

In the spirit of this, a few lines that may be familiar.

Capt: A dozen years have pass'd since this took place,
And all that time hath Parliament kept hid
The secret of this world, till River here
Unearth'd it from their minds. They feared she knew.
And right they were to dread, since many more
Among the spinning worlds would know it too.
And someone has to speak for those now dead.
For divers reasons did you join my crew
But all have come together to this place.
I've in the past demanded much of you.
Today I ask yet more; perhaps for all.
For this I know, as I know anything:
That they will try again. Another world
Will be the lab for this experiment.
Or maybe they will sweep this landscape clean
And in a year or ten attempt again.
They'll swing back like the needle to the north
To the belief that they can better men.
And I hold not to that. Here from this grave
I will not run. I aim to misbehave.

- o0o -

Capt: There's more to flight than buttons, albatross,
More to the pilot's role than charts and maps.
You know the foremost rule of flying? Aye,
I know you do, since you know what I'll say
Before I part my lips.
Riv: I do, but yet
I like to hear you say it nonetheless.
Capt: 'Tis love. Though you know all the math the 'verse
Contains, if in the sky you take a ship unloved
She'll shake you off as sure as worlds turn.
Love keeps her in the air when she should fall
And tells you that she hurts before she keens.
It makes her home.
Riv: The storm is getting worse.
Capt: We will endure a while, till it disperse.

The argument less fraught

2008-04-07T19:17:41Z

In the spirit of one of the greatest xkcd cartoons of all, as given life by pnh:

Two threads diverged in a blog comment,
And sorry I could not argue both
And be one advocate, on I went
Researching one, and all that it meant
Unto the limits of its growth;

Then fought the other, just as keen
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it had less buzzword-sheen;
Though as for that, 'twas just as mean,
With obfuscation much the same.

And both held promise of delight
With comments not yet answered back.
Oh, I marked the first for another night!
Yet knowing how fight leads on to fight
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be blogging this with a sigh
Someday ages and ages hence:
Two threads diverged in a blog, and I,
I took the one less comment-shy
And that has made all the difference.

We Nine Trilobites

2008-03-04T20:51:05Z

tnh pointed me (and the rest of the net) to a page on the nine orders of trilobites: http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Tree_of_Life/PhylumArthropoda/ClassTrilobita.htm

It's a great page, and leads to some good clicktrance. But it made me think of "We Three Kings of Orient Are". And once I'd thought of it, of course, I had to write it. (Sleep being, of course, something that happens to Other People)

Trilobites from Cambrian stone
Evolution glorious shown:
Adaptations, variations
On their ancestors unknown.

O fossil record, long preserved
Ancient hist'ry still conserved
Stone from sand made, nine of their clade
Now are classed from forms observed.

Ancient Agnostida you find
Primitive, and many are blind
Head like butt, thus isopygous
(Greek is much less unkind!)

Redlichiida's thoracic spines
Form distinctive parallel lines
Micropygus, eyes a big plus.
Order that the head defines.

Varied trilobites could conform
To Ptychopariidanic form.
Long surviving, widely thriving
Giving them time to transform.

Corynexochida descends
And from Redlichiida's form bends:
Glabella clavate, bum a tad great
Pointiest at their back ends.

Many trilobites spread their spines
Few, however managed the lines
Of Lichida, lacy leader:
Order that's dressed to the nines.

Asaphids, effacéd, could glide
Or perhaps in sediment hide.
Distinctive sutures but no futures
The order still, like others, died.

Lasting till the Permian age
Proetida, ultimate stage.
Small, with spineless tail behind, this
Order turned the final page.

Semi-circle or ovate brimmed
Rostral plate by ages' change trimmed.
Ptychopariida had Harpetida
But was by an order slimmed.

Spineless trilobites, a surprise!
What that in prehistory lies
Could but see the Phacopida
As they saw with compound eyes.

Worlds change, adapt if you can.
As with trilobites so with man?
Global warming, new plagues forming
May we run as long as they ran.

O fossil record, long preserve
All our hist'ry, and conserve
Stone from sand made, what of our clade
Will be known, and who'll observe?

The scansion gets a bit ragged on the last lines; I was kinda punchy by the time I finished it. But it was fun; how many times do you get to rhyme "Head like butt, thus" with "isopygous" in one lifetime, after all?

Pooh meets Tolkien meets Cthulhu (Eeyore wins)

2007-08-20T22:35:19Z

Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
Where all that happens is for good,
Where Roo still plays on sunny days.
Pooh and friends once desperate stood.

The Bear of Little Brain then dwelled
Where honey with a U is spelled
Among the trees and bumble bees
And hero parties oft were held.

With Piglet trembling close beside
He roamed the forest, far and wide,
Where Heffalumps and Tigger jumps
Would make our heroes run and hide.

While in the background Rabbit fussed
And griped and (sotto voce) cussed
As Pooh was stuck and then unstuck
Uncured of his great hunny-lust.

The haycorns grew in sunlit dells
While daffodils and silver bells
On riverside did thick abide
And perfumed with ambrosial smells.

But deep within the river crept
A darker force, its anger kept
In check by him who, visage grim,
His watch maintained while others slept.

Until a game of Pooh-sticks played
Upon a new bridge in the shade.
When Eeyore won, his guard undone
Released the thing from where it stayed.

The cloud that crossed the sun that noon
Was not a bear on a balloon.
The darkness spread, and with it, dread
That reckoning was coming soon.

The grass grew withered, turning grey.
The river whipped up icy spray
And in the trees the honey bees
Mysteriously slipped away.

As ruin of their home they faced
Our heroes in their centre placed
Small frightened Roo, and Piglet too
While breath grew short and pulses raced.

And at the shore they made their stand
Between the water and the land
As eye met eye they knew they'd die
And with their blood stain red the sand.

Upon the bridge brave Rabbit hopped
The shadows rose and overtopped
The parapet. Old Long-ears met
And stopped the dark, then lifeless dropped.

Then for his dead friend Tigger howled
And in response, the forest growled
Thence came a beast, like Death released
And Rabbit's lifeless corpse befouled.

The tiger bounced then, gold and red
And from him darkness briefly fled
But the black struck swiftly back
And left him broken, beaten, dead.

Above the heroes rose a bird
By Tigger's death to courage spurred.
No longer meek, with claw and beak
Old Owl fought (without a word!)

Then Christopher Robin turned
And saw the river once more churned
With foul mud and Rabbit's blood
As revenant, their friend returned.

At that their blood froze in their veins.
Abandoning their meagre gains
They huddled in, while with a grin
The zombie rodent sought their brains.

And as they stood in trembling row
And watched the beast they used to know
He reached right through and seized on Roo.
And though they fought he'd not let go.

He pulled his tiny captive through
Their hopeless clutches and withdrew
His prey, held tight, soon ceased to fight
And then, "Oh, bother!" exclaimed Pooh.

And at that sound the noises ceased
As friend and foe and eldrich beast
Turned in awe, and wond'ring, saw
The Might of Pooh at last released.

A gentle humming sound he made
And through the grass began to wade
And all he touched unclenched, unclutched
As he spread peace throughout the glade.

With Kanga weeping in his wake
His way to Rabbit did he make.
The foul hare, with yellow stare
In unclean voice then harshly spake.

"You rob me of my prey, then, Pooh?
Three friends for one I'll trade to you
If I can choose the one you lose
I'll end it now, bear. What say you?"

The rabbit's eyes then opened wide
And met with Eeyore by Pooh's side.
His voice was grim. "I choose him
And will not lightly be denied."

Pooh turned and peered then at his friend
"I want this Unpleasantness to End
But what to do? I can't lose you."
"It's OK," said Eeyore. "I'll mend."

"Oh, not from this," the monster smiled
And Eeyore's fur with slime defiled.
As Rabbit healed there stood revealed
A tangled shadow, dark and wild.

It caught up Eeyore in its night
And he succumbed without a fight
While at his side his friends all cried
And darkness howled in grim delight.

Then in the sunlight played small Roo
While from the beach bounced Tigger too.
And Rabbit, dazed, in horror gazed
At hands still smeared with foul goo.

The donkey lay upon the hill
While darkness worked its foul will.
The friends he saved watched him, enslaved
And vigil kept as he lay still.

First he grew sqamous, then rugose
His skin drew tight and wrapped him close
Instead of hair grew tendrils bare
In writhing, twisting, twining rows.

But then he moved, and raised his head.
"I see that I'm not really dead.
I should have guessed I'd get no rest.
How typical," the donkey said.

In time the rot seemed to reverse.
And Eeyore lived despite the curse.
"These psuedopods and Elder Gods
Are not so bad. It could be worse."