Working On It

So I'm writing a poem every day since I got here. Here are two that Brette said were alright.

August 9, 2009

What Is Still Literal

“…[T]his vast, dispersed network of interdependent data systems has lately come to be referred to by an appropriately atmospheric—and vaporous—metaphor: the cloud.” – The New York Times Magazine

“Divorced people who suffer depression and complain of cognitive dysfunction may be expressing the loss of their external memory systems.” – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

The cloud doesn’t hold a character,
a bit or byte of memory, a digital image.

The cloud is an animal, a cetacean
that grieves and the sky

its own whale-road, full of forgiveness.
The cloud is a Ford Fairlane

with a long hood and fins.
The cloud is also a loon, loud

wings flapping against the water.
The cloud isn’t a metaphor

but a shape that doesn’t hold
like the loss of joint memory, a place

where we held externally our interiors.
The cloud is not a place

to store data or one to decide
who remembers what. It is a cloud.


August 10, 2009

The Tipping Point

Skitter is too cacophonous a word
to transmit the sound
of a mouse sliding down the plastic
trash bin’s side. S doesn’t
soften the k to reflect the futility
of four paws up and then back,
the hasty upshot and heavy
return to bottom. If gravity is
relative to size, then we can all know
how the mouse feels coming down.
We can all understand
the convergence of some dozen ants
that creep in, defying gravity,
to take out the mouse.