A Leaf’s Lament
I will be dead come morning. This I know well.
Do not cry, for I have grown used to the idea. I have slowly withered and changed and watched my friends do the same, falling and slipping away one by one. Tonight, it will be my turn. I can feel it in the night air. Death’s beckoning call.
Come, says he, the time is now right for you. Take your peace.
Peace. What a wonderful melody it makes upon the wind. Can you hear it? Tinkling just around the bend, over a hill perhaps, and carried to the four corners of the earth upon ever-changing currents. Here and there, it bends and swoops, promising its kiss to one while growing distracted by another. But it will not miss me this time. Oh no. Death has promised me that. And Death never breaks his promises.
Such an unyielding gust, that wind, rattling through the branches. Sent from the enemy, I shouldn’t wonder. And what a bitter enemy, too. I’ve heard whispers of his brutality, of the annihilations of generations past. And yet…a visitor weaved through in the spring; like a needle, it pierced us with tales of a more resilient abode with scores of generations still clinging to life.
It seems so long ago now…though not so long until morning. Will I see the first rays draw back the crisp night air and lighten the clouds as though my world has not changed forever? Or shall Death come while the owl still cries and the stars dance in formation to herald yet another season?
Ah, there! I feel it. Like a lightheaded dream. A warmer breeze rattles me until I feel myself slipping. It embraces me tightly until I break and feel my crumpled shell float away. For a moment, I hang suspended, hand-in-hand with Death and Peace, as we watch my old form ride the wind down to my comrades. Once young and green, it is now bright yellow and crisp. No less beautiful, I consider vainly.
We begin to drift up, greeted by vistas of red and orange and yellow, awash in the light of the full harvest moon. Yes. There is beauty in the ending of something, as surely as in its beginning; even in the ending of autumn, when all leaves must fall. And oh! the stories I could divulge…
Good Mourning
In your smile I’d chill for awhile
Within your eyes time would fly...
Your sarcastic wit-talking shit
Stuff I miss most about
Before you died...
Some still critique things you did
Like mistakes you made
When you were a kid...
It doesn’t alter an ounce my feelings
Speaking ill of my dead friend
Sounds like some dirty-ass dealing...
Just the other day
I thought: ‘What would you have said?’
About some shit that
Really made me mad...
Yeah so...
My memory backtracks old
Conversations that we had
The light-the heavy
The good-the bad...
Losing you is an understatement
Nature’s cruel reality & crushing abatement...
Feeling empty these days when I sigh
Sometimes-I too wanna die
If for no other reason why-
Other than I’m so damned tired...
I mean...
Who wants to be a slave
To life’s tidal-waves...
Along with all that
My senses so
Incessantly crave...
Accomadation entices
That vacant-placid grave...
I didn’t ask
For this task
Like some juggernaut
Caught in stream inertias path...
At times
My anger borderlines a sociopath
Then it’s like you whisper
Some dumb-ass joke in my ear...
Then I relax
Close my eyes
Bellowing a deep-hearted laugh...
At my own moronic-
Juvenile lesser half...
In that moment
I am saved by the past...
I hold on tight
With all my might...
Cause it never fuckin lasts...
So peace my friend
What else can I say...
Peace in the end
So close yet far away...
3.14159 Ways to Annoy a Female Engineer
1. Speak in masculine pronouns only, especially to describe teams you've never worked with before, future hires, and prospective clients. Assume your female co-worker is an exception to the general rule that women are not engineers, mechanics, executives, salespeople, or people at all.
2. Narrow your eyes and tilt your head noncommittally anytime your female co-worker makes a recommendation. Then slightly modify and re-pose the recommendation in your own words. Wait for the rest of your team to agree with your terrific recommendation.
3. After you've held a meeting to discuss an important issue with your female co-worker's peers, brief her with a "quick chat". If your female co-worker is accidentally excluded from an email chain, forward the emails along instead of replying all to add her. Call your female co-worker's manager, program manager, desk neighbor, or chiropractor when you have a question they might be better able to answer than your female co-worker herself about her own work.
3.14159 Assume your female co-worker memorized the abbreviated definition of pi for bar trivia and not because she happens to be a female engineer.
Stopping (adapted from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
Sometimes I steal myself away
Retreat in thoughts of yesterday
Ignite the flame--control the spark
Rewrite, recast a different play.
The car is off, the street is dark
Lit homes reverberate a bark
From some kept dog in some backyard
Or maybe from a nearby park.
The autumn night is coming hard
On heels of sun's abandoned guard
The shiver outward, inward too
I turn the key, tear up the card.
Memories, frozen, always true
But the mind can heat, recast a few
Imagination is ever new.
Imagination is ever new.
Rhymindyou
A lot to stress about,
a lot to feel doubt.
A lot to feel mad about,
a lot to see bad. But now
be glad, the 20-20 impairment is a sad
illusion,
all the confusion's pursuant to the pollution
that's making the collective voice seem muted.
So expect a choice true and
good and beautiful, Plato's holy trinity.
Just feeling dutiful.
Thus appealing to the funeral of
it-which-ought-not-be-named
that sustains these chains and enslaves the
lion by its mane, so the main aim in this
space on history's present page is simply to
reclaim the divine grace that made
our humanity.
Oh the profanity.
No, I'm blabbering. But reality's shivering
in the blubbery bankwhale's belly, bellowing,
wailing, quivering, and waiting for the statement that will
replace this state with aer recentibus infinite.
