Yummy Flashback

Out of nowhere

working on my laptop

years later, I taste 

the flour butter

sugar oatmeal dough

of Mum's cookies

A full pinch 

out of the bowl

and I hear her scold

Sorella

For Sasha

He struck off into the park
but at ten to 3 was himself struck
by the rotting branch of an old maple tree.
He was sat weeping mid-stride.

He might've sat beneath that tree,
lifted his eyes to the cold city skies
to script a new constellation of designs.
But he was sat weeping mid-stride.

He might've been killed outright.
But he was sat weeping mid-stride.
His mind will never be what it might have been.
He was sat weeping mid-stride.

Singularity (revision)

Stuart glued electrodes to his scalp
in preparation for the Great Upload.
He crammed his hard drive
full of blueprints for a cyborg city:
turbines, turrets, turbo tanks.

When the slime moulds took over,
they soaked his laptop in digestive goo.
You’re being emotional!
he shrieked at a plasmoid,
which slithered up his torso
and into his ear.
He tried to scream again in Esperanto
but the fruiting bodies had occluded his airway,
and it was becoming difficult to think.

Mother's Day

After a quiet meal, I nudged my mother,
and on my plate, traced out two stick figures
holding hands.

Recommended, No Star

Silent aroma reminiscent of Brahms

A bicycle taste, greener than red

Off key in nutmeg, deaf to the touch

Don't fascinate it. Smoke will fix

your eyes bluer on its dog-fur sound

Best before after. Try mixed with Tuesday.

Sorella

Also That Week

The week Barbara Jordan dies, January 18, 1996,

the universe brightens in apparent magnitudes of eloquence:

the Hubble sights 40-billion more galaxies,

scholars agree a 1612 elegy is Shakespeare's,

and Cupid, lost in the shadows of a Fifth Avenue rotunda,

is rediscovered: "Good light made all the difference."

Also that week Rushdie emerges from fatwa solitude

to read at the New York City Public Library,

where, among the literati, a certain film star sits in perfect view:

An almost cinematographic silver light graces the ballroom.

It's been a tragic, magnificent week. I want to stare

but a glance as I bask in Rushdie's prose will have to do.

Slight changes to rules

1)  I've made the requests for critique/fluff options into tags, thus saving you all the effort of typing out requests every time.  Just click the "critique" tag or the "fluff" tag, as the spirit moves you.  I have retrofitted old posts with these tags.

2)  I've introduced a "no fluff" option, in case anybody wants it.  (It was an empty corner of logical space just begging to be filled.)  So if you only want hard-hitting critique, use that.

3)  I've changed the "say one positive thing" rule to a slightly vaguer "be helpful" rule, since Bill Moss has demonstrated that it is possible to be helpful by providing a bunch of line edits in a neutral tone.  I will assume that saying one positive thing is sufficient, but not necessary, for maintaining a helpful tone.  I neither want nor expect to micromanage critiques based on tone; just be reasonably courteous to each other, please.

OK, dull housekeeping stuff is over.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled poetry.