Random Inspirations

--I am always on the lookout for inspirations for future poetry writing and this morning, I came across this blog post with this poem:

DUSK by Lisa Russ Spaar

Blue, I love your lapis palace,
your stair of melancholy that burns,
but does not consume my heart.

I love the heaven-shot and glinting stares
of all your tall and far-flung windows,
your shadowed sills, your roofless picnic of stars.

I climb your fabled tense of once
and upon a time, your fractured prayer:
that restless hinge: your voice, thick with thorns.

Molly Spencer, the writer of the larger blog post, gives this writing suggestion:  What color (or colors) could you write a direct-address poem to? Something to try, perhaps.

--I thought about all the colors I love:  blue and purple and green.  I thought about jewels and peacock feathers.  But I did not write a poem to a color.

--I read these lines written by Luisa Igloria in this blog post/poem:

The sales clerk said, helpfully: Sometimes
the size is different depending on the maker.

--I thought of factory workers and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.  I thought of all the ways that workers rebel, the daily resistance, and how it can end in a blaze.  Or maybe it just ends in shirts of slightly different sizes.  I had a vision of factory workers cutting slightly off the pattern, but of course, that process must be mechanized.

--Maybe the machines rebel against the mechanized work, the relentless quest for conformity, the soul-stripping nature of their existence.

--I think of my good friend and her co-existence of a new machine.  She lies awake at night watching it watch her.  I asked if it was noisy, and she said no.  It's just a new presence in the bedroom.

--I think of this machine, and factory machines, and all the tiny machines we keep in our pockets.  How in thrall we are to them!  Yesterday I walked up the stairs with a colleague who could walk up the stairs and text at the same time.   However I was halfway down the hallway before I realized that I had left her behind.  We may be able to text and walk, but few people can text and walk at a quick pace.

--When my parents taught me about resisting peer pressure, we all assumed that I'd be pressured to smoke or take drugs.  Lately, everyone's been telling me how I need to join this century and get a smartphone.  But I already find it hard to be present with humans when I'm surrounded by other machines.  Why would I want to add a little despot of a machine to the menagerie?

--I think of machines and how much music has been mechanized.  I think of how many elements of modern music annoy me:  the drum beat that never changes, the people who sing at full-throated warble, the people who don't sing but mutter, the sinister/thuggish undertones and overtones.  Some days I just want to avoid the gym altogether.

--But then I wouldn't overhear nuggets like this one:  "It should be against the rules to bring baked goods to the gym."