As the Barge pushes up lake under an overcast sky, here are some word pair definitions:

elegy: a sad poem, especially for soomeone who has died. from Greek elegos
eulogy: a speech or piece of writing that praises someone highly. To eulogize or eulogise is to praise highly. from Greek eulogia, praise (we know Greek logos means word)

propensity: tendency to behave in a certain way. From Latin propensus "inclined"
tendency: 1. an inclination to behave in a particular way. 2. a group within a larger political party or movement

Huh. (All definitions from Oxford Dictionary of Current English. The book.)


Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for Tuesday June 29, 2010

Malvolio in his tights the world's a stage for olio
refresh your caches full - croxetti and fine cocoa
You adore all words, they bathed you sore in utero
List birds and rivers. Say amethyst, say Cree
Your tongue has territory too how vast an area
an aria to every book nonsense to lit
Issa, Chaucer, epic poetry or saga
write a raga to the shores of Iwo Jima
eulogize your rat faced dog, it's all okay
pen words to and with what you adore
What else? What more? Oh words you are the cat's meow
the mother lode the goose's golden egg the priceless ore
for you have aged more well than Stephen Rea
if out damned spot all greed and screed we'd oust
what better flow than this unless it's tidal
for truth winds through its mobius strip but atom
split from wit and wonder yeast will rise.

Am I a poet? A writer? A reader?
A dawdler and doodler
Weed identifier and ripper-outer
water watcher
lie about
sucked into the freecell vortex
there's gotta be something about a something cortex
I'm reading aloud WHITE TIGER
and silently I'm reading THE LACUNA
each is about a boy
and I get the boys confabulated
imagining the Mexican/American boy
swimming past the lotus eating water buffalo
or the Indian boy mixing frescoe plaster
for Diego Rivera
a double helix of coming of age stories
coming apart

I don't have the pulse
don't feel the zeitgeist of my age
am not any sort of genius
I so hoped I would be some sort of genius
could read the work of genius
ride it like a wave
feel the pulse of its purpose
like my own
I thought it was my own
parrot, mimic,
oh I can fling the epithets
punish myself daily
refuse me pleasures
for all my shortcomings
if you ask me to do something
I will do that something
no matter what it costs me
if I ask it
I spit on the task
sit around with protest signs
half painted
the great are better to themselves
they believe in their work anyway
even if they don't love themselves
they believe in their work
they do their work
I lose my work
file it in the drawer of lost things
or let it blow away down the road
sunder it between my teeth
am loathe to love it
unless someone publishes it
if a poem has seen print
has my name on it
I might deign to read it again
muttering

New synthetic oil in the beetle, renters in the house, and I'm on the road at a Days Inn. Why do they serve hard boiled eggs with no peels on? Who peels them? How?

Here's the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft from yesterday's NY Times Puzzle


As fifth grade Shakespeareans raise epees to scrap
for valor and better lines, our minds turn to Albee
for gloomy betterment, Tom Eliot for his cat,
and Abba's Waterloo. brought PeeWee to the Alamo
and screamed our long vowel e's no need to boom
with "oo's" like men for we are of the gentler hue.
You said "I do" where windsurfers trust the wind
to up them high not flop them to the rocks below
you know I'd rather hop than drop like tatted lace
that place where it's all simple you say as ABC
well maybe but as you run at your fate rapidly
I think vapidly of all that topples from its zenith
though I know you mean this, in love since recess
you'll always be my unicorn launching not alone
Marriage vows are hexes launched against vexed
arguments the human in humility our ability
to believe the apex is the curve our graphs have cast
our loves will thrive like waving wheat in acres
you curse the vapors I'll whip the slave
division of labor, a saber if you' stayed
while Roberta spins the flax and stirs our soup
we droop beneath the pomp the stomp of self
What else?

I put conventional oil in my VW TDI beetle
so now I have to drain it before I can drive anywhere
which is a teeny problem since I'm at Lake Chelan
and it is 4am.

Breathing until I can call someone and work this out.
I've read various TDI forum remarks
what else to do with eyes like headlights
and the brain half on?

Up up up in the parking area my beetle sits
with bad oil in its belly. Saturating its surfaces
all the places that 10w30 oil will mess with because of its
wrong viscosity, its conventionality a liability.

Ah for Castrol to meet the VW 505.01 standard!
My kingdom for that Castrol 5w40 TXT 505.01
and the ability to go back to sleep.