Working off the NaPo prompt, to use concrete imagery for an abstract concept.
Loneliness
The clock ticking at midnight.
Lights on, humming low
but loud in the silence
Cat sleeping
dreaming and twitching her toes
The keyboard is sticky
And a little squeaky as I hit each key
My phone beeps
Squawks
Video game feet kllp-kllp-kllping
down the Hawkins paths
YouTube playing
CocoLegallyBlondeHairJCSCinemaSinsReactionsReviewsPolitics
Whatever
Keep it quiet enough
not to wake the neighbors
But it doesn't matter otherwise
Fast food boxes and drinks
Scattered on the desk
I haven't used the stove for days
(though I actually like to cook)
Will I go to bed soon?
After the day's poem?
I don't care, and neither does anyone else.
The clock continues ticking
On its way to one.
And two.
The lights hum.
And I finish.
I have a game to return to.
And a sleeping cat.
And maybe, eventually, sleep.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
NaPo 3: Lost in the Gray
Well, the NaPo prompt today was about band names, but I couldn't get into it. It did get me thinking about music though, so I thought I'd try something like lyrics for a pop song.
Lost in the Gray
(lyrics)
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
Just a roll of the dice
sent me far from your side
into the deepest dark
where monsters abide
Just a twist of bad luck
a wrong turn on the road
and I was lost in the shadows
where cold rivers flowed
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
I called out for you
in the fog and the mist
and I felt you nearby
like the night we first kissed
I heard your voice in my heart
and I began to see
the light filtered in
and I knew I'd be free
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
The monsters still move
in the shadows below
But I'm moving away
Toward the love that I know
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
Lost in the Gray
(lyrics)
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
Just a roll of the dice
sent me far from your side
into the deepest dark
where monsters abide
Just a twist of bad luck
a wrong turn on the road
and I was lost in the shadows
where cold rivers flowed
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
I called out for you
in the fog and the mist
and I felt you nearby
like the night we first kissed
I heard your voice in my heart
and I began to see
the light filtered in
and I knew I'd be free
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
The monsters still move
in the shadows below
But I'm moving away
Toward the love that I know
Lost in the gray
I see a light shining through for me--
the things that you do for me,
guiding me on.
Monday, April 2, 2018
NaPo 2: Accents
Okay, this one's a little better than yesterday's. I do like a sonnet here and there. It's old-fashioned, but so be it.;p
Accents
(Elizabethan Sonnet)
I always craved an accent of my own
A voice that said I came from somewhere real
A place of hoary words and ancient stone
Where tales would flow and mossy bells would peal.
The words would fall like gentle, lilting leaves
And each would be a gift from voices past
Old songs and words would ring down from the eaves
And I would know my secret name at last
Instead, my voice is flat and harsh as ice
As gray as Erie's endless shallow waves
The nasal tones that only would suffice
In the nowhere that I find my fathers' graves
My real voice sings of nearby country lanes
And the factories, farms, and Yankees in my veins.
Accents
(Elizabethan Sonnet)
I always craved an accent of my own
A voice that said I came from somewhere real
A place of hoary words and ancient stone
Where tales would flow and mossy bells would peal.
The words would fall like gentle, lilting leaves
And each would be a gift from voices past
Old songs and words would ring down from the eaves
And I would know my secret name at last
Instead, my voice is flat and harsh as ice
As gray as Erie's endless shallow waves
The nasal tones that only would suffice
In the nowhere that I find my fathers' graves
My real voice sings of nearby country lanes
And the factories, farms, and Yankees in my veins.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
NaPo 1: The Storm Cloud
Blech. Not an inspiring start
The Storm Cloud
(Villanelle)
Inside the cloud, the storms already rage,
the anxious pleadings of their impatient cast
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
Beneath the sky, the heavens form a cage
We can't know how long the rain will last
And inside the cloud, the storms already rage.
The duration is impossible to gauge
Now that we have all the players massed
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
The tempest shouldn't strike in reason's age!
The storm is something breaking from the past...
But inside the cloud, the storms already rage.
And the orders have gone out to engage
The bombers will release a fatal blast
And raise the curtain on a furious stage.
The coming storm is taunting's heavy wage
And when it comes, the burning will be fast --
Inside the cloud, the storms already rage,
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
The Storm Cloud
(Villanelle)
Inside the cloud, the storms already rage,
the anxious pleadings of their impatient cast
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
Beneath the sky, the heavens form a cage
We can't know how long the rain will last
And inside the cloud, the storms already rage.
The duration is impossible to gauge
Now that we have all the players massed
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
The tempest shouldn't strike in reason's age!
The storm is something breaking from the past...
But inside the cloud, the storms already rage.
And the orders have gone out to engage
The bombers will release a fatal blast
And raise the curtain on a furious stage.
The coming storm is taunting's heavy wage
And when it comes, the burning will be fast --
Inside the cloud, the storms already rage,
To raise the curtain on a furious stage.
Friday, March 30, 2018
NaPoWriMo is approaching
Just creating a tag to stick (hopefully) daily poems on for NaPoWriMo. I can do this. Yup. Done it before.
Once.
Well, I did literally just write sixteen poems in two hours (wrote the instructions for 16 kinds of short forms in verse), but that was at work, so it doesn't really count.
I haven't made a real habit of poetry for about four years. Let's see how it goes...
Heh, I'm starting a little early. Just wrote a virelai to fill out a chapbook, and I kind of love it.
Once.
Well, I did literally just write sixteen poems in two hours (wrote the instructions for 16 kinds of short forms in verse), but that was at work, so it doesn't really count.
I haven't made a real habit of poetry for about four years. Let's see how it goes...
Heh, I'm starting a little early. Just wrote a virelai to fill out a chapbook, and I kind of love it.
Ooh, Shiny!
What was I thinking, just moments ago?
I lost the thread as it sped to and fro!
How was I trav'ling and where would I go?
And people around me are staring...
Other folks keep to their topics, I know
They can stay steady and manage the flow
But me? I'm constantly erring!
I grab shiny things like a raven or crow
No, that's a magpie, they're all corvids, though...
Oh, blast, now I'm off again, raring!
Thoughts won't stay in order, above or below
I hope I can cover it, so it won't show
But inside, I'm kind of despairing.
What was I thinking, just moments ago?
I lost the thread as it sped to and fro!
How was I trav'ling and where would I go?
And people around me are staring!
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Wonder Woman review
I guess in the great war between DC and Marvel, I come down pretty hard on the Marvel side... not that I read the comics, we're talking strictly cinematic universes here. I find that I've never had the patience to try and catch up on fifty years of comic history for... well, anything. That said, I have nothing special against DC properties. I liked Superman and Wonder Woman in the 70s, and I like them still. I'm vaguely fond of Batman.
So, while I wasn't exactly waiting on the edge of my seat for the Wonder Woman movie, I certainly meant to go see it, and I finally did. Since I was late in the game for blockbuster, I doubt I really need a spoiler warning -- everyone who meant to see it probably saw it before me -- but for form's sake, I review with spoilers all of which are unmarked.
It was... pretty good. I'm not sure about all the hype about how utterly amazing I'm supposed to find it, but yeah. Good flick. I liked the people (which isn't always a given for me in recent DC films), and I liked the overaching theme that the way you behave toward people isn't about what they deserve, but about what you believe.
And yes, it's cool to have a female-led major summer blockbuster. Dear Marvel, aren't you kicking yourself now about not bothering with a Black Widow movie just because you thought female superheroes wouldn't bring in the box office? Want a plot? She has to infiltrate Hydra and retrieve a Macguffin, forcing her to don several undercover identities along the way. Or she is using her common tactic of pretending to be captured when outside events trap her among the enemy, and she has to escape and rescue whoever she was sent for. Or she discovers that the red room is still active, and goes in to rescue girls who have been so brainwashed that most of them don't even think they need rescuing. Or... you know, pretty much any well-written story would work. If you can come up with stuff for Tony to do, you can come up with stuff for Nat to do. It is not an alien concept.
It's true that female-led superhero movies in the past have flopped -- Catwoman, Supergirl, Elektra. That wasn't because they were female-led. That was because they were awful movies. Get a good movie with a female action lead, and people come to it like any other awesome popcorn flick.
Which brings us neatly back to Wonder Woman.
It's much better than it has any right to be, following, as it does, one of the worst superhero movies I've seen, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I hadn't bothered to watch it before, and only watched it now to find out how they set up WW, and, spoiler, it's as bad as the reviews say. Just a big, dark gray, muddled mess. But Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman was the best thing in it, and by some miracle, they gave her over to people who could capitalize on that instead of killing it.
So, elements:
Plot
Diana, princess of the Amazons, spends her childhood on the hidden island of Themyscira, home of the Amazons. After a bloody battle Zeus hid it from sight with his last breath. Diana is the only child. She has been raised to believe that it's the Amazons job to defeat Ares eventually and stop human wars. When WWI pilot Steve Trevor crashes through the barrier, chased by German troops (defeated by the Amazons because they're just that good), she learns about the Great War and decides that Ares is abroad in the world. Taking the sword she believes to be the god-killer and the magic lasso that compels people to tell the truth (along with her iconic gauntlet bracelets, of course), she follows Steve back out into the world of the 1910s. They stop first in London, where she gets her first taste of modernity ("It's hideous!"), and then they go to the Belgian front, where she suits up as a superhero and goes through a brilliantly shot bit of trench warfare to save a village. She believes the German commander is Ares and determines to find him and go mano-a-mano, especially after he destroys a village with a poison gas attack -- the very village that she, backed up by Steve and the Howling Commandos -- er, I mean, Steve and his band of misfits -- had saved. She kills him, but he isn't Ares, and it makes no difference. The real Ares shows up, and gosh, it turns out that killing him won't really work either, since humans pretty much make war without a lot of help from divine or demonic forces. She's tempted to simply give up, but Steve makes a huge sacrifice to save a lot of lives, and she understands that Ares' view is too simplistic. Yes, humans do stupid and cruel and violent things, but they also do great and brave things. So she continues fighting (though, judging by BvS, she gets pretty jaded afterward.)
Again, not bad. There is a lot of seriously mangled Greek mythology, which bugs my Grecophile self, but I'm guessing they're stuck with it from the comic source material. Just as a taste, Ares has killed all of the other gods. Yes, in this verse, the Greek gods had Ragnarok. Also, more irritatingly, THE AMAZONS WORSHIPPED ARES, mythically speaking. They were daughters of war, not pacifists sworn to fight their own patron god. And Zeus wasn't exactly a pacifist, and he didn't create humans (that was Prometheus) and Ares... sigh. Suffice it to say, if you're a fan of classical mythology, just kind of... remember that it's most likely not the movie's fault, and what they came up with makes a kind of internal sense. Ah, well. Someday, a movie will do justice to Greek mythology, but that movie is not this movie, and that's okay. They're constrained by a lot of comic canon.
Character
Much improved for DC. Diana is good protagonist. She goes through a very believable innocence-to-experience arc, and she works even the sillier elements of the WW mythos -- the Lasso of Truth, for instance -- work in context.
Steve Trevor is good as the love interest. Like most superhero love interests, he's strictly support, but he does it well. He and his band of brothers follow WW through the trenches. He teaches her to dance. She rescues him several times. But he's a believable enough sort of guy, and Chris Pine does well with him.
Ares is... well, let me put it this way. If you can't figure out exactly who Ares is really pretending to be within one scene, you haven't been watching a lot of hero movies. The telegraphing was breathtakingly clumsy, one of the few plot missteps, unless it was actually almost brilliant: It was so obvious that I thought for at least part of the movie that it might be a red herring, and that they were playing all of the cliches to try and misdirect my attention from someone else. But... they weren't. Still, David Thewlis seems to be having a good time with it.
Setting
The first setting is Themyscira, and it's a lovely Mediterranean island with glowing water and an ancient Greek society. For that part of the movie, they actually used saturated color, almost. After that, we're in Great War Europe, which is understandably bleak, though not as understandably mostly gray.
I like the historical setting. We don't have a lot set in WWI, and it's a striking choice because of it. I wish there were more period pieces, though most of Diana's frame story is in the present, so we most likely won't get any more.
Style
Have I mentioned how much I hate the "gritty" look, and how fervently I wish the fad to end? Because I hate the gritty look and fervently wish for the day this fad will leave.
That said, while it's certainly of an aesthetic piece, it is brightened up somewhat, and Themyscira uses almost lifelike color. Maybe they're slowing digging their way out of they gray, but feel they can't do it too suddenly?
Theme
"It's not about what they deserve. It's about what you believe."
The theme is actually relatively complex. Wonder Woman learns that mankind is troubled and deeply flawed, and she can't save the world with a single grand gesture like killing Ares. And people may not deserve the help she gives. But it's important to be a good person anyway, important to be a hero, because the more people choose to be heroes, the more likely we are to defeat our flaws. Therefore, believe in love and goodness and heroism (all names for the same thing in this 'verse), and act accordingly toward your fellow creatures, and in that way, you contribute to saving the world. It's a pretty healthy message.
I guess there's some complaint that Ares' presence as a real figure undermines this somehow, but I don't think so. He whispers to people about how to do more efficiently what they want to do anyway, but he doesn't cause them to want to do it. My own interpretation is that the nature of the humans is what created the god of war in the first place, and they therefore sustain him, rather than vice versa.
That's about it. I enjoyed the movie. It has a lot of details that I liked and didn't mention because they're just... details. But yes -- I may even make an effort to see Justice League in a more timely fashion, since this movie shows that DC can make movies. (And also because Joss Whedon touched it up, of course.)
So, while I wasn't exactly waiting on the edge of my seat for the Wonder Woman movie, I certainly meant to go see it, and I finally did. Since I was late in the game for blockbuster, I doubt I really need a spoiler warning -- everyone who meant to see it probably saw it before me -- but for form's sake, I review with spoilers all of which are unmarked.
It was... pretty good. I'm not sure about all the hype about how utterly amazing I'm supposed to find it, but yeah. Good flick. I liked the people (which isn't always a given for me in recent DC films), and I liked the overaching theme that the way you behave toward people isn't about what they deserve, but about what you believe.
And yes, it's cool to have a female-led major summer blockbuster. Dear Marvel, aren't you kicking yourself now about not bothering with a Black Widow movie just because you thought female superheroes wouldn't bring in the box office? Want a plot? She has to infiltrate Hydra and retrieve a Macguffin, forcing her to don several undercover identities along the way. Or she is using her common tactic of pretending to be captured when outside events trap her among the enemy, and she has to escape and rescue whoever she was sent for. Or she discovers that the red room is still active, and goes in to rescue girls who have been so brainwashed that most of them don't even think they need rescuing. Or... you know, pretty much any well-written story would work. If you can come up with stuff for Tony to do, you can come up with stuff for Nat to do. It is not an alien concept.
It's true that female-led superhero movies in the past have flopped -- Catwoman, Supergirl, Elektra. That wasn't because they were female-led. That was because they were awful movies. Get a good movie with a female action lead, and people come to it like any other awesome popcorn flick.
Which brings us neatly back to Wonder Woman.
It's much better than it has any right to be, following, as it does, one of the worst superhero movies I've seen, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I hadn't bothered to watch it before, and only watched it now to find out how they set up WW, and, spoiler, it's as bad as the reviews say. Just a big, dark gray, muddled mess. But Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman was the best thing in it, and by some miracle, they gave her over to people who could capitalize on that instead of killing it.
So, elements:
Plot
Diana, princess of the Amazons, spends her childhood on the hidden island of Themyscira, home of the Amazons. After a bloody battle Zeus hid it from sight with his last breath. Diana is the only child. She has been raised to believe that it's the Amazons job to defeat Ares eventually and stop human wars. When WWI pilot Steve Trevor crashes through the barrier, chased by German troops (defeated by the Amazons because they're just that good), she learns about the Great War and decides that Ares is abroad in the world. Taking the sword she believes to be the god-killer and the magic lasso that compels people to tell the truth (along with her iconic gauntlet bracelets, of course), she follows Steve back out into the world of the 1910s. They stop first in London, where she gets her first taste of modernity ("It's hideous!"), and then they go to the Belgian front, where she suits up as a superhero and goes through a brilliantly shot bit of trench warfare to save a village. She believes the German commander is Ares and determines to find him and go mano-a-mano, especially after he destroys a village with a poison gas attack -- the very village that she, backed up by Steve and the Howling Commandos -- er, I mean, Steve and his band of misfits -- had saved. She kills him, but he isn't Ares, and it makes no difference. The real Ares shows up, and gosh, it turns out that killing him won't really work either, since humans pretty much make war without a lot of help from divine or demonic forces. She's tempted to simply give up, but Steve makes a huge sacrifice to save a lot of lives, and she understands that Ares' view is too simplistic. Yes, humans do stupid and cruel and violent things, but they also do great and brave things. So she continues fighting (though, judging by BvS, she gets pretty jaded afterward.)
Again, not bad. There is a lot of seriously mangled Greek mythology, which bugs my Grecophile self, but I'm guessing they're stuck with it from the comic source material. Just as a taste, Ares has killed all of the other gods. Yes, in this verse, the Greek gods had Ragnarok. Also, more irritatingly, THE AMAZONS WORSHIPPED ARES, mythically speaking. They were daughters of war, not pacifists sworn to fight their own patron god. And Zeus wasn't exactly a pacifist, and he didn't create humans (that was Prometheus) and Ares... sigh. Suffice it to say, if you're a fan of classical mythology, just kind of... remember that it's most likely not the movie's fault, and what they came up with makes a kind of internal sense. Ah, well. Someday, a movie will do justice to Greek mythology, but that movie is not this movie, and that's okay. They're constrained by a lot of comic canon.
Character
Much improved for DC. Diana is good protagonist. She goes through a very believable innocence-to-experience arc, and she works even the sillier elements of the WW mythos -- the Lasso of Truth, for instance -- work in context.
Steve Trevor is good as the love interest. Like most superhero love interests, he's strictly support, but he does it well. He and his band of brothers follow WW through the trenches. He teaches her to dance. She rescues him several times. But he's a believable enough sort of guy, and Chris Pine does well with him.
Ares is... well, let me put it this way. If you can't figure out exactly who Ares is really pretending to be within one scene, you haven't been watching a lot of hero movies. The telegraphing was breathtakingly clumsy, one of the few plot missteps, unless it was actually almost brilliant: It was so obvious that I thought for at least part of the movie that it might be a red herring, and that they were playing all of the cliches to try and misdirect my attention from someone else. But... they weren't. Still, David Thewlis seems to be having a good time with it.
Setting
The first setting is Themyscira, and it's a lovely Mediterranean island with glowing water and an ancient Greek society. For that part of the movie, they actually used saturated color, almost. After that, we're in Great War Europe, which is understandably bleak, though not as understandably mostly gray.
I like the historical setting. We don't have a lot set in WWI, and it's a striking choice because of it. I wish there were more period pieces, though most of Diana's frame story is in the present, so we most likely won't get any more.
Style
Have I mentioned how much I hate the "gritty" look, and how fervently I wish the fad to end? Because I hate the gritty look and fervently wish for the day this fad will leave.
That said, while it's certainly of an aesthetic piece, it is brightened up somewhat, and Themyscira uses almost lifelike color. Maybe they're slowing digging their way out of they gray, but feel they can't do it too suddenly?
Theme
"It's not about what they deserve. It's about what you believe."
The theme is actually relatively complex. Wonder Woman learns that mankind is troubled and deeply flawed, and she can't save the world with a single grand gesture like killing Ares. And people may not deserve the help she gives. But it's important to be a good person anyway, important to be a hero, because the more people choose to be heroes, the more likely we are to defeat our flaws. Therefore, believe in love and goodness and heroism (all names for the same thing in this 'verse), and act accordingly toward your fellow creatures, and in that way, you contribute to saving the world. It's a pretty healthy message.
I guess there's some complaint that Ares' presence as a real figure undermines this somehow, but I don't think so. He whispers to people about how to do more efficiently what they want to do anyway, but he doesn't cause them to want to do it. My own interpretation is that the nature of the humans is what created the god of war in the first place, and they therefore sustain him, rather than vice versa.
That's about it. I enjoyed the movie. It has a lot of details that I liked and didn't mention because they're just... details. But yes -- I may even make an effort to see Justice League in a more timely fashion, since this movie shows that DC can make movies. (And also because Joss Whedon touched it up, of course.)
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