rejectomorph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rejectomorph) wrote2014-12-21 07:46 pm
rejectomorph) wrote2014-12-21 07:46 pm
The Shortness
I keep nodding off in front of the computer. I probably shouldn't have had that beer after I came home from the stores, but I hadn't had any beer with lunch (because I didn't have lunch) so I owed myself one. Right now I'd like a big bowl of macaroni and cheese, but I don't feel like cooking it and I don't have any of the quick variety. I don't like the quick variety anyway. Maybe I'll have the peanut butter sandwich I didn't have for lunch. But if I go to sleep early I won't miss any English people killing each other, because instead of Mystery PBS is running reruns of last year's Downton Abbey, which is sadly short of murders. I miss Miss Marple.
Perhaps if I fall asleep with my face on the computer keyboard my nose will write an entry more interesting than this one. Probably not, though. My nose has never shown much talent for writing. Of course neither have my fingers, but that hasn't stopped them. And here I am again this damp and gray shortest day of the year, expecting words to pour down like the rain lately did. They don't, of course. I'm sure the best ones have better things to do. What comes into my head is I really must clean the cat's litter box, and If mail was delivered on Sunday I'd have forgotten it until now.
This storm didn't end with any spectacle— no wind, no thunder and lightning, no final downpour. It just petered out in a fog that shrank the world for a while, and now, even thinned, permits no stars to show themselves. Winter begins like this— like exhausted autumn giving up. The chilly night is quiet, and suggests that I'd best not disturb it. Perhaps I'd best pay heed.
Sunday Verse
by John Burnside
Stepping outside in the dark,
if only to fetch the coal, this December night,
I stop in a river of wind
on the cellar steps
and think of men, no different from me,
transforming themselves at will
to animals
— misshapen lives
suspended in the blood,
slithering loose
and loping away through the snow
half-flesh,
half-dream;
or, coming in,
I turn to face the cold
with nothing in my veins
but haemoglobin,
the thought of someone
not unlike myself
in borrowed senses
— marten, dog-fox, wolf —
coming to some new scent, some bitter truth,
and gulping it down in the dark
while the hunters
listen.
Perhaps if I fall asleep with my face on the computer keyboard my nose will write an entry more interesting than this one. Probably not, though. My nose has never shown much talent for writing. Of course neither have my fingers, but that hasn't stopped them. And here I am again this damp and gray shortest day of the year, expecting words to pour down like the rain lately did. They don't, of course. I'm sure the best ones have better things to do. What comes into my head is I really must clean the cat's litter box, and If mail was delivered on Sunday I'd have forgotten it until now.
This storm didn't end with any spectacle— no wind, no thunder and lightning, no final downpour. It just petered out in a fog that shrank the world for a while, and now, even thinned, permits no stars to show themselves. Winter begins like this— like exhausted autumn giving up. The chilly night is quiet, and suggests that I'd best not disturb it. Perhaps I'd best pay heed.
Sunday Verse
Shapeshifters
by John Burnside
Stepping outside in the dark,
if only to fetch the coal, this December night,
I stop in a river of wind
on the cellar steps
and think of men, no different from me,
transforming themselves at will
to animals
— misshapen lives
suspended in the blood,
slithering loose
and loping away through the snow
half-flesh,
half-dream;
or, coming in,
I turn to face the cold
with nothing in my veins
but haemoglobin,
the thought of someone
not unlike myself
in borrowed senses
— marten, dog-fox, wolf —
coming to some new scent, some bitter truth,
and gulping it down in the dark
while the hunters
listen.
no subject
Here it is winter, and it's going up to 50 degrees with intermittent sunshine. Something is amiss in Seattle. Probably me -- it's my fault, I suspect.
Interesting poem. I like the river of wind on the cellar steps.
no subject