hummingwolf | Entries tagged with megahal-inspired

$hummingwolf: Part of a julia fractal in colors of fire and smoke. (Fire-flavored fractal)$

In some cases, despite careful and correct
surgery, sterility does not speak--
words of a butterfly's wing, the
fully formed, but immature, offspring is born.

--MegaHAL

I keep thinking I ought to write down what I'm thinking, but if I see what I'm thinking and hear what I'm thinking, I might know what I'm thinking, and I think I don't want to.

I think, therefore I'm scared.

You feel the fluttering in your chest, in your belly, barely noticed at first, barely there. Soon, though, it grows, it's a heavier beating, wings beating from the inside, centered on the solar plexus, making it hard to breathe. You like to tell yourself it's butterflies. Then you start to wonder if it's dragonflies. Then you begin to believe it could be dragons after all.

If I'm not careful, I might breathe fire.

I try to gather words the way a dragon gathers treasure, build up a word-hoard of jewels and gold and royal purple to dress up my thoughts in. But maybe they have no wish to wear those fancy clothes. Maybe they would tear off the clothes I would like to see them wearing, rip and claw and bite at the clothes that would make them pretty, fit for public display. Naked thoughts are invisible, of course, but there's always something around for them to dress up in. Maybe they would rather cover themselves in dust and ash and earth.

It isn't seeing immature thoughts that bothers me. It's the possibility I might find them fully-formed. Words of a dragon's wing, casting aside the clothes of polite society and showing their true selves to the world.

In some cases, despite careful and correct surgery, you discover that you still breathe flames.

[Originally posted January 2006]

$hummingwolf: animation of green and gold fractal, number of iterations increasing with time (Iterations in green and gold)$

Aside from the fact that HAL got an old Sade song running through my head, this is the kind of poem I'd like to talk about in some detail. But I also have Stuff To Do if I can find the energy, plus the return of an annoyingly frequent cough, so I'm not really going to say much of anything.

( Some may think this morbid. )

Current Mood: contemplative

Yep, blame sleep-dep (well, dep of deep sleep--there's been plenty of light dozing this week). Or blame codeine, because even though I haven't taken any of the lovely prescription cough syrup yet, I am about to and it's probably reached back in time to affect my mind already. Or blame the chest pain that's made me decide it's time to take the cough syrup tonight. Or blame the fact that I walked 2.5 miles today with twitchy lungs and could I be any more insane?

The following is today's post for MegaHAL Poetry Month. MegaHAL poetry, as most of you know, tends not to make a whole lot of sense. Tonight's ramblings inspired by the MegaHAL shouldn't be expected to make a whole lot of sense either. G'night, everybody.

( If this makes sense, it's not my fault. )

Current Music: distant siren

I think, here is oblique
praise for the storm
ready to eat.
with heart of earth; with thoughts of love affair?
and why.

last night i know, in the same name every time
i've got you under the tent of night between the planets
and the mother brood some deed of sacrifice?
her floating robe, in royal amplitude,
falls in deep water,
it belongs to me.

look! The cupboard has closed.
wee, small hands, quick finger tipped,
slipped the key to time and space folding up
i saw the thing descending, circling, here.
and marking you i shall find again
dancing on the hollow of the fence.

--MegaHAL

Oh, my children, you do not know how weary your Mother becomes, giving birth to you, nourishing you, bringing you back to myself again. Being your Mother, holding the lives of all my children, is a burden in ways you can never understand. How could you? For all your boasts and all your glories, you are still so very young.

This is how you know your Father loves me: air and water, in the guise of storm, he comes to me in the night. This royal robe I wear--this identity--time and space!--comes off beneath his hands, my willing sacrifice. I renounce myself; he claims me. Time and space, falling away, forgotten in his inconceivable storm. Our older children--the littler ones--carefully gather up that royal robe and all of you in it, fold it up and put it away. For a while, I am not your Mother Earth. For a while, because of Father Sky, I forget myself, and I dance at the edge of the worlds.

Current Mood: it's definitely bedtime
Current Music: a distant party (not distant enough)