Intermidable. Also very long.
This flight will be unpleasant till the end.
I have no pateince left that I can spend,
I am as crabby as a crabgrass lawn.
This bouncing up and down I can't pretend
Is any way at all my stomach's freind,
It feels as if it's being preyed upon.
We're only three hours in, oh great good grief,
The ground is too far down, or out I'd fling.
There is nothing resembling relief,
Trapped close in this tin can with metal wings.
We're jigging round just like an autumn leaf,
Oh Terra Firma, you'd be just the thing!



That part's over, thank goodness. Venice is a dream. More on that later.

Petrarch

        In a few short weeks I, armed with three and a half weeks of listening to Pimsleur's Italian 1, will be descending upon Italy for ten whole days with my brilliant, generous, and fluently Italian speaking cousin. In honor of the miraculous tangent my life has taken, I have decided to tackle the Petrarchan sonnet form. In preparation I am currently reading Petrarch, Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works (Oxford World's Classics) http://www.powells.com/biblio?inkey=65-9780192839510-2
       At the moment I'm almost finished with the Letter To Posterity portion of the book and in tone and self reflection Petrarch reminds me of no one so much as Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice. To be fair he is a good deal cleverer and a much better poet, but his carefully cultivated modesty -- even as he name drops as heavily as an up-and-coming production assistant at an LA soiree -- is a bit hilarious. He does have his moments though, my favorite quote at this juncture is his reason for quitting law school:
   "It was not because I disliked the power and authority of law, which is undoubtedly very great or,
because of the endless references it contains to Roman antiquity, which I admired so, but rather   because I felt it was being continuously degraded by those who practiced it. I hated the idea of learning an art which I would not practice dishonestly, and could hardly hope to practice otherwise. Had I made the latter attempt, my scrupulousness would have undoubtedly been ascribed to incompetence."
     Petrarch was living and writing in the 1300's. How little we change.
      So, Petrarchan sonnets. We all know, or at least I hoped I've managed to convey, that the Shakespearean sonnet's rhyme structure is ABAB,CDCD,EFEF,GG. Well, not so with the Petrarchan. I will now have to bend my brain around ABBA,ABBA,CDCDCD. No couplet at the end! And I have a bad feeling about that extra A...
   














   











       

LXVI Game 1

LXVI

So Tigers, it's not looking good so far.
For you I mean, and that is a fine thing.
Your game is not proving to be on par,
And you've had just three runs for all your swings.
It's true your pitching stats are pretty good,
But with his three home runs I swear it's true,
That even though their norm is bamboo wood,
Our Panda's gone carnivorous for you.
Your grey and orange doesn't pop as well,
Orange and black is a much finer gear,
In four more games I hope you will be felled,
Your beards are small and don't instill much fear.
     I'm sure there's other things that I could mock,
     But I'm all out of room for more trash talk.

LXV Morbid. Ghosty. It's October.

LXV

They'll find this here, a relic of times past,
A last most stubborn fossil that remains,
Curling, uncurling, restless as a cat,
A splinter moving through the beat of veins.
Those things that cannot find the light must wait,
A potent ling'ring itch that can't be reached.
A mystery that moves from place to place,
Yet cannot move at all towards some relief.
After time held in heat and pressurized,
It well might make some precious souvenir,
Even the smallest things can mesmerize
With enough pacing by the hobnailed years.
    This tiny knotted thing may yet see day,
    When all the rest of me has gone away.

LXIV Pumpkins

October is the month of blood and gore,
When killers with their knives run round the screen,
And try to up the numbers of death's score
In ways that are increasingly obscene.
When eager viewers sit and feast their eyes
As viscous fluids spray about from wounds,
They scream and cheer, or sometimes even hide,
And marathon these flicks of blood and doom.
But unbeknownst to this morbid lot,
The greatest slasher tale is all too real,
Each year we go out to the pumkin plot,
We grab the squash and then away we steal,
     We vivisect them at the kitchen table,
      And then display them long as we are able.
      

It's Sonnet, It's Sonnet Time

Last year I embarked upon an ill fated resolution to write one sonnet a day for a year. I lasted a little over two months and 63 poems. You can find them here: http://ejcrazycurls.blogspot.com/2012/01/iit-begins.html
I have realized I miss the exercise. So, here is a new blog. The Sonnet Blog, just for them. I am calling it thus so that (after this post) I have no excuse to post anything but sonnets here. So it begins, expect regular updates, I certainly will.