Category: extra

Fast!

TRAIT: super-speed, so fast he dodges rain-drops, the
FLASH! In the movie, there’s a rain of babies to the
PLAZA below. He saves them all! How? Speed and glucose.
STORK? Now a total Flash fan, her labors not in vain.

Dinner

EAGLE swimming back to shore,
SLICK feathers unfit for flight.
SOLID plan for dinner turned to miss and splash.
TAKEN in perspective, eagle’s had better days.

WIDER river in spring, boars linger,
AWAIT a moment, await instinct, await daring to
CROSS for better feeding on other side. Will they be
MEATY prey for crocs?

WHINY din of forest, is it all for hunting,
LUSTY creatures ravening to feast?
NOISE of restaurant breaks in on day dream. Table and
BOOTH artfully conceal that I’m in my own nature show as I eye the menu.

Note: Another 3 day catch-up. Challenging words for it. Also: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/14/732843218/bald-eagle-caught-elegantly-swimming

Schachnovelle

THUMB inky, Zweig pauses from feverish writing about feverish
CHESS, tale of a man whose body slipped the Gestapo’s clutches, whose mind did not.
SYRUPy Fios de Ovos is brought to his table. The
HOTEL staff quietly fusses over Zweig. Perhaps the care of staff may yet ground an unquiet mind.

Note: I’m imaging Stefan Zweig in 1941 writing his Chess Story, or Royal Game, in a hotel in Petrópolis, Brazil (though I think he actually wrote in his own house there). His life was shadowed by the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of World War I. He wrote of the passing of the Austrian culture and way of life he had known in the The World of Yesterday. Zweig, like Dr. B in the Schachnovelle (the German title of Chess Story) was able to escape Nazism. As a Jew, he wisely fled Austria in 1934, when Hitler came to full power in Germany. Yet, his sense of loss was too great. Within a year of writing the Schachnovelle, Zweig committed suicide.

Schurken

WHOSE domain is predation upon fellow human may posit self
SUPER or über, so Nietzsche. Yet let that fearsome fish perform its function, the
SHARK–as for Humans sharking, they are not sharks, but Schurken, villains in a
FABLE about erring in species and thus erring in all that matters.

Note: one etymology for shark is that comes from a Dutch/German word for predatory villain, “Schurke” in German.

Invention

CHOIRs with orchestras and festive music are what
TUBAL-cain had in mind, inventing bronze instruments. Instead,
SCOURing earth, humankind mined, forged weapons of attack and
PARRY. Yet, on occasion, a battle horn would be used at night to sound the note of rest.

Note: Cf. Gen 4:22 “Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron”. Sometimes, scripture can be frustratingly laconic. I would love to know more about Tubal-cain.

Prufrock has Toothache

MOLAR pain. Prufrock, pondering again whether to propose, to
MARRY, but can’t think straight for pain. Will there be time enough? Or will time, a cat, slink away like coiling smoke into the night,
OPTIC trace decaying in the fading light? Pain, held at bay with
DROLL musings, unspoken to his peers. Pain, and droll, and fear: does the eternal Footman snicker as he passes?

Note: some (very) slender echoes of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.