Recently in poetry and prose Category

Poem on my mind... "Trees" by W.S. Merwin, as heard on The Writer's Almanac.

Trees (excerpt)

I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches

If somebody created a patch with this poem on it, I would sew onto my backpack in a heartbeat.

According NPR's The Bryant Park Project, today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. It's one of the many events happening during National Poetry Month. The idea is to select a poem you love, carry it with you (preferably, in your pocket), and share it with other people.

While I'm perfectly capable of the selecting and the carrying, I'm not very good at the sharing, at least not in the face-to-face sense of the word. I just don't possess the courage to read a poem to somebody in person. The fear he or she will think I'm a complete idiot is a bit overwhelming.

Which is why I decided to share my poem here. It's "Bivouac on a Mountain Side" by Walt Whitman (source: Wikisource).

I see before me now a traveling army halting,
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen,
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the mountain,
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering,
And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, breaking out, the eternal stars.

And, just in case you were wondering, I actually carried the poem in my pocket. Carrying a handwritten copy made the poem feel more personal. For safekeeping (and posterity), I scanned it.

Yosemite's Happy Lexicon (with apologies to Franklin Pierce Adams)

These can be a hiker's happiest words:
"Dewey to Crocker to Stanford."
Trio of rim points, as high as the birds,
Dewey to Crocker to Stanford.
Each one offering a most inspiring view,
Of the valley and El Cap and Half Dome, too --
If you should visit, there's a hike you must do:
"Dewey to Crocker to Stanford."

My goal for Black Friday was to be as far away as possible from the insanity of shopping malls and outlet stores. Hiking in Yosemite was the perfect way to achieve it.

After filling up on Curry Dining Pavilion's breakfast buffet (eggs, hash browns, sausage patties, pancakes, cereal, and coffee for $8), we drove to the McGurk Meadow trail head on Glacier Point Road for a hike to Dewey Point. We were also going to visit Crocker and Stanford Points, but they weren't the headliners on this trek.

From the road, the distance to Dewey Point is 3.9 miles. From there, it's 0.6 miles to Crocker Point and an additional 0.7 miles to Stanford Point. Doing some fast math, the out-and-back distance is 10.4 miles.

The toughest part of the hike was finding the trail head. On our first pass, I accidentally overshot it and ended up at the Taft Point / Sentinel Dome parking lot. We backtracked and found it, just west of the Bridalveil Creek Bridge, by pure chance. The only sign of the trail head's existence was a post without a sign.

We found a place to park off the road and started out. It was 10:15 a.m. and 36 degrees.

The first mile was a gradual descent through the forest. I had hoped the sunlight would reach the ground to help me warm up, but the trail was well-shaded. After a few minutes, we came across a log cabin built in the 1890s by a man named John McGurk (source: Trails.com).

Beyond the cabin, the trail left the forest and crossed McGurk Meadow. The last time I saw the meadow, it was covered in snow. That was in January of 2006, when we snowshoed to Dewey Point. Now, the meadow was gold instead of white.

From the meadow, the trail meandered back into the forest and began a climb that would continue all the way to the point. After another mile, the trail merged with the Pohono Trail, which runs from Glacier Point, through Taft and Dewey Points, to the Wawona Tunnel.

After a good deal of climbing (mostly mild, with a few steep spots thrown in), I noticed the wind picking up and I took it as a sign that we were getting close. When we reached the point, I was struck by how different it looked without snow.

I walked to the edge and braced myself against a boulder to photograph the valley. The wind was blowing so hard, I could barely keep my eyes open and tears were streaking down my cheeks. Breathing was also difficult. Inhaling wasn't a problem, but exhaling was a different story. I found that yelling and hollering helped. The view was exhilarating.

Crocker Point was a short, downhill hike from Dewey Point. Two-thirds of the way there, M's foot began to hurt, so she turned back. The plan was for me to catch up with her after I visited Stanford.

The view at Crocker was still impressive, but not as spectacular as the view from Dewey.

From there, it was a steep, 400-foot descent to Stanford Point, named after Leland Stanford, the former California governor and cofounder of the Central Pacific Railroad, according to Richard Hartesveldt's Yosemite Valley Place Names. For the curious, Crocker Point was likely named after Charles Crocker, an associate of Stanford, and Dewey Point was named after Admiral George Dewey, the hero of the Spanish American War.

It was early afternoon when I started the return trip. As I reached Dewey Point, M radioed to say she had reached the split in the trail. Shortly after that, I lost reception. I was still two miles behind her, so I picked up the pace.

When I reached the trail head, it was 3:15 p.m. and the temperature was in the low forties. I expected to see M waiting for me, but she wasn't there. I tried the radio, but it still wasn't working. I checked the car and ventured down the road, but she was nowhere to be found.

Worry washed over me. Had the pain in her foot been too much? Had she strayed from the trail and gotten lost? Had she accidentally taken the other trail?

I dismissed the first two possibilities right away. If her foot had been hurting, she would have stopped and I would have stumbled upon her. As for straying off the trail, that just wasn't something M did. That meant she must have taken the other trail. It also meant she could either be backtracking towards me or heading towards Taft Point.

Unable to contact her to find out which way she was going, I decided to leave a note on the dashboard and retrace my steps on the trail to see if I could regain radio reception. After a quarter-mile, I did. M was okay.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"On the trail -- heading towards the trail head. I'm almost there," she replied through heavy static.

"You are?" I looked around, bewildered. "I think you're on a different trail."

I doubt she heard that last part because the radio cut out again.

I continued down the trail. A few minutes later, I met a family of four coming from Taft Point. They were only the third group I had seen all day. I asked if they had seen anybody matching M's description and the mom told me they had seen her heading towards Taft an hour earlier.

I thanked them and broke into a run. I sprinted by McGurk's cabin, through the meadow, and into the forest. As the trail began its ascent, I slowed, figuring all I was doing was wasting energy.

I was almost at the split when M and another hiker came around the bend. The hiker's name was Henry. M had run into him as he was coming from Taft Point and he had pointed her in the right direction.

An overwhelming sense of relief washed over me. The three of us hiked back to the trail head. Before parting ways, we thanked Henry for all of his help.

By now, the sun was setting and the temperature was dropping. As we drove back to the valley, we passed at least three or four dozen cars speeding towards Glacier Point. I didn't know why they were in such a hurry until we reached the Wawona Tunnel and saw the view.

Despite the excitement at the end, the hike to Dewey, Crocker, and Stanford Points was wonderful and I would highly recommend it to anybody visiting Yosemite.

You can find more photos from the hike at Flickr.

And now, to end this lengthy post, I leave you with this thirty-second video clip I took at Dewey Point. Please excuse the yelling in the beginning. That's just me trying to breathe.

Poem on my mind... "I'm Scared of It All" by Robert W. Service. The poem introduces Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke's One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey. Below are my two favorite verses...

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;
My rivers that flash into foam;
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,
My ice-fields agrind and aglare:
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom —
I know that I’m safer up there.

I’m scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear
The voice of my solitudes call!
We’re nothing but brute with a little veneer,
And nature is best after all.
There’s tumult and terror abroad in the street;
There’s menace and doom in the air;
I’ve got to get back to my thousand-mile beat;
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet;
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet;
Good-bye, for it’s safer up there.

You can read the entire poem on Wikisource.

It was a brisk September morning and the stream of students flowing to classes on campus was barely a trickle, just the way he liked it. He didn't like crowds. They made him nervous - correction - more nervous.

He was a tall, lanky kid of Indian descent. The small gold-framed glasses he wore gave him a studious look. The jet black hair that sat on his head like a double scoop of melted licorice ice cream didn't. He liked wearing white polo shirts under baggy blue sweaters. He also liked wearing pants that weren't two inches too short for his legs, but he didn't own any.

This was the third week of his freshman year in college and he was still trying to get a handle on things. His biggest problem had been getting to class on time. It wasn't a large school, but his schedule had conspired against him by placing his only back-to-back classes at opposite corners of campus.

He walked the first week and arrived to the second class five minutes late, drawing undesired attention to himself. He ran the second week and arrived on time, sweaty and out of breath, which only drew more undesired attention.

A friend suggested investing in a bicycle. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he purchased a secondhand beater advertised on a bulletin board in the student union.

Now, as he rode along the paved walkway, he was beginning to feel buyer's remorse. Actually, to say he rode is being too generous. The word suggests a certain steadiness of motion, a degree of control. What he was actually doing on the bike suggested nothing of the sort. For every intended foot of forward motion, there was an unintended inch or two of sideways motion. He didn't ride; he wobbled.

If the school newspaper kept track of such things, it might have described him as one of the best wobblers in university history. For all of his unpredictable maneuvering, he managed to stay on the bike, aided by the fact that his lower body acted like a giant paper clip. He also managed to keep the bike mostly upright with the help of some Shakira-caliber hip action.

What was most amazing, though, was that he never crashed into anybody. His wobbling was slow enough that people had time to jump out of the way, once they realized he was heading their way (a fact that wasn't necessarily apparent until the last horrifying second). It probably helped that he closed his eyes before every potential impact.

The wobbling was going surprisingly well until he reached a patch of grass next to the bike cage on the other side of campus. That's when it all went horribly wrong. As long as he had momentum, everything worked fine, but as soon as he slowed, it all went to weed.

The long legs that had clung so tightly to the beater couldn't untangle themselves fast enough as the bike began to topple. The hips that didn't lie tried to compensate, but there was no fighting gravity. The bicycle tipped ever so slowly and he gradually crashed to ground, hands still on the handles.

He laid there for a few seconds, blinking at the blades of grass in front of him, hoping to avoid any undesired attention, hoping no one noticed. For the most part, nobody did. People walked by without slowing or looking.

Only one guy stopped to help him up. The guy had noticed the wobbler as soon as he had come into view a few hundred feet away. Three weeks later, he would write a truth-inspired account about it all online for his own amusement.

(With emphasis on the "random" in "random curiosity", here is a silly tale with a beginning, middle, and that's about it. It's worth at least a chuckle or two. Enjoy!)

According to legend, before deregulation, there was only one goddess of electricity. Her name was Peggie and though she was only a minor deity in the pantheon of gods, the people adored her and worshipped her devoutly.

During the Puce Age of Deregulation (puce is roughly eighteen steps below gold), several gods were demoted. By dividing powers and responsibilities among a greater number of lesser gods, deregulators hoped to decrease deity unemployment while improving response time to prayers and pleas through competition.

Peggie took her demotion particularly hard. She had always been a fair and receptive goddess. She had never been greedy - asking for her own priestess and temple or requiring firstborns or virgins as sacrifices. She was quite content to be represented by a shared priestess in a common temple (as long as it had an unassuming statue of her somewhere smart) and only asked for a modest basket of lemons or limes once every three months. And even when the people failed to present a basket, she was never spiteful. She didn't stop electricity from flowing or summon swarms of Energizer bunnies.

That isn't to say she was a pushover. When displeased, she was known to make people extremely susceptible to static, which doesn't seem so bad until you've zapped yourself and your loved ones for several hours straight. That's when you realize a basket of fruit is a fair price to pay for not having to flinch every time you touch something or someone.

After Peggie left, a struggle for dominance in the dominion of electricity ensued. Gods offered more power and greater reliability for smaller and smaller sacrifices. Some offered free deity bobble heads for those who converted. Fighting between the gods was common and electrical surges were prevalent during this period.

Time passed and eventually equilibrium was restored. Where there was once one goddess of electricity, there were now three gods: Ronnie, Eddie, and Dookie. To keep the deregulators from demoting them, they formed a secret pact and promised not to undermine, annihilate, or pull the classic hand buzzer trick on one another. They also agreed to feign competition by asking for different quantities of lemons and limes (they had adopted Peggie's old ways) and covertly met at crochet club gatherings to evenly redistribute the fruit (cleverly hidden in balls of yarn).

1. No god is allowed to work more than eight hours a day.
2. Every god is entitled to full dental coverage and two weeks of leave a year for feasts and orgies.
3. Every god will deduct no less than two percent of his or her offerings to maintain mandatory membership in the union.

Fearing an increase in competition and an end to their secret arrangement, Ronnie and Eddie approached Afelicio to strike a deal. In exchange for the status quo, the gods of electricity promised to abide by the bylaws and provide the god of unions with one hundred pairs of crocheted slippers (gods have notoriously cold feet and wear through footwear quickly).

Before they left, the two gods also claimed the coveted day and night shifts, leaving Dookie with the most demanding shift of all... the swing shift - the time of day when people came home and needed tremendous amounts of electricity to cool or heat their dwellings and power their televisions and game machines.

And where was the future swing shift god of electricity during these proceedings? Why, he was sitting in a dental chair, having his teeth whitened, as it was now fully covered by his new union-mandated benefits.

That evening, when he heard the news, Dookie was furious. He had received the short straw and it was either that or no straw at all, so he fumed, gritted his newly brightened teeth, and started working his yarn and crochet hook furiously.

By morning, thirty-three pairs of slippers lay at his feet. Ronnie and Eddie let Dookie sleep in, neither one wanting to wake and tell him he still had one more pair to go.

Poem on my mind... "The Worriers' Guild" by Philip F. Deaver, as heard on The Writer's Almanac.

The Worriers' Guild

Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers' Guild,
and I'll be there.
The problems of Earth are
to be discussed
at length
end to end
for five days
end to end
with 1100 countries represented
all with an equal voice
some wearing turbans and smocks
and all the men will speak
and the women
with or without notes
in 38 languages
and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
the squirrels will be
chattering and scampering
directionless throughout the town
because
they aren't organized yet.

Poem on my mind... "The Art of Disappearing" by Naomi Shihab Nye, as heard on The Writer's Almanac...

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

On Monday, I heard the following poem on The Writer's Almanac. Leo Dangel wrote it and it's called "Closing in on the Harvest".

Closing in on the Harvest

No one could stop him.
A bad heart, he still
worked in the field
and said he would die
on the tractor.
Out on the Super-M
picking corn, somehow
he got off, though,
and sat on the ground,
leaning against the tire,
where we found him.
His eyes were wide open,
looking mean as hell,
like when he was alive
and chores weren't done,
but his hand
lay on his chest, gentle,
making us think
he was pledging something.
We could smell
the dry wind.
The tractor radio was on
to the World Series—
Cardinals 7, Yankees 5,
Bob Gibson on the mound,
one out to go—
the steel corn wagon
was not quite full.

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo (which I'm officially doing) and NaBloPoMo (which I'm unofficially attempting). I heard about National Blog Posting Month from Elkit. The challenge is pretty straightforward: post at least one entry a day during November. I'm going to give it a try despite knowing full well that every word that appears here this month is one less word in my NaNo novel. At the end of this sentence, my novel-to-be will have a word deficit of 82.

As usual, I started my novel with no idea of what I wanted to write or how I was going to write it once I had an idea. Luckily, that technicality didn’t stop me from reaching my first day goal of 2,000 words. Below the fold is an excerpt from today's effort...

Last Friday, I heard Garrison Keillor, on his Writer's Almanac, read a poem by Robert Pinsky in honor of Pinsky's birthday. It's called "Samurai Song" and I post it here so I won't lose it.

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

North Korea, watch
how Typhoon Sanctions threatens
like a flagging storm

The following is the result of riding the bus and reading Pratchett on another rainy day...

And the rain fell. So much had fallen for so long that most people believed they would never see the sun again. The more foolish ones assumed the bad weather would disappear with the changing of the seasons, but that hadn't happened at all. The icy block of winter had simply given way to the soggy lump of spring.

The world was dripping wet. What it didn't need was more rain. What it wanted was a quick spin in the planetary dryer (with electronic moisture control to prevent shrinking) or, at the very least, a good toweling off. But as usual, it wasn't going to get what it wanted. And the rain continued to fall.

Write what you know. It's the one piece of advice every aspiring writer learns. That means if you're Raechel Ray, you write about cooking. If you're Bode Miller, you write about winning Olympic medals partying. And if you're me, you write about missing the train, which, by the way, is way cooler than cooking or partying.

If I ever write a series of novels, every adventure will begin with the main character missing some form of public transportation. Of course, this statement is based on the bold assumption that I'll write X number of novels where X is an integer greater than zero.

As I've learned from missing many trains and buses, strange things happen during those unexpected fifteen minutes of free time before the next train or bus arrives. To support this statement, I offer the following, rather lengthy episode as evidence...

He shivers as he comes around the side of the house. The morning is cold. The grass of the soccer field across the street, which doubles as a detention basin during the rainy season, is a frosty white. He takes care to avoid the diseased rose bush and places his socked and sandaled feet on the stepping-stones that provide a clear path between the dying groundcover and thriving weeds the neighborhood landscapers "maintain".

He stops in front of the telephone box framed in the wall. With his numb fingers, he successfully removes the two sheet metal screws holding the metal cover in place and stuffs them in his pocket. He then pries the cover loose using his Stanley multi-bit screwdriver and sets it on the ground.

He stares at the assortment of colored wires running rampant inside the box. They tangle and twist, but all terminate at the mysterious gray box within the telephone box. He doesn't know what purpose they serve except for the black one. It powers the gray box.

Forgetting the mess of wires, he focuses on the task he set out to do. He opens the inner box and gawps at the collection of controls in front of him. In the upper left corner is a liquid crystal display. Next to it are four pink buttons. Below these is a large programming dial with two-dozen labeled options. At the very bottom of the box is a slide switch.

He sets the screwdriver on top of the telephone box, rubs his frozen hands together and steadies himself to program the box. Feeling up to the task, he exhales and accidentally steams up his glasses, temporarily obscuring his vision. A frustrated expression crosses his face as he impatiently waits for his glasses to clear.

He then begins the furious sequence of dial turning, button pressing and display reading. Set day, hour, minute. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday: Off. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: On. He forgets the cold and the numbness as he concentrates. Zone 1 and 2: 0. Zone 3: 5. Start time: 10:00 AM. He then runs through the sequence again for good measure. It's set correctly, he thinks. He gives a sigh of relief, turns the dial to Auto, closes the gray box and replaces the metal cover.

He returns the way he came, comforted in the knowledge that the backyard drip system will come on automatically and water the plants during this dry period of winter. Later, as he writes, he checks weather.com and learns that showers are forecasted for the weekend. He kicks himself and braces himself for a repeat of the nerve-wracking experience tomorrow morning.

August 15, 2002

Yesterday, three blocks of housing in the Smoggy Heights district were condemned to make way for the new Beantown Green.

The Green is part of Mayor D.C. Stone's attempt to create a buffer between the town's quiet residential neighborhoods and its noisier industrial sector.

"In our eagerness to meet the demand of developers, we surrendered our town's precious open space. We never intended for smokestacks and swing sets to be so close together. Today, we mean to right that wrong. True, a thousand residents will be displaced, but with the development of high density housing in the wealthier Blue Sky District, I promise that they'll have new homes next month or my name isn't Daniel Cedric Stone."

Within hours of the mayor's announcement, residents were evacuated and demolition of the tenements began.

August 15, 2005

Yesterday, in a shocking reversal of Mayor D.C. Stone's environmental policy, the Beantown Green, established three years ago, was cleared to make way for the Smoggy Heights Shopping District.

"Our citizens need places to shop. Everytime a Beanie buys products from neighboring communities, Beantown suffers. And while trees offer plenty in the way of beauty and shade, they offer little in the way of boutiques and sales tax revenues. True, many trees will be displaced, but with the development of the Beantown Greenlet in the Blue Sky District, I promise that a percentage will be replanted or my name isn't Daniel Cedric Stone."

Within hours of the mayor's announcement, trees were uprooted and construction of the strip malls began.

October 12, 2005

After a two-month investigation, local reporters discovered records revealing that Mayor Stone's given name isn't actually Daniel Cedric, but is in fact Dolphin Charisma. Contrary to his published biography, he was not born and raised in Beantown, but was born in a lime green VW Van and raised in a commune on the outskirts of Berkeley, California.

A new investigation has begun to learn the exact whereabouts of the relocated residents and trees of Smoggy Heights.

This was inspired by actual simulated events that occurred during last night's SimCity 4 session.

The following is practice for NaNoWriMo, which begins in twenty-six days.

The sun rose over the sea of skyscrapers and gave the smog an attractive tint. The wind picked up and caused litter cyclones. In an unusual convergence of corporate, municipal and natural forces, a fast food chain paid the city to sponsor the swirling trash at its busiest intersections.

On a particularly gusty corner, a pair of legs, clothed in oversized cargo pants (with precise rips), trudged through a tornado of chicken sandwich boxes and large soda cups. The legs belonged to Lenny, who, once he removed the cheeseburger wrapper (and cheese) from his face, looked far from loving it.

He rushed, in a leisurely sort of way, into one of the high rise buildings. With determination, he casually strolled through the lobby, past the empty security desk, to the elevators and pressed the call button. In two heartbeats, a bell chimed and one of the elevators opened. Lenny stepped in and pulled a post-it note and red pen from one of his baggy pockets.

This morning, he was dressed sloppily, as he was every morning. His coworkers attributed his appearance to laziness, but he knew better. He had to wake an hour early to look like he just woke up. His shoes were untied and his hair was uncombed. More accurately, his hair appeared uncombed. In truth, it took hairspray and enough saliva to lick thirty envelopes to make the cowlicks stay. He took great care not to shave and made sure to leave most of his shirt untucked. A deliberately hastily made peanut butter sandwich threatened to escape from his strategically unzipped backpack. Were one to notice his unusual attention to carelessness, one would have known Lenny's true nature. He was anally apathetic.

He pressed the button for Floor 108 and tried his best to slouch properly. He glanced at his reflection in the silver elevator wall and gave himself a disapproving look. He shook himself to loosen his muscles and tried again. After two more shakes, he felt sufficiently slouchy. As the elevator began its ascent, he eagerly practiced an expression of sheer boredom.

The elevator chimed at the second floor, the doors opened and another man entered. He was in his early thirties, nearly the same age as Lenny, but was clean-shaven and had slicked back, saliva-free hair. He carried a briefcase and was primly dressed in a pressed blue pinstripe suit. His tie had tiny elephants and donkeys on it. The animals were shown in various positions that suggested the owner of the tie wasn't a fan of a certain two-party system. He nodded at Lenny and pulled a red pen and post-it note from his jacket pocket.

"Lenny."

"George."

"Ready?"

"Ready."

They leaned against the sides of the car with pens poised over their post-it notes. The doors closed and the elevator accelerated upward. As people entered and pressed buttons, both men glanced at the lighted button, intently scanned their scraps of paper, and occasionally made marks.

As the car climbed, the tension between the two seemed to mount. George looked grim while Lenny aggressively tried to appear unaffected.

At the 94th floor, a senior executive entered. Lenny recognized the man, shifted and assumed his game face. George glanced at Lenny and immediately knew something was up. It was never a good sign or a comfortable sight to see Lenny manage an expression of nervous boredom. He knew Lenny was close, but he was close, too. It all depended on what the man did next.

They watched with anticipation as the executive's finger zeroed in on a button. 98? 101? 104? The finger hovered over 104 for a second and Lenny let slip a squeak.

Then the man pressed 103. Lenny gaped, but quickly covered his shock by gaping nonchalantly.

George scanned his post-it note feverishly. With a shout, he marked it and waved it wildly in the air.

"Bingo!"

On the edge of the little town of Beansville, there used to be a cafe that sold the best coffee in the entire county. People from near and far would come for a cup of joe. Some folks took such a liking to it that they named their firstborn Joe. It was that good.

To get a cup of coffee at The Old Cafe was an ordinary thing. All a person needed to do was walk in and order one. Joseph, who regulars called Old Joe to differentiate from other Joes, would pour the hot brew, give it to the customer, ring it up on the register and take payment, usually a quarter a cup. Customers who wanted to add milk or sugar (typically the ones not from around those parts) could help themselves. The process was simple and fast.

Then one day, Old Joe passed away and his brother, Aidan, took over. Now, Aidan knew nothing of the coffee business, but had an MBA and figured that those three letters would be enough to fill his brother's shoes. He had Big Ideas.

First, he moved The Old Cafe to a bigger space in the center of town. "It will revitalize Beansville by drawing in the crowds, which will bring more business," he said.

Then, he gave the place a bigger name. "It needs a name that means something. From this day forth, The Old Cafe will be known as Customer Service Cafe!"

Finally, to go with the new name, he revamped the whole ordering process. "The way people get their coffee is antiquated. I'm going to revolutionize the way folks get a cup of joe. And while I'm at it, from now on, I'm calling it a cup of aidan!"

To get a cup of aidan at Customer Service Cafe was no ordinary thing. A person had to stand in line to order one. Jacob, Aidan's son, would complete an electronic form specifying the cup size, whether or not to add milk and/or sugar and the cup number. The customer then took the printed order slip to a second line where Aidan would exchange the slip and payment (now a dollar a cup) for a receipt and an appropriately numbered cup. The person then stood in a third line to hand the receipt and cup to Madison, Aidan's wife, who would look up the cup number in the database and fill the order. It was most certainly a revolutionary process. Antiquated expediency gave way to innovative mistakes and slower service.

Word soon spread about the legendary lines at Customer Service Cafe, now referred to as Queue Cup by grumpy locals. Folks from all over the county flocked to see the spectacle. To drum up tourism, the chamber of commerce claimed the lines were "longer and livelier than the ones in Disneyland!" Of course, with the influx of onlookers, demand for services and items, namely coffee, rose.

Competing cafes and coffee carts started sprouting up like Starbucksia, a common weed found in most towns. Places like Instant Joe, Coffee Now! and The No Wait Bistro and Waffle House started drawing away customers from Aidan's lines and soon forced him to sell the shop to Emma, Old Joe's only daughter, who had recently graduated from college.

She gave Customer Service Cafe an extreme makeover, which mainly involved putting things back the way they were and taking a sledgehammer to the neon sign outside. With time and hard work, she restored the reputation of The Old Cafe for fast service and the best coffee in the county.

(Inspired by an actual "revolutionary" non-coffee-related event.)

Random and useless trivia (my favorite type): In 1880, Joseph and Emma were the sixth most popular names for babies. In 2004, Aidan and Madison were the second most popular names. Emma topped the girls' list, but Joseph had fallen to 24th for the boys.

Traffic was light as he drove north one cloudy weekday morning. He cruised along the highway in his tan sedan and listened to classical music on the radio to ease the tension that built whenever he sat behind the wheel. He lost himself in the sounds of a string quartet.

As the scenery and miles flowed by, he found himself creeping up on a cherry red Mini in the fast lane, one lane to his left. On this day, "fast" meant five miles below the speed limit. It was as though the Mini was a bright red fish on the end of an invisible line that he was reeling in slowly.

His sedan and the Mini were soon side by side. He was sailing by when the Mini began drifting into his lane. He checked his mirror and veered to the right, barely avoiding the collision. The Mini corrected abruptly and angled back to its own lane. He lifted his foot off the accelerator and allowed the Mini to pass him. As it did, he glanced over at the driver.

Staring back at him was the oldest, tiniest, most startled Asian woman he had ever seen. She looked frail and wore glasses with frames the size of her car's headlights. The bottom rims were barely clearing the steering wheel. Considering her white hair and wrinkles, he guessed she was nearly 75, but with his tendency to guess low, she was probably closer to 125. If his great-grandmother had ever driven a vehicle, he imagined she would look very similar to the shocked woman looking his direction.

The vision of it all made him laugh and he was still playing the close collision in his head as the Mini pulled ahead and began drifting into his lane again. With the lane change nearly complete, it occurred to her to signal. She allowed her flasher to blink twice before turning it off.

He shook his head and turned up the soothing voice of Hoyt Smith announcing the next orchestral piece. He couldn't wait for tomorrow when he could be back on the train and free from the madness.

Thanks to a little comment coaxing from fling, I've decided to give the Punchbowl Meme a go. It asks that you write a four-line poem where the first and third lines read "Turd in a punchbowl". The second and fourth lines can be about anything, but they must rhyme. Here is my attempt...

Turd in a punchbowl
One cup won't make you sick
Turd in a punchbowl
But two might do the trick

Turd in a punchbowl
With three you're on a roll
Turd in a punchbowl
If barfing is your goal

Can't you just see this on a bathroom plaque (in somebody else's house)? The words would be in cursive and there would be an illustration with puffy clouds, blue sky, a bird and a punchbowl.

He finished the California roll, making sure to completely submerge it in the bowl of wasabi and soy sauce before consuming it whole. His nose was still stinging and he was on the verge of tears as he drank the last of the hot tea. He held the cup and sat completely still, waiting for the nasal sensations to pass, putting on a brave face for the petite waitress slowly circling him, her lone customer, like a vulture.

He tried to ignore her, letting his eyes wander around the room, the walls of which were painted bright red. White speakers hung in the corners from the ceiling. Jazz music played throughout the little Japanese restaurant. After a moment, he set the cup down on the yellow table, gathered his belongings and stood to leave. He barely escaped unharmed as the waitress swooped in and cleared the table with blinding speed.

Once outside, he took a deep breath. It was the first Friday of November and a beautiful day. The blue sky and warm temperature betrayed any sense of autumn. He daydreamed about finding a peaceful park bench where he could write away the afternoon, be a few words closer to finishing his novel, a simple story by a simple engineer.

What a perfect way to spend the day, he thought, as he walked back to work. It was tempting, so tempting that he promised not to look at any of the benches he passed along the way. He doubted he could resist their calls to sit and stay awhile.

So, he returned to work with his head down, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, despite the warmth, and eyes focused on the sidewalk in front of him. Yet, as fate would have it, there was a noise as he passed the last bench of the last park. Curiosity got the better of him. He looked.

Whatever caused the sound was gone. All he saw was an old, homeless man sitting on the bench, a grocery cart full of possessions parked next to him. He wore torn black jeans, old black boots and a heavy, dark blue ski jacket with a rip in the left shoulder. A dark green skullcap covered his head. His beard was full and gray and his skin was shades of pink with brown smudges.

He sat hunched over a dilapidated notebook, furiously scribbling with a generic black pen. A stack of worn notebooks sat next to him. They were warped and muddied, the pages discolored, their edges frayed.

He wondered what the old man was writing. Was he doodling? Was he recording his daily observations? Or was he, perhaps, finishing the last pages of the next great American novel?

That would be something, he thought, as he neared the corner, the man almost out of sight. Waiting for the light to change, he shook his head and laughed at himself. He was always coming up with the most cliched and ridiculous notions. It could never happen in real life. Only in fairy tales could the ugly beast become the handsome prince or the simple engineer become the brilliant writer.

Before crossing, he took one last glimpse back. In a quiet park, on a wooden bench, sat an old, homeless man pouring his thoughts onto pages the same color as the leaves at his feet. Wouldn't that be something, though, if beyond all appearances, the man was the next great American author? He let the fantasy tickle his brain all the way to the office.

A day passes
I leave a message
You don't call

A day passes
You don't call

A day passes
You don't call

A day passes
I leave a message
You don't call

Patience running low
Sitting in limbo
I don't think we
Were meant to be

I don't want to stalk
But we need to talk
Oh, claim adjuster!
Where are you?

Somewhere between my second and third cups of coffee, I passed the 25,000-word mark. The mystical milestone of 33,000 words isn't so far away. Here is a slice...

He couldn't seem to look away. She wore a blue collared shirt, black slacks and a green apron. He conjectured it was a uniform, since the guy next to her wore the exact same outfit, which could have also meant they were having a really embarrassing day or were one of those couples who strangely enjoyed dressing alike.

Tigg said the name silently, allowing his lips to form the word. It sounded pretty in his head. He then realized she was looking at him. Had she seen him say her name? Hadn't he been taught it was rude to read with his mouth open?

It's fine to create a hero who seeks the One. It's cruel to create a world for said hero and populate it with only the wrong ones. It's something I'm toying with as my story slowly progresses. I finally broke the 10,000-word mark yesterday. It's amazing (and scary) how much I can write without a real plot.

I have been unusually cruel to my characters, placing them in awkward situations, making them uncomfortable and causing them to squirm. It's similar to the way people mistreat their Sims by removing all of the toilets.

My main character, who remains unnamed and known only as MC (main character), has suffered the most. I almost wish I hadn't placed so much of myself in him. Almost. Anyway, here is another snippet from "Huh?"...

MC walked into the cafe, surveyed the room from the door and immediately spotted SK (sidekick), who was sitting on the plastic-covered sofa and browsing a magazine. He glanced over at the corner table where She normally sat, but was disappointed to see she wasn't there. An unknown man, who would be too much trouble to describe, occupied her chair instead.

He gave a nod to Fred, who was sporting a blue goatee and orange dreadlocks. Fred nodded in return and casually served up a cup of steaming hot coffee like it was a shuffleboard weight. The brown cup and saucer slowly rotated as it slid smoothly across the waxed counter and onto the floor, shattering upon impact. Nobody looked up.

Fred smiled sheepishly and gingerly carried the next cup over to the coffee table, taking great pains to place it on a coaster. MC thanked him and flopped himself down on the sofa beside SK.

Gazing thoughtfully out the large picture window, he asked, "Don't you wish the writer would give us more meaningful lines of dialogue?"

SK took a sip of his chai soy latte and reluctantly looked up from his magazine, which he read strictly for the articles. He lazily stared out the window, paused for effect and replied, "Nah. Who wants to hear us pontificate or go on about our angst? I say, give us more action! Give us more smut!"

Let me tell the story this way, with what I know of that night and the names changed to amuse myself. This is the brief and uneventful tale of Joe and May. Consider it a two-minute mystery.

May is a waitress at a billiards club. Joe is a guy from out of town. He and a group of friends enter the club to shoot some pool.

Joe goes up to May to reserve a table. She asks for his name and says she will call him when the next one is available.

A few minutes later, she sets them up at a table by the DJ near the front door. The group plays for a couple of hours and when they finish, Joe and two others go to the register to pay.

As May hands back his driver's license, she smiles and says, "Thank you, Joe." The other two guys give him a look. Joe shrugs and mouths, "What?"

Back around the table, the group hangs out a few minutes longer. May passes by one last time and when Joe spots her, she smiles. The others rib him on and tell him that she is sending him signals. He replies that she is only being friendly and nothing more.

They try coaxing him into talking with her, but Joe doesn't believe them and dismisses the notion. With the hour growing late, the group finally leaves the club.

Who read the signals correctly, Joe or his friends? Was Joe being realistic or a clueless shmoe? More importantly, can anyone really tell anything from a two-hundred word story?

Yesterday's oneword (a site I wrote about a while back) was pitch, which made me think of baseball and resulted in the following minute-long effort...

It isn't the way you throw
It's the way you pitch
Take the ball and hold it so
Hidden behind your glove
With your fingers like this
Pull back your arm and
Then hurl it forward
Releasing the ball
Remember
It's all about timing

This is also known as poetry in sixty seconds or fastball poetry.

I only meant to whisper, now I only want to hide.
Let some silence fill the time and let the words fade away.
If this journal is a song, it's played pianissimo.
An obscure etude amongst these masterful symphonies.

As an apology to The Bachelorette's Ryan for deriding his poetic abilities in other places, I have written a poem. The wonderful difference is that mine is not being read on national television.

Is this a mountain?
Is this a well?
From where I stand
I cannot tell

Is this a whisper?
Is this a yell?
For when I speak
I cannot tell

Something is said
Nothing is heard
Searching for wisdom
In silence and words

This sinking feeling
Coming as you leave
Only for a while
Feeling like forever

Being there with you
Listening, laughing
Those little moments
Always made me smile

I vowed to myself
I would not be hurt
I would stay untouched
By the thought of you

Oh, but here I am
Breaking my promise
Finding myself with
This sinking feeling

All of us wait, waiting, waiting
The soil and streams and plants and trees
Rooftops and sidewalks and pavement
Expecting, anticipating

Gray clouds slowly gather above
Hover ever so patiently
Hoping for the coming command
To let go, to release, to rain

The dark skies give way to the morning light. Houses and buildings seem to float by. Streetlights glow brightly and trees sway slightly in the gentle breeze. The rhythm and hum of the train is quiet and steady.

Passengers pass the time in relative silence. Some read novels or the morning edition, some sip coffee, others take in the view and a few nap peacefully as the train travels to San Francisco.