poetry » Missives From the Technocave

Tor Nørretranders on Permanent Reincarnation

Posted on 02.15.08 by Widge @ 10:59 pm

Tor Nørretranders, from the Edge's latest annual question, "What have you changed your mind about? Why?":

98 percent of the atoms in the body are replaced every year. 98 percent! Water molecules stays in your body for two weeks (and for an even shorter time in a hot climate), the atoms in your bones stays there for a few months. Some atoms stay for years. But almost not one single atom stay with you in your body from cradle to grave.

What is constant in you is not material. An average person takes in 1.5 ton of matter every year as food, drinks and oxygen. All this matter has to learn to be you. Every year. New atoms will have to learn to remember your childhood.

These numbers has been known for half a century or more, mostly from studies of radioactive isotopes. Physicist Richard Feynman said in 1955: "Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in your mind a year ago."

I love this. First of all, it's exactly the sentiment I was trying to get across in my poem, "The Stygian Depths of You and I and All." Secondly, "Last Week's Potatoes" is tremendous name for a band.

Filed under: General BS
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Watching You Succeed From a Distance

Posted on 05.11.07 by Widge @ 4:37 am

No One Wants to Grow Fur Anymore is not dead. In fact, here's the poem that closes the third book inside the book. That third book, What I Did On My Summer Vacation, is comprised of unreleased poems and outtakes, with a smidgen of new material. I wanted something new to close it out. And here it is, finally complete.

Hello.

From where I stand
I could lift one finger
and blot you out.

Were I to draw closer
it would take less effort
still.

Still,
when all is said and done, who
will have been the better thief?

Building ramparts from stone and wood,
or carving them from words and air,
either way, things are safer past the reach
of a single finger.

Safer for which of us,
I don't care to discuss.

There are merely moments,
adhering to the script, saluting your image.
Each stone, inscribed, says
just like every cell we've ever shed

–I'm in the wrong place
but you're not–

and we kaleidoscope between these
two vague locales
forever.

Forever and
always.

Always, the line never consummated.
Lovers of and in the mind.

The words turn into so many lovely colors,
all there to test what we have learned.

What we have learned.

Filed under: Projects
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Okay, Fine, So…Next Book

Posted on 01.15.06 by Widge @ 5:45 am

So it occurs to me that my original plan isn't really valid in light of my New Year's resolution.

Here was the original plan:

1. Get Sunday Before You published. Done.

2. Get it sold out. Working on it.

3. Reprint it and the out of print Love Letters in a single bound book along with a third "book's worth" of poems and lyrics entitled What I Did On My Summer Vacation. This would be the "outtakes" of the previous two books and all the remaining poetry I had that was worth a damn that was theretofore unpublished. Vacation would be book-only, to try and inspire folks to buy the thing.

Now that everything's going up online…there's no reason not to proceed and get it published. So therefore, as of now, my third bound book has the working title "Broken as Designed," a line from one of the songs and an album title I unfortunately never got to use. Once I get it organized, you'll get it up here and it'll be in the pipeline to get published.

In other news, the latest Something Else is now available here which kicks off the third season.

And the latest chapter of Overkill is up here as well.

Somebody asked what was going on over at the Internet Archive, and yes, I am putting things are they are finished over there as well as the audio page. If you like the stuff you've downloaded from here that's listed there, slap it a review up, would you? Every little bit helps.

P.S. The Lady Porphyre has the best line I've read in a week's time: "I'm in the wrong place, but you're not." It's pretty much a summary of the poetry I've written to date, in eight words. She's just that way.

Filed under: Projects
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