Uh Huh, Yep, and That's How

I heard some of my favorite French words while laying face down on a towel on the hard-scrabble sand (does sand get hard-scrabble) of a beach in John Pennekamp (sp?) State Park
Sur la plage
Rien

And my other favorite French floated through my head and I wished it all spoken by this family wherever they were from and wherever they were going
La piscine
En plein-air
Hypermarché
Jamais

I'm surprised I didn't think about chouette at the time, but am now

I like how easy less common characters are on my phone

And I love its sense of what I meant when I head off somewhere new

Courtesy and plain and all kinds of help

I have this new crowd-sourcing app of sorts that's going to come in handy for writing

First up is something about a tomato that I'll share soon

And an image and text tool, too, that will be gobs of useful

I'm reading a lot

I'm doing a lot

This weather is unreal and I wish I could keep it going a couple weeks longer

Deletions, selections, false croppings, and false crops

A V in wood and a cross bar -- more wood -- and a pad and a non-skid stopper of a thing

I want to be better at languages

Life has made me better with geography, but I'm still far from good

Acceptable, pride-inspiring, and a third thing

The night is dragging on

The moon drags the oceans around

It misses them

To steel cores slowly dance in molten everything

Ferris wheels

Cotton candy

Funnel cake

Can can, can do

We're so so proud of all the whys and what-fors

What fits is what sits

And orders from the breakfast menu

Because 11am comes at the same time this time of year

Now skedaddle

Location:Harbor Dr,Key Largo,United States

I Watched, Looked at, and Read So Many Funny Things Tonight

The weather was great

I watched, looked at, and read heart-warming things, too

Fish were caught at the right times

I ate food, I drank drinks

The day came and the day went

There were birds and other things, too

Location:Marina Ave,Key Largo,United States

Some Kind of Strange Reading Thing Going On

Reading "I Remember" on the plane last night -- I'd re-read sections and sentences would now be there that weren't there before.

Now reading a science fiction short story and a "seaweed crackers that weren't to her taste" became a "sweet crackers that weren't to her taste" on re-reading. Funnily, the seaweed crackers made perfect sense to me -- more than the sweet crackers.

Maybe this problem will go away as I sink into a better vacation pace.

Location:Bahia Ave,Key Largo,United States

En Route (for You)

How about Latin?
Curving lanes, humid streetlights
The moon overhead

Location:FL-821 S,Three Lakes,United States

The Last Girls Next Door (and Possibly at the End of the Universe)

The "Rachel" was a populard hairstyle

Her real name was Jennifer

You see how that works? The haircut wasn't a girl

The sisters and mothers problem is similar -- I'm talking about contemporary challenges in artificial sense-making here

Which is a step (for some people) in artificial intelligence-making

And I really think that's all you need to highlight the dead end

People build new roads in Northern Virginia all the time

Tax breaks for developers; sundry other economic incentives; progress, progress, progress

Doesn't happen by accident

Simile, metaphor, conciept (sp?), synechdoty (sp??)

Rainfall is among the weather

Detection was on the table

Let's continue

As you were

Location:N Upton St,Sterling,United States

There Re Things You Allow

There are things that are continuous

There are things you try again later

And later still

Please try again later and later

There are expectations and night-time

There can be photos with high-tech flashes nothing like what you grew up with

You can take photos with any of your fingers at just about any time

On land, in the air, even underwater

Expectations, like I said earlier

+++

The ghost story is still working its way through my head and is on the way to my fingers

If I didn't have to get up at a reasonable hour I might give it a first go

But maybe that'll be tomorrow

+++

I almost put in a senseless picture

Donuts, an artist's rendering of a hyper-sonic glider, smurf hats, word bubbles, animé sports action shot, spelltower screenshot, the coast of Maine, iBook screenshots

That's what I had going

None of them right now

+++

In a dream last night I had a revolver that wouldn't shoot fast enough

I don't know why I kept being alive to notice it wasn't shooting fast enough

It kept on switching from the kind with a hammer to the kind without and back

It was the snub-nose-ish police kind

There were other details and other dreams I don't remember now

But this is still far more than I usually remember

And I tend to hate on dreams in poems

I know. I'm small-minded about some things and should work on it

+++

I'm looking forward to pulling a real late night within the next seven days

Is reportage a word?

I guess so

+++

I wish you were there when Buck Downs did this reading at Ruthless Grip in its Dupont Circle days and he tapped the mic and said

Is this thing on

And then he was out

He'd started by singing as he walked up to the front of the room

Singing without the mic

It was all wonderful

The window behind him was so dark

I must've been sitting on the floor and looking upward to the sky

I don't remember the streetlights, but they must've been there

Keep on going

Location:Fredricksburg, VA

Year Forty, Day Two

Good stuff

Various stuff

Tired

Despite what you've heard, math is, in fact, not hard.

Despite what you've heard, a bunch of other stuff.

What's the best choice of cleanser vis-a-vis a slate that is less than clean?

The opposite of laconic can be called "the opposite of laconic," for instance.

Is "Lacanic" an adjective grad students would throw around in the mid- to late-90s?

It seems like it might have been a missed opportunity

It seems like it might only be funny to me and only right now

Holy shit! Talking eggs!

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

The Top Everything of Everything

Here You Go (Again)

That sounds right vs. that's right

Things get crushed all the time

Your capacity to reduce things plus your will to survive

There are children in countries all around the world

Plague hides in the dirt, but so does oxygen

There are earth worms and rocks and crushed bits of shell

Shale, sediment, layers, diversity, deeper and deeper

Toil on about the center of the Earth

Dream about twin iron cores locked in orbit

Think about the sun and the birth of plants

Keep up a healthy fascination with grass

Go on to think about things you never think about

Write them down, add instructions, edit, proofread, set to simmer

Cowboy coffee

Late fall air

Late fall sunshine

Forget the importance of seeking shade that was all summer

Forget about most insects

How long do most spiders live anyway?

What is a natural death?

I've recently decided I'm going to live longer than I thought

I really love the concept of a running average -- like when you are taking a running 6-month average of whatever

I really like spreadsheets, too

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

I'm Writing a Scary Story

This is not the right way to park Mr. Blue SUV from Illinois

I wanted to key your car, but I didn't

I'm writing a scary story, but I go to work all day and don't talk about it

It has ghosts or maybe it is just one ghost everywhere (like photons) but day in and day out I'm not working through the details

The details will work themselves out like math, I tell myself as I drive south on 95

The same when I'm driving north

There will be a car accident, a farm, and all kinds of words

I will write this down soon and then it'll be done

I won't invent science fiction in the process, but I will pack for a trip to Florida

Florida is like a horror story, but am entire state

I hope nobody gets shot while we are there, but that's asking a lot

Michigan is a "right to work" state now?

Those are scare quotes and that is scary, too

I hear there were golden days when we had an actual conservative party in America

Those are the same golden days when there were only white people in your school

Headsup, those days sucked

There were ZERO apps in the App Store

There was no Internet

People died all the time from stupid shit

Nowadays you only die if you live in Florida and play your music too loud at 7-11 so some guy shoots you

Now is so cool

I can't wait for tomorrow -- I live I a right to tomorrow state

Location:W Pratt St,Baltimore,United States

Reading Chris Toll's "Stack Overflow at Line 1"

Reading Chris Toll's "Stack Overflow at Line 1" (which is in the online Magic Octopus magazine and you can read it here but I know it is one of his printed books some place, maybe "Life on Earth"?) and (a) man, you were really cooking at the end, friend, the sentence rhythms were breaking into a new place and (b) this is a really gorgeous one, I'm glad I bumped into it unexpectedly this Saturday morning, and (c) it has TWO sword moments (an individual cutlass for one character and then a pair of swords for a second) which makes me think of Adam Robinson asking "Chris, do we need this second pair of guns in this one? Could we just go with the first?" but this time it's swords and (d) all of this makes me smile and I think I'm in the long and final stage of missing you that comes with a lot more smiles and golden memories and the tears are quiet and sniffly and a lot less "WTF, I don't believe you're gone."

You Can Have All These Things

Or you can have all these other things

And you can have yet all these other things

I want this to be to the tune of Madonna's "Get Into the Groove" but

a) I've been there before, and

b) It just isn't gonna work on this one

Then a whole bunch of one-liners walked into a bar and I forgot all the choices

Location:Blue Heron Farm Rd,Pittsboro,United States

When I Have Cell Service

More likely when I have wireless access

When I have a location

When I'm sitting up in bed

A bed vs. bed, actually

Some whens now and some whens to come

When everything is unexpected and yet just like it should be

Right places, worn surfaces, warm spaces, openings

A sports analogy should go right here

Something about some latest fashion should go here

Stand a whole bunch of things in opposition to better see exactly where you are

Or put a quarter next to it

When I have a location

Location:Broken Tree Rd,Greensboro,United States