response 130 of 178:

May 14 15:50 UTC 2001

in fact.

response 132 of 178:

Feb 6 00:05 UTC 2002

Avoiding the agglutinative personality of the crowd,
I sidle along a back street
Seeking the erzatz inspiration of some eponymous deity.
Half blinded by the tearing rain
I notice a whore, drenched in the sudden downpour
Like a sort of ragged Virgin Mary huddled in a doorway
Watching this hallowed meretrix, I feel the muse's prick
And hurry home to write, the words tummbling from my pen
When I read what has been written,
I wonder that such indefatitigable bullshit
Should ever have come from me.

***********************
Julie's back.  Been really busy with other things.
I want to reestablish the rules here, though as I said before they are 
only cast in clay, not stone.  There are to be 5 to 8 pairs of words.  
Poets are supposed to use ALL the offered combinations and the poems 
are only supposed to be 5 to 16 lines in length.  Like I've said before 
I'm not picky but... Please try to stay close to the rules.  Otherwise, 
what's the point?

************************
New Word List
1. capable incompetant
2. blank musings
3. indifferent similarities
4. royal nobodies
5. sad joy
6. aluminum frustration

response 134 of 178:

Feb 6 07:57 UTC 2002

sahib?

sahib!

Paradox is the world I teach you today, sahib.
It is a glorious kingdom
where royal nobodies sit upon thrones of aluminum frustration,
and their sages are court fools babbling blank musings.
Troubadours and common gleeman alike sing songs of sad joy,
and wealth and poverty line the streets,
paved with golden and wooden coins from the east
etched with a parable on their third sides
speaking of indifferent similarities here.

response 136 of 178:

Feb 6 19:36 UTC 2002

"Watching this hallowed meretrix, I feel the muse's prick"

haha, excellent.  Was the pun intentional? 

response 138 of 178:

Feb 7 11:16 UTC 2002

Word list, please!

response 140 of 178:

Feb 8 04:52 UTC 2002

yes.  It would be unwise to break a near rhyme that happens to have a 
witty interpretation by a certain colloquialism.

Oh, beg your pardon, John, sorry.. it is my turn.  Here we are, as 
follows:

rich beggar
fragrant stench
delicious dogma
skillful quack
thoughtful ignorance
coordinated chaos
joyous damnation
stereophonic soliloquy

response 142 of 178:

Feb 8 15:21 UTC 2002

 It was not coincidence:
 It was the delicious dogma of the skillful quack
 that one rich kid was bad enough, but twins?
 Too much.
 So one was squirreled away
 (In the coordinated chaos of the birthing room)
 To the fragrant stench of the London streets,
 The joyous damnation of living among the common people
 nd raised in the love born of thoughtful ignorance.

 And yet, as the boys grew, their misery at their fates
 Rose above the streets of London --
 From Buckingham Palace to the Back Alleys --
 From the impoverished prince and the rich beggar -- 
 A stereophonic soliloquy of "Woe is me!"

 (From the back story of "The Prince and the Pauper" ;} )
 
 [Scribbled and reposted, I forgot one.]

response 144 of 178:

Feb 8 19:15 UTC 2002

oh my.  I might need to look those ones up too, just to know what they 
mean when they are used in verse.

response 146 of 178:

Feb 11 19:10 UTC 2002

I killed it. ={

response 148 of 178:

Feb 12 06:23 UTC 2002

Not terribly good, but fun to write...


Sitting at the coffee house, watching his pipe make dragons
I practice my spurious capnomancy and spin stories about them
Stealing bits of wisdom from maidens who then buy them back
With gems.
The jacket talks about gin and tonic and again I smell the effluvial quinine
Of British officers in India, and think of the treacle-flavored disintegration
Of the Empire on which the sun never set.  Until it did.
Grasshoppers lead one to another and I babble about tales of handmaids
And retired wives.
I am a devout heretic when it comes to their conversational patterns.
They follow me nonetheless.
Later I may talk about the woman who was frightened by ghosts
That turned her kylix into gelatinous ceramic
Or try to hard to bridge a gap between cyberpunk and folk song
By talking about yours trulyUs retrofitted pyrene.
Why do they let me?


(Words to follow)
{I swear Brighn picks his words the same way Lofting's good doctor picked
places to go}

response 150 of 178:

Feb 12 17:45 UTC 2002

Who is Lofting's good doctor, and how did he pick places to go?
I'm impressed, by the way. Only the last one -- retrofitted pyrene -- sounded
really forced. The rest worked their way in fairly well, considering my
Sadistic choices.

response 152 of 178:

Feb 13 05:09 UTC 2002

To brighn:  Nope, I'm gonna be stubborn, and make you look it up.
To morwen:  I've forgotten the source now, it was in something about Hecate,
who was his mother.  The reference seemed to be very obscure, and he wasn't
very MUCH recognized.

response 154 of 178:

Feb 13 07:13 UTC 2002

Hmmmm... my resident Hellenic Reconstructionism contact is unaware of Hekate
having children. Musaeus was not a Muse, but was connected to Them and to the
Oracles (being the son of Selene and, perhaps, Orpheus). Apollo (also
connected to Oracles) had Musagates [leader of the Muses] as an eponym. He's
unaware of anyone called Museo (which is actually the Italian word for
"museum," not surprisingly).
 
But, Greek mythology spans a long time. It sounds spurious, but I can't
disprove it without sources.