Poem for Thursday

Preludes for Prepared Piano 3: Sonnet for Hank Cinq
By Estill Pollack

Falstaff to London—in a public street, the King tells him
never come within ten miles of me again.

Back in his lodgings, a blue glass lamp near the window—
when he came back, the light was on the floor,
the heavy glass lampshade shattered,
higher order objects distributed, but the light still glowing.

Another part of the field, mort de ma vie, all is confounded,
all our ranks broke. God let him live to see his greatness fail,
to teach others how they should prepare.

When swing was king, dreamsville galactic all night jam,
Hercules tattoo, hello kitty sound check…

English archers pouring arrows into
a number of recurring metaphors, irresponsible
wanton, transform.

--------

Though I am always a bit sorry when summer vacation ends and the days start to get noticeably shorter, I am never sorry about the approach of autumn -- my favorite season -- and Halloween, my favorite holiday. (I like Purim a lot too, and it has a lot of similarities, but it's not like all my neighbors are celebrating it and there is something so much fun about so many people putting up Samhain decorations.) So I was having lunch at Lebanese Taverna with , and we discovered that in the empty Tower Records store, a Halloween Adventure place has opened, so of course I had to visit.


Big inflatable lawn decorations at Halloween Adventure.


Wouldn't you love to have one of these in your doorway?


Part of the inevitable Star Wars costume display.


Hats...


...and masks...


...and pirate wench costumes!


Plus more pirate paraphernalia, cutlasses, hooks, eye patches and all the rest.

Wrote three relatively redundant TrekToday articles (more on "World Enough and Time," more on Zachary Quinto that's pretty much exactly the same article from two days earlier, more on Shatner being bummed about Trek XI) and the rest of my day was concerned with kids and animals. First Adam was looking at animal conservation web sites and I discovered that the Monterey Bay Aquarium now has a white shark being rehabilitated after being caught in a fishing net...I wish I could see it! Plus we watched two PBS shows, Masters of the Arctic Ice -- in which the researchers studied polar bears and put a crittercam on a seal and a narwhal to see how they survive under the polar ice -- and Emperors of the Ice, about penguins. The crittercam was put on a penguin named Rodney, named after Rodney Dangerfield, and apparently he got no respect because they put the crittercam on him and he looked quite aggrieved. But the show ended unhappily, with hundreds of penguins dead from an iceberg collision, so Adam was upset.

tagged me for the meme where you list seven things about yourself: List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself. Tag seven people to do the same.

1. I have seen every episode of every Star Trek series, and until they became intolerably awful, I had read every one of Bantam, Ballantine and Pocket's Star Trek books.
2. I love salty stick pretzels with slightly burnt ends.
3. Before I had cats, I had parakeets.
4. I won a Jaws 3-D towel in a magazine contest that I later ruined in an incident involving chocolate mousse.
5. The only full sentence I can say in Yiddish is an insult involving bad words that my father's father taught me.
6. I can sing the entire score of Evita. Well, I know all the words, at least -- I would never claim that I can actually sing anything.
7. I have a huge collection of eraser animals. (Also Star Trek action figures, Barbie dolls, Tarot decks and many other things that have been well documented here already.)

I tag, hmm, I have no hope of remembering who already did this. Or whose journal is where these days. Who will forgive me for putting upon them? Umm, , , , , , , ?