Zelda's Inferno: write a poem using either all short lines of seven or fewer syllables, or long lines of more than seven.

An optional wordlist to get started: empathy lugubrious pacification budding lilliputian empowerment book-learnin' reflection

upon reflection
it seemed that
she might not have
made the right decision
when she pulled out the gun

but there she was
and there was no going back
like driving over
a tire damage strip --

no backing up now
without getting torn up
so only go straight, don't know
like the zen master said

so she held her aim steady
finger on the trigger

in a minute she would see
how it all worked out

Happy Irish Pride Day! I don't have much use for St. Pat, but as I understand the history, the American celebration started as a defiance of anti-Irish bigotry. I'm all for defying bigotry. (Sometimes I wonder if Gay Pride week will end up the same way, that gay or straight we'll all take a day to wear pink and drink cosmos...)

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a writing exercise. Sort of recursive but fun.

Write a poem or series of poems in which you accomplish the following:

1. tell your secret name in the form of a series of riddles
2. provide the specific and articulable facts that lead to a reasonable suspicion that the universe is, from some perspective, beautiful
3. love your words
4. i mean, select twelve words at random from a newspaper, magazine, book, or street signs, and fall in love with them. Madly, deeply. Let them haunt your dreams. If those words reject you, contemplate suicide -- but do *not* carry it out. Just get righteously stinking drunk and slip into a months-long depression. (For extra credit, let your failed relationship with these words inspire major life changes.)
5. use iambic pentameter, or other meter than Iambe might dicate. (For extra credit, use a meter approved by Iambe's father, Pan.)
6. explain where the flowers are before they bud upon the tree
7. provide a schematic diagram of the starry dynamo of the machinery of night
8. Americans and Europeans see a man's face in the light and dark patches of the moon. The Japanese see a leaping rabbit. Give another interpretation.
9. weave a net to capture a dragon.
10. write the poem that will lure the dragon into the net
11. write the poem that will free the dragon from the net.
12. end your poem with a reflection of the glorious crystalline structure of space-time that will trigger the satori of at least one reader. if you can't manage that, end with a deliberate obfuscation so that everyone ends up equally confused.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a pantoum

I hear distant rumors of spring
in between the warnings of winter
and this is both fact and metaphor
as politicans threaten and promise

in between the warnings of winter
visions of despair and of hope
as politicians threaten and promise
the same cycle, again and again

visions of despair and of hope
flowers will come again
the same cycle, again and again
it is enough to make me believe

flowers will come again
and this is both fact and metaphor
it is enough to make me believe:
I hear distant rumors of spring

inspired by this morning's e-mail:

third-hand report of crocuses
is enough
to believe in spring

An open letter to:

Delegate Steven J. Deboy, Sr. steven.deboy@house.state.md.us
Delegate James E. Malone, Jr. james.malone@house.state.md.us
Senator Edward J. Kasemeyer edward.kasemeyer@senate.state.md.us
Governor Martin J. O'Malley http://www.governor.maryland.gov/mail/

Dear Delegates, Senator, and Governor:

For 42 years, the Maryland Summer Centers for Gifted Students have run programs that have enriched the lives of academically talented young people.

I was one of those kids. For four summers in the early 1980s, I got to attend the "Center for Advanced Studies" program held at Western Maryland College. It was at this academic summer camp that I took my first computer programming class, setting me on the road that led to a master's degree and a successful career. (Which, I might point out, has resulted in some significant tax payments to Maryland over the years!) I got to learn about philosophy and logic and psychology; a quarter-century later I still reflect on some of the things I learned those weeks.

From Psychology Today blogs, Paul J. Zak discusses the anatomy of con job:

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

Also see this video of Michael Shermer running the "pigeon drop" on the streets of Westwood, California:

Zelda's Inferno exercise: Connect those lines! Given two lines, write the poem that goes between them.

When the sun rose lowest on
The horizon, & the bitter winds blew, I
Settled my mind in for the winter
like a tree settling sap into its roots
The time of quiet withdrawal
of inward movement, of storing
To sleep
To await the message of spring

We await that message
But where now is the messenger?
Fleet-footed Hermes, when will you bring the word we await?
The word of Persephone's return?

But Hermes is delayed
For he is the God not only of messengers but of thieves

Caught in a caper up in the Pleiades
He's doing five to ten in the Olympic pen

And so we are left waiting for the word of spring
And the bastard child of Zeus was bested by life once more

Zelda's Inferno exercise: timed writing from phrases selected from the New York Times:

1) the radius of movement

anchored at one point, the here-now, the mind swings an arc, like a geometry student's compass constructing a perpendicular bisector, or like a dog running at the end of a rope tied to a tree.

2) his direct contribution

Zelda's inferno exercise: the poetry obstacle course, about mundane objects and actions

an empty plastic grocery bag floats on the harbor
muddy water flows down the storm sewer
the streetlight flickers, flickers, flickers, then comes steady on
my car tires slowly grind away into dust
a thousand things do not happen
the light bulb in the lamp on the mantle in my living room burns out
another junkie ODs in a back alley
another kid gets shot
another girl gets HIV
another baby is born
another man falls in love
another woman writes a poem