Furball Assassin

Grey and black furball
With the heart of an assassin,
Stalks dangerous prey.
He attacks!
With vicious abandon.
And that is why
I’m wearing combat boots
In the house.

Musings On A Bird, Skeletonized By Ants

Author’s note: This is a performance script. Line breaks are breaths, bold or italics are emphasis, both are extra loud. This was one of my most popular pieces for performance.

Hello, Bird.
I see the heat was too much for you.
Not a glorious end to a glorious creature.
But the ants have fared well.
There is scarcely any flesh left on your fragile, hollow bones.
Did you have any dreams?
Did you know how great you had it,
Commanding flight at a mere whim?
Did you have a family?
Did you see little ones hatched.
Grow large and strong from your care,
And leave to grow little ones
Of their own?
I had dreams.
I have known flight.
I have been present at the birth
Of my little ones.
And I have watched them grow
Large and strong.
And I have watched them
Leave
And come back.
And leave
And come back.
And someday to leave
And not come back.
I had Dreams,
But now I merely dream.
Never Dream…
Don’t you dare have Dreams.
Dreams will dance along in front of you
Just out of reach.
Dreams will crush your soul
And tear out your heart,
And skip away, laughing merrily.
Much better to have mere dreams.
Mere dreams stand patiently waiting.
They say, “Here I am, come get me.”
Mere dreams are not major triumphs,
But they are not losses either.
And missing out will not leave you
Feeling like something inside you has died.
did you have friends?
Comrades, Brothers under the skin?
Do they miss you,
Or even notice you are gone?
Surely there is some member
Of your species
That knows, somehow
You are no longer there.

Opus the Poet

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Iterative design

I use a design process called “Iterative Design”. That is I make a design, then go back and look for mistakes before I freeze the design, or I make major changes and do a comparison to see which is better, then combine the best parts of both for the next iteration. This process grew out of “Trial and Error” which is an offshoot of “Cut And Try”. Anyway, that is the major reason why I take a completed design and make major changes or even start completely from scratch.

Of course some of the times I do that it’s because the design parameters were changed by factors beyond my control, as when the minivan donor vehicle became unavailable. That was an entire design that had to be scrapped, and started from scratch on the Pentastar lightweight replacement design. But the thing is I’m doing this because this is how I do things. Every so often I just click on “Start a new drawing” and start drawing a new design. Part of that is because I know I’ll never have access to the money or materials I need to build it, part is because if I stop creating I get antsy, and other psychological “issues” crop up. Fortunately I have two outlets for creating, this blog and planning the Sprint-T.

I have also been thinking about transcribing some of my poetry to the blog. Most of it is about 20 years old at this point, and the Y2K point-and-laugh in particular are a little dated (like Conan’s “Year Two Thousand” bits). But some are still pretty good if morbid, like “Musings On a Bird, Skeletonized By Ants”. Tell me what you think in the comments.

And it’s getting early in the AM and I have things to do tomorrow.