A rare double post

Posting this while it's still fresher in my head so there are two blog posts from me today. Do not worry, this is not a fall back to the olde days of Live Journal.

Last night at Writers' Block there was a Grab Bag Slam, in which poets were assigned a topic and had a week to write a poem with it and perform it in a slam.

Thirteen poets accepted the challenge and read them last night. It was a very impressive display of writing. The topics read about were Dance, Moisturizer, Yogurt, Doo-rag and many others. Colin was the last poet in the slam and ended up winning the night with a brilliant poem. His subject was Kool-Aid. I'm glad he won because there were three poets tied for second and there would have been a Tri-ku to determine the champion.

My topic was Ice and I was happy with how it went. Because it was an assignment I'm going to post it here.


Staff Refrigerator: A Lesson in Fear

Pouring down onto containers of uncertain age
are colors not found in nature

Pooling on glass shelves are liquids of unknown origin -
a waterfall of chemical composition that may or may not be toxic

There was an email sent to the entire staff of the building

Desiccated solids that could have been lunch fluid in their intent
Sump ponds with stagnant moist stuff in tupperware that
may have been a meal containing mammal bones

There is a memo on the window of the staff break room

Behind the freezer door lay chunks of permafrost ice cube trays,
or are they italian ices from ancient Rome, buried deep

There is a piece of paper on the side of the refrigerator

Puddles of who knows what cryogenically ice floe alien in origin frisbees
or U.F.O., unidentified frozen objects that may have been taken
from the locker in hangar 13 of a top secret military installation.

There is a memo taped to the front of the refrigerator door

if this object was not placed in this building in 2009 -
We’d carbon date the contents, but they did set off a geiger counter
and no one in the Technical Services department has a Haz-Mat suit

If I were to brave the stench and look inside of the refrigerator
I’d bet five dollars there is a copy of the clean up your damn mess memo
hanging from one of the shelves.
But neither I, nor the bomb squad, are looking.


So there was that poem. But I also wrote another, a bit more serious.

Terra Nova Pantoum

I am just going outside and may be some time
the last words of an Antarctic explorer
He walked to his death in 1912
Their tent now buried by an ice shelf

The last words of an Antarctic explorer
We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us
Their tent now buried by an ice shelf
A tomb hidden by a century of climate

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us
and therefore we have no cause for complaint
A tomb hidden by a century of climate
Becomes a heroic trophy for placing the South Pole discovery to Amundsen

and therefore we have no cause for complaint
Robert Scott’s final diary entry
Becomes a heroic trophy for placing the South Pole discovery to Amundsen
They found the pole, saw a Norwegian flag, died on the journey back

Robert Scott’s final diary entry
He walked to his death in 1912
They found the pole, saw a Norwegian flag, died on the journey back
I am just going outside and may be some time


Ever since I was a kid I had an odd interest in the doomed Scott expedition. The explorers of the Arctic had to endured some incredibly hostile conditions and some did not make it back. Brave men.

Hard to slam with a pantoum though, and I was not that confident!

So that was two poems written in a week, something that does not happen to me much these days.

I have ambitions, research is being done. Comfort zones are being tested.