Live your dash

On your tombstone
you’ve got your birth date

and the day of your decease —
and you’ve got your dash.

Live your dash.
Hold still and watch the birds.

Like the hummingbirds —
why are there so many of them?



Taken from the London Evening Standard's review of Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss, 30th March 2012. A comma has been removed after 'tombstone'. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

But if the water becomes deeper still

Positioned in the water in an uncomfortable pose,
afflicted with a relatively high mean density,
suffering from substantially high frictional drag,
and unable to raise and lower its neck
and hence unable to adopt a synchronous gait,
we conclude that giraffes would be very poor swimmers,
and that it might be assumed that they would avoid
this activity if at all possible.



Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis in the Tetrapod Zoology section of scienceblogs.com. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

The Name of the Father

The first time I came home
with a hangover - I was 21
or 22 - I was in the kitchen
making a cup of tea. In those days
all I drank was Guinness - my dad
leant over to me and said:
'Do you drink spirits?' I said:
'No, I don't.' He said:
'Don't.' That's stayed with me
all my life. I don't drink spirits
at all. It was profound because
my father was a man of
very few words but,
when he did speak,
it was emphatic.



Taken from an interview with Liam Neeson in the Metro, 27th January 2012. Submitted by Marika Rose.

When you have eaten an orange

When you've eaten an orange you have to
go back to the shop to buy another.



Brazilian author Paulo Coelho describes the profitability of piracy for artists in his blog post My Thoughts on S.O.P.A. Comma removed. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

In the Air

I will not make you a slave, you
will live in my 200-story castle where unicorn
servants will feed
you doughnuts off their horns. I will
personally make you
a throne that is half platnum
and half solid gold and jewel encrested.

Thankyou again for teaching us
about meteroligy, you're
more awesome than a monkey
wearing a tuxedo
made out of bacon
riding a cyborg unicorn
with a lightsaber for the horn
on the tip of a space shuttle
closing in on Mars,
while ingulfed in flames.



Taken from a thank you note written by a nine-year-old, thanking a local TV weatherman for visiting his school in Austin, Texas, as reported in the Metro on 15 March, 2012. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Goodbye, few things

Top of the list is cupcakes. Does anyone
actually eat this sickly over-iced,
pseudo kitsch, toy food except perhaps
a few girly women who think having
a large shoe collection makes them maverick.

Big black pick up trucks as driven by men
whose default fabric is camouflage. These
swollen testosterone substitutes are
the automotive equivalent
of a liquorice flavoured ribbed condom.

PVC banners, those dingy oblongs
of bad computer graphics tied onto
every suburban pub, roundabout, school.
Usually advertising a singles nite
or fundraising fayre long since past, or worse
still, a carvery. Pop up anything.

The vaguely west coast stubbly check shirted
bloke who features in every phone, computer
and small car ad. You know the one
with scruffy hair and a retro t-shirt
probably designs apps that no one asked for
and fewer people need.



From The Pitiable Impossibility of Debt in the Mind of Someone Shopping, a blog post by the teddy bear Alan Measles. 'a' omitted from line 5, first half of the 'swollen' line removed and the remainder merged with the following line. Also, 'that' changed to 'who' and 'less' to 'fewer' in the last stanza. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Note to Service Technician

Dishwasher will enter into Test/Calibration mode
at the first power up.
Door must be closed and latched.
Wait till second fill (~6 minutes from power up)
to cancel cycle
by pressing Start/Reset key.
Dishwasher will then be ready
to operate after a pump out.




A note left behind by a dishwasher technician on the 8th March 2012. Submitted by Michael.

Saying true things

I’m in love with you
and I’m not in the business
of denying myself
the simple pleasure of
saying
true
things
I’m in love with you
and I know that
love is just a shout
into the void
and that
oblivion is inevitable
and that
we’re all doomed
and that
there will come a day when
all our labor has been
returned
to
dust
and I know the sun
will swallow the only earth
we’ll ever have
and
I’m in love with you.



From The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton Books, 2012). Submitted by Megan.

A piece of tree bark

Half way through the night,
as recurring twinges of cramp keep me
padding off to the
bathroom.
I experience a quite
irrational fear of
being in the same room as a piece of
tree-bark.



Taken from Pole to Pole: with Michael Palin, first published in 1992. Submitted by Lauren.

Breaking up

What am I supposed
to do now? I've got your face
tattooed on my arm.



From a most incredible exchange on Facebook, in which a young man finds out that his girlfriend of one week has had his face inked permanently on her body. Sadly, for us, a hoax. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Groceries or pizza?

pizza is just an easy fix
for a temporary solution



A friend's facebook response to a shopping dilemma on March 1st 2012. Submitted by Rachel Helen Smith.

The moderate Finnish sauna

You should not slap
your neighbours without asking
their permission first.

The sauna is dear to me, almost sacred.
My father was born in one,
and his dying wish was to bathe 
in a sauna one last time.

Summer is the best time to go.
Strike a match, hear
the crackling of dry birch wood
as it is engulfed by the greedy flames,
then sit down on the steps
to ponder the ways of the world
and wait for the sauna to warm up.

Your body sighs with relief when the first
ladleful of water hits the sizzling stove.
The experience is topped off with a dive
into a pure, clear lake.
What else does a human being need?



Both the senryu and main poem are from a piece about saunas by Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner in charge of the Eurozone crisis. Omitted: 'to the sauna' (line 5) and 'sauna' (lines 9 & 14). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.