Category Archives: Writing

Doggerel & Pastiches

Safety briefing, listen if you’re flying

Written for a parlor game post for Making Light:

Hey now passengers, look up here and listen,
Time for safety-talk, nothing to be missing!
First the safety belt, buckled up and pulled tight
Open with a latch-lift, steel shining moon-bright.

On this airplane, eightfold are the ways out:
Front and back and over-wings we point out.
Watch and learn, and may I just remind you
That your nearest one may lie behind you.

If the cabin’s dark, gaze you down at the floor
Lights will shine out, make a path to the door.
Leave all bags behind, take no stabbing heel-shoes
Jump, don’t sit down, or the slides as rafts use.

Now beneath your seat a life vest
Put on just so, double bows will hold best.
Light and whistle, tube to take a breath-draft
Don’t inflate it till you leave the aircraft!

Hid above you, masks in their compartments
But if air grows thin in these apartments
They’ll drop swiftly. Fit your own as I’ve shown
Then when you’re safe, help those only half-grown.

On this airplane, none may smoke their pipe-weed
And you must obey the crew as they need.
If there’s safety knowledge that you still lack
See the card that sits inside your seat back.

Now is time for you to stow your cases
Under or over, fitting in their spaces.
Seat backs, tables, all should be upright now
Toys off, phones off, ready for our flight now!

Sonnets

First frost

The first frost, whitening the grass today,
Surprised the summer’s final cloverheads
And scattered them with diamonds as they lay
Like amethysts beside the cattail beds.
The mist moves like the Lord upon the face
Of silver waters ruffled by the wake
That trails an onyx grebe. The pearly lace
Of clouds drops sunbeams on the waiting lake.
But still the rows of indecisive trees
Stand dithering between the green and gold,
As if they’ve months to go before the freeze.
So, muddy-leafed, they watch the fall unfold
And wear this day the way that little girls
Play dress-up in their mother’s finest pearls.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Doggerel & Pastiches

Martian Caravan-Song

Red these deserts – and free at last we roam;
But we are exiles from our fathers’ home.

Listen to me, as when you heard your father
Sing long ago the song of other sands –
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
On this frequency, as we cross these lands.

From lone oases hid in sandy canyons
Atmospheres divide us, and cold of space –
Yet still the blood is strong, my dear companions,
And we in dreams ride at a camel’s pace.

We shall not tread again the wide and sandy plain
Where naught but night protects us from the sun
Nor gather in the souk to bargain once again
Returning to our tents when trading’s done.

When last from great Damascus we had banish’d
The infidels crusading through our lands
We did not know our peaceful time had vanish’d
Corrupted by the oil beneath the sands.

And so we fled, and insha’Allah have found
A desert world where we may roam at last.
But still we turn, when calls to prayer sound
To Mecca, to the homeland of our past.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Doggerel & Pastiches

Settings pastiches

  1. Come live with me and be my love,
    And we will all the pleasures prove
    That we in dark and deeply mined
    Chasms of black Moria find.

    And we will sit beneath the ridge
    And watch the Balrog keep the bridge
    Above the fiery pit whose smoke
    Makes even orcish fighters choke.
  2. The watchmaker
    Who rigged for me
    The warp drive flange
    Out of space debris
    Has given my crew
    A working ship
    So we’ll make it through
    From this scouting trip.
  3. We’ve tried each spinning space mote
    And reckoned its true worth:
    Take us back again to the homes of men
    On the cool, green hills of Earth.

    Rocannon has windbeasts
    And hilfs who act like lords.
    But you just might, if you have to fight,
    Be spitted on their swords.

    To ice-encrusted Gethen
    Our coming was foretold.
    But who’d have known we’d sleep alone
    And wake up twice as cold?

    The dusty moon Anarres
    Is home to anarchists
    Who can only live because they give
    And by gifts their world exists.

    While rich and fertile Urras
    Is plagued with poverty.
    The poor all cry looking at the sky
    That the moon’s the place to be.

    On peaceful settled O
    The Night and Day are wed
    Sedoretu build on the vows fulfilled
    Both in and out of bed.

    The Hainish sent out ships
    For many a planetfall.
    But changeling breeds in time have needs
    To be Ekumenical.

    We pray for one last landing
    On the globe that gave us birth;
    Let us rest our eyes on the friendly skies
    And the cool, green hills of Earth.

(Originally posted on Making Light)

Sonnets

A sonnet on Google Wave.

The sea has depths in which no net is cast,
With trackless kelpine forests where great squid,
Like Sasquatch in his mountains safely hid,
Dance dreaming with the fishes swimming past.
And human interaction is the same.
Beneath an email surface lies the deep:
Unmodeled work and social patterns creep
And spread in ways existing tools don’t frame.
If all that data made a single stream
(Instead of tossing users to and fro
Among their applications), it could flow
To ever-mounting heights: Hokusai’s dream.
It sounds like fun. I must confess I crave
To grab a board and surf the Google wave.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Doggerel & Pastiches

So we’ll go no more a-scrying

So we’ll go no more a-scrying
So deep into the night
Though the comets still are flying
And the stars are still as bright.

For the software troubles grow
And the hardware fails on test
And the current halts its flow
And gyros come to rest.

Though the sky was made for flying
And the night has more to show
Still we’ll go no more a-scrying
And fall once more below.

Originally posted on Making Light

Making, Sonnets

The sonnet muse is back from her vacation

In reply to a recent sonnet by Fragano Ledgister:

To make a thing, to bring it into being
Is intimate, like making love. The verb’s
The join, for making either one disturbs
A universe where knowing comes from seeing.
I dream a thing that doesn’t yet have form
Is risky as I love you. Both require
A trust that one’s interior desire
Is strong enough to make the world transform.
But reformations of the universe
Alarm a fair few folk. My age is cause
To say I mustn’t meddle with what was.
And thus they have a reason to reverse
That instant when I took the world apart
And re-assembled it to match my heart.

Originally posted on Making Light

Sonnets

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock

The lizard rests and thinks it’s quite alone
Since now that pesky Spock lies poisoned by.
But then the twisted scissors catch its eye
And darting to evade them, it meets stone.
For poisoned Spock, before it was too late
Was briefly vanished from the universe
Then, in a sudden, startling reverse
Returned when his disproof the lizard ate.
The stone, with reptile innards slimed, in paper
Now is wrapped. And thus it blunts the blades
Of snipping, snapping scissors. Then it fades
As phaser-blasts reduce its bulk to vapor.
I know the winning choice is purely random
But entry and amusement run in tandem.

Originally posted on Tor.com

Doggerel & Pastiches

Pyramids

(To the tune of “Fields of Gold” by Sting)

You’ll remember me when the sandstorms blow
Among the low mastabas
You’ll forget Lord Ra in his shining boat
As we guard the pyramids.
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Upon the low mastabas
Her sarcophagus was their shelter then
Among the pyramids.

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the low mastabas?
You’ll forget your time in the living world
As we sleep in pyramids.
See the sandstorms blow wearing down the stones
That make the low mastabas
Feel her cerements as the wrap you round
Inside her pyramid.

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear to you in the days still left
We’ll sleep in pyramids
We’ll sleep in pyramids.

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the low mastabas
And the time has come now to rise again
Among the pyramids
We will show these men what it means to fear
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids
Those who guard the pyramids

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Fire and chains

(To the tune of “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor)

Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone
Suzanne, the zombie bite put an end to you
I went down to the graveyard, you were lurching along
I just don’t know what I should do with you.

I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried starving you, but the moaning never ends
I’ve had lonely times when you’ve frightened all my friends
But I always know that you’re craving my brains.

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus
You’ve got to help me to make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day.
My bite wound is aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way.

I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried feeding you, but the hunger never ends
I’ve had lonely times since I’m shunned by all my friends
But I always know that you’re craving my brains.

Been walking my mind in a fever dream with my back up against the wall
Lord knows when the others come they’ll be tearing me to bits
There’s no more time for the might have beens, there’s no more time at all
The door is breaking in and I’m scared out of my wits.

Oh, I’ve tried fire and I’ve tried chains
I’ve tried holding you, but the biting never ends
I’ve had lonely times since you’ve eaten all my friends
But I always knew you’d get me, baby, try to eat my brains
Thought you’d end up eating all my brains
There’s just a few more seconds till you get me down, now
Thought I’d save you, thought I’d win with fire and chains, now

Originally posted on Making Light