Tag Archives: poem

Daily Poem 23: The Lost Numbers

4 8 15 16 23 42

I bet the numbers, slide my chips

Into their squares and step away

To watch the Roulette gods decide

Who wins this battle of the war.

Odd or Even. Red. Black. Heads. Tails.

Statistics. Probability.

The ball is from my Grade 1 class

And plays Duck-Duck-Goose with the wheel

Until she finds the boy she likes.

He’s 23. And metaphors

Don’t matter anymore. I won

And money made the others lost.

This is based on my experience of winning (a small amount of) money playing the Lost numbers at Roulette in Las Vegas.  For those of you who are fans of Roulette wondering how I could bet on 42 when it’s not on the board, I bet on 2 (4 and 2) instead.


Daily Poem 22: Fatidic

I possess enough common sense to call

Myself fatidic and know that it’s a lie.

Image is from Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal

fa·tid·ic 

adjective 

Relating to or characterized by prophecy; prophetic.
[Latin fātidicus : fātum, prophecy, doom; see fate + dīcere, to say; see deik- in Indo-European roots.]


Daily Poem 21: Umbrage

I take umbrage to Aeolus’ fan

When the ensuing clouds disrupt my tan.

Another simple play on words.

um·brage

[uhm-brij]

–noun
1. offense; annoyance; displeasure: to feel umbrage at a social snub; to give umbrage to someone; to take umbrage at someone’s rudeness.
2. the slightest indication or vaguest feeling of suspicion, doubt, hostility, or the like.
3. leaves that afford shade, as the foliage of trees.
4. shade or shadows, as cast by trees.
5. a shadowy appearance or semblance of something.

Daily Poem 20: Quixotic

Are you quixotic, squirrel?

What urgent quest compels you

To keep blurring my photos

When I try to pin you down?

Is it for love or adventure?

Is it for justice or fame

Or to battle armed windmills,

My heroic Don Squirrel?

Oh.

It was just for food.

You’ve ruined my poem.

A silly poem I wrote for a Berkeley squirrel that was bounding around my bench while I was contemplating the word quixotic.

quix·ot·ic

[kwik-sot-ik]

–adjective
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) resembling or befitting Don Quixote.
2. extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.
3. impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

Daily Poem 19: Berkeley

Berkeley on the First Sunday of Spring Break

Locked doors and darkened window panes

Remind me that I’m out of place

On grounds of learning, where, again,

Sagacious stones refuse my wandering ways.

Only the wooded paths embrace

Me on a log-cum-bench: the bait

To bring my ears into this space

Where nature’s bards all play.

A crow calls singing to her mate

And with the chatting creek I strain

To hear his soft reply, then wait

And watch and wonder why she stays.

 

Over the last few days, I was lucky enough to spend some time around the lovely, albeit abandoned, UC Berkeley campus, but now I am headed back up the California coast en route to Canada. The poems for the next few days are scheduled, so anything about the trip home won’t appear until next week (at which point my daily poem project – meant to jumpstart my own production on this website – will likely have ceased).