2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #5: What Not To Expect

we expected swales and ridges,
signatures of an atlas
too relaxed to hold up the world,
content to let things slide.

we expected a world
of pencil lead and chalk,
laxative and kitty litter,
permafrost foam on frozen brine.

after a year
we don’t know
what we have
and we still don’t know
what to expect.

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #4: With and Without

Our finest schools
are holding pens for teenagers
if nobody tries to teach or learn.
Our most skilled surgeons
are mere butchers
if they operate with no purpose.
Our finest museums
are storage sheds
if we do not
appreciate art

Without science
our greatest voyagers
are shiny curiosities
abandoned
on distant playgrounds.
Without science
the most intrepid odysseys
are taken by
high-end adventure tourists
vicariously checking boxes.

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #3: On the Dome

The sun has set on the Karoo,
leaving an orange smudge as a
brief reminder.
Jupiter reigns
as the sky’s brightest beacon
while Sirius and Canopus lag behind.
The deeper delights await
darker skies
but we won’t be up here then.

We shouldn’t be up here now,
not this late,
not at all.
We wave furtively to
earthbound colleagues,
scurrying to open their domes
and get to work
while we sit on ours,
finishing our Windhoeks,
considering a second
(or third?)
and talking about everything
and nothing.

Were I asleep
this would be the makings
of a
stress dream.
I am awake enough now
to have a better grasp
of what’s important
and where
stress resides.


----

A little poetic license, for what it's worth. :)

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #2: Light Is A Bully

light is a bully
if you’re the wrong size
in the wrong place.

it will claw at your surface,
cracking and peeling
your very essence.
it will flip you around
and leave you spinning
until you break.
it will drag you
from a path you’ve followed
for millions upon millions of years
and beyond your control
send you to the heart of the sun
before blasting your ashes away
to the void of interstellar space.

light is a bully
but darkness a thief
that slowly takes and takes
until you equilibrate
with nothing left to give.



----

Video of YORP Spinup from Derek Richardson's multimedia page: https://www.astro.umd.edu/~dcr/gallery.html.
Related paper: Walsh, K.J., Richardson, D.C., Michel, P. 2008. Rotational breakup as the origin of small binary asteroids. Nature 454, 188-191
Also see: Walsh, K.J., Richardson, D.C., Michel, P. 2012. Spin-up of rubble-pile asteroids: Disruption, satellite formation, and equilibrium shapes. Icarus 220, 514-529

2016 NaPoWriMo Poem #1: To An Empty Place

there was enough sparkle
for the landing,
which was not
a small affair.
one flash of light
but no smoking pistol.


there's no sign of life,
just the power to charm.
but do you remember
the bills we have to pay?
after five years
of humble pie or bitter fruit
it seems there’s nothing i can do.




i heard a rumor from ground control
i won’t be king
but no, love, we’re not alone.
if there's life on mars
really never was the point.


---

I'm telling myself that I'm warming up. I'm not even convinced I can call this "my" poem.

National Poetry Writing Month 2016 Incoming!

April is National Poetry Writing Month, aka NaPoWriMo. As part of it, people are encouraged to write a poem every day. If you do that, you "win". While there's no requirement to do anything with these poems, every April since 2010 I've turned this site, nominally my music blog, into a poetry blog where I post that day's poem. And every year I've written a version of this post explaining what I'm doing...

For a variety of reasons that I won't get into here (but might leak into this year's poems) I've had a difficult March and may have a difficult April. I'd considered not writing at all this year, but it is something I always look forward to and get a lot of enjoyment from, so I think I'll give it a shot. :)

In 2010 I wrote about a different baseball team every day.  In 2011 I switched to chemical elements. Since 2012 I've been writing space poetry, beginning with writing about specific objects but of late wandering off into more expansive concepts. I expect to write more space poems this year, though I'm going to give myself slack to write about whatever I feel like.

I do hope you'll join us in writing something every day, or even a few days, this April. If you'd like to post something but don't have a space, I'd be happy to post it here under your name or anonymously.

A few of my favorites from previous years:
The Eighth Wonder, In Repose (2010)
Fourteen Atoms, Twenty Seconds (2011)
Am I Not A Planet? (2012)
science is a sometimes friend (2013)
The Summer Cottage (2014)
The Sea Haunts The Camp (2015)

Song for Sandra, Sort of

I have been feeling physically terrible for a few weeks. Today is the first day I felt like picking up my guitar, and I thought I'd make the best of it.  While I've been thinking about REM and the 25th anniversary of the release of Out of Time, I decided in the end to do an original of very recent vintage.

I started working on "Song for Sandra, Sort of" while driving across Arizona and California in January. I was thinking about some colleagues and the crazy things we put ourselves through to stay afloat and try to make things better in the field of research science. Most of the words came to me on that drive, though some of them were written along with the music in mid-February. The bridge isn't quite settled in my mind, though perhaps the act of recording will make this the final version. I'm not sure if this song has a future beyond this blog post, but I guess we'll see.  The name "Sandra" was picked to go along with the consonance of the other title words, and because I don't know anyone named Sandra (at least not well)--not unlike the decision to name the love interest in OBAFGKM "Suzanne".

In case it wasn't obvious, it was recorded live in glorious mono all at once. I tend to use Audacity when I record like that.

Voila:
Song for Sandra, Sort of