Poem for Today, Addressed to a Baby (Not that I'm pregnant.)

The Alien

by Greg Delanty

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning & end,
the pre–big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you're not here
to subdue us, that we'd put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.

"The Alien" by Greg Delanty, from The Ship of Birth.

hat tip: The Writer's Almanac

The Lettuce in My Fridge is Going Bad

The statement is true, but lettuce is not actually the subject here. I just couldn't think of a title.

In other news, writing poems every day is cool. Hard sometimes, but cool.

Friday I wrote a sestina; yesterday I wrote one about running into my gay ex at the Hare Krishna temple's Festival of Colors; today I wrote one while watching House by stealing lines of conversation and ripping them violently out of context.

Doesn't this sound like more fun than cream puffs? Mmmm, cream puffs. Maybe not more fun than those. At parties in Mississippi when everyone one else was using booze as a social lubricant, I used cream puffs. Fill me with a few of those and I'm fine.

And that, dear friends, is why my jeans don't fit anymore.

Anyway, also wanted to share this quote from a documentary film maker that I loved: "A bad film stops when it's over. A good film starts when it's over."

True of all art, I'd reckon.

One other thing. Learned this on a podcast, from a sound artist man. He took a recording of seals under the water in Antartica, and I swear to you that it sounded exactly like electronic music, only really really good electronic music, better than humans can make. It sounded like outerspace is what it sounded like. Also, walruses clack their teeth under water and it's full of these beautiful, artful cresendos and decresendos. What does this mean?

I think it means this: We humans that think we're artists? Amatuers. Every last damn one of us.

My Weakness, Explained.

In writing news, I'm trying to write fiction, which I don't write and which I find incredibly difficult. For a few days I was thinking it might be the hardest genre, but I think perhaps they're all hard, I just do the others more often. In nonfiction, I'm adapting and thinking about my own life. In poetry, I'm playing with language. But in fiction, I have to turn a blank page into an entire world--characters and setting and thoughts and shoes and faces and hamburgers. It's an odd feeling. I'm trying to write about a woman who gives birth to a baby without eyes. Which actually happens: sockets, eyelids, no eyeballs. I didn't know. That's all I'll say.

In other news, I found out why I pick chocolate cake, in a general way. Before I get there, this is one of my favorite pictures of my niece, Ari. She dished up her own chocolate cake at my mom's birthday party. And this is when she realized she may have been in over her head, portion-wise. I can't tell you how often I feel like this. The only trouble is, I usually feel that way AFTER that mammoth chunk is in my belly. Okay, maybe not exactly that huge piece of cake because I'd probably throw up, but is this not a symbol? I keep it on my fridge, to remind myself to realize when it's still on the plate, so to speak, like Ari. I wish it worked better. Maybe I should tattoo the image on my hand.

Anyway, I was listening to a Radiolab podcast on choices. First they said that humans can only really remember 7 numbers at a time, plus or minus 2. This is why your phone number is 7 digits and your social is 9. See that? Clever scientists.

Just wait, they get cleverer. They did this experiment where they brought people into a room, gave them a number (2 to 7 digits long) to memorize right there, walk down the hall, and tell it to someone else. That's all they had to do. Only, on the way to the someone else, they were intercepted by a nice lady who told them they could have a snack: chocolate cake or fruit salad. Get this: the people with a whole 7 digits to remember were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to pick the CAKE than the people with a measly 2. I repeat, FIFTY PERCENT. I repeat, CAKE. That's really something. (And those other people, with 7 numbers who still picked the fruit, they're my mom--who has the will of an ox. The woman could swim a river of chocolate and not open her mouth. It's inhuman. Why couldn't she pass me that gene, why?)

I mean, Radiolab used it as evidence of something else, but for me this is the reason why I am always picking the chocolate cake or the cookie or the whatever else that looks appetizing. It's because I'm always stressed, like everyone else, trying to walk down the proverbial hall, keeping track of the proverbial 7 numbers! It's in my BRAIN! See. Chocolate cake, explained.