by Get Fuzzy
Water,
water,
everywhere…
I didn’t do it.
Many thanks to the readers who forwarded the link to me. Here is another one — the hilarious run-up cell that gives a taste of Fuzzy’s logic:
S: You wrote a poem?
F: “Wrote”? Sir, I am bloated with steamy wonderousness. My poems are not so much written as they are excreted.
boiling water hiss
cherry pits lie next to stems
spicy fish and rice
by Irving Feldman
Among the absolute graffiti which
—stenciled, stark, ambiguous-command
from empty walls and vacant lots,
POST NO BILLS, NO TRESPASSING HERE:
age and youth-Diogenes, say,
and Alexander, dog-philosophy
and half-divine, too-human imperium-”
colliding, linger to exchange ideas
about proprietorship of the turf.
Hey, mister, you don't own the sidewalk!
Oh yeah?
Yeah! the city owns the sidewalk—mister!
Oh yeah! says who?
Thus power's rude ad hominem walks all over
the civil reasoner, the civic reason.
Everyone has something.
Everything is someone's.
The city is the realm of selves in rut
and delirium of ownership, is property,
objects made marvelous by prohibition
whereby mere things of earth become ideas,
thinkable beings in a thought-of world
possessed by men themselves possessed by gods.
. . .
So I understood at twelve and thirteen,
among the throngs of Manhattan,
that I dodged within a crowd of gods
on the streets of what might be heaven.
And streets, stores, stairs, squares, all
that glory of forbidden goods, pantheon
of properties open to the air,
gave poor boys lots to think about!
And then splendor of tall walkers
striding wide ways, aloof and thoughtful
in their nimbuses of occupation,
advancing with bright assurance as if
setting foot to say, This is mine, I
am it-and passing on to add,
Now yield it to you, it is there.
Powers in self-possession, their thinking
themselves was a whirling as they went,
progressing beyond my vista to possess
unthought-of worlds, the wilderness.
These definitions, too, have meant to draw
a line around, to post and so prohibit,
and make our vacant lot a sacred ground.
Here then I civilize an empty page
with lines and letters, streets and citizens,
making its space a place of marvels now
seized and possessed in thought alone.
You may gaze in, you must walk around.
—Aha (you say), conceit stakes out its clay!
—That is a cynic's interpretation,
pulling the ground out from under my feet;
I fall, I fear, within your definition
which, rising and dusting off my knees,
civilly I here proclaim our real estate,
ours in common, the common ground
of self, a mud maddened to marvel
and mingle, generously, in generation.
Nice interpretation of infrastructure and controls.
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)
Man sails the deep awhile;
Loud runs the roaring tide;
The seas are wild and wide;
O’er many a salt, o’er many a desert mile,
The unchained breakers ride,
The quivering stars beguile.Hope bears the sole command;
Hope, with unshaken eyes,
Sees flaw and storm arise;
Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
Steers, under changing skies,
Unchanged toward the land.O wind that bravely blows!
O hope that sails with all
Where stars and voices call!
O ship undaunted that forever goes
Where God, her admiral,
His battle signal shows!What though the seas and wind
Far on the deep should whelm
Colours and sails and helm?
There, too, you touch that port that you designed –
There, in the mid-seas’ realm,
Shall you that haven find.
Some interesting commentary on Stevenson can be found on the website by RCAHMS (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland), in reference to Barra Head Lighthouse:
Although Robert Louis Stevenson had to fight hard to be allowed to express his literary talent instead of following in the footsteps of his grandfather, uncles and father, he appreciated their achievements. In 1880 he wrote:
‘Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors. The Bell Rock stands monument for my grandfather, the Skerry Vore for my Uncle Alan and when the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn brightly for the genius of my father.’