Hearty Doomish greetings go out to Ian M, his friends in and around UBC's comp sci department and nerds everywhere (hi Admin!) This is your day
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Alas at some point along the way Ian's old man severely lost his way and became … an Arts nerd?
There was the time back on June 16, 2004 when the Chronicle-Herald picked up a stale wire story and I awoke to find …
"Orlando Bloom Named World's Sexiest Actor"
emblazoned all the way across page E1 of my breakfast newspaper. I couldn't stop laughing for a week.
That was followed by a year and a half painstakingly constructing a Spenserian sestina to demonstrate the application to D-chiro-inositol of a radical new strategy for cyclitol specification, but for today perhaps it will be just as well if I limit the fun and games to a pair of ghazals inspired by one of the Gray Code examples in Knuth. They're actually two of the draft sections for a long sequence of celebrations of our neighbourhood catch basins I've been working on titled Empire of Drains.
Pawns
Be my sword you fat French spade, mucking to the prize.
Glow harder, swifter, smaller, oh spark struck in my father's eyes.I found the willow wands unasked but they'll look nice
on the mantle, fire crackling, skirts rustling; tinkling of father's ice.Outside, together, raise the picnic table, praise the cross.
How warm it is to shelter and forgather at my father's house.Who wants to carry a caldron, mince mushrooms, memorize a curse?
Not I, a diamond scepter let me bear on father's horse.But maybe it's for me when others judge the case.
If I could spell, would it disturb my father's ease?Let me bear tankards while the children all carouse.
I see his club, there's no one in this awful house.Locked fast inside the cockpit; see, this finger knows
I need to scream and dive upon my father's house.Awake pentacle and float above my cloud. You'll rise
to when you rain like shekels, dancing in my father's eyes.
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More Pawns
Despite the love no resting in my mother's arms.
I drained that cup for nation (Mother's) harm.Burn this stick, I'll show you what I am.
Dentistry accorded with my mother's aims.Sing out, out! It won't contain, this room.
Dance seven-times-seventy-times around my mother's home.Ring-scores on glass sparkle in the gloom.
Last night I dreamed of mother, home.Let them perceive a black sizzling when we come.
And what's for this night's supper mother, ham?They came for singing, but I'll entertain the dome.
Tap wands, pull bunnies till my mother come.Break in, the gate, I need to dig that loam.
The brush awaits let burn my mother's umb.Smart toilet – what coin would operate, what alms?
Brush off this straw, then set me in my mother's arms..
John Wise McLeod
