The exercise:
Write about: pollution.
Max slept through most of the night last night. I felt so ridiculously amazing when I woke up this morning. Another week's worth of that and I might feel human again!
The front porch has been demolished, but not yet replaced. I guess we'll be using the side door for the next little while.
Mine:
His entry to a room
Is oft met with despair,
For his nonstop blather
Will surely taint the air.
He sends my guests fleeing
With opinions most dull;
His round face inspires
Dreams of hammer to skull.
But I can do nothing
To stave off this brain loss;
I suffer in silence,
For this fool is my boss.
5 comments:
I hope you rewarded Max this morning when he woke up, so that he knows sleeping through the night is a good thing! (Oh wait, that might be pets....) Glad you got some sleep though.
And you know, if you'd gone with my idea for the trampoline, you could have that outside the front door right now, making it usable still :-P
I can hear you reciting that poem when I read it; I think it would look rather good performed at a poetry jam.
Pollution
Charles Asciugimento, Head of Building Security, looked at the little man sat in the chair on the other side of his desk. The man was short, which made it easy for Charles to see his bald patch. The man was slightly greasy, with little bursts of acne dotting his exposed skin, and, to Charles's mild horror his bald patch too. And the man was holding a shiny badge in his hand that announced him as a member of Greenpeace.
"You're on our list of top one hundred polluters," he said, holding his hand out for Charles to shake. Charles removed a soft, white cotton glove from a drawer, put it on, and shook the man's hand. Then he removed the glove and dropped in a bin marked "Bio-Hazard."
"Did you do the tests yourself?" he asked. "Only I might be concerned that there was cross-contamination."
"We hire independent laboratories to perform our tests," said the little man. "We are completely open about our research."
"And about your results?" Charles's voice was smooth and deep.
"Of course!"
"Ah," said Charles, smiling. "How odd. It seems that the laboratory that you sourced your tests from this time delivered quite a lot more data than you've shown me so far. Data, which, when taken as a whole, would suggest that we are not, in fact, an operation that could be considered 'highly-polluting'."
"You can't prove that!" The little man leapt out of his seat, reminding Charles of a jack-in-the-box.
"Yes I can," he said. 'But I won't have to. Because we have increased our pollution-management protocols quite stringently. And I'm afraid you fall into the category of hazardous waste...."
Pollution is that grayness of the air. It dulls the colors, so subtly that one blinks and strains the eyes and believes that it is one's own self that is the problem.
-- Anonna
The brown sludge came up to his ankles. At least it did two hours ago. Now it was up to his waist. He was long past grossed out. The pain had subsided as well. He could no longer feel the sludge burning his skin. Three hours ago, his wife told him about the leak in the basement. He called the plumber. His phone was busy. His neighbor called him, told him about the leak in his house. Seems the whole neighborhood had sprung a leak. Then the phones died. Then the power. Which led to the sump pump dying and his need to take emergency measures, namely wading into the sludge. Now he is there, up to his navel in brown, thick sludge. His movements have slowed. Everything has slowed. There is no longer a sense of urgency. No way to fix the sump pump now. The sludge is here. It is warm. It is nice.
Our sky-filling, planet-changing pollution
Will soon alter the earth beyond recognition
Yet we carry on with the mess
How can we change ourselves, even for the best?
Greg - you know if you keep encouraging me to do poetry jams, one day I might actually do one!
The acne on the bald patch was a nice (probably the wrong word to use) touch. And that's a nice turnabout at the end there as well :)
Anonna - excellent observation. Feels like the opening of a rather powerful essay.
Anonymous - ugh, fantastically horrifying. That ending is just... shudder worthy.
Morganna - it's truly a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.
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