Showing posts with label LGBTQ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LGBTQ. Show all posts

2023-04-03

NaNoWriMo 2023 - 3 - "Vonk..."



"Vonk..."


...the bird on the duckpond calls
the other inhabitants disconcerted.
"Vonk.  Vonk!  Vonk!!!" this individual blurted
and it looks like a duck,
walks like a duck,
swims like a duck...

...it is just the quacking that's awry
and the other avians wonder why
this singular bird cannot conform.

They probably do not mean it harm;
they just would prefer, if it must "vonk"
it would do the decent thing
and keep it to itself.




2022-03-16

Do you have the ticket / we all are always never going home

I have two poems We all are always never going home and Girl with degenerate matter earring in Corporeal, and another in their sibling publication En*gendered, so I recorded this performance of one from each...






Nonbinary bus image from:
libragender on tumblr

Featuring bus and bus station sound clips from:
Julien Matthey, abrahemp, and Ubehag on Freesound

2019-04-05

NaPoWriMo - 2019 #5 - I shall now mock you




I shall now mock you

Pick a country; choose a side;
pick a religion, all the while
insisting you and only you are right
and I shall laugh, while pretending...
well pretending nothing, I will just laugh...

Let's talk about the reality of things, solidity, substantiality,
versus the irreality of thought.
You have been taught to draw lines on the world,
to cut things up, as if this was a clever thing, to say:
"here are the boys

and here the girls"—
to take a popular example
and I am laughing again and shading with crayons
where your line goes multifractal in-between,
in the place you mysteriously cannot see...

Can you even see your pencil?
It has an rubber on the end,
or is that an eraser with a pencil on the front?
You know, I could stab someone with this
or load it in a crossbow

and though it would not fly so far or straight
it still would kill a man.
So is it a dagger, is it a bolt?
Are you clawing at your reasoning,
trying to find the fault?

Why does this pencil, this woman, this philosophy not classify?
I'll tell you here and now
the absolute and perfect reason why:
atoms.
It just takes atoms,

to show most human thought is pish.
This isn't a pencil, it's a grouping of particles.
It is what it is,
and it does what it does;
and we can't entirely know either case.

See?  Now I wrapped it in duct tape
and jammed it in the printer where,
because I could sharpen it to the right length
it serves to hold the broken toner cartridge in
until we can get a new one.

It's not a pencil;
it's a adjustable compression prop.
Your attempts to understand must have a stop,
not because the analysis is wrong...
Analysis is great, please do more!

Draw lines, calculate error bars,
shade some portion of the chart where dragons
provably cannot lie
but never forget:
things are as they are

the analysis is just our latest, bestist, most-partial guess.
So chill a little.
It's what it is,
whether you will or no.
Let it go.




2018-11-30

Making out with Proteus

I've not posted enough this year.

But I did post during NoPoWriMo and one of the poems was There's very much a multiverse - a casual, and probably acausal, dissection of life in a quantum multiverse.

Proteus is the eldest son of Poseidon; called the Old Man of the Sea, he is a shapeshifter.  He could also foretell the future, but hated to do so.  Probably because of the temporal turbulence that causes.  So, to make him do it you had to wrestle him and he would turn into horrible things...

In that poem I committed a sin of a type that used to annoy Douglas Adams so much that he created an improbable sperm whale as a way of getting back at us about it.  e.g. I created a character for the reader to care about, and then discarded them without explanation.

OK, I didn't kill her off, but I did leave her in a quantum superposition of pkissed = 0.5 and ppunched = 0.5.

I subsequently felt a bit bad about her situation.  I thought I should get her out of it.

She turned out bisexual in the process.  There's no social or political meaning behind that, it's just that in her world anybody can become anything, so what can you do...

Anyway, to quote Adams again: This is her tale...






Making out with Proteus


And when our lips meet, his face unfolds
not à la Hellraiser or Resident Evil
but more like topology, mathematical;
an object that, rotating, shows
where I thought it simple, I was wrong...

...it seems we're every one of us a world, cityscape, a throng,
a crowd scene filmed in Technicolor and
just as I think I have absorbed that one
there folds out of the multitude a female face.
So I kiss that too.

I'm taller and she tilts her head,
there's just a touch of breath across my lips,
before they brush on hers.  There is no rush,
but when I pull back, wanting to see her eyes,
she winks

and then her whole body unfolds.
And I half fall, and step, but now I'm walking
through her... him... them... the plurality
ambiguity meaning nothing, in this unplaced untime
and they are still unfolding all around

and I'm walking through their whole world now:
past a booth, where a bakelite telephone is ringing,
through faded dark green curtains onto
a late-night street with distant drunken singing,
towards the only open place: a coffee shop

and as I go I feel the ghosts of kisses,
punches, traffic accidents, hands on zips, caresses
the flash of lust,
or possibly tactical nukes,
the glass in front of me explodes

the world goes dark
and the spinning fragments form a field of stars
so vast and deep and hungry now I know
that this is perfect love for me
a warm heart-shaped infinity, not limited

to any single name, identity or gender,
not always tender, not even always undoomed,
but although infinities can come in different sizes,
my subset of the multiverse is precisely
the same size as the whole.  I can choose,

if I wish, only to live the lives
where I'm with this lover,
and infinity again, is still as large
after this dissection.
It is the working of affection

to compute the intersection
of every possible world where there's a you
with every world where there's a me
and love the result
and if I now take one more step,

I can kiss the stars.



2018-06-06

New Muses: forever inwords

I'd been meaning to post the words to these for some time, then I forgot...

...but now somebody asked, so here they are!




New Muses for a Post-Human Age



Calliope

Call me Calliope. My steampunk look
left over from the fairground organ vibe...
It was a strange new way to be alive
encoded on punched cards, but I took that
and ran with it. I formally enlarged
my sphere of influence: from epic verse
—the quests of heroes... battles... kings and curses—
to something even worse, I'm NP-hard

computation. I am the patron saint
of any project where the work of brain
exceeds the work of muscle by a hundred
fold. I urge you on, through records numbered
in the billions. Always epic at heart,
the oldest muse, but now... state of the art.


Clio

Is Vanderella going to leave Stu?
I've the hot gossip, all the celeb sleaze
for you. It's me who helps sustain belief
that heroes have the hots for you; the muse
of fan-boys shipping couples whom the authors
did not dream were close. I love red carpet spite
and all the tiny dresses that the big nights
bring out to play. I love to see the other

starlets' partners start to drool. I am quite mean
(necessarily) with all your fanfic scene,
your flash/slash stories and most of your art
but also note I hold your private heart
up for the other otaku's gaze. Their praise
I offer you: we'll fan your secret blaze.


Euterpe

There's drugs and sex and then there's me, I've ditched
my flute and taken up the Stratocaster.
There's sex and drugs and ever faster, faster
on motorbikes. I am nobody's bitch
but I will ride you in a motel room
with both our earbuds plugged into the noise.
I offer leather jackets and other toys,
like pills and needles of straw-coloured doom—

my cultists are the twenty-seven club
and I tell you there is no greater love
and never any form of sadness sweeter
than for the young musician turned to meat
before their time. I'm loud, not sweet, not modest.
I am the one, the only, true rock goddess.


Erato

Erato here, you think there's nothing new
beneath the sun. You say you've fucked in all
the ways, by pairs and threes. You say you fall
for boys and girls and toys and ropes and screw
your parents and their weird ideas... but I'll
tell you that sex is of the mind, and gender's
in your pretty head. My gift to you is tender
feelings of all types, no need to justify

if they're for someone cute or for a self
made for yourself—personas off the shelf
or custom-built. I am the mirror for
your work-in-progress life of love and more.
You follow me with every stroke of brush
on image: perfect yourself; there is no rush.


Melpomene

My mask is no less tragic now I've swapped
the costume for the soberest of suits
and left the boarded stage so they can shoot
me here, behind the fancy desk. I've chopped
your world down into sound bite size. I prize
all moments of sick carnage I report
and human interest sobs. One time I thought
this a temporary gig, but no: I rise!

There's no end to your appetite for slaughter
or how you idolize the war reporter
who pulls his face into a sad expression
and flat-voiced says that on sober reflection
a civil war may not be altogether
the best thing for this place. And now the weather...


Terpsichore

You want to switch your gender? I'm fine
to help with that. You want to swap your limbs?
That's cool. Steel can be sexier than skin—
if you do it right. You can take me as the sign
the universe don't need you in the form
that you were born in. Take it from me: human's
defined by what the human does and "super"
is an epithet you add yourself. So warm

the cockles of your cybernetic pump...
or maybe you need less? Perhaps just jumping
higher than the other guy, despite your lack
of legs. We can do this! Just put your back
and prosthetics into it. You'll get the cheers
and if not, you can always be reengineered.


Thalia

Say what you will: I know the truth of you
and how you spin yourselves just makes me laugh
you say you are a moral man, pay half
your tax, are faithful to your wife—you screw
around only if out of town. I know
all those sharp edges on your soul, and grime
long ground into the fabric. All the time,
you skirt the crime tape round the portico;

the columns all look straight when you are just
a little off from centre and you must
therefore believe this is the place to stand;
believe you worked this out yourself. "Random"
is my critique of your fondest self beliefs,
but I love your lies, they are my light relief.

Urania

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two...
and so on. This is my new song: music, spheres,
steel gantries pointing through the atmosphere
at the nearer of the spinning rocks. I see
more futures in the heavens now. The signs
of yesteryear and claiming to see clearly
through crystals or in fight of birds, they weary
me. Come worship, when orbits all align,

with rocket stacks of high explosive fuel.
Sweat in your launch capsule. Try to keep cool,
as mission control applies the match. Or probe
from a safe distance. Fire robots from your globe
up into my domain. While far stars shine,
new worshipers approach more distant shrines.


Polyhymnia

Loading data. I’m loading all your data
for I am Polyhymnia and all
your songs sound well to me. We'll have no walls
between the disciplines or their creators.
Come here. I'm what you see when you look across
the quad and through some other department's window.
I'm what you find if you stare from what you know
towards what you do not. My tracks crisscross

your landscape of epiphanies and wide-
eyed wonder-strikes. The days you stepped aside,
and saw the world was not the thing you knew,
were down to me. I love things, once untrue,
now obvious. The whole damn thing's my faith,
I say: embrace your inner polymath...


Omnes

Immortal though the gods have always been,
they mostly now are gone. Eternity
went on and on and most lost heart. We now see
we always were the best. We were the queens
of continual creation, not just pulling
a universe out of a hat and taking
the afternoon off. Not blustering and faking
a lightning smite, but eternally fulfilling

a quota of electric inspiration
for every soul. We don’t control or ration,
we simply open floodgates of ideas
and drop you in the flow; but do not fear
we’ll hold your collective hand, live in your minds,
we are with you until the end of time.




2018-05-16

Girl, unaccompanied

I've tagged this with my LGBTQ tag, which I have created to collect together this important category of poems.  There aren't enough, of course, there will only be 9 with this one (and for some the connection is weak.)  As a heterosexual I still feel awkward writing about this...  but equally I have many friends for whom it is an important subject.

I recently asked Amy why a particular new work of theirs had such a gay slant and they said "just redressing the balance," so that's me told: I ought to do more.  I may have to take advice.

Romance is only one of two ways to read this poem.  The other is about being an outsider; about teaming up with another outsider to help take on the world.  However this interpretation can still circle back to the gay angle since growing up gay could be what makes the girl an outsider in the first place.

So the possibility that one or both of these girls is falling in love is entirely there.  I've not explicitly filled in their ages (but for reading Romeo and Juliet in drama they would be late teens I'd think.)  A gay, female friend did tell me that this is exactly how she felt about another girl back when they were are school...

...so I've given this the LGBTQ tag, and you can make up your own mind.








Girl, unaccompanied


Lately she's been singing out of key
and I found this a revelation.  In choir
on Thursday afternoons, she stands in front of me
and I lurk behind one perfect shoulder,
embedded in her faintest scent and try
not to be obvious.  Also

lately she's been dressing kind-of wild,
while I maintain my camouflage
of sweatshirts, jeans — only the beige ribbon
in my hair.  It's lately, I've been...
restless with my life, of writing my name
twelve coloured on the backs of books; but she

relentless in drama (it's Friday now) looks wry
reads Juliet as suicidal assassin and I
need to know if anything has changed.
So I meander in her spinning wake,
scuffing ash and torn pages
to find the smallest flowers still dancing

in the aftermath.  Latest is: she spoke to me
in maths, mocked obsessing on precision —
on getting it right every time.  We laughed
and I feel daft, but drift towards a strategy
where I'm the girl who can't keep the beat
and she's the girl who likes to sing off key.




2018-05-14

Review: Amy Kinsman's "&"

Review: Amy Kinsman's "&"


Amy Kinsman
(from the back of the book)
Amy is one of the most interesting poets I know.  I have known them getting on for two years now and we meet almost precisely once a month as Amy hosts the popular Gorilla Poetry open mic, where I am also a regular.

Amy is genderfluid and uses gender-neutral pronouns.  They edit Riggwelter online journal of creative arts.  Amy also regards themself as both a performance and a written poet — a bifurcation I attempt to bridge myself...
Amy's book & (pronounced "Ampersand") won the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet prize in 2017.  Last week I attended its Sheffield launch and was reminded what a remarkable book it is.  There are seventeen poems in this pamphlet occupying 29 pages and ten of the pages are taken up by the two longest pieces: Iterations of self and it's like this.  There is plenty of good stuff elsewhere, but I am going to focus on these two, both because they're really good, and also because they are the ones that (for me) tell the strongest stories about the author.

In the first of these, iterations of self, Amy dissects their identity using "jonathan", an identical twin occupying the same body ("Jonathan" being the name Amy would have had if they had been assigned male at birth.)  Through the thirteen sections of this poem the characters "you", "jonathan" and "amy" iterate different approaches to their various identities.  Each section characterises a different theme to tell us something about the overall self: masculinity, femininity and hallucination are three examples, and the whole picture builds incrementally from these pieces as we proceed.  Let me quote two sections from quite early in the poem:

iii. self as electron

contemplate the light, its red and its violet. consider the theories postulated by quantum mechanics: perhaps there is only one particle in all places at once. conclude that you were made in the dark.


iv. self as repetition

at the kitchen table, your grandfather cuts a barbed spiral of identical paper girls. they push themselves up from the surface and arm in arm they go, singing amy, amy as they march eyelessly towards its edge. what to do with all these little girls? there are so many of you, heaps and heaps of you. your grandfather is calling you by your mother's name and you don't have the strength to correct him as you sweep the scraps into your hand and begin to devour them.

iterations of self

Amy kinsman

Here we see some of the scope of the dissection.  An electron of course is neither particle nor wave, and also (before its wave function collapses) neither here nor there.  Wave function collapse happens because of "observation" (scare quotes because after a century there is still no rigorous definition of this) and metaphorically observation cannot take place in the dark.  Therefore this persona, created in the dark, has an uncollapsed wave function; is simultaneously red and blue.

In the self as repetition we see the "cookie cutter" nature of traditional genders.  You look "girl" therefore you are girl, you should act in girllike ways, and the "eyeless" paper girls haven't even thought about it, and just took what they were given.  How awkward it must be to express a newly minted gender to a grandparent who hasn't the background to understand, and by extrapolation how strongly established (e.g. old) structures must reinforce these stereotypes.  In fact, in this section, the character has no strength for explaining yet again.

The final section of this poem, xiii. self as ampersand, I believe provides the collection's name.  Here, rather than simply assuming multiple selves can be pasted together, we instead see a need to disassemble some parts and reassemble into something different and new: if still flawed.  In software engineering we call this refactoring: transforming a functional system into a something different but still functional.  The closing phrase:

this time i want it enough. even the gods have built imperfectly, stumbling towards completion; look at us.

—is loaded with the hope and difficulty of this.


Amy jokingly sold this pamphlet to me with the brilliant advertisement: "it contains the long one about my sex life", and it's like this is that poem.  This also is structured as many numbered paragraphs, but in this case all entitled: "it's like this".  Many even commence with the identical words: "two of your lovers stand before you."  This is because each presents a number of actual or potential lovers.  Pairs, groups and types of lovers are contrasted, or presented in scenarios which highlight various relationships or attitudes.  Again the overall picture builds throughout the poem, let me quote two sections:

vi. it's like this:

two of your lovers stand before you. the one on the left is the first person you ever loved though you only know this in retrospect. the one on the right you only recently realised you are in love with. the winner is whoever's name is the first out of your mouth.  both of them are women with scrutinising gazes whose eyes glisten with mania through their curtains of dark hair. both of them lower their deep brassy voices.  somebody turns off the light. all of you are counting the seconds.


vii. it's like this:

you are having a threesome with two of your lovers, both of them men, both of them avoiding looking the other in the eye. one above, one below, the two of them are locked in a tug of war over the spine of your being. the pressure builds.  you cry out i don't bend like that, but they continue as if they have not heard.  your bones splinter at sacrum and coccyx. you snap in two. the winner is the one holding the larger part.

it's like this

Amy Kinsman

Amy is bisexual, so lovers with a range of genders appear.  More than this, every section returns to a question of who is the "winner", reflecting the poet's polyamory:  a monotony from continual questions such as "which of us do you really love?"  Thus only the poem's simplest level is about the poet's sex life (full of humanity as that is) and at deeper levels expresses the frustrations we all have (but the genderfluid, bisexual and/or polyamorous must feel more acutely) in the effort of explaining what we are to those around us.  This comes over most clearly in that the protagonist has difficulties with lovers (i.e. section vii above) but almost as many difficulties with other people reacting to lovers, for example:

the mother of the one on the left will say are you a lesbian with an honest indifference. the mother of the one on the right will say an english girl with an indifference which must be practiced. your mother will say are you sure you want to be with someone like that in a tone that reveals she likes neither of them. the winner is everyone's mother.

it's like this

Amy Kinsman

For me these two are the most important poems, and also my favourites...  There is much else here to attract the attention but I have already written twice as much on this excellent collection as I intended.  I will just briefly mention anton yelchin, which muses on his tragic accidental death, descent in which an anonymous character falls to Earth after a grand endeavor, and disappearance of the poet: the enjoyment of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.


it's like this ends as the poet takes off their laurel wreath.  I prefer to interpret this as tactical withdrawal and not a complete resignation from the fight.  It is important not to resign, we have to keep on fighting.


Amy Kinsman's & is available from Indigo Dreams at £6.00 + pp.




2018-04-06

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day six - there's very much a multiverse...

there's very much a multiverse...




The multiverse, earlier in what we may as well call "today"

...and anyone says otherwise is saying something different in some other world than this you gave her a kiss and just the same you punched her solidly in the solar plexus but there is no nexus of universes no group of places more or less real you are the saint and martyr monster non-entity and plastic penguin wash machine designer in equal measure you have such leisure to explore the multimultimultiplicity of things and thingness and you might conclude that nothing matters why struggle when every act is going to play out whatever why try when here you are just getting by and some other you in another place that is this place but "other" if you know what I mean is leaning on his golden balcony and shouting to his mistress that he will not need the Rolls now after all what with the telegram from the World Bank and you are you and all the shades of you and all these people blurring together in a smear scooped from the larger melange of peopleness and some yes you would say are definitely you if with added combat knife or virtuoso violin but others again are close to youspace but not quite in it there is no hard limit and around the edges you blur imperceptibly as if anyone is perceiving this but stay with me because around the edges you blur into everybody else you know or might have known and there is out there somewhere the you which is fifty-fifty between the man you think you know and Keanu Reeves and there is the one that's sixty three percent Diana Dors and all the shadings into Hitler of which we shall not speak and equally there's the version which is exactly half way between you and God and there's all of this and more more than you imagine more than you can imagine more than you can imagine imagining even if some of you can imagine a lot so you may think there is no point persisting in being the you you are but do carry on because if nothing matters cosmically then here and now it still matters to you and me and I'm sure we can do better and there is a view that there isn't even a multiverse and that all there is is every possible state of the universe just thrown together in an random pile and that time only appears to exist because some states of the universe appear to encode a past and in this view nothing may be real nothing may last seven seconds ago might be a fiction and seven seconds in the future might never come and given that you are the fourteen second you then you should be who you are with all your might and given that yes given that YES! I believe I will have that drink...




2018-01-30

New Muses for a Posthuman Age



New Muses for a Posthuman Age








I follow a filk singer/songwriter called Dr Mary Crowell and on her album: Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour she has a song: Courting My Muse.  This track inspired me to write a sonnet sequence about how the Muses might be updated for the 21st century.

So far, so good, nothing unusual there, I've written sonnet sequences before...

...however when I came to record this, I had a problem.  Muses are female and plural, where I am male and singular.  So I hatched a plan.  I put out a call to various female poetry friends asking them whether they would like to be one of my Muses (I phrased it a little more carefully than that.)

To my delight friends signed up in sufficient numbers to be able to record all nine Muses, plus a group effort for my bonus "Omnes" sonnet that rounds things off at the end, and I was doubly delighted when Mary Crowell leapt at the opportunity to participate (bringing the whole thing full circle...)

I've spent some time editing these together with sound effects and music to complement the poems.  I also recorded myself narrating between the various goddesses in my guise as "The Mortal".

I have to say I'm very pleased with the result.  There's something uniquely satisfying in hearing talented voices read your work back to you, and it also is also educational, bringing out things in the poems that wouldn't be there in my reading.



Cast in order of appearance:

The Mortal
A man, like any other...
Ian Badcoe
This is my blog you are already reading...
Facebook
Twitter

Calliope
Goddess of Complex Computation and Difficult Projects
Natalie Shaw
Natalie Shaw is a poet who also works for the Government Digital Service. She is @redbaronski on Twitter and writes very occasionally on her blog: https://natalieshawpoems.wordpress.com/

Clio
OMG of Celebrity Gossip and Fan-fic
N Magennis
N Magennis is an author and artist. She lives in Argyll. https://nikkimagennis.com/

Euterpe
Rock Goddess
Amy Kinsman
Amy Kinsman is a poet and playwright from Manchester, England. As well as being the founding editor of Riggwelter Press, they are associate editor of Three Drops From A Cauldron and the host of the regular Sheffield-based open mic, Gorilla Poetry. Their debut poetry pamphlet & was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2017 and is due out in April this year.
Facebook
Twitter: @manykinsmen

Erato
Goddess of Personal Development and Self Image
Juliet Anthill
Juliet Antill lives on the Isle of Mull with a SORN'd Fiat Punto and a cat called Alice. She has poems coming out in Magma and Prole this Spring.

Melpomene
Goddess of Heartbreaking News
Dr Mary Crowell
Dr. Mary Crowell is a geeky musician from north Alabama who is very active in the filk community. Her doctorate is in music composition, and she teaches music theory, composition, music appreciation, and piano at a local community college as well as at her home studio. Mary loves to write songs about mythology, gaming, coffee, beagles, and zombies. You can find her gaming album Acolytes of the Machine & Other Gaming Stories (2012) on Pandora Radio. Her latest album (funded by Kickstarter) is Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour (2017).
Patreon
http://marycrowell.com/

Terpsichore
Goddess of Body Modification and Bionics
Jenn Zed (Cyborg Edition)
Ms. Zed is an artist and writer who lives in Bath, England, with her cat. You can view her Portfolio at https://jennzedblog.wordpress.com/

Thallia
Goddess of Lies we tell Ourselves
Rosemary Badcoe
Rosemary Badcoe’s first collection, Drawing a Diagram, is available from Kelsay Books or directly from her. She is editor of the online poetry magazine Antiphon and has been published in a range of magazines.

Urania
Goddess of Space Shots and Surprisingly Distant Robots
Brenda Levy Tate
Brenda celebrates life in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, where she wanders outdoors at midnight, camera and tripod at the ready. She's especially drawn to astrophotography, so Urania is her particular Muse. She was a senior high drama and English teacher for endless years. Now she's a cat lady, poet, occasional singer and cheerful retiree.
Her book: Wingflash
brendatate.com

Polyhymnia
Goddess of Misc.
and Everything
and Holism
and Interdisciplinary Studies
and All That...
Jenn Zed
Biography as above

Credits read by
David Callin
David Callin lives on the Isle of Man.

Additional vocals
Rosemary Badcoe



Sound effects acknowledgements

All sound effects were downloaded from freesound.org under either The Creative Commons Attribution LicenseThe Creative Commons Public domain License, The Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License or The Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.  Changes were made such as fading-in and -out, tempo/frequency shifts, noise reduction etc...

The effects used can be found at:

Calliope:
https://freesound.org/people/Christopherderp/sounds/364531/
https://freesound.org/people/Erdie/sounds/27858/

https://freesound.org/people/brendan89/sounds/321552/
https://freesound.org/people/metrostock99/sounds/345078/
https://freesound.org/people/Snapper4298/sounds/183497/
https://freesound.org/people/Ali_6868/sounds/384911/
https://freesound.org/people/BigDaddyD/sounds/54829/
https://freesound.org/people/Cribbler/sounds/377083/
https://freesound.org/people/YleArkisto/sounds/349654/
https://freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/129745/
https://freesound.org/people/Sevin7/sounds/271039/

Clio:
https://freesound.org/people/jayfrosting/sounds/333402/
https://freesound.org/people/drotzruhn/sounds/405203/
https://freesound.org/people/btherad2000/sounds/328045/
https://freesound.org/people/satanicupsman/sounds/149140/
https://freesound.org/people/Pandos/sounds/362353/
https://freesound.org/people/jayfrosting/sounds/333384/
https://freesound.org/people/unchaz/sounds/150957/
https://freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/82361/
https://freesound.org/people/kukla/sounds/94036/
https://freesound.org/people/loudernoises/sounds/332808/
https://freesound.org/people/Adam_N/sounds/324892/

Euterpe:
https://freesound.org/people/luis_s/sounds/328971/
https://freesound.org/people/pitx/sounds/16188/
https://freesound.org/people/martian/sounds/83155/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182015/

https://freesound.org/people/karolist/sounds/370934/
https://freesound.org/people/straget/sounds/404687/
https://freesound.org/people/abett/sounds/316703/

Erato:
https://freesound.org/people/11linda/sounds/393600/
https://freesound.org/people/LasciviousGork/sounds/168132/
https://freesound.org/people/acrober/sounds/86112/
https://freesound.org/people/Setuniman/sounds/155256/
https://freesound.org/people/bulbastre/sounds/103991/
https://freesound.org/people/golosiy/sounds/107932/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182015/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182018/
https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/195286/
https://freesound.org/people/btherad2000/sounds/328045/

Melpomene:
https://freesound.org/people/pgi/sounds/212606/
https://freesound.org/people/pgi/sounds/212600/
https://freesound.org/people/gkillhour/sounds/267222/
https://freesound.org/people/FillMat/sounds/384401/
https://freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/241590/
https://freesound.org/people/visions68/sounds/351333/
https://freesound.org/people/copyc4t/sounds/218372/
https://freesound.org/people/maycuddlepie/sounds/330298/

Terpsichore:
https://freesound.org/people/sevenbsb/sounds/349398/
https://freesound.org/people/FlatHill/sounds/324756/
https://freesound.org/people/stomachache/sounds/274516/
https://freesound.org/people/Vosvoy/sounds/139026/
https://freesound.org/people/botha9johann/sounds/326049/
https://freesound.org/people/SpiceProgram/sounds/365034/
https://freesound.org/people/chinpen/sounds/381959/
https://freesound.org/people/renatalmar/sounds/264981/
https://freesound.org/people/Reitanna/sounds/344001/
https://freesound.org/people/Hybrid_V/sounds/321215/

Thalia:
https://freesound.org/people/toam/sounds/198625/
https://freesound.org/people/esperar/sounds/170781/
https://freesound.org/people/Vosvoy/sounds/139026/
https://freesound.org/people/DJames619/sounds/389247/
https://freesound.org/people/OldSchool_/sounds/408768/
https://freesound.org/people/fisu/sounds/350619/
https://freesound.org/people/pyro13djt/sounds/337997/
https://freesound.org/people/kiddpark/sounds/201159/
https://freesound.org/people/benjaminharveydesign/sounds/366099/
https://freesound.org/people/f_ilippo/sounds/59194/

Urania:
https://freesound.org/people/the_very_Real_Horst/sounds/223419/
https://freesound.org/people/Corsica_S/sounds/52752/
https://freesound.org/people/Oddworld/sounds/125105/
https://freesound.org/people/Wesselorg/sounds/408442/
https://freesound.org/people/digifishmusic/sounds/54190/
https://freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/sounds/70986/
https://freesound.org/people/primeval_polypod/sounds/158894/

Polyhymnia:
https://freesound.org/people/chipfork/sounds/50087/
https://freesound.org/people/DCPoke/sounds/387978/
https://freesound.org/people/ProjectsU012/sounds/334685/
https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/160469/
https://freesound.org/people/MrAuralization/sounds/259292/
https://freesound.org/people/are16ocean/sounds/117597/

Omnes:
https://freesound.org/people/benjaminharveydesign/sounds/315918/
https://freesound.org/people/harrybates01/sounds/254364/
https://freesound.org/people/thegreatperson/sounds/210793/
https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/343130/
https://freesound.org/people/mike_stranks/sounds/341604/
https://freesound.org/people/lebcraftlp/sounds/243627/
https://freesound.org/people/parnellij/sounds/74892/
https://freesound.org/people/Parasonya/sounds/394921/
https://freesound.org/people/ryansnook/sounds/110111/

2017-09-24

Sept 24th - Making distinctions



Making distinctions


Some say
the gills are grey
beneath the fringe
and that is how you tell,

and snobs will claim
the acid-test remains
in how they hold their cup of tea.

Another thing that you might see
is if they feel the need
for any special clothing
or badges that propound a creed.

Landing with their wings spread:
is another popular sign,
but you must check the antennae ends
for knobs,

and finally, many swear
you can note the length
and parting in their hair, or the side
on which they wear an earring --
if they have one.



2017-09-06

On discovering one's new doctor is a girl...

There are certain global roles which are more important than run of the mill A-list celebrities and international leaders.

One of these roles was recently reassigned...  That's not the right word, what is it they say? "Appointed?" — No.  "Elected?" — No!  What do they say?  Oh yes...

"Regenerated"


The Doctor is an imaginary hero, and imaginary heroes are singularly important people.

Firstly because they are heroes.  Mere Presidents, Leaders of the Opposition, and Secretary Generals of the UN fade into insignificance beside heroes.  Leaders can only tell you what to do, but a hero can show you who to be.

But imaginary heroes outrank even real heroes because real heroes are only human, and consequently flawed.  It is a pity we're psychologically incapable of accepting that somebody can be a hero and a bastard simultaneously, or even a villain and a very nice guy (1).

But a fictional hero can be superhuman, transhuman, or even not human at all. Furthermore, they can face problems cunningly constructed to parallel awkward moral corners and demonstrate how a suitably progressed nature overcomes all challenges.

So if real heroes show us who who to be, then imaginary heroes give us aspirations for who we would be in the best of all possible worlds.  They show us what things could be like after we've sorted all this irritating mundane crap.

Imaginary heroes give us something to aim for, something in fact, to aim the whole World at (2).

So now The Doctor is going to be a woman and what could be better than that?  You wouldn't want to steer a World ignoring half of the passengers, would you?







On discovering one's new doctor is a girl...


I - which part of
fiction did you not understand?

The writers write and can write what they like:
make him an accountant, make him a fraud;
they could have Ian Chesterton wake up,
in January nineteen sixty four,
and call the whole damn thing a dream, a trip
more psychedelic than extraterrestrial

and the TARDIS only bigger inside his head.


II - which part of
science fiction did you not understand?

I mean, really, have you read the literature?
Forget the tiny part that gets to film,
because Sci-fi is at core about the different

the unusual, the strange. We've had hero robots
hero ghosts, heroes who were nobody,
we've had heroes who were toast

and brought back from the dead, irreligiously.

So a female hero should not be a stretch, especially
as "different", "unusual" and "strange" need not apply.

So perhaps the problem is the other side
of the equation, because Sci-fi is secretly about the day
in which it's written: the doomsday weapon fifties,

the cyberpunk eighties -- you get the idea...
So maybe an effortlessly superior, hyper-intelligent
witty, humane and technologically supported woman

is too close to the knuckle, for the average office drone?
Well get over it.



III - Which part of
alien did you not understand?

It's infeasibly lucky for Time Lord's to have hands
that the slightly vulnerable, yet gutsy, cute
and sometimes awestruck companion can hold.

Bilateral symmetry, being less
than one mile in diameter, a smooth
and spike-free outer skin, non-radioactive

a working temperature below one thousand degrees --
there's none of these we have a right to assume,
but every time we've thrown the dice and looked

at page two-six-four-one-three of the DM's guide
and the regeneration table, we've always rolled
not even a funky Klingon forehead.

You never quibbled at a pair of hearts
why so much trouble with a pair of breasts?


IV - It's not political.

I have heard otherwise well-meaning people say...
Hell yes it is! This is a choice made
before the public gaze. This is us when we say

we do not need the word "heroine". This is
the very best of Dr Who: grandstanding
and soliloquising all the way up to someone else's line

drawn in the sand and, when
the whole room is focussing on her,
rubbing out the line with the toe of one sensible shoe

before stepping across and strolling off
into the future that should already be.



(1) If we understood intellectually that we're all flawed, and therefore did not (for example) expect politicians to keep their trousers on, or policemen to be inhumanly incorruptible, patient, disinterested, perfect observers and the peak of physical fitness then the World would be a happier and simpler place.

(2) Which is why I do not grumble on rare occasions when the somebody needs picking up in the middle of night — it's the closest I can get to materializing in a magical blue box at to save the day...



2017-07-21

A blue star rises, and who of us can say

Click to see full-sized original
Edit: Jenn Zed has kindly created a new image to illustrate this poem.  I've cropped it and scaled it to fit the ludicrously small thumbnail here, but click to see the full glory.



Cultural change is famously the hardest sort of change to achieve, but probably the most important.

Who do we believe we are?  Clearly in the past we have believed some very silly things.

There is a concept in cosmology called the Assumption of Normality.  It says: do not invoke special rules to explain what you see.  They mean that in the sense that: (i) we do experiments here on Earth, and (ii) we look 100,000,000 light-years into the Universe (and hence the past), but (iii) we shouldn't not without really special evidence assume physics down here to be any different from physics out there.

So, if we've believed stupid things in the past (which is "out there") then we must deduce we probably still believe some stupid things now.

The important thing is to keep making improvements to our beliefs; to keep extending the assumption of normality until we can see understanding reaching everywhere, and everyone, without having to invoke special cases.







A blue star rises, and who of us can say

out by the horizon, electric blue ink
a sky uniquely annotated dawning
its own way and who of us can say
what a day like this may mean

one pale, bluish star, low in the brightening sky
I watch you stir your tea I watch
you watch my eyes we're drawing nearer
covertly, through a fall of hair

a blue star might rise unprecedented
just there in its own way on a day
with the horizon not so far away
you tie your hair back firmly with a string

out by the horizon
I greet you properly, a public display
what passes as normal, we're unaliened
and our funny ways strange no more

a blue star rises and all unmanned,
unwomanned, freshly peopled...
we walk out hands held
into the new world, bravely



2017-04-04

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 4th - A blue star rises, and who of us can say

From this prompt about the Enigma Variations -- although as ever not directly from that...  I came the long way around.


A blue star rises, and who of us can say

out by the horizon, electric blue ink
a sky uniquely annotated dawning
its own way and who of us can say
what a day like this may mean

one pale, bluish star, low in the brightening sky
I watch you stir your tea I watch
you watch my eyes we're drawing nearer
covertly, through a fall of hair

a blue star might rise unprecedented
just there in its own way on a day
with the horizon not so far away
you tie your hair back firmly with a string

out by the horizon
I greet you properly, a public display
what passes as normal, we're unaliened
and our funny ways strange no more

a blue star rises and all unmanned,
unwomanned, freshly peopled...
we walk out hands held
into the new world, bravely

2016-09-10

Boy/Girl/Thing

This may be the newest poem I have ever posted, I was editing it as recently as August 7th...  although, as is common for me, it had its origin some years ago and had to sit around in my subconscious/backlog until I was ready, willing and able to complete it.

This is also one of the hardest pieces of text that I've written for some time and the explanation for that is chock full of *spoilers* so stop here and go to the poem first if you want to experience it without preconceptions...



Ready now?
  OK, so this is my attempt to get beyond gender.  Gender has been one of the major social battle grounds of the late 20th and and early 21st centuries, and great progress has been made
at least in some parts of the World.

So in this poem I'm attempting to look ahead to a time when gender is completely sorted out, and I'm using the trick of writing in the voices of two intelligent machines that don't have gender.  This way they can look, as it were, from the outside.  I've also added (off stage) some sort of do-gooders who are trying to "give" gender to the two machines
presumably on the basis that it is their (human?) right but missing the point that the machines may be happier as they are...

...which of course echoes various historical cases of people thinking they know what's best for other people...

...I've even attempted to suggest that wiping over with a lint-free cloth is something of a sex act for these machines (I don't see that sex without gender is at all contradictory...) and finally, just for kicks and characterisation, one machine has a crush on the other (which again doesn't absolutely require gender.)

So why was that hard to write?  Just because English isn't designed to portray conversations between sapients without gender.  We only have the one ungendered pronoun: "it" which is far too loaded to sprinkle around unexplained.  So I had to resort to a certain amount of syntactic trickery (like assuming the person now speaking is the one whom we just just watched acting) and also repeating the two names more often than is common for casual writing.


And as it happens the whole exercise is a complete failure, because having gone to all that trouble: used gender-neutral names, avoided gendered pronouns and generally twisted the text...  I still think of one character as more male and the other as more female
—damn!







Boy/Girl/Thing


This whole damn gender thing  fucks me, says Viv,
so many different ways.  A tiny nod,
a shrug, sets sensor clusters all asway
and Chris has always been in love
and Chris will never say

one word to the machine called Vivian.
Working together now, they pull
a rusty barrel, probe the casing.
Viv tastes, grimacing; throws the tongue away.
Phenols again, we're broadly screwed
to sell this crap.  A sighwe'll have to crack
it down to short-chain feed.
A wiggle in the nether parts and Chris
has never seen a sight so fine
as hydrocarbon plant deploys.  Meanwhile, Viv

still ranting on the need for sex:
You see the bit that gets to me...
remember how they showed that vid:
two squirming pink things on a bed.
It bites an alloy thumb.  For me
the only sexy bit was how they'd come:

their car I thought was someone I'd enjoy.

And all the while poor Chris,
while not unhappy being an "it",
feels some appeal in girls and boys,
and beds; and is content to rub a cloth
across his best friend's heat exchanger grills,
but wonders if there's something more.  So asks,
and instantly feels shy: Tonight
maybe let's try again...
but this time both be boys?