the caffeine poem etc

It has come to my attention that I need to post the caffeine poem on here so everybody can see and hopefully giggle at it. This came about as I was singing a couple of my songs for Pearl and Mom and Greg and Julie just a few minutes ago, Amber and Grandma already having gone sensibly to sleep. Seems Julie actually remembered that there was a caffeine poem, which to me is simply too big of a compliment to ignore.

Wrote this puppy my junior year of high school, I think, after learning the chemical formula for caffeine in chemistry class. Who says you never learn anything useful in school?

-----
Ode to Caffeine
based upon its chemical formula

C8H10N4O2
It tells me what to say and do
Without it, I do not believe
My consciousness could still conceive.

C8H10N4O2
Shows me the beautiful and true
It drives my mind to calculate
And drives my heart to palpitate.

C8H10N4O2
Adds zest to any tasty brew!
My eyes are bloodshot - my hands shake -
I need another coffee break.
-----

And since I've got a couple other good-uns by heart, I might as well put them here.

Less instantly memorable, but still something I recite to myself when in need of a mood booster. More or less inspired by Lois Bujold. It isn't a sonnet--the rhythm starts out totally random, and it's unrhymed. Note in what context it shifts into iambic pentameter (da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA), the traditional rhythm for a sonnet, however. I did that kind of on purpose, but unless you're a poetry geek, I have to point it out. Then you're like "ohh, that kinda makes sense."

-----
the needs of modern escapist fiction

You need to write novels that can be read
on the train by bored administrative
assistants like yourself, that they can sink
into like a child in bathwater, nose
not quite breaking the surface. You open
your eyes, as if surprised that eyes still work
to tame that rippling landscape, where the sun
pours in along the curtain like spun gold.
Submerged, you can recall the breathless hope
(puff out your cheeks, let streams of bubbles go)
that light would strike the water with a splash
and come up lions, bursting into life--
Appearing, just as bubbles disappear
when they rejoin their native element.
-----

Now this next one was inspired by my main man, Talcott Parsons. He is the bomb, although I must say I haven't much use for the school of sociological thought that took up his mantle. To my eye, he used the insane level of terminological exactitude in the service of real insight, insight that saw straight through to the core of his science. He simply wanted his ideas to be unmistakable, defined with the greatest possible rigor and examined with all necessary thoroughness. The problem is that everybody seems to take up the rigor and thoroughness, and completely lose sight of the ideas. The quote that heads up the poem is the closest he comes to a casual metaphor, and inspired the poem directly.

The basic idea is that no matter how much you know, how much you define, there is always something vitally important to whatever you're doing that is not covered by your definitions. In this poem I personify that part of truth. A part which (as Talcott points out) can only be described in negatives.

residual categories
Any logically defined system...may be visualized as an illuminated spot surrounded by darkness. ...The logical name for the darkness is residual categories. The only statements that may be made about such truths are negative ones; "it is not so-and-so." But it is not to be inferred that because such statements are negative they are therefore unimportant.
~Talcott Parsons, from The Structure of Social Action vol 1

will the woman who never kicked your dog
open the door
she won't step in the moonlight on the rug
you won't know whether she thinks about flowers
you won't know whether she is

not measuring the circumference of her thumb
she will gather what is not your pride
it billows in the breeze from a window
that faces away from the moon
she will draw it from over your brows
by a process none can verify

or repeat
you will not watch what falls unfolded at your feet

and all unaware
you will nibble her thumbnail
for she will split the peel
of what is not an orange,

Rise, and reel across the room
to what is not a door
to cast your helpless mouth into an empty sky.