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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Jul 18, 2016 - 07:42pm PT
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We don't seem to have mosquitos up here this year. But for those of you who do...
The Mosquito
We’ve got three mosquitos up north to annoy us,
Anopheles, Culex, Aedes by name.
Diseases they carry won’t likely destroy us;
These bugs are content just to drive us insane.
Down south Culex carries two kinds of filarias,
And elephantiasis is what they give you.
Anopheles carries four types of malarias,
To roast you and chill you and possibly kill you.
We’re way too far north for that mean dengue virus
That Aedes carries and lays you out flat,
But sooner or later they’ll likely West-Nile us,
And given a choice, hell, we’ll settle for that!
Prevention is simple, just spray on your person
Some N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide. *
The other solution is even more certain –
Curl up by the TV and don’t go outside.
* The chemical name for DEET. Don’t you EVER read the labels?
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jul 18, 2016 - 10:06pm PT
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No one knows
the maze our hearts wander
but the dusk.
The dusk knows.
4.12.2014
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Jul 18, 2016 - 11:17pm PT
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Da doze dose you hab a cold...
(The nose knows you have...)
Clearly I haven't changed.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jul 19, 2016 - 05:53am PT
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Some people say
Some never change
A conclusion on
Which I should reflect
Good thought to carry, bushman.
I usually disapprove of generalizing,
which may lead to rancor and prolongs debate.
Specificity is much better, more exact.
I have tried since knowing my friend John Decker,
to avoid this in my speech to him,
because he ALWAYS calls me on it when I use generalities!
I've learned; and as a result I've "changed my spots."
**A Leopard Lives In a Muu Tree^^
A leopard lives in a Muu tree
Watching my home
My lambs are born speckled
My wives tie their skirts tight
And turn away -
Fearing the mottled offspring.
They bathe when the moon is high
Soft and fecund
Splash cold mountain stream water on their nipples
Drop their skin skirts and call obscenities.
I'm besieged
I shall have to cut down the Muu tree
I'm besieged
I walk about stiff
Stroking my loins.
A leopard lives outside my homestead
Watching my women
I have called him elder, the one-from-the-same-womb
He peers at me with slit eyes
His head held high
My sword has rusted in the scabbard.
My wives purse their lips
When owls call for mating
I'm besieged
They fetch cold mountain water
They crush the sugar cane
But refuse to touch my beer horn.
My fences are broken
My medicine bags torn
The hair on my loins is singed
The upright post at the gate has fallen
My women are frisky
The leopard arches over my homestead
Eats my lambs
Resuscitating himself.
--JONATHAN KARIARA/Kenya/2014
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jul 20, 2016 - 12:48pm PT
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wallace Stevens
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jul 25, 2016 - 09:15am PT
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Nolaig shona dhuit!
Warm embers in the hearth,
warm memories in the heart.
The joy of children's laughter
and pine needles in the carpet for months after.
Hot coco and carols on the radio draw us in together
through long dark nights and winter's stormy weather
to share our gifts and reunite
the bonds of love this Holy night.
copyright Peggy von Burkleo, 2008
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Jul 31, 2016 - 01:50pm PT
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The Flamenvix
Part I
Down through the chasm of doom and dark gloom
In the Gruelfaschen's chamber where the Flamenvix rules
In the fumarole steamed and the brine stench filled room
Vaulted stalagmites forebodes o'er we fools
Huddled and bowed with our sweat dripped brows
Winded as harried our contingent near drowned
Nauseous and trembling we waited there cowed
As the Flamenvix entered and sauntered on down
Holding her scepter of withered thorned vine
Draped in a raiment of hemlock I saw there
Liquid her eyes in white features so fine
Crawling en mass all the scorpions in her hair
Her irises then focuses and flames in them flicked
Withered by her gaze but I looked up again
But turned my gaze downward lest by guards we get kicked
Worried for my welfare and that of my friends
Part II
She spoke soft low mystic words and the guards closed about
There came to her side a figure in dark attire
I suddenly saw stars as the lights all went out
And dreamed of subterranean pools and eyes full of fire
When I woke all was grey and a lump was on my crown
And lamely while deciding this endeavor had gone wrong
My eyes adjusted as I cast them all around
There captive in a dungeon with no clue as to how long
The drip drip drip of water synced with hunger
Many rats there scurried to and fro
One by one they were my diet sans the fur
And the drippage from stalactites my only h2o
In what seemed an indeterminate time
No one came to my rescue and no voices were heard
There was no way out but to climb
And I steeled myself to this without a word
Part III
I scratched at holds with scraped raw toes and clutched at them with shaking hands
Each stone I groped was loosening fast and slickened by a sickening slime
And slid my fingers along to pull at pockets wherever there was one
There I scratched and there I clung to lunge upwards for an endless time
Itchy pungent creeping things slithered across my face
I slowed the stuttered rhythm of my heaving rasping breath
And pulled my starved and wretched frame onto a gritty ledge
Lying there not knowing how or when I'd meet my certain death
Some creatures strange in dream approached with dark and glistened spiny limbs
At angles odd and spidery they hoisted me and carried me as deftly as the insects do
Immersing me in fragrant warmth like a rose petal and jasmine stew
Enveloped as I sank into this pungent embryonic goo
I floating there in darkness as I slept until a vision came
A moth approached unfolding dusty brown kaleidoscopic wings
Transforming in my consciousness to a bird of brown and feathered span
With a face like that of a woman once I'd loved who pulled at my heart strings
Part IV
I woke up from the dream again as my vision blurred from grey to white
The Flamenvix stood overhead towering above me in her light
Rising like the Phoenix metamorphosed from a volcanic pyre
As nauseating sparks of pain flashed in my brain like stars at night
The bludgeoning now begun in earnest at a hurtful rhythmic pace
Striking me with her wingtip claws I was sure I would not last
Her eyes shone without pity as empty hollows in her face
As she clutched me like a vice with her foot claws holding me fast
I shuddered near passed out on the floor as she released me in a heap
She stooped to hear my racing heart listening for a sign of death
And I dared not shed a single tear to show my weakness in her keep
And held my cries inside me as she opened up her wings like death
As she leaned in dragon like and opened up her icy mouth
I restrained the urge to flee once more when she cooed to me in a rattling tongue
In a birdlike alien language that slithered around inside my head
And then something else transpired there that forever shall remain unsung
Part V
Again in darkness I remained and for how long I could not know
What felt like years was only days compounding fear that would not go
And worst beyond my quandary was the gut-wrench that I felt below
To know not of my comrades fates did fill my heart with woe
Which served my thoughts to summon something deep inside and held in check
I clawed myself free from my ties and loosed the tether at my neck
I groveled to the cavern wall to gather myself from the wreck
The Flamenvix had left me in my confidence but a lonely speck
Before our bold adventure to investigate this urchin's nest
We'd been warned by local gentry to beware what devils we should wrest
But young and bold were we to sojourn to this grotto on our quest
Unknowing the Gruelfaschen's chamber held for us a ghastly test
I clung to hope in blackness now as though it were a withered vine
And knowing soon the Flamenvix upon my wretched soul would dine
I groped along the chamber wall dragging my tethers now behind
And wracked my brain for as to what inveiglements I would design
Part VI
There is the darker part of darkness that pools deep beneath our pain
Where the worst of all our demons lurk to resurface again
But we balance it with compassion lest we all should go insane
It's the the evil that's inherent in the heart of every man
Up to now the heartless alien had toyed with me and learned
What it's spawn would need to know to insure we'd all be burned
This birdlike moth she-being had both seduced me and had spurned
With her soulless dead black eyes and such cruelty be warned
So I shuffled off in the darkness and found refuge in a niche
As hate blossomed in my heart to parry the loathsome witch
This angry heart was now a weapon as a plan began to stitch
As seductive as she'd become I knew I had to kill that bitch
As the plot to slay my adversary formed inside my head
It was as brutal an idea as any thought I'd ever had
Requiring dumb luck and deception with my vitriol held in stead
It being clear to me in that moment was that my friends were likely dead
Part VII
As time traversed the metronomic tic-toc of my beating heart
I had no memory of the details beyond imperatives that I must impart
As I stood above the Flamenvix with a shard of stone thrust to her heart
I had forfeited my sanity to preserve this life now torn apart
There were rustlings and scratchings in the bones of those who lay nearby
For the Flamenvix had fertilized all her victims as they began to die
There in distance near a parapet was a torchlight upon on high
As my eyes played tricks her progeny flickered about in an angry sky
As I ran to seize the torch the sweat ran down upon my face
There her minions lay distracted in an orgy all about place
The far exit was blocked by an alien with a carapace
But the sound of trickling water drew me near it quickening my pace
On the floor of the grotto ran a darkened river below a bench
So I dove headfirst in that water just to escape the army of that wench
And as I held my breath and swam beneath the subterranean trench
I knew my life hung in the balance by but the narrowest of an inch
Part VIII
Denouement
As I scraped along through that river in the belly of our Mother Earth
I found air pockets that sustained me but of good oxygen there was a dearth
And the narrows I pressed through barely accommodated my boney girth
But I held on with my resolve and swam hard for all that I was worth
Up ahead there were strange pixies who sparkled in the watery night
They swam ahead and guided me in a vision that was so recondite
As though angels were there to guide me to my maker in his robes of white
But found instead I was swimming from beneath a pond up to the light
I returned back to the city on a train the very next day
And dared not trust a coachman that he might detour or stray
To home and hearth was what I hoped would heal me I should say
From what the Flamenvix exacted on my soul that dreadful day
But the pain of mournful injuries to my spirit was not so bad
And the loss of all my friends still made me angry and very sad
But what was worse was all the terror and the suffering that would be had
When the Flamenvix would rise again
It was enough to drive me completely mad
-bushman
(Aka -Tim Sorenson)
07/31/2016
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Jul 31, 2016 - 08:04pm PT
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Holy smokes, Bushman - I'm amazed!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jul 31, 2016 - 08:12pm PT
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An Opus, oh boy!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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For the closet cricket fans like Russ.
Happening on the island of Trinidad and Tobago in 1960 a cricket riot, mon.
One anecdote given by Dave Francois, a longtime member of the Queen’s Park Cricket Club, is that noted radio sports commentator of the time Raffie Knowles described the rioters as “hooligans.” Transistor radios, being the norm of the day, were glued to the ears of many of the spectators and before you knew it, the media area was bombarded with bottles too!
RIOT IN THE OVAL
By Lord Bryner
Don’t doubt me, don’t doubt me
Because ah saying what ah see
At the Test match in Queen’s Park Oval
Right after the tea interval
From the time Charran Singh get run out
Ah don’t know where all those bottles come.
CHORUS
But it was bottle and stone riot in the Oval
The Test match turn to a carnival,
Ah had to hide me head inside a canal
Lee Kow was like Nasser in the Suez Canal
Right in the middle of the Federal Capital
It was rotten and bad
And a shame to the island of Trinidad
After we had such a good sporting name
One little thing make we lose we fame
It will take us 15 years or more
To get back the good name, I am sure
So MCC take this apology please
On behalf of Trinidad, Brynner, and the West Indies.
I was on my heels.
When the Premier and the Governor came to the field.
They started raising their hands up
Signalling the rioters to stop
Well that didn’t help anything
They started calling louder to bring back Charran Singh
Then ah only hear fling like a bottle fly
And it lick out the Premier glasses clean from he eye
Any how I think am sure
This kind of things would not happen no more
Because we all should understand
West Indian cricket back bone is England
Because the same Charran Singh that didn’t get the run
Might be in Lancashire in a few months to come
And when England send him back to the West Indies.
You must call him Sir Charran Singh if you please.
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Aug 11, 2016 - 11:11pm PT
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The Rendering
I took my usual route today
Through my neighborhood and down Sloughhouse road
Then hurriedly down the highway
Where no bike lane buffered me from traffic
And few cars passed but trucks careened under their massive loads
The canal path was my haven
And I cruised it until Grant Line road
I took a left and followed it
Where all the cars and trucks wore on my nerves
So I pushed to find a safe haven with my shoulders hunched and torso bowed
To a backroad I had sometimes driven
When commuting into town
I'd been cautious there to slow down
For the livestock and two hairpin turns
But at fifty five miles an hour I'd only seen but farms and fields of brown
So the turn from Grant Line onto Eagles Nest
Was refreshing and quite a switch
For a bicyclist on a summers day
In three miles only two cars went by
As I stopped to rest at Laguna Creek which in most places was just a ditch
I wondered that I hadn't noticed
The creek in this locale
It's bucolic beauty unfolded to me
Bringing back memories of childhood days and fishing trips
Something about it's solitude buoyed me with new vigor as it lifted my moral
The few crossroads up ahead
Brought honking horns and speeding cars
But I stayed my course up Eagles Nest
Beyond the busy intersections
Though quiet again this section for touring would barely rate one star
Then the road left the pavement
Onto gravelly washboard and eroded ruts
I checked out the Mather RC club
An airfield I'd once been a member of
Perhaps this day the patrons were elsewhere with their beer and nuts
Back on the blacktop and around the bend
East towards sunrise Boulevard
It's a shortcut seldom drivers take
On this lonely leg of Kiefer Road
Where I peddled past the peculiar stench of the animal rendering yard
It's difficult to put into words
What's referenced as peculiar
The revolting stench became more rotten
As I turned onto the bike trail at the Folsom South Canal
Where a herd of cows by the rendering plant eyed me for their rescuer
The gallows humor struck me
As I walked my bike on by
How near or far to death they were
Those cattle helpless in their yard
Then I saw that I was just as prone on the highway as a truck went by
As I rode home on the bike path
And thought in my defense
On how short and merciless life can be
I found my pace and with fortune grace
I had in staying with the living and my occupancy in the corporeal sense
There were cars backed up on Grant Line
As I rode beyond the drama
Of traffic jams and first responders
And pondered about those peaceful places
Just beyond the clamor in the tall grass where if you're quiet is an emu or a Llama
-bushman
08/11/2016
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Aug 12, 2016 - 07:59pm PT
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Evocative, Bushman. Keep it up.
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Aug 21, 2016 - 10:35am PT
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The Island of Lost Horizons
Part 1
The Ship
As notice from my master came
The cloud cast afternoon burned clear
To lively sunset auburn haired
Much like her scratchy mane the dear
So drunk with pungent song I sang
To the pesky girl I wooed and bed
Alas my situation lost
Left me no choice and so I fled
The pastor's step on our day for to wed
A deckhands ad answered in a clutch
And we set sail on waters late
The month of August laden such
The keel on harbors bottom scraped
And hoped my captains fate was less
In kind adrift and rudderless
Or muddled like my fettered list
Escaped from I was wedded bliss
But 'fore my labors washed all this
The captains wrinkled grayish brow
O'er dark encircled eyes that frowned
With worrisome forbodence fell
To scan horizons then cast down
Through bow timbers to blackened deep
His enigmatic reputation kept
By first mate and by lock and key
Those voyages that he had seen
So buried we our worries the more
For all world a 'bound by destiny
Week on week we crested wave
Southward to as weathers calmed
And waters warm and open seas
As balmy doldrums soon embalmed
Our spirits fell on duties cursed
A deathly purgative unwarned
Less appetite left me replete
And darkened thoughts left me forlorn
On oceans wide horizon scorned
On murmured sounds of mutiny
No sharpened knives below the deck
A captain's only order stood
Between the noose and broken neck
Then spirits rose a cry to men
When west winds pressed the sails to mast
The Ivory coast appeared to east
The waves they rose and fell at last
Off Dragon's tails that never ceased
'Round Horn we pushed to India
By monster gales and seas festooned
By shoals and reefs a lurking there
To shipwreck and leave us marooned
A 'drowned and swept by Neptune's tides
To a mirthless ocean bottom tomb
And some were lost swept overboard
By sleeper waves that settled score
Left a crew survived by those much more
Now dangerous than those before
On latitudes off course bereft
Unsettled weather settled soon
Our compass course so stigmatized
We'd navigate by sun and moon
Much further south we drifted as
Through fog we saw only the ghosts
Of long lost ships and long dead crews
And heard the cries out in the mists
Of long lost Captain Darius
Whose soul was traded once for gold
Descending he to satin's lair
As olden sailor's legends told
The third day on those souther'd seas
The Indian Ocean sat like pond
No winds to tell or lift the sails
To blow the fog or stir a breeze
The captain broke out with the rum
A ration each man's fear to quell
For soon we smelled a ghastly smell
Like burning hair on animal hide
Or witch's porridge straight from hell
Which stirred us primally inside
The winds ne'er came for o'er a week
With sunken eyes and slouching gait
No words were said we did not speak
The rum long gone our nerves a wreck
A feverish red inflamed our eyes
When first came blood to black of night
The watch cried out a man on deck
His throat was sliced his face was white
The captain ordered all to top
First mates face was clenched and drawn
His pistol held and hammer cocked
He stood like that until the dawn
Each night it came each morning sun
Dispatched we were now one by one
Those of us the specter sought
In sport in form or gruesome fun
To rid the seas and keep to thee
Our cargo and our vessel for
A paltry prize for what he'd done?
Afore each dawn there came the scream
Another murdered there was lain
At midship deck for all to see
We once were forty but now fifteen
I could not wait 'till next was me
I could not sleep except by day
And cowardice kept me from flight
While hiding in a life boat passed
In trembling fear another night
And dreamed of Bess Cornelius
My near betrothed with skin of white
Her gentle smile and eyes of green
Reproached me for my treachery
I looked away but still her voice
And auburn hair encircled me
And called my name not once but thrice
With baleful moans and dreadful cries
I startled then awake to see
With flames all 'round I realized
'Twas trapped with no way clear to me
And saw no exit to my plight
As flames were there at every turn
I ran back t'wards a life boat then
A flash of pain and blackness came
I would not see our ship again
The good ship sinking as it burned
A timber'd struck me o'er the head
And when with pounding headache woke
In the only lifeboat left afloat
My former hideaway and bed
The sky was dark and the sea was black
'Till morning clouds descended
On the waters where my lonely craft
Was cloaked by fog a 'never ending
For days on end I drifted there
The dew it never quenched my thirst
No food to quell my hunger fast
With an old tarpaulin spread out where
The blistered skin and pulpy hands
I noticed not and did not care
And all my ceaseless shivering
Wore me out 'till I slept fair
As waves picked up and the wind did blow
Where I should drift I could not know
Part 2
Captain Darius
My boat made land on a blackened shore
As the tide pushed up and my feet dug in
To a coarse volcanic gravelly sand
Like one I'd never seen a'fore
Beyond all that I kept no score
For the fog had thickened all about
But my hunger ached to sound once more
So imprudently I began to shout
And thought I heard voices of men
But my eyes were weary and my ears did ring
And I stumbled into a jungle deep
Where tree vines hung to dampened ground
Knowing not what crawled or creeped
But still heard distant melodies
As I slept to rest my pulped feet
(To be continued)
-bushman
08/21/2016
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Aug 21, 2016 - 04:08pm PT
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There was an Old Man
Late one night
I heard a strange noise
So I went outside
And there was an old man
Standing by the cedar tree
He had a bald head
And a stubbly beard
All stooped and limping
Just like me
He came towards me
I raised my arm
To warn him off
But I saw something
Something moved
In the field beyond
Way out by the pepper tree
A strange glow of colors
Coruscating
A wormhole opened
Bright and green
Right out of Star Trek
Like I had seen
The old man whispered
"Don't go near
You see I once
Was from around here"
As I stood trembling in fear
He told me then
He'd worked for years
As doctor on a merchant ship
One long winter ocean voyage
They spied a man
On an iceberg there
And attempted a rescue
As a storm did rage
In the North Atlantic on that day
Then the old man said
The iceberg man
Was clearly dead
His body it was frozen stiff
Encrusted with ice
He'd waited too long
But inside his tent
Was a time machine
With it's motor turned on
The old man continued
To tell his story
That's when he said
That's when he fell
Through a wormhole there
And found an old man
Way down at the other end
Then the old man said
That it was him
I told the old man
To stop right there
That I didn't believe him
About what he'd seen
And I did not care
He smiled and turned
And disappeared
In the worm hole by
My pepper tree there
Now I've grown older
And my memory fails
Can't recall my aches or ails
Or if I've gone through
A time machine
Was I the iceberg man
Or the wormhole man?
Though there was an old man
It matters not that I can tell
-bushman
08/21/2016
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Aug 27, 2016 - 05:02pm PT
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Seasoning
There is a time in life's late seasons
To drop excuses and find reasons
To be performing daily feasance
For your dogs.
They love your butt to death
And your crotch smells like Lab breath
And it will until your death
Long time hence.
So don't be too blue and mopin'
Cuz it's nice and wide and open
And your Labs will find there's no pen
O'er the fence.
So keep on sackin' dog poo
The odor so becomes you
Here come the Labs to smell you
And your scents.
--Dog R. Ell
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Oh, An Ode
As I drove down the highway bound for Mexico,
Down to the land of the coyote and the crow,
I slammed on my brakes and almost hit a doe,
Then ran off the road where the weeds always grow,
Down through the tulies as the wind started to blow,
And that's when I saw how the sky was aglow,
When the earth shrank to nothing I had to say, "Whoa!"
I stepped out of my car because I didn't know,
I'd be lost in a cosmic archipelago,
I started to pass out when I heard a banjo,
But the worst of my fears was acute vertigo,
So I reached in my pocket real nice and slow,
I pulled out some oxygen aerosol, yo,
It comes in a pump or a spray, hello?
As that backwoods banjo strummed an adagio,
Desperately in need of some fresh h2o,
As I glanced at the moon and it's warm afterglow,
The leer she returned was most un-apropos,
But my pinkish complexion was as blue as my toe,
So I climbed in my car as it started to snow,
The snow in deep space was a dark indigo,
And as cold as the depths of the oceans below,
On an earth now gone missing into hyperspace, Joe,
So such was my quandary in space, Eskimo,
With no means for my safety or a quid pro quo,
No means to survive or a clear paseo,
But I would not relinquish and cried, "Tallyho!"
Then lapsed into deep unconsciousness, oh!
Now I could argue but I'm no Cicero,
Going from bad to worse in a heartbeat, such woe,
But much like the sad and forlorn weeping willow,
Or the puddle of drool that seeps into your pillow,
I was worse off today than I might be tomorrow,
With no future to beg, or to steal, or to borrow,
I had sealed my own fate when I'd stepped in that auto,
Now a castaway, unconscious, adrift in a grotto,
As the dueling banjos quickened pace to allegro,
My dreamscape swirled to a maelstrom staccato,
Then I woke soaked in sweat from my chronic lumbago,
And wished I'd not eaten the meat and potato,
Should've had only salad with the spinach and tomato,
So an ode to an 'Oh!' is no grand manifesto,
With some lofty philosophy to be spoken with gusto,
But a tribute to an 'Oh' without bold braggadocio,
Just a simple, "Oh, now where did the time go?"
-bushman
09/03/2016
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Alpine World #2
The Obelisk
On horizons before yesterday
Transported back in time
To the base of an ancient obelisk
Two climbers offloaded their gear
From the shuttle below a glacier
Two hundred sixty million years ago
When the Karoo Ice Age finally receded
Crackman sized up the route
He could scarcely believe his laser eye
With no portent of the danger
The bargain struck yet not conceded
The splitter ran straight from the bergschrund
To the top of the northwest buttress
Ice crystals thinly plastered the rock face
Here and there
For fifteen thousand feet
But little snow appeared on the ledges
And the crack looked free of ice
Crackman brewed hot soup
As Ropedroid sorted their gear
And hung her ledge from a nearby boulder
The climbers tended to their duties
As they spied a rare carcass
Picked clean by birds and lice
At dawn Crackman was in rare form
And Ropedroid's bionic arm
Shot bolts without ever seizing
Her pneumatic piston power source
It put a sparkle in her turquoise eyes
And they climbed forty pitches before dusk
Next day the stormy skyline
Foreboding to the west
Compelled them to climb much faster
But an ice choked chimney blocked their exit
From the buttress to the summit ridge
Ropedroid kicked her clawboots into overdrive
And led through icicles which overhung
For two rope lengths as they continued on
From nightfall into dawn
At the summit they took the south ridge
The good weather now was gone
Socked into their snow cave
The whiteout blizzard howled
As shuttle crews would not respond
With atmospheric disturbance
Playing havoc on their nerves
As well the signal from their phone
The rations spent and fuel gone
Crackman and Ropedroid spooned for heat
A love affair was born
With no calories for consummation
Two weeks went by since they had gone
The shuttle saw the woman first
His arms waved also on the second fly by
Plucked off the the southern ridge alive
They'd both lost thirty pounds or more
The second ascent party had less luck
But that's another story, son
-bushman
125,000,000 BC
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Dream-E-state?
Witness to the Black Plague, 1347-1350, it took half of civilization
Leaving the Dark ages. In its wake ,
dream estate behind earth and mortar walls
Safe from marauding hoards beatified. decorated with Topiary 'nd stone, some that were entwined
together Pontoon boats made contemporary moats ineffective
Not long past the age of moats, every one became infected
Rock Gnome, glade of Diabase, in the year of our lord 1358
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