Cryogenics and the Two-Part Inventions

 

Stephen Kingsnorth and his spiritual community
in Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Wales

(Don't they look cheery?)

 

* * *

—Poetry by Stephen Kingsnorth, Nolcha Fox
and Caschwa
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of
Stephen Kingsnorth, Joe Nolan, and Medusa

SPACIOUS
—Stephen Kingsnorth, Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Wales

What unity of time and place
is staged in this, our cosmic waste—
leaving trust in time misplaced
as Einstein ready theorised?
Although we measure starlight years,
yet in that place, most space revealed,
galactic hosts beyond our dreams
suggests no ending, being placed,
space curvature, continuum.

 

 

 

 Valley of Desolation, South Africa
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Stephen Kingsnorth

DESOLATION
—Steven Kingsnorth

A vast bleak wilderness, a waste,
deserted, featureless by face,
night lunar landscape, dust in dark,
with no redeeming feature, less
some prospect, anything to grasp.

Horizon spread without event,
no place save space with nothing there,
all point and purpose disappeared,
just time, yet more, quite unfulfilled,
alone in devastated scape.

Despair in life, though wished a mare,
for such affliction, overwhelm,
as heard in utter, wearied cry,
that doleful, melancholic state,
despondent gloom enveloping.

Is this—from Wiki—best can do,
the valley named, South Africa?
For when, by study of a map,
its isolation claims the same.
For here is green, a tree, the leaf,
and forest growth on yonder hill.
So desolate, not barren scene,
but distance, being, human life.

 

 

 

 Desolation Wilderness, Lake Tahoe, CA
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Medusa

HIDDEN STORY
—Nolcha Fox, Buffalo, WY

My grandfather never told me
why my older cousins shunned him.

I didn’t know why he guilted us
before he left the country.

It wasn’t until after he died
I finally heard the secret.

He badgered them for money
to bring relatives from Nazi Germany.

Because of him, we didn’t suffer utter
desolation.
But he suffered for his deeds, painful
isolation.

 

 

 

 Above the Fog
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

A STEP ABOVE
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

Inspired by one of Medusa’s previous
Seeds of the Week, Hills to Climb

in the late 1960’s when I was
attending UCLA working for
a bachelor’s degree in music,
I would spend some time down
in the piano practice rooms in
the lower level of Schoenberg
Hall playing Bach’s first two
2-part Inventions as fast as I
could. This rote practice yielded
me a few positive comments and
not much else

at about this same point in time
across the country a marvelous
musician named Wendy Carlos
engaged the use of the new Moog
Synthesizer to put out a vinyl
album entitled Switched On Bach
which took some of the same Bach
compositions and explored new and
exciting frontiers of listening pleasure

my initial response was I am never
going to hit a home run that far, so
I tamed my expectations accordingly,
along with admiring Urbie Green’s
slide trombone rendition of Flight
of the Bumblebee, knowing, however
that reaching the point where I could
accomplish that feat playing my own
trombone would leave me keyless
stranded outside the securely locked
door to higher plateaus

yes there are some true stars I do admire,
and they would never think of having
someone else drop their golf ball into the
cup for them

 

 

 

 Sr. Cell Phone
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan

ALONE WITH MY PHONE
—Caschwa

bought a nice cell phone
so I was led to believe
but then the battery overheated
something else for me to grieve

while I was in the safe zone of
a hospital waiting room
had to remove the failing part
during my own doom and gloom

visited the battery store and
was shocked at their prices
more than the phone had cost
just to power such devices

replaced the phone with another
and was happy for awhile
until it became unusable
had forgotten how to smile

so I took my late wife’s phone
and it was fully up to task, its
keypad suited me better and
gave me all that I could ask

on those several accounts to
which I’d posted the old number,
my goal to update those they
had a sure plan to encumber

as a login precaution, they’d
send me a confirmation using
my old cell number, which is
now out of use, how confusing!

used to be easy to record a phone
number change, just type a few key
strokes to replace old with new
that makes it right and let it be 

 

 

 

 —Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan

ANSWERING MACHINE
—Caschwa

Hello, you’ve reached the number
of a person who has been cryogenically
frozen until the world is a better place

Please do everything you can until
this goal has been reached, and then
try calling again…but never in the
morning

when I do awaken, if the first thing I
hear is a chorus of people asking for
money, it’s back to the freezer for me

___________________________

Today’s LittleNip(s):

COINCIDENCE
—Caschwa

no word “win” in there
until we go pronounce it
coincidence

* * *

OLD MEMORY TRICK
—Caschwa

1, 2, buckle my seatbelt

3, 4, open the vent

5, 6, pickup truck

78 RPM

9:10, time for a nap

__________________________

Carl Schwartz (Caschwa) has a good eye for the ironies of life. Today he’s writing about technology: “Years ago I gave out my cell number to various private and government institutions as a way they could contact me. Well that phone became unusable, so I didn’t spend more money to keep the account active, and proceeded to start using another cell phone with a different number. However, when I attempt to contact an institution to make that number change, they insist on sending a confirming text to my old, unusable phone before they will make available to me the form or protocol to correct the number. Thus my poem.”  

In Carl’s poem, “A Step Above”, he mentions the Moog synthesizer; ironically, I was attending CSUS (then Sac. State) at the same time he was at UC, and I was also a music major—also playing the Two-Part Inventions! Everybody was in just as much a kerfuffle over the Moog as people are about AI these days. I remember thinking that the Moog was just a different animal, and that, if people no longer wanted to play traditional instruments, with the feel, the sensuality, the creativity of those, then they wouldn’t. Things die out because we don’t want them anymore, right? But clearly, we still love the actual instruments, and synthesizers just serve different masters. Will you ever stop writing, just because AI can also do it?  

Meanwhile, Nolcha Fox and Stephen Kingsnorth have responded to our current Seed of the Week, Desolation—though Stephen’s photos hardly look to be desolate. Stephen’s poem, “Spacious”, is downright upbeat~

Last Saturday I made an error and posted that MoSt (Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center) would be sponsoring another of its summer workshops that day, and that there would be a fundraiser, Words for Wynter, at Sac. Poetry Center. Wrong—both of those are actually going to take place this coming Saturday, Aug. 31. My bad… Hope I didn't mess you up.

Then the computer went down yesterday morning before I got Joe Nolan’s feature posted—my apologies to him! If you didn’t see it, go to http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2024/08/knights-of-air.html/. It’s a dandy one, indeed!

Anyway, many thanks to today's contributors. Wouldn’t you like to join them for breakfast in Medusa’s Kitchen some day soon? Guidelines are at the top of this page at the “Placating the Gorgon” link; send poetry and/or photos and artwork to kathykieth@hotmail.com. The snakes of Medusa are ALWAYS hungry!

__________________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Greetings from Wales from
Stephen and Denise Kingsnorth!

—Photo by Denise Kingsnorth

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
Sacramento Poetry Center
presents Gabrielle Myers
tonight, 7:30pm.
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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Find previous four-or-so posts by scrolling down
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LittleSnake hides from the world
inside his piano~though he's still

looking for a one-part invention~~

🎶🎶🎶