I thought it would be fun useful cathartic to summarize a collection of thoughts/experiences that occupied my brain the last couple of days.

What I’m thinking –
My wife and I listen to entertainment/talk show radio on our commute to and from work. We get a dose of top 40 music and sophomoric humor in the morning, and sports talk radio in the evening. I was actually paying attention to music one morning, when I heard Katy Perry’s Dark Horse featuring rapper Juicy J…specifically this lyrical gem in the rap section:

She’s a beast
I call her Karma (come back)
She eats your heart out
Like Jeffrey Dahmer (woo)

Really?

Now….I am, admittedly, not a big fan of rap, though I understand the phenomenon and the urban appeal. It is a form of poetry(rhyming, meter, metaphors, alliteration, etc). I admire certain artists’ ability in rap…both in writing and performing (eminem comes immediately to mind).

But, not only is this example in poor taste…it is just lazy writing. To trivialize a serial murderer in a song lyric about addictive love/lust…surely someone could have come up with something better than that. I’m not a lyricist, and I don’t make a living as a recording artist, but I hope that we as a society don’t reach the callous point of integrating our worst examples of humanity into pop culture throwaway lines…like that.

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What I’m reading –

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a slow book finisher, and I tend to have several books going at once (probably around 5 right now, at last count). Most recently, I just started Robert Edsel’s The Monuments Men , in anticipation of the movie that going to be released soon. That one has me intrigued, particularly because the book is very factual and dry at this point, like a history lesson. It certainly has the makings of a great war time adventure story, and I will finish it. Incidentally, the last two books I finished were Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian and Dan Brown’s Inferno, both of which I finished within a couple of weeks of each other last summer/fall, which is some kind of record for me.
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Things that I’m writing

I’m writing alot these days for work: technical reports of various thus and so. I enjoy putting together different ways to discuss trends in data, make predictions, and discuss what observations/results mean or extrapolate to other conditions. It is not surprising then, that for poetry, my inspiration comes mostly from observation. My most recent poem vignette is the result of me staring at a picture on my wall (of twirled poppies) that is located next to a window (where, conveniently this time of year, I can see winter/snow). The symbolism in this poem is not lost on me, as poppies symbolize sleep, peace, or death; these are beautiful and yet, being stuck in a frame, they appear to twist and strain to see the bitter cold and and peace of snowfall.

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Things that I wonder about

I like statistics and trend relationships. The stats functions here on WordPress tell me something about my readership.
1. Someone in India really likes my poem, Respite, I get a hit from India every couple of days. Whoever you are, thank you for visiting…let me know what you like about the poem.
2. I don’t get many visitors for non-poetry posts. But, I will continue to write things as I feel inspired to.
3. NanoWriMo 2013 really boosted my readership, coinciding with Freshly Pressed, but I don’t think many of them returned after last April/May.
4. I get the highest hit rate when I write romantic or stylistic Romantic poetry. My take is that people like poetry that makes them feel good. But, still, I get very few actual comments (I’ll harp on that some more).

Thanks for visiting. And if you happen to write song lyrics, insist on better metaphors.