The Wordsmith's Forge

I posted "Together We Have It All," which is the giant epic about Turq reuniting with his foster family. DW and LJ are being hinky again.

 Double-sided blanket.

This poem is spillover from the January 3, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from janetmiles, mdlbear, and redsixwing. It has been sponsored by janetmiles.


"Heisenbugs"


In the febrile gap between
letters and numbers live
the Heisenbugs.

They bring the déjà vu
of things seen again and again,
a glitch in the matrix; and
the jamais vu of things
never seen before.

They perch on the tip of the tongue
and crunch numbers before
they can be summed,

words before they can be recognized.

They make the misconceptions
and the mistaken readings,
the lexical gaps and overlaps.

When is it fog, and
when is it a cloud?

Oh, wait, the word in the list
was humility, not humidity.

They live in computer programmers,
and thereby get into computers
and programs, far more fatal
than the wing of a moth.

The next thing you know,
December is January and
we're left wondering

how the glitch stole Christmas.

* * *

Notes:

Déjà vu  is an eerie sense of repetition.

Jamais vu  is an eerie sense of unfamiliarity.

Tip of the tongue is a sense of almost knowing something: the query activates the correct memory packet, but it fails to make the transit up to the conscious mind.

The first computer bug was an actual moth.

This is from the January 3, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from corvi. It also fills the "gods / goddesses" square in my 1-7-17 card for the Dark Fantasy Bingo fest.  This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles.


"Loopholes and Destinies"


The thread of fate is unbreakable,
but it always has loopholes.

Clotho smiles, and pushes her hook
into the burlap backing of her rug.

For every prophecy, there is
some way to avoid it and
get by on a technicality.

For every impenetrable protection,
there is a donut hole it doesn't cover.

For every curse, there is
a means of breaking it.

For every all-knowing program,
there is a glitch in the matrix.

Lachesis winks, and
her silver needle twinkles
as she crochets.

The hero's journey is not
about destiny, self-discovery,
getting the girl, or even
saving the world.

At its heart, the quest is really
about finding the loopholes in fate.

Atropos laughs, and
sharpens her scissors.

* * *

Notes:

The Three Fates are goddesses of life, death, and fortune.

Latchhooking is done by knotting short yarns through a mesh to make a rug. Read instructions or watch a video on it.

Crochet uses a hook to loop yarn into cloth.  This site has all kinds of introductory material. See a video or read a tutorial about this craft.