The Wordsmith's Forge

This poem is spillover from the November 7, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from readera and redsixwing. It also fills the "captivity" square in my 6-16-17 card for the hc_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by EdorFaus. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics and precedes the poem "A Way to Make Right."

Warning: This poem contains some intense topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It features Skink in a holding cell after a bad cape fight, mild hypothermia and moderate calorie shortage due to superpowers, description of the unpleasant circumstances of Skink's manifestation, flashbacks, reference to messy medical details in the past, current discussion of using Skink's injury-activated Regeneration to pay his debt to society, poverty, racism, becoming a supervillain out of desperation rather than desire, past starvation, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

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This asexuality blog has a list of nonsexual intimacies. 

This tweet neatly points out a flaw in isolationist logic. 

This poem is spillover from the November 7, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from readera and redsixwing. It also fills the "forced to hurt somebody" square in my 6-16-17 card for the hc_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by torc87. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics and follows "Severance Pay," so read that one first or this will make no sense.

WARNING: This poem features graphic scenes that may be disturbing to some readers. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes emotionally complex responses, reference to past deprivations and disadvantages, recalculation of social debt due to Skink having helped to take down the buzz-saw supervillain without thinking to mention it to his adjudicator, graphic and gross medical details, ~level 8 pain for several minutes, Skink has no idea what help is even available let alone how to ask for it, dietary issues, tentative bonding, discussion of adaptive clothing, and other challenges. This is hardcore hurt/comfort, but the overall tone is actually quite positive. If these are touchy topics for you, please consider your tastes and headsapce before reading onward.

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A friend and I got to talking about how to put the bottom rungs on the ladder. One thing you need for this is an understanding of base premises -- those are the bottom rungs. The ladder is an argument. You get this stuff from logic and philosophy, but those fields handle them in slightly different ways ...

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This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, July 3, 2018 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Xenolinguistics and Lost Languages." I'll be soliciting ideas for linguists, polyglots, translators, adventurers, archaeologists, anthropologists, sailors, police, firefighters, clergy, superheroes, aliens, uncontacted tribes, minorities, conlang mavens, other people who deal with exotic languages, translating, listening, reading, speaking, writing, constructing languages, reviving lost languages, following other languages into dark alleys and rifling their pockets for loose grammar, traveling, learning a new language, troubleshooting, discovering problems, finding creative solutions, confronting deception, asking questions, exploring new techniques, classrooms, libraries, archaeological digs, remote villages, exoplanets, outerspace, ships, the glory road, offices, churches or temples, magical laboratories, trading posts, other places of unusual linguistic activity, dead/dormant languages, rare/dying languages, heritage languages, constructed languages, alien/fantasy languages, linguistic genocide, language nests, heritage-language newspapers, untranslated/untranslatable documents or concepts, isolate languages, first contact, unforseen circumstances, when the whole world changes out from under you, cape fights, alien invasions, rare phonemes, atypical grammar, English is as pure as a cribhouse whore, and poetic forms in particular.

Some of my series play into this.  Frankenstein's Family has the werewolves speaking Dacian.  Polychrome Heroics has Dr. Infanta speaking Basque, Aidan speaking a version of Proto-Indo-European, Pips (secretly) and Walden (openly) speaking Pictish, lots of people speaking Native American heritage languages, and Roger the Pirate speaking who knows what else.  The Blueshift Troupers have a different derivative of Proto-Indo-European.

I have a linkback poem, "Wings, Dragons" (16 verses, A Conflagration of Dragons). 

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week.  (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts.  I am now.)  Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog. 

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These are the character notes for "A Way to Make Right."

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Here are the location notes for "A Way to Make Right." They cover the Dr. Mary Fulstone Visionary Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Reservation Clinic for Lost Notch.

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These are the content notes for "A Way to Make Right."

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