Debating The Plain Facts

 

Physical exercise is a more powerful aid to pure thoughts. When unchaste ideas intrude, engage at once in something that will demand energetic muscle exercise. Pursue the effort until fatigued, if necessary, making all the while a powerul mental effort to control the mind. Of course, evil thoughts will not be expelled by thinking of them, but by displacing them by pure thoughts. Exercise aids this greatly.,

         -John Kellogg, Plain Facts for Young and Old (1898)

 

Sir: winter made a bad

sport of me. Six times

I sprinted the block, impure

ideas lingered. I dashed

to the flower shop, was

cruel to my florist who

possessed the last tulip

in northeast Nova Scotia

& what I said was, is that

all? The tulip nodded

in a doomed way, it had

once been a charming

ruby. Florists, of all people

recognize despair. She

invited me to rifle

through spent freesias,

buckets of lost, ragged ferns.

When I asked where she

attended flower school

I knew I could run

marathons, still cross

finish lines wicked.

I chose a cracked branch

of baby's breath, it recalled

snow caught in a hairnet

more than I would have liked.

 

 

Small Sad Rant

 

Eveything's a contest, I told him acridly.

Race you to the top of the stairs, he said.

 

 

a brief history of the celts in the old

world & the new (in five moveable parts)

 

[old] they board a boat; they suffer.

[new] they disembark; they suffer.

[then] they out-migrate; they suffer.

[later] they return; they suffer.

[any time] they pipe their song; they suffer.