Polerand's Hamburger Shack

2003-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

Highway 11

A boy with a face
of mocha-milk-chocolate
runs along the side of
Highway 11.
His arms are spread out.
He is an eagle,
running in the skies.
His face is turned up against
the clouds,
his eyes are shut
and his mouth is open.
He is laughing, this eagle.
The wind plays games with
his face and his arms and his legs.
It rustles his blue jeans
and hides in his back pocket.
It bends his hair back on
his head, and teases the
tiny hairs on his arms.
As cars float past him
like a dream,
the wind gusts through him
and he can fly.

A Jeremiah Adams Original, ©2002, Jeremiah Adams, Jeremiah Adams is a ™ of Jeremiah Adams, etc.

This poem I wrote after experiencing the joys of having to get out of my truck on the side of a highway. And, it has a part in naming my blog Highway Polerand because I couldn't really think of anything else.

2002-11-04T14:30:00.000-08:00

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

By Robert Browning

Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!

      Water your damned flowerpots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

      God's blood, would not mine kill you!

What? your myrtle bush wants trimming?

      Oh, that rose has prior claims--

Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

      Hell Dry you up with its flames!



At the meal we sit together:

      Salve tibi! I must hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather,

      Sort of season, time of year:

Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely

      Dare we hope oak-falls, I doubt:

What's the Latin name for "parsley"?

      What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?



Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,

      Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,

      And a goblet for ourself,

Rinsed like something sacrificial

      Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps

Marked with L. for our initials!

      (He-he! There his lily snaps!)



Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores

      Squats outside the Convent bank

With Sanchicha, telling stories,

      Steeping tresses in the tank,

Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,

      --Can't I see his dead eye glow,

Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

      (That is, if he'd let it show!)



When he finished refection,

      Knife and for he never lays

Cross-wise, to my recollection,

      As do I, in Jesu's praise.

I the Trinity illustrate,

      Drinking watered orange pulp--

In three sips the Arian frustrate;

      While he drains his at one gulp.



Oh, those melons? If he's able

      We're to have a feast! so nice!

One goes to the Abbot's table,

      All of us get each a slice.

How go on your flowers? None double?

      Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,

      Keep them close-nipped on the sly!



There's a great text in Galatians,

      Once you trip on it, entails

Twenty-nine distinct damnations,

      One sure, if another fails:

If I trip him just a-dying,

      Sure of heaven as sure can be,

Spin him round and send him flying

      Off to hell, a Manichee?



Or, my scrofulous French novel

      On gray paper with blunt type!

Simply glance at it, you grovel

      Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:

If I double down its pages

      At the woeful sixteenth print,

When he gathers his greengages,,

      Ope a sieve and slip it in't?



Or, there's Satan!--one might venture

      Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave

Such a flaw in the indenture

      As he'd miss till, past retrieve,

Blasted lay that rose-acacia

      We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine

'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratiâ

      Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r--you swine!

ca. 1839, Robert Browning

2002-10-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Spring in January

Whir-whir-whir
sounds the black bike tires
on the warm, grey concrete.
Whir-whir-whir
they resonate for eternity,
steady and stable.
Whir-whir-whir.
A breeze whispers through
the leaves,
bending the trees down
to our level.
Whir-whir-whir
the worn bike tires
continue on while
the breeze and the trees
and the leaves, plea
flee-flee-flee
and the black bike tires leave.
Whir-whir-whir.

A Jeremiah Adams Original, ©2002, Jeremiah Adams™ etc etc.

It sounds like whir-whir-whir to me.

2002-10-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

A Latter Day Saint

I am sitting here, staring at the near blank screen of my computer. It is sparse of any information, save the deep green background and the menus of the word processor program. And the cursor. That blinking bar of contempt, ever reminding me that I have not written anything in weeks. I stare at the blinking vertical reminder. Like a flash it appears and then it quickly fades away. Perhaps it won’t come back and I will have something to do. Maybe my computer has frozen and it will take a good hour or more of creative enterprise to fix it. It would be nice to feel creative again.

Another flash and the cursor is back. That little shit. At least I know why I am angry at it. This little bastion of repetition and accountability is to be trusted, whereas my performance is spotty at best. Maybe that’s why I was never good at sports. That and my lack of ambition. Or something. Blink-on, blink-off. Dammit, I have to take a break! I’m not even working but I have to take a break from ... this. I’ll go grab a paper downstairs. That’ll make me feel like a writer.

So I hurry out the door of my room, pulling on a dark blue windbreaker as I go. Fuck, I forgot to lock it. So I walk back the five feet I had traveled and stand in front of my door, searching through the mound of keys in my hand. There we are. I push my foot in at the bottom of the door gently so that the lock fits the hole, I insert the key into the lock and turn it with ease.

“Hey, what’s up?” asks a neighbor of mine, walking down the hall.
“Oh, nothing, you know. Work and stuff.”
“Well, take it easy.”
“Later.”

I walk down the hall and hit the call button for the elevator. And I wait. I stare at the lit down arrow as it pulses from bright to weak to weaker and back. Always, my whole life, will I be waiting and staring at the lights. I sigh. The light disappears and I look around to see which elevator has graced my presence. Number 4 ... well, this should be fun. I step onto the elevator and push one.

“Come on, let’s go,” I mutter to the elevator. It helps. I push the close door button. It also helps. Finally, after ten painful seconds, the doors begin to close slowly. There is a brief lurch as the elevator begins to go down and then it evens out. It sure would be nicer to fly.

“Well, at least it’s not stopping on any other floors,” I say to reassure myself. And then the elevator stops abruptly.

“Sonofa bitch, what was that?” I demand. No doors open. No movement. I wait for half a minute. I reach down and hit the open door button to see if I’ve stopped on a floor. The doors open slowly to reveal nothing. Darkness, save the little rectangle of light coming from the very top of the open elevator doors.

“Oh fuck,” I say. Someone must have heard me, or heard the doors open on their floor as I soon saw dress shoes in the lit opening, and then the dress shoes became a person’s head looking in on me.
“Hello,” says the head. “You alright down there?”
“Yeah, I’m peachy.”
“How’d that happen?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Is this a bad time to talk to you about the book of Mormon?”
“Yes.”
“Yes it is a bad time to talk to you about it, or yes you’d like to talk about it?”
“No, I would not like to talk about it. I would like to get off of this fucking elevator.”

A Jeremiah Adams Original, ©2002, Jeremiah Adams™ etc etc.

2002-10-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

"Sonofabitch Bastard!"

That's from the great film Dirty Work

It's probably an aquired taste. Similar to the beloved Hamster Dance (which is definatly not Hampster Dance). And that is simply heavenly. Joyous. It's too bad I've already used the term "Shizzle my Grizzle" on the Highway or I could have worked it in so well here. Well ... it would have worked to me. So anyway, I didn't really spend any time on my machine tonight so the Highway is still under construction. Oh, and I've alphabitized and corrected all those links - if you change the title of your blog, I will probably hurt you. Fair warning.

And, eventually, I'll run this side-by-side with the Highway. I'm not sure what I'll be doing with this blog, but it will be something! Like, biggest paranoid moment of the day! Or, a dream journal (it makes me want to laugh). Or whatever. Or maybe I'll start my own line of hip swimwear for the Inner Pole in us all. If you would know of anyone willing to sponser such a business adventure, do give me their contact information.

2002-09-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

Fry It Up

Would you like fries with that?

So, here we are, kind of next to the The Highway and we are back in action. For the most part at least. I'm considering ... many different options and so, for the time being, this will be a random place of craziness. Which is not to be confused with the crazy Highway.

So, I recently switched to OS X, spilled root beer on my machine, had it sent to Applecare where they replaced the bottom, the ram shield or something like that, the backlight, my keyboard, and they fixed my power cord ... thingy. Thanks! And it was done in one day. Cool. So, now I'm all the way up to Jaguar and loving it. I've had far too much fun doing the most trivial of things - customizing the appearance. My main drive icon is Hal, I have a couple Simpsons icons for my firewire drives and a folder (Fat Tony, the asian chef guy, Akira, and Teensy the monkey), I have a couple Grand Theft Auto III icons, Scooby Doo, a very cool picture of 4 old books that is for my writing folder, and, of course, staples such as G. I. Joe, Zero Wing (All your base are belong to us), Masters of the Universe, and a couple of other things that have nothing to do with anything else. Very fun to me. I'm considering altering the boot and login panels, and I'm fairly certain I'll change the icons on the dock (including the Finder). iChat is pretty cool, even if the the Pope doesn't like the speech bubbles.

And now to see if things work as they should ...