A practice session

[Wonderer67]

Straight Eight



Old engine sitting there,
I call you anvil
For that’s the era of technology
That you left behind
Barely
As you evolved
Over-engineered in every way
Except the course that Evolution took
Cro-Magnon killing off Neanderthals
Overbuilt, which is why you’re still here
Depression-era relic
A survivor from
The dim and musty past.
From when my grandfather
Was a young man
You two, virile at the same time
And very relevant.
The world was yours.
Your makers powered machines
Of the last Great War
And he went to subdue the enemies
Of Civilization.
He’s gone, and you’re here.
Having sat idle for 50 years
Stashed in a barn
A part of a project
A dream of a younger man
Now grown too old to pursue it
Past Dream Stage.
The seller floated
A Trial Balloon
To gauge interest.
Will some have you, or are
You fated to be junked?
Hell, I have several of these things
Projects for when Life slows a bit.
I’ll come to get you.
Salvage? Maybe Rescue
Yeah, that’s more like it.
Preservation . . . .
You were to have been
A Street Machine power plant.
I won’t make you that promise
But I will keep you from the scrap metal man
If only to delay
Your conversion into
Half a dozen electric “cars.”

This is really well done wat. As @42BelowsBack mentions, you can smell the smell the oil and grease. I can feel and see the rust. And definitely have the “feel” of old over engineered machinery that was built to last.

(Ironically, cars in those days rarely lasted 100k miles. According to Google at least….)

I think you had to be a backyard mechanic to really get your miles worth out of a car back in those days…

Car Lifespan Over the Years

• 1930s:
  Cars would average about 50,000 to 90,000 miles, and reaching 100,000 miles was considered a significant achievement.
  
  
• 1950s-1970s:
  Cars began to last closer to 100,000 miles, though reaching that milestone was still a notable feat for many vehicles.
  
  
• Today:
  Modern cars can often reach 200,000 miles or more with proper care and maintenance.
  

 

[Wat_Tyler]

This is really well done wat. As @42BelowsBack mentions, you can smell the smell the oil and grease. I can feel and see the rust. And definitely have the “feel” of old over engineered machinery that was built to last.

(Ironically, cars in those days rarely lasted 100k miles. According to Google at least….)

I think you had to be a backyard mechanic to really get your miles worth out of a car back in those days…

Car Lifespan Over the Years

• 1930s:
  Cars would average about 50,000 to 90,000 miles, and reaching 100,000 miles was considered a significant achievement.
  
  
• 1950s-1970s:
  Cars began to last closer to 100,000 miles, though reaching that milestone was still a notable feat for many vehicles.
  
  
• Today:
  Modern cars can often reach 200,000 miles or more with proper care and maintenance.

Anvil engines are good for maybe 80,000 miles or so before a rebuild. Super Fred, the one I collected last fall when we met for lunch, shows 80K on the odometer but the story is, it has been redone. The lack of oily smoke out the rear tells me this is true.


My old (2007) truck has 225000 miles and the landlady's Honda has 222000. They should be good for another 50-100000 with all things being equal.


Metallurgy is gooderer than it used to be.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Dylan Thomas
1914 – 1953


And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Shadows . . . .


I still cast a shadow
And I think you know why
I was in a tough way
And fresh out of ideas
Hell, the last one
Worked so fucking well
It tried to kill me
You spent a Sunday
A springtime afternoon
When I couldn’t focus
And scrambled for something
That looked like a solution
Crazy looking old man
Like psychotic Santa
White mane like a lion
Blind in one eye
Maybe can’t see from the other
They didn’t track together
I still have no idea
Which was the good one
You pointed out
That basic lesson
From Business 101
That to find a solution
One must first
Identify the problem
Oh yeah
Sometimes the simple
Is exceedingly complex
Especially to a
Complicating mind
Such as mine
You “got it” too
You modelled what to do
Haven’t seen you in eons
I still cast a shadow
And if you do not
You are sharing in mine . . . .

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Artists can see the horrors that are taking place in the world perfectly well and some of them are doing what little they can to create more awareness in society at large, but many more are giving way to apathy, treating art as an escape from reality, a comfortable, insulated world…...

~ John Calder

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Writing​

By: Charles Bukowski​

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman’s love,
no wealth
can
match it.

nothing can save
you
except
writing.

it keeps the walls
from
failing.

the hordes from
closing in.

it blasts the
darkness.

writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist,
the kindliest
god of all the
gods.

writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit.

and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain.

it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation.

that’s
what it
is.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

In a word


The world's terms
are,
in a word,
Unacceptable.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzQcpwrjJJgldlzNTVDhFFhlVRpj


The first essay anybody writes is for school. Same here. But the only examples I remember are the ones I wrote at the end, in my A-level exams. One compared Hitler to Stalin. Another, Martin Luther King, Jr., to Malcolm X. I was proudest of the essay that considered whether the poet John Milton—pace William Blake—was “of the devil’s party without knowing it.” I did well on those standardized tests, but even passing was far from a foregone conclusion. I’d screwed up my mocks, the year before, smoking too much weed and studying rarely. Since then, I’d cleaned up my act—a bit—but was still overwhelmed by the task before me. My entire future rested on a few essays written in the school hall under a three-hour time constraint? Really? In the nineties, this was what we called “the meritocracy.” As a system of evaluation, it favored the bold and the brash, laid waste to the rest, and was irrelevant to the rich, whose schools drilled essay technique into the student body from Day One. In a school like mine, exams came as a surprise. Up to that point, we’d basically thought of school as a social event, a sort of mixer for a diverse group of teen-agers, many of whom had only recently arrived in the country—like a mini U.N., but with easier access to psychedelics. Almost half the school was felled at the first hurdle, leaving after G.C.S.E.s, aged just sixteen. (For G.C.S.E.s, you usually studied about nine subjects; for A-levels, only three.) Those of us who survived struggled on, trying to jump through meritocracy’s narrowing hoops. If you couldn’t do maths and had trouble with the hard sciences, each hoop came with an essay topic attached. (I did English, History, and Theatre Studies.) The stakes were presented as not just high but existential. You had to produce a thousand effective words on the rise of the Chartists—or else! What did “else” mean? Never earning more than minimum wage, never getting out of your mum’s flat, never “making something of yourself.” My anxiety about all this was paralyzing me.

Then something happened. An English teacher took me aside and drew a rectangle on a piece of paper, placed a shooting arrow on each corner of the rectangle, plus one halfway along the horizontal top line, and a final arrow, in the same position, down below. “Six points,” this teacher said. “Going clockwise, first arrow is the introduction, last arrow is the conclusion. Got that?” I got that. He continued, “Second arrow is you basically developing whatever you said in the intro. Third arrow is you either developing the point further or playing devil’s advocate. Fourth arrow, you’re starting to see the finish line, so start winding down, start summarizing. Fifth arrow, you’re one step closer to finished, so repeat the earlier stuff but with variations. Sixth arrow, you’re on the home straight: you’ve reached the conclusion. Bob’s your uncle. That’s really all there is to it.” I had the sense I was being let into this overworked teacher’s inner sanctum, that he had drawn this little six-arrowed rectangle himself, upon his own exam papers, long ago. “Oh, and remember to put the title of the essay in that box. That’ll keep you focussed.”

I was seventeen when this priceless piece of advice came my way. I’m now almost fifty, and although I don’t often draw out the rectangle anymore, this charming and simple blueprint is buried deep in my cerebral cortex, lit up like the flux capacitor in “Back to the Future.” I still use it.


~ Zadie Smith

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Walking on No Kings Day



15,000, damned near 16,000 steps
Here in the city
But not in downtown
No idea where
Didn’t ask and don’t care
If it makes you happy, then go.
The sky was perfect,
The light is yellow
This time of year
And I took the time
To go to the old part of town
Being a gorgeous afternoon
All the little gentrification
Residents were out
Doing suburbs shit
In what once was the ‘hood.
Funny how that works.
But I saw signs:
Chinga la migra
Resist
No kings
Democratic candidate yard signs
Some for one of them
And some for all three at once
A fire engine
No ambulances
And no poepoe
Little kids nattering to parents
Doing almost suburbs stuff
In their postage stamp yards
Nicely kept, which is easier
When it’s ten feet by twenty-five.
Over there, where I came up the hill
Is the old park where the wartime hospital was
Funny, there’s no graveyard
The view of the river there
Would make it a developer’s wet dream
Million dollar condos
At least the old houses
Still have their half-a-view.
Meanwhile, what of the kings?
I’d rather see horse shit
And fire up the tractor
It’s on the agenda
Just a few more months
And then I bid you adieu.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

My Great American Novel Project


When I write The Great American Novel
I will explain where it all went wrong
I will say it eloquently
As though lyrics of a sad song
I’m not sure what to do about it
But I’m sure what’s been done so far
Is just a giant cluster fuck
We are being led to the abattoir
These are the times that try our souls
As was said once upon a time
There must be something to do about it
More effective than finding words that rhyme
I can go home and clean my rifle
And ensure that I top off every magazine
But I’m not sure anyone would help me
Or that they even understand what my words mean
I go to work and pay my taxes
Toiling beneath the boot heel of the man
I think great thoughts which ought to make sense
I put them to paper every chance I can
This to create my great American novel
My version of the fact of life
I follow attempt to bring some hope today
To attempt to relieve the burden of the strife
My friend and I greet one another
By simply asking, what’s wrong now?
What answer may be to trade the city
For country land with horses and a cow
I’m up too early to be going to work
Pounding pavement going down the road
To perform yet another function for the ungrateful
My job vacancy will be posted before I’m cold
One reason the church had an easy time selling salvation
Was that there was no hope here where we dwell
Trading our minds and aspiration for material
Nearby making life nothing short of hell
Dear readers, small children, please don’t mistake me
Through my words, I’m glad we got a chance to meet
Please, dear people, trust me when I tell you
I refuse to die on my knees rather than my feet
And I believe this to be the spirit of the great American novel
I must get busy and write my masterpiece
I must not leave you with no direction
But even dead men know the living need release

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Life


Seems annoying sometimes.
It’s what we do
But then a moment arrives
When it’s like looking at it
From Somewhere Else
As in, who is this?
But moreso, what is this?
Like, What The Fuck is This, really?
It takes the Caring right out
It’s not like a tummyful of thistles
Or rusty razor blades
Maybe more of whence and whither
We have made it all
Too goddamned complex