Sky+Kalfus

toc =Ode to Quarks¹=

Three quarks for muster mark!² A trinity³ ignites a spark. Stray neutrinos⁴may impose on, But just as likely will a boson.⁵ Strange to meet, but charmed⁶ (I’m sure) Spin’s the cause of its allure.⁷ Should the matter up the ante,⁸ The remainder would be scanty.

¹Subatomic particle that hadrons (such as protons and electrons) are composed of. ²Line from Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce that coined the word “quark”. ³Three quarks form a hadron. ⁴Subatomic particle that may collide with a quark. ⁵Another subatomic particle that may collide with a quark. ⁶“Strange” and “charmed” are both varieties of quarks. When strange quark is hit by a W boson, it becomes charmed. ⁷The movement of a quark, called “spin”, creates one of the four fundamental forces (i.e. gravity). ⁸When matter pairs with antimatter, the two are annihilated.

=Summer Ghazal=

We leaped to the dollar store, with each leap we laughed. Siphoning sunshine, awaking from sleep, we laughed.

You and me, we were animals, impulsive and crass Although our humor was cheap, we laughed.

Short-sleeved and shameless, we lay in the grass Whenever the conversation got deep, we laughed.

We were babbling and joyous, a unified mass As we collapsed into a spasmodic heap, we laughed.

The day was robust and shining, the color of brass For every memento we didn't bother to keep, we laughed.

We were liberated, yet we traveled en masse Like blind and braying black sheep, we laughed.

=(Very) Abstract Sonnet About the Weather=

Geosmin, petrichor blue-gray, the air gets foggy, excess particles to mils. Among your tracheal cilia, they share thoracic space, every crevice it fills.

Let me sublime amid your molecules, become blue-gray, expand like medic's gauze. My histamines protest your ridicule but glia transmit, dissolve without pause.

Cement and fly ash static underneath curled metatarsals and elastomers. The hedgegrow, eyelash ferns construct a wreath For damp pale fingertips and thistle burrs.

My mass is far too consequential, dense I'm empty, nonexistent, yet immense

=Reflection on Poetry=

Poetry is a tricky subject to analyze, because it deals primarily with emotions, without regard to the pragmatic conventions of prose. It does have its own constraints, but they seem arbitrary and inconsistent. For a long time, it confused me. What, I wondered, could be expressed in poetry that could not be more eloquently expressed in prose? Why the abstraction, the line breaks, the syllable counts? After reading some poetry and writing my own, I was able to draw a conclusion. Meter and rhyme scheme, though apparently arbitrary, force the writer to manipulate language in unusual and beautiful ways. They create a lyricism that cannot be achieved by prose. Good poetry conveys emotion in a way that is more abstract, yet often more effective. In writing my own poetry, I was marginally successful. I am proud of my Ghazal, which I think captures the mood I was trying to express. I had much more difficulty with the sonnet, however, and had trouble maintaining the structure while staying true to the subject matter. In the end, it was abstract to the point of being incoherent. Contrary to common misconception, the purpose of poetry is to communicate, not to confuse.

=John Updike=

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children
They will not be the same next time. The sayings so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected. Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in the more securely to the worldly buzz of television, alphabet, and street talk, culture polluting their gazes' pure blue. It makes you see at last the value of those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves) who knew you from the start, when you were zero, cooing their nothings before you could be bored or knew a name, not even your own, or how this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.

Sonic Boom
I’m sitting in the living room, When, up above, the Thump of Doom Resounds. Relax. It’s sonic boom. The ceiling shudders at the clap, The mirrors tilt, the rafters snap, And Baby wakens from his nap. “Hush, babe. Some pilot we equip, Giving the speed of sound the slip, Has cracked the air like a penny whip.” Our world is far from frightening; I No longer strain to read the sky Where moving fingers (jet planes) fly. Our world seems much too tame to die. And if it does, with one more //pop,//I shan’t look up to see it drop.

Burning Trash
At night—the light turned off, the filament Unburdened of its atom-eating charge, His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low To touch a swampy source—he thought of death. Her father's hilltop home allowed him time To sense the nothing standing like a sheet Of speckless glass behind his human future. He had two comforts he could see, just two.

One was the cheerful fullness of most things: Plump stones and clouds, expectant pods, the soil Offering up pressure to his knees and hands. The other was burning the trash each day. He liked the heat, the imitation danger, And the way, as he tossed in used-up news, String, napkins, envelopes, and paper cups, Hypnotic tongues of order intervened.

Analysis of "Burning Trash"
In John Updike's poem "Burning Trash", he considers his own mortality, death being the "nothing standing like a sheet of speckless glass behind his human future". He finds comfort, however, in the substance of the world and its physicality. He also derives pleasure from the rhythmic fluctuations of life, which he equates to the flickering of burning trash.