No poem this month. Just the (now) usual last-minute note that Geek Gather is tomorrow night.

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.11.13
• Wilde Roast (Map)

Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.
— Linus Van Pelt (Charles Schulz)

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.10.09
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.
— John Updike, “September”

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.09.11
• Wilde Roast (Map)

Oh, hey! It’s the 2nd Tuesday in July! Time for Geek Gather — tonight.

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.07.09
• Wilde Roast (Map)

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise
— Mark Twain

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.06.12
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

Now the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
— John Milton, “Song on a May Morning”, 1660

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.05.08
• Wilde Roast (Map)

See you on the 8th!

Nothing like waiting until the last minute:

"OVER the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
Love, do you hear me sing?

By highway, love, and byway
The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
The wind of winter blows.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain
I sound the song of spring,
I throw the flowers of spring.
Do you hear the song of spring?
Hear you the songs of spring?"
— Robert Louis Stevenson

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.04.10
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The Plowboy is whooping-anon-anon:
There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
The rain is over and gone!

— William Wordsworth

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.03.13
• Wilde Roast (Map)

See you on the 13th!

Being that tomorrow is our usual Geek Gather night and tomorrow is also Valentine’s Day, I figured we’d skip Geek Gather this month.

Back to our normal schedule in March.

"Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the bum city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace."
— Dylan Thomas, January 1939

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.01.10
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.