April 20, 2011

Pile-ons. Fibonacc 87. Revised April 20, 2011

Ordinarily, I wouldn't make a separate post of a revised fibonacci, but I made the changes immediately prior to the reading at Day's Espresso here in Louisville on Friday night,and I know they brought forth an entirely different response in the listeners.   I tightened the line with 89 words and revised the final line.

 Pile-ons

1    We /
1     get /
2     into trouble /
3     when we expect /
5     life to be a straight /
8     line. Remember, there are no straight lines in /
13   nature. Rather, there are pile-ons and forest fires and orgies of mass movement; /
21   there are fight and flight and paralysis; twisting stream beds, fractal-ed coastlines, wild-hair branches leaping out from the otherwise tidy white azalea bush./
34   Why do we think disasters should happen in logical fashion, at discrete intervals, with allowances for us to catch our breath?
      Was the earthquake not enough?  Must there be aftershocks as well, and a /
55  tsunami, and nuclear power plants' electrical systems destroyed, and increased nuclear levels on the Atlantic coast after a disaster on the Pacific?  Can we not be allowed time and space to bury or cremate our dead?  Can the ocean not cough up their bodies?
     And to make it personal, must the little dog be grounded /
89  for ten days because of a dislocating kneecap that pops out of place each time she squats and lifts her right back leg.  She's funny on painkillers, like your funniest friend with a buzz on.  Her minor disability is contemporaneous with my fellow's emergency surgery for a gall bladder turned enemy, and then the doctor said "gangrene" and I didn't breathe for three days. That morning I learned a beloved friend was dead.  That midnight, I burst the wall of a tire driving home in the exhaustion. /

1   Nature /
1    does /
2    not live/
3    in a straight /
5    line. Nature and life are /
8   a pile-on orgy, a forest fire earthquake tsunami /
13  clusterf*#k.  In response, be of good cheer. Choose one task.  Do it well.
                                                                              by Mary Cartledgehayes

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