Touchdown Confirmed: Lines Composed 26 November 2018
by I. E. Sbace Weruld
InSight had been in flight since May 5, when it landed on
Mars, on November 26. Its trip had been quite long,
the length about 300,000,000 miles from the Earth,
the cost $830,000,000 US purse.
The craft decelerated from 12,000 mph
to 0 in its 39-foot parachute depower.
Its parking spot was in Elysium Planetia,
MarCO real-time communication at Mars setting, ah.
The present mission is to search crust, mantle, and the core.
it’s time to do a little bit of Terraforming Mars.
I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of space. His favourite board game at the moment is Terraforming Mars.
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Stephen Hillenburg (1961-2018)
by Cawb Edius Reel
Marine biologist and animator Hillenburg
has just succumbed to ALS and left stage planet Earth.
Known for his sprightly cartoon series with SpongeBob SquarePants,
the sea sponge dwelling at Bikini Bottom’s water manse.
whose house is a pineapple, with pet scallop and pet snail;
who bothers those around him, though he’s a good-natured male,
who is a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, where he still works,
who was quite mischievous at times, indeed sometimes a jerk.
And now we learn his animaker Stephen passed today;
but SpongeBob SquarePants does not plan to go so fast away.
Cawb Edius Reel is a poet of TV and film. One of his more annoying quotes is “Ain’tch got no Cultcha?”
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The Black Sea Naval Incident: November 25, 2018
by Alecsei Durbew
The sky was grey, the waters grey; the ships were grey as well.
The ice floes had not shown up yet; this was not Dante’s hell.
Three ships were sailing off Crimea, when the Russians hit;
one ship was rammed; the Russians opened fire; that was it.
Ukrainians were injured in the confrontation there;
and twenty-four were captured in the tense and frigid air.
Two gun boats and a tug had sailed from Odessa’s port,
they were enroute to Mariupol; but they had to abort.
The clash at sea was a reflection of the clash on land.
That war can flare up any time when one side takes a stand.
This incident in the Black Sea is a reminder that
it’s not a frozen conflict; it is still a deadly spat.
The stalemate now in Donbass is an uneasy truce;
more than ten thousand have been killed; and peace remains elusive…
Alecsei Durbew is a poet of Russia. His great-grandparents on his mother’s side were from Odessa, and spoke both German and Russian.
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Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan
by Arcideb Usewel
How strangely it appears near blocks of Soviet-style flats,
the brutal and severe, old-style communistic plats—
Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan,
its wave form lunging up into the sky, and flowing down.
Continuous and fluid, rounded by a plaza’s sweep,
its surface holds white curving forms due to GFRP.
The rhythmic seams, composite beams, the concrete and the steel
rise up above and well beyond the ordinary streets.
It seems a future wonderland of swirls prepared for flight,
and slides and curls inside and out, depending on the light.
Arcideb Usewel is a poet of architecture. The Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan, was envisioned by Zaha Hadid (1950-2016), the Iraqi-British architect.
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In Pakistan
by Waleed Budecir
She gave a cup of water in His name; that is a sin.
In Pakistan that person could be thrown in prison, and
put on death row. And even if that nation’s highest court
acquits her from a crime she never did, years afterward,
she’ll be rewarded with death threats, and vile, vicious hate;
and anyone who dares help her, could meet a dreadful fate.
In Pakistan—the country is so pure it can’t withstand
the slightest offering from some poor woman’s gentle hand.
She must be kept in prison, and she cannot leave the land.
And will there be asylum for her? Is this what she wins?
Waleed Budecir is a poet of Pakistan.
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A Tiny Corridor Between India and Pakistan
by Sri Wele Cebuda
This week a corridor was opened up between two towns,
one, Dera Baba Nanak, and the other, Kartarpur.
Now visa-free, the Sikhs from Pakistan and India
will now be able to go to the other hassle-free.
The white domes of Sri Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara now
will be accessible without long-range binoculars.
The distance of the two towns is just six kilometres,
but prior to this new agreement was prohibitive.
Does India still dread Sikh sep’ratists in Pakistan?
Sometimes the situations down on Earth can get so tense.
Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of India.
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Nature’s Natural Nuclear Reactor
by Ira “Dweeb” Scule
About two billion years ago at Oklo in Gabon,
there was a nuclear reactor, naturally grown.
The U-235 amount, is less than, as a rule,
is found in nature, rather more like spent nu-cle-ar fuel.
Discrepancies are there in other isotopes that gel,
like neodymium, and some ruthenium as well.
There were discovered other elements, like strontium,
in greater sums, and cerium, gray-white zirconium.
Krypton and xenon also there, despite their nornal dearth,
were of the largest concentrations ever found on Earth.
But unlike modern toxic nuke waste we accumulate,
at Oklo, nature trapped it in aluminophosphate.
Ira “Dweeb” Scule is a poet of science. Gabon is a West African nation.
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Czech Nuclear Reactor Spent Fuel
by Aleš Eduw Rebič
The Czech Republic has six nuclear reactors that
produce about one-third of its electrical grid’s plat.
There’s two at Tomelin and four are at Dukovany;
and there they are all pumping out a lot of energy.
Spent fuel is stored within those sites, and more are being planned,
though building more new sites is hard in such a little land.
But though there ever is a great demand for even more,
it still is very hard to pack, spent fuel is hard to store.
Amassing too much is to make another problem too,
accumulating too much you do not want to accrue.
Aleš Eduw Rebič is a poet of Central Europe.
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Amalie Emmy Noether (1882-1935)
by Euclidrew Base
Amalie Emmy Noether worked in abstract algebra;
her thoughts with chain conditions were fresh and original.
Her bold research made in the Betti homologic groups
led to new lands and algebraic topologic pools.
Her theory of ideals and the inverse Galois prob,
along with commutative rings did duty on the job.
Unique approaches led to category theory’s realms
and certain symmetries implying conservation laws.
Her normalizing lemma helped designing novel proofs;
she was a kind, unselfish colleague and inspiring prof.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics.
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The Purge
by Esca Webuilder
The Purge continues. Social Media is on a run.
The latest, Jesse Kelly, was a combat veteran.
He’d gone to war; he served four years; but now he’s being banned.
His friends died in Iraq, and now his twittering is canned.
He fought for freedom in Iraq; at least that’s what they said;
and now they say, he cannot stay; to them he now is dead.
His twittering has been expunged; the reasons are “unknown”.
Those who don’t tow the line are being tossed out one by one.
He cannot be a Somebody on Social Media;
he’ll have to be a Nobody on Skwiki-pedia.
Esca Webuilder is a poet of the Internet. He prefers free speech to hate speech, accepting diversity to intolerance. When called out on it, Twitter reinstated Jesse Kelly; but Twitter remains a censor dispenser. And yet Twitter will not censor those promoting flogging blogger Raif Badawi.
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Sunday Morning Psalm
by W. Israel Ebecud
Get the stringed harp, the gittith, on the wine-fats, David, yes.
Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth, o, press.
You’ve set your glory in the heavens. Praise him, them and these.
You have established a stronghold against your enemies.
When I consider moon and stars, the work your fingers do,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them? They of you?
You’ve made them lower than the angels, yet crowned them with fame.
You’ve made them rulers over all. Majestic is your name.
You’ve put all flocks and herds and wild beasts beneath their feet.
Fish swim sea-paths. Birds fly sky-routes. Sing tweet, tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet.
W. Israel Ebecud is a poet of Israel.
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We’re Being Watched
by Bic Uwel, “Erased”
“Big Brother is watching you.”
—Eric Arthur Blair
We’re being watched. Our government, and also enemies,
are spying on us daily with computers and machines,
like satellites and cell phones, apparati that we use,
devices electronical, with batteries or fuse.
They rat on us as we go on about our business day,
like MSS, FSB, MI5 and CIA.
We’re being tailed as we go about the lives we lead;
in case someone we do not know may need to intercede.
And yet how many are the people every day on earth,
who do some thing that is a breech of etiquette or birth?
Bic Uwel, “Erased”, is a poet of the missing and the deactivated, the shunned and those considered unimportant. One of his favourite works is George Orwell’s prescient “1984”.
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Crispr Babies
by Aw “Curbside” Lee
What’s wanted now are Crispr babies, Smartr babies too;
and now a vision close to this is coming in to view.
He Jiankui, a Shenzhen scientist has engineered
the Earth’s first Crispr babies—HIV resistent girls.
When it comes to designer babies and gene editing,
the Chinese are well groomed to reproductive hoovering.
Their population’s huge; it’s used to all kinds of controls,
like choosing offspring sex, laws with eugenic undertones.
O, guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, attend!
the brave new world of Gattaca is just around the bend.
Aw “Curbside” Lee is a poet of Chinese industry.
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The Passing Year: 2018
by Cade Lewis Rube
When I was young, I never heard him sing—Charles Asnavour—
but I heard Roy Clark sing his “When I Was Young”…”Hier Encore”.
I touched its depth. And now they both have gone to death—this year.
Those heart-felt words I still recall. Those heart-felt words I hear.
O, yesterday—I still recall. And now today, I pause
before the awesome power of life’s unforgiving laws.
But I must leave them here upon the shifting sands of time,
before I too must disappear into some distant clime.
If only I could turn life back—this precious treasure, o,
if only I could turn life back, if only I could, o.
Cade Lewis Rube is a poet of Country music. The biggest hit of Roy Clark (1933-2018) was Charles Asvenour’s translated song, “Yesterday When I Was Young”.
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