Grudgingly listening to a playoff hockey game from around the corner of the tv
It's hard, it'll take some time, baby steps

Not to mention the whole "death doesn't really hurt me anyway!" thing but of course sometimes you may be better off not treating these practical negotiations with yourself as philosophical questions either

I mean yes Socrates has to drink the hemlock but he gets to be the founding hero of Western philosophy so in the end who won really

Stuck in some drawn-out negotiations with someone whose style of interaction in a case of conflicting interests is rather different from mine and I keep thinking of the guy in the union at York who said the trouble with academics is they want to treat a strike vote as a philosophical question

haiku by Carl Brennan Moth in the house elusive as a ghost… my cat left the wings

Too true
haikuniverse.com/haiku-by-car...

Red-Necked False Blister Beetle Eating Hepatica Pollen Red-Necked False Blister Beetle Eating Hepatica Pollen. Photo taken near Marmora, Ontario. Copyright Matthew King. E-mail birdsandbeesandblooms@gmail.com to inquire concerning use or purchase.

Pic of the week: Red-Necked False Blister Beetle Eating Hepatica Pollen
birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/04/21/r...

That or the fact that I am never confident I have spelled "zugzwang" correctly no matter how hard I stare at it

Of all the challenges I faced in this year's contest perhaps the one I will remember most fondly was discovering about 75 minutes before the deadline that there was a tick embedded ever so slightly not far enough back on my right side that I couldn't have grabbed it with my tick grabber

Currently 12:58 EDT which means I'm at the point in the 2-day contest when I'm like uhh I dunno this is like 80 seconds I coulda been editing my poem some more... I mean ok now it's 1:00 so can you see why maybe not but still

Also the correct number of d's, which I have not consistently remembered is zero

Doing the CV2 2-Day Contest under non-ideal conditions this year and honestly will consider it a personal victory if I manage to submit my poem with the correct number of z's in "zugzwang"

This one of hers is one of the four out of my top 10 favourite poems by living poets, which I reeled off the top of my head there a while back, that doesn't prominently feature a non-human mammal
northamanglican.com/the-rectors-...

A masterclass in rhyme from one of my favourite rhymers, @lhamccabe.bsky.social

And there came a voice to him, Rise, Raven; kick, and stomp.

But Raven said, Not so, Lord; for I have never danced to any thing that is Not-Goth (TM).

And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What mine new Covenant hath oontzed, that call not thou Not-Goth (TM).

Welp I am now the poet laureate of a chiselled thinky line and the whole time I've been forgiven for thinking about you but I don't have a system of escalating fines for Vlad's childhood baseball best buddy narrative just a quick note that nobody is clapping because I was gonna come in via THE RUINS

Set me aflame and cast me free
Away, you wretched world of tethers
Through the endless night and day
I have never wanted more
Always thought that I would stand
Before the faceless name of justice
Like some law unto myself
Like a child of God again
-- Ronan 20:12

"Phyllis Schlafly"

The decision to do my studies at UCalgary meant leaving another program. A big part of the reason was to follow my partner, and now spouse, Berly Brumble. We got married right here in the Department of Philosophy lounge space (by Dr. David Dick, no less) and that was a valuable outcome indeed!

Ok I had to look up this Archie Fields III and... Archie Fields got married to Berly Brumble in the philosophy department lounge by Dr. Dick, what

The top of an amaryllis stalk with three open red flowers and one about to open

And so on

Blond Squirrel with Peanut Blond Squirrel with Peanut: photo of leucistic eastern grey squirrel taken at Lake Ontario Park, Kingston, Ontario. Copyright Matthew King. E-mail birdsandbeesandblooms@gmail.com to inquire concern…

Pic of the week: Blond Squirrel with Peanut
birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/04/13/b...

A newly fully opened red amaryllis flower

And there it is

Notwithstanding the one in the middle (!) I do dig this set of three poems each touching on what we late-whatever-we-are humans and all this artefactual stuff we're awash in have to do with each other

Trampoline Poetry Trampoline Poetry

Happy to be back in the always intriguingly off-beat @trampolinepoetry.bsky.social with a kinda quirky one, "Lost Keys to Desert Dreams", in which among other things I try to make something of one of my little biblical hobby horses--in the middle of a nicely trio'ed set here:
trampolinepoetry.com

That amaryllis is this amaryllis, which never bloomed last winter/spring, and then its leaves never died back for it to go dormant before blooming again like it's supposed to, it's just been going straight through since January 2025
bsky.app/profile/cinc...

An amaryllis stalk with four red blooms about to open and some goldfinches outside the window behind it

A red amaryllis flower staring to open

A late entry to amaryllis bluesky this year (JCO never posted hers??) but life careens on

Can now reveal that I am now the poet laureate of a hoot I will get it to the vet so where is it just seems like a great day when Mulroney has a mirror-image twin after noticing the difference between inflation and deflation I will not give up the squiggle to get a very nice Jesus shirt and a phoebe

I guess a funny thing about "flooding the zone with shit" is that if you tell everyone that's what you're doing it works even better

"No quarter will be given", ha ha good goof, blow up boats and shoot the survivors, oh man excellent goof, destroy civilizations, greatest goof of all time

A long time ago I saw some low-budget movie, have never been able to dig up the title again, where a guy does something awful (don't remember what) and then keeps saying he "did it for a goof", he doesn't get why everyone's mad at him and he has to be punished because he did it for a goof

Anyway I gather from a quick look at the other place that the dominant online line from the chaos party may be "he's trolling you, how are you so stupid as to fall for it," i.e. how are you so uncool, be cool, we're all having a larf, at you, it's cool