Month: December 2012

Why I Should Poem

by
Why I Should Poem

Why I Should Poem

Why I Should

Because I still breathe
because I have something to say
even
if it is only me
Even if it’s only me
saying it to
me

Because the sun came up and the rivers flowed
and if feels good to say so

because it’s the end of a year
a new year and
and it felt good to say so

because I’m a crazy fool
who will spend his last penny
making something he likes
even if others throw it away

even if it rots in the back of an unknown book
even if it is forever an unknown song
even if it rots in a basement

so I will grab another handful
of colored sand
for whose works
are not
swept
away?

Why Should I Poem

by

Why Should I Poem

Why Should I

There are two points in every life

that is in the artist life

the point where the painting and words and music

and the person

are asking why

with a fire unlike any fire

and a point

where the artist or writer or musician

and person

is asking

why should I?

why should I?

I beat my primordial head

on this stone in this cave

why am I not hunting the elk

instead of scratching with this

blunt burnt stick

until my hands  are worn

and I beat on this stone with these hands

and this stick.

“Oh you have drawn the elk

we saw him this morning

but wasn’t his leg longer

and his horn had more points.”

what I saw

what I saw

what I saw

I do not understand

I cannot understand

Why should I?

 

david michael jackson

Maybe if you just express those moments they won’t stand in the way of the bigger why. Maybe. We’ll  see.

WordPress Getting Started

by

The first part of this video is concerned with the installation of a new WordPress Blog. If you wish to review the basics of making posts at Artvilla and would like to be one of the total idiots who work for free for something called art or poetry or music and you feel journalistic in a moment of weakness or whatever just contact us.
Wordpress Getting Started

Egret Poem by Michael Estabrook

by
egret poem

egret poem

 

Egret

 

Tall gray bird, an egret I think, standing

in the shallows of a small pond over in

the fields behind the high school,

poised, quiet, elegant, intensely

focused, his head with its long beak

snapping suddenly like a whip

into the water, stabbing at one

of the innumerable, plump, brown

tadpoles beginning to kick their frog

legs. But he misses, comes up dry,

his beady eyes staring down

into the dark water, incredulous

at having missed and,

if I didn’t know better, a little

bit embarrassed about it too.

 

Egret © Michael Estabrook 2012

Sundown Poem by Robert P Jackson

by

Red light orchestrates softly across the evening sky
The disappearing horizon becomes more evident
I feel as if I”m sliding away with the turning of the earth
Darkness settles in, and a new life begins
Stars circle in the open air
Lying enriched in their dark blanket
Soft Cirrus clouds lasso the moon for a brief moment
The nights chill rolls across the land
Dew begins to rest on the blades of grass
A hovering fog forms

***

Lutetium poem by Janet Kuypers

by

Lutetium

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#71, Lu)

When I was little
and first fell in love
with the stars in the sky,
it was always easy
to spot the constellation
Cassiopeia at night —
just look for five dots
that looked like the letter “w”
as the throne for Cassiopeia,
queen of Aethiopia.
But apparently the Germans
had a thing for Cassiopeia too,
because an Austrian,
a Frenchman and an American
all independently discovered
the element Lutetium
at the same time…
After years of debate,
the Frenchman won
the naming rights for Lutetium,
but the Germans still
stuck with Cassiopeia
for their name-of-choice
through the nineteen fifties.

But I don’t know, maybe
this element Lutetium
was the perfect thing
for queen Cassiopeia,
because although it is
more common than silver
here on Earth,
it’s hard to separate
from other elements,
and it’s harder and denser
than it’s counterparts
(even costing ten thousand
dollars per kilogram).

#

If I could have photographed
queen Cassiopeia,
I may have wanted
Lutetium aluminum garnet
as the liquid element
in immersion lithography
for added depth-of-focus
in my photo journalism travails…
Though maybe I should just
savor the connection
between queen Cassiopeia
(with her throne in the sky),
the mother of Andromeda
(goddess and galaxy),
and Lutetium —
something that has always
been so strong,
and has also worked
with others, to help us see
everything so much better…

lutetium electron structure
    * Germans used cassiopium (Cp), after the constellation Cassiopeia, as the name for element 71 (Lutetium) until the 1950s.
Lutetium is not a particularly abundant element, though significantly more common than silver in the earth’s crust; it has few specific uses, but is found with almost all other rare-earth metals but never by itself.
Lutetium is very difficult to separate from other elements, and pure Lutetium metal is very difficult to prepare. Even though it is more common than silver, it is one of the rarest and most expensive of the rare earth metals with the price about US$10,000 per kilogram, or about one-fourth that of gold. Lutetium also has the highest density, melting point, and hardness of the lanthanides.
For an application for Lutetium: Immersion lithography is a photolithography resolution enhancement technique for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs) that replaces the usual air gap between the final lens and the wafer surface with a liquid medium that has a refractive index greater than one. Currently, the most promising high-index lens material is Lutetium aluminum garnet.