And, yes, I do think that a single post title—instantly amplified and multiplied—has an effect on how individuals relate on a social level.

We need to understand that we are currently building the future.

I found two groovy sources for it: the incomplete Wikisource entry, and this read along site.

Beginning in January 2012, Mike is going to read The Faerie Queene and we’re all invited along. The site is already impressive, and it’s bound to become more so once he’s underway. I hope at some point he expands the about page to a feature length movie.

Apparently the magic that allows this to work is the css height: 0; declaration. I’m not sure why that is, but it gives me the chills (and probably nightmares entitled Box Model).

<h1>Title
<span class="subdraft">
<sub>5</sub>
<sup>*</sup>
</span></h1>

span.subdraft {
display: inline-block;
}
span.subdraft sup {
height: 0;
float: left;
}

Or, if it’s easier, you can download a html file (css embedded).

And I gave up.

I want to include currency and version information at the end of poem titles. I’ve decided to print a superscript current draft asterisk directly above a subscript version number.

I’ve attempted various methods, such as negative left margins to move the superscript over the top of the subscript, but the best looking was to enclose the <sub> and <sup> in a <span> and float:left the <sup>.

As can be seen in the screenshots below, it renders as I expected it to in WebKit and Gekco browsers, but not in Opera or IE. Opera inserts a horizontal space between the superscript and subscript. MSIE places the superscript below the subscript.

I don’t have a Windows machine, so no IE, and browsershots.org has yet to give me a grab; I have to rely friends to send me screenshots, so working on an IE solution is slow going.

Screenshots

My intended rendering as seen in Safari iOS

Opera introduces an extra horizontal space.

MSIE does the crazy.

<header class="entry-header">
<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="#">Greenhouse Christmas</a>
    <span class="dver"><a href="#"><sub>6</sub><sup>*</sup></a></span></h1>
<p class="epigraph">This experiment in POV and the sudden flipping thereof is a year old.</p>

<div class="entry-meta"><span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="#">December 12, 2011</a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="#">asoulinprogress</a></span></span></div>
<div class="comments-link"><a title="Comment on Greenhouse Christmas" href="#">1</a></div>
</header>

span.dver {
text-decoration: none;
color: #808080;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Cochin, Palatino, Times, serif;
font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal;
margin-left: .25ex;
display: inline-block;
}

span.dver sup, span.dver sub {
/* Do I need to explicitly state display: inline? */
font-size: inherit;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
text-decoration: none;
font-variant: normal;
}

span.dver sup {
vertical-align: super !important;
font-size: smaller;
float: left;
/* Do I need to clear that float? */
clear: both;
}

span.dver sub {
vertical-align: sub !important;
font-size: smaller;
}

span.dver.sdver, span.dver.nolink {
cursor: help;
}

span.dver.sdver sup {
float: none;
}

span.dver a:hover {
background-color: #e2e2e2;
}

span.dver a:active {
background-color: black;
color: yellow;
}

.current span.dver a:link {
color: #007f00;
}

.current span.dver a:visited {
color: #007f00;
}

/* Reset just about everything including */
sub, sup{
border: 0;
font-family: inherit;
font-size: 100%;
font-style: inherit;
font-weight: inherit;
margin: 0;
outline: 0;
padding: 0;
vertical-align: baseline;
}

sup, sub {
font-size: 10px;
height: 0;
line-height: 1;
position: relative;
vertical-align: baseline;
}

sup {
bottom: 1ex;
}

sub {
top: .5ex;
}

I’m using a WordPress Twenty-Eleven 1.3 child theme so I had to override some of the CSS from the main theme.

The best page to see a live example is the Poems category, which includes new and old drafts with and without version numbers.
I replaced the code on the site. I am now setting the current draft marker inline with the version number. I’ll continue to look for a solution, but it’s no longer a priority.

Anatomy of a Poem Post

I’m making progress on the wordpress theme for this site. Here’s a screenshot explaining the new features

The wind shifted north, killing off livestock. Eventually we were blasted by hot currents from every direction. It never rained again, the wind never died, everything crumbled. I don’t remember that last day other than as a dream: delicate flesh stinging from the cold; brittle ice cutting into cheeks; a red nose peeks out from under a scarf.

I awoke to the itching and flaking of burnt flesh, in time to catch a tree slowly falling, its topmost branches snap loose, crash into the rugged earth, and crumble before the trunk catches up. In the beginning the downed wood would have been swarmed by carpenter ants and termites—but there are none left, they couldn’t survive the undying furnace, ever stoked by growing windstorms.

Every step was thought to be the last. Every step digging a little deeper into the loose ground. After the trees abated their war against gravity, their dry roots gave way and forests fell. Collapsing like the rest of life, simply giving up and letting go and laying down en masse.

The terrible wind blows and trees die. It howls and you know there is one less thing to care about. The sun glares and you bleed dry, and you walk—trying to stand on loose ground. Trying to walk over ground that crumbles into the hallows left by decayed roots. There was a time, I remind myself, that the ground was solid. When the earth was supported by a series of roots, invisible but for the structures they supported. There was a strong and resilient earth, covered with life drawing strength from an invisible web of roots. Roots surrounded by damp ground. Roots I once cursed for hampering my digging. Roots that meandered their way into my compost heap, seemingly demanding to be dug out—extinguished.

Roots that would have died by now anyway. Roots that were the last to see it coming. Roots that didn’t know that the world above was withering into dust, and sand, and neglect. Suddenly alone in empty dry ground. Suddenly vanishing, ripping open holes in their death.

Welcome home. Welcome to a world where a thousand non-decisions have been cast by outsiders, a thousand words of advice from unaware and unmindful idols flinging unthoughtful opinions at their trusting admirers. Leading, eventually, to dry winds scouring a hallow earth.

I should probably get rid of the following self-serving whinefest, but I can’t bring myself to. Not now.”

I’ll probably never go back to it. But I may get inspired during my Buffy/Angel rewatch—I’m up to BtVS s5 / AtS s2, if anything will help me capture a good narrative flow and otherworldliness it will be those seasons.

I’d like to blather on, but I have TV to watch.

Pull out an iPod and a notebook,
Smile at the rustling plastic,
Lean back to day-dream—

And crash into the heater.

Blackness followed by a growing awareness.

The yellow notebook is buried in mulch.
The heater is on its back.

Jump to your feet,
Lift the heater,
Trip over the chair—

Vague images of hair over eyes,
Close-up of lips.
Strip out the soundtrack and make me
Say what should’ve been said.

The iPod is face down inside a clay pot.
The screen is not cracked.

Dig out the notebook and
Write what you came out here to write.

Sit by the heater and
Enjoy the warmth.
Think of me.

Pull out an iPod and a notebook.
Smile at the rustling plastic.
Lean back and day-dream.

Keep leaning back, and back, and…
Crash into the heater.

Blackness and a growing awareness.

The yellow notebook is buried in mulch.
The heater is on its back.

Jump to your feet,
Lift the heater,
Trip over the chair.

Vague images of hair over eyes,
Close-up of lips.
Strip out the soundtrack and make me
Say what should’ve been said.

The iPod is face down against the inner edge of a clay pot.

The screen is not cracked.

Sit down,
Pull out the notebook and
Write what you came out here to write.

In the meantime you guys are gonna be left with the dregs of poems I have in (try not to say cloud, or bits, or electronically. try not to say agh, in a digital, agh form)

We begin with whaat to include.rtf, a richtext file on my desktop. It was created Wednesday, November 2, 2011 2:02 AM, modified Tuesday, November 8, 2011 6:43 PM, and last opened now. It has no label.

The first line of the document is:
a short selection of current poems not stuck on paper

The first poem Driftwood is black helevetica 12 pt. Titles are bold. Some poems are 50% black—already posted. Some of the black ones are really really bad.

But not all, I am posting all the remaining black ones that I can bear. Maybe all of them. I am going to tag them black (until I can figure out if this calls for a new taxonomy, post-type, custom field, or series).

UPDATE: I just tagged the others grey so you can look at the whole set if you want. (that I’ve had the balls to post). The only exceptions is the Chinese Problem is tagged both black and grey because it should have made the first cut.

(You should be imagining
a yellowing handmade sheet of paper,
its rough edges frame
a fishing village and its surrounding mountains.

There are 3 to 5 vertical lines of Chinese calligraphy.)

Poseur and the Gent peer into the darkness and slowly unclasp their hands. The air is heavy and low with despair. A distant foghorn echoes through the cavernous alleyways and explodes into the courtyard; its deep notes harmonize with the creaking of lumber, and is punctuated by the popping of moths drawn into a lamp’s mantle.

Amorphous shadows roll over pavement and shimmy up dilapidated buildings. With a hesitant well then, the Gent saunters towards the struggling beacon. It flares between his breath, ripping ragged patches out of the shadows.

A fuzzy shape streaks the periphery. Eldridge catches a breath, and with a grimace, shifts his eyes towards the disturbance. A rat arcs overhead, its arms flailing for a secure hold. The rat regards the gauzy cloud surrounding the lamp, and stretches into a slow spin. It unfurls its talons one at a time, and gently snatches individual months from the swarm. The rat smiles, revealing ragged and broken teeth, and brings a struggling moth to its maw.

It disappears in a halo of discordant light. The Gent centers his stance, relaxes his eyes, and counts two deep breaths. He senses a silhouette lowering its leg.

The ground between the two men grows and shrinks in seemingly predictable orbits. The Gent rolls into a crouch, stumbles through the shadows, and climbs over the light. A hand grips into muddy sod–new growth surrounded by flimsy brown, a foot shoves off a rock–chalky and white. Darkness and pressure. The feeling of advancing.

Poseur pulls himself to his feet on a ledge. He pauses to study the swarm as it expands and contracts with the flaring of the lamp—a dandelion exploding and reassembling. Shadows, discrete and defined, play against the ground—rolling and swaying, and obeying natural orbits. The shadows create impromptu flowers that end in sharply pointed petals, the flowers rotate and reform seeking structure.

The pair are bucketed and thrown. They weave and stumble. They slip on greasy puddles, and stall on rough concrete. The skinny one leaps for the cast iron lamp post, the Gent grunts in approval and allows himself to fall into the post.

The sun rose with icy wind, and sat with thunder. The men clinched the post to keep from being swept into the darkness. Days passed in minutes, and then in seconds. The Gent, either through malice or exhaustion, pries Poseur’s unwilling hands from the post.

The pair tumble and flail through icy fog. Through darkness. Through pressures quick and keen. Howling cicadas accompany them through thunderous moans and fiery lightening. Sudden impact. Cracking ribs. And the moans they hear are now their own. Filtered light. Soft moss. Rough bark.

“It is for precisely this, my dear mentor, that I despise you so,” Poseur grumbles running a hand over bruised ribs, and pulls out a cigarette. He taps the cigarette against the tree Gent is still laying against. Cracked purple lips smile.

The Gent lies in the calm. He counts the number of shadowy leaves on his face and hands. Content and reassured he springs up, “nonsense, my reluctant protégé, it is only now getting interesting.”

and I regret it

Fine and dandy: but, so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. If poetry were anything—like dropping an atombomb—which anyone did, anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet’s calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you’ve got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being. I am quite aware that, wherever our socalled civilization has slithered, there’s every reward and no punishment for unbeing. But if poetry is your goal, you’ve got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it’s you—nobody else—who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There’s the artist’s responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it—and be. If you can’t, cheer up and go about other people’s business; and do (or undo) till you drop.

I should have known, I was terrified of it from the start—from the moment I saw the thought begin to geminate—the perfect white seed vibrated a little as its coat peeled off—how could you look away from that? Even being terrified to watch it grow. And then it dug in roots.

And that lead to nightmares and a refusal to get out of bed until the after images went away. Eventually I was able to shrug off both hope and despair and muddle myself some coffee. Only to surrender to blankness which will eternally be my craft.

You, I’m telling you Poet, I am telling you Writer, I am telling you Naive and Innocent, that this is what you must go through to Be.