Acknowledgment r02

You were cruel to me,

rancorous in singling me out.

As I worked more and more,

in excess of 80 hours each week,

you advised me to seek counseling

instead of treating me with respect;

you contributed to my waking dread

through every sneer and disdainful stare

and howl during weekly face-to-face dress-downs.


I don't know why you needed to treat me

like dirt--if it was the pressure of being

a new faculty member, or the shadows cast

over you by your partner and other young faculty,

or if it was the stress of motherhood in the academy,

but it showed me a wonderful way not to treat

any person I will ever come into contact with,

especially those in my care or supervision.


Investigation capability in spades does not make

one kind or understanding or capable of managing

effectively. I only wish that I had not worked in your lab.

I could have learned what I did with significantly less pain

and without worrying that my confidence would be ruined

forever. A shame you needed to crush my dream with your insecurities.

Wrinkles like these don't quickly smooth--don't fade with time.

Birds eat grass

I'm expectant and bubbling--effervescent and impatient.

The semester is over. I've graded the students; I've graded the course & myself.

Work continues such as it is. Folks & products are heated & cooled. Oil lubricates and is washed away.

But I. I sit on the edge of a precipice.

It might not be a precipice (do my legs stretch before me in the dirt?)--I might be poised above four blades of browning grass.

Or. Or I might be clawing for air: a fledgling.

My top 10 favorite rappers/MCs/DJs

Links are to youtube or vimeo (*cough* Jay-Z on Tidal *cough*).
They're mostly NSFW lyrically.

In no particular numerical order, except via tiers:

S
1. Biggie
2. Gift of Gab
3. Q-Tip and Phife Dawg
4. Rakim

S-
5. Nas
6. Killer Mike
7. Jay-Z
8. Nelly
9. André 3000

A
10. Tupac
11. Nicki Minaj
12. Lil Wayne
13. Boots Riley
14. Eminem

I'll recognize the unquestionable brilliance of others such as Mike Shinoda too. I like Linkin Park and Fort Minor, sue me.

This list brought to you because I just watched Lin-Manuel Miranda do his top 5.

The criterion was personal preference, lyricism, and sound (generally). I concede my taste is confusing, inconsistent, questionably informed, and ordered unconventionally. I'm a fan not a head and I can't speak very intelligently about hip hop but I've had many good recs from my friend Dan Lee and Jesse Thorn (Bullseye).

Updated 29JUL2026.

One last Hamilton gush

Look. I've been listening to the soundtrack of Hamilton for weeks, after my friend Courtney eventually got through to me and INSISTED for reals that I check it out.

Finally, a few minutes ago, I took a moment to watch a bit from the Tony Awards. Blown. Away.

Get. It.

Note, not to be confused with the Hamiltonian. Or Hamilton, Ian. Words are fun. So says Lin-Manuel.

Poets lately

I dig poetry; I love the ambiguity.
                                  It is art and you can interpret it how you like.
Everyone can make it--but not everyone does.  The world is terrible and wonderful and deserving of poetic justice from everyone.

Today I listen to Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye, read by Alise Alousi:

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

I desire to be famous to you, because you are famous to me.  We all know, say, and express this.
This is poetry--and it is accessible--because it was written that way.  Some ideas aren't accessible by their nature, others are made inaccessible for some reason, for a reason.  I like both.

Recently a good friend of mine recommended a poem by Marie Howe: What the Living Do

An excerpt:

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

This grips me because it is every day.  Life is a poem waiting to be written.  Sometimes I write those poems--the important poems that aren't about battles, tragedies--the poems about the spaces in between.  These poems aren't gaudy because life isn't gaudy.  Life is in your details and in the details you share.  I love your details and I love my details--even the painful ones--and I want to share.  We all want to share on some level.

Mary Oliver writes Bone, an exerpt:

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

 and from The Journey:

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Thank God we have no choice but to keep ourselves company.  What kind of company do you keep?

Finally, Oliver again from House of Light:

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts 

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking 

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.”

Life.  People are great fiery mysteries.  I believe it too.

A couple of personal thoughts in conclusion:

I'm baffled at the everyday poetry we refuse or cannot be bothered to record. It's awareness of the beauty in banal, timeworn moments.
— Steve Pohler (@stevepohler) 29. April 2015

Poetry percolates and simmers, prepared to burst forth violently from every broken or breaking seam of human experience.
— Steve Pohler (@stevepohler) 28. April 2015

The clock that couldn't

My clock sits on a bookshelf--next to a print depicting a Chinese spring scene that I picked up cheaply in Shanghai.

The juxtaposition is charming; a jigsawed cutout of mishigamaa neighboring the crisp green still.

In a tragic twist of fate, the newly minted timepiece struggles at each second to capture past time.

The torque gods are cruel.  Each second a battle against gravity.

My heart goes out to the hand that barely reaches New Holland,
                                                          fails to mount Founders
                                                     and falls back to Saugatuck.

Soon, a precious 16 hours will be lost forever to the ravages of forgotten time, unrecorded.

Sloats and Frains: Johannisnacht memories

It is tremendous to recall,
     at any instant,
          the way you felt and the atmosphere and the warmth of a summer night
               and the wine and the conversations that became fluid yet deep and the wine
          and the second languages that somehow transcended fluency and the wine
     and the two next to you who started spontaneously yet sloppily making out
and the wine and a great rendition of "American Pie" at a Mainz festival and the wine
     and the train you missed as you were stumbling back helping to half-carry
          the woman who made out with someone she never would have 3 hours prior
               and the wine and the expensive taxi ride back to Ingelheim
          and offering to save some money by running back from Gau-Algesheim to Ingelheim
     but that being shot down because you were being stupid though chivalrous.
          Of course memory has two edges, and the other edge can make you bleed
               5, 10, or 1000 times
                    from the same raw wound--

that is why humans share with those we care about.

"And to the glorious past:

You've opened my window but broken the glass.
And I beseech thee, 'shed thy beauty.'
For as a child leaves the womb and learns the cold,
you have taught us perils in the present,
and you will bring us peril in our surely-soon-to-be. Unless…

The river's not flooded this time."
// La Dispute, Said the King to the River

the remainder of November's winter

I found this tidbit on a scrap of paper today, while unpacking and exterminating the contents of another box.  It's a little alliterative reminder of yesteryear's winter, during the throes of a fresh new April:

Slowly, snow's soft caress hides hills, tips trees, blankets buildings...
I wake to a washed world, and cannot contain myself.
--
SEP 11-27-12

Life observed

An examined life requires sufficient pause to
Appreciate dirty ice in the sun baked median.
Unexpected joy is being present--driving through
An icy landscape of chopped corn in a warm car.

Pale, late winter sun warms my face and legs,
Begging me to roll down the window.
I hear the distant sound of birds' wings beating;
Still remote, robins nearly precipitate from the air.

Between the legs of a lonely stop sign dead grass
Shakes and jitters with the chill spring wind.
Take its name while you wait for the light to turn--
The sum total of its purpose a glance before work.

original word

word struggles and pushes through layers in a cortex. word fights to gain meaning, dragging nuance, context and entendre. word leaves a crumb trail in its flouncing, disruptive wake.

But lo, a word materializes not ex nihilo.  A word nucleates from the desire to convey, to paint with a brush upon the mind.  Borne into being by prosaic utility or by passion or by swelling emotion, it fills its proper place, punctuates stillness and noise, soars above towering trees.

Tossed aloft on the wings of a breath, a word fights with the air like a fledgling, its purpose yet uncertain.
Some to savor, sever.

words wash from the loquacious, drop like mics from the mouths of grumpy cavemen.  Yawp!

verse thrills and spills forth, a broken dam of liberated words upon a parchment gorge.

Let's flood some plains.

In defense of "basic"

They suggest the unoriginal,
Unsurprising and tamed.
Branded as un-serious with
Tacit femininity claimed.

They merely like because
And fail to pique the rest.
The music of the crowd coos:
"One mode does it best."

For reasons quite obscure
We ally with consumption.
But make the choice to
Condemn particular gumption.

Implicit in this jest lies
Androgenic confidence.
Is personal value bound by
Cheap cosmetic competence?

Go ahead, quip "basic,"
You're entirely quotidian.
Try harder to be clever,
Your wit exposed is pridian.

We sip homogeneity,
And find the other queer.
Though first judged sardonically,
We gasp and realize: seer.

Succinct

This is to say concisely: I love spring.

Dirty brown grass promises to green.

The sun is making eyes at me, having dispelled winter's clouds.

Finally it's warm--enough to walk (hand in hand) outside.

Because my goal is brevity, I stop.

Guys night

We're not much for glory days;
The wives are out of town.
Both genuine and banal
We converse, belie, and banter.

Don't look for names in lights
Or record holding swagger:
Old deeds preserved in wax
Share absently, carelessly.

Who tells the men to bleat
On sundry scores and work?

The chants we utter roar

Full of beauty, romp and vigor.

Some long for greatness, silence;

Their enemy made timeless.

My only wish is this:

Unfeigned mutual dependence.

In a thousand hoary homes
You'll not discover greatness.
Dutiful, unrefined we sit
Our story told and ageless.

Seek to improve upon our chatter
And find your aspirations dashed.
The sum of a life: fickle puzzles,
Prosaic and plastered over.

the funky Abstract

[lyrics are linked to the songs they come from...most are NSFW lyrically; image credit]

I want to drink melody and splash harmony around in my mouth.
I want my breath to stink of a lyrical meal--just enough to hint at how I digested it.

Work it when you're spittin'; Imma sit with the Phoenicians digging on musicians.  Let me hear your stomping, ripping and romping.  You got the air soul kicks and crushed velvet hats?  Pick up all the pieces and make an island!

People tend to bug cos the beats are hard but gentle.  You shake it on, rocking on and on, break of dawn.  Get on my level.

Made possible by Missy Elliott,  E40, Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, Jimi Hendrix and Wiz Khalifa.

Finding God space again

My physical body and motley pile of trappings and belongings have been spirited away from State College for 5 months already.  That went pretty painlessly, though I definitely left it all in the middle of the floor in my parents basement until I had to clear it away for Christmas.  My routine has even made the trip, now that I have work and a schedule that I'm responsible for.  Things look like they're coalescing back to normal on the outside.  On the work side.  On the material side.

If only moving were as simple as transporting collections of atoms.

I'm still moving back emotionally and spiritually.  Those are the parts that give me the most inner turmoil and heartache.  For good reason.

Emotionally
During one of the most intellectually stimulating, stressful, and at times, traumatic periods of my life, I was part of a group of people that were experiencing similar delights, joys and atrocities.  Those bonds don't dissolve (nor would I want them to!), or fade from memory quickly.  The feeling of disjointed connectedness remains, with a physical separation of hundreds of miles.  I feel pangs and memories and aches almost daily.

Friendships change over time and space.  In a way they become windows and views of former places from lofty heights.  The lofty heights of memory, text messages and phone calls don't do friendship justice.  Sharing a cup of coffee or a beer over the phone is...well...inane.  But that is how life forces us to reconcile new places; memories and intermittent contact.  And we drink deeply of the cold, sweet water of reconnection.

Emotionally, I may always straddle the places in life where I've felt and experienced intense emotion.  Everyone does and deals with it in their own ways.  Some ignore the past, some live in the past, and others come to terms with a life of small, constant, distant tugs.  I imagine the latter will always be true for me.  There is too much in the past to forget it, and too much in the future to embrace with open arms.

Spiritually
Perhaps the language of moving and fixed destinations is not appropriate for the topic of a spiritual journey.  However, the setting in any journey does change, and impact the traveler directly, so in that sense I am moving in a different phase of life spiritually.

Life in Penn State Christian Grads (PSCG) was a very stimulating experience.  My head-space was occupied with lofty precipices and even more subterranean lows when it came to questions of faith, meaning and purpose.  There were honest conversations between minds questioning and probing, that received no answers some days and few the next.  Daily struggle was not uncommon, and at times it was exhausting.  Confidence is a quantity that was once prized, but comes to be despicable in many ways.  It seems impossible to return to confidence in anything after a point.  However, despite the unruliness and at times stark contradictory nature of this newer reality, I would never trade this part of my journey.

PSCG is a group of dear friends who cared deeply about each other and still do.  We are scholars from different fields seeking the gospel and life in Jesus, and engaging thoughtfully and honestly with our peers in the hope that they will join us.  We are a missional community.
Throw in the occasional heretical conversation in the "College and Careers" adult bible fellowship that I led at church and you get the mess that I called a spiritual life.   But it took years to cultivate the space for safe, honest questions, and for conversation and dialogue without judgment.  Those opportunities don't materialize from nothing.  God space requires time and effort.

It's taking a while, but I'm finding that space.  Sometimes that space means a small, intimate group during a Sunday night prayer service at the church I grew up in.  At other times it's time spent skyping weekly with two of my closest friends.  God space can be at a brewery for a weekly bible study as easily as it can be at a new church I've found, spending time on Sunday morning in worship.  I'm finding my new God spaces in a new/old place.  Looking forward, I'm excited to see what space I will find in Young Life for eastern Ottawa.  There is space to talk about spiritual things everywhere, it just needs to be cultivated.  YOU can cultivate it.

Those who ride pandas

For those who ride pandas to battle,
harness something fierce 'neath the saddle.
The black and the white,
they cause such a fright.
Because sometimes you need to kick a pack of wolves to death.

Only seeming to live on bamboo,
whose G.I. tracts are talented: poo.
They might be a blight,
people flee on sight.
Because pandas will knife you to death if you're not careful.

A general once said to his captains,
"A panda did make me these napkins."
His stitches were tight;
they came out just right.
But it turns out that now he just sells refrigerators.

But this poem doesn't make any sense,
pandas aren't even very intense.
Don't bring them to fight,
just buy them a kite.
But they can totally only barely throw a frisbee.

Inspiration credit to Luc LaFreniere

Set to music

0.6 Yparticles

A mole once emerged from her hole.

She rolled out to go on the dole.

Though fat as a slug, she outweighed the bug,

and never got any money from the government.

Snark

Photo credit: Mural (Banksy); Aardvark (travelnewsnamibia); Bird on a branch (Dawn Smith); Stars (bitácora de Galileo).
In the dark park sat a lark upon the bark.

Its shadow marked stark against the luminous pockmarked bulwark.

"Hark" remarked the aardvark matriarch set to embark.

"Join me Plutarch, in my arc to the celestial monarch."

nothing rhymes

I've been eating oranges a lot lately because they're absolutely, incredibly delicious. The formatting was kind of an afterthought, but I like how it turned out. I initially useD capitals at the end of verbs to distinguisH them, but it waS too confusing and didn't differentiatE them clearly. In other news...I'm glad I learned HTML once upon a time.
The formatting is still kind of meh...and I feel like my ad/verb usage is weak, but for a first runthrough I liked the result.

rubbery and pliant, almost waxy in Texture--it slides smoothly, rolls easily, in my Hand.
Thumbnail pierces Skin, releasing a pungent, aromatic Spray, transforming the Room.
Flesh trapped in a protective webby Prison releases pleasant, fierce limonin counter Attacks.

the Orange sits on the Desk taunting me, daring me to open it up and taste its sweetly-bitter Juices.
it promises that my Beard will be wet and sticky by the end.
the Beauty of an Orange lies as much in the Anticipation of those saccharine wet Bites as in Consumption.
my Teeth poke fiercely through the Membrane and my Brain conducts the sensory Orchestra.
notice first the crisp Notes that the Nose picks up, proclaiming, "we have Purchase!"
the Tongue enters boldly like the bombastic Tones of a trombone Section blaring loudly and brightly!
dribbling out the Corners of my Mouth, Nectar is snatched up by eager Fingers, a suspended Cymbal resounding.
i notice the Mess i've made of my Surroundings. it dries quickly, leaving sticky Steps for Mice to meander o'er.
quarter-at-a-time the Carpels are consumed with abandon.
over before it started, Hands lay limply at my Side, drenched and drying.

Makin me ta wanna rite

My friend is an English professor who reminds me of John Keating from the Dead Poets Society. She is a prolific writer and blogger too. Her love of Jesus and of those around her oozes out of her writing and conversation.

It seems to take friends like this to reignite my love of writing. We were talking a few weeks ago, and she suggested a short writing idea. It felt so good to write again--to write about a memory, to write about anything.

I like to have ideas and drafts waiting for me to poke at, to prod, to contribute to and prune.

This afternoon, I decided to eat an orange outside in the sun for a few moments, and I thought about the verbs and nouns around me. I felt the sun beating down on me and the black bench outside my lab. Heat radiates to me directly from our star, and from beneath me through the energy contained in the metal bench, warming and washing me from head to toe. Somehow today brings the cleanest warmth imagined, so I sit, and I munch. The plump navel orange peels easily, leaving me with sticky sweet hands while I eat.

My lightly freckled, blonde haired hands soak it in, pale and white after the bitter, refreshing winter. They bring each plump bit of pale citrus from its place on my juice dotted lap to my lips, waiting with breath abated.

With each bite I'm tenuously satisfied, yet have the desire for more, to jump into a pit of pulpy orange juice and let it saturate my pores, inhale it deeply and breathe it.

The moment is brief, but delicious. Busyness will squeeze the enjoyment of a moment like this from our lives, so I enjoy it while I can.

I'm determined not to be squeezed out like my snack, unless it be into the maw of the worthwhile.