?

Viruses incorporate their genetic material into the host genome. Illness can follow as that new material is promoted and transcribed. But after illness passes, does the viral genome remain in the host genome for good? How and when is it ever finally excised?

When a person already knows what it's like to be high on something, and later they dream about having another such experience, and realize it was just like the real thing, complete with all the expected feelings... then have they been high without the drug? Of course if you woke them, it would fade just like that... but I wonder, could you call the dream state of being high a state of being high?

Some say that the universe would collapse if the amount of matter and energy in it were just sufficient to halt the outward expansion of everything. But I wonder: Even if all of the matter began collapsing together, wouldn't space itself continue to expand, creating an otherwise empty universe with a hypermassive black hole? Can massless space be pulled by gravity? In the "balloon" model, this would be like all the matter pooling on one side and then into a point. Or does the "balloon" model of the universe allow gravity to pull the balloon into a smaller shape?

P.S. Would it matter if gravity is confined to the skin of the balloon or if it can propagate across the inner volume?

Are there any organisms that are not part of a food web? Perhaps a toxic bacterial autotroph that just disintegrates after death?

They can't all be snagged by some other decomposer... do they just eventually disintegrate?

Assume for a moment that we evolved to prefer the taste of cooked meat after the invention of cooking meat. (or don't). What do you think was the primary reason proto-humans first thought of putting an animal's valuable meat over something as destructive as fire? Was it to tenderize? To sterilize? To do some valuable biochemistry? Was it that we just lumped meat together with the tough veggies we cooked? (Or did we somehow already mysteriously have taste buds that preferred stuff cooked?)

I think that if you put a lot into a title, the body of the poem itself could get away with being very short. But of course, the smaller it gets, the easier it is to argue that it is no longer actually a poem. Examples:

"Upon Having Looked at What I Am"

no

"The Greatest Illusion"

I

Even these can be double entendres or cause a person to think deeply. Thoughts?

To such askers:

Seriously! We don't know you, and we have a million potential ways to spend our day. I am too disgusted by the laziness of the question to ever try! Are you vain, or just not into homework? Discover the wonders of writing and creating and expressing as well as simply reading! Peace.....

I used to dream of being at my great-uncle & grand-aunt's farmhouse on the other side of the lake, not doing much other than walking about their peaceful property. Then, it was like some kind of bomb went off.

Everything after that was a grey haze, like staring at a blank screen for a long time, and there was a ringing in my ears like the sound of a TV channel that has gone off the air for the night. This awful state of not-quite-blindness & deafness would seem to last through my night!

I did not have a TV in my room. Any ideas of what it could mean?

Turn the damn TV off

Do you know what ideals

suckled the growing bones in

these hands, years in the telling? Can you

hear the distant echoes

of the pleasured sighs of the past loves

you've asked about? These hands

run their requests over your surface,

crackle with thunderous charge

enough to explode all your infomercials.

These aren't hands, they are demands.

Do you know what needs

swerved each fluid flexion of

these hands, conducting a life? Can you

feel the sleeping aches

of the pummeled blows of the past fights

you've asked me of? These hands

rerun their quests through your dales,

teach a body of truths

enough to dispel all your dramas.

These aren't hands, they are demands.

Turn off the damned TV.

My Korean gf asked me to write her a poem, and I've obliged! I used the Shakespearean sonnet form since it's the easiest of them. The lines work as iambic pentameter if you sort of ignore the initial "I've" words.

The Lotus Bloom / for Kyung Hee

I’ve washed up on sparkling sands unknown to man,

Left prints I’ll make again, should sea rescind.

I’ve walked light and cold as sun on alpen span,

Left there a hope to dwell amongst the winds.

I’ve pressed on through blizzard blast to snowy peace,

Kept fresh the thought I’d settle in snow yet.

I’ve passed under fronds of palm and fragrant trees,

Kept fond the memory of summer’s breath.

I’ve crossed canyon, prairie, yawning stretch of sea

To find I’ll never have my fill of skies.

I’ve chased down each place that might embolden me,

To forge my links to life, and energize.

Yet by this little pool, the Lotus bloom

Could put to rest my thirst for other room.

Sometimes, at sites like www.pathetic.org, I can not sign up as a member because they discriminate against people with email accounts from free email account providers (such as Yahoo). Why on earth would something like this be the deciding factor about whether or not I can join a group? (btw I can not ask them).

I cannot write a poem

while sitting on this wallet -

no license in its leaves

If only the weight

pinning shut its catcall streetmouth

would silence its burden of tongues -

insistences of identity; banners of won worth

hungry echoes of consumption

soak into buttock, bloodstream, belief

about the day beyond the day,

the day I'm trying to have.

What of diesel in airways, what

of fall insect songs

softly scraping away all

I once knew, silver linings,

scars, smoke?

What of the alien sun

mixing up its project's palette,

fading clothes, tanning hides until

we come out in a uniform wash,

our hangups flushed

our cotton clean

I can't pen any of that

upon a page blazing my unfamiliar eyes shut,

ink blotting oblivion everywhere.

I'm not talking about ones that allow free "memberships" that can not read or respond to msgs from other users (useful, eh? Those are the majority!). Are there any sites that let you do all the necessary dating stuff without demanding your cash?

Cranked this one out a moment ago...

To Make the Snow Angel

To make the snow angel

First come to joyfully inhabit

A world that is fresh and new as new snow.

Love the smooth swish of your synthetic snowsuit.

You artist! Allow the tracks to the site. Just bubbles to a thought balloon,

The drawn dashes of paper's airborne motion.

Forget the possibility of judging watchers. Lay

yourself into crystallized cloud

- proud head too -

and make the motions of flying.

You remember.

Someone here recommended the site. It does appear good, but their signup option has not worked after a week trying, and there are no contact addresses or help option.

Does anyone know if this site is full or something, or if it is a temporary problem?

Anchor, Fear / Severance Pain

aRound my ankle, round my heart,

That chain that grounds me, bears each bolt

of lightning, each spike on my chart

down to the unreactive veldt

This chain is fear, it's kept me here

Safe from monsters, close to sane,

eQuipped to grab the world and steer,

yet shut behind a curtained pane.

Past my peak, & past my cove

The shipping routes go far round here.

They don't come near this buoy's love.

They read my tone as a word: Beware.

Could I cast off, and yet be me

and sail across each of these routes

to where the world goes mad? and see

the distant lands of foreign tongues?

If I'm built to sail but no one told me?

If me's not really the best thing to be?

It's time to cut myself in half,

to cut the anchor, drop the fear

and make the voyage I hold so dear

in a heart forgetting how to laugh.

In a heart of unyielding iron pain.

In a heart that sees in iron a chain.

For 10 points for best answer write a poem in 10 words or less, not including title. And I'll go with the voters.

I'm wondering if the "micropoem" is possible, without managing to sound completely "meaningfully challenged".

The reason I ask is a tiny one I was just struck on leaving as is. This one's supposed to be ominous (duh) but deep.

The second last word is supposed to be italics but I dunno where that option is on Y!A:

identity.

Who are we?

Who are we?

We are.

My poems are usually too long for contests, or too short to have a decent chance (who would ever pick a winner that was a haiku, right? no matter how good), or they contain spacing that make them somewhat concrete and won't translate onto a site... do you have to decide between showing any kind of poem you want and having a shot, or is there a place where you can enter anything?

"One for the squashed."

O pioneer, that entered our sterile Arcadia

in the name of your brave kind, you

dared show yourself, to quietly claim

in your corner you belonged, too. Nothing

would have come of it - no mate, no prey.

Still, too light to trigger nerves, you strode

upon the perceptions of unwelcoming gods.

They stomped you one for good measure.

You both knew it at the start - you were,

intolerably, the stronger.