our chances of being alive together, statistically nonexistent
Today's poem:
Alive Together
Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who-but for endless ifs-
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.
~Lisel Mueller
And thus we conclude another National Poetry Month. I hope you enjoyed it.
***
SHIELD: Nothing Personal
I would have happily watched an hour of Maria venting to Pepper while she and May knocked out CIA agents, with May's mom as the wheelwoman. Skye can come too. (Triplett can be the arm candy.)
Also awesome, Skye calling Ward a Nazi, because let's be real, at base, that is what he is. Also, her headbutting him. I'm so glad she was grossed out rather than appeased by his feelings for her being real. Ugh ugh ugh. If she doesn't get to kill him, I hope May does. Also, while I don't think it's her fault if she lets Mike kill Ward, I do understand why she couldn't do that, and it has nothing to do with any feelings she may or may not have towards him. She was rattled by the "Do you want to be a murderer?" thing the way most civilians would be, and though she's allegedly a SHIELD agent (or she was), she's never really had to face the hard choices, so I can't see her making one there.
I also enjoyed Mike Peterson calling Ward on his bullshit too: "I was just following orders. Nothing personal." I really hope that now that SHIELD is gone, someone is looking out for Ace Peterson and his aunt.
Ward is so much more entertaining like this, though! I really hope they don't redeem him, because I think that ship has sailed, but now I kind of don't even want him to have a redemptive death! I want him to sleaze around having an EVIL nervous breakdown, which is kind of what he looked like he was doing in this episode. Note: I'm not looking forward to an episode of his backstory, though. I don't think it's at all necessary. He was abused/bullied, Garrett offered him a way out, and he took it. I don't need more than that. And also the last time the show tried to do it, it was godawful.
I wish I liked Fitz more, but his temper tantrums are annoying. He and Coulson need to get over themselves, because I would be much happier if they were gone and Triplett were there in their spot. I did like Maria telling him SHIELD was gone and they weren't getting the band back together, because duh. What good is upending the status quo if you don't let the aftermath play out for a while?
Simmons is going to turn out to be HYDRA now though, right? That was the vibe I got from that "You'll never have to find out" line, anyway. And I actually like her, too.
I wish they'd just drop the whole TAHITI thing - how could it have been Pierce if Pierce was HYDRA and HYDRA wanted to know what happened? Anyway. Coulson experimented on people but then when the results were too awful he resigned? I feel like maybe the line should have been drawn a little earlier, at "experiment on people by injecting them with alien goo" rather than at "alien goo causes people to break down in horror" (mostly because I'm willing to bet there was no IRB approval, no informed consent, no FDA-type oversight, just Fury and SHIELD) but what do I know? But since this is totally a Marvel thing - lots of experimenting on people, people getting their powers from unchecked weird science (Walter Bishop and William Bell are totally Marvel villains, don't even front; Walter just got a bit of a redemption arc; Olivia is the superhero they created) etc. - I will roll with it. But hopefully they'll just drop it because it's not really interesting.
Except for how SHIELD obviously has memory implanting technology - the Death Star zappy bot - how much of that came from Zola/HYDRA and, most importantly, how much of it was used on Bucky?
Adrian Pasdar's mustache is seriously awful, though not quite as awful as it was last time. Good lord, I know those CGI effects are expensive (even if the flying car bit looked like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), but surely they could spring for a decent mustache stylist.
I also don't get how Maria can say one minute that Stark would hire Coulson in a hot second but then turn around and say no, Tony still thinks he's dead. How does that even make sense? (Also, I'm guessing 'privatizing world peace' just leads to Ultron. Oh, Tony, no.)
Lastly, this show really should have started at midseason, because it burned through almost all of my goodwill towards it, so now I'm really hard to win over even when an episode shows as much improvement as this one has.
Of course, I also could have been in a shitty mood because ugh, the Rangers. What the hell? I can't even. Tonight is going to kill me. Fucking Flyers. Fucking playoffs.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/659041.html.
people have commented there.
Alive Together
Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who-but for endless ifs-
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.
~Lisel Mueller
And thus we conclude another National Poetry Month. I hope you enjoyed it.
***
SHIELD: Nothing Personal
I would have happily watched an hour of Maria venting to Pepper while she and May knocked out CIA agents, with May's mom as the wheelwoman. Skye can come too. (Triplett can be the arm candy.)
Also awesome, Skye calling Ward a Nazi, because let's be real, at base, that is what he is. Also, her headbutting him. I'm so glad she was grossed out rather than appeased by his feelings for her being real. Ugh ugh ugh. If she doesn't get to kill him, I hope May does. Also, while I don't think it's her fault if she lets Mike kill Ward, I do understand why she couldn't do that, and it has nothing to do with any feelings she may or may not have towards him. She was rattled by the "Do you want to be a murderer?" thing the way most civilians would be, and though she's allegedly a SHIELD agent (or she was), she's never really had to face the hard choices, so I can't see her making one there.
I also enjoyed Mike Peterson calling Ward on his bullshit too: "I was just following orders. Nothing personal." I really hope that now that SHIELD is gone, someone is looking out for Ace Peterson and his aunt.
Ward is so much more entertaining like this, though! I really hope they don't redeem him, because I think that ship has sailed, but now I kind of don't even want him to have a redemptive death! I want him to sleaze around having an EVIL nervous breakdown, which is kind of what he looked like he was doing in this episode. Note: I'm not looking forward to an episode of his backstory, though. I don't think it's at all necessary. He was abused/bullied, Garrett offered him a way out, and he took it. I don't need more than that. And also the last time the show tried to do it, it was godawful.
I wish I liked Fitz more, but his temper tantrums are annoying. He and Coulson need to get over themselves, because I would be much happier if they were gone and Triplett were there in their spot. I did like Maria telling him SHIELD was gone and they weren't getting the band back together, because duh. What good is upending the status quo if you don't let the aftermath play out for a while?
Simmons is going to turn out to be HYDRA now though, right? That was the vibe I got from that "You'll never have to find out" line, anyway. And I actually like her, too.
I wish they'd just drop the whole TAHITI thing - how could it have been Pierce if Pierce was HYDRA and HYDRA wanted to know what happened? Anyway. Coulson experimented on people but then when the results were too awful he resigned? I feel like maybe the line should have been drawn a little earlier, at "experiment on people by injecting them with alien goo" rather than at "alien goo causes people to break down in horror" (mostly because I'm willing to bet there was no IRB approval, no informed consent, no FDA-type oversight, just Fury and SHIELD) but what do I know? But since this is totally a Marvel thing - lots of experimenting on people, people getting their powers from unchecked weird science (Walter Bishop and William Bell are totally Marvel villains, don't even front; Walter just got a bit of a redemption arc; Olivia is the superhero they created) etc. - I will roll with it. But hopefully they'll just drop it because it's not really interesting.
Except for how SHIELD obviously has memory implanting technology - the Death Star zappy bot - how much of that came from Zola/HYDRA and, most importantly, how much of it was used on Bucky?
Adrian Pasdar's mustache is seriously awful, though not quite as awful as it was last time. Good lord, I know those CGI effects are expensive (even if the flying car bit looked like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), but surely they could spring for a decent mustache stylist.
I also don't get how Maria can say one minute that Stark would hire Coulson in a hot second but then turn around and say no, Tony still thinks he's dead. How does that even make sense? (Also, I'm guessing 'privatizing world peace' just leads to Ultron. Oh, Tony, no.)
Lastly, this show really should have started at midseason, because it burned through almost all of my goodwill towards it, so now I'm really hard to win over even when an episode shows as much improvement as this one has.
Of course, I also could have been in a shitty mood because ugh, the Rangers. What the hell? I can't even. Tonight is going to kill me. Fucking Flyers. Fucking playoffs.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/659041.html.
people have commented there.