Day Twelve. The Dirty Dozen, 12 eggs in a carton, 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel, the duodecimal number system (base 12), the Twelve Days of Christmas, 12 Angry Men, 12 beer cans in a case, 12-step progam, 12 inches on a ruler, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 months in a year — 12 items in this list of 12's! ヅ At the NaPoWriMo website, Maureen Thorson suggests "a replacement poem. Pick a common noun for a physical thing, for example, desk or hat or bear, and then pick one for something intangible, like love or memories or aspiration. Then Google your tangible noun, and find some sentences using it. Now, replace that tangible noun in those sentences with your intangible noun, and use those sentences to create (or inspire) a poem." In the Poetic Asides blog, Robert Lee Brewer challenges us to "write a city poem. The poem can take place in a city, can remember the city (in a general sense), be an ode to a specific city, or well, you should know the drill by now. City poem: Write it!" Mixing the two prompts as always, I googled sentences online that contained pavement and city, simplified them by removing any city names, then replaced pavement with happiness. And there you are Happiness Underfoot in the City The last line, incidentally, is converted from the opening lyrics of The Subways song "City Pavement" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSkHO-_LKk4). Actually, my text might be a kind of parody of that punk song and of city poems in general. Hmm. What do you think? Alan says by way of intro, "I'm running a bit late today; my apologies. I was going to try the 'Google something and change the word' prompt, but I kept reading about recent stabbings and decided it would be better to find a bench outside, away from everything, and let my mind wander. I find that a fixed form helps me, sometimes, to develop ideas, as if I am solving a puzzle. Please indulge this small bit of autobiography (the explanation and the poem)." Relativity Ain't that the truth. I bet one of our cell phones holds more than those WWII-era computers that took up entire buildings. I learned in a computer class 30+ years ago that the term "bug" for a computer problem came from these building-size computers where real live insects would gum up the works. My first computer was an early generation Mac that I was able to buy because I won a writing award that had some prize money attached to it: the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. I've always been grateful to George Mason University for that prize and how it got me going, computer-wise. Before that I had done all my computing and word processing on Indiana University mainframes, printing out poems on that newsprint accordion computer paper. Anyway, good poem, Alan. Very gracefully and elegantly constructed Petrarchan sonnet. Bravo! About being "late" About tonight's reading Faithful readers, won't you comment, please? To post a comment, look for a blue link below that says Post a comment; if you don't see that, look in the red line that starts Posted by Vince and click on the word comments. Ingat, everyone. Look for happiness in the city — one hopes not underfoot. ヅ 
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