I am just collecting samples today

Um...Look at this.

The intersection of Silly and Heartbreak

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a
plastic swan-shaped paddle boat on a pond in the
German town of Muenster and has spent the past three
weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a
sailing instructor said Friday.

Peter Overschmidt, who operates a sailing school and
rents the two-seat paddle boat on the Aasee pond, said
the black swan with a bright red beak has not left the
white swan boat's side since it flew in one day in
early May.

"It seems like he's fallen in love," said Overschmidt.
"He protects it, sits next to it all the time and
chases away any sail boats that get anywhere nearby.
He thinks the boat is a strong and attractive swan."

Overschmidt said the swan will figure it out sooner or
later but hopes he won't be too heartbroken.

"I'll wish him all the best and hope that he doesn't
make the same mistake again," said Overschmidt."

Help I don't get it

This is a general call for assistance of the weblog variety.

First off, why why oh why are my sidebar links to the poems I wrote and the general goodness so large and ruddy compared to the regular links? I swear it looks exactly the same in the template gobbledygook (shut up, Al).

Second, why are all my links underlined? Do I have a choice?

And third, I'm trying an experiment.

I did it I did it! I made an intext link. Is that called a hyperlink? I don't care. I will enjoy the smartypants rush in all its fleeting glory.

Beginning the Fast

Call this era the New Somberness.
Call it Ghastly Lighting.
Call this era There’s an Antique
Mall In My Heart.

When I was more certain,
more self-assured,
I was more
of an ass, true. But

I didn’t ask permission to hunker
down under a day (pleeease)
the size and usefulness
of a white elephant.

Please?
Oh honey please! I must
go more bravely. This
crouching doesn’t count.

As if I am made with a glass handle
And all the world wants to lift my lid.
Call this era Liberating My Idiom.
Call it Nothing. Not even hunger.

I have been a traveling salesman afraid
to look in my own suitcase!
I have had the best things happen to me!
There is something left to be desired!

Oh, honey, what an ass.
Call this era Ode to Scissors.
Call it Learn to Make My Own Fun.
I keep a box of broken habits under my bed

for sentimental reasons. Call it Mustering
the Courage to Set the Box on Fire.

List Deal

Some time back, my friend Allison asked a group of us to list our all time favorite top 5 books of poetry. Here's my top 10, in no particular order and subject to additions at any moment. (This is a really hard game!)

Four Quartets: T.S. Eliot
The Book of Gods and Devils: Charles Simic
Book of My Nights: Li-Young Lee
View with a Grain of Sand: Wislawa Szymborska
Return to the City of White Donkeys: James Tate
Steal Away: C.D. Wright
Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson
The Four Questions of Melancholy: Tomas Salamun
The Dream Songs: John Berryman
Tristimania: Mary Ruefle

Does anybody have a list of their own or a favorite book I maybe don't know about? I could use a good read.

SOMETHING BLUE

-for Meg Rains

Everywhere blue existed
first, we are tourists.

So when the couple was wed,
they felt compelled to extend

a formal invitation to it. Blue,
the local authority, zipped up

a party dress and used eyedrops.
The entirety of the being of blue,

the long, personal history of blue
(which includes, but is not limited to,

the efforts of dyed blossoms beneath
grocery store neon, and later,

the vases dumped down the sink,
the sorrow of rivers

which empty and empty
and never become lakes,

and every lake collecting
sunsets and other vessels)

participated in the ceremony.
Therefore, everything changed.

For once, no one, not even the rain,
forgot the sky. The clear May sky,

which gladly dressed one – then
two – birds on a branch

preparing to bloom.

Chicago is "just right" for me!

That is a quote from a very fine t-shirt.
Every time I visit Chicago, I want to move there. After the wonderful readings at Danny's Tavern and the Book Cellar, I am eagerly awaiting the trip photos. Of friends, amazing friends, mainly, but also of the long and ever growing list of oddly combined words. A restaurant awning proclaiming "Patio Beef" was the clear winner this afternoon. (Which reminds me, on the trip to Fargo last month, a sign selling "elk" and a sign selling "violins" were posted next to each other in the same field. It's just an amazing world, really. Those landowners are special enigmas to me.)
Clearly I have made it home safely and am wildly overtired.

Aural Revision of "The Motto..." or "Making Technology My Friend, Continued"