Bussresan till Björklunden
Paintings of you
Floating, unimagined
In white and pink and blue
Papercut just above the eyes
Posing, perfect return to night
Sliding mountain around the cave
Past the tombs, out of sight
Graveyard picnic hypnotizing
Balloon sword gripping bloodful rising
Swollen pen
Inks the page
College ruled zen
Untitled poem 1
wooooorting
sloged bavary: a coined tremble
transporting hosiery
a good bevel
aborting honesty
the food rubble
assorted beans in my palm
upturned (palm not beans)
rains tiny rocks for the cement cracks
question all- freak out when stampeding hobgoblins yelp, "alas!"
Untitled poem 4
swag! this is teardropping hairspanking
twine-night:::::::
fResh
bOunce
pAretti aBarrenlish
tokyo tokyo tokyo tokyo tokyo tokyo tokyo a boys night
tokyo tokyo toykyo toykyo toy co toy coy yokyo
Untitled poem 11
cape cape Cape on a bird! Rabbit runs by
ah, the water
whetting signature holster
i've found a way out--
'Tis not what you think
("are you in your window")
"no"
(thought i saw you)
back back Back to the grind!
Untitled poem 12
Ephestra: Boys and guillotine, come one and ghost. Harrowing grief, sorrowing guilt, and borrowing your copy of the Magna Carta.
Hibiscus: Alas, you beseech mine joyful screechings. Relenting crumbling bubblable Fortune, protest in eclectic march a fortuitous mumble. A grumbling of treaties; and a morose dish of sweets.
Ralph: In queer regard, I fawn toward neglection. Apparently shrieking in bloody direction – once apples fell keenly on Mother's eye, sleeping. So every gail freeing their jugular jail.
Review: Todd Strasser's "Y2K-9"
It’s not that I had high hopes for a kids chapter book about a crime-fighting, chatroom-lurking Labrador Retriever, but I was utterly appalled by how disappointing of a read Y2K-9 turned out to be. With cliché, unrealistic dialogue and blatant, embarrassing pandering to children through the use of “cool” and “hip” turn-of-the-century internet slang, Todd Strasser has weaved together a dull frame of a story which was able to occasionally hold my attention only long enough to suffer through a chapter or two.
The novel (a word I use simply because I assume that’s what it was intended it to be) follows Byte, a retired Animal Intelligence Agency operative and human pet, who is contacted for an urgent anti-terrorist mission by Lassie, Byte’s former case officer and current non-dog. PHLUSH, an anonymous group who communicate by magazine letter cut-outs, has threatened to send the country “down the drain” unless its demands are met. After a secret meeting with Lassie at the doggy doctor, Byte reluctantly accepts the job and enlists the help of his only three friends whom he knows solely through online chatrooms. He arranges an in-person meeting and to his surprise_ (not mine) Foxybabe, Buffhunk, and Richgurl each possess the opposite characteristics that their usernames suggest and are disgracefully under- qualified for a top secret intelligence mission. However, Byte realizes he has no other choice and starts work on finding the bad guys with his rag-tag, know-nothin’ team of losers by holing up in a crummy apartment, ordering takeout and researching who the bad guys might be by, I guess, Googling stuff?
At this point during my torturous experience of reading this book, I realized I was already halfway through. My mind filled with panicked, exhausted thoughts: When will anything happen? Couldn’t these characters have been given some depth? Do I have to finish this? Amazingly, Todd “Pulitzer” Strasser, as I like to call him, ends up scrambling together an ending. The story ends in the way you’d expect. The team is at their breaking point and about to give up, but a convoluted combination of each of their “unique” talents is somehow enough to defeat the powerful mastermind behind the terrorist threats. All are congratulated and rewarded, Byte returns to his family, yadda yadda, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, did I mention his family’s surname is Barkley?
1/5 stars.