POETRY IN MOTION

I am in another running streak challenge, hosted by Runner's World magazine on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/events/545028802257323/?source=1) and elsewhere.  Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, inclusively, participants are supposed to run at least one mile per day.  Or 1.6 km a day for those few, like me, who use the metric system.  People would run and then post their distance and time etc, sometimes a long-winded conversation would follow, or new friends made.  I'm doing pretty well at it, despite the difficulty of getting up at 4:45 AM to run between 5:20ish to 6ish.  To make things more interesting, instead of just posting my distance and time, on a few occasions I threw in a poem.  Or at least a few lines of text that rhyme or follow a certain structure.  Just for fun!

Pre-dawn, before work
Short run in asphalt jungle
No photos to share

(The past few run challenges I participated I had the luxury of running far away and take photos of the various places to share.  These days I only run short distance before going to work, before the sun comes out, nothing nice to take pictures of.  In haiku format, which in English is roughly 5 syllables first sentence, 7 syllables next, then back to 5 syllable.)


D-tags are red, DNF'ers are blue
I see you are streaking
Will you be my boo?

(For those who are looking more than a running partner.  The standard lines are "Roses are red, violets are blue".  While I quickly found something running-related that is red, I couldn't think of anything that's blue.  I used "blue" as in sad, with DNF'ers meaning people who "did not finish" a race, usually  because they no longer could take the punishment, but also apply to when a race was interrupted.  A D-tag, by the way, is the longish piece of paper embedded with a computer chip to register the runner's position as he crosses the finish mat or similar locations.  D-tags are widely used by the New York Road Runners.)


There is a streaker named Lex
Creative muscles he likes to flex
Fancy routes made with his Garmin
Got him to start wonderin'
Can the same be done with a Timex?

(I've been doing GPS art with my Garmin watch.  Recently, Timex Ironman became a sponsor for the smartphone app Charity Miles, which I use a lot, so I made the word "TIMEX" as a gesture of appreciation.  I would appreciate it even more if they send me a watch to try to do GPS art with LOL. The poetic structure here is a limerick, which I keep clean as limericks are usually lewd.)


I run each morning from 5 A.M. to six
Loud on my iPod is that song by Styx
Dressed in black, didn't see that truck comin'
Now all I hear is that song by Led Zeppelin

(I quickly ran out of poetry format to try to write.  There are many others of course, just none that interested me.  Luckily, I am a big fan of Whose Line Is It Anyway improv show on TV and one of the games they play on the show is a hoedown.  Unlike the genius comedians on the show, I didn't do this spontaneously and had to think long and hard to come up with the four lines.)


I am in this challenge
To run one mile a day
It's called streaking
But keep your clothes on to play

Start from Thanksgiving
Keep logging the miles
To January the first
And don't forget to smile

However you do it
Roadway or dreadmill
Keep plugging along
At the end stuff yourself to the gills.

(Another favorite game of mine on WLIIA is Irish drinking song, where the comedians sing one line of a song, made up on the spot of course, on some topic.  Again, it took me some time during my work commute to come up with the little poem about streaking itself.  Yup, many of us run just so we can eat what we want.)

RUTH OR DARE 10K

I am fond of fonts.  Well, technically what I'm fond of are called "typefaces", but I cannot think of a verb that sounds like or alliterates with "typeface", so "fond of fonts" will have to do.  What I've been gwriting up to today was the equivalent of stick figures, in the sense that the letters have no actual width.  I know how to write using outline fonts but I don't have the time to do so if there are too many letters in the word or phrase.  "RUTH" is the perfect name to experiment with outline font.  "R" and "H" turned out pretty good but "U" and "T" can be better.  I think the upper left of "U" is an anomaly with the satellite, as I am sure I didn't cross the street there.  I thought about making "T" span three blocks and use a whole block's width for its trunk but didn't, so it looks sorta slender.  Its upper right section is probably another satellite anomaly.  I remember when I was at the corner of 76th Street and 19th Avenue, there was a big gathering of parents etc waiting to enter the school on the block.  It's that time of the year when students graduate, whether from middle school to high school or some other advancement.  The parents blocked the entire sidewalk.  Instead of walking around the blob, I paused the GPS watch THEN walked around them and resumed recording my route afterward.  Somehow the horizontal lines merged and the top of the "T" appears to have no thickness.

Ruth is a friend I knew from PPTC although she's more of a FRNY member.  Her special day is around the corner.  Not only I gwrote her name, I also composed the following, ahem, clean limerick:

There is a Front Runner named Ruth

Over forty, your honor, no harsh truth

Much energy for Hadassah

Always smile for the camarah

Deep inside she is just a mere youth

"RUTH", 10 km in 1:24

The Simple Life

My friend the Lone Gunman told me about some Simple Life movement. I have the link on my work Windoze machine, but I don't have the time to boot it up, or do a quick Google, so suffice to say that we as a consumer society is too busy gathering possessions which in turn possesses us. Let us step back and live a simpler life, excellent idea. Make do with what you have, give away what you don't need. Shoot, I suppose that 3G iPhone will never find its way into Lone Gunman's paws...

One of the fun stuff I did in Facebook was joining the many groups it offers. One such group is some limerick groups. Limericks are poems that consist of a total of five lines, with rhyming happens on the first, second, and fifth lines, also third and fourth. Another pattern involving the two set of lines is that the first, second, and fifth lines have three metrical feet; the third and fourth lines have only two. Whatever metrical feet are you will have to read about in the link of the blog entry. I think a metrical feet is a set of unaccented and accented syllables. Whatever...

Here's a limerick for the Lone Gunman and his Simple Life:

There is a man in Tampa
Possession drives him banana
Give away he must
Simplify or bust
Now he has just his pajama!