Category: Canon 5D Mark II

Poetry by Patrick Jennings
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Burrard Iron Works, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Irony ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #289

I am having
High-order, ill-mannered thoughts
Inconvenient truths
As the saying goes

Understatement that it is

And I have always
Wondered why
Understatement
Doesn’t have a better word

Overstatement has
Hyperbole
Pointed overstatement
An extraordinary word

Understatement
Seems so…
Well
Understated

But I’m lying
Not about understatement
I cannot overstate it
I cannot be hyperbolic

About understatement or lying

But I digress
I dissociate
Because I am lying
About having these

Thoughts

I’m not having them
I mean that emphatically
Which is also a better word
Than understatement

And still I digress
Dissociate
Dis-associate
Because I also most emphatically

Do not want to have them

So I digress
Again
Diverge
Obsess about other thoughts

Any other thoughts
Or no thoughts at all
Even better
Any activity which annihilates

Thought

Television
Computer games
Hours-long arguments
On social media

Irony
Another great word
A device used properly
Only as a hammer on an anvil

I have arguments
About high-order, ill-mannered thoughts
To avoid thinking about
A particular set of high-order, ill-mannered thoughts

But I digress
From my digression
Which speaks to the power
Of dissociation

I dis-associate
From dissociation

But those thoughts
I don’t want to have
They want to be had
They want to be thought

And they’re knocking at the door
Pounding at it really
Against the big metal door
Protecting my consciousness

Like a hammer on an anvil

Even now
I am buttressing the door
Keeping it shut
As it reverberates

I desperately want
To turn on the telly
Play a game
Or open Facebook

Continue reading Irony ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #289
Detail by Patrick Jennings
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The Touch of... A-Maze-ing Laughter, Yue Minjun, Morton Park, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Being ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #191

This is a bit of a rough sketch for a chapter in a series which began with Come It Said and continued to Like a Hammer on a Drum. These stories revolve around the idea of a sort of ‘electric Buddha’ I’ve been toying with for years.

Also, my apologies for the lateness of this week’s challenge. I had to work today, and then this much prose takes much longer to pen than a poem. 😉

The situational awareness of a Series 25 is pretty hard for a mere human to wrap their head around. While these battle droids are equipped with a pair of excellent optical sensors, positioned to replicate the appearance of a predator’s stereo vision, it is their internal sensors which provide the bulk of their operational data. These include radar (both atmospheric and ground-penetrating), with full sonic and electro-magnetic spectrum arrays. Their entire body acts as an antenna, collecting sensory data in a sphere up to a one kilometer radius. The Quantum Processing Unit parses and analyzes this data in real-time, determining all relevant threats in the sensory sphere and developing ongoing action plans for eliminating them.

I talked with a droid designer once who said there was really no way of putting an upper-limit on how fast a 25 can assess and respond to every situational detail of a battle in terms I could understand. “But,” she said, “if you can imagine beating Bobby Fisher at chess one hundred million times in a nanosecond while simultaneously playing every instrument for a full orchestra’s rendition of the William Tell Overture, you’ll have an inkling.”

Continue reading Being ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #191
Poetry by Patrick Jennings
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Old Sound, Britannia Beach, Howe Sound, British Columbia, Canada

Before ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #190

I float
Gently
Back in time

To an age before
This silence of spirit
And its sorrows
These days of hardness
And slight assurances

Back to a time
Of no small beauty
When time itself
Came in an abundance
Applied to the creation
Of wondrous things
While wonder was divinely inspired

Meaning was no fleeting connection
And purpose a life’s rendition

Before profit and growth and ROI
Became ends and means and purpose

A time long before
The remains of this pier
Were ever a pier
Before ever a ship
Sailed these waters
Before any European left the shores
Of a land not yet named Europe

Gently floating
I let waves and bird song
Dominate the frantic race
Of engines on the highway behind me
Breathe the ocean deeply in
Exhale millennia of progress

For a moment, at least
I exist in a time before
All that I am
Was ever possible

Can I let this self die
This day
Allow a time before
To lead me
To a time that follows

Continue reading Before ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #190