Ken Poyner
EXCHANGE
The silence tonight is terribly engaging. It flows from the commercial district, spreading itself into the metered residential town parks. Quibble knows he should keep his doors shut, windows closed, the chimney flue locked. With no more precaution than that, the silence will be kept at the foot of the porch, move onto his neighbor’s homes – which it will find similarly enclosed, all latches latched, occupants unworried as they have seen this before, embraced the remedy. Quibble opens his front door, feels the stillness of silence as it slithers across the porch and begins seductively to explore his cacophonous home.
INDUSTRY
The almanac customizes the sort of dark she makes. Keeping track of the unusual is master talent. Adjusting the dark for eclipses, planetary alignments is the safety-pin of success. Anyone can cut the dark to the proper length, draw out the ends so it merges easily into dawn or dusk. But not everyone can properly punctuate the difference between a quarter moon eclipse and a full moon masking, Mars and Jupiter aligned or in growing avoidance. She takes pride in her work, though you sleep through most of it. She would advise you: you don’t know what you are missing.
EQUIDISTANT
When the county outlaws clocks, Quibbles takes his family grandfather clock to the basement, lets it run unrenewed into stillness, happy it will forever stoically show 2:16, and be safe from confiscation. He can do without church bells and assembly hall tower clocks, even pocket watches and wrist chronometers. Especially alarm clocks. This old clock ties him to his history, generation to generation pinioned with this hardware. He has no intention of ever making it a clock again. Quibble does not realize it is not clocks the county discourages, but periodicity, sequential causality, the taming push of time casually metered.
Ken Poyner has been publishing for 48 years, married for 45 years, retired for seven years. He writes to defeat the numbers. Find his eight available books at www.kpoyner.com, or any number of on-line book vendors.
EXCHANGE
The silence tonight is terribly engaging. It flows from the commercial district, spreading itself into the metered residential town parks. Quibble knows he should keep his doors shut, windows closed, the chimney flue locked. With no more precaution than that, the silence will be kept at the foot of the porch, move onto his neighbor’s homes – which it will find similarly enclosed, all latches latched, occupants unworried as they have seen this before, embraced the remedy. Quibble opens his front door, feels the stillness of silence as it slithers across the porch and begins seductively to explore his cacophonous home.
INDUSTRY
The almanac customizes the sort of dark she makes. Keeping track of the unusual is master talent. Adjusting the dark for eclipses, planetary alignments is the safety-pin of success. Anyone can cut the dark to the proper length, draw out the ends so it merges easily into dawn or dusk. But not everyone can properly punctuate the difference between a quarter moon eclipse and a full moon masking, Mars and Jupiter aligned or in growing avoidance. She takes pride in her work, though you sleep through most of it. She would advise you: you don’t know what you are missing.
EQUIDISTANT
When the county outlaws clocks, Quibbles takes his family grandfather clock to the basement, lets it run unrenewed into stillness, happy it will forever stoically show 2:16, and be safe from confiscation. He can do without church bells and assembly hall tower clocks, even pocket watches and wrist chronometers. Especially alarm clocks. This old clock ties him to his history, generation to generation pinioned with this hardware. He has no intention of ever making it a clock again. Quibble does not realize it is not clocks the county discourages, but periodicity, sequential causality, the taming push of time casually metered.
Ken Poyner has been publishing for 48 years, married for 45 years, retired for seven years. He writes to defeat the numbers. Find his eight available books at www.kpoyner.com, or any number of on-line book vendors.
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