(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 23, 2015)

The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.

The intellectual stone:
intrepid bravado,
indissoluble substance of certitude,
the very matter of suffering
unable to dissolve its own errors
and miscalculations of how we are.

Unmovable, it burns in the sun.
It sinks in the stream and rolls
only when the other stones roll.
We love our stones. We do.
But what about the rock’s soft
cradle of soil, the embrace of earth.

Goodwill we say, (because love
implies too much), is a practice,
a radial gradient of feeling
gripping, like a muscle, the joy
and sifting go of the hard ache,
the tight cerebral prizefight ropes,
the square platform comprising a ring,
soft gong that ends the quarrel  
which was always only
gray canvass in the brain.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 22, 2015)

When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This thought an instance of “blocking” where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.

That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.


The mind sees what is broken;  the mind chooses
broken things; the mind breaks to survive
the unmade, unfinished and unresolved.

The heart is the fixer, the clincher,  
wants to color the tongue out to the tip,
wants to fill in the oval, urging and fathoming

parts undone. Breaking and fixing the self—
the tug of war between the thready broken
and the seamless whole. Heart’s pride

is fear of death—so much the stacks
unsorted, the protest unfinished,
the game—something short of won.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 21, 2015)

Bizarre material is better remembered than common material.

That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.


The remotest Bigfoot is the easiest to believe.

Today, search for the Lock Ness monster yourself with Google’s underwater Street View.

The easy truth is hard to believe.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 20, 2015)

The tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of your personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for you, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.

P.T. Barmum’s boxcar of fortune tellers, religions and personality tests
predict I may be inadvertently pressuring someone.
I may be inadvertently over-extended. I need to be proactive
and not be proactive in taking on more than I can handle.
However, the sun is in my Professional house
which may affect my relationships. I blame this on my Gemini.

People suspect he’s holding out on them.
(That would be me.)
His problem will continue if he continues to stonewall.
(That’s right.)
If he throws someone a bone, that will buy him sometime.
(Interesting.)

Nothing is any good in the long run.
Something is always changing.
You never give yourself credit for being specific enough.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 19, 2015)

Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Today—no question what we would talk about:
L’entrée de Barry Manilow, or as the French say,
Faire son coming out, as if homosexualité

was Americain. You know, like the French
used to say making love in the English way
while the English were saying making love

in the French way. Meanwhile my own closet
of 33 rpms and fan-club letters and all those
barroom assertions. Is he? Isn’t he?

What is the nature of his love? So benevolent
to his fans, surprising them at the piano
of their houses, the spotlight of polite

amid rock and roll infamy. This hindsight
bias is tricky: "At the time." Since when?
Every moment to the now we speak of it.

The was that made the is to be: we will argue this
to our thrones. Like literary ironies of thigh master,
controversial poet of the bedroom farce,

Krissy Snow and her gentle flurry of confession.
Zaftig fans with their quinquagenarian chest pains.
Fantasy is always predictable. It never was.

They are screaming like Beatlemaniacs.
The happy hour question left for us now:
What is the nature of their love?

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 18, 2015)

Rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful. A famous example being used in the O.J. Simpson trial with the defense’s use of the phrase, “If the gloves don’t fit, then you must acquit.”

The carriage of craft glitters in meaning
provide there’s a meter we can sing to the ceiling.

When cooperative verses are ******* and buckled
our sense, intelligence will never be cuckold.

Music mechanics bestow faith in the word
whenever rotten fish cannot smell the ****.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 17, 2015)

A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faced in clouds, the man on the moon, and hearing non-existant hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Mysticism is felt in the heart muscle, rustles
where no feelings truly exist. What exists
of the dead voice hollering on the recording? Ordering
the apparition’s dances under the light beam. What seems
like God is deep in the conspiracy, the marvelous irony
of mirage. Brain eats signs; feet seek sense, pearl innocence.
The ghost is the illusionist, an enthusiast
who will never reveal his true forming mist. What exists?
But in the center of the sit-and-spin, you sit within
the vault of kaleidoscope pointers, confusing spoilers.
When you cannot stand you will understand
the significance of the word shaper…who waivers.