Sunday, April 6, 2008

Babies Eating Lighting Bolts In Flowered Dresses

A couple nights ago Cameron (Jackson) and Jack (Morgan) and I attended a reading at Pegasus books...for the sake of those present, I will not name names, or make any reference to characters ficticious or otherwise. Let's just say that there were some poems, some maybe happened to be interspersed with epistemological essays on lighting. Sometimes, as it happens, readings last about half an hour per person. So there were these essays, interspersed by essays, read as if reading a poem, for a good solid long ammount of time.

I'm taking a geography class this semester. We learned about lightning. This is what I learned. I made it into a poem :

Lightning

Travels at speed of light (186,000 mi/sec)
Cloud to surface charges move downward in (approx.)
50-yard sections, producing a path along which a charge is deposited.
The circuit is complete when the charge reaches the surface.
Thunder is a result of lightning.
The air around the lightning bolt is heated to extremely high temperatures
(50,000°F). Pressure from the heat causes the air to expand (explosively), pushing (compressing) surrounding air and causing a shock wave (within first several feet)
then continues as sound waves.
Boom.
Approximate speed of sound: 761 mph (at sea level).

Nothing of this nature should exceed 47 seconds.

The coolest part of the reading was how her dimples shuddered and trembled and grew more pronounced depending on the stretch of her mouth during words.
And the really cute cabbage patch baby.

1 comment:

Cameron said...

Boom.

Dimples shuddering...brilliant.