It's a risky thing, giving out a topic on this board right before you go overseas for a week, but I trust all will go well. I want couplets on your day job (real or imaginary). I expect to be delighted when I return!

I ain't got no day job, nope.
Use my rezmay to clean my dope.

<u>In Local Parentis</u>

Teacher! Teacher! I go now to home?
Please, not now, 'Adel - put down the phone.
Teacher! Teacher! I English speak good?
"Do I, Ahmed", (thinks) If only you could!
Teacher! Teacher! She say bad for me -
"Told me", Fairouz...and for "him" - it is "he".
Teacher! Teacher! He write not nice things!
Yes, Mohammed...oh god give me wings!
Teacher! Teacher! He take from me book!
Okay Sho'aib...but remember, it's "took".
Teacher! Teacher! Why you are make cry?
As, Taha, I'm here - and it's costly to fly.


[This message has been edited by Nigel Holt (edited June 19, 2001).]

Nigel, I love this! I suspect you can find a publisher for it if you want to. In the sixth line you might change "it's" to "it is" for rhythm, and I wonder if you could get rid of some of those quotation marks by using italics for the children's lines.

Enjoyed!

Carol

Forgive the break in form. ;)

Pufferfish nucleotides, doo-dah, doo-dah
Piscine retroviruses, lobster DNA.
Mutagenic plasmids in barra...cuda.
Lipopolysaccharides, all the doo-dah day.

Tony

[This message has been edited by Tony (edited May 27, 2003).]

I know that I'm not metrically apt yet...still I had to try this.

With my dilated eyes, I for a moment looked
Away from the bewitching screen, clad in steel blue;
From my skullduggery: turning chalazions,
Transferring corneal wounds and abrasions,
An extended ophthalmodynamometry
All into skillful tactics of arithmetic
And into dollar bills. Profiting an MD
Is more complex and arduous than it used to be.

I looked away to mess around with poetry
And pay by working late in ophthalmology.

My job's a series of routines,
translating words and counting beans.
Sometimes I'd like to stay at home
and play online or write a pome,
but I have promises to keep,
and mouths to feed before I sleep.

Carol

Two verses - two meters. You see why I need this place:

I am software master tick-tock
fiddling with a database lock.
I was born a math'matician;
Gave it all in competition.

I write new code just like a nerd;
You see my rates are quite absurd.
My days are projects 'till the end;
nights I drink vodka with a friend.


------------------
--

Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/

Late,sorry, but my real job...


Buying and selling,swapping and dealing,
Banking and losing, spreading and stealing.
The derivitive process of debts I arrange,
In a prescient madness of foreign exchange.

PCB Assembly Blues
-------------------

Slumping is dreary,
solder gets smeary,
someone please answer my thixotrop query.
To discard is a waste,
but the flux is debased
and I can't call this runny stuff paste.

Ball grid arrays
might be the new craze
in the circuit board real-estate daze,
And I must confess
I get pick-and-place mess
when spacing is 12 mils or less.

HASL*, silver and OSP,
these things make circuit boards pretty.
When they've sat on a shelf
for more than I know
I only hope they reflow.

Since the customer asked,
I laid blame on the mask
for the shorts he observed in the past.
FR-1, FR-4
it's an incomplete cure,
and I've seen this old problem before.

If the pin test goes well,
then no one can tell
that the solder pot smoked and developed a smell.
I'm not one to shirk,
but as long as things work,
who gives a darn that the line went berserk.


* pronounced "hassle"

I've been here long enough that I have learned basic meter, and so I hope to improve on my performance above. This one about my old day job:

<u>Random walks on fractals</u>

It is the latest fashion: fractal math.
I've set myself the task to find a path
between two fractals in an abstract space,
a space so strange it's really not a place.

Imagine little dots that run around
inside this funny fractal I have found.
Their moves are random, not so unlike dice.
A question: Will they visit each site twice?

A funny thing about those fractal dudes:
The dots will always hit the neighbourhoods.
The chance that any site is left alone
has probability of one. You groan?

The sites are just too many there, and dense.
That's why. Does mathematics now make sense?
"I hate that subject, it's my worst!" you say,
and curse. But if you listen, I will play.

------------------

Svein Olav

.. another life

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited July 30, 2001).]

A Day in the Life of Gj the Tech Writer

Gj sits down at his desk, takes his pen and writes a word,
then another, breathes in deep, blows out air, then writes a third.

Gj looks up at the door, thinks he sees a friend walk past,
drinks some water, takes a piss, writes two words down fast.

Gj scratches at his nose, looks and sees five words are done,
thinks a while then changes one, looks out at the sun.

Gj feels five words are good, adds them to his out-tray now,
sits back slowly, stares outside, scratches, wipes his brow.

Gj sees his in-tray high, wonders at what he should do,
sees his out-tray is still low, balances the two.

Gj gets up from his desk, stretches back and puts on coat,
wanders out into his life, needs liquor down his throat.



[This message has been edited by Gj (edited July 30, 2001).]

I'm reviving this ancient thread as a mixer (no reference to the goldfish thread intended) for those of us who don't get to go to the West Chester conference this weekend. Hey, why shouldn't we have an opportunity to schmooze, too?

That said, I have nothing to post yet http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif , but I hope if we all start working on our job-description small talk now, we'll soon have such diverting conversation going on that no one will even notice the lack of refreshments.

Let the party begin!

Julie Stoner

I take the rusted hulks of transportation
Grind away the decades’ devastation

Cauterize the wounds of carelessness
Strip away internal moldiness

Tear down somebody’s past to basic pieces
Clean them off and lubricate with greases

Then put together. This simple reassembly
Restores a dream from someone else's memory.


http://home.fuse.net/jh/before3.jpg

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited May 27, 2003).]

Queen o' the Cube


First things first, and first I take an elevator.
Today, if truth be told, it was a smellevator.

I change my shoes and head right for the coffee room.
I drink too much and scuttle for the ladies room

and there I gloss my lips and fluff my flat hat hairs.
I dish the dirt with Deb and gush over what she wears.

Later, not sooner, I return to my messy cubicle.
My boss looks annoyed. I swear he is such a boobicle.

He wants something typed and then he wants thirty xeroxes.
He breathes down my neck like a herd of thirty queer oxes.

Let ‘im exude, ‘cause whether he seethes or abides it
he’ll get what he wants when the Queen of the Cube provides it.

Lucky for him I’m in a magnanimous mood.
I head for the copy room; that’s when my heel comes unglued.

Lucky for me, a shoemaker store’s in the lobby.
When I get back at twelve, my boss appears purple and sobby.

Lucky for me he’s got a real urgent appointment,
‘cause I’m telling you now, his nose is way out of ajointment.

I’ll get him his copies, all perfect, he’ll thank me a bunch
but first things first: I’ll take a three hour lunch.

I wholesale wooden handmade boxes -
Those who see the price it shockses.
Clearly, they don't know the time
they take to make. Law, its a crime!
At times I sigh, my mem'ry lingers
back on days of perfect fingers.

My job found me on my last dollar.
They knew I weren’t no Harvard scholar

but did their deed and took me on,
now I’m their status quo moron.

I order paper for the trash,
for this they pay me decent cash.

I sort their mail and call their cars,
I hardly make any faux pas.

I’m not abused, I’m not affronted,
but whisper-stammer when confronted.

They’ve come to value me as “trusty”
and they don’t mind that I’m so busty.



------------------
zz

Those rosy cheeked minnows in the deep
Of the playground who often weep,
Those little chaps with scabby knees,
Who cough, retch, vomit, bleed and sneeze,
Those pigtail pullers so strong and tough,
Who crumble when play gets too rough,
Those giggling ladies small and vain
Who brush their long hair time and again,
Those gossips, boasters, cry babies, sneaks
Creeps, loungers, sporties, nerds and geeks,
Those quiet ones who fade into the black,
The loud ones you wish will not come back,
Those needy ones who tug and pull
At sleeves and struggle hard in school,
Those brainy types who work during break,
And sneer at those left in their wake,
Those who bully, threaten and laugh
And this I’m afraid is just our staff!
A teaching job is way above all
If you want to torture the small!

Yours from a position of false authority bolstered by threats and a bullish behaviour,
Gus

Ladder 157, Rescue 2

Now lay the old New York to bed
but hold the memory in your head
of bloodstained streets and sky lined red.
Find strength between the flame and ash.
between the thunder and the flash,
Remember those who raised so high
-between the silence and the sigh-
bold tattered flag in shattered sky.

[This message has been edited by Lo (edited June 03, 2003).]

if left paren i must fill up this space
with shop talk right paren left curly brace

before i get the conversation rollin'
i'll need a cup of Java semicolon

at least they have a t1 in this place
semicolon space right curly brace

Restless in a big armchair
I spend the hours, as I stare
At every anxious, grieving face
Within the 50-minute space
I've heard it all--the wife who cheats
With Internet guys whom she meets
The secret incest, crooked deals,
The husband dressed in bra and heels
The anxious who are prone to panic
The wired who are likely manic
Many of them are depressed
Can hardly shower and get dressed
I've done this many years, and yet
Their stories I just can't forget
When I get home I have one mission:
Avoid Lifetime television

My job's to be the meanest mom alive.
Why else would I so willingly deprive
my daughters of--ahem--"socialization"?
So sad. In home-directed education,
they have to miss the school bus, though they do
enjoy the double-decker at the zoo.
Alas, the asphalt schoolyard's out of reach;
my daughters chase their friends around the beach
while other kids breathe chemicals and mold
in "temporary" classrooms decades old,
which take up space where playgrounds used to be
before schools canceled recess and P.E.
My kids think it's okay to stay unique,
instead of fearing epithets like "geek".
You see, I so deprive my progeny!
I keep them out of school! Shame, shame on me!

[Edited to conserve space and face]


[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited November 26, 2004).]

I came to this a little late, but had a fun few minutes anyway!


This is my day job, as far as I can see
people are tapping furiously
or staring at screens with intense concentration,
living in crowded isolation.
But, to be truthful, I can’t see so far,
infrequent greetings tell me who they are
The shoulder height barriers, the pig-pens I call them
cut off the contact, the milk from our sow. When
I reach the office, I rarely see
the people tapping furiously.
The tops of their heads and whizzing fingers
A morning greeting sometimes lingers
in the air, as I walk by
and duck into my own pig-sty.


Rachel

Morons tail my tanker truck, they climb right up my ass.
They want to smell the deadly scent of forty tons of gas?

False imprisonment and overkill:
Monarchs wedged behind a Big Rig's grille.

Bravo, Tony.

Best,
Greg

Graywyvern, I envy you!


[This message has been edited by diprinzio (edited August 10, 2003).]

I’m the official boo boo kisser,
Four leaf clover finder, and well wisher.
My breasts are in a funny place
to my waist they seem to race.
And the stretch marks haven’t faded
even though the milk’s evaporated.
I’ve changed a thousand diapers, true
and dealt with so much stinky pooh
I no longer smell my own arm pits.
AND I’ve mastered the search for lice and nits.
Oh these talents ought to be incorporated
the president himself should instate it:
a million dollars for every mom!
Instead of nuclear, we’ll drop diaper bombs!


[This message has been edited by Melalope (edited August 13, 2003).]

One couplet says it all:

Living on the line of sanity, I write not for bows
But to put sense and order into the head of cows.

Tough job, eh?
Cheers!



------------------
Nevine Al Seidi

Just bumping this up. Lots of new (and old) members haven't yet introduced themselves. Consider yourselves invited to do so!

Julie Stoner

"Your day job--don't quit." He
said, "Not to write this kind of ditty."

[This message has been edited by Edmund Conti (edited November 27, 2004).]

What If Dr. Seuss Wrote My Resume

I’m a Parent with a Student whom I homeschool at my house,
and a Parent of a Graduate from College. For my Spouse,
I contribute all my talent as Computer Specialist.
In the meantime, I’ll admit that I’m a Bibliophilist.

As a Military Veteran I served my Country well;
it’s where I learned Computereeze, but now I do Excel.
To my credit, what I learned on in the Coast Guard was a Wang,
a simple word processor, that for then, was quite the thang.

I’ve also worked with Doctors, Nurses, Therapists and Patients,
staffing for a Home Care Agency. Now my relations
all call me up and ask me to explain their Doctor’s orders,
looking for some information on their new disorders.

I volunteered at schools and churches, sports associations--
at everything, exceeding my lone body’s limitations.
So now I’m down to helping family and my neighbors. Life
has proved to be rewarding as a Poet, Mom, and Wife.




[This message has been edited by ChristyElizabeth (edited November 28, 2004).]

Every month we publish data,
what we don’t know we estimate.
People use them as indicata
Some want to retaliate
when we post errata.

Then every year the numbers change,
and what was quite true yesterday
now has a different range.
What we used to call GNP
is now defined as GDP.
OK with me, I’m not a snob.
It tells me where to be invested.
If I invest before release date,
I could be arrested,
or lose my job.

Current dollars, chained and real,
we estimate what might appeal.
Taxes, transfers, interest payments,
wages, salaries, balance of payments,
net purchases of nonproduced assets.
It's the economy, stupid, in all of its facets.

Rah Rah Raahhh!




[This message has been edited by Florence Campi (edited December 04, 2004).]

call me a housewife if you must
I do my chores, I wash and dust;
but inbetween my daily round
of making meals and lost things found
I strive to write something worth more
than junk mail landing on the floor;
the 'internet' is my downfall,
it lures me with its siren's call
it keeps me oh-so-busy chatting
I don't get round to mending that thing
that needs fixing in my verse,
so often bodge and make it worse.
Out in the garden I must clear
the doggie pooh, a job so drear,
so get a cup of coffee going
back on the 'net' you'll find me going!

I'll make the beds and sort the laundry,
then stop to speak with all and sundry;
I'll work at writing on the screen
my brow all furrowed, ears a-steam,
but typing makes my fingers sore,
my pen's run out, now that's a bore!
Pages stare at me accusing,
excuses too many am I using,
prevaricating when I should
just knuckle down, write right, write good!
then there're books that someone said
were just too good not to be read,
I see I'm doing it again
instead of fixing my last 'gem'.
(I got more writing done last year
when funds were tighter, dear oh dear.)

Work is very complicated.
Maybe that’s why I’m elated
that I only work eight hours
at a stretch. I have some flowers
on my desk, long-dead, forgotten,
starved of water. (Is it hot, in
here, or is it me?) I’m guessing
I should say, since time is pressing,
that my job’s a lot of writing:
contracts, strategizing, fighting
to obtain the funding needed
for my projects, all that stuff.
Tell me when I’ve said enough...

[This message has been edited by Florence Campi (edited December 04, 2004).]

My careers have been sort of hoppy, hippity
but let me stick to the nitty, grittity.
I worked in the field of sociology,
then got a doctorate in psychology.
Had a job, for a time, inside a hospital,
which turned out to thrill me, more than a little.
So I started all over again, like a fool;
at thirty-two, went to medical school.
Became a rheumatologist, at home in joints
and a teacher of same, making points
to interns, residents and many a fellow.
Retired now, I’ve become quite mellow,
writing poems (or, more accurately, “verse”),
most of it bad and some of it worse.

Just Another Day on the Gulag

Ah yet one more piece of writing miserably writ!
A medical genius sent me his rock-like prose to edit.

So I try to make tails of heads, heads of tails,
and toil to introduce sense where grammar fails.

Pass me my pickax, Comrade! My jackhammer, please!
Let me drill some meaning into this rock-brain tease.

Christopher T. George

I am a medical editor in Washington, D.C. . . . http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by ChrisGeorge (edited December 10, 2004).]

By day, a lonely roofer;
Each night, a dance-hall hoofer.

Horseman, pass by. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif



[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 16, 2004).]

Midnight Visitor

"What do you see?" "A lonely rider."
"Quick, get out the cookies and the cider.

"It will be Santa with his coat so bright.
He's come to clamber down our chimney tonight."

"Don't get excited, it's only a solitary writer.
Come to fix our roof as planned: it's J.A. Crider."

Christopher T. George http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif




[This message has been edited by ChrisGeorge (edited December 16, 2004).]

It really, really, really bugs
me when after introductory hugs
the first thing people want is that you
answer the ubiquitous: “what do you do”. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/rolleyes.gif
It really, really can’t describe “I”
Mostly it leaves me wondering, “why?”
Because, of course, our immediate instinct
is to categorize that person as something distinct. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/frown.gif
It really, really irks me no end
and within, I squirm, wriggle and bend;
but my pc choice is simply to say,
“It rather depends on what time of day”.
So here’s my list, in chronological order.
1. Trying to be a respectful daughter.........)
2. Trying to be a supportive wife.............) http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/confused.gif
3-7. Mothering 4 kids, lotsa joy, lotsa strife)
8. Those translations some bills will pay
9. Healing, to help folks’ pain go away
10-11. Friends in need…& the ever-ringing phone
12. Snatching a read when I’m finally alone
13-21. Shopping & housework, a tiresome bore
When I don’t hear thanks, http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/mad.gif boy do I get sore!
22-24. And I also write and sew and paint -
when folks pay me for ‘em, http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif sorry I aint!
25. Some one-only sandblasted mirror designs,
26-?? & more. Thus ‘day-job’ really defines
me as “dabbler”, http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/tongue.gif but if I’d answer that way
I doubt you’d give me the time of your day.

Well, you asked about ‘day job’, not about night,
So I’ll just http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif & smile & no more, alright?




[This message has been edited by Seree Zohar (edited December 25, 2004).]

Since work eludes me
This thread excludes me