To The Book Borrower - II

Again because nobody ever returns books they borrow...
You can read Part I by clicking on the following link - TTBB-I.

In the beginning, ownership is remembered. Then, slowly, it becomes an illusion. Finally, it comes to rest with the borrower!

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TO THE BOOK BORROWER - II
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This is Tom’s tome.
Used to be Tom’s tome?
Hey you, are you Tom’s tome’s tomb?

-Thomas Jay Cubb

Notes
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1. A Cryptic Explanation
L1 - Statement of possession
L2 - Statement post-prehension
L3 - Statement of new position (and possession)

2. Line three used to be Hey you, you's to be...? but changed it later on, because it made it too cryptic, defeating my intent behind writing it on the book!!

3. TTBB-I was more efficacious - with this, the reason was sometimes lost in the rime!


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JUST-IN-CASE LEXICON
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Tom - me, the owner of the book
Tome - a book
Tomb - the final resting place
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To The Book Borrower - I

Because nobody ever returns books they borrow... After some time it becomes the borrower's - why return it now, he has read it anyway! I used to write this in every book I bought.

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TO THE BOOK BORROWER - I
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This book is dearly mine,
And if you, my darling, borrow
Mind to return within weeks nine
For that is the mine-thine fine line.
Beyond which is bereavement, sorrow.

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Use Refuse

USE REFUSE
--------------

The lizard uses its beloved tail,
To tickle itself, to scratch its head, to many avail.
But when in trouble, trapped by a nail
Coolly sheds it, with not so much as a wail.

- Thomas Jay Cubb


Notes/Commentary
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1. Alternate titles were Use-And-Throw and Disposable.
2. The spontaneous removal of a body is called autotomy.
3. Refuse is used in the sense of disposed stuff.
4. Moral: Favours done are very easily and quickly forgotten.

Cause And Effect (intro)

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CAUSE AND EFFECT (intro)
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Opulence,
A life of ease.
Corpulence,
You are obese.

-Thomas Jay Cubb
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JUST-IN-CASE LEXICON
opulence = wealth as evidenced by sumptuous living
corpulence = the property of excessive fatness
Definitions sourced from WordWeb dictionary

Commentary
------------
This is an excerpt from my poem "Cause And Effect" which deals with the problem of being overweight and how to get rid of the extra flab. Its philosophical thread is how the cause and the effect are so easily (and so often!) mistaken by the casual observer as the other.

This snippet summarizes the cause-and-effect line of reasoning. The poem is shaped (literally) as a fat man on a diving-board; these four lines form the head of the person and of course the root of the problem!

The surest way to eliminate the effect is to remove the cause from the equation. Rather be fat than poor?

FFAT (Four Fingers And A Thumb)

Here's a song I wrote in early 2004. Can be sung to the tune of generic rock and roll songs . This version has been stripped of scene-setter/mood-changer paras which I felt were obstacles to the free flow of the rock'n'roll rhythm.

Literary value? Well, it coins a new(!) proverb and also tells a story!
It is an autobiographical account of a band that never was. Does that make it fiction?

Read (sing) on ....

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FFAT
(Cubb)
-----------
Spending my days out on the beach
Dreaming dreams that were outta reach
Gotten tired of counting grains of sand
Why don't I start my rock'n roll band?

Tunes that buzz around in my head
Wonder can they earn me my bread?
Scores of new songs in my hand
But what's the name that I will call my band?

Whoever said that, "What's in a name?"
I tell you he really hasn't played the game
Abbreviations mean less appreciation.
Personal name gives one all the fame (and the blame!)

It's gotta have soul
It's gotta rock'n roll
Yeah, and it's gotta have meaning too.
That's the name of the game...

(chorus)
Don't you know that
Four fingers and a thumb
make the mighty hand
Four fingers and a thumb
make the mighty hand
That's the name that I will call my band
Four fingers and a thumb.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Times were good we could do no wrong.
People they throng just to hear our song.
Though the exec was a slippery eel
Finally managed to land us a deal.

(he said)
Guys you really don't fit the mould
Gotta beat the odds just to break even
(and we said)
We ain't clones of pop stars of old.
Platinum, gold just a question of when.

Songs I sang then in the studio
I hear them all now on the radio
Playing pool, drinking beer, we're having some fun
Rock show here, a concert there, we're out in the sun.

We're on a roll
We've beaten them all.
Beaten the odds and broken the records.
Wonder whether we've won the game?

(chorus)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Though the years have passed us by
The hand's still mighty and going strong.
Man, you oughta hear us
When we're on song...
...And that's always!

(chorus)
(repeat & fade to end)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


WASTE
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The discarded lines were

Maybe/Babe/You'll be seeing me singing on the shore
Maybe/Babe/You'll be seeing me singing on the show
Maybe/Babe/If you don't see me right on top for sure

at the end of each chorus.

and

[It's a long way/To the top/If you wanna rock'n roll
I got high hopes/But no ropes/to climb upon]

[It was a long way/To the top/We really did rock'n roll.
Gonna stay on/where we've got/ Just know that things will stay the same.]

just before the 'maybe-babe's.
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Quote
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Four fingers and a thumb make the mighty hand. - TJ

About A Word

This is a poem about my favourite word: quinquennium, which means a period of five years. This is fresh from the Incubbator! Track its history there.

Not sure how much literary value it has; there is no theme as such, just some facts in verse. But if you are here for the wordplay, this is it.

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ABOUT A WORD
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English words starting with 'Q'
Are, queerly, but a quiescent few.
Query anyone, "Not many in queue".

A quixotic five-year quest (quite untrue),
Cupid's arrow struck me, a random lexicon view;
I had found the one most q-true-blue!

Quinquennium: It's quite my word favourite.
Quin-quenni-yum: Say it aloud and savour it.
Take my cue: over "half a decade", favour it.

Indeed the Queen Of Words. Aye aye, so true!
Not only does it start with a 'Q',
But it has one to spare too: two!

-Thomas Jay Cubb

Beauty And The Beast Holder

Wise men and philosophers through the ages have disagreed on many things, but most seem to agree on one - "We become what we think about".

A man is what he thinks about all day long. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's life is what his thoughts make of it. - Marcus Aurelius
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. - The Bible

It is when we fill our minds with negativism that the world becomes evil. (The beast is within.) Everything we experience and everybody we encounter will carry the scent we hold in our mind.

Everything is a matter of perception; everything is relative, to you. You can choose to see a diamond or a rock. You choose the spectacles you wear - choose blue ones and the world is blue, choose green ones and the world is green.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder... Cliche! Cliche! ... If you don't have beautiful eyes, everything is ugly!

The Lime Sublime

Here is an excerpt from my poem "Free Verse I - The Anthem", the first part in my Free Verse trilogy. The first four lines here are to set the background. The snippet, I suppose, can stand on its own.

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ORANGE TROUBLE
(From Free Verse - I )
-----------------------------------

It is the poet’s struggle
To find the words to juggle
To make it a decent rhyme
On lines, each and every time.
.
.
.
If capture the poet’s heart does an orange
(Oh,that lime sublime!)
But alas, which has no rhyme!
How his feelings can he messenge?
Is his to be a still-born rime
For his hapless subject’s ‘crime’?
.
.
.
- Thomas Jay Cubb


PS Other words with no rhymes include : month, nothing, purple. Also check out the limerick by Jim Farrand at http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~henkm/english/rhyme.html

Spin-Offs

I need to get more organized as I realize that all of me may not be for all of you. CubbSpace is multidimensional, you see. Such arrogance! I hear you mutter. I was trying to put too many eggs in one basket.

Only stuff with some literary value will come in here from now on - snippets of prose or verse.

It's horses for courses, and so I've started different blogs for different topics.

CubbSpace
- http://cubbspace.blogspot.com/ -
My literary blog - expect funny stuff (I hope!)

oOzone
- http://oozone.blogspot.com/ -
My programming and OO design tech blog.

InCubbator
- http://incubbator.blogspot.com/ -
Watch my ideas get cooked here!

Oraclique
- http://oraclique.blogspot.com/ -
A trivia-oriented quizzing blog.

Choose your poison! Choose all of them if you will!

Twisted Beauty

It takes a very literal
----be---------- nd----
------- nt--- mi--------
---------- of------------

To appreciate these beautiful
---------- t-------------------------
------------ u----------------------
---------- r-------------------------
------------ n-----------------------
---------- s-------------------------
------------ o-----------------------
---------- f-------------------------
------------ p-----------------------
---------- h-------------------------
------------ r-----------------------
---------- a-------------------------
------------ s-----------------------
---------- e.-------------------------

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Written in 2003. Very nearly landed me a job! The dashes are forced because without them, the page doesn't get displayed properly.

Introduction (Declaration Of Intent)

This blog
Will be a log
Of my brainwaves
And self-raves
As and when
They ripen!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Every Dog Has His Blog

Publishing's gone to the dogs
Nowadays everybody just blogs.
Words and ideas the blogger bleeds
Nonsense spewing out at insane speeds
Who cares? Anyway, nobody reads!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

To Blog Or Not To Blog

For months on end, I deliberated. Everyone was doing it, why wasn't I? The answer: because everyone was doing it! Any self-respecting author believes himself to be special, mould-breakingly so. Why be a drop in an ocean?

The blog is the last resort of the unpublished author.
Every dog has his blog.
Should I really stoop so low to conquer?

Maybe fears of being an open book, of having my brain-children dissected, decimated and appraised as worthless as well, (worst of all) being told that my grammar was all wrong... were the reasons that were stopping me.

Nothing was happening. No publishers coming in search of the golden child. No motivation to write either. My pen was getting rustier than a sword in this nuclear age....

So, finally, I've made the plunge. And I'm doing it at Cubb's pace, here on/in/at(?) Cubbspace.