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Overloading the Machine

So Many Had Carved Stone, So Many Had Carved Wood

And that'll do it. Your opinion raised hounds in me
Though I lowered their watery voices deep,
Like a door click for which there is no dream.
I can see through these windows fortunes away from us,
Our projects taking over from the front lawn.
I stopped by. Maybe I invented you,

But you are pleased, and committed, and in your letters there are
Quick notes and songs so dressed I strain
To let them transpire. Senses, you do more with less
And forbidden, you want no part of what's
Streaming by, although on these rocks it appears
As only the general store and the eddies that rely
On an eye for vortices hold hands for days.

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last Days of Pompeii." Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse, beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford," written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad: It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

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