These four short writings were posted as reactions to or imitations of Czeslaw Milosz's Road-side Dog, a work which combines poetry and prose.
The Limit as Q Tends to Nothing
Reaction from Dante Angerville
If the limit as Q goes to infinity, your Q terms will become very large and dwarf all other terms.
If the limit as Q goes to zero, Q terms become very small and are usually neglected.
I have a function for you. Stress raised to the 3rd power minus devotion times the logarithm of nothing.
That tends to infinity, or nonsense, depending on how you look at it. Professor Hicks calls functions like that big and scary, and people laugh at him.
But there are no Q terms.
What is the limit as Q goes to infinity? Negative infinity? Zero? What is Q? Who is Q? Who cares? If you take the function's Taylor series to the umpteenth term, you might find the story of a Q in there somewhere.
But I don't see one here.
Constant is this function at negative infinity. Constant is this world, and the function of this poem, that neglects the letter Q.
What is not said, tends to non-existence. Quite sad, if you ask me.
Philosophy/Religion
Reaction from Matthew Ehring
After waking up one morning with nothing to do, I went online to Ask Jeeves-- how do computers work?, what is the circumference of the Earth?, and who was most influenced by the work of Georg Hegel?-- simple curiosities that came to mind. The search results provided detailed information answering each question. After a time, I got bored and decided to test the boundaries of the online search engine. I asked it "Why?" It responded to my question with information regarding the Democratic Party, nutritional value of milk, and the Darwin Awards. Seeing that the search engine didn't answer my question with relevant information, I decided to go back to sleep.
A Castle from a Dream
Reaction from Aykan Karabudak
Godzilla came and Destroyed the castle,
My loneliness is the fire in his breath.
And in the night I quivered with Fright
Petrified at the nearness of him...
Mothera came out of the darkness
My heart fluttered like his battered wings -
Which caused the tornado that blew down my castle.
Damn the Butterfly/Mothera effect. Cellar Door.
Pursuing a Goal
Reaction from James Laskowski
Being normal is such a hard thing to do for someone with an eating disorder. Somehow you become big, then overweight, then obese. The more you think about being overweight the more you eat. The more you eat the more overweight you become. It's only a vicious act, that can break this vicious circle. This act is not scene 4, this is not scene 3. This is scene 1, the very first one. Without coming first, there can not be any play; there can not be any glory. The curtain is up. What will you do?