Yondercast 000 - Introduction

Intro

Welcome, Traveller! I’m not sure what this podcast will develop into, but I definitely want to read some of my poetry and prose. This brief introductory episode showcases one poem and one piece of prose.

Poetry

"Dream Sleeves"

I know your secret.

You draw your imagination
on your dress shirt sleeves.

There is a cat, its eye a buttonhole,
its body all blue ink and white cotton/polyester blend.
Cat has dragonfly wings, can fly from here
if it so decides.
For now it is content to sleep by your warm wrist,
hidden by your graduation gown.

Your other sleeve, the left one,
contains a drawing of a Spring-windy day.
Must have taken you (left-handed) hours,
yet the details are clear.
You drew smells carried by the wind:
fallen rain, winter-trodden leaves, coffee (sugar, two creams).

You are a sly, sneaky one.
After today, they might make you wear a business suit,

but you will always wear dream sleeves underneath.

Prose

"The Demolished School"

Near the corner of Queenston and Bunting there is this old school that has been closed for ages. As the bus drove by the area, I saw that the school is being torn down! One corner of the building is gone! It looks as if something has bitten a huge chunk out of the building. I think it is weird how we humans can demolish places. I mean, hundreds of children lived major portions of their lives at that school. In days, or even hours from now, the halls that they ran in and the classrooms they fell asleep in will be gone. All the memories about the principal and about the teachers and the bullies and the pretty girls and the friendly kids and the whiz kids and the kids who could doodle really well ("Can you draw in my yearbook? Please?") and the kids really good at phys. ed., all these memories are no longer linked to bricks and doorways and concrete steps. The bricks will be taken elsewhere, but nobody at the dump or the new building will know that Bobby leaned against those same bricks the moment he decided that writing down the stories in his head was a good way to spend a life. The playground will disappear; who knows where the swing chains will go? Wherever they go, nobody will know that that chain, yes, that one right there, that it belonged to the swing Lisa was using when she decided that she would never tease anybody the way she had been teased.

I wish these memories could live in stone and metal, but they can only exist in people’s heads, on paper and hard drives, and sometimes, very briefly, in the air between one person’s mouth and another person’s ear.

Extro

Thank you for listening! Yondercast is going to be an intermittent podcast of undefined length, at least at first. However, I would like to podcast for at least fifteen minutes at least twice a month. Future episodes will contain my poetry and prose, as well as some surprises.

Thanks for listening to the show! Travel well!

Theme Music by ParaVerse

The theme music for this podcast is used by permission of ParaVerse. The Yondercast theme music is actually the first few seconds of their song "Lost Mind" from their album Shun. You can find ParaVerse on the Web at www.myspace.com/paraverse. You can find their album Shun at www.metal-command.net. ParaVerse, thank you for letting me use your song!

Contact

Got any questions or concerns about Yondercast? Please email me at shane@yonderman.com or leave a comment at www.yonderman.com.