"Dominion everywhere of patient dung beetles! Dominion everywhere of patient dung beetles! Boo-yah!"

Daily Candy is usually only empty calories. Daily Candy is usually so devoid of substance and so rich in sickly-sweet prose that I think you could actually get diabetes from reading it every day. But today they finally sent out a link for something completely awesome.

Quickmuse is a site where poets and songwriters are given 15 minutes to write on a subject of the editors' choosing. You can either just read each writer's finished piece or you can actually watch the poem being composed in real time. This means you get to see where writers stalled, where they second-guessed themselves. Or where they wrote the word "POEM" at the top of the page and then sat there for two solid minutes before beginning, like Matthew Rohrer, whose poem I loved.

But what's really fantastic is what happens when you read the finished poem before you watch it being composed. Because since you know how it's going to end, you find yourself silently rooting for poet. Like when Rohrer wrote "POEM" at the top of the page and then sat there for a while, I was all "For king and country! For king and country! POEM for king and country, dumbass!" It's like watching someone decide what letter they need on Wheel of Fortune when you already know what the phrase is. I highly recommend trying it, if only for the opportunity to yell "Countryside watered with tears! Countryside watered with tears! Yesssssss...." at your screen, preferably at work.