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Monthly Archives: February 2013

Earth & Else Where

February 8, 2013
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Enigmatic & quite a show
Entertaining & awesome glow
As we lessers contract catarrh
Rheumatismatical Epstein-Barre
There’s our Life-Grantor SUN so fair
Heaps of Energy with a flare

George Carlin, pointed tongue in cheek, on Sun Worship: “I’ve begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to “God” are all answered at about the same 50% rate.”

To cover all the bases, though, Carlin prayed to Joe Pesci: “You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he’s a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done.”

George Carlin and the Sun have two things in common. Both have radiated enormous energy; and both are not on Earth, but some other Where.

 

 

Vehicular Bugslaughter

February 7, 2013
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Every day billions of us doom billions of us to death via kinetic energy. Most of the death-dealers don’t give it much thought, even when they’re squeegeeing off the mortal remains of their fellow creatures from their windshields.

We are killers, yet the ghosts of what we smash (or eat, or consign to starvation through eviction, or exterminate) don’t tend to haunt us. Our factory farms make a mockery of “reverence for life.” The havoc we have wreaked (or “reeked” as above) is all the more horrific for being commonplace.

And we name some of our children Alexander, and some others David. One dealt death wholesale, one retail (not Goliath; Uriah). It is no coincidence that Anthony Burgess named the berserker of his A Clockwork Orange Alex.

Socrates is said to have said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

NOTE: Berni Wrightson and Mike Ploog are illustrators. Wrightson has worked with Stephen King, on Creepshow and The Stand and The Song of Susannah of the Dark Tower series. Ploog did some comic-book continuity in the horror genre as well; some of his panels from Werewolf by Night have been stuck in my memory for more than thirty years.

 

Grandmother’s Grand Smother

February 6, 2013
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Today’s post gets a little personal. My father’s mother, whose maiden name was either Cora or Marguerite Price, and whose Uncle Arthur co-founded the city of Chandler, Arizona, left this earth in the first part of January, 1979. It wasn’t till I started this page, based on a framed photograph of her probably taken in the early 1930s, that I discovered how dark the dark side of my memory of her could get. I suppose she did the best she could, and I owe her my life, my circumstance, and a lot of my DNA; but my poor Uncle Jim (birth name: Brian Aylesworth Bowers) and my poor father (he could have signed a contract with the Chicago Cubs, and would have if he’d followed his dreams)! There is a Latin phrase, “de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est,” that I am defying here. She ruled with an iron fist in a satin glove.

Stil Life with Clay Head

February 5, 2013
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Since we can be lovely when we’re not becoming ash
Try recording graphically your Lovely Soul to cache
Insistence on an optimistic stance–a way well led–a
LIFE-LY friendliness in showing memory’s well fed

Note: I was tempted to include a comma after “well” so that it would read “Memory’s well, fed.” I left the comma out, because it would klunkify the syllable stressification; but I invite you to consider the subtle difference in meaning.

The acrostic weighs in at thirty-five words, or forty if you include the acrostic words doing double duty. And it’s a quintuple acrostic, though a little fudgy since exact characters-per-line isn’t even close to achievement.

But it’s far from the ultimate in quintuple acrostic word economy. About four years ago I did one whose first line was “The JonQuil’d KoalA.” Three lines, a total of fifteen words–and the acrostic was TEN JACK QUEEN KING ACE. It CAN be done, my friends, and one fine day I’ll blog-post the image, which is headed by an illustration that included not only the Kee-YEWTEST li’l Koala you ever did see–and Jonquil’d to boot–but also the poker hand known as the Royal Flush. I leave it as an exercise to you, O revered Reader: which twelve words followed the first line?

Between Bell Rock and a Hard Place

February 4, 2013
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I now live in the land of Spooky Woo-Woo, where maps of psychic vortices are available. One such vortex is rumored to be on Bell Rock, which is walking distance–LONG walking distance, but I’ve done it several times. Maybe it’s the altitude, or the stunning red-rich rock configurations, but there does seem to be something extraordinary about this place.

Invented Brunette

February 3, 2013
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Bobby Darin wants a Dream Lover, so he don’t have to dream alone. Paul Simon says all the girls he knew in high school…would never match his Sweet Li’l Imagination. And speaking of imagination, Whitfield & Strong breaks our hearts with “When her arms enfold me/I hear her tender rhapsody/But in reality/She doesn’t even know me–Just my imagination/Running away with me…”

So about sixteen hours ago I invented a brunette, and wrote:

Isadora Theodora Glocca Morra Deb
Never met them won’t forget them hotter than a Weber [a barbecue grill]
Viva Diva Apéritiva too imprudent Pru
Each one non-historical unsung by Jacques Barzun
Netty Betty Ferlinghetti’s Muse Meg Marguerite
Though they don’t exist their Kiss is still both Tart & Sweet
Evie Stevie U.B. Levy none is 2nd best
Dante had his Beatrice I have my sweet Celeste

After I’d drawn her face, I showed it to my girlfriend, and said I’d tried to make a face I’d never seen before. Denise took about one second and then said “Illeana Douglas.” Pretty close, actually! Now I’ll be hearing that Fran Drescher-like voice for days.

Why Celeste? Because my Invented Brunette is Celestial; also, the crew of the Mary Celeste disappeared without a trace.

You Knee Verse

February 2, 2013
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I don’t know what to say about this page except to describe it and tell a little of my choices.

At the top of the page are three panels labeled You, Knee and Verse. Interactive state-of-the-art does not permit me to insert an image of a given individual reader. If it did, the left panel would hold an image of YOU, the person who is reading these words. It would be the same image you would see if you dressed up and made up as you pleased and then posed in front of a full-length mirror. (Any reader who wants to please me no end is invited to fill the left panel with such an image and send the jpg of the revised page to onewithclay@hotmail.com. Really!)

The middle panel is this artist’s conception of a knee, with ancillary leg and an arrow pointing to the knee to be specific. I did not draw from a photo source, so it’s not too anatomically accurate.

The right panel contains a verse, a specific verse written by Robert Louis Stevenson and apparently intended for his epitaph. So after “This be the verse you grave for me” I made the rest of the verse epitaphesque, but it tickled me to isolate and emphasize “HOME” so the three Homes lined up. (Some readers may think it’s “home from the sea,” but I have it on good authority that “home from sea” is correct.)

My triple acrostic beneath reads:

Y’all think you can deny the Grave
Or call in MARKERS for a favor
UR-LIFE demands we pay our dues
UNoffers we cannot refuse

Fans of THE GODFATHER franchise will recognize the riff on “an offer he cannot refuse.” As for UR-LIFE, the prefix Ur means Primitive or Original.

At the bottom I’ve quoted another poet, this time Bob Dylan, from “Chimes of Freedom,” one of my favorite songs of his. “Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed/For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse/An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe/An’ we gazed upon the Chimes of Freedom flashing.”

The last thing I did was sign and date it. I took a little more care with my signature, mainly because I thought I’d done so well with the G of “Glad did I live…” It’s similar to the way George Washington made his Gs.

Any questions?

Curly Queue

February 1, 2013
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“Ars longa, vita brevis.” That’s Latin for “Art long, life short.” But sometimes in our short life, we have to wait a seeming forever for something we want. Sometimes we have to get in a line to get it. Sometimes we have to get OURSELVES in line to get it. And some heartbreaking times we find that what we waited for, and what we behaved ourselves so pristinely for, was not quite what we wanted, or even at all what we wanted. So the next time you’re in a line, with a lot of time to kill, ask yourself: Is THIS what I REALLY want?