The title alone indicates this is not for the faint of heart, nor, since no transcription nor explanation follows, for the easily frustrated. Hints, though slight ones, are in the tags.
Unethical Ethel’s Endangerment Spree
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Monthly Archives: May 2013
hawk EYED
I confess (or reconfess; my old brain is getting repetitive): I have voyeuristic tendencies. Left to my base desires, I would be a blatant Looky-Lou. Instead, I am a discreet Looky-Lou–certainly more discreet than what you see when you do an image search on Ogling, which I did as part of research for this page.
People like to watch, but people also like to be civilized. It is a tug-of-war.
Here are the words to the double acrostic. NOTE: in my younger days I pronounced it OH-gulled. I now pronounce it AH-gulled.
hooded glances may disturb as much as cast or stye
aspirations and implied intent provide the why
wanton feral human WANTING makes a mind to boggle
knowledge of the Ogle-force demonds that IT be ogled
Ref-Rig-Era-Tor Art
The invention of the Post-It has made the creation and curation of Refrigerator Art Galleries a fairly common practice, at least in my crowd. And refrigerator magnets–either the kind that hold paper to the reefer door or the sticky-fronted kind you can adhere your image to–make presentation an ever-movable feast.
Last June I co-featured at Caffeine Corridor, and gave gift bags that contained one refrigerator magnet each, and each unique. Here is the all-at-once:
Jewel Egg
Justification of time & expense
Eerily jars jurisprudence/defense
Whispered eternity “Put on the dog
Enigma’d existence is radiant FOG
Leave E.L.E.G.A.N.T.L.Y”–with disciples agog
This jewel is under construction.
Synopsis Symphony
Supposedly there are only a few stories, and we ring endless changes on them. I don’t think that’s true, or maybe it’s true to a crude extent only.
Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS is a cautionary tale, just as the original story of Prometheus was. Much more recently, “Blood Music” by Greg Bear takes the premise to a wonderfully horrifying extreme. An Internet search will lead the curious reader to a synopsis, and a more curious reader to the “gray goo” concept.
We are an increasingly synoptic culture. So many things demand our attention! Why, I myself am demanding your attention at this very moment! I better keep it brief!
Words:
SING, O MUSE, of summ’d-up stories
Yawners, t h r i l l e r s, allegory
Nasty fall or heartmelt gem
OMG-er: booze/buff/hemp
Parabol that’s fulla Pooh
Sappy RomCom: thrice-pitch’d woo
If/then/else in Kind or Mean
Sapience: Aye, THERE’s the key
I used “parabol” instead of “parable” to give a flavor of arc to the story.
“Pooh” does and does not refer to a certain Bear of Little Brain that I’ll always have fondness for, even though my hero Dorothy Parker scorned him and his chronicler.
“If/then/else” will be familiar to those who indulge, even to the slightest degree, in computer programming. “If/then/else,” I submit, is the distillation of Story to the barest of bones.
“Sapience” means Wisdom. Our species has the taxonomy “Homo sapiens.” Riiiiggggghhhht.
Tricks of Emphasis. Lynda Barry.
Here there is not the usual poetry, but rather a celebration of tonality in graphite. It is also celebrates that the original Ampersand design hippogriffed the e-t-c of Etcetera.
Lynda Barry is a hyperaware, grit-dealing, truth-wielding patron saint of misfits. I have been an adoring fan of hers for over 15 years. (So have Tom Robbins and Matt Groening.) I hope to fill the right side of this work in progress with a poem worthy of her, but that must wait until I finish CRUDDY, her illustrated novel. I started the book when my daughter was eleven or twelve; she’s 23 now. The book slipped through my fingers, back to its owner, Marty K, way back then; he has reloaned it to me. Stay tuned for completion, followed by completion.
Euclid Squares the Circle–Not
Two thousand three hundred years ago, more or less, an Alexandrian man whose name translates to “good glory” was making up rules and checking them twice, and through those postulates was born premodern geometry. To my knowledge, though, and right on through to today, not even Euclid could use compass and straightedge to perform that magical operation known as “squaring the circle” with trueness.
One of my heroes, Isaac Asimov, once wrote a science article called “Euclid’s Fifth,” perhaps obliquely referring to Beethoven, whose Fifth Symphony rivals his Ninth for space in our collective consciousness. Euclid’s Fifth Postulate, much more complicated than his first four, goes like this:
If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that sum to less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles sum to less than two right angles.
Asimov elegantly demonstrated that not taking the Fifth as gospel paved the way for NON-Euclidean Geometry, which with many aspects of reality (navigating the Earth’s surface, for instance) is a better match than non-NON-Euclidean geometry.
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
Some protocols–see Balke
Quiesce awhile–Cthulhu
Upset love-crafting talc
And proved a cunning tool
RE-tool’s amendment: Idi
Enhanced misanthrope’s screed
I leave to the student the explanation of what the Balke protocol for measurement of maximum oxygen uptake, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu and Idi Amin Dada have to do with Euclid and/or the futility of “squaring the circle.” HINT: No one today really knows what Euclid looked like. Good Glory!
House Guest: a Horrors Story
Last weekend I went to Phoenix, and spent two nights at the home of Marty K, a lifelong friend of mine. I did not sleep well there, for many reasons, not the least of which was the squalid condition of his abode. Not that I didn’t have plenty of squalor in my unattached days to rival his; it’s just that living with a “neatnik” has given me a taste for fresh unclutter.
I am grateful for Marty’s hospitality (not to mention Vic’s, the night Marty kicked me out–long story), but SO glad to be home.
Words:
Horrors appear but you say Golly G
O what a squalor–a roach knows Kung Fu
Unguents with spillage–a sprawl on a spree
Stoic, you sack out, just paying your dues
Exit–survival-sense gets a BIG boost
Coronation Barrenness: a Challenge Met
This was written and performed at the {9} Gallery for the Caffeine Corridor poetry event last night, May 10, 2013. Judy Green-Davis gave me the word Coronation and I wrote it about six poets before my Open Mic performance of it. (This is the capsule version; a previous post of mine seems to be lost to the ethersphere.)
Spatial Delivery — Sine Here, Please
The starship Enterprise, as conceived by Gene Roddenberry, whom Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, called “The Great Bird of the Galaxy,” will endeavor in the 23rd Century “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” But Arthur C. Clarke, much more scientifically attuned than the late great Roddenberry, says, “The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
Meanwhile humans of two different hegemonies have ventured beyond our atmosphere. This page has a hint of the magnitude of that very real endeavor, the various forces (gravitational, ideological, economical, teleological, and so forth) influencing the effort, and the hope and the despair of the future of human space exploration. Part of the hint is that in free fall, there is no rightside-up; we groundlings can’t take in a page like this in one glance, or even one gaze. Betters than us (or is it we?) will follow, I hope.
One with Clay, Image and Text 