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Monthly Archives: May 2014

behold it was

May 24, 2014
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it begins to fade so let’s hurry: a classroom for adult continuing education
a stern teacher perhaps mrs. holmberg from 6th grade
a door to the bright-sunshined outside opens and it is you
and you have wigs with you some brunette some redhead

and i realize: it’s a class in social dynamics
you are a guest lecturer
there are some minutes before class begins
there is an empty seat two from me and you sit in it

the guy between you and me is a friend of mine but opportunistic
he begins to chat you up and i interrupt and ask him to stand
he does and i do and i ask him to sit where i had been sitting
i sat where he had been say “that’s ever so much nicer” for now i’m sitting next to you

i’m sitting next to you for the first time
what a smile you have
i ask you how old you were when you gave your first lecture and you say “three”
i ask if it were in church and the strolling teacher looks at me sternly and i wake up

Spider/Golfer

May 23, 2014
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At last there’s a payoff on the hours I have spent drawing and filling in checkerboard grids. A golf club and a spider’s legs require straight or near-straight lines in the drawing, and I now can draw them quickly and easily, up to a certain length.

This image is entirely faked. Nor golfer nor spider posed for me, and I didn’t do my usual internet image search to remind me of what what I want to draw looks like. I’m sure I’ve made egregious errors in both arachnoidal and human-golfer anatomy, but a) the dymanics of the drawing depend less on anatomical accuracy and more on pattern interplay, and b) the next time I see a spider, or a golfer, I’ll notice what I did wrong this time, and my future drawings of either or both will benefit.

The text on the image is very difficult to read. Here is a transcription:

Solitary critters, both, and two you daren’t bug
Pester either, you may turn a Nancy to a Sluggo
Irritation makes detractors wish they were unlawful
Destiny gave one a web and one a hat to doff
Expertise is gained with practice. Dancers at a barre
Rarely work as hard as they to bring things up to par

Rest Easy

May 22, 2014
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Yesterday all was Sleepless Despair. Today promises to be Restful Serenity, and I will try to help it along with this affirmative page.

Here are the words:

Ruffled dispositions need a welcome cooling breeze
Energizing Solitude may calm that choppy sea
Savored armchair plush & drink & gently rustling trees
Take a soul from rough-milled grit to smooth tranquility

Brother Sleeplessness, Sister Despair

May 21, 2014
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Friends, it is now 21 May, the Year of Our Lord 2014, 5:10 PM Mountain Standard Time. I am sleep-deprived, owing some to attendance at three scheduled-when-I’m-normally-asleep meetings in four days, owing some to disorganization, owing some to inability to sleep at will. With the sleeplessness is a creeping despair, exemplified by the fact that the original working title of this post was “The Future Futility of Human Existence.”

Usually the moral of the story comes at the end, but here it is now: “Get good sleep, or you will be sorry.”

The above image is a great mashup of The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat. A still life of plate, chair, spoon, table and floor provides the background. The spine of a triple acrostic is at upper right; of a septuple acrostic, from top midleft to bottom right; of a quintuple acrostic, from bottom left to bottom midright. The crucial middle words of the septuple and the quintuple have been determined, and I know from experience that that’s the hardest part. I know that sooner or later, with patience and some research, I’ll eventually have the poems that will complete the acrostics, and I will have done something that represents the utmost in what I can do in this peculiar genre I’ve plumbed for more than seven years.

But I also “know” even if I expend that effort to the tune of hundreds of hours, draw better than I ever have before for the final incarnation of the image, and dress it in the perfect frame–that it will have been a waste of time.

I put “know” in quotation marks because I suspect that that’s the sleep-deprivation talking.

It’s now 5:27 PM, MST. Time to wrap this up and get as much sleep as I can before clocking in at 11.

Sleep well yourselves, Friends…

Riddle Q/Inference Pattern/Riddle A

May 19, 2014
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Today’s post will be a riddle’s question, followed by an image titled “Inference Pattern” and containing partial text from whose pattern it may be inferred forms “Inference Pattern” (the image also contains checkerboards and other patterns of horizontal and vertical, and a wicked-looking earwiggy caterpillar, or caterpillary earwig, if you prefer), followed by the riddle’s answer. As far as I know the riddle was invented by me some hours ago. The sufficiently smart and/or patient will be able to infer the answer to the riddle prior to seeing it.

Q: What is an orange’s favorite type of furniture?

Inference Pattern

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A: An orange’s favorite type of furniture is…

…

…

Sectional, of course. [dodges thrown oranges]

PS–The phrase “Inference Pattern” was deliberately modeled after the phrase “Interference Pattern.” An Internet search on “Double-Slit Experiment” will yield extensive discussions on the intereference pattern abtained via this experiment. It is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Universe and the interaction of the observer. Infer from that what you will, my friends!

 

Giving Birds the Vote: a Parable

May 18, 2014
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Special thanks to stellar poet D___C____ for thematic suggestion.
Giving Birds the Vote: a Parable
One day some parrots stopped parroting. They spoke, but in sentences of their own invention, and not from mimicry. Somehow, some one or thing had hacked into their birdbrains and downloaded intelligence and eloquence. With help from some sympathetic humans, a delegation of intelligent parrots was brought to the nation’s capital, and through the courts a type of citizenship was fought for and won for them.
Meanwhile, other bird species demonstrated intelligence despite their speech being limited to warbling and other birdsong. Soon they too were talking via prosthetics, and they too became citizens. It was a bit tricky to prove native-born status for non-parrots, but one very smart bird teamed up with Google to develop retroactive surveillance, ironically using the sensoria and memory of birds to “videotape” the births of every sentient, or potentially sentient, being born on or after August 4, 1961, the birthdate of Barack H. Obama. (Yes, he was born in Honolulu. Some of the funding for the project was provided by right-wing groups convinced that he was not. Ouch!)
By the time of the extremely accurate 2030 Census, the birds not only had the vote but they had the numbers, partly thanks to “anchor chicks” from eggs deliberately laid in the USA. Soon humans were voted out and given the boot. Since the birds had a far different agenda than human beings, most industry ground to a halt. The entertainment industry thrived, though. The common ground of the flighted and the flightless, it turned out, was irrational sentimentality.
There is more to the story, but I bawk at continuing.

Laugh, SARAH, Laugh (to Suzy C)

May 17, 2014
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I have a friend now named Suzy Jacobson Cherry. When I met her she was Suzy Jacobson. Here she is with her man.

Today I got an invitation from Suzy to participate in an “Invitation to Take Part in a Collaborative Art Project.” Here are the details:

Below you will find scriptures that describe the life of a character named Sarah.  Please read it with literary/artistic eyes.  Think about the things that affected her, and consider what kind of person she is.  The drawing below is by my friend Cecilia O’Brien.  This is her rendition of Sarah.  Study this drawing, and put together an idea of who Sarah is and what she might be like, what her concerns might be, how she might feel about the things that happen to her and the choices she makes in the story.  Think of her in terms of this ancient past AND today’s world.  THEN, in the comments below, share words and phrases that describe her and/or her world.  Share thoughts of current events in relation to this woman, if anything comes to mind. This is an artistic endeavor, faith tradition should not come into play.  If you choose to take part, have fun and thank you for helping out with this!

And here is what I did:

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What struck me in the story: Sarah (then named Sarai, but that’s another story) was thought to be barren, i.e. unable to have children. She sends her man, Abraham, to conceive a child with the slave girl Hagar. (Sidebar for American comic strip readers: the Horrible? One wonders…) Years pass, Abraham is about 100 years old and Sarah 90, and the Lord God decides it’s time for Sarah to have a baby of her own. “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?'” Yes, you shall, dear old Sarah, if it be His will.

Here are the words to my triple acrostic “Laugh, Sarah, Laugh”:

Lady pushing 90-plus is laughing fit to howl
As she cuddles ISAAC she just bore–yes, life’s a luau
Unto her nonageneric self–a CHILD!! HA
Gosh, and when much younger she was BARREN as a log
HEY–can’t spell Jehovah without ending with an Ah

LORD, I hope Suzy likes this!

Were YOU There with Vic and Gair?

May 16, 2014
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Photo by Deborah Berman, co-host of Balboa House Poetry

Here are the two co-features of Balboa House Poetry’s April 2014 event, collaboratively reading. Victoria Hoyt and I have been friends for a good half-dozen years, and it is always an honor to perform with her.

Vic went on first, and she moved the audience to laughter and tears and glowing good feeling. Then I went on, showing off an acrostic portrait of Patrick Stewart, a valentine to my Sweetheart, Denise, and certain other selected poems. Fellow poet Paul Dlouhy had offered harmonica accompaniment, and I took him up on it for my “The Love Song of Heinrich Chinaski, Deceased.” We had never rehearsed, and I suggested before we started that Paul come in with a cadence like walking. He did a jazz/street riffarama that was perfect for my words.

Finally, Vic joined me at the podium and we did some back&forth haiku we’d written in e-mail exchange a few years ago:

Dueling Haiku

Gair:

Spring

Blossoms all around
Transport me and my nose to
Pollenesia

Vic:

No Spring

Millions of meno-
Pausal baby boomers add
To global warming

Gair:

Global Warming

Global warming’s cool
Majestic ice calves make
Ocean on the rocks

Vic:

No Global Warming

From Lark to Exxon
Smoke and mirror scientists
Falsify research

Gair:

Falsification Haiku

Weapons of bereaved
Weepings of mass destruction
“Whoops–honest mistake!”

Vic:

No Falsification Haiku

Now playing on your
Smart phone: Iraq war heli-
Copter video

Gair:

VideoHaiku

Blockbuster’s busted
Netflix flickers red box loi-
Ters near entrances

Vic:

No VideoHaiku

Reality killed
The video star who killed
The radio star

Lastly, we read this, which we’d written together on a sketchpad. First Vic wrote one word, then I two, then she four, then I eight, and so forth till we got to 32, and then we imploded it back to the final word, which we co-wrote: “BLOOD.” No transcript is available at present, but wrestling through it is half the fun…

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Long story concluded: a good time was had be all, and especially us!

I Got Your Back (Wish It Were Mine)

May 15, 2014
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At the Cottonwood Recreation Center there is a certain subset of gym rats that hangs out in the Free Weights area. For the members of that subset, frequent homage to the Buff Gods is mandatory. One in particular likes to quasi-scream as he cranks out the last of his reps, and when the set is done he lets the free weight free-fall to clang on the rack resoundingly, distracting the entire gym floor.

I don’t like such behavior, but there’s no denying he’s getting results, and I’m envious enough to do a post about it. Lord help me if I’m ever envious enough to act like that, though.

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

If you’re fitly lifting free, bub
Getting anatomic visa
Off them duds & take a pic
To preserve a build like brick

(“Anatomic” may also be read as “an atomic.” [smiles])