Right now, September 10, 2014, I am in the moment of having a Sweetheart about whom I am head over heels. In the wee hours of this morning, thinking of nothing in particular, I did most of this sketch by the seat of my pants. It is full of drawing errors and clumsiness, but it also has life and love.
usku
undoing lifelack
salvaging hope in the dark
striving i and thou
As this is written, today is still Title Tuesday, that day of the week when I usually provide five prompting titles to my fellow Facebook members of the poetry group Poets All Call. Today I went metal:
*****
Title Tuesday for September 9, 2014
Here are titles for them as wants them:
Goal Digger
Silver Dogger
Bronze on Blonde
Brass Ear
Tincompoop
Gonna take a Sentimetal Journey? Hope so, and with YOU, my Friends!
*****
My friend and colleague Bob Kabchef responded, not with poetry (though he would soon write some), but with these additional titles:
Cad me chum
Steely eyed
Iron or
Rare earths
Fools goaled
I wrote “cad me chum,” and the curious may see it in Poets All Call. Then I wrote “rare earths,” and I struck gold, because my poem was a long and elaborate setup for an exotic pun, about which later. First, here are the words:
*****
rare earths
please mock me not nor sneerium
there’s sugar on my cerium
and though it’s not eye candium
i’ve nudified my scandium
heaped praise on praseodymium
pee-ohing neodymium
lathed lanthanum bathed yttrium
egad that gadolinium
must not disturb my terbium
in suburbs with my erbium
to rope-a-dope europium
takes thulium with opium
perhaps a good samarium’s
promethium’s aquarium
ytterbium’s symposium’s
discussing our dysprosium
while promising lutetium
though last she’s not beneathmium
the rarest earth of all (just one)
swings with the moon around the sun
*****
As for the pun, it is a pun of omission. I deliberately left out the Rare Earth holmium. I was hoping to be asked why. Had I been asked by Emily Watson (sigh), my reply would have been, “Element-ary, my dear Watson. Since it was Holmium, I felt compelled to make a . . . deduction.”
I do not apologize.
Brick and Mortar, and equivalents thereof, are fine in moderation. Are we as a species moderate? An Internet search on Dubai buildings will provide a fun answer. Not that I’m knocking Dubaians and their innovative excess. If I had more money than I knew what to do with, Cutting-Edge Architecture would be a great place to throw it.
But Urban Sprawl, made possible by that “I claim this land in the name of Spain” mindset that is this-century obsolete, made of the Valley of the Sun where I grew up a fungus of humanity, spreading up and over the mountains every which way, and far beyond the Valley’s borders. “Brick & Mortar” is now recognized as a largely unnecessary venue for business. Let us move on.
Here are the words to the double acrostic, making Ands of the ampersands for the sake of clarity:
Bursting out- and upward, our explosive growth goes boom
Reaching for the brass ring’s old–we charge like raging sumo
Instant towers scrape the sky where once was merest rumor
Clearing forests calls for disregard of owl and wombat
Keeping books reduces Life to uptick and pro rata
Andes-climbing’s easier than knowing what should matter
I once had a roommate in college who told me of his narrow escape from conscription into the armed services during the Vietnam war. The last doctor to see him had finished examining him and had signed off on his fitness for military duty. The doctor was unexpectedly called away from the examining room, and Alfred (not his real name) stuck the doctor’s notes down the back of his pants, and managed to leave without his appropriation being discovered. Consequently there was eventually a re-examination. This time the results were more “favorable,” and Alfred never saw a barracks.
Decades later, remembering his story, I decided that the best way to avoid Hell is never to show up at its entrance. That is the official theme of my latest page, but truth be told it is mostly an excuse to do some fun doodling:
Here are the not-quite-nonsensical words:
Half a haberdashery from now, a registrar
Enters Armageddon like a danseuse to the barre
Registration info isn’t obsolete nor hidden
Entrants should’ve paid but some meticulously didn’t
very like a meteorite
it came from my mouth
after decades of clinging via cementum
to my lower right twelveyear molar
now it’s under my pillow
and i await the filling fairy
in 2002
the potter’s hands lent axial symmetry to the clay
the painter’s fist slathered white slip on the dark clay
and the sculptor’s blade carved away a pattern on the slip
it was cooked to 1850 degrees
dipped in clear glaze
and cooked again to 2200
now the clay is a vessel
There’s an adagey acronym applicable to public speaking and other forms of persuasion: KISS. The mean-spirited version is “Keep It Simple, Stupid;” the kinder, gentler, Humphrey Bogart is “Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.” Trying this blend of word and image was both a KISS and a KITTY. KITTY is “Keep It True–Thank You.” But of course it is not true. These people do not exist. The trees in the background are not even close to oaks. The box framing the words is a box of expedience.
But the KITTY came from constant erasure and retry, attempting to channel something real without superimposing personal baggage. (Is that possible?) The couple look like no one I know. I like these two. It looks like they struggle and win, and being together helps big time. The words are their essence.
Sought and found
Soft and sound
Oaks’ milieu
Oft says you
Urge and place
Ups her grace
Lo, tonight
Love is right
On August 16 I participated in a Tug-O’-War at the Jacot family picnic. Later I drew what I thought it looked like, and acrosticized some related thought, thus:
For the record, and to show how different the Mind’s Eye is from The Truth in this instance, here is a photo I saw after I made the drawing:
My drawing serves the storytelling purpose, perhaps, but I’ve long been disabused of the notion of “photographic memory.”
Here are the words:
The freeflown feather has a softer touch than lacquered jackstraw
Upon a daemon schmendrick doffing hatted candelabra
Gesundheit cures aloofness–good example is the answer
Wanted to post. Got nearly nothing. This is a near-doodle. JC and BD loved each other. I’m more a BD fan than a JC fan, but admire them both. That’s all, folks!
More than half a month after the picnic my cousin Bob put on, I’m still blissed out from it. When I posted a photo of Bob and me on Facebook and expressed my gratitude, he was quick to share credit with others, thus:
“Thanks for the kind words. Rosemarie and I are glad that so many people were able to come. It was nice to catch up with family and friends that we have not seen in awhile and to meet relatives that we’ve never met. There were many people working together that made this year’s picnic a success; Bob Sokol, David Hollis, Mike and Nichole Knotts Jacot, Dan Candelaria, Lisa Brito-Norrbom, Danny Norrbom, and many more picnickers and children that stayed late to clean up. Special shout-out to Diane Householder Norrbom for being the historian of the family archives and the glue that binds the many puzzle pieces that is our family together. And if not for Rosemarie Jacot’s tireless work and support, there would not have been a picnic.“
What a guy. Here’s my acrostic salute to him:
Just the fella for the job
And an impresario
Calls the Peeps and turns the knob
Oh, a HUNDRED? Hey, no prob
Taste the Sauce–you won’t be sorry
One with Clay, Image and Text 