Today brought the devastating news that M. Sharon Mac Ewan, whom I met online through the social medium Eons under her username shadowmac, has died. I am doing the typical chicken-with-head-cut-off irrational things some of us do just after we get bad news like this. My office/workroom is in major disarray far beyond the usual as I’ve been looking for the portrait I did of Sharon and her mother. I have not been able to find it, though I did find this, which I may have posted on this blog before:

It is specific to Sharon in that a flamingo figures prominently. Her avatar as shadowmac was a flamingo.

I hope a future post, or an edit of this one, will include the portrait. I’d also like it to include a poem I wrote about missing her, “shadowlack.” but I can’t find that either. Times like these make me self-loathe for being so badly organized.

While I was looking, though, I found this page. It has nothing to do with Sharon, but it may serve as an odd analogy for the loss of her. For me loss of her is a loss of a little sliver of my identity. I did not ever get to meet her in person, and now I never will, unless there is more to reality than I think. This page is about loss, or devaluation, of self. The double acrostic is “less than a shadow.”

Laminate-badged America
Extracts/distills/grids identities
Slide/present/insert to get through
Soulless numbers-running miasma
Takes a life and renders it freeze-dried
Hinders perception to near zero
And devalues bowl and sparrow

I will close with new words about my lost friend:

farewell shadowmac
may your soul be borne aloft
on flamingo wings

Grateful acknowledgment, again, to Bob Kabchef for the title suggestion.

Emit, O chi, & radiate
Net Worth w/dazzle Wealth w/gleam
Extend undark–unhinge a gate
Renounce complacency & grr
Get urgency w/every erg
You’ll do so well you’ll spawn a meme

In honor of my transgendered friends in San Diego, I transgendered my image’s protagonist. She was at first a balding, graying, self-lacking dude. Now she’s jittery but alive.

Back in Aught-Eight, I did a quintuple acrostic that was the equivalent of a hole in one in golf, or a Royal Flush in poker. And, joy of joys, the acrostic itself listed the five cards that a Royal Flush has, in numerical order: Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace. Ever since I started this blog, I’ve wanted to feature that acrostic–but I couldn’t find it…till today. Here it is:

Transcription: “The jonquill’d koala embraces seek/find sync now knowing–glee.” Ten words. Quintuple acrostic. Hole in one; royal flush.

To celebrate, today I did another, more literal Royal Flush, thus:

Transcription:

Rarities are wondrous stuff
Olallaberry with falafel
Yes, iffy thens uneff a snafu
A fine evolvement fair unscuffs us
Lufthansa, loft that fluffy loofah

Final thought: Nothing that has already happened is improbable.

Here is an acrostic unique in that the right-side letters are in reverse. Visually, the challenge was to unreverse them while retaining readability.

Undivided Intention

UNHIDE, O hearts, agendas, smiles and sun
Neuronic contradictions stilt us so
Deliverance may come with simple “hi
I see you and I’m glad.” to be direct
Veer not, fear not, and give the vibe a listen
It’s true that honesty may bring POLICE
Demonstrativeness has its DEMON, bent
Encapsulatingly on drops that glisten
Do not be cowed, though. T R U T H will dot your I

Within less than a week two people who mean the world to me independently made reference to their mortality, and that gave me a two-ply shudder. It is horrifying to imagine the world without them. For some reason I responded with this poem, which is illustrated and calligraphed above:

no passing zone

within the confines of these words
you may not age nor die
you may grow wings like malls or birds
you may well sing and sigh
but save your sorrow save your deaths
for far-from-now occasions
and draw here now your sweet clean breaths
and lave your life’s abrasions
i do not want to mourn or miss
you confidante you soulmate
i want your word your smile your kiss
more time to file to collate
rejuvenate and be refreshed
a spirit shower will do
be loved be savored be encreched
and do not wonder who

Here the acrostic is needed more for compositional unity than for meaning. The spoon, the jumpropers and the acrostic make a near-equilateral triangle that, like The Dude’s rug, “really ties the room together.” But the acrostic also helps create tension between specificity and transcendence, with an overlay of ambiguity. One way to read it is “Anu USS Gut Throne hers erst.”

there is a picture of denise sleeping, but that is for another time.