
Chess Knight with Knight & Dragon



Last week, hastily I turned a lump of clay into a semblance of a bird, then wrapped it to slow its drying. When I took it out this morning I decided to finish sculpting it with no help from any tools. As ways the goal is to become a better sculptor.
The clay is firm but still has some flex to it. I was able to change the overall shape with careful squeezing compression with two hands. It was possible to remove a small amount of clay from the (unreal) tail section, making eyeballs for the lady’s head, but I then faced the challenge of affixing them, and I didn’t want to use saliva, finding the prospect literally distasteful. Luckily I had a small amount of perspiration around my temples, and I harvested as much of it as I could, and now I need a shower. 🙂
Fingernails came in handy for making curves curvier and sun shapes less ambiguous. I’m not too obsessed with perfection–Nature herself is loaded with imperfections–but it improves a work of art to reduce, if not eliminate, internal inconsistency.
Here’s bird-eyedly looking at you, Friends!

the conflicting views/and subsequent arguments/sucked the oxygen.
fluff a kerfuffle/and make feathers ruffle: a/game oafs like to play.
guess. test. revise thought./the scientific method:/anti-kerfuffle.
why do we argue/about stuff no one can prove?/it passes the time.
argumentative/representatives preen; wax/reprehensible.

Vague Point Taken
Vituperation is EXPLOSIVE–worse than TNT
And vengeance dooms a soul to drown, engulfed by churning sea
Go hunt, go fish, go kickbox, and you may make bones to break
Upstanding citizens lay low in presence of a snake
Extremist thoughts may entertain but structure cannot take the strain
****
I make of this what I would, readers, friends, and invite you to do likewise.

the bank that tells us what to do
the bank’s very name tells us what to do.
it has us chasing a new car, chasing a house, chasing investment income, chasing material dreams,
all sorts.
we have been pre-approved, probably
since before we were born,
so as we drive past the blue-logoed branches,
each logo is a reminder
of our duty to pursue,
our mandate to be never content.
therefore, having money in our checking account,
and having bought that car
with help from the automotive loan personnel
or algorithm thereof,
the blue-logoed bank diminishes our wealth
each month
painlessly as possible
with an automatic withdrawal.
.
long ago chase manhattan bank
and the j. p. morgan company
found it more suitable to collide and collude
than compete.
.
jupiter pierpont morgan died more than a hundred years ago
but his acquisitive soul lives on
and we scamper at his whim.

CHB
Caress the cover
Have a look
Ah a lover
Needs a book.
Get that wordplay
In your piece
Now or Thursday
Grip/Release.
Hear a reading
And take part
Nurture seedling
Drawn with heart.
Savor stories
Bred eclectic–
O, the glories!
Ouch, the skeptic!
Keep your journals
Stuffed with notions
Tossing kernels
Onto oceans.
Reading’s fine as life itself!
Each sweet dream deserves a shelf.

the farcical force of the furze
a long time ago in Sports Illustrated magazine
there was an account of a Scotsman in a kilt
golfing on a course that had thigh-high gorse
as its rough
and the poor Scotsman hit his ball into that rough
and wading through the gorse to get to his ball
his scrotum was lacerated by the spiny gorse
and he exclaimed “OOH!! ME WEE DANGLIES!!”
and that elicited from me a zero-empathy horselaugh
because the scrotal descriptor was unexpected
and zany
.
so here we are years later and i need to write a poem
but i have nothing
my brain is blanksville
except for a title appearing spontaneously,
“the farcical force of the furze”
which as fate would have it matches the meter
of the first line of a Limerick
so that would write itself except i am not exactly sure
what “furze” means
so I look it up and it means “gorse”
and the memory of the Scotsman bubbles up
and i would love to reread the article
so i do a search on “me wee danglies”
.
alas, no article, but curiously
a small hanging light made in czechoslovakia
shaped like a spider with the light its abdomen
is being marketed under the name “wee dangly”
it’s cute
.
the farcical force of the furze
brings a Scotsman to tears and incurs
ignition of memory
rough as boards they call emory
when hazardous flora occurs.
.
such internet search serendipity
bringing up such strange knowledge that’s flipped to me
and that randomness element
huge as an elephant
may well take me from cradle to crypt–we’ll see.
A touch of Strings in music
May constitute a Riff.
A touch of Unoccluded
May make a grown man Stiff.
A touch of Breeze in Phoenix
Gives bus stop folk Relief,
But when you touch Insanity
You risk eternal Grief.
.
The touching Acts of Heroes
Have seen us through Disaster,
And touching Scenes on Hardboards
Might shine like Alabaster,
But when a Midas Touch of Greed
Plants its profane, corruptive Seed
We must ensure we do not feed
Its hellspawn would-be Master.
.
The Will to Live is one fine thing,
The Strength to Love’s another,
We must march on with Hymns that sing
Our Love of Earth our Mother,
And fight the old barbaric ways
With ingenuity that stays
The killing hand, then leave the maze
Of Conflict, Sister, Brother.

longwalker
walking has saved me
.
i walk away my heart disease and my heartache
the sidewalk my cradle
the canal bank my oasis
as I grow and shrink mountains
and press a metronomic message onto the earth
.
when I walk I fly above the haze
brain singing with insurge of nutrient
delivered by my quickened pulsing bloodstream
.
every walk is two journeys
the lesser’s destination is perhaps a convenience store
or a bus stop or the remaining distance that will exceed 10000 steps for the day
the greater’s destination
is fulfillment
of a lifetime
mission to follow
the sacred mandate:
keep going keep going keep going keep going

Change a month & catch a Thrill/Sketch a drooping Daffodil/Plan some stuff you never do/Don’t be scared–it’s only New
Monthly Renewal
My O my, the Calendar has flipp’d a fresh page over
Out goes August; in September; cooling may ensue
Nonetheless the night sky now includes a blown-up Nova, ‘n
There in Horsehead Nebula some brand new stars are due
Here on Earth’s September we obey unwritten law
Let the lightning flash & thunder growl with sis boom ba
Yay for fresh new months that well reward our wherewithal