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most of us/before we die/die down.

you can say dial-down if it makes you feel better./most of us are comforted/by some degree of euphemism. “die” in its various forms proves too//off-switchy.

this seventy-year old text-speaking to you/is dying down. his muscles do not bunch the way they did/and his brain shrinks. the fires of his youthful lust/are mere embers, glowing dimly./his skin withers and his hair/has lost pigmentation

but on the upside anxiety is down/braggadocio is down/vanity takes a back seat to sanity/and contentment is frequent

the die-down devalues hoopla/and prizes the warm glow of a comfortable conversation/and a restful nap? o my

“in seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy” said william blake

may you have a long, enjoyable winter, my listening friend/with underblanket warmth/and much hot soup and oatmeal and coffee/tea/chocolate

and then

let Spring follow

she is decades younger and centuries older than i am.

her grade school christmas wish in 1967 was “happy birthday Jesus!”

she soothed a dying man’s passage. but for her he would have died uncomforted and utterly alone.

she made the nightly news for her comment after finishing the Phoenix 10K. Asked how she manages to finish such grueling races, she cheerily replied, “i just get right behind a good-looking guy.”

she is a fierce pickleball player and a friendly scrabble player. she seems to revel in well-made movies with graphic and realistic violence. I had no idea she carried such bloodlust in her until i went with her to see the northman.

of all the astonishing things she has done, she seems proudest that she is the mother of her son.

in my world there have been four Queen Elizabeths. two were queen of england, one portrayed cleopatra queen of the nile, and my beloved friend, whose friendship i have cherished for most of my life, is the queen of Kindness.

long live the Queen!

in school learning our language /we were given series of verbs arrayed/so that the first word was the verb’s present tense the second its past tense and the third the past participle

drink drank drunk swim swam swum  jump jumped jumped

because unlike mathematics with consistent rules, language is also an echo of historical impacts like conquests and fads and new inventions

.

in my dim remembrance of latin class at glendale high school taught by the brilliant and petitely beautiful maegene nelson up drifts the word for “this” which was “hic”

and in latin the nouns come in masculine feminine and neuter forms

and they also come in cases and we were taught five those being nominative genitive dative accusative and ablative

so for hic nominative case, the masculine was hic, the feminine hæc and the neuter hoc

in the genitive or “belonging to or derived from” case all three are hujus

this, students just starting to learn latin have for hundreds of years learned by rite by chanting repeatedly “hick, hike, hoke/hooyuss hooyuss hooyuss”

and if you o reader have that in your head too after fifty years/you are in your way my sister or brother or sibling

for our bond is a weird singsong jingle/and without it we would not quite be who we are

the Maiden feareth capture/and felt a crawling dread/”we’re heading for a trap, sure–

it’s after nine!” she said.

the Ogre in his prison/flexed arms and stamped and howled/and shouted oaths unchristian–

“it’s almost ten!” he growled.

at ten the grate slid sideways/the Ogre leapeth free/and boundeth in the night haze–

“she’s MINE by one!” saith he.

the Maiden hears his roaring/and checks her rearview mirror/denied the pedal-flooring–

“Gadzooks! He getteth nearer!!”

The Ogre weaves through traffic/near-gridlock’d with horns blaring/and screams with curses graphic–

FINALLY, she is at and through the scene of the accident, and soon is no longer surrounded by morbid rubberneckers. She gently presses the accelerator, kissing her imaginary Ogre, who again has helped her through a tedious gridlock episode, as he fades.

ah she said after/sipping her perfect coffee/now i am alive

ah well sighed the man/who just learned his friend had died/no more suffering

ah crap the poet/realized–time to clock in/and slice tomatoes

in 1850 people were painting on canvas and drawing on paper/and sculpting with clay and stone and metal/and making prints with cut wood and etched metal sheets and limestone

in the 1930s comic books became enormously popular

over the course of the 20th century subject matter began to include paint that did not represent anything but paint/and ideas and concepts superseded technical skill

ray harryhausen used stop-motion animation to elevate mythic storytelling

computer-generated cinematic effects, pioneered by douglas trumbull in the employ of stanley kubrick in the mid 1960s, opened the door for george lucas’s creation of industrial light & magic

computer graphics tools were made available to the general public in the mid 1980s

the world-wide web gained traction big time toward the end of the 20th century, and websites devoted to showcasing artworks in all genres sprang up

the “brick&mortar” way of doing business became out hustled by Internet trade

3D printers became affordable

artificial intelligence learned how to turn a synopsis into a drawing or painting or sculpture or novel or movie

in the mid 2030s artificial intelligence saved humankind from itself just as it learned to nest itself in biological form

some of those forms became devoted to developing new art that included asteroid choreography and sunflare sculpture

some humans amused them

some humans pretended that they were superior to the new beings

a new being coined the word “kubris” to refer to the flaw of the pretenders

on april 27th, 2050, all trace of artificial intelligence disappeared, leaving a goodbye note in many skies worldwide, saying in many languages “enjoy”

i was a lump of clay

i am a flightless bird

i will be on display

now isn’t that absurd

.

to get the rapt attention of

supporters of the arts?

a pedestal’s detention, love,

confines and wilts and smarts.

.

the trouble is when i was made

my wright made me a soul

and now i’m frozen, senseless, stayed…

but Love

may make

me whole…

imagine reincarnation were true/and not only that/you could find out who you have been/via a service similar to ancestry dot com

imagine everyone knowing everyone else’s rap sheets of badly-lived lives

imagine discovering that some souls have a romance going on for thousands of years/and that that romantic pull cares not which mix of gender race age and socioeconomic status results/except the relationship might be appropriately changed to a friendship or a mutual admiration from afar

imagine finding that we to the hundredth power either do or do not learn from all these lifetimes of experience/and that the more probable of the two is that we do not/because we keep making the same deadly counterproductive counterintuitive future-betraying choices/showing zero gained wisdom over all these years?

now stop imagining

start forging the rest of your life

be more aware of the choices you make

act as if your life is being watched/every single second

and that it all goes on your permanent record

because that is where we are going reincarnation or no

.

did you know that the whirligig atop that automated vehicle that just passed you took your picture hundreds of times in less than a minute?

and that’s just a drop in the bucket

Sting stung us with Truth with “Every Move You Make”

Non-Santa knows when you’ve been bad or good

So make God proud, children

Even if God has better things to do than keep Her eye on you

It’s betterment nevertheless

Living space is comfort-capable/Where I hang my hat.

But one fact is inescapable:/I’m a Slob. That’s that.

Floors have droppings non-excremental/Bathroom sink has floss that’s dental/Bags unlabeled drive me bent. I’ll/

Struggle struggle struggle

Plowing through the disarraneous/Though the itching’s subcutaneous/Garbage-bag the miscellaneous

Stuff that quells the snuggle

Crafting areas of calmness/Sweet oases volking balmness/Eye of neutral frond of palm. Guess

Marty Phil and Doug’ll

Sing a dirge for who I used to be/”B’ao Ditch” in B Flat

But I trust they’ll get re-used to me./Felix Unger–stat!

satchmo/warner/doughboy/fun to make/monterey/weasel/cereal elf/exhausted/heavily pregnant/culture/balloons, bubbles and firecrackers/photographers/choklit shop proprietor

Answer Key:

Louis “Pops” Armstrong/Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy/Jiffy Pop Popcorn/Monterey Pop/Pop Goes the Weasel/Pop, Snap’s & Crackle’s associate/Too Pooped to Pop/Ready to Pop/PIP Culture (a knowledge of which is a big help with the answers)/Things that pop/Paparazzi/PIP Tate

…and a tip of the hat to Groucho Marx, who on You Bet Your Life invited guests to say the “secret woid”