My sweet cohabitant Donna has prepared a bowl of strawberries topped with blueberries and placed it near the rocking chair where I toil, with the red corpuscular cushion supporting my lower back, to bring my dual-acrostic illustrated poem to completion.
This is a moment created by the break Donna created when she said, “Would you like some strawberries?” and I replied, “Yes, I would. Thank you!” It is a welcome interruption worthy of capture, a delicious sliver of the day.
last month he was an arizonan and a phoenician
now he is becoming an ohioan from toledo
because love is grand and of colossal power
and the woman is lovely and kind and playful
..
leaving one community for another is not easy
it is an uprooting that includes many goodbyes
there is a hint of the funereal
with an unspoken “i will never see you again”
..
he does not miss the hellish heat
he sees the d-backs from a distance
he dines on broiled embellished meat
new friends will have some fun his stunts
..
it might be nice to be a buckeye
but this guy’s still a desert rat
and yes, it’s me and with some luck i
like ohio, trim my fat.
she used near-inaudibility
to keep me on my toes and in check
and it gave her opportunities to correct me
no
i said I heed you
not i hate you
..
i asked her to speak up
and then i learned of her wicked wit
for she levitated two yards above my head
and was harder to hear than ever
i had no clue what she was saying
itay not even have been words
..
then she tilted her head back
to speak up to the sky
or to a deity of rumbling thunder
and then i heard her clearly
as she declaimed I AM AS WELL
and the heavens or clouds parted
and lightning struck her
as a celestial voice responded
TRUE.
SO?
..
she was unharmed by the lightning
but miffed by the dismissiveness
so she began murmuring again
as she settled close enough
to breathe her voice into my face
several place t emse ves ab ve us
but i choose to be at your sigh
..
then she faded into the air around me
her disembodied face lingering by my ear
as she whispered find me
and was then gone
May the world not end.
May the killers go sane.
May the unworthy and wicked be stripped of the power that they wield.
May children enjoy their childhoods.
May good weather more than make up for bad.
May we choose not to fight.
May we find worthwhile uses for our time.
May we seek understanding, justice, and grace.
In the name and at the helm Universe of which we are an essential element, may Kindness and Reason prevail.
the goat solves differential equations
at the drop of a tin can
which he then eats.
..
he is the brainchild
of a biologist turned computer scientist
who long ago read “think blue, count two.”
..
the goat has a wireless print peripheral
and a tireless creativity which in two days
schematicized a mireless swamp,
..
and he takes no pay save a pasture full
of semismart nanny goats with whom he can make
a small nation of brilliant, peripheralized kids.
..
alas, he has learned
that a stupidly misguided government
wants to appropriate him, his wives, and his progeny.
..
the government sees him and his
as weapons of conquest, ideal spies,
and manipulable dupes.
..
alas for humanity, for the goat,
with some influence from “seventy years of decpop”
and galápagos and the day of the dolphin,
..
has conceived and is schematicizing
a nifty, subversive means of reducing humans
to a single village of idiots.
Carbo Protein Fat & Dairy
Clown may wax incendiary
Clown may wax inflammatory
“He’s just joking” is the story
..
Baby-Toddler-Youth transition
Clown may speak of acquisition
“I want Greenland I want Cuba”
Backed by an oomph-oomphing tuba
..
Clown kills innocent civilians
Maybe next will be Brazilians
War may visit on our nation
Many-fold retaliation
..
Crypto coinage trading cards
Ill-got fortune thus enlards
One-percenters double money–
This a joke? IT ISN’T FUNNY.
soul full ness
long ago I read The Lady Who Sailed the Soul
by Cordwainer Smith (secret identity Paul Myron
Anthony Linebarger), about a woman who had a
starship across a vast distance while her c o n
s c I o u s n e s s was slowed so that it seemed to
her her hair gushed out of her head.
later he began “Himself in Anachron”
but died before he finished. an artificial intelligence
just told me it is about a man who must save his wife
by divorcing himself from time and space,
in the sacrificial sense similar
to “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul.”
the author and editor Harlan Ellison went to some
length to acquire “Himself in Anachron” for the third
volume of his Dangerous Visions trilogy. his effort
was in vain.
today i walked two miles to see the west Toledo
library for the first time. I perused the science fiction
shelves and found Tommy dismay that they had NO
Poul Anderson books, NO Isaac Asimov. But they had
a single volume of Harlan Ellison, copyright 2014:
The Top of the Volcano, a compilation of Ellison
stories that had won awards.
i had read most of them but there was a long story
i had not. in it a man named bailey
had his soul yanked from him to be placed
into the soul of an alien military subaltern named
Pinke, there to cajole Pinke into ending a war that
had gone on for generations.
i have not finished the story. I will leave that
for another visit. rather, now, i reflect on the amazing
succession of life-events: i read Cordwainer Smith,
his story was covered by Harlan Ellison, i found the
Ellison book in the West Toledo Public Library, and
I began to read his story of the abduction and
exploitation of souls…
three weeks to the day
after having arrived in Toledo
from Phoenix, Arizona
in the company of my sweetheart
in an automobile of make Kia,
model
Soul.
Late this evening I completed a draft of the two acrostic poems on this page. I also embellished the textual elements and did more drawing within the two half-moons.
King& Queen
Kumquats @ a B•B•Q
If you mist it — c’est perdu
Now sweet breezes intervene
Getting shut of airs obscene
& reventing shit up spleen
..
Mana Wife
Many woes beset us now
As our land resists the plow. I
Need you, dear. Help me un-oaf
As we ask our soles to Loafe
..
These are drafts. More stages coming soon!
Day after day I’ve told my sweetheart Donna, “I have got to draw today.” And yet I didn’t and didn’t.
Today is different. Marvelously so. I have the above Work In Progress well under way, and pleasant surprises abound with it, and I have high hopes for it. The “King& Queen” acrostic’s rhyme scheme has been solved, rhyming BBQ with C’est Perdu (schoolboy French to the rescue again!) and the first line establishes a bizarre matchup.
Much needs to begin, but as Mary Poppins tells us, “Well Begun is Half Done.”
Cheers, my friends!!
shaving techniques of the corrugated-skin american: haibun
complications ensue when an american male’s facial flesh ages and he wishes to be clean-shaven. many hairs that were softly pliable in the springtime of youth have become thicker and tougher in their dotage. they are anchored in skinfold that was once smooth hillside. the hide of the old american’s face must needs be stretched into tympanic tightness for effectual shaving to occur; and the stretch must often be not merely with fingers, but perhaps over sawhorse-planked teeth, compressed cheek-air, or even tongue-poke for that mutant milkweed of a follicle that so stubbornly resists shearing.
over decades, standards of the american facial æsthetic have shifted. in the mid 1980s it became popular to always look as if a shave had not occurred for several days. this was due to the star quality of mr. don johnson, one of two male leads in the hit series miami vice. but in 2020s america foliagiality is more complex. baseball pitchers, once facially bald as eggs, may now be found with anything from pencil moustaches to old-testament-patriarchy on their young faces.
an old man has just realized that he is able to shave with the grain of his beardstubble and still look as if he recently shaved. today he has done this for the second day in a row, and confirmed that this technique reduces nicks and cuts to zero.
in times uncertain
let us draw the act-ending curtain
on self-harm.
