This September I’m showcased at Bookman’s Entertainment Exchange, and on September 29, 2 to 3 PM, I will be there at a Meet the Artist event, making free sketches and doing a demo on acrostic poetry creation. My last work day at Matt’s Big Breakfast/Airport is the day after tomorrow. The good feeling I have now is captured in the 11th line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIX: “Like to the lark at break of day arising…” Hope you are equally, Friends.
A few things happened and are happening to me in the last twelve months that are irreversible. I cannot not have had Covid, for instance. I tested positive in mid-August and went through a week and a half of fatigue and mild misery. I made the choice I was offered, to get a monoclonal antibody infusion, and now I experience what I am pretty sure are side effects from that infusion: almost every day I get an itching, especially in my hands and feet, upper arms and ankles, and every few days there is a numbness in my forearms or face as if they were wrapped in mildly electric wool. And the literature I got relating to the infusion said that there might be side effects, and itching due to anaphylaxis was mentioned.
Months before I got Covid, though, in late March, my daughter and I became estranged. No details, Friends, for privacy’s sake. But there it is, and it’s more negatively impactive than the Covid. I was hoping we’d resolve things long before now, but we may never. And she had been the most important person in my life.
And now we come to the photo above. You see a drawing I made today, and my airport and employee credentials. A little over a week ago I sent this e-mail to certain managers at SSP America, the company I work for:
****
Subject: Graceful Exit (two weeks’ notice)
Priority: Important
From: Gary Bowers
To: Jake W; Maria W; Tommy R; Linda W; William H; Lieryn J
Sent: Sep 7, 2021 4:46 PM
Dear Managerial Friends,
It is with some wistfulness and regret that I hereby tender two weeks’ notice of my exit from SSP America. I have had a thoroughly wonderful time in my five-plus years with you fine folks. But two things have become acutely obvious in recent months. The first is that the physical and logistic demands of my job with my hours are taking too much away from my creative endeavors. The second is that I am running out of time to do the many things I need to do before my time is up. I’ve just turned 67, and the meter is running.
Bless you all and thank you for all you have done for me. I have a headful of memories I will cherish always.My last day of work at SSP will be September 21, 2021, two weeks from today.
My very best regards and wishes,
Gary Bowers
Host/Cashier, Matt’s Big Breakfast
Here are Jake and Linda, two of the managers who got my e-mail. They are fine people to work for, and I am going to miss them terribly.
As for the drawing, it isn’t very good. I have not done much sketching since my Covid episode, and this was forced. But it seems to reflect, even in the forcedness, a sort of Yin/Yang dynamic that is part of the mix when things change.
Hell Own’d
Here&Now I am hurt so
Even snakes don’t get so low
Loss of friends & sacred kin
Leaves me lost & feeling skinn‘d
Hay Bud
Haboob
Aperçu
Yarrowstalked
“A river is never the same,” says the ancient wisdom, and so it is with our lives.
september
eleven
two thousand
and one.
dismember
unleaven
arouse and
be done.
smash into
a tower
and then do
its twin.
begin to
feel power
let hurtyou
begin.
persuant
to orders
subdue two
more crews.
be truant
of borders
in queues to
bemuse.
the bleeding
is crippling
the pain takes
its tolls
by leading
the rippling
of hatred
in souls.
Gamblin’ Fool and the Lucky Ladies
The Valley of the Sun in Arizona has casinos
And some of the Blackjack tables have a side bet called Lucky Ladies
Bet a buck or more on the Lucky Ladies
And if the two cards you are dealt total 20
You have won at least four bucks
Even if it’s an ace and a nine.
If the two cards are the same suit you have won at least nine bucks,
If the two cards are identical face cards you have won at least nineteen bucks,
And if the two cards are both the Queen of Hearts,
You have won
At Least A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS.
But if
The Two Cards
Are BOTH QUEENS OF HEARTS
AND THE DEALER HAS A BLACKJACK
You Have WON
A THOUSAND DOLLARS
FOR EVERY DOLLAR YOU BET.
It is called a “Sucker Bet”
Because the odds are much against you.
(Let’s have a brief interlude into Probability;
Please skip this stanza if uninterested.
For a double deck, which is close enough for our demo,
The odds are two in 104, or one in 52,
of you getting the first Queen of Hearts,
And the odds are one in 103
Of you getting the second Queen.
So already you’re looking at odds of one in 5,356 of getting those Queens.
Of the 102 cards remaining,
Eight are Aces
And 30 are face cards.
So of the 10,202 ways the dealer can get two of the remaining cards
There are eight ways he can get an Ace on the first card,
30 ways he can get a face card on the second card.
So, of course, there are 30 ways to get a face card on the first card
And eight ways to get an Ace on the second.
So 240 times two is 480 ways she can have a Blackjack.
Divide 480 by 10,202
And you get odds of a little worse
Than 1 in 20.
So the odds of you getting two Queens of Hearts
And at the same time the dealer getting Blackjack
Are less than one in 107,120.
That means they pay out less than 2 cents on the dollar
Of the true odds
That it happens.
Sucker!!)
But sometimes Suckers Win.
And the Gamblin’ Fool
On this auspicious occasion
Had not one but THREE dollars bet on the Lucky Ladies.
He let out a Whoop when the Queens appeared,
And felt light-headed when the dealer, in a sweet conspiratorial voice
Said “I do have the Blackjack.”
So there he was, winner of THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS…
Or WAS he?
First they called Upstairs
To run the vid
To establish that everything was on the up and up.
The Gamblin’ Fool had to fill out a couple of forms.
One was a W-2G
Which meant the three grand was Taxable Income.
Another was an Agreement
With the option to let the Casino use the event and his likeness
In promotional material.
(He passed.)
When the smoke cleared the dealer,
A sweet person of color,
Who seemed genuinely thrilled for him,
Handed the Gamblin’ Fool
Six purple $500 chips
And he in turn handed her a hundred-dollar bill as a tip
Wondering if he was being a Cheapskate.
When he turned in the chips he tipped the cashier $20,
Saying “My lucky day.”
He left the Casino with his head held high,
Finally Walking Away A Winner,
Two ghostly
Lucky Ladies
By his sides.
Here’s a Valley poet who’s been a part of the scene far longer than I have, going back to Willow House, which I never had the pleasure to attend. “I have dozens of Ted Christ stories,” he says with glee in his voice. I have about three Ted Christ stories. I envy Perry.
Perry and I both love both reading and concocting Bad Puns, so I threw in some Punnishment in the acrostic poem. And in a phone conversation just a few minutes ago, when I scored his permission to do this blog post, I told Perry there’d be a Bad Pun in the annotation, a mangling of a line from a Bruce Springsteen song. Asked him to try to figure it out, giving him an ETA of an hour and a half to do so before I published. But I’m going to pull a fast one and publish in far less than an hour and a half. That way Perry will rightly say that I didn’t give him enough time.
The mangled line, which will now refer to my friend and me:
“. . . Because Scamps Like Us, MAYBE we were BORN to Pun . . .”
Cheers to you, Perry Sams!!
Sams Club
Subverse in fun with kitsch & sync
And Pun in hand estop & THINK. You’ll
Meet a Queen & she will dub U
Sir Thickwicket so save your stub
On Saturday, August 14, Banner Urgent Care called me to let me know I had tested positive for Covid-19. Pfizer vaccinations had in April were an insufficient bulwark for the ravaging hordes. So from that day to this I have dealt with a debilitating fatigue and up to two days ago there was also a dryish, yappy-dog-persistent cough.
A few days ago I received a monoclonal antibody infusion, intended to keep my mild symptoms from worsening. I had no side effects and my cough went away. Coincidence?
The second most creative-energetic thing I did during this episode was this Covid Edition To-Do list. I never got around to that Laundry Prep, but I’m doing the blog post now.
As for the most creative-energetic thing, here it is. On an index card I describe what has happened to me and advise myself not to succumb. I didn’t.
If I can get to noon tomorrow without a fever, my quarantine ends and I will totter back out into the world, overjoyed to be among the living. Be CAREFUL out there, Friends!!
your noodle is a wonderland
of fixt intent and reminisce
of journeys by the lump and strand
and newfound hope and longlost bliss
so treat your noodle with respect
and seek new treasures for its store
be caring kind and circumspect
and own your deeds and go for more
A few days ago I got a dry-erase board and some markers from the office-supply chain Staples. Every day I erase the board and repopulate it with new items. (Tomorrow, though, a few items may carry over!) And every day I challenge myself to draw something–today it’s a motorcyclist defying death the way Evel Knievel used to do.
My friend Manuel Paul Arenas, whom the poets of the Valley of the Sun call Manny, with his poetry and fiction tills many of the same fields as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and, last but first, Shirley Jackson. Manny’s work may be found in Spectral Realms and other…ah…spectral realms.
He is a soft-spoken and gracious man with a good, however dark, soul, and I am lucky indeed to call him Friend. When I texted him about doing this acrostic, I told Manny it might be fun to substitute “Pall” for his middle name. He texted back “Sure,” but I think he was being too nice to object. I ditched the idea, partly because there is a real apostolic quality to Manny. His Facebook video recitations have a velvety-voiced quality of arcane proselytization.
Manuel Paul Arenas
My friend explores an Area
Across the Primal barrier
Necropolyptal mise en scène
Undoes accursive Lion’s Den
Endearing ghoulish Shangri-La
Lets serve a plate of moist foie gras
tonal range
torch’s blaze to darkest char
oleo to chop-fraught sea
new-paint-glisten on a barn
amateur but p.f.g
let the graphite SMILE & be
“P.F.G. stands for Pretty Good. 🙂 And the original meaning of Amateur is someone who does something for the sheer love of doing it. I love to draw.
One with Clay, Image and Text 