Reflecting on an alliterative interjection…
x.o.n.c.
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Atlas on an Atlas
On Facebook there is a poetry group called Poets All Call. I am one of the group’s moderators, and I contribute with my poetry and with a weekly feature called Title Tuesday, in which I provide five titles and invite the poets to use the titles as prompts.
It’s Friday, and there hasn’t been much activity in the group–perhaps a sign of these pandemical times. So, since I think both writing poetry and reading poetry is good for the soul, today I tried to lead by example by starting a poem without any inspiration whatsoever. As the poem unfolded I got some illustration notions, and I went back and forth beteeen the poem and my drawing.
Here is the poem that inspired the drawing.
grab those bootstraps
(to my fellow Poets All Call members)
i have nothing to say
and only the vaguest set of urges
chief of which is the fear
that my word-engine will heave
a sputtering sigh and die
if i let it idle too long
hey, i just said something
this is first gear
and i remember thinking
about atlas this morning
atlas according to greek myth
supported the entire Earth on his shoulders
and i was thinking cmon greeks
any five-year-old would know that that
is stupid
what’s HE standing on when he does it?
why doesn’t he just rest the Earth
where he is standing?
and why isn’t there a theme park
where his beyond-gigantic hands are?
(the word-engine is revving)
(rev is short
either for reverend
or revolutions per minute)
(there are reverends
and then there are right reverends
but none will admit to being
a wrong reverend)
(another way of abbreviating
revolutions per minute
is rpm
pronounced arpeeyem
and easy to say fast
as befits an abbreviation
that an inebriate
can abbreviate
and not deviate)
speaking of deviate
we did
we were speaking of atlas
the laughably improbable
and got sidetracked
but it all ties in
an atlas is a collection of maps
in other words it holds
all or part of the earth
and the earth spins
at approximately 1/1440 rpm
for 1440 is the approximate number of minutes
in a day
as for the poetic nonsense
of certain reverends
it neverends
but this little poem
this bootstrapping jaunt
must end
i will snip its umbilicus
and send it out into your eyes
for i am its mother
literarily speaking
and the being of a mother
is so sacred
it has raised empires
and flared hope
with the promise of renewal
you might enjoy some motherhood yourself
if not tomorrow (who knows?)
then right now–yes, now!
you have a notion
knocking about in your fanciful head–
i know it!
please share it!
start from scratch–
grab those bootstraps!!
coin fix n flip
There is a coin shortage in the United states of America. Less commerce is being conducted on the premises of brick-and-mortar establishments, and when there is commerce, debit/credit card use is encouraged, in order to reduce personal contact and maintain social distancing. This is yet another facet of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unbidden, the acrostic “COIN FIX& FLIP” came to me. “Fix and flip” is a term usually applied to cheaply-bought houses or automobiles. The faster a house or car is repaired and sold, the more Flippy the Flip is. But when it comes to the coin shortage, you get extra mileage out of the Flip aspect, if you are as miserable a punster as I am. To complete the wretchedness, the spot illustrations are all coin-related bad puns.
coin fix n flip
change CHANGING from Cha-CHING as if
one pops anon before it snaps. i’ll
in FILTRATE explain the diff — i
need to CEDE & cut the CRAP
This mostly makes sense if you are a Southwestern American on the vulgar side. “Change” is short for “pocket change,” which is coins.”Cha-CHING” is onomatopoetic slang for making money. “Pop” has a moiney connotation. “95 cents a pop” means 95 cents each. A Filtrate is the stuff that’s being filtered, in this case coins being filtered out of circulation. To Cede is to give way to pragmatism. “Cut the Crap” is vulgar Americanese for “End this nonsense.”
If you find it dense or difficult, Friends, try James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Mercy!
n.e.s. #150 of 480
A few balancing acts: Justice with Dance, Figure Drawing with Abstraction, the Serious with the Playful, and Freshness with Finish.
obelisky business
Here’s another drawing exercise, graphite on Stonehenge sketchbook paper.
As Dawn resolves
As Dawn resolves/the forest wakes//The boy repents/of his/mistakes//A leaf/a bird/a boy/enthralled//A creaure/by no/known name/called
Stop•Look•Listless
During the two official World Wars people made huge sacrifices for their country, and that not only included life and limb, but also road trips, certain foodstuffs on certain days, and–alas!–liberty, in the case of many Americans of Japanese ancestry.
During the Cold War, when there was fear of nuclear war, some people built fallout shelters and stocked them with canned goods and water, prepared to “shelter in place” until the devastation had ceased. And kids and adults alike were trained to “duck and cover” if they saw a blinding light. Never mind that this strategy was demonstrably ineffective–it was better than nothing.
But now, with a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus infecting all corners of the Earth, many of my fellow Americans cannot even be bothered to put on a sputum-blocking mask. The masks cost anywhere from near-nothing (a bandanna and two rubber bands) to a hundred-plus dollars, depending on how effective and/or fancy and/or stylish you want them to be. And many establishments give them away to their paying customers.
There is a direct correlation between the enforcement of mask-wearing and the halting of the spread of COVID-19. That many in the US ignore the correlation is partly due to the maskless example President Donald Trump sets. He has turned a public-health issue into a political issue, even though back in February he scorned the Democratic Party for “politicizing the Coronavirus.” Sadly, even his detractors have been so desensitized by his daily-basis hypocrisy that it is hard to work up outrage any more.
This has been a year of such bombardment of calamity, in fact, that people are flat-out getting used to apocalyptic conditions. As so today, triggered by a childhood memory of a “Safety Walk” in which we grade-schoolers were encouraged to “Stop, Look, Listen” before crossing the street, I flashed on the phrase “Stop/Look/Listless” as being more endemic to our situation now. And so this acrostic came to be.
So GROUNDLINGS gasp & swell
Succumb to slouched ennui
Tympani BOOM? O wells
Tsk not, mon cher petit
Oppression’s Oddly DULL
Oft RUMOR ONLY, see
Per PELIKAN & gulls
Pretend a keepsake frees
Those last two lines are a bit obtuse. Pelikan is a brand name for the India ink I used when learning to draw with a crowquill pen. “Gull” is not only a bird but a verb that means “to fool [someone].” And what kind of keepsake makes someone feel free? Could be a St. Christopher medal, popular in the late 1960s. Patron saint of Travelers. Don’t leave home without him! 🙂
Stay Safe, my friends. Fighting Listlessness will help.
some a em e qui d
Here is a modest visual puzzle. The solver’s task is to supply the missing letters and to discern what the rectangles and oblongs and hybrids have to do with each other. Further thought may reveal a steady stream of metaphors.
n.e.s. #149 of 480
You may think you’ve seen something like this before. If you have, yet more Symmetry falls into place.
queen & crew
There are a few sounds that non-mimicking birds make that sound like words. One of those sounds might be transliterated to “Awe!” I put “Awe!” in the bird’s word balloon, partly because [bird noise sounding like “Awe!”] might be confusing and distracting, and partly because it delights me to think that a bird taking off might FEEL the Awe that her noise implies.
queen & crew
quarantined &
ultra-chic
everclear & somewhat meek. her
enmity is just for show. she
need some Friends with need to know
One with Clay, Image and Text 