ornAMENt
osmiCosmos makes us gleam
ring surrounds a worthy scheme
nest-in-spun-gold regimen
amplifies sweet Sentiment
INKtober 2019: Ornament
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INKtober 2019: Wild
The prompt for today is Wild, so the drawing style is scribbly and there’s a full moon. Shadowy, stealthy stuff is happening. The artist didn’t stay within the lines. The Beast.
Wild Life
We oft leave Comfort for Thrill
Itch to grow claws & folliculi
Long for Jehovah teed off
Deliver us an Evil Spree
INKtober prompt: Legend
First off, apologies to John Legend. I was sketching you, John, but the unforgiving ink snuck in a generous portion of Steve Harvey. This is a misfire, John. You don’t look like this. I will do a better portrait of you, John, when I go back to pencil.
The three-liner of an acrostic poem includes an inside joke that only one person on Earth will “get.” And we will keep it that way.
Leg/End
Legend: Airy Vivienne
Entered–Gary said amen
Got a Fairy Tale? Hit Send
Inktober supplement: Spread Sheets
Long ago, in a century adjacent to our own, I put food on the table of my tiny family by creating, enhancing, and updating Excel spreadsheets for a hospital system known then as Samaritan Health Services. They paid me about three times what I am making now, and in more-potent 20th-century dollars. Nevertheless, I sleep better at night now than I did then. Part of that insomnia was due to Imposter Syndrome, part was Breadwinner’s Burden, and part was the inability to forget about the job in my off-hours. But now I think of that time as vital and productive, and I’m grateful for the insight it gave me into the labyrinthine workings of the financial side of “healthcare.” I did this page with a generous dose of nostalgia.
Spread Sheets
Suspend a disbelief the Moo-cow moos • Present a spirit willing in the flesh • Repeal the laws that make us always lose • Encapsulate a Babe & build a creche • And THEN you’ll pass this arbitrary test • Designed to turn your whole notes into rests
INKtober 2019: Overgrown
No poem today, Friends, but a few “making of” notes. The prompt is Overgrown, and it made me think of a big baby, and then a baby impossibly big, and then the worst parenting chore made even worse. So I found royalty-free stock images of a seated, diapered baby and a forklift. (A crane would be more useful but less visually feasible.) Drew everything with a ultra-fine tipped pen that was running out of ink. Scanned and realized the midtones needed to be darkened to the fullest extent of the law, but that would destroy the pleasing midgray of the sketchbook surround, so I made a copy of the image and darkened it in MS Office 2010, then went to Paint and manually fixed up the lettering some and then copied the page area only, then while still in Paint opened the original and pasted the page interior, which effectively erased the wishy-washy original drawing but preserved the gentle background.
INKtober 2019: Ash
Simple truth: tobacco destroys healthiness.
If you smoke, you have my sympathy. It is harder to kick the smoking habit than the heroin habit, hands down. But please try. It is a fine gift for your lovers, family, friends, and YOURSELF to stop.
There’s all kinds of help out there, too. You’ll be amazed what shows up when you do a search on “help with quitting.”
Love and good luck, my friend. And if you’re thinking “I will when I’m ready,” news flash: You are ready NOW.
INKtober 2019: Dragon
The word “Privet” appears quite early on in the Harry Potter books, and since it was used for the name of a street, I for one never learned exactly what it meant. I looked it up recently and am freshly impressed by Rowling’s delicious slyness:
priv·et
/ˈprivit/
noun
-
a shrub of the olive family, with small white heavily scented flowers and poisonous black berries.
It seems like that is a perfect name for a street for the Dirsleys to be living on.
My triple acrostic is “Saving Privet Dragon.” The odd net of the words to the poem are a silly attempt at that salvation. Sillier still was an earlier idea, which I’m sure has been done before, of dressing a dragon in a kimono for “Kimono Dragon.”
INKtober 2019: Snow
The double acrostic for this one is a single word, PHOEBE. Though Pho and EBE are standalones–Pho is a Vietnamese food, and EBE is Extraterrestrial Biological Entity–let’s ignore the halves and let them be Phoebe. And within this most minimal poem, snow nay be found.
Phoebe
Poet songstress was set free
Heaven knows her F.O.B
O the afterhaps we’ll see
INKtober 2019: Pattern
Pat Benatar performed at the Arizona State Fair tonight. Missed her, alas.
As for Terns, they are winged miracles.
Pat & Tern
Protopunk @ left, and Byrd@ Rite,
Torch sun & patter
& climb’n the Matter’n.
INKtober 2019: Swing
In my youth a playground had Monkey Bars, a Slide, and a Merry-Go-Round at minimum. When I started the 4th grade they added a painted length of sewer pipe that was nor fixed to the ground but could be rolled if kids pushed. Not long thereafter the playground makers anchored them. To the ground. I wonder if it was because a kid was crushed.
Miss & A Swing
Many a lad & lass/Is on a playground now/Soaring and not. I/So miss the action/& the aerobatic feeling.
One with Clay, Image and Text 