My friend Suzy wrote on Facebook that she wanted Midsummer poems for her newsletter. Here is what I gave her.
And here it what it says:
Marvel at the Solstice steam
It is wondrous in the scheme
Ice your plectrum for the flare
Dazzlin’ Sol’s most debonair
I was glad to to this for Suzy. She is a deeply spiritual and honorable person whose entire life has been a poetic journey, setting huge challenges for herself and meeting them. She both literally and figuratively walks the labyrinth.
One Saturday last winter there was a slim woman in a long blue coat waiting for the 32nd Street bus that I take to work. I am normally too shy to initiate conversation with fellow passengers, but as I approached I found myself saying “Good morning.” And she shy-smiled and said “Good morning” as well. I had just met Sonia.
For the next dozen or so Saturdays, Sonia and I exchanged pleasant light conversation before the bus arrived. I learned that she was from eastern Europe and she lived with her daughter, who sometimes drove her to work. She learned that I had a daughter as well, and that I was a restaurant host and cashier at Matt’s Big Breakfast, which had a 32nd Street/Camelback location. Somewhere in there I suggested it might be pleasant if we had breakfast there sometime, if we could find a mutual day off where neither of us were too busy.
Then one Saturday she didn’t show. And the next, and the next. I figured her schedule had changed. Sighed a little. She was so nice.
But months later, yesterday, I was waiting for the bus and who should walk up but Sonia! Wow, was it good to see her. “What’s your favorite flower, Sonia?” “Ummm…roses.” “I’m gonna draw some roses for you.” And I did. And I gave her the drawing this morning, on the condition that she pose with it. Here they are!
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Stevie Nicks, “Landslide”
Landslides, Avalanches and Waterfalls all involve the force of Gravity on a massive amount–tons–of the elements. And so when we think of a metaphorical Landslide coming down on us, or a roaring Avalanche on our heels, or going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, some kind of catastrophe is occurring in our lives.
landslide avalanche waterfall
lo and beholden to physical law
and vladivostok’s affirmative da
need and attrition and forces won’t wait
do a delilah it loads up your plate
savonarola condemns from afar
lassie runs rescue safaris, arf arf
if in the chaos you dance cha cha cha
don’t be dismayed by a mishap–hell, all
ends and endeavors see breakage and sprawl
wet is life is tears says pierrot
and you drink n Ford n wade n go
tasty one day brackish next–who knew
each a cosmos-splash on peak or shoe
raindrop dew or flowing sewer
I have never seen a certain acrobatic troupe in live performance. I hope to some day, but a ticket is above the pay grade of a practitioner of Shoestring Economics.
Nevertheless I admire the performers and wish them well; and this weird, chaotic, drawn-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sketcharama is my tip of the hat to them.
Positional Level
Poseurs I so wish you well,
OG, Opie, Ostler, belle,
Sergei, Davy, Nancy, Kev,
Ima, Erma, Anna, Neve,
Tesser, bevel, shame the Devil
Note: OG stands for Original Gangsta. Opie was a character played by award-winning director Ron Howard in The Andy Griffith Show. An ostler is someone employed to tend the horses of inn guests. “Tesser” is an action invented by Madeleine L’Engle in her Newbery-Award-winning novel A Wrinkle In Time; it means to travel through a fourth spacial direction, bypassing length, width and depth. “Shame the Devil” is part of that fine old adage “Do your work and shame the Devil.” These were all chosen to showcase diversity, realism-optional magic, and work ethic.
Take my signature/date and the dedication to superstar sf writer and conceptualist Larry Niven off this image, screenprint it a kajillion times on a bolt of Hawaiian-shirt silk in wild colors, and I think we could sell some shirts. No charge for the design but I want free shirts for life.
Two days ago my bad tooth got worse. Yesterday, it being Saturday, I went to Urgent Care instead of a dentist. The PA had me hypo’d with antibiotics and cut me an Rx for an oral course of them. Said if the swelling got worse, specifically if it spread to the eye, that I should check in to a hospital emergency room.
Today it got worse.
Off to the ER I went. I am here still. They got a urine sample, a few tubes of blood, and they IV’d me for more antibiotics, pain stuff, and iodine for the cat scan I just had.
Yesterday the PA told me a friend of hers had died because the cellulitis reached the orbit of her eye, affording quick access to a vulnerable brain. Well, Friends, not this kid. Better Safe Than Sorry, said co-workers: sweet server Dez and barlady Brie and magnificent managers Michelle and Shawna as they observed the puffiness of my face. Ladies, you may have saved my life. Thanks!!
In 2016 the most powerful office in the United States of America was hijacked by an opportunistic liar and a hostile foreign power. My country must undo the awful damage that followed. I am grateful that steadfast, decent patriots such as Robert S. Mueller are here for us.
David Knorr is the star of the solo show “Biomorphic Conversation,” now on display at Five15Arts, in the Roosevelt Arts District in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona. Also on display with his stately and/or whimsical and/or gravity-defying sculptural works is the years of hard and focused work he has put into ceramic sculpting, an endeavor that involves a great deal of failures due to firing mishaps or glaze misbehavior or transport mishandling. The more than a dozen sizable works in the show have a flawlessness to them that belies these pitfalls of the medium.
One sculptural element that occurs in more than one piece is an array of I-beam shapes, small-scale girders in a short stack, curved possibly by the melting that occurs during firing. The curvature is a perfect example of the biomorphosis implied in the show’s title. The little girders are unsuitable for buildings but perfectly suited as support for a living, flexing thing. And the way that they stick out reminded me of the game Jenga, which involves pulling out miniature 4x4s from a tall stack of sucb without making the stack topple. This gave me the phrase “Agenda Jenga,” a happy accident that fit perfectly with the acrostic I was constructing. And the rest of the line, “fancy plain,” was another happy-accident perfect fit, which gave me a new oxymoron (I just love oxymorons!) In this case “fancy” means the same as it does in the phrase “flight of fancy.”
I hope Mr. Knorr will forgive my less-than-masterful portraiture. I’ve put his eyes too close together, and narrowed his broad, friendly face. But I think the expression works: an open, honest, convivial countenance, exuding well-earned confidence.
Distribute I-Beam-esques. OK.
Agenda Jenga, fancy plain.
Vorpal limblets two by two
Inch their way through Whimsy Moor
Demonstrating what whim’s for.
Note: “Vorpal” is a word invented by Lewis Carroll for his “Jabberwocky.” In the 70s the Vorpal Gallery mass-printed certain of M. C. Escher’s works. I and that gallery borrow Carroll’s magic.
To square a number you multiply it by itself. Is there such a thing as a square meal? “Circle gets the square” was often said on Hollywood Squares, but not in Hollywood circles.
This image, acrostic and post deal with the incredible glory and inadequacy of Language.
One with Clay, Image and Text 