(serum sera seraph cess)

satiation boo & hiss

(hagiography’s grotesc)

takes an arc & makes a disc

(androgen may phil phillippa)

amputation of an aura

(parts of bodies may be hip)

raurosizes n p r

(even monarchs get that grippe)

I was doing my dishes this morning, enjoying the use of the Bachelor’s Tip regarding hand-washing dishes, which came to me a few days ago:

BACHELOR’S TIP: When hand-washing dishes, every fourth time or so, don’t open the soap bottle. instead, just run hot water over the closed nozzle. There will be enough post-nozzle congealed soap to make your dishwater nice and sudsy, AND you’ll prevent that nasty, gross Congeal Buildup.

This Tip should have occurred to me years ago, but I wasn’t paying enough attention. And so it is with much of our life’s endeavors. We do things a certain way because we have always done them that way. We don’t think of better ways.

So the word destiny floated up from the suds in its metaphorical way. And it made its way to one of the blank index cards I have on hand, and it was surrounded by other stuff, thus:

The Role Model and Hero I refer to is my Glendale High School classmate Dolores Gail Wager Quintero. In her storied lifetime she has had two full careers, one as a Government agent and one as an inner-city teacher of science and mathematics and general knowledge. And that’s just the visible portion of the iceberg. Among many other achievements, she also earned a tailor’s license and is handy enough with tools to have rigged up her own dash-cam for her vehicle, the appropriately named Fit.

Years ago Dolores was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, and if she had cooperated with her doctor’s prognosis, she would have been long gone. She did not and she is not. She was supremely proactive in her medical care, doing extensive research and not taking anything for granted. She pays attention to both opportunities and pitfalls. So ought we all.

On impulse I picked up an unfinished acrostic poem from my cluttered card table. I had just had a nap and felt refreshed. Great luck! The double acrostic was IMPULSE CONTROL. Impulsively I spent 45 minutes finishing the acrostic, no mean feat since the only word I’d written besides the bookending IMPULSE and CONTROL was “FDIC.” Greater luck! Impulse control, and the increasing lack of it, played a major role in the poem’s composition. Look at the lines and you will see that they start evenly, almost stodgily, and then get wilder as the poem rolls along.

The greatest luck of all was having just read an article about the plague of Internet trolls ruining things for everyone. Epiphanatically I realized I was writing about the ultimate, impulse-control-challenged, troll of all, the mad Tweeter King.

Three successive weeks last month I bought a sculpted heart from my friend Deborah Hodder, whose work was on display at five15 Arts on Grand Avenue. I asked her if I could use the hearts in my creative expression. She enthusiastically assented, and went so far as to suggest performance art. This post is a performance of sorts. One of Deborah’s hearts is in the image above, and it and the two others I own are in the image below, along with a bird I sculpted a few weeks ago.

Here is the poem.

Impulse Control

Invigorate your system with a dose of cold Hi-C
Investigate your president as if FDIC
Mull Holland Mueller Malkovich and high-fived CEO
Meticulustfully to see how to and fro we go
Perhaps we grapple with a loss and cray-cray now and then
Upanishads and Spanish moss seduce a soul unpent
Let’s lift and drop and call a cop for grins or grim diss-honor
Seek chicks and sex and cello vex S Kubrick meets R Donner. O
Entre-penury of late is loose and on a roll
Engagement and no rules reveals the Season of the Troll

Here are the boxed earthly remains of my younger brother next to an urn I made at the Thunderbird campus of the Phoenix Center for the Arts. I knew while I was making the urn that the odds of it being suitable as a vessel for Brian’s ashes were small, but that I needed the practice; and it is helpful to learn what doesn’t work, on your way to making something that does.