The original was done when I was into spoons. I still like spoons, but they need a context, even an unreal one.
Finishline 13th: spoon duo
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Finishline 12th: Gloam & Dome
Long ago an art professor, Scott by name, declaimed to his class, “When you are painting, it is better to make a BOLD LIE than a Timid Truth.” And there is a bit of Bold Truth to that, though this is not a mutually-exclusive, either/or world.
Long before Stephen King wrote UNDER THE DOME, John Brunner wrote STAND ON ZANZIBAR and briefly mentioned “Fuller domes.” And of course Buckminster Fuller, that exceedingly visionary eccentric, had the original notion.
Gloam & Dome
Gopher holes and fumaroles oft perforated the land
Practicing the underground with furrows Meath the sand
Obelisky business sparks imagination too
All the ancient myths in shadow beckon fleet and loom
Makes a zealot want to beat upon a kettled droome
five such things
[Originally published in the Facebook group Poets All Call, earlier today.]
five such things
there are five such things as desire
want
ambition
lust
appetite
dissatisfaction
and there are five such things as death
cessation
mortality
zero
discontinuity
oblivion
but there is only one such thing
as you where you are
receiving this message from me
wherever i may be
telling you that you are loved
and that you deserve
good tears and lusty laughter
and the overhauling
of pain
with riotous joy
there are eleven thousand
nine hundred and thirty-two
such
things
as
❤
Finishline 11th: oath
Sometimes the impulse to draw springs from a mind’s-eye full-blown vision, with all the conceptual exploring already done. Other times there is a vague notion, of a character or a setting or a quotation, perhaps, and some exploration occurs while drawing. Yet other times the artist just grabs something to draw with and thinks, “I FEEL like drawing, but I have no idea. So let’s just see what happens.”
I have only a slight, tickly notion of what I was thinking when I made the original drawing, which likely happened at least eight years ago. I think I was imagining the taking of an oath of office in a future where doing such would be much more reflective of the person elected, and not straitjacketed by hand-on-Bible or other arcana.
Some day I’ll take a drawing as incompletely formed as this one was, make a hundred copies, and finish them a hundred ways, each as radically different from all the others as reality, including my imagination, allows. It will be an odd hat-tip to Andy Warhol, for reasons obvious and not.
Finishline 10th: embryonic relations
The midnight deadline makes for Procrustean design decisions. This page suffers from ten-pounds-of-stuff-in-a-five-pound-bag syndrome. But I will work on it no more, except perhaps one day I’ll use it as the basis from a painting, minimum size 4 feet by 6 feet, so it might breathe.
embryonic relations
embattled loneliness is what we fear
mad circumstances–to be kind–austere
beset, unsettled, nettled, we set sail
receiving imput from both gal and fella
yen-tangled and amiss to cross a t
one fine day one-ll call you mon ami
now comes a kiss or clasp, behold and lo
in time a touch begets a welcome moan
creation’s more than crows and queens and drones
Finishline 9th: Embedded Weasel
Yesterday’s challenge was tough. Today’s is an easy stroll. I found an index card that took the words “embedded weasel” and bracketed them to reveal important subwords. All I needed was to add weasels and embellish the pseudo-haiku.
the embedded weasel
weaselily eases
in bedfellows’ beds
Finishline 8th: pig/pigeon/eon
This was the toughest Finishline challenge so far. The image was OK but not great–it wasn’t conveying an Eon except vaguely. And the acrostic demanded 2/3 of unfinished sonnet to be done, to cleave to iambic parameter, and to make at least a little sense. And it was about 4:40PM, and I only had till midnight. And I was falling-asleep exhausted.
So I did a crazy thing. I looked at what I’d done, really gazed at it, and then I took a nap.
And in the nap I had a weird dream. My high school sweetheart, whom I haven’t seen nor spoken to this century, was offstage in the dream, but in some structure and creating something with chalk. Something expressive. And some of that chalk came my way and I began to practice with it–it was tricky stuff.
I woke up. Used the bathroom, washed my hands. And somehow, with little forethought whatsoever, I attacked the completion of the drawing like a house afire. It was like I was handed a ten-pound set of keys. Bright light with an infinity symbol in it somehow becomes Eon. The pig’s ear calls for attention. The letters beg for articulation. The poem’s meaning is cracked open by bookending the lines of species with an ending that throws a million years at OUR species. And here we are, 10:10 PM.
pig/pigeon/eon
profusive species of the universe
perform and propagate and turn a phrase
perhaps a porpoise has a calf to nurse
percussive pelicans may stop and gaze
perverse Corruption plays a 6-deck shoe
permuting variations of your foe
inadequacies get your poor goat too
ineffability guides Silence so
if searching Truth we get a merry chase
o it’s enough to vex Bartolomeo
in finding sadness we do wet our face
o it can be like Vincent’s brother Theo
give us a million years, and in the main
good future kinfolk MAY have cured our Pain
Finishline 7th: Gesture Drawing
Gesture Drawing
Go Gyrate, Lady, ever onward
Extend & flex in boots of jodhpur
SYMPOSIA that swoop & fly
Draw untold pleasure from an I
Reveal a truth for all to glean
Exactitude to make it sing
Finishline 6th: P°E°N°G°U°I°I°I°N
There’s an energy drink called Red Bull whose slogan is “Red Bull gives you wiiiiings,” give or take a few i’s. Since penguins already have wings, and they’re as visually whimsical as the slogan, I thought I’d throw some i’s at them and see how they liked it. They have not objected.
The original unfinished drawing was done for a 3D design class I had at Scottsdale Community College last year. It was for an assignment to sketch ideas for a cardboard stratification sculpture of an animal of our choosing. The instructor, the superheroically-named James Gamble, didn’t think the penguin form was right for the assignment, since he wanted us to have the sculpture be built on legs and build volume on the way up. He regarded the penguin as too static, even though my sketches were trying to sell that they were anything but. So he had me work from my sketches for a gorilla instead. My gorilla sculpture was a disaster. I hope to make a decent sculpture of a penguiiin some day.
As a final bit of whimsy, I drew without looking at any photo source two impossible reflections of what I tried to make look like Emma Thompson in the eyes of the penguiiin seemingly staring at the viewer (Note: penguin eyes don’t work like that. But since this is not a Penguin, but a Penguiiin, these eyes do. And that goes for all other anatomical discrepancies!). Two reasons: 1) I adore Emma Thompson–she gives ME wiiings; 2) it’s a REALLY WEIRD RIFF on the song “Bette Davis Eyes.” Ladies and Gentlemen, behold, for the first time in human history, a Penguiiin with Emma Thompson eyes. 🙂
Finishline 5th: pluslessness
The good and the bad news about this one is that it was rushed. I spent the day caregiving for my mother, went home, took care of a few things, felt a wave of exhaustion, took a nap for longer than I intended–and when I woke up, the midnight deadline was staring me down, less than two hours away, and there was much to do. So this is “finished” but still quite raw, but there is energy in the rawness.
pluslessness
pathways are trammels and therefore contain
limits and curbsides to drive us insane
undercut circumstance tends to diminish us
slipped-in obscurity threatens to finish us
One with Clay, Image and Text 