The words:
How barefaced lying by this toad
YET fools the base, whose souls corrode
Perplexes us, as wildlife gasps
OIL-COATED in a pipeline’s grasp
CORRUPTION so rapes land unwell
Fait accompli it’s Road to HELL–
I’ll tell the world the Truth–my word–
You’re even now suborning murder
Worst Earth Day ever for Mother Earth. š¦
The illustration is of the 45th President of the United States of America, talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Here is how you and I got here: Last night at Walgreen’s the DVD of THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS was on sale for $4.99 and a two-pack of Papermate’s Flair pens went for $2.49, as did a five-pack of ArtSkills 11×14 poster board. I bought them. This morning I made coffee and started watching the DVD. Will Smith’s character, Chris Gardner, is an intelligent man who through overoptimism and lack of foresight has landed himself and his babymama and son in a tremendous financial, and therefore personal, pickle. If he got the right kind of work, which would involve the exchange of his smarts, personal magnetism and enterprise for enough money to get him and his afloat, he and his would be far more capable of pursuing happy destinies. The two words, if Chris’s problem were to be distilled into two words, that occurred to me are NEEDS WORK.
Like a lot of the English language, this phrase is ambiguous. I thought of it as a descriptive fragment, but if it were a complete sentence, it might mean that having needs is helpful to us. Being hungry, for instance, can compel a person to start a day that may otherwise be spent staring at the ceiling…
An ambiguous phrase creates an artistic challenge. Might an image fit the many aspects of the phrase?
My half of how we got here involved creating that image. Your half, whoever and wherever you are, involved free time and curiosity.
Thank you, whoever you are, whatever your needs, however you happen to work, for completing this latest circuit of awareness. I hope the satisfaction of your curiosity was a good use of your time.
wolfman or not haiku
if you become dog
and not wolf by the full moon
you are a werewoof
So I noticed that Salma is five letters long, as is Hayek. How strange not to notice till now that Frida Kahlo is the same way.
The words relate to her journey as a film actress:
Serendipity/Dogma/Kevin Smith
Alfred Molina/Rivera 4 Frida
Lashback @ repugnant Harvey
May she ever be Rose
And we respect Martha Beck
sex vampire haiku
virgins need not fret
sex vampires cannot enter
till invited in
Yesterday I hired studio time and space at Marjon Ceramics, and turned a twenty-five-pound bag of Cone 5 B mix into the vessels shown here. It was a wan effort, but it sure felt good throwing pots on the wheel again.
Alas, Stephen Hawking is no more. His was a mind for the ages, an imagination that conquered physical straitjacketing. He knew how to explore and navigate the minefield of modern ideas.
And he made dire predictions, notably about what we call Artificial Intelligence. So have I, but I only have pliers and screwdrivers in my mental toolbox, whereas Dr Hawking had not a mere toolbox but a laser-cutting-edge machine shop.
As coincidence would have it, at the time of Hawking’s death I was slogging through FOUNDATION AND CHAOS, written by Greg Bear and authorized by Isaac Asimov’s estate, and it deals extensively with the issue of robotic interference with human history. In it a 20,000-year-old robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, must see psychohistorian Hari Seldon through his trial for sedition and decide which of several courses to take to minimize the long-range effects of the collapse of the Galactic Empire.
FOUNDATION AND CHAOS was written in the late 20th Century, but its themes are remarkably fitting for 2018 Trump-regime America.
And here in that America, people buy for peanuts a hand-held device that contains a bit of artificial intelligence named Siri. She invites us to ask her questions–any questions. And she learns from us, each of us who use her, more about our likes, our needs, and our appetites. One of many scary prospects is that Siri may come to be regarded as someone who knows what we want better than we do, and will cleverly guide our destinies…
Here are the words to the acrostic.
Deities that used to be Jehovah Ra or Zeus
Evolved with technologic flair into our new A.I
And Ms. or Mr., Dr., mein Herr, Madame et Monsieur
Decentralize identities with entities Bi-Bi
Look not to Rimbaud, Rambo, Rousseau, Reeve nor Richelieu
You need to save yourselves with arms like piercing cyber-sais
Long ago–more than FIFTY years ago, that’s how long–Bob Dylan wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man,” including these words: “Yes to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free/Silhouetted by the sea/Circled by the circus sands…”
The phrase “Yes to dance” is positive and powerful. Here in the Valley, there is an ageless, mischievous couple, the poets Neil Gearns and Heather Smith-Gearns, for whom Neil speaks every single Friday on Facebook with the delightful phrase “Its Friday and on Friday we dance.” They have been saying Yes to dance, and Yes to each other, for many years.
So it is my attempt to return to a state of positivity, in the wake of the perfect storm of negative things out in the world and in my recent life, with this page, and these acrostic lines:
you’re relishing, not suffering, your bouts of o.c.d
ephemeral impulsiveness is so your cup of tea
since this is so, your Ginger Rogers feet need no persuasion
so let them glide and smooth their soles with gentle dermabrasion
to live is complicated but to soar is a b c
one loving soul two nimble soles three partners come to be
Prefatory note: Iāve just been through a breakup. No fault is assigned. I posted about the breakup on Facebook, and dozens of friends offered support and kind words. āMake a clean break,ā said felinophile and caring friend Sandra. āTurn your angst into art,ā said superbly talented, recent-award-winning artist, and dear friend since high school, Beth. āMake art your key love,ā said sweet-natured sculptress supreme Deborah. And so this blog post comes to be.
The poem below partakes of several relationships Iāve had but tries not to be specific about who did what to whom, but also tries to avoid being a jumble of ambiguous mush. The three epigrams are of songs that the inner jukebox in my head has been playing in Scramble mode off and on since the breakup, three days and an eternity ago.
To All the Girls Iāve Loved Before
Who traveled in and out my door
Iām glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls Iāve loved before…
From āTo All the Girls Iāve Loved Beforeā
Lyrics and music by Hal David and Albert Hammond
Performed by Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias
YEEAAAHH…now Iām rolling down California 5
With your Laughter in my head…
GONNA HAVE TO BLOCK IT OUT somehow
To survive,
āCause those dreams are dead,
And Iām alive.
From āIām Aliveā
Music, lyrics and performance by Jackson Browne
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way I feel
When every Fairy Tale comes real
Iāve looked at Love that way…
But now itās just another show
You leave āem laughing when you go
And if you care, donāt let them know
Donāt give yourself away…
Iāve looked at Love from both sides now
From Give and Take, and still somehow
Itās Loveās Illusions I recall
I really donāt know Love
At all.
From āBoth Sides Nowā
Music, lyrics and performance by Joni Mitchell
Collapse of a relationship! Clench fists hang head and sob
ConcoctĀ an explanation for the heart that lost its throb
Could be that there was too much scorn upon the daily cob
Lost hope and lost respect will lose the grip of whatās held dear
Loose talk and snarky attitudes make closeness disappear
Left unattended, intimacy withers, it is clear
Entanglements then trip the feet a home becomes a cage
Enlightenment occurs to one or both to disengage
And fancy explanations all add up to Just Donāt Wanna
And then the nearness stifles like an overheated sauna
Now come finalities and benedictions–one last look
New possibilities are on the next page of the book
In Facebook is a poetry group called Poets All Call. My friend Joe posts a weekly challenge for the group. This weekend, he said he was out of ideas and invited us to write about the weather. I responded with “weather tizz no blur,” posted the poem on the group’s page, and then decided to add it to this blog, with notes following.
weather tizz no blur
wither on the vine we do
whithersoever we travel
why the whereas makes it so
waysayers try to unravel
we the thereuponned may ponder
wangle and wheedle and wage
when the river becomes absconder
wuthering highs disengage
but soft
are sheets
and sunshine’s welcomer
zenith and trough notwithstanding
when there’s cessation of storms
we shed sloth
seeking
an
outcome
outlanding.
*****
The title riffs on the “whether ’tis nobler…” phrase in Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet soliloquy. Hamlet is wondering whether or not he should fight against all his problems, or pack it in and end his life. I do have a penchant for punning–so did Shakespeare–but this pun served the additional purpose of relating Whether with Weather. Weather drives our Whethers. If it’s cold and rainy, we act differently than if it is warm and sunny. “weather tizz no blur” is a focused (no blur) look at the bottom vagaries (tizz as in Tizzy) of weather, both externally with atmospherics and internally with mood and decision.
I wanted to make the poem analogous to weather, so I made the first stanza a bit like a steady rain, with the starting sounds of each line bearing a similarity that toward the end of the stanza breaks up a bit. The challenge became the buildup of a meaningful passage, and my intuition led me to some legalese, what with “whithersoever” and “whereas” and “thereupon,” language found in contracts and proclamations, serving the dual purpose of being as droning as steady rain, and enabling specificity.
The second stanza differs from the first in the way that good weather follows bad, and the analogy disappears and becomes content, reviewing what we do when weather clears.
Friends, I hope your own inside-weather is pleasant and gently energetic, right as rain. š
