Awry Left Home/away from home/Well Come Home

June 19, 2016
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Here is the first page I’ve done since I moved to my new place. Much of it was done on the drawing table sketched in lower left. I do so feel more at Home, using my table.

The three acrostic takes on Home come from my recent move, my years of weight struggle, the tragedy in Orlando for which flags are now being flown half-mast, and that grab-bag feeling one gets when a lot is happening at once. But, for once, this page is not a dashed-off, gottagetitdone thing. I spent three days on it, and I hope it shows.


Awry Left Home

Avoirdupois and sleekness match
When you’ve a KEY and not a latch
O running Wafflers may make scream
Yet Value’s not in Hits nor Meme

away from home

a child lifts a stufféd pooh
whilst parents wonder what to do
as youngsters out for fun take aim
you need a someone whom to blame

Well Come Home

We go and cause the world to laugh
Enjoying Moo-Cow and Giraffe
O Laughter is a Marvel! I’m
Laugh-loutish till the end of TIME

. . . my own personal time, that is. “Steel in my heart, and laughter in my breast!” quoth Rostand’s Cyrano. 🙂

THIS OLD MAN, part 4: This Old Table

June 17, 2016
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This is my drawing table, a gift from my parents on a Christmas sometime in the early 70s. It has been in Arizona, in Glendale and Phoenix and Cottonwood and the Village of Oak Creek in Sedona, and it has also been in Las Vegas, Nevada. I almost gave it away to someone for no other reason than that he had his stuff on it. I almost threw it piece by piece into the dumpster by my last apartment, faced with the prospect of having to U-Haul it to my new place. (I have just moved out of one apartment and into another one.) I am SO GLAD that luck and good sense and friendship conspired to keep it mine.

The lamp vise-gripped to the right edge of the table was part of the Christmas gift, and it works like a dream still. The stool and the fatigue mat were gifts from my former sweetheart Denise, and my gratitude to her continues. The banjo to the left of the table was another gift from my parents, and I gave it away once, hoping it would be well used; alas, the guy I gave it to never used it, so I took it back. (Alas, to this day I cannot play it.) The painting on the right is a superb nature study of butterfly and reflection by my dear friend and Confidante, Gen L (or E, depending). Another gift, and I am so grateful to be so gifted, and so egomaniacal to suggest that that has a double meaning. (I will play the I’m Just Kidding, Folks card if asked.)

But a crucial gift that keeps the table mine is of time, elbow grease, and the use of a magic red Pick-Em-Up Truck from my TRULY gifted friend, Russ Kazmierczak, Jr., creator of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS. Russ and his truck moved my possessions entire from 35th Ave/Northern to 29th St/Indian School on two consecutive days. Russ offered me this help some weeks ago, when he found out I would be moving. When I took him up on it, he proved his rarity by cheerfully agreeing, showing up cheerfully on-time-or-early as agreed, co-muscling my stuff and Tetris-ing (his verb) it into the bed of the truck, and shlepping it to where it now belongs. Russ is a keeper, as his wonderful girlfriend Randi well knows. (And vice versa, as Russ well knows.)

So here’s to continuity: of Friendship, of Creativity, and of Love, of companions along the way past and present. Life is as good as we take it.

Bye, Bye, Hideaway West–for now

June 15, 2016
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“Sad news, Juanita–I’m moving away.” When I said those words to Juanita G, stellar cook–make that Chef–for The Hideaway West, my heart dropped. My dreamlike move-in-progress had finally become real.

So I had yet another of the best damn breakfast in town (said the Host/Cashier of Matt’s Big Breakfast), and before I left I got my first-ever hug from the lovely Juanita, and the above selfie. And now we’re Facebook Friends.

“You should’ve told us earlier. We would’ve saved some boxes for you.”

“How about I come by about sixish?”

“OK. We got a beer order coming in.”

I sure will miss her. And with only two months on the existing lease, who knows–maybe I’ll come back. Her smile is worth it. Her superb cooking is a bonus.

fecund second/spin it minute

June 14, 2016
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Here is an exploration in distillation, minimalism, irony, and association. It’s also another baby step in my quest for proficiency in oil pastel.

The first acrostic, “fecund second,” describes six rich actions that may take place in a single second. The second, “spin it minute,” is of six words, all nouns, that I am 100% sure have never been strung together in this order before. Reading them aloud in their order imparts, at least for me, a sense of a mysterious narrative with a lot left out. The first two words imply chaos; the next two pairs of words, “intersection nosferatu” and “integument testosterone,” have the same number of syllables, implying order. The last pair match stress syllables as well: inTEGument/testOSTerone. With minimalism details like this make a big difference.

fecund second spin it minute

fecund second

facing the Fates
echoing miracle
calibrating the cosmic
unraveling intaglio
nesting in the Moon
defining vagabond


spin it minute

spasm
potpourri
intersection
nosferatu
integument
testosterone

 

hitheryin & yonyang

June 13, 2016
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Strange things are on the up. A wrong-headed man has opened fire, his targeted victims members of the LGBT community. He happens to be Muslim. A wrong-headed man running for President accuses his probable opponent of wanting to do away with the Second Amendment, which I will undoubtedly slightly misquote from memory as being, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

Yin and yang. Straight and gay. Gun-toters and gun-law-touters.

Bisexuals are said to “go both ways.” At least one of my best friends on Earth is bisexual. At least one other is homosexual. Any others are keeping a low profile, and who can blame them?

Lassie was a girl-dog whose movie and TV portrayal was often made by a boy-dog. Collies have concealing fur.

The folk song “Did You Ever See a Lassie?” Has another verse, unknown to most nowadays, that starts, “Did you ever see a laddie . . . ?”

My card advocates staying home and traveling afar at the same time via our E-Ticket ride on the Planet Earth. Since the Sun hurtles toward the Sagittarius constellation at 60,000 mph, the pattern the Earth makes through its tiny subsector of the galaxy is a marvelous slinky-shape, enhanced by the subslinky of the gravitational tether of the Moon. YouTube has video of this, and it is a joy to behold.

Here are the words to the messy double acrostic, made, I hope, more sensible via prosification.

Hie thee away to another land. It will be strangely fey and grand. By this time tomorrow Earth will go Headlong through a spiral arc–yes or no? Elliptical pathways in centric array respond to the pull with a hip, hip, hooray. Telemundo, tell Alice, then it gets intriguing: Nest nesting in travel and you will be singing.

error & & & trial & & & error

June 9, 2016
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Among my poet friends are two that I found quote worthy today. Shawnte Orion says, “These poems aren’t just going to reject themselves.” With that profound adage as his watchwords, he’s gotten his poems rejected numberless times–but also, increasingly, ACCEPTED by increasingly prestigious journals.

As for Victoria Hoyt, with whom it’s been my pleasure to talk for hours about poetry etcetera, a shift of word-emphasis in the five words “Poetry is like a code” yields two quite different thoughts.2016-06-09 08.58.23

eradication and reconstitution and awe

reverence and blasphemer’s sand dollar

rotomontade and melodies of grandeur on grand piano

outstanding stamina/splinter

revivals and the age of alexander

temper temper

June 5, 2016
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“Temper, temper,” we say of someone who flies off the handle/gets Pee Oh’d/indulges in rage. But “temper temper” may be advice, when the first Temper means “serve as a neutralizing or counterbalancing force . . .”

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temper temper

ten-second counting is the best
emotion checked with time & geste
marshmallow mellow pick & strum
permits this chum not be a chump
emergent calm need not be rare
reject the raging growling bear

. . . or lion. Lamb it up today, Friends!

Roberta L Streeter and the 3rd of June

June 3, 2016
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The Third of June rolls by again. That makes 48 Thirds of Junes since the song “Ode to Billie Joe” came out in 1967. And Bobbie Gentry, born Roberta Lee Streeter, is said to be living in seclusion in Los Angeles. If alive, she is 71 years old.

She once owned a piece of the Phoenix Suns, but hasn’t since 1987. She never told us what the girl and Billie Joe threw off the bridge,  but said the real meaning of the song was about nonchalance and indifference, a family talking casually about a seeming suicide while not realizing the fellow’s girlfriend was right there at the table. (That does seem downright Faulkneresque, if not Kafkaesque, to me.)

Anyway–I was a fan. I watched “The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour” as few others did. I think “Ode to Billie Joe” is a classic. And I imagine many will remember her, this Third of June . . .

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