There are a total of twelve unique words on this page, signature and date aside. Those who trouble to puzzle them out may come down with a mild case of aphorism.
waitwish stayseek
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The Critique of Humanity, Phase One: Roadkill
The Verde Valley is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. In a way, though, it is one of the most depressing. What makes it so is the variety of dead creatures on the various roadways. Rabbits and skunks are quite common but javelina, coyote and fox I have also seen; and I in my truck have had near-misses with all five of them, and with deer as well.
Yet I keep driving, and so do my fellow Verde Valley residents, and so has all of the automotivated populace for more than a hundred years. We ourselves are the most numerous of the roadkill. “That’s a real shame,” we think as we pass another squished-in-the-middle carcass. But we do not indict ourselves for all of this carnage. We see it as too bad but inevitable; and that to me is proof that we and I have a long ways to go, ethically.
false horizon falser horizontal
One reason there are lots of instruments in the cockpit of an airplane is that sometimes pilots cannot rely on their senses. Their semicircular canals tell them one thing, the view out the window another, and the instruments contradict both. To stay alive, a pilot often has to literally fly in the face of what the body says.
In life, a sense of well-being may just mean that the brain chemistry is literally on the high side of the manic-depressive cycle. Ingesting alcohol or other drugs often imbues the user with undeserved confidence. If you don’t have instruments, like a penlight for the Nystagmus test or a Breathalizer for the measurement of blood alcohol, when in doubt, don’t, no matter what wonderful sense it seems to make, whether it be calling that lost love at three in the morning or shaving/tattooing your head or entering the wonderful world of amateur day trading. (Sorry to be so parental.)
Here are the words:
Fate denied me being pharaoh
And you say, it’s best that, Gair-O
Lap up your courvoisier
Lapdogs may include Sharpei
Salvage peace/shalom/La Paz
Serenity is no palazzo
Eternity by daw-do-zen
Ernest earnestly got bent
Rovers flying o’er alfalfa
Race past baffleds on El Al
Trail–Tom Mix–Spoon
Anyone heard of Trail Mix? Sure you have!
Anyone heard of Tom Mix? No? Well, he was a movie cowboy. He pre-dated, and paved the way for, John Wayne. There’s a book called TOM MIX DIED FOR YOUR SINS. When Robert Bloch, author of PSYCHO, was asked by Philip Jose Farmer if he’d read the book, he replied, “No, and I haven’t read JESUS CHRIST AT THE 101 RANCH either.” This not only made Phil laugh, it inspired some writing of his, including some in his world-famous RIVERWORLD series.
Anyone following my blog knows that I have a spoon fetish. Sorry!
Anyone heard of the MX Missile? No! We haven’t! Or we don’t want to! “MX whistles” are OK, though.
Here are the words to this double-double-quadruple super-duper Acrostic:
Tried a contrail’s atmospherics
Rode a comet’s utmost deep
Asteroids are poised to go
Is SPACE full of foistings? NO
Launching MX whistles–fun
Event
nine the month eleven the day thirteen the years
nine the month eleven the day thirteen the years
hot fuel trickled down a building’s spine
twice
crushed lives and complacency
a five-sided base of operations got slammed
a lovely meadow got scarred
ray charles sang in arizona
out of verse sequence
in his eloquence:
“o beautiful
for heroes proved
in liberating strife
who more than selves
their country loved
and mercy more than life…”
george w. bush threw a perfect strike to kick off the d-backs vs. yanks game
it may have been his finest hour
how his back must have itched
then we went to war
dealt a deck of cards with bad guys on them
got quite a few of them
stuck them on the edge of cuba
one group gets taken out
another materializes–isis?
wasn’t she a saturday-morning superheroine?
or is it isil?
they will be airstricken
and they will pay
and others no doubt
will come out of the thin air of the desert and the mountains
but we must do something
we must look at thirteen years of what we have done
and ask: what works?
what heals?
we must become a different creature
we must become a different world
wisdom is elusive
but mercy is in all of us
let us reward the merciful
yes let us defend ourselves
but may we be clever enough to do so
without attacking others
let it be our way
to never give up on mercy
Carol Hogan, Cutter of Sand
Carol Hogan is a cutter of sand two ways. First, she’s the editor of SANDCUTTERS, the quarterly publication of the Arizona State Poetry Society. It was she who raised the publication from a black&white chapbook to a color-covered nicepaper showcase with a real spine.
Second, she’s always drawing lines in the sand. She is a female Don Quixote, tilting against the Koch Brothers and other creatures of corporate greed. I’d cast her as Galdalf in a gender-bending version of LORD OF THE RINGS, standing on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and telling the Balrog “You cannot pass!!” in her quivery voice. (Carol says she lost her voice some time ago, but I did not get details.)
Last Saturday Carol came to my mother’s house to photograph various of my ceramic works. She intends to feature me in SANDCUTTERS as the next in her series of poets who are also artists. She and Mom hit it off well, and there is talk of future visits.
Here are the words to Carol’s double acrostic:
Clasp a tempest–Oh! Oh! Oh
And the beaches stir her so
Rioting with verse & blog
OUT the blahs and ON the gaga
Living on a swift toboggan
usku
Right now, September 10, 2014, I am in the moment of having a Sweetheart about whom I am head over heels. In the wee hours of this morning, thinking of nothing in particular, I did most of this sketch by the seat of my pants. It is full of drawing errors and clumsiness, but it also has life and love.
usku
undoing lifelack
salvaging hope in the dark
striving i and thou
rare earths
As this is written, today is still Title Tuesday, that day of the week when I usually provide five prompting titles to my fellow Facebook members of the poetry group Poets All Call. Today I went metal:
*****
Title Tuesday for September 9, 2014
Here are titles for them as wants them:
Goal Digger
Silver Dogger
Bronze on Blonde
Brass Ear
Tincompoop
Gonna take a Sentimetal Journey? Hope so, and with YOU, my Friends!
*****
My friend and colleague Bob Kabchef responded, not with poetry (though he would soon write some), but with these additional titles:
Cad me chum
Steely eyed
Iron or
Rare earths
Fools goaled
I wrote “cad me chum,” and the curious may see it in Poets All Call. Then I wrote “rare earths,” and I struck gold, because my poem was a long and elaborate setup for an exotic pun, about which later. First, here are the words:
*****
rare earths
please mock me not nor sneerium
there’s sugar on my cerium
and though it’s not eye candium
i’ve nudified my scandium
heaped praise on praseodymium
pee-ohing neodymium
lathed lanthanum bathed yttrium
egad that gadolinium
must not disturb my terbium
in suburbs with my erbium
to rope-a-dope europium
takes thulium with opium
perhaps a good samarium’s
promethium’s aquarium
ytterbium’s symposium’s
discussing our dysprosium
while promising lutetium
though last she’s not beneathmium
the rarest earth of all (just one)
swings with the moon around the sun
*****
As for the pun, it is a pun of omission. I deliberately left out the Rare Earth holmium. I was hoping to be asked why. Had I been asked by Emily Watson (sigh), my reply would have been, “Element-ary, my dear Watson. Since it was Holmium, I felt compelled to make a . . . deduction.”
I do not apologize.
Brigand’s Mortar (Brick & Mortar)
Brick and Mortar, and equivalents thereof, are fine in moderation. Are we as a species moderate? An Internet search on Dubai buildings will provide a fun answer. Not that I’m knocking Dubaians and their innovative excess. If I had more money than I knew what to do with, Cutting-Edge Architecture would be a great place to throw it.
But Urban Sprawl, made possible by that “I claim this land in the name of Spain” mindset that is this-century obsolete, made of the Valley of the Sun where I grew up a fungus of humanity, spreading up and over the mountains every which way, and far beyond the Valley’s borders. “Brick & Mortar” is now recognized as a largely unnecessary venue for business. Let us move on.
Here are the words to the double acrostic, making Ands of the ampersands for the sake of clarity:
Bursting out- and upward, our explosive growth goes boom
Reaching for the brass ring’s old–we charge like raging sumo
Instant towers scrape the sky where once was merest rumor
Clearing forests calls for disregard of owl and wombat
Keeping books reduces Life to uptick and pro rata
Andes-climbing’s easier than knowing what should matter
One with Clay, Image and Text 