Spectral Sanctums

December 30, 2014
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Incongruous scale has been used by artists from time immemorial to a few hours ago, when a place mat was enlarged beyond easy belief and put inside the orbit of the moon of a gas giant. The intention in this case is transportation away from Earthly, and human, concerns.

Spectral Sanctums

Surface and its tension are at times strange bedfellows
Placematting of orbital proportions and sensoria
Engendered for oblique kinaesthesia foster alien nation
Crucial to a viewpoint less anthropocentric
Tension and its surfaces disconnect intellect
Rationed rashness rekindles much adieu
ALtogetherness will bring us optimal pessimisms

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Doodle Logic

December 29, 2014
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One of the proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem in our high school geometry book was the single word BEHOLD! and three checkerboard-patterned rectangles forming a right triangle in the negative space they created. One checkerboard was a 3×3, one a 4×4, and one a 5×5; and, indeed, 9 plus 16 equals 25.

To prove the non-existence of Doodle Logic is impossible. No matter how random the doodle is, the doodler brings SOMETHING to the table, if the doodler is a human being. Any computer program will necessarily have code that imposes rules.

Perhaps our local Universe is the ultimate doodle.

cosmos combos

December 28, 2014
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Cosmos Combos

C: configures space&time: speed of light is C
Oscillations play the temp–atoms dance allegro
Silver’s born in nova’s cosh…pressured, stars go Boom
Matters dark & otherwise; Womb to Zoom to Tomb
Off on hyperbolic jaunts! Conic secs by Lego™
Seen through a galactic lens, we are but debris

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Kid stuff as rejuvenative force

December 28, 2014
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Denise’s family is visiting. Her granddaughter was drawing, and I offered her $2 to draw Dixon, the family dog. She accepted the challenge but declined payment. “How about this?” I counteroffered. “You draw Dixon, and I’ll draw whatever you want, and we’ll trade.” She asked for a cute pig. I asked for the pig’s name and she said Phillip. I drew this:

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She drew this, and I’d say I got the better end of the bargain:

dixon1

Exchanging kid stuff proves to me that you’re NOT only a kid once. You can be a kid any time you draw pictures with another kid.

Velvet Dreams

December 25, 2014
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Merry Christmas and Peace and Love to all who read these words, be you Christian or otherwise (I’m an Otherwise myself). May we all see a better year ahead.

Velvet Dreams

Vexacious times wear Trouble like a beard
Vicissitudes cause wars, most undeclared
Enchantments give a wish a wheel to steer
Events make crosses children borne must bear
Lieutenancies emerge in Fate’s fell spate
Love’s touch lends voice to scent we taste & see
Legalities help predators predate
Voracious carnivores still spare the pea
Victorious survivors sport the stoma
Ventricular caprice makes tragic trauma
Entranced botanicals enjoy the loam
Enhanced mechanicks find a shop & glom
The SATINED VISIONS steer us through the isthmus
Then make(s) The Presence present(s) here/now/Christmas

Note: “vexacious” and “mechanicks” are deliberate misspellings. They would drive my younger self crazy. I refer him, and you, to the “extended play” version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quotation about foolish consistency:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Toss Up My Heart & See Where It Lands”

December 21, 2014
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This post is inspired by Stephen Bishop’s song “On and On,” taking its title from one of its lyrics. Two other lyrical sections of the song are also quoted.

The song has stuck in my head for nearly forty years; I like it but it haunts me. I like the rarity of a man singing about a man crying who is not the man himself.  I also like its singer/songwriter, Stephen Bishop, who was billed “Cool Guy With Guitar” in the landmark comedy ANIMAL HOUSE. He was the one whose guitar was smashed to pieces by John Belushi’s Bluto, who handed the severed neck back to him with a sincere but I-had-to “Sorry.”

Toss Up My Heart words:

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Though they’ll have Tito Puente there’ll be an empty seat at Hialeah
Of the 600 outmunitioned almost all died in Crimea
Such odd haphazard history may have you ask What For
Seek ye serendipity becomes my soul’s retort

See Where It Lands words:

Swollen willows weep–it’s offal
Section Eights have FILLED Golgotha
Every time stuff hits the fan
Each soul tries to understand
Evanescence–drifting sands

POS / Sybil / It / Ease: a Celebration

December 20, 2014
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I’m finally free of that albatross of a Manuscrypt [sic] for a while–sent it off just before noon. That also means I’m free of the blog-posting restriction I imposed on myself. So this is a celebration. POS can stand for any number of things–Point of Sale, for instance. Sybil has come to mean “crazy multiple-personality person” in recent years. It? IT is what IT is. Ease is what we all non-strivingly strive for some time or the other, and this is the time for this guy. More later. Over & out for now!

the search for avery soffen

December 17, 2014
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here is how a poem doesn’t get written: the notion
was to find a name phonetically similar to the phrase “every so often”
and use it to springboard wordplay

“avery soffen” quickly occurred to the poet
but the poet didn’t even know that soffen was a name

it is and moreover no one need be impugned
for although “soffen” yields many search results
“avery soffen” yields “no records match your search”

but in the course of soffen-searching one dr. gerald soffen showed up
he was a project scientist for nasa and coordinated the work of seventy scientists nationwide
they were conducting unmanned scientific experiments on mars via the viking program
and so dr. soffen was among the first practicing exobiologists

every so often
a poet realizes he is a court jester or at best shakespeare’s fool
and is overwhelmed by the difference between flimsy wordplay and the real advancement of humanity

Rachel Carson, Speaker for the Silenced

December 10, 2014
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001Here is the consummate environmentalist. She fearlessly spoke out against the profligate use of pesticides, which she wisely renamed “biocides,” and her successful battle against the propaganda and dirty-dealing of such as DuPont was the single most important factor in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Thanks to Wikipedia, YouTube, and any number of environmental websites on the Internet, her passionate voice may be heard instantly by anyone with computer access. Her message is just as timely as it was in 1962, the year of publication of her Silent Spring, whose title refers both to the loss of birdsong due to pesticide collateral damage and the potential Earthwide silence should the rapists of Mother Earth continue their fell practices.

I am working on a double-acrostic poem and page on her which will be the final needed ingredient for my manuscript of Natural Distractions, the poetry/image collection that I’ve been working on every day. Here is the work in progress:

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ETA on the completed manuscript, and with it the completed Rachel Carson page, is tomorrow morning. Upon its completion I’ll convey it to David Chorlton, a fine environmental defender in his own right, for editorial assistance. Stay tuned! [determined smile]

2nd Anniversary Post: Where To Now?

December 3, 2014
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cairn1

The photo was taken on Sedona’s Bell Rock some time ago. At lower left is the shadow of the wayfarer’s head. In the midground is a cairn, a trail marker of stones cylinderized with baling wire. From each cairn not the beginning nor end the wayfarer ought to be able to see the cairn preceding and the cairn following. As long as there is a cairn in sight, then, the wayfarer is never lost; and, indeed, at upper right the wayfarer sees the next cairn on the journey.

There have been 676 posts in the two years of this blog, whose anniversary is today. Once Sam Shepard was asked how many plays he had written, and his answer was “Too damn many.” I saw his Fool for Love at a Phoenix-local theater about twenty years ago. It was good and weird.

I am going to use the love I have for making posts in this blog to incentivize the completion of a manuscript I started, with editorial help from award-winning poet David Chorlton, more than a year ago. I will be limiting my blog posts to one a week until the manuscript is finished.

After I finish the manuscript (working title: Natural Distractions), I’ll resume regular posting until the end of the year. Then I’ll finish the second manuscript I’ve got hanging fire, for a children’s book with the working title Sizegirl and Cloudboy. Again, I’ll be one-a-weeking this blog till that ms. is in the rearview mirror.

Somewhere in there should be Volume II of LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve done at least as many poet page/profiles as I did for Volume I–declaring victory and bundling it all up has been long overdue. Disorganization has been the bugaboo of my creative existence.

In addition to, and aside from, all that, my realio trulio creative heart’s desire is making large-scale versions of the best of my pages. I hope to do at least one such in time for entry into the Glendale Arts Council’s juried show I enter every year.

That about sums up Where To, conceptually anyway. Please wish me luck and wherewithal, dear Reader!