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Friday afternoon Denise and I drove to Phoenix in the most horrendous varietal winter weather I’ve ever encountered. Thank Goodness Denise, who is a superb driver AND grew up in northern Arizona, was driving. We went there to attend the Caffeine Corridor poetry event, and the only real time-chunk I had to do my daily journal page was at the event itself.

Here are the words:

My, mic time’s a bootstrap upon which to strop
Itinerant MINSTRELS will posture & cough
Compelling distracting one mundane one boffo
Roughedg’d as a sledge or as slight as chiffon
O open thy honeycomb’d throat–then begone

Though it sounds as though Mr. Snidely Dismissive might have penned the words, the real viewpoint character is the one who’s about to perform–and is worried about the audience reaction to HIS performance, and is consoling himself with the range of talent that has so far graced the stage.

The triple acrostic refers to the fact that at this poetry event there is no microphone, yet the first segment of the event is still called “Open Mic.”

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Close to fifty years ago, Paul Simon rewrote the Sermon on the Mount with his song “Blessed,” which begins:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows
Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?

And yesterday, at more than twice Paul Simon’s then-age, I found myself also musing about that Sermon, and the huge proportion of Earth-walkers who are some combination of disenfranchised, exploited, homeless, mistreated, but above all ignored. I don’t envy world leaders the challenge of making a world-culture that promotes individual dignity and appreciation. I have almost no notions of what to do, or even try to do, about the lot of these poor souls. I do know it is vital not to pretend that they don’t exist.

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Here are the words to the two acrostics:

Balladeers say woh woh woh
Æsop tells Behold & Lo
Learn if the response is no
Long promotions will abrade
Yell-less wisdom gives us aid

Beautiful Pacific isles–they’re anything but meh
Analoguing MYSTERY & dreams–think nature/khaki
Losing touch with things that count may lead us to inveigh
Interest in TRAVEL may enlaurel & enwreath

At the top left of this page is a halo hovering over the head of my friend of more than five years, Phoenix poet Victoria Hoyt. Below her head, and the origin of the arrow pointing to her, is my birthday message for her, which includes an apt quotation from Brian Hooker’s translation of Edmond Rostand’s famous play Cyrano de Bergerac, Act I, scene i. “The best friend and the bravest soul alive!” suits Victoria. She is true-blue loyal, a tough-love mother, sister, and friend, and the most honest and charming performance poet north of the South Pole.

A little over three years ago, I did a page exclusively about Victoria which ended up in my chapbook LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona, for which Victoria wrote the introduction. Her page came out like this:

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Lastly, there’s a note mentioning Raymond Chandler on the page. I got curious about what he looks like so I Wiki’d him. I found his face so intriguing that I did a sketch on the spot. Finally, I figured the double acrostic CHANDLER RAYMOND would work well if I made the final D double-long to facilitate a final couplet and make up for the one-character deficit in Raymond. Here’s yet another opportunity to collaborate with me: Write That Acrostic!

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I’ve got a thing about Birds, and I’ve got another thing about Words. Yesterday I was thinking about weird idioms like “kit and kaboodle” and “part and parcel”–and then “beck and call.” What does Beck bring to the party of Beck and Call? (Not the singer Beck, nor the brew Beck, you understand.)

This led me to birds, because Beck is equilaterally similar to Beak and Peck. Consequently I invented the above bird, which I christened the Abovebird.

Here are the words:

Tantric tautologies MAXIMIZE trivia
Holographed Fastballs lend Creedence to plumb
Endocrinologists Lymph to the servo
Beholding the HEADMAN the Jefe the Gov
Entreatment may heat up a feeling like love
Contentment enhances & sometimes makes numb
Kerplunk! went the ethics of Richard the III
Olfaction’s mixt blessing can bring on a brrr
For crucialities we wax undeterred

Ouch! that last line doesn’t scan right. Well, neither did the third line of Shakespeare’s sublime Sonnet XXIX. And Will & I–we’re like THAT. 🙂

 

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When I was a kid growing up in Glendale, Arizona there was a local show for kids called It’s Wallace?  It was the BEST kid’s show I can imagine. The hosts were Wallace, whose real name was Bill Thompson, and Ladmo, whose real name was Ladimir Kwiatkowski. They were often bedeviled by a prissy, pouting fellow in a Dutch Boy wig who claimed to go to the finest private school in Scottsdale, and who was always badmouthing “public school brats” like me. They called him Gerald; his real name was Pat McMahon.

Their cartoons were top of the line, and one of my favorites was Rocky and Bullwinkle. The two were in constant conflict with Boris Badenov (my memory of him reminds me of Jerry Stiller) and Natasha Fatale (voiced by June Foray, who was also the voice of Rocket J. “Rocky” Squirrel). The nefarious couple was a parody of spies in the Cold War, but my page is no joke, though it is a tribute to my fond memories of R&B.

Speaking of tributes, here’s one I did in 2007 for Wallace & Ladmo. Alas, Ladmo died in 1994, less than two years after a co-worker of mine got his autograph for me.

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Here are the words:

There oft exist exotic Guilds developing Arcana
How eagerly practitioners divine a certain pattern
Regarding abject wonderers who hanker to be long
Euclid took Geometry to levels transcendental
Ensuring the 3-cornered shape would be its cornerstone

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that it is easy and fun for everyone to draw overlapping triangles and then color in a la checkerboard to get alternating light and dark. I put a little extra zing into this one by making a light gray via rubbing the entire upper surface of the paper with my big fleshy thumb/palm pad, then erasing out a couple of background white triangles. Drawing with an eraser is really satisfying!

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Today is exactly 3 months since I started this blog. I have not missed a day; that’s 91 daily posts. I celebrate by presenting two pages today.

The first is of Lee Radziwill, a tragic figure if ever I saw one. Many of the people who gave her life weight–sister Jackie, brother-in-law Jack, Her former husband and son, both princes, and Andy Warhol and Truman Capote–are long gone.Today, she bears enough of a resemblance to Jackie that it is easy to imagine what Jackie would have looked like, had she lived this long.

By the way, Wikipedia says it’s not pronounced RAD zee will, but RRAH gee veeaw. Yet another cross for her to bear is that probably almost no one can say her name correctly.

Sympathies and best of luck to Lee, who is actually Caroline, a beautiful name once worn by my grandmother, who died before I was born. On to Continuity Pleas:

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This page was started a long, long time ago. I don’t have much to say about it except that I am glad to have reduced my unfinished projects by one this morning. Also: aside from the triple acrostic, I gave myself the additional constraint of using a maximum of three words per line. Oh, and Beale Street is a famous landmark of Memphis, Tennesee.

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The twice-told words:

I never knew what’s who the why of schizophrenia
Mortality uncoils just when the route is getting scenic
Plumbago blue and roses red make violet–it’s neat
Rejoiced in Soda Pop since I was knee-high to a Nehi
One of billions–carbonation China to Ohio
Vinegar and baking soda foam up like Orion

Notes

Two things I want to say about the image. One: the near-sphere in the middle that the guy with the clipboard is either standing on or projected from is a duodecahedron, one of the five “regular solids” whose every facet is some polygon. (The tetrahedron and the cube are two other Regular Solids.) Two: I much enjoyed depicting a cat and a woman sharing a halo.

One more thing

My girlfriend’s son, Sean Wegner, has a birthday today. I did a page on him celebrating not only his birthday but also his deep abiding love for baseball. Several teams are mentioned in this quadruple acrostic…

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Here are the words:

As aggression & madness hit home hard & bad
And the fact of the madder: insanity’s sad

Nonetheless we have need of the fight-or-flight urge
Near the dangerous nexus adrenals must splurge

And we’re grateful whilst passing this trail of tears
Agile minds are elastic & friends give 3 cheers

Pick a challenge: adapt and bid Fate do her worst
Ply a cause be adoptive grow hearts fit to burst

Esoteric & oleoresinous G R A I N
Estée-Laundering cheesiness works as a strain

Thus a madness once nasty becomes just plain silly
Take your fun while it’s tasty and run like a filly

Here are some notes:

An Anapest is a measure of meter with two unstressed syllables and then one stressed. “May this sentence exemplify anapest feet.” is a line of anapest tetrameter, that is, one line is four anapestic feet long. Perhaps the most famous example of anapest tetrameter is attributed to Clement Clark Moore, who began “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” thus: “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house/Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

The acrostic is a riff on “Manifest Destiny,” a philosophy akin to “Conquer we must/If our cause it is just.” I think Manifest Destiny has had its day, and needs to not eat it too. I like Anapest Destiny a lot better: let us strive to be Poets.

“Estée Laundering” will be familiar to American fashion-conscious folk as derivative of Estée Lauder, the makeup magnate who lived to be 97 years old and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush in 2004, the year she died. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award an American can receive. A question I pose to you, dear reader: do you find my reference to Ms. Lauder complimentary?

Anyone else want to play? Here is a page that has been a Work In Progress for about two years. I intend to finish it in two days or less.

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Suggestion: print it out and draw silly stuff in the panels, or let a youngster color it. Then try to fit some words in there that go with the letters already there. Think of it as a puzzle with whatever rules you want to use for it. Hope you have fun!

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Here are the words:

Labral tear tears algorithmic swaths against purr forming
And her fans w/oogs & aarghs feel empathetic trauma
Dancing w.abandon & an edge is OW so warming
Yanked off-tour & yanked O.R.ward is a Lady’s drama

Here are some notes:

In a previous post I posted a postscript to my blog post with an “Anyone else want to play?” skeleton of a future post. (Yes, there were five occurrences of “post” just now. Have some Post Toasties and bear with me…) The skeleton looked like this:

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I thought “Lady Gaga” would be an ideal starter kit for a fledgling acrostic poet. Alas, no one responded. Perhaps the ice-cream-truck-looking panel array or the internal lower-case additional acrostic elements put prospective acrosticists off. And who has the time nowadays?

Then it fell to me to complete the page. Knowing little about Lady Gaga beyond the notorious Meat Dress, “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance,” I took to Wikipedia, and then her official website, for background–and found she’d just had hip surgery. Also found she’s a philanthropist and, admirably, an avid anti-bullying advocate.

I wish I had done her justice. Alas, I think this page misfires to some extent. I now see her as a sort of Super Skrull of a modern female music icon, amalgamating characteristics of Cher, Bette Midler, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett, Madonna, Avril Lavigne, and Pink–and maybe Billie Holiday as well.

I wish you well, Lady Gaga, and I hope you’re back on stage soon.

Anyone else want to play?

Writing anapestically is as easy as waltzing. perhaps it is your…

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