Vehicular Bugslaughter

February 7, 2013
Uncategorized
3 Comments

Image

Every day billions of us doom billions of us to death via kinetic energy. Most of the death-dealers don’t give it much thought, even when they’re squeegeeing off the mortal remains of their fellow creatures from their windshields.

We are killers, yet the ghosts of what we smash (or eat, or consign to starvation through eviction, or exterminate) don’t tend to haunt us. Our factory farms make a mockery of “reverence for life.” The havoc we have wreaked (or “reeked” as above) is all the more horrific for being commonplace.

And we name some of our children Alexander, and some others David. One dealt death wholesale, one retail (not Goliath; Uriah). It is no coincidence that Anthony Burgess named the berserker of his A Clockwork Orange Alex.

Socrates is said to have said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

NOTE: Berni Wrightson and Mike Ploog are illustrators. Wrightson has worked with Stephen King, on Creepshow and The Stand and The Song of Susannah of the Dark Tower series. Ploog did some comic-book continuity in the horror genre as well; some of his panels from Werewolf by Night have been stuck in my memory for more than thirty years.

 

Grandmother’s Grand Smother

February 6, 2013
Uncategorized
4 Comments

Image

Today’s post gets a little personal. My father’s mother, whose maiden name was either Cora or Marguerite Price, and whose Uncle Arthur co-founded the city of Chandler, Arizona, left this earth in the first part of January, 1979. It wasn’t till I started this page, based on a framed photograph of her probably taken in the early 1930s, that I discovered how dark the dark side of my memory of her could get. I suppose she did the best she could, and I owe her my life, my circumstance, and a lot of my DNA; but my poor Uncle Jim (birth name: Brian Aylesworth Bowers) and my poor father (he could have signed a contract with the Chicago Cubs, and would have if he’d followed his dreams)! There is a Latin phrase, “de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est,” that I am defying here. She ruled with an iron fist in a satin glove.

Stil Life with Clay Head

February 5, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

Since we can be lovely when we’re not becoming ash
Try recording graphically your Lovely Soul to cache
Insistence on an optimistic stance–a way well led–a
LIFE-LY friendliness in showing memory’s well fed

Note: I was tempted to include a comma after “well” so that it would read “Memory’s well, fed.” I left the comma out, because it would klunkify the syllable stressification; but I invite you to consider the subtle difference in meaning.

The acrostic weighs in at thirty-five words, or forty if you include the acrostic words doing double duty. And it’s a quintuple acrostic, though a little fudgy since exact characters-per-line isn’t even close to achievement.

But it’s far from the ultimate in quintuple acrostic word economy. About four years ago I did one whose first line was “The JonQuil’d KoalA.” Three lines, a total of fifteen words–and the acrostic was TEN JACK QUEEN KING ACE. It CAN be done, my friends, and one fine day I’ll blog-post the image, which is headed by an illustration that included not only the Kee-YEWTEST li’l Koala you ever did see–and Jonquil’d to boot–but also the poker hand known as the Royal Flush. I leave it as an exercise to you, O revered Reader: which twelve words followed the first line?

Between Bell Rock and a Hard Place

February 4, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

I now live in the land of Spooky Woo-Woo, where maps of psychic vortices are available. One such vortex is rumored to be on Bell Rock, which is walking distance–LONG walking distance, but I’ve done it several times. Maybe it’s the altitude, or the stunning red-rich rock configurations, but there does seem to be something extraordinary about this place.

Invented Brunette

February 3, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

Bobby Darin wants a Dream Lover, so he don’t have to dream alone. Paul Simon says all the girls he knew in high school…would never match his Sweet Li’l Imagination. And speaking of imagination, Whitfield & Strong breaks our hearts with “When her arms enfold me/I hear her tender rhapsody/But in reality/She doesn’t even know me–Just my imagination/Running away with me…”

So about sixteen hours ago I invented a brunette, and wrote:

Isadora Theodora Glocca Morra Deb
Never met them won’t forget them hotter than a Weber [a barbecue grill]
Viva Diva Apéritiva too imprudent Pru
Each one non-historical unsung by Jacques Barzun
Netty Betty Ferlinghetti’s Muse Meg Marguerite
Though they don’t exist their Kiss is still both Tart & Sweet
Evie Stevie U.B. Levy none is 2nd best
Dante had his Beatrice I have my sweet Celeste

After I’d drawn her face, I showed it to my girlfriend, and said I’d tried to make a face I’d never seen before. Denise took about one second and then said “Illeana Douglas.” Pretty close, actually! Now I’ll be hearing that Fran Drescher-like voice for days.

Why Celeste? Because my Invented Brunette is Celestial; also, the crew of the Mary Celeste disappeared without a trace.

You Knee Verse

February 2, 2013
Uncategorized
4 Comments

Image

I don’t know what to say about this page except to describe it and tell a little of my choices.

At the top of the page are three panels labeled You, Knee and Verse. Interactive state-of-the-art does not permit me to insert an image of a given individual reader. If it did, the left panel would hold an image of YOU, the person who is reading these words. It would be the same image you would see if you dressed up and made up as you pleased and then posed in front of a full-length mirror. (Any reader who wants to please me no end is invited to fill the left panel with such an image and send the jpg of the revised page to onewithclay@hotmail.com. Really!)

The middle panel is this artist’s conception of a knee, with ancillary leg and an arrow pointing to the knee to be specific. I did not draw from a photo source, so it’s not too anatomically accurate.

The right panel contains a verse, a specific verse written by Robert Louis Stevenson and apparently intended for his epitaph. So after “This be the verse you grave for me” I made the rest of the verse epitaphesque, but it tickled me to isolate and emphasize “HOME” so the three Homes lined up. (Some readers may think it’s “home from the sea,” but I have it on good authority that “home from sea” is correct.)

My triple acrostic beneath reads:

Y’all think you can deny the Grave
Or call in MARKERS for a favor
UR-LIFE demands we pay our dues
UNoffers we cannot refuse

Fans of THE GODFATHER franchise will recognize the riff on “an offer he cannot refuse.” As for UR-LIFE, the prefix Ur means Primitive or Original.

At the bottom I’ve quoted another poet, this time Bob Dylan, from “Chimes of Freedom,” one of my favorite songs of his. “Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed/For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse/An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe/An’ we gazed upon the Chimes of Freedom flashing.”

The last thing I did was sign and date it. I took a little more care with my signature, mainly because I thought I’d done so well with the G of “Glad did I live…” It’s similar to the way George Washington made his Gs.

Any questions?

Curly Queue

February 1, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

“Ars longa, vita brevis.” That’s Latin for “Art long, life short.” But sometimes in our short life, we have to wait a seeming forever for something we want. Sometimes we have to get in a line to get it. Sometimes we have to get OURSELVES in line to get it. And some heartbreaking times we find that what we waited for, and what we behaved ourselves so pristinely for, was not quite what we wanted, or even at all what we wanted. So the next time you’re in a line, with a lot of time to kill, ask yourself: Is THIS what I REALLY want?

Blurred Visions

January 31, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

Once upon a time, a man named Lyon Sprague de Camp summed up the Propheteering game by opining, “It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.” Many years later, a charismatic charlatan named John Edward McGee Jr. truncated his name and hung his Psychic Medium shingle on the airwaves, fooling millions with “I’m seeing a J. He’s VERY important…” and similar claptrap. If you’d like to become a Psychic Medium yourself, there’s plenty of How To material on the Internet; just do a search on “Cold Reading.”

Ever since the summer of 2012 I have lived in the charming subsection of Sedona, Arizona known as the Village of Oak Creek (also known as the VOC). In this beautiful rock-formationed land there is much belief in the supernormal. Last December a fellow went up Bell Rock with the publicized claim that a “space portal” was going to open up and he was going to jump in. Alas, no such portal materialized for him. It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.

The last line in the acrostic refers to Kurt Vonnegut, who was my favorite writer in the 70’s, and continued to be so in the 80’s, the 90’s, and the Aughts. In his Slaughterhouse-Five he followed every mention of death with “So it goes.” It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.

Finally, for those unfamiliar with American alphabet soup, an ATV is an All-Terrain Vehicle. I can be specific about that, since I’m no prophet.

 

Malty-tasking, Moldy-Tasking, and the Heart of the Matter

January 30, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

This has been a week of doing several things at once, as are all weeks, for all of us. But when a few things forestalled my journal paging, the word Multitasking sprang to mind, and solved my daily problem of what to journal-page about.

David and Bathsheba are mentioned, as they were, sort of, in Leonard Cohen’s melancholy anthem “Hallelujah.” (I have listened to one of k.d. lang’s versions on YouTube approximately three dozen times.) My new avatar reminds me of Cohen, and the paleness of my face thus makes me a pale imitation. I wasn’t trying to imitate him, though: that pesky software Gravatar kept bugging me for a picture. The hat was purchased on the Redondo Beach pier last spring by my girlfriend, who gave it to me; it was the Performing Poet’s Fedora I always wanted. I have only worn it in public performance a handful of times, but many people have said it looks good, so here it is.

As for the heart of the matter, it is, as always, the human heart. May yours be full and fresh.

Tycho Brahe’s Nose, and Other Work Done

January 29, 2013
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

Tycho Brahe, that great Danish astronomer, dueled and lost a chunk of his nose. The duel, according to Wikipedia, was “over the legitimacy of a mathematic formula.” After that he wore a prosthetic nose, thought to be silver or gold, but which exhumation proved to be brass. More than four hundred years later, Kim Kardashian had a nose job. Thus the two were fated to meet on one of my journal pages.

I never would have dreamed of giving Kim a gold nose, but the necessities of making a triple acrostic in Sonnet format demanded it. I also had to slop three lines over into the next line to preserve the rhyme scheme.

This is not my first foray into a discussion of enhancement for the sake of beauty. There was this, done in October of 2008:

Image

Much more recently I did a portrait of a woman whose only enhancement, far as I knew, was staying alive for a century. Her beauty stunned me. My drawing is but a rough echo:

Image

Friends, when it comes to Work Done, the best place for it is on the pages of our lives.