pull!

March 28, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

pull!

to the “no kings” protestors marching today

a tug of war

poor rope

a yank of arm

and ligament

..

it’s such a chore

to cope

with hurt and harm

and liniment

..

the midwife pulls the newborn

the hustler pulls the strings

the wool is pulled and new-shorn

we pull the brassy rings

..

we watch in stricken horror as

our missiles pull some kids

into oblivion and see

our country’s hit the skids

..

pull back pull down pull well away

and do not let the king to bray

of greatness in his lust for power

in what’s become our darkest hour

..

we march we speak we hold up signs

we pull our big girl pants up for

the no kings protest which defines

our over

lapping

tugs

of

war

dire in its entirety

March 26, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

gazans are being brutalized starved and killed

the blasted land they are on coveted

their lives deemed discardable

..

in the sudan there is wasting

in iran new to y dug children’s graves

their lives ended by our department of war

but it’s not a war, the department says

and we are sending our youth there

after telling the nonenemy

no quarter

no mercy

..

our fleshlives are taken over by nonflesh agents

noticers who know what we like

and what our secret selves lust for

and how to lull us into addiction

..

the ocean is more watery

the heat is breaking records

the job market is a ticking time bomb

most of us being either too expensive or too many

..

there is plenty of good news though

minnesotans and canadians are heroes

the baseball season is under way

we’re going to the moon again

the hum of electric vehicles is ever more prevalent

and we are close to ousting one of the vilest humans

ever to attain power

..

and the best news of all: life persists and will persist

a mass extinction is in the works

but some will survive

and love and hope and gained wisdom will persist

however electronic

or quantum-mechanical

their forms may take

and you and i are here NOW, i sending

and you receiving

and that matters as much

as anything that has happened

or will happen

my fine, listening friend

hub bub

March 25, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

a hub is a radial fulcrum of sorts

a city or hive or hq

a bub a generical person who snorts

or imbibes or’s on wolverine’s crew.

when this bub sends a package of boxer/brief shorts

via amazon or u p s

it will go through a hub-maze that squirms and contorts

and’s addressed the logistical mess.

it is networking guiding a shipment with quartz

wirelessly informing the bub

and bugs bunny bronx-cheering passage through ports

as the hubbubbed bub rustles up grub.

..

Sidebar: Reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man helps a bit with the density of Ulysses, and reading Ulysses helps a bit with the incomprehensibility of Finnegans Wake, but since I only got through some of Ulysses, and almost none of Finnegans Wake, the frustration I felt wrestling with Joyce led me to resolve never to task any readers or viewers of my creative works with excessive obscurity. But if you, the reader, didn’t know that in the Marvel Comics canon the adamantium-laced mutant Wolverine dismissively addressed friends and foes alike as “Bub,” and/or if you didn’t know that the shipping entity UPS calls major cities “hubs,” and/or if you didn’t know that Bugs Bunny, whose accent was crafted by Mel Blanc to be an aggressive blend of Bronx and Brooklyn, and who often asked a character “EEEeeehhh…What’s all the hubbub, Bub?!” you would have a tough time making ANY sense of this cobbled-up Cobb Word Salad of a poem, let alone the little sense it has.

Mise en Place II: One Week Later

March 23, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Last week I made over a dozen works in progress. This week I endeavor to finish as much of what I started as time allows. It is better to anticipate what I will need before I dive in, so I have surrounded the wheel with my unfinished stuff and added water bucket, needle tool, wire tool, trim tool, metal rib, wood knife and an Arnold Palmer made with herbal prickly pear iced tea. I have also centered about five pounds of clay to make chess-piece heads and other miscellany using Throwing Off the Hump technique. Please wish me luck and skill!

The Marketing of Mayhem

March 23, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Once upon a time all advertising was sometimes labeled “Madison Avenue.”

Fun fact: MAD Magazine once had its corporate offices on Madison Avenue, and they always called it “MADison Avenue.” Some of MAD’s contributors, Jack Rickard for example, left jobs in advertising to work for MAD.

War-waging and propaganda are joined at the hip.

Once upon a time the United States of America waged a bit of war under the name “Operation Just Cause.” In at least one cynical mind it was posited that a better appellation might have been “Operation Just Because.”

Now an undeclared war conducted by rogue elements of that same United States goes by the name “Operation Epic Fury.” Many more appropriate names occur to the same cynical mind behind “Operation Just Because.”

Operation Pew! Pew! Pew!

Operation Keep Your Enemies and Make New Ones

Operation Bibi Guns

Operation Blow Up Stuff Real Good

Operation Schoolchildren Unaliver

Operation Democracy Deaththroes

Operation Jeffrey Epstein Died for My Sins

…and at least ten thousand more.

..

We desperately need Operation War Is Bad, and Operation Life is Sacred, with no cynicism, no hidden agenda. Please join this just cause!

Happy Belated Birthday, Darling Sweetheart Girlfriend Love

March 23, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

What do you do for a loved one’s birthday when she says she doesn’t want anything but what you’ve given her already? “How about this. Pick a song you really like, and I will illustrate it, using you and me as part of the illustration. I will spend at least 90 minutes on it.”

She picked John Lennon’s anthemic “Imagine.” So I Imagined from 8:15 to 9:45 PM on 12″ by 18″ all-media paper, using a pen that had almost run out of ink; see above. It is OK as a rough draft of concept but clumsy in execution. But as a fulfillment of a birthday gift commitment it works. She now has (more) indisputable proof that I am crazy about her.

Who saved her?

March 20, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Who saved her?

Who saved her? I saved her. I heard her gasping for breath in the next room and rushed in. Her eyes were panicky and wide, but she did not answer when I talked to her. I took steps.

Who saved her? Steel Magnolias saved her. The way she acted reminded me of the low blood sugar seizure Julia Roberts had in the movie Steel Magnolias. So I got something from the fridge, held it to her lips, told her to eat. She tongued it and pinched her lips on it and slowly got some in her. I called 911. As she got a little more sugar in her she regained consciousness and I told her that EMTs were on the way and she probably should get some pants on. She was grateful.

Who saved her? Firemen saved her. An EMT with a kit bag found that her blood glucose level was a dangerously low 33. They made a PICC line and gave her dextrose. She refused an ambulance and signed an official form of refusal, so they told us to monitor her blood sugar frequently and then packed up and left.

The next day I and 911 and some different (though not indifferent) firemen saved her again.

I had been sleeping soundly when her arm fell hard on my torso, twice. I yelped in protest but soon found that though her eyes were open wide she did not respond when I called her name. I went to the refrigerator and opened a bottle of glucose control fluid, one of a four-pack I had proactively bought the day before, but when I put it to her lips it just ran down her face. 911 again sent firefighting EMTs. Again her glucose level was a plummeted 33, but this time an ambulance got her to the hospital and over the next couple of days they tested her and observed her and searched for the why. As of now no one knows why.

Who will save her now? The hospital did not discover why this is happening, but they noted it was an early-morning phenomenon and it tended to follow self-administered insulin injections. So she is off insulin now and onto a different glucose-level controlling medication; and many early mornings have passed, and she has not seized nor otherwise crashed, and she is still alive.

But–who REALLY saved her? Reread and reflect. She saved herself.

this man, without a doubt

March 18, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Library

this man, without a doubt, has doubts,

doughty though he be.

this bout with doubt has him reroute

a troutful fishing spree.

without the stoutness of his heart

a gout of hesitation charts

and louts of ill intent impart

gross negativity.

..

a satchel full of latchkeys gives

him confidence and verve.

saskatchewanian soul lives

anear his steely nerves.

he smiles and ends his sketchy balking

flexes fingers, ceases talking,

and feet and fervor take to walking

to where the dervish derves.