I’ve been a fan of Anne Meara since she and Jerry Stiller were on the Ed Sullivan Show as Stiller & Meara. My favorite performance of hers was in the 1980 version of FAME. Fun fact: she won a Writers Guild award.
egg
i intend today to throw
most of an egg on a potter’s wheel
and then sculpt a hummingbird
when the almost-egg is leather hard
I intend to cut its base at a bias
to give it a jaunty axial tilt
then perch the hummingbird
at its apex
absurdly out of scale
with the huge egg
it is valiantly attempting
to incubate
it may show how heroic
motherhood is
or how ridiculous
life is
the egg may have cutouts
to give it a windowed interior
or embossing
to give it a muralesque exterior
it is impossible to say yet
sometimes we just have to see
what happens
when it hatches
fyb
first you burst
from the pudendal starting gate
or were pulled into the world
by modified salad tongs
or you were sprung from amniotic limbo
via incision and extraction
(“hey, rock! watch me pull a rabbit
out of my hat!” “again?!”)
or even
as urban legend has it
you were launched by a mom
about to be t-boned by a mac truck
through the window of the doomed car
onto the soft grass
on the side of the road.
it was your birth.
you came from the there of maybe and hope
into the here of the sensate.
you have Now-What?ed your way
through a most improbable journey.
and now you have the grace and leisure
to read a few words about beginnings
from a friend.
thank you for ending up here
and now
with me,
my friend.
that’s all
but only for now.
their knight threatens but
my pawn buffers and my queen
stands ready to pounce
Here are two of my recent bird sculptures. One is glazed, one unglazed, and I may leave the unglazed one as is because it is nicely ghostlike in contrast to its mate. If my diabolical plans come to fruition, they will be worth at least $1000 US each in less than two years. But I’d be glad to sell the both of them TODAY ONLY for a grand total of $100.00 plus shipping (free delivery in the Phoenix, AZ area, though). Any interested party may either leave a comment on this post or e-mail me at onewithclay@hotmail.com. Deadline is midnight Mountain Standard Time today, May 29, 2023. Support the Arts, Friends!!
hale
memorial day is for remembrance
of soldiers who died
serving their country.
“hale” is both a description
of a person in a state of robustness
and a surname.
george washington needed a volunteer to spy
behind british lines and get intel on the brits.
captain nathan hale alone stepped up.
hale was a bright kid, a yale graduate at eighteen,
a schoolteacher at twenty. now he was a spy.
alas, he was soon recognized and ratted out.
a british soldier who witnessed hale’s death
wrote in his diary “he behaved
with great composure and resolution.”
on the gallows he supposedly said
“i only regret, that i have but one life,
to lose for my country.”
but his brother enoch asked around
and was told that nathan gave a longer,
spirited speech,
and said among other things that
if he had ten THOUSAND lives,
he would lay them ALL down for his country.
today, America’s memorial day, I think
of that bright, patriotic kid of twenty-one,
and of his courage and dignity.
National Poetry Writing Month 2023, day 7
the funny thing about sorrow
sorrow visits us all our lives
for a weekend here
and three years there
and at least a little every single minute
but it can make you laugh
as with a funeral
where the best friend of the deceased
tells funny stories
and the gathered are grateful
for laughter’s relief
and the brief escape
reliving ridiculous episodes
when you have a good cry
an ugly cry or a soft cry
it’s funny how it sometimes seems
you just had a bath or a baptism
and sins or street grit
seem to have been washed away
my mom helped my aunt zilpha cry in 1965
while kid-me watched from the next room
they were looking at letters from her brother
my grandfather
who’d been institutionalized
and died in 1963
funny how later that day
aunt zilpha was so cheery and aware
i have a little sorrow going on right now
and it’s funny how i am sort of celebrating
by not talking about it
but posting a new profile picture
with my sorrowful face on display
it is good to smile
but it is also good to cry
good to let friends know you’re not ok
but will be ok soon
and so it will be with you, my friend,
at certain times of loss,
or adverse circumstance
Shakespeare’s Falstaff said a funny thing:
“Who hath [honour]?
He who died o’ Wednesday.”
beware wednesday
says this joker
cracking wise
because sorrow
One with Clay, Image and Text 