To V. S. G.
now i take me out to shop
the mask that Vicki made WILL STOP
the dreaded Cee Oh Vee Eye Dee
19–just stay six feet from me!
THANKS, Vicki!!!
Today our prompt is to write a poem celebrating the little nice things that get us through a day, a year, a life.
Lite Nice Ness
Let’s look at the things that give a day a bit o’ gain
It’s as small as landing safely when you’re on a plane
T‘would be mush less saucy had we not War Chest or Shires
E‘er the wee! sweet! lovelinesses spiking our desires
One of the little nicenesses that get me through a day is Bad Puns. I love making them up, and I love when other people make them up and I read them. The third line of this poem is straight out of Badpunsville. “mush less saucy” is doubly punnish. Mush could also be Much, but Mush is edible. Saucy could be either attitude or condimental. And then “War Chest or Shires” is a wretchedification of Worcestershire, which is a sauce pronounced variously as “wurrshurr” or “woostisure” or “watery brown stuff.” I won’t apologize that “War Chest or Shires” matches no known pronunciation. It is closer to the actual spelling as anything I’ve heard.
Lastly, the whole poem is a setup for a Bad Pun. Notice that the first word of every line is a contraction. “Why, Gary??” I hear you asking. SO glad you asked, Friend! (Or “Friends,” if there is still more than one of you still reading.) (Or “Is there an echo in here?” if in fact no one is left reading.) The reason every first word is festooned with an apostrophe is answerable in two words. Here they come. Don’t hate me.
“Contractual obligations.” [Bdumph/Shhhuhh] (Rimshot.)
Ah, Apostrophes!! Don’t you just love the Little Things that Get You Through Life?
This morning I was watching a video featuring the late John Prine. He was at a festival that had “Not Strictly Bluegrass” in its title. Inference says it was 2017 because Prine dedicated the song “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” to “The New Führer, Adolf Benito Trumpetini.” And bless Honest John Prine’s protest-prone heart. He certainly had Trump pegged.
Prine has gotten a lot of deserved and long-overdue attention since he contracted, and eventually succumbed to, COVID-19. His many fans may enjoy a listen to another Heaven-related song, “When I Get To Heaven,” which begins with these spoken words:
“When I get to Heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand.
I’ll thank Him for more blessings than one man can stand.
Then I’ll find me a guitar, and start a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band.
And check into a swell hotel. Ain’t the Afterlife grand?”
John, this one’s for you. Wish you were here.
Over Atop
OMGDG someone call the DEA
Onward! For amazement jazzes up both alp & lea
Verily some Jameson laced your café au laît
Very Fine to Mint–remember LSMFT
Endchronic maelstromic War serves the libretto
Ectoplasmic echoes gather souls from manse to ghetto
Romper Room is OVER friends–balloon’s about to pop
Rise the fell APOCALYPSE the fullness of the stop
Today’s National Poetry Writing prompt called for a poem that featured technology that is no longer in vogue. When I saw the prompt the memory of the scent thrown off by the mimeograph at Glendale High School–of the ink and spirit developer, that second cousin of Magic Markers, liltingly aromatic–hit me in the nose, so I did a little bygone-era walkabout via Internet search, and watched a training film on mimeograph techniques courtesy of the University of California at San Diego, which in 1958 was called San Diego University.
(More Memory Laning came when the film reminded me of the sound the film projector made when in grade school and high school they showed us stuff like that. I remember in 8th Grade, Mr. Gasser showed us a film on digestion, featuring fluoroscopy after a food or drink item had been put in the mouth, and seeing the journey down the gullet to Stomachville. Hilarity ensued when Mr. Gasser ran the film backwards, and you saw stuff gradually coming up a kid’s esophagus, then consolidating in the mouth, and then you see the kid chew and chew, stick his fork in his mouth, and pull out an unchewed piece of cherry pie. Our darkened room exploded with laughter. So hey, Rudy Gasser, wherever you are–thanks for all the fun stuff like that!)
Mimeo Graph
Make a stencil/get an ink pad/paper: cotton rag
Mockup/test/& crankcrankcrank/you got it in the bag
Images come flying out, 12 dozen for a dollar
It’s a boogie-woogie noise the envy of Fats Waller
Memoranda/flyers/Hell: The History of Cholera
Maybe even comic books–Osiris Vs. (Taller) Ra
Eventually, Xerox gave the mimeos the slip
Obsolescence makes them one with petro/hieroglyph
In a previous post I did a poem intertwining Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe and Sylvia Plath. “Kip Poe Syl” lent itself to an acrostic, but I did not do one. Now I do.
Kip Poe Syl
Khartoum beckons. Reaper reckons. Lass
Keeps fiendish company as love takes pass
Into Manhood-proving fateful fray
IF NEVERMORE & Daddy go away
Pip Pip hooray Bedeviled eggs go well
Parboiled plenteously here in HELL
Day Fourteen, and here is a paste of the prompt:
“Today’s optional prompt asks you, like Alice Notley, to think about your own inspirations and forebears (whether literary or otherwise). Specifically, I challenge you today to write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. These could be poems/poets/people that you strive to be like, or even poems, poets, and people that you strive not to be like. There are as many ways to go with this prompt as there are ways to be inspired.”
So I thought of the poets, and there are too many. Then my inner acrosticist took three cards out of the Rolodex: Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sylvia Plath. All left their mark. All were driven and bedeviled and haunted. And they haunt me. I know the opening lines of “The Raven” and “Daddy” and I know all of “IF-” And Kip, Poe and Syl uniquely identify them with three letters. So there may be an Acrostic in the future…but I’m not feeling Acrosticky right now. But let’s see what happens.
Kip Poe Syl
Rudyard and Edgar and Sylvia Plath
Let us be shaped by this odd Threefold Path.
Let us get Kip for the blood and the bone,
Firmly embed in Testosterone Zone.
Poe is for Passion so darkly uncomic,
Endlessly rhymed with a beat metronomic.
Syl’s so unsilly, such willies she gives,
Pouring her hope into such porous sieves.
Put them together, you get KipPoeSyl,
Mournful and frantic as Hank’s Whippoorwill.
“Hear the lonesome Whippoorwill.
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low,
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
Hiram “Hank” Williams, Sr.
I’ve been wearing a mask when I go out. It looks like this on me:
Some people don’t wear masks going out, despite convincing evidence that they slow the spread of COVID-19. I was thinking about that when I conceived this acrostic. “Off/On” is as binary as “Doff/Don.”
It is a bit uncomfortable to wear, but Friends, I’d rather be uncomfortable than in the ultimate relaxation and comfort condition known as The Dirtnap.
Don & Doff
Danger! Cee*Oh*Vee*Eye*D
O how Bug does Dirty Deed; O
No wonder we’re put off
& can’t STAND a Scoffer’d SCOFF
purple orange yellow
pick your colors carefully
up the saturation — be
rainbow-ravished– glad and grateful
paint your canvas Joy-innateful
like a manger or gazebo
effluorescence furthers, we know
This is the year of the pandemic, and it makes for a lot of text exchanges. One such that I’ve had with my former co-worker Yuko led down a conversational path to an exchange of not just text, but images. The photo source for this drawing is one of those images. Yuko had explained that she was angry at her mother because she didn’t like the noodles she was given. A sketch, and then an acrostic poem, were born.
baby yuko
bogus noodles every day
and i’m MAD and hope that u
bring me food that is ok
yummy, sweet and tasty too
Moron Mooon
Marigolds are made to bloom
Mission phantoms bank & zoom
Orbits arc & s a g a s too
Retrograde goes to & fro
Riyadh then Kalamazoo
Overhead that so & so
OMG Behold & Lo
Needle-tufted seeds are sown
Nestling in the Great Unknown
Here, Friends, is a tiny triptych that includes this card.
One with Clay, Image and Text 