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Tag Archives: acrostic poetry

Rival Rifle Revel

Rife contention roars its roar

Ignorance’ll frolic more

Voices lift from your TV [Vouching for your POV]

Advocate: Let Reggie Mantle

Let it slip–you never can tell

..

Hipshot Fishnet

Hobnobbed with a BFF

It’s a true Roman à clef–I

Paid my deus [sic] struck my poses

Salivated over roses–eh

Up comes revelation when we

Take our stage for gal & gent

..

Red E Stet Goop

Resonating syncopating

Entertainment in slo-mo

Dissipate like Perry Como

Enter storm grate and full stop

..

Done Deal

Desmond had in Molly goad

Obviously on they rode

Nanny for a reaped alfalfa

Ecumenical falafel

..

Words fail.

..

I am not a lineman for the County

Nor do I look for an overload

But between the start and end

It is hoped that I append

An Americanan footnote on this road.

..

Words fail.

for midpoint october fa la la la

a tree will exfoliate that is the law

let’s hear it for lepi then dopter then a

leave leaves to their slumber and fall up today

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pander money yum

pompous bums are acting cadly

and the world looks on so sadly

needy men from lsu

designate a parvenu

energetically some serum

rounds up yahoos to de-leer ’em

..

Title: a warpage of Pandemonium.

The Pompous Bums are certain fascistic politicians.

The regard for the United States of America has taken a tragic nosedive.

LSU may stand for something different, but Line 3 was inspired by Randy Newman’s lyric “College men from LSU/Went in dumb, come out dumb too.”

Parvenu: upstart, arriviste, someone desiring undeserved respect.

Serum: A formulation intended to correct an undesired condition.

De-leer ’em: Wipe the smugness off their faces; a warpage of Delirium.

Notional Security

Newer brainwashing commenceS

Outrage faked still bursts through fences. WE

Tend to still be fooled, you C

Influenced, we tend to B. YoU

Overcome? We tend to sigh, oR

Nestle selves on the lanaI

Acronyms DOGE and LSMFT

Linger in the mind so timelesslY

..

The battle for hearts and minds has gone both nuclear and digital. The Notions I mention in this double acrostic, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and LSMFT (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco) seem poisonous to me. A Department that leads to the end of the Voice of America, which promoted Liberty American Style, and USAID, which fought valiantly against world hunger and disease, has inefficiently cost much more than it purported to save. As for Lucky Strike meaning Fine Tobacco, the shortening of lives via lung cancer, COPD and emphysema seems far too agonizing and ugly to be fine.

You’d think we’d be more savvy after more than a century of an advertising industry based on smoke-and-mirrors deception. Alas, the Lizard portion of our brains never wises up.

My Sweetheart Donna Sue has a box of square scrap paper which I have lately found useful for doing acrostic poetry roughs. Today I did three, “Goal Post” successful enough to compel me to add a thumbnail illustration.

Goal Post

GRASP ye Soul and ye shall reaP

O for yodels oleO

As it snows so winter creepS

Leave ’em Loved. Á bientôT

..

I like the spareness/economy of “Goal Post” that nonetheless includes (with necessarily enormous gaps) an entire life cycle, even to an optimistic “see you later.”

Here are the other two, which were OK as exercises but less worthy as showpieces.

..

Deeper & Deeper

Deployed & then exploiteD

Entangled & ne’er to be freE

Erased & forgot save by ToynbeE

Prepared & embalmed while asleeP

Exacting & final, his starE

Remorseless & in situ & faiR

..

Service Surface

Seasons change. Bring on the showerS

Enter fall and maybe flU

River ruined: effluent souR

Vile a’purpose is no gooF

It’s corruption run amok–A

Con concocted here ad hoC

Ethics elsewhere–pad the LockE

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Chastise Complain Confront

CacophoniC story arC

Hiss and boO and make a mark. O

Anatomic Mocking’s fuN

Slapstick Pleases everyone. IF

Taunting Leaves a nasty scaR

It’s coarse for Adolescent par. O

Save us from Indignant shuN

Engage iNstead in kick pass punT

..

Since 2007 I have made acrostic poetry my own private playground, but it isn’t all fun and games. At times it’s a lot like trying to sculpt with a sledgehammer, with a shoehorn for a chisel. I have written a handful of these with exact rhyme and meter and (using Excel spreadsheet software) exact number of characters per line. Those were at best stilted and at worst excruciatingly bad as far as cohorence of content went.

My megalomanic goal is to become the best acrostic poet of all time. In furtherance of that goal I periodically create acrostic puzzles of great difficulty and then try to solve them. This time I took three theme-related eight-letter words starting with a C and searched for the trochaic-tetrameter lines that would as nearly possibly rhyme in couplets. To make it work I had to start the next line on the previous line.

I flatter myself to think that thousands of exercises like these have made me a hell of a poet, in a novelty-item sort of way. If not–well, it passes the time, and it’s better than Solitaire.

Photo by Donna Atkins

Here is my latest drawing. It is not finished, but the unfinished nature of the drawing may make this stage of completion superior to what would follow. I’ve dated it “October 2026” just in case I work on it some more; but after October 31st, nothing further.

I was doodle-sketching a man looking vaguely like a bald Vincent Price. He looked like he needed a friend, so I added a waifish-looking woman, scaled differently so she would fit, and that enabled me to put her right arm around his head, rather protectively.

Then came consideration of a double-acrostic poem to go with the drawing, and “Scale Model” came quickly to mind: a Model built to Scale, punnish but (I hope) not too punishing.

I have done four acrosticizations of “Scale Model” and they all miss the mark but all have merit. If I did a dozen more I’d undoubtedly be nearer the mark, but there would go another few hours. I have a few other projects trying to be done, so the ghost of Robert Frost whispers

“Oh, I marked the first for another day!/But knowing how way leads on to way,/I doubted If I should be coming back.”

Scale Model

She and he have made a team

Cast and crew are oyster-steamed–O

At the wrap they’re all redeemed

Latent talent makes the theme

Ending well means what that hell

..

Scale Model

Sally 4th 4 new gigs loom

Comes the dawn we worry so

Angst is up til we feel doom’d

Lava flows and ice ergs floe

Every set’s a grassy knoll

..

Scale Model

She is small & he’s her gem

Cowardice has made him moo

And she haws as he has hemm’d

Lady’s skein’s a villanelle

Egomaniac doth swell

..

Scale Model

Sarcasm

Cameo

Adenoid

Lagniappe

Enamel

I’ve been chipping away at this work in progress a bit at a time for about three weeks now. Today I put in a good hour and a half. It would be thrilling to be done with it by a week from today, but as always with a more ambitious work, the drawing starts taking control and making demands. That is a superb problem to have!

Fig. 1: Secretariat ° Fig. 2: Maddow, Rachel
Fig. 3: Chick &Chick Fig. 4: Din-Din

Wilhelmina wailed then wept. “I miss my Chuck,” she sighed

Ifs & thens had pierced his wherewithal like assegai

Nether Regionals he’d entered, triumphed, won, and then

Nightfall, downfall, fall from grace beyond all human ken

Ah, how swift and with a whisker passeth foofara

Human humid hayride hell & then a humbug’d bah