Know This
Keepsakes are not vainly kept
Nothingness has zero depth
Out of Love came You and I
With Caresses meeting Sighs
This image and double-acrostic quatrain is from a remembrance of my favorite book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. The way I read Bridge, Wilder presented five different kinds of human love as an argument that the Universe did in fact make sense. I try to conduct my life as if that were true.
I am a disbeliever in miracles, though I have some sympathy for my late, great friend Karen W’s Course in Miracles definition of a Miracle as “a change in perception.” But Childbirth does seem miraculous, and holy, to me. It is an essence of hope. It is that fabled Death-Defying Act
That said, if a potential parent doesn’t want to have children, case closed as far as I’m concerned: they absolutely ought not to have children. There should be zero pressure from relatives, and especially there should be zero pressure from significant others, for someone who doesn’t want children to have them anyway. And Contraception ought to be vigorously employed in such cases. The “be fruitful and multiply” edict was initiated when the world population was far fewer than one billion. The more billions we add, the more overall quality of human life goes down.
Sorry about the preaching. May all the childbirths in your life be cause for joyous celebration!
off (offset) set
offspring nascent in the throes
ferment verdant purple rose
fellow mellow friend or ghost
For the entire month of September I had display space at Bookmans Entertainment Exchange, a charming emporium just north of the Northern Ave Light Rail exit, and on the 29th I was the “Meet the Artist” artist, doing free sketches and demonstrating Acrostic Poetry construction.
I also drew free sketches for customers. This lady wanted the “S” Superhero symbol. I was glad to try. When I asked her name she said “Superwoman.”
I also offered for sale merchandise that included postcards and refrigerator magnets of my artwork.
I didn’t make much money with this venture, but I think I made a ton of FUTURE money if I act on what I learned. Next time an arts or crafts fair nearby has a call for vendors, and there are no scheduling conflicts, I may just take another flying leap. 🙂
This is not my first portrait attempt with Sara. I did one for her birthday, but it wasn’t very good, though she accepted it graciously. I think I did a little better this time, but getting her just right still eludes me.
Sara, once known to me as Hydroxia Gryphon, can perform without a net, metaphorically speaking. She will without a cheat sheet face a crowd and begin singing a capella, and it sounds both spontaneous and pre-ordained. Her voice is pure and elemental, remindful of a prairie wind.
Sara Will Sing
Scent of sage wafts in the chorus
As the prairie girl sings for us./I
Really love to feel that keen
As deseert zephyrs wail and cling
This is my approximation of Patrick Hare, a mordant and acerbic Valley poet who uses his poetry to skewer cultural wrongdoers who interfere with his enjoyment of daily life. His harangue on the grocery-counter ambusher-cashiers who hit you up for a worthy-cause donation when you just want to pay for your stuff and get out is howlingly hilarious, but dark as can be and not for the squeamish. He says out loud what many of us dare not even think. But he’s a real sweetheart offstage, so I tried to say so in my acrostic:
Wild Hare
Wisteria hides a Pariah
Indignant but sweet as Papaya
Lord Snarky gives dummies What For
Delivering Takedowns galore
The superlative poet who calls herself Trish Justrish has been involved in the Valley poetry scene forever, both solo and as a member of The New Subterraneans. The last time I saw her perform, pre-pandemic, I was moved to caption a photo of her “This is Trish Justrish, whose cerebral and yet heartfelt poetry reveals a more-than-passing knowledge of certain of the sciences. You have to love a person who can wield the word Omicron effectively. You have to love her more for the layered expression on her face when she delivers the line “I KNOW you want to kiss me.” She brings a quality to the New Subterraneans that helps them be more NewTrishous.”
Doing her page got me thinking about the “Just” part of the name Trish Justrish. It does not have to mean “merely” or “ordinary.” Another definition of the adjective Just is “righteous” or “fitting” or “demonstrative of appropriate karma.” She IS righteous. Her poetry is honest, as I attempt to convey in the convolutions of my acrostic.
Trish Notjustany Trish
The words so coherent dispelling the mist
Tell thoughts that would wow a devout scientist
Rewoven reality makes to career
Reverse/hearsals juxtapose woes far and near
If heartache’s subsumed in a vain search for Pi
In fact it will wrestle on deck or lanai
Submerse in the New Subterranean blues
Set poems to paper and pay up more dues
Her work is True Blue it is not Bait & Switch
Her clear voice will stymie the false then enrich
That “Thanks, Trish!!!” I put to the left of my signature is for more than Trish’s gracious permission to do this page. I sent her an early draft of the acrostic, and it was much more ambiguous than this final version. She wrote back expressing confusion over my reference to Abercrombie & Fitch, makers of fine suits and other clothing and accessories. And she was right as rain; the obscure reference in the second-to-last line knocked the acrostic’s integrity way off plumb. Trish Justrish knows poetry, whether she is writing it or reading it. She is a cerebral wonder.
A few things happened and are happening to me in the last twelve months that are irreversible. I cannot not have had Covid, for instance. I tested positive in mid-August and went through a week and a half of fatigue and mild misery. I made the choice I was offered, to get a monoclonal antibody infusion, and now I experience what I am pretty sure are side effects from that infusion: almost every day I get an itching, especially in my hands and feet, upper arms and ankles, and every few days there is a numbness in my forearms or face as if they were wrapped in mildly electric wool. And the literature I got relating to the infusion said that there might be side effects, and itching due to anaphylaxis was mentioned.
Months before I got Covid, though, in late March, my daughter and I became estranged. No details, Friends, for privacy’s sake. But there it is, and it’s more negatively impactive than the Covid. I was hoping we’d resolve things long before now, but we may never. And she had been the most important person in my life.
And now we come to the photo above. You see a drawing I made today, and my airport and employee credentials. A little over a week ago I sent this e-mail to certain managers at SSP America, the company I work for:
****
Subject: Graceful Exit (two weeks’ notice)
Priority: Important
From: Gary Bowers
To: Jake W; Maria W; Tommy R; Linda W; William H; Lieryn J
Sent: Sep 7, 2021 4:46 PM
Dear Managerial Friends,
It is with some wistfulness and regret that I hereby tender two weeks’ notice of my exit from SSP America. I have had a thoroughly wonderful time in my five-plus years with you fine folks. But two things have become acutely obvious in recent months. The first is that the physical and logistic demands of my job with my hours are taking too much away from my creative endeavors. The second is that I am running out of time to do the many things I need to do before my time is up. I’ve just turned 67, and the meter is running.
Bless you all and thank you for all you have done for me. I have a headful of memories I will cherish always.My last day of work at SSP will be September 21, 2021, two weeks from today.
My very best regards and wishes,
Gary Bowers
Host/Cashier, Matt’s Big Breakfast
 
Here are Jake and Linda, two of the managers who got my e-mail. They are fine people to work for, and I am going to miss them terribly.
As for the drawing, it isn’t very good. I have not done much sketching since my Covid episode, and this was forced. But it seems to reflect, even in the forcedness, a sort of Yin/Yang dynamic that is part of the mix when things change.
Hell Own’d
Here&Now I am hurt so
Even snakes don’t get so low
Loss of friends & sacred kin
Leaves me lost & feeling skinn‘d
Hay Bud
Haboob
Aperçu
Yarrowstalked
“A river is never the same,” says the ancient wisdom, and so it is with our lives.
Here’s a Valley poet who’s been a part of the scene far longer than I have, going back to Willow House, which I never had the pleasure to attend. “I have dozens of Ted Christ stories,” he says with glee in his voice. I have about three Ted Christ stories. I envy Perry.
Perry and I both love both reading and concocting Bad Puns, so I threw in some Punnishment in the acrostic poem. And in a phone conversation just a few minutes ago, when I scored his permission to do this blog post, I told Perry there’d be a Bad Pun in the annotation, a mangling of a line from a Bruce Springsteen song. Asked him to try to figure it out, giving him an ETA of an hour and a half to do so before I published. But I’m going to pull a fast one and publish in far less than an hour and a half. That way Perry will rightly say that I didn’t give him enough time.
The mangled line, which will now refer to my friend and me:
“. . . Because Scamps Like Us, MAYBE we were BORN to Pun . . .”
Cheers to you, Perry Sams!!
Sams Club
Subverse in fun with kitsch & sync
And Pun in hand estop & THINK. You’ll
Meet a Queen & she will dub U
Sir Thickwicket so save your stub
My friend Manuel Paul Arenas, whom the poets of the Valley of the Sun call Manny, with his poetry and fiction tills many of the same fields as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and, last but first, Shirley Jackson. Manny’s work may be found in Spectral Realms and other…ah…spectral realms.
He is a soft-spoken and gracious man with a good, however dark, soul, and I am lucky indeed to call him Friend. When I texted him about doing this acrostic, I told Manny it might be fun to substitute “Pall” for his middle name. He texted back “Sure,” but I think he was being too nice to object. I ditched the idea, partly because there is a real apostolic quality to Manny. His Facebook video recitations have a velvety-voiced quality of arcane proselytization.
Manuel Paul Arenas
My friend explores an Area
Across the Primal barrier
Necropolyptal mise en scène
Undoes accursive Lion’s Den
Endearing ghoulish Shangri-La
Lets serve a plate of moist foie gras
tonal range
torch’s blaze to darkest char
oleo to chop-fraught sea
new-paint-glisten on a barn
amateur but p.f.g
let the graphite SMILE & be
“P.F.G. stands for Pretty Good. 🙂 And the original meaning of Amateur is someone who does something for the sheer love of doing it. I love to draw.
One with Clay, Image and Text 