Archive

Tag Archives: acrostic

Full Deck/Fool Deck

November 6, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

001

Once, long ago, Arthur C. Clarke was challenged to write an entire science fiction story on a postcard. He succeeded with his usual panache. I won’t spoil the story for you–I’ll just invite you to read what I was delighted to find online: http://www.postcardshorts.com/Quarantine_Arthur_C_Clarke.html

There’s a lady who lives where I work who is encouraging me to learn how to play contract bridge, simply because I saw her and her friends at it and mentioned that I wished I had learned. She showed up at the desk with a volume by the Master, Charles Goren, as thick as the metro Phoenix phone book we had in the kitchen when I was a kid. After a couple of weeks I got up to page 8 in Mr. Goren’s book. Perhaps it is not meant to be.

Here are the words to the quadruple acrostic:

For Brother Mordfael’s timeless road
Uncounted Eons may implode
Less fictive cohorts’ bric-a-brac
Lets crackling cards run in a pack

into each life

November 5, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

001

“Into each life a little rain must fall.” Thank Goodness for such unparched earth as results.

The triple acrostic was tricky when I added the stricture of keeping the total word count under 25. It comes in at 23 when you include the acrostic words. Rhyming L and I didn’t happen, though it could’ve if I could’ve worked in Bain de Soleil and Feng Shui. Didn’t, because a) I’d already done that with another acrostic and b) the far more important fact that it would’ve been nonsensical.

Here’s the four-line, triple, 23-total-words, only-one-of-the-couplets-rhymes-well acrostic:

invigorate your wherewithal
now add a dash of calamari
to generate a cleft motif
of mr. bosch and ms. o’keeffe

Disputatious Desperations

October 28, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

The theme of this spot-welded image and acrostic poem is that it’s a crying shame when evangelical parasites use deific archetypes to bleed believers dry. It is an old, old message, but it still needs to be told, based on what I saw on certain TV channels when I was working graveyard this year. I hope I have told it in a new, engaging way. I hope also that it is not viewed as a slam against any particular creed–just of the ghouls who use the faith of innocents to further their base ends.

The iambic-septameter double acrostic goes like this:

Decisions made by A will leave B’s dreams unrealized
Incentivizing dalliance so often proves unwise
Suspension of one’s disbelief seems currency for bliss
Propinquity of doom will shrink contentment to a wisp
Upending some unending preconceptions on a dare
Takes chutzpah and charisma and a messianic flair
Alliterative declarations guarantee a yea
Tumultuous extravaganzas untrue a parfait
Inside insane aquaria there’s no need to be koi
Osmundium earth’s rarest when it’s found in an arroyo
Unctilio if left unchecked defrauds the citizen
Sedition-sanctified denial scratches up the lens

002

sudsy logorrheic psoitic happiness

October 28, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

Suppose you sustain a groin injury. Suggestion: STOP Sustaining it. Overrule it! Get in a tub full of hot water saturated with bubble bath powder. Talk your head off about your unreasonable dreams. Soak–and sure as Annie Oakley’s aim, Happiness will visit you. But That’s Not All! SOPH of One Tree Hill will magically arrive–then URSA from Superman II–then a package specified DROP SHIP, direct from the manufacturer–and finally, Bigfoot the YETI herself! (What–you thought she was a he?!) Four words properly aligned thus yield five words, 60% of which refer to beautiful females. For indeed, Ms. Yeti is beautiful. Prepare to die if you tell her she isn’t.

Relation Ship

October 26, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

Less than an hour ago “In a relationship” became “In a domestic partnership” in my Facebook settings. Some hours earlier my partner, Denise, made a lovely blog post, about our trip to the Pinetop-Lakeside area, in which she referred to “My partner, Gary.” (Here’s a link to that post: http://aintnoninny.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/autumn-in-the-white-mountains-apache-country/ ) So we have made our partnership semi-online-official.

I liked the idea of slicing Relationship into Relation Ship. Sometimes there is a ship to steer, and for sure there will be chopwater, sandbars and squalls to navigate. Much depends on choices of battles or compromises, the rheostat setting of respect, and the prioritization. Denise and I have a long way to go. But we have come a long way together as well, and love is there.

Here are the words to the double acrostic:

Retro-fitting tastes & likes
Efforts, ventures, dips & spikes
Leaves a couple mixed to match
Applesauce with kaffeeklatsch
Tenderness & tetrazzini
Intimacy conjures djinni
Offline lovers loop the loop
Nestled in the Primal Soup

Duodecahedron (Not Safe For Work)

October 25, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

A duodecahedron is a twelve-faceted figure, each facet of which is a pentagon. It is one of five volumes possible in our Universe that has sides made up of the same “regular polygon” (sides of equal length and interior angles all equal). The other four “Platonic solids” are the tetrahedron (four facets), the octahedron (eight facets), the ocosahedron (twenty facets) and the hexahedron (six facets). The hexahedron is much more commonly known as the cube. And the duodecahedron is much more commonly known as the dodecahedron.

HEY, WAKE UP!!! That goes for me too. Sorry to throw such dense Solid Geometry into the mix so early, when the subject really is Testicles.

Testicles occur mostly in males. They are responsible for the manufacture of DNA-headed wiggling bioforms known as spermatozoa. Figuratively, Testicles are a symbol for male bravery, integrity, and effrontery. The word testimony is rumored to derive from the notion that in Roman courts, witnesses swore, not on their honor, but on their manhood. The hand that in American courts goes on the Bible went, so the rumor goes, elsewhere when a witness was sworn in.

In my drawing, the fellow in the tuxedo standing on one of the facets of the duodecahedron, looking somewhat like Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, only with a goatee and a number of girls clinging to him, is Valley of the Sun poet and impresario Ernesto Moncada. He is also known as “Ernasty.” I have drawn him to metaphorize the idea that he is a Chick Magnet.

Ernesto showed up on my drawing unexpectedly, but as it turns out he is absolutely essential to this image/text. Some years ago at a poetry reading I saw Ernesto recite and perform a lengthy Paean of Praise to, of all things, his testicles. Cojones. Huevos. Balls. He rang many changes on descriptions of his testicles, and you could almost hear them clang. He had the audience laughing, gasping, and OMGing uncontrollably. His performance compelled me to do a page on him with the double acrostic ERNESTO MONCADA/THE POTENT FORCE. Interested parties will find the page in my chapbook LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona (Vol. I).

Years later, this morning in fact, I imagined a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA starring my colleague in poetic ribaldry. It would be called BRING ME THE BALLS OF ERNESTO MONCADA. You might say that with this page I have brought them to you, and to the world. World, you’re welcome.

Words:

Difficult whilst dining on a plate of fresh Fatoosh
Underwriting policies & playing Scaramouche
Omnipresence brings with it a need to act unscripted
Dune & Brashstreet now require a qualified encrypter
Evangelicals still YES! as skeptics NO! NO! NO!
Custom-facet everyone & all will be très bon

Micromanagement (Blast from the Past)

October 21, 2014
Uncategorized
4 Comments

Here’s a sonnet from 2008 based on a managerial nightmare I lived through in 1996. I had just gotten to the point when I could look back with amusement on those days when I’d wake up five days a week grinding my teeth and dreading the workday to come. It took 12 years, but it took well. [smile]

Meticulousness runs from stem to sternum
In certain Middle Magistrates. Such folk
Cry foul at Boo-Boos soon as they discern ’em;
Reek of their daily egg whites–that’s no yolk.
Of course they trust their hardcase reputation’ll
Manipulate their workers to docility.
Alas, instead, Psychosis Motivational
Nit-Pickery makes flare into Hostility.
An agile Agitator’s often stepped in
Gainsaying claims of fairness by The Boss;
Emotions sizzle–nuance may have crept in–
Mud, slung in haste, wreaks Havoc, Fear & Loss.
ENsuring Workplace Harmony’s a chore–
The bossing style that wins is–Less Is More.

001

lovechild inkfield

October 19, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

003

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze.
With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn.
I courted her proudly but now she is gone,
Gone as the season she’s taken.
Bob Dylan, “Ballad in Plain D”

When you see through love’s illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While this loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool…
Jackson Browne, “Fountain of Sorrow”

It was a time I won’t forget
For the sorrow and regret
And the shape of a heart
And the shape of a heart
Jackson Browne, “In The Shape of a Heart”

The dance was good. Now let it end.
Roger Zelazny, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”

I did love a girl. Her skin it was bronze, especially when she sunned. On June 14, 1971, I fell for her hard. In January of 1979 I left her. In August of that year we went to Colorado together for a week, but things were not the same between us and would never be so again. In midsummer 1990 she called me and asked me to come see her, and I did, and it provided some closure for me, and I hope for her. In March of 1993 I did a marathon in the city where she lived (and lives), staying as a guest in her house while she stayed with her husband-to-be. I haven’t seen her since. We used to call each other on our birthdays, but we haven’t done so this century.

There’s a lot left out of the above paragraph, just as there’s a lot of detail lost in the page I scanned and selectively deresolutioned. Restored, it reveals a portrait of her very young self and a double acrostic poem based on her name. She deserves her privacy, and I need a shorter leash on my spilling-my-guts tendency. But this blog, which will be the chief trace of myself left over after my death, is intended to be holographic, and I could not leave her out of it.