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Cats are bloodthirsty and duplicitous. They will disembowel their played-with prey without a care, and five minutes later act the innocent in your lap, their purr-motor set to Lull. But you gotta love ’em.

My friend and fellow blogger Michel Lamontagne once praised my predacious-cat drawings, and so I hope he likes this one; it might not have happened but for his kindly comment.

The words:

Penelope June also answered to Peej
Uganda D. Mouser was fond of the bijou
Rough Justice was dealt twixt boudoir & foyer
Remains to be seen? Maybe so–not today

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Three posts ago I quoted Carly Simon. I then realized that her name might make a doable double acrostic, and that I’d been smitten by her since the mid-70s, and that her spirit is ageless and enduring. Then I struggled for days. I could well struggle more, but I will never do her justice, so I rely on the adage “A work of art is never finished; it is only abandoned” and abandon ship.

The phrase “slow-sculpted as a Bonsai” is a tip of the hat to Theodore Sturgeon and his “Slow Sculpture,” which is just as much a prose poem as a humdinger of a science fiction story.

The words:

Cheerful-mouthed, hopeful-eyed, ageless
Angel-voiced, scalpel-witted, slow-sculpted as a Bonsai
Romance-hearted, nimble-lyricked, at home in the boardroom & on the farm
Lovingly maternal & brimming w/brio
YES!!! is the answer, You LIKE her? the question

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The Devil exists in my heart, thanks mostly to tales told me in my early childhood. He used to scare the Bejeezus out of me, but no more. Some of our fellow world citizens are far, far scarier than the so-called “Prince of Darkness.”

The Devil went down to Georgia, but before he did that he hobnobbed with such as Daniel “Denial” Webster and Alistair Crowley.

The translation of “Satan,” I am told, is “Adversary.” There is inherent wisdom in this, I think. Let us all avoid adversarial relationships.

With my epigram I tip my hat to the Rolling Stones and their two bad boys. See THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST for more info.

Harlan Ellison wrote a long story, “The Deathbird,” that among other things attempted to demonstrate how Satan got a bum rap, with cards stacked against him (until, ironically, Nathan Stack happened along).

The words:

Just an Adversary? He is K I L L E R on the bass
One whose taste in lingerie leans heavily on lace
Underwordly by nature not quick to condemn
Relishing those ladies who would be by him begemm’d

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Well, friends, my drawing’s a bit muddy today. I will blame it on the affliction I’ve alluded to previously. No Acrostic today either. But Tomorrow…

Big thanks to Magic Mary M, and to Wikipedia, the royalty-free beneficent dispenser of information textual and imageric.

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One of my favorite songs is “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. It has many memorable lines. The one that most catches my breath is “I had some dreams; they were clouds in my coffee…”

Yesterday I spent two and a half hours in an Urgent Care Center. A subcutaneous horde of nastiness had marched north and south of my right elbow, making its presence known with swelling sufficient to unknuckle three knuckles of my hand, and a flaring pink-red that sought my heart. So there is no acrostic poem to go with the drawing, and the drawing is doubly sketchy. But today is another day.

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Just this minute I did an Internet search on Syria. Floating to the top was the headline “In Syria, Anger and Mockery as Obama Delays Plan.” Dare Ya, Dare Ya, DOUBLE Dare Ya–which is about at the same level of maturity as Now Look What You Made Me Do.

For fifty years, intervention has been a colossal failure. Treating a symptom often does nothing for the disease–and with such as insecticides and 9/11, it exacerbates.

So here is yet another never-does-any-good-but-I-gotta Anti-War message. Standing up to be counted is important for everyone, though almost valueless as a tool for change.

Here are the words:

THE WAR OF MADNESS, AND VICE VERSA

7th Street has traffic lights some amber
There’s an antechamber bright & fissile
How the jackals howl to hear a panther hum
Eventide brings humming of a missile
Magistrates may murmur of chrysanthemum
But their yen: a limbered-up Haboob
Ebb tide brings its jetsammed torpid tube
Ridges are a favored place to clamber

The words only make sense as metaphor. They do make more sense than what is happening in battlefields past, present and future.

One of the largest collections of my ceramic works is within these walls. I am a houseguest here for another fourteen hours or so. My host acquired my works through purchase at various art shows and art sales, but mostly through my gifting of them. She has given them a good home.

Here are a few of them:

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Properly cared for, ceramic creations can last thousands of years. It gives me a peculiar comfort to know that some things of mine are receiving proper care.

It’s been a wonderful day, and now it’s time for bed: the 30th became the 31st. Good night, Night Owls!

 

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…and they are correct. I was delivered by Caesarian section fifty-nine years ago by A. Franklin, M.D. of Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, California. Two women brought me into the world: the A was for Ann or Anne (my memory is a bit sketchy).

The photo above was taken where I now type, the Burton Barr Library in Phoenix, Arizona. I came here from up north in Cottonwood expressly to see the play RENT with my beloved daughter Katharine, whom everyone calls Kate. That will be at the Phoenix Theatre, easy walking distance from here.

The drawing I hold is the one my readers most told me to complete (see previous post “More from the Unfinished Vault”). It is of Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing with great joy, or, at the very least, seeming to.

The words:

Rattling the rafters & raising the roof
Intricate steps is the way of the hoofer
Train with your partner till you got it made
AH to be DANCING unfettered unstayed

So far this birthday has been great fun. I hope to make another post before the day is done.

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Last November I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I wrote over fifty thousand words under the title AULD LANG SYNAPSE, which was about the creation and use of nanotechnologized dust that made it possible for people to switch bodies via wireless synaptic exchange. The novel is still a disorganized, unfocused mess, but I liked a minor character who called himself the Mighty Eater of Food, and here I make a superhero out of him. (EATING as a superpower? You think that’s ridiculous? I invite you to do an internet search on Matter-Eater Lad, late of the Legion of Super-Heroes.)

Lately I’ve been dwelling on my own struggles with weight control (“Belly-Worshipper!” I trash-talk myself with scornful “stinkin thinkin”), and recently wrote a mock children’s song called “Gobble Gobble Gobble.” This is part of that tapestry.

I threw in an additional challenge to my triple-acrosticization, and demanded that each line contain a pun on a color. Why? Well, it’s my contention that many art innovations are arbitrary and/or newness for the sake of newness. But once you decide to do it, do it as best you can.

The words:

EH! Don’t want to con-fuschia
EW! I’ll TEAL ya–let’s climb
Now! Rosed Tuckling is crucial
NEXT: to Beiging–sub-Lime