Here is a poem I wrote some months ago, rhymed, metered, but not acrosticized. I trust anyone involved in social media will recognize certain tropes…and I hope my calligraphy precludes the need for transcription.
A popular conversation-opener at Unit VI Elementary in the mid-60s was “Remember the Twilight Zone where…” The Twilight Zone was the gold standard of Cool TV Shows. How tragic that its creator, narrator, and author of the majority of its episodes, Rod Serling, died long before his hair turned completely gray. He would have been Serling Silver.
The sad fact is that Rod Serling was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes and work, work, work. He died in a hospital of a different kind of broken heart. But his family life, as described by his daughter, Anne Serling, was rich with love and high good humor. I’ve just read an advance copy of Anne’s memoir, AS I KNEW HIM: MY DAD, ROD SERLING, and good Heavens, I wish I had met and known him. Read the book, which is heartily endorsed by Carol Burnett, Robert Redford, and Betty White, and you too will wish my wish.
Appropriately for a page dedicated to the six-Emmy-award-winning creator of The Twilight Zone, I write this at 4:14 AM local time.
At the upper right is an ersatz Twilight Zone intro, which, if you’re a fan of the show, you will not be able to read without hearing Mr. Serling’s unforgettable narrative voice.
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Risky business, television–hey, ask a man who knows
O those censored teleplays–the jerks would predispose
Dimwits dumbing down unto a low denominator
Mangled messages with wounds so often proving fatal
Ah, but this man persevered with WORK fulfilling wishing–in
Noting his sad passing we must add that he’s gone fishing
Many years ago, in Mr. Richmond’s Senior English class at Glendale High School, I wrote an essay in which I admitted knowing almost nothing about the subject. Milnor Richmond, in his profound wisdom, circled the admission in red and wrote “Don’t admit it.” I have never forgotten that…
…but I haven’t always taken his advice, literally, literarily, or figuratively. About this page I wish to admit that it has serious flaws. It doesn’t say all that much; what it has to say is confusing; and the face that is supposed to represent Rage doesn’t: it just looks like a guy about to sneeze.
All that said, I don’t think the page is a waste of time to look at. As another wise teacher, Darlene Goto, former Drawing & Composition instructor at Glendale Community College, would often say to a student, “It has possibilities.” I am creatively arrogant enough to say that if I ever take a decent amount of time to realize the page’s possibilities, I’ll have a text/image for the ages. (Now I hear Mr. Richmond’s gravelly voice saying, “Don’t declaim it.”)
Hear are the words to the two acrostics:
Cold fury’s touch will sear
A blast of HATE is near–a
Lunatic–don’t beg
Methinks Fate will renege
Thoughtful speculators dream
Essays to assay a meme
Many wingbeats tax a swan
Pray consult a clairvoyant [French pronunciation, not American]
End with panicked dash, mach schnell–a
Runaround leaves us unwell
In grade school they hit us with Nationalism, and they hit us hard. We pledged allegiance to the flag, and then we marched in place to “You’re a grand old flag/You’re a high-flying flag/And forever in peace may you wave/You’re the emblem of/The land I love/The home of the free and the brave…” The song later boasted “where there’s never a boast or a brag…”
Miss Heath, the pouter-pigeon of a Chorus teacher, wasn’t done with us yet. Here’s one she played so many times I still remember it 50 years later, though I’ve never heard it since:
This is my country,
Land of my birth;
This is my country,
Grandest on Earth.
I pledge thee my allegiance,
America the Bold,
For this is my country
To have and to hoooooooold!
So what’s wrong with a little patriotic zeal? Well, it perpetuates Us as opposed to Them. And, folks, we’re all of us on Earth in the same leaky boat right now. We have much to do, we world citizens, or, say most climate scientists of repute, things are going to get tipping-point uninhabitable before this century’s end.
My modest proposal, implied via my latest journal page, is that we change focus.
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Notorious illusions make us fear
And nictitate our vision–make unsclera
The blinding process yields an idiot
Invading Homeland’s soul & presidio
Oppression strikes peones y patrón
Nulls personality with harsh persona
And M I C R O —L O C A L I Z E S commonweal
Let’s focus on Cassatt & Ming & Schiele
Faithful readers will recall “Li’l Universe,” a clay sculpture I offered for delectation about a half dozen posts ago. The faithfullest reader of all, Monsieur Michel Lamontagne of Canada, whimsically and delightfully created an image of an alien creature “misusing” Li’l Universe at a bowling alley. So this post is dedicated to him.
The big sister of Li’l Universe is much closer to bowling-ball size than her kid sibling, though still marginally shy of regulation size. In the photo above I’ve included one of my “business” cards, measuring 2 inches by 3-1/2 inches (approximately 50mm x 75mm if memory serves, Michel), to show scale. I also took a couple of webcam selfies, thus:
So, friend Michel, there you have it. May your Byworld sojourns lead you to ever more fulfilling creative endeavor!
Unfortunately, when you illustrate Disarray with a text component, the text become nigh-impossible to read. That’s why I’m grateful for the annotative aspect of blogging–I can provide the text in readable format, thus:
Discussion’s fine if density goes SHEER
It helps when once-opacity turns clear
Still: bubbles effervesce in Perrier
And NOW is quickly LOST in yester-day
Does it seem random? (Note to historians of the future: in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the word “random” developed a pejorative connotation.) I’d like to point out that Disarraneous rhymes with Miscellaneous.
Why are there three Rs in my Disarrray? Just seemed right.
This page has an odd provenance: I’d just eaten French toast. There was a puddle of butter/syrup on the plate. A bagel was available to sop it up (Goodness GRACIOUS, what a Glutton), but the puddle didn’t want to cooperate. Then I remembered that magic of physics known as Capillary Action, and set two bagel-quarters inside-down and waited; lo, they did absorb. This led me to read up on Capillary Action via Wikipedia, and that led to lacrimal ducts, and acrostic compulsion led to Lacrimal Ductwork.
The acrostic defies pure rhyming, but the first thing that occurred to me was that “you” rhymes with the “goût” of the French expression “chacun à son goût,” which may be translated to “each to his own.” Then the first line sprang to be, but the third line could only be near-rhymed, and, Heaven help me, I could not resist trying “hermaphroditic.” This led to thinking about how Man’s Inhumanity to Man might be cured with androgyny (anyone under forty read THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. LeGuin?), and then the poem pushed me aside completely and wrote itself.
Here are the words:
LIQUIDITY may not need Liquid
And TRAGEDY may not need U
CAUSALITY’s hermaphroditic
RIGHTEOUS? Chacun à son goût.
IDEALLY we’d never kow-tow
MISANTHROPY makes us so do
ANDROGYNY’s a higher power
LUCIDITY unkinks a Kook
I don’t think it’s too much a stretch to relate all this to Lacrimal Ductwork, which involves Crying.
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Happily en route to Appalachia
Evergreen Adventuress’s job
Raconteuse with nary wail nor sob
Earning fine time being gently-laughin’-ey
It was unusual panhandling. Most often I’ve been tapped for money; sometimes I was hit up for a bus pass or transfer. This is the first time I was asked to purchase and donate multiple vitamins.
I am not an easy touch. My younger brother had more than one bout of homelessness, and had his HOMELESS/HUNGRY/PLEASE HELP cardboard sign; yet on at least one occasion he told me NOT to give money to some cardboard-signers unless I wanted to enable their continued hard-drug use. Also, I am congenitally stingy–might as well own up. But here I had an opportunity to get something in return. The vitamins were $12.99 plus tax; I think I got my money’s worth.
Anybody in the Etherverse want to render their opinion about panhandling, this one in particular or generally? Here’s your chance!
In 1977 I did a paper for my Human Factors in Engineering class; its title was “Work’s End.” In it I predicted that, given the advent of industrial robots and the mundanity and ignobility of conventional blue-collar toil, manual labor and “work” in the conventional sense would not last the century. The instructor, University of Arizona professor Russell Ferrell, annotated the B grade he gave my paper with his impression that though my premise was interesting, he didn’t think we’d get all the bugs out of “the Problem of Production” by my deadline.
And here it is, 2013, and part of my current job is folding napkins for an independent-living retirement community, and I am glad I was wrong. Of the many ways to render aid and comfort to the aged, hand-folding napkins to enhance their dining experience is seemingly trifling, but circumstantial evidence that they are special. I feel privileged to fold those hundred per night. They are a lovely purple, which also connotes the specialness of royalty. (I’ve color-enhanced my drawing to make it match that hue as close as I can.)
I imagine some readers smiling and thinking how pathetic this particular napkin-folder must be, trying to make such a drab endeavor out to be noble. I stand by my notion.
Here are the words to the acrostic, changing the spelling of UFO to its phonetic pronunciation to avoid confusion:
Nimble Jack, be deft–don’t goof
As e l u s i v e as an Oof-O
Perfect crease ain’t taught in school
Knappa: foe from Chester Gould
If i n e p t i t u d e ‘ s severe
Nab some cloth & dry a tear
NOTE: Chester Gould was the cartoonist who created Dick Tracy. He also created a multitude of bizarre characters–see the Warren Beatty movie Dick Tracy for samples. Here I’ve imagined Knappa, a villain who employs napkins in the binding of his kidnapping victims.
I hope the subtext of my page and these notes comes across, but I’m not proud: let me explicate. We are all headed for old age, if we’re lucky. We all need taking care of, and we get it, if we’re lucky. Part of being taken care of is life’s assurance that we deserve attention and dignity. The little touches of assurance may loom as large as the big ones, especially for people facing mortality.
Meteorologists are now naming storms as well as hurricanes. Consequently I heard tell a few days ago of Winter Storm Zeus, and I liked the challenge of a six-five-four triple acrostic, to wit:
Wind-whipt humans cry Puh-Leez
In this twistered ride to Oz
Its effect of vortexed cause
Nebulized your souls to seize
No telling what cold games ensue
Tell smiling Gérard Depardieu
Take S H E L T E R–esta eres tu
E X E U N T on trembling knees
Ever, I S O M E R I C laws
Relent to Ancient Mother’s jaws
Cold page–warm heart. Honest!
One with Clay, Image and Text 