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… because it is a Mars/Soupy/Al (Marsupial).

In a lifetime of concocting horrible puns, this is one of the worst. As far as I know, the planet Mars and Soupy Sales and Al Pacino have never before been linked to such nefarious purpose.

The text of this triple acrostic is nigh-impossible to read, doing as it does Loop-the-Loops with internally-repeating text strings, so here is a plain-text transcription:

My Mephistopheles has an Agenda
Mmmost unmysterious–yet an enigma
My bane is mucilaginous pudenda
My oddities extend to the 6th sigma

And if by chance I riff a lot, my VISA
Augmented by demented tours of ASIA
And psychical applause from Mona Lisa
Agrees then to succumb to Euthanasia

Responding to despondent plaintive plea
Retributive spare parties hunt the Fauna
Responsible for plaguing Earth and Sea
Repeatedly whipped-creamedly with Sauna

Spawn-taneously we may Breed until
Symp symphony then contraceives our Will

Fans of the Sonnet will note that this is one such: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, Shakespearean rhyme scheme, concluding final couplet. In my immodest and self-aggrandizing opinion, no one else on Earth could have written a triple acrostic, the letter lengths of which are three/five/two, with a metaphor of such stick-together oddness summed up by the punned acrostic, cleaving to sonnet parameters, with a Zero Population Growth message embedded. Plus it has Loop-the-Loop calligraphy and loopy illustrations. Hope you like it!

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Here is a page based on what a brief quotation from James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE was based on. For the Thought, I include one of Maxwell’s equations (with a boost from Gauss’s Law); the Word is from my hero Groucho Marx; and the Deed is a crude re-enactment of a portion of the journey that culminated in humanity’s first (hu)manned trip to the Moon. The seemingly-random-but-not juxtaposition is an odd tip of the hat to Joyce, who juxtaposed like crazy, and crazily, in FW. For another hat-tip to him, here’s this:

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Lastly, here’s a tip of the hat to Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss mentioned above, possibly the ablest mathematician who ever lived.

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Consider: ballad, folk rock, ska, calypso
And if your voice sucks Buttermilk–O.K
Ridiculousness serves to fix&flip woe
You need a playlist laced w/FUN today
One hopes one’s thirst 4 ☆dom may B slak’d
Konsumed on Kaiser rolls w/extra mayo
Enjoy the Sturm und Drang w/out a break
Yet–get ME to perform? no freakin way

Such are the “lyrics” to this “music”:

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And the last line is a bit of a fib. Karaoke-like, when I was a featured poet at Caffeine Corridor in June of 2012, my girlfriend and I performed “Suddenly Seymour” from the play/film LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. My vocal talents are meager, and I warned the audience that I would not hit the high note. Miraculously, though, I did hit the high note; ironically, it occurred with the word “can” in the line “Yes, you caaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” And the moral of the story is Try, though you think you may fail, for some happy time you Can..

The acrostic pokes fun at the American pronunciation of the Japanese word “karaoke.” Instead of “car are oh keh” we say “cary okey.” As Robert Frost says, “Thus Eden came to grief.”

Today’s journal page is based on a photo of two of my ceramic birds, which in turn were based on vessels I threw on the potter’s wheel. There is something meta-ish about doing a drawing of a sculpture, but I also found it exciting to be intimately familiar with the forms I was drawing, having sculpted them: I could ignore the visual and enhance the tactile, and it would not ring false. I KNEW these birds.

Here is the page:

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And here is the photo it derives from, of my two bird sculptures:

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It’s plain to see I took great liberties with the image. I might have felt less free to do so were the sculptures someone else’s creation.

At Glendale High School, in Glendale, Arizona, the band of choice for the Friday dance was The Factory, Their drum kit was painted psychedelicately, and looked great under black light. Their cover of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (Vanilla Fudge style, not Supremes style) was, no lie, EPIC.

And it still is, more than forty years later! Listening to them at the Glendale 100-year reunion, in December of 2011, was like a trip in the Way-Back Machine.

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My latest journal page is topped with “NOTE: If you can figure out what the letters stand for, this page may make sense.” Below that is a series of panels, each with a set of letters and something the letters are illustrating; and below that, in acrostic array, are these words:

Bees sting; scars form — it’s sad
Be strong they say — too bad
Right wrong/go stop/cop plea
Ruled out/on task/at sea
It’s tough to mend w/cheer
In times of melting fear
Gethsemane was stark
Gardena leaves a mark
How we best cope is known
Here ’tis: DON’T roll your own
Take givens in their stride
Toss acorns Far & Wide
Empathic ENTITIES
Need need’s array — it frees

One other word in square brackets, [also], is there.

Below the acrostic is my signature and date.

I so hope someone in the Blogoverse figures out what the letters stand for!

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Ten minutes ago it was Yesterday, when I did a journal page on the Bar-Tailed Godwit, a bird with an incredible non-stop migratory range. Here is the page:

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Earlier, my lovely and lively Girlfriend, Denise, and I stopped by the Village Gallery, where my work is on display. I dusted, rearranged, and added a bowl and an odd tiny relief sculpture of a warped clothespin. Here I am standing beside my humble rack of wares, dustcloth in hand:Image

It was a good, restful day. Hope yours is the same!

 

My path to acrostic poetry began when I was twelve years old, and a Dell Crossword Puzzles book cost thirty-five cents. The book wasn’t all crossword puzzles. My favorite feature was Solicross, where they gave you a nine-by-nine grid and put a circle in one of the squares, blacked out three others, put point values on the rest, gave you a letter list, and let you go to town. It is quite similar to Scrabble, but a Scrabble grid is 15 by 15.

So here’s to Solicross (property of Dell), and to Scrabble (property of Hasbro). Long may they wave!

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Yesterday I attempted portraiture of Anne Hathaway and was not too successful, in my own estimation. As a portraitist I have my good days and not so muches. But “try, try again” I shall, just as I did with James Baldwin on two way back when occasions:

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