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Reversal Reverb

December 1, 2014
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Yesterday’s post included a page in progress, the double acrostic for which is “Reversals Rehearsal.” By sheer happenstance I put the page in a notepad from four years ago, and found to my amused startlement that back in August of 2010 I’d also done a reversal-oriented acrostic, “Rotarepo Reversal Lasrever Operator.” Here they are together, first the Then page and then the Just-Now (I finished “Reversals Rehearsal” less than three hours ago).

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002Visually the first page seems more tepid and timid than the second one. On the other hand, the second page is more sloppy and jungly than the first one.

Here is the first one’s acrostic:

Rotorepo Reversal Lasrever Operator

Ravel played–fearlessly–upon the cello
Odd glides, and gearless, like a wheeling rap
Tor/Reveals & revs and Engine with a swelled toe
Anticipating fervor from the captor
Rejoindings are from spicy to vanilla
Ecstaticburgh to Dullsville Ajo, AZ to Monserrat
Processes under the aegis of Symmetry go
Oscillantly; the bulrushes wave in the mirror

Here’s the other:

Reversals Rehearsal

Roly-poly M E C H A N I S M S make the world go rounder
Even when you’re plummeting before you hit the ground you’re
Va–RRROOOOMED aloft as gear & motor sync & then enmesh
Exogenous as a woman wearing a caleche
ROUND the buswheels ROUND the corner ROUND the Sports Arena
Schwarzchild radii describe where relatives go tweener
As the whirling world revolves a visual précis
Lets lay & learned folk alike infer a starry sea
Sometimes celestial events turn starmass hyperreal

Curious that both poems involved a revving engine. The “rev” in Reversal, perhaps?

Threefer: Vase and Page and Poem

November 30, 2014
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Today there are two works in progress and one finished. First, a vase thrown in January of 2007 gets a substratic coat of acrylic paint mixed with matte medium:

vase113014

Second, a page begun last night got another slug of composition work put into it:

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Lastly, here is a poem in the form of a note originally posted to Facebook, written in its entirety today.

cold and fuzzy in the neverafter

randomness always increases
such is the provable implication of the second law of thermodynamics
which a lot of us have heard before
and many of those usses have heard of “the heat death of the universe”
and a few of those usses can do the math

but i and most of the usses can’t even state the laws of thermodynamics
but in our wonderful 21st century we can look it up
so here’s a quick education courtesy of wikipedia
between the asterisky borders:

*****

  • Zeroth law of thermodynamics: If two systems are in thermal equilibrium respectively with a third system, they must be in thermal equilibrium with each other. This law helps define the notion of temperature.
  • First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.
  • Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the participating thermodynamic systems increases. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.
  • Third law of thermodynamics: The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero.[2] With the exception of glasses the entropy of a system at absolute zero is typically close to zero, and is equal to the log of the multiplicity of the quantum ground state.

*****

in my layman’s mind then i see a future a trillion years or so from now
where it is very cold and fuzzy
and scattered
and uninteresting
and there are no usses

but on the bright side (not that it’s bright)
there are no thems either

and on the brighter-yet side for some of us-and-now
what has happened so far is so miraculous
and surprises seem to be around every corner
that something else might be in store
even without divine intervention

but on the wet-blanket side
i for one-of-us doubt it
and wish i didn’t

falcon alulae

November 28, 2014
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There are some words that seduce the poet through ululation. Ululation is one such. Then there are uvula, Pavuvu, Honolulu–and alula.

An alula, also known as a spurious or bastard wing, is a substructure of the bird’s wing that when flexed changes the airfoil of the wings, raising the pressure differential of upside and underside airflow, which helps prevent the bird from stalling. My first encounter with this word was as a teenager reading Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Menace from Earth.” His protagonist, one Holly Jones, resident of the Moon, liked to fly using her top-of-the-line Storer-Gulls. Controls encircling her thumbs allowed her to flex her alulae.

When the happy mashup of Honolulu and a peregrine falcon showed up on my radar, I could not but celebrate with this page, which is really a celebration of the word alula and its plural alulae.

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falcon alulae

flight is pull & swoop & hula
atmosphere the crafter’s tool
lift her over honolulu
climb with her into the cool
oft aloft: the sky’s bathsheba
never stall–“thumbs” up, meine liebe

What Gave

November 26, 2014
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In some attempted creative expression the end product offers the creating party a trade, saying, “You don’t get to get me completely–I’m ungettable by my very nature–but I’ve got something you’ve never done before, and you better keep it.” I think this is one of those.

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What Gave

Wizened horseman sought a gig
Wayward daughter worked the trig
Had some talk at 8th & Shea
Hopped a plane unto LA
Added travel slow & rev
And a Stan with last name Lev
Thus the Trickster plays a fife
Tuneful of an orphan’s life

NOTE: The “Stan with last name Lev” is probably Stanislaw Lem in disguise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem

Fire & Bone and Bone Fire

November 23, 2014
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My first Life Drawing class was in the Spring of 1973. My eighth or so was sometime in the early 2000s. Outside the classroom there were a few occasions, and today I found an unfinished drawing circa 2010. I believe the model was Valley-local legend Crystal Cruz. Shoplight lighting and a skeleton made for a good erotic/macabre ensemble.

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Bone Fire

Balderdash & one naïf
One in love with fluffy Fifi
Neither wishes to demur
Either’s ether’s too unsure

Fire & Bone

Flimsy limb & leg of lamb
IED goes off & Wham-O
Rip a tide & keep it keen
Enter Now & make the scene

Charcoal Galore, but not

November 20, 2014
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This celebration of Charcoal in its various forms was done not in charcoal but in pencil. Without proper charcoal paper, charcoal, a real chamois, at least two kinds of eraser, and fixative, it is unwise to attempt a coherent charcoal drawing.

I here galorify Charcoal with three acrostic poems and one drawing of four Charcoal incarnations:

charcoal 112014

Charcoal I

Carbon & gum arabic
Have a vine & dandy go
Add your dark and scarabic/A
Righteous DARK’ll Rock & Roll

Charcoal II

Could be it’s a stick with colic
Half a shadowed calico
Anti-talc or -tapioca
Rich rococo cocoa local

Charcoal III

Crackled screeches: cacophonic
Half a circle makes a halo
And a matador’s veronica
Robbing feedlots of a payroll

Jack Being Nimble

November 18, 2014
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Five years ago Thursday I was watching Jack Evans, “the Godfather of Phoenix poetry” according to Phoenix New Times, co-host and perform in the Caffeine Corridor series, and I was fortunate enough to have pencil and scrap paper on hand and a ringside seat, so I did a sketch. That that was five years ago attests to the longevity of Caffeine Corridor, and of Jack.

Today I was delighted to see that Jack had made that long-ago sketch his Facebook avatar, probably in acknowledgment of the five-year anniversary of my sketch. Jack, you REALLY MADE MY DAY, doing this! Thanks so much!

jack 112009

done places, gone things

November 17, 2014
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done places, gone things

[Satan, to a newly arrived Chicagoan]
The trouble with you Chicago people is,
that you think you are the best people down here;
whereas you are merely the most numerous.
Mark Twain (“Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar”)

in our language of euphemism and shorthand,
first we get older and then we get old.
we go there and do that and get the t-shirt.
if we like it enough we go and do and get again.

when you’ve already been older and are heading for old,
life’s increasing limitations elbow their way in,
so you stroll along the strand rather than running tirelessly through it
on the way to something else,

or get quietly smashed instead of raising hell.
you turn in your young-person card
and start referring to young adults as “kids.”
in our language of euphemism and shorthand,

we “slow down” as we “get on”
though we tell ourselves “fifty is the new thirty”
and other nonsense,
and some of us take desperate measures:

doctors saw at the skin of our faces
or inject paralyzing toxin into it, or both,
and sometimes the masquerade works,
and sometimes it doesn’t.

we get offered “rewards” that are enticements
for the dispensation of our disposable and not-so-disposable cash.
we get mail about cremations and cruises
and we get fading music.

the cradle rocks and the grave is still.
in between, the speed limit will go from 75 to 15
and there’ll be a wiggly pointed line on a yellow background.
it is then that we find out what we’re made of.

rats/tsar/star/arts

November 16, 2014
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Here quadruple acrosticism is pushed to its limit. Nineteen words are arrayed in four lines that yield four more words. Each row summons an image; each acrostical column is illustrated by contrapuntal images. Talismans is to Arcana as Secretariat is to Racecar. The two middle acrostics are the bookends of those four words, and the first word in every row ends in the same letter of the acrostic column next to it, and the last phrase of each row begins with the same letter of the acrostical column to its immediate left. Why all these strictures? My guess is I do it for the same reason Henri Matisse painted a green stripe down the middle of the face of his portrait of Madame Matisse. We’re pushing on something, seeing if we can get away with it, and seeing if it matters.

Curiosity may be satisfied by doing an Internet search on “matisse green stripe.” Meanwhile, here’s mine:

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Some fine day I may push the envelope further with “spot/opts/pots/stop.” I’d be overjoyed if someone beat me to it, though. [rueful smile]