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Tag Archives: art

Micromanagement (Blast from the Past)

October 21, 2014
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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.

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Abs Tract Art Manny Festo

October 20, 2014
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Here is a page that has been unfinished, hanging fire, for more than half a year. I would look at it over and over again and despair that it would forever be unfinished. It needed more pop–“Pop” Cornwall and POPcorn Wall were not enough. Finally today, October 20, 2014, rolled around. Today is what would have been my father’s 81st Birthday, were he still among us. At last–more Pop! (I never called him “Pop,” though. It was always “Dad” or “My Old Man.” And if you ever want a good cry, go to YouTube and find John Prine, or even better, the original songwriter Steve Goodman, singing “My Old Man.” I’m going to do it right after I post this.)

Mother Goose Regoosed

October 20, 2014
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Today Laura, the human owned by Lena Furbena, gave me another picture of her. I used it to fiddle with an old nursery rhyme. Part of the fiddling was to remove the reference to a fiddle, replacing it, sort of, with a ukulele.

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I’m delighted to report that Lena has accepted my Facebook friend request.

Here are the words to the retooled rhyme:

Hey dilly daily,
The moon’s ukulele
No-handedly played for the spoon.
The little dog’s distance
Due to nonexistence
Was deemed by the cat quite a boon.

What did the uke play to the spoon? Why, “Some Enchanted Evening,” of course. [smile]

lovechild inkfield

October 19, 2014
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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.

The Shaman Wakes At Dusk

October 19, 2014
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This courtly gentleman lives where I work. He is shamanistic, a lover of music from Mozart to David Gates’s Bread, a lover of dancing, of our Verde Valley, and of his fellow human beings. There is something about the tipping of day toward night that wakes him from a nap. There is something about the joy he derives from everyday life that brings an easy smile to his face, and then the faces of the people he talks to.

I’m glad to know him, and I wish the Earth had more of him.

Here are the words to the acrostic of his name:

Can o p t i m i s m come to be
Around when some unhappily
Reflect on spires that do not gleam
Lost love, lost chances, darkened theme?
Of course! Just find a friend who’s fair
Shake Shakespeare and confound Flaubert

Shakespeare wrote HAMLET and KING LEAR and MACBETH and ROMEO AND JULIET and TITUS ANDRONICUS (“probably in collaboration with George Peele,” says Wikipedia) and OTHELLO and other awfulness-containing tragedies. Flaubert is chiefly known for MADAME BOVARY.

Hidder Midst/Meta-Man

October 18, 2014
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Hidder Midst says nothing and thinks bubbles–a true Superhero in search of an Origin Story. Meta-Man may have more to say than Spielberg’s A.I. or Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man,” but he may just be all about a pose occluding text. The Book of Ecclesiastes says both “All is vanity” and that there is nothing new under the Sun. But that second one is a trick answer, as far as we mere mortals go. We are NOT “under the Sun.” We are OVER the sun, just as the Moon is over us. Should we fall into the Sun, we’d be falling down.

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silence in two whiles

October 16, 2014
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in a soundproofed room
you are still bombarded with signal
and depending on your instrument of translation
may receive modulated radiation from the electromagnetic spectrum
the least exhalation of breath and the most harrowing shriek and all between flow through you constantly though encrypted

but shut off the phone and be alone again
with your own pulsed heart and
your own rhythmed breath
heart’s lobed beat
lungs’ swelled fill

beat and fill

quiet

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the main sound on the predawn desert mountain trail
is the scrape of your soles on scree cinders
but the near silence allows calibrated gain

and then are heard the thwips
and rustle
and padpadpad
of fauna and flora

stop on a rock and blink away the runoff from your brows
turn away from the view of the parking lot and look at the panorama you made
with nothing but a footborne change of elevation

and you’ve earned a silence of approbation

and when you break it with a twist
of your waterholder’s top
and then with the buhbloop of good and cold
over your tongue and down your throat
it’s hard not to “aaaaah!” with satisfied volume
and then enjoy a low-hummed resilencing

bent a little by the miraculous, bone-conducted sound
of your blinking eyelids

NOTE: My illustration for this poem is the first crack at Scratchboard I’ve had in thirty years or so. Consequently, the inherent strength-through-contrast of the medium is offset by the clumsiness of the practitioner. The next ones will be better.

Meet Lena Furbena

October 13, 2014
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Yesterday I was behind the desk at the Independent Living Retirement Community where I work, and Laura, the Pet Visit lady, offered me any of the three photos of the pet, one Lena Furbena, she’d brought to visit. I selected one and asked permission to use it as a photo source for an illustrated poem. Laura kindly granted permission, and here we are.

Lena has her own Facebook page. Here is a link: https://www.facebook.com/lena.furbena?fref=ts She claims study at Yavapai College and work at Bossa Rosa. Apparently she enjoys moonlit walks and dirt baths.

I don’t know her well, but from the vibe I got from my brief visit with her, this emerged:

Love-Kitties often loll & paw & goof
Lick sharpened claws & blink & blink at you
Enjoying your discomfiture, they purr
Enjoined, they do a thing that lacks a verb
Now Cat & Human share a warmth serene
No discord interferes with what they glean
An afternoon in Harmony’s corona
A Love-Cat LIVES in Northern Arizona

Half a Secret/Reveiled

October 13, 2014
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Half a Secret

If there were such a thing as half a secret
There would be such a thing as half aloof
So goes the half aloft and closet peeklet
Entangled in the clothing of the proof
Less entropy prevents a leaky roof
Ferality unmeeks the meekest meek pet

Reveiled

In veils we find
The mystery
Sought by the blind
Encounter. We
Leave type and kind
For History.

murk in progress

October 9, 2014
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A long time ago, Gahan Wilson drew a cartoon of two Asian monks or lamas hovering over a cauldron of stew. One has just tasted with a ladle. He says, “Enough yin. More yang.”

Similarly, the idle sketcher will start with a doodle and then the two sides of the brain wrestle over it. “Enough intuition. More logic.” Suddenly it is no longer a doodle but a start on something more. All too often for the impatient or attention-deficited, it doesn’t amount to anything.

I have stacks and stacks of such, and much more has been discarded. This one is on the bubble:

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Next post will either have a completed version of this, or something completely different, or both. Depends on whether I run out of yang. [yinnish grin]