Right now, September 10, 2014, I am in the moment of having a Sweetheart about whom I am head over heels. In the wee hours of this morning, thinking of nothing in particular, I did most of this sketch by the seat of my pants. It is full of drawing errors and clumsiness, but it also has life and love.
usku
undoing lifelack
salvaging hope in the dark
striving i and thou
As this is written, today is still Title Tuesday, that day of the week when I usually provide five prompting titles to my fellow Facebook members of the poetry group Poets All Call. Today I went metal:
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Title Tuesday for September 9, 2014
Here are titles for them as wants them:
Goal Digger
Silver Dogger
Bronze on Blonde
Brass Ear
Tincompoop
Gonna take a Sentimetal Journey? Hope so, and with YOU, my Friends!
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My friend and colleague Bob Kabchef responded, not with poetry (though he would soon write some), but with these additional titles:
Cad me chum
Steely eyed
Iron or
Rare earths
Fools goaled
I wrote “cad me chum,” and the curious may see it in Poets All Call. Then I wrote “rare earths,” and I struck gold, because my poem was a long and elaborate setup for an exotic pun, about which later. First, here are the words:
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rare earths
please mock me not nor sneerium
there’s sugar on my cerium
and though it’s not eye candium
i’ve nudified my scandium
heaped praise on praseodymium
pee-ohing neodymium
lathed lanthanum bathed yttrium
egad that gadolinium
must not disturb my terbium
in suburbs with my erbium
to rope-a-dope europium
takes thulium with opium
perhaps a good samarium’s
promethium’s aquarium
ytterbium’s symposium’s
discussing our dysprosium
while promising lutetium
though last she’s not beneathmium
the rarest earth of all (just one)
swings with the moon around the sun
*****
As for the pun, it is a pun of omission. I deliberately left out the Rare Earth holmium. I was hoping to be asked why. Had I been asked by Emily Watson (sigh), my reply would have been, “Element-ary, my dear Watson. Since it was Holmium, I felt compelled to make a . . . deduction.”
I do not apologize.
Brick and Mortar, and equivalents thereof, are fine in moderation. Are we as a species moderate? An Internet search on Dubai buildings will provide a fun answer. Not that I’m knocking Dubaians and their innovative excess. If I had more money than I knew what to do with, Cutting-Edge Architecture would be a great place to throw it.
But Urban Sprawl, made possible by that “I claim this land in the name of Spain” mindset that is this-century obsolete, made of the Valley of the Sun where I grew up a fungus of humanity, spreading up and over the mountains every which way, and far beyond the Valley’s borders. “Brick & Mortar” is now recognized as a largely unnecessary venue for business. Let us move on.
Here are the words to the double acrostic, making Ands of the ampersands for the sake of clarity:
Bursting out- and upward, our explosive growth goes boom
Reaching for the brass ring’s old–we charge like raging sumo
Instant towers scrape the sky where once was merest rumor
Clearing forests calls for disregard of owl and wombat
Keeping books reduces Life to uptick and pro rata
Andes-climbing’s easier than knowing what should matter
Queen Latifah was being Biographied on the tube. I’d just sketched and eaten cookies. The cookie wrapper begged to be Queened. Then the doodle and the Queened wrapper asked to be paired. Now Paddy C.’s MARTY is on the tube. Life is this.
Yesterday I showed Denise’s grandchildren a drawing in progress of a terrifying bug in extreme closeup. With their coaching I was able to de-terrorize the bug a great deal. Before we were done the bug was smoking a cig, wearing a beret and cop-sunglasses, wielding an ineffectual gun, and gaining a sidekick scorpion singing to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot.” Reflected in the cop-sunglasses were Sissy and Bubba’s faces, Bubba mock-scared and Sissy mocking-grinning. All of the enhancements helped make a going-nowhere faked-up study become a showcase of the bravery of children in the face of the unknown. Bless the Beast and the Children! [smiles]
The Urban Dictionary’s #1 definition of Geek is “The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult.” The kids I drew on this page are still being picked on, but they know they rock.
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
Good LORD–feel that enthusiasm–each a superstar
Enjoy our radiation: safe enough for Gramp & Gamma
EnDANGERment is mocked–we use a Death’s-head-grin alarm
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar holds court within our diorama
Note also the hidden message via blacked-up letters: “THUS–ugh–Death holds our wit.”
Speaking of the awesome, starring-in-AIRPLANE! Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who just wrote a guest column about racism in a major publication, long ago I made up this riddle about him:
Q: What should you sing if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has his thumb in your coffee cup as he’s handing it to you?
A: “You’re the Kareem in my Coffee…”
Yes, I’m a Joke Geek. And vice versa.
Recently TIME Magazine profiled a retrospective of Jeff Koons. Mr. Koons is a good four months younger than I am, yet he’s seen work of his sold for a cool 58.4 million dollars. Once I sold a piece of mine for $250.00, but then the gallery took its 20%. Sigh.
It reminded me of this page, of a pioneer of not only Art but of an artist’s self-promotion:
Here are the words to the acrostic sonnet, with apologies for the clumsiness of Line 5:
What Picasso Had
Well, Pablo had a round head–that’s for starters;
His Bald and Bulbous Noggin was a Moon;
A gorgeous Harem–Demoiselles & Martyrs;
The cheek to make a napkin-drawn cartoon
Pay for three demoiselles’ Euro-Vacation;
Intensity of Focus . . . FEAR of Death . . .
Chicago’s streets to sculpt a Big Sensation;
A knack for Marketing with Every Breath.
Some envy his long life, his wealth, his Women,
Success like that some Art aspirants strive for;
Oh, nothing’s wrong with Fame to smile & swim in,
However, it’s unseemly to connive for.
Ahhh–I’ll not judge him. ART’ll; FATE’ll; GOD’ll;
Don’t know–but I won’t use him as a Model.
(Of behavior, that is. He was a real and true Jerk. See SURVIVING PICASSO for a taste of his Jerkiness, not to mention a stellar performance by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Quoth Wikipedia: “Picasso is shown as often not caring about other people’s feelings, firing his driver after a long period of service, and as a womanizer, saying that he can sleep with whomever he wants.”)
Today I finished a remake of something I’d first done more than five years ago. I used stroke victim John Updike to create a sort of public-service announcement, giving the warning signs of stroke and also some preventive measures. I am no stranger to the Soapbox, you see.
Here is what I did in the wee hours this morning:
And here is the original, finished in late January 2009:
You’d think the latest would reflect five solid years of practice between late January 2009 and early July 2014, but the new one is not all that much better than the old. Reason is I didn’t take the time I should have.
Here are the words:
Stroke: a random Maniac
Twinge devolving to Attack
Rawly, aftermaths illumine
It’s a CRAPSHOOT being Human.
Here is another finally-finished page.
The words to the single-word double acrostic are these:
Index cards & social meme
Novice hack or reader’s dream
Voices shrill can drill to bone
Orders strict tell despot’s notion
Lavish love creates its quotient
Vortex waves have force of oceans
The meaning to this one is less elusive if you think of the words with the image as not describing a universal truth, but one person’s relationship/maturation journey, and that person someone you’re just getting to know.
Away from my home, with sketchpad and Verizon pad, I send a finally finished page. Desperation to get it done played hob with petal anatomy and lyrical clarity but did wonders for uniqueness.
One with Clay, Image and Text 