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The words will come first for this one, the image last. The image won’t last but some of the words might.

NOTE: Like American Raku, American Haiku does not adhere to the rules of its Japanese namesake. I am a native-born citizen of the United States of America. The only rule I adhere to for my own “Haiku” is that it have a five-syllable line followed by a seven-syllable line followed by a concluding five-syllable line. They’re succinct!

the baggage unclaim’d
by conscientious thinkers
need not be opened

blink outside the box
sink rapidly to moisten
think or swim; you’re Choice

the fog is meringue
in the middle distance, a
surrounding scrim close

if life’s but a dream
then dreams are life subroutines
else life’s but a glitch

insomniac x:
why zee? DOUBLE you be, see?
just no-bud D saw.

the Road Less Traveled
may be dangerous or dull
better ask around

PAIN is not a gift
TORTURE is not an art form
Respect must be paid

unstressed syllables
are the sorbets of verses
they cleanse the pallette

friendly host zombie
chowing down on Ringo Starr:
who wants a d r u m s t i c k?

exclusivity
and loneliness may well go
hand in empty hand

5-7-5 is
an aggregate 17
–so QUICK: SAY something

Twin edifices
Tumbled down twelve years ago.
The Republic STANDS.

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Cats are bloodthirsty and duplicitous. They will disembowel their played-with prey without a care, and five minutes later act the innocent in your lap, their purr-motor set to Lull. But you gotta love ’em.

My friend and fellow blogger Michel Lamontagne once praised my predacious-cat drawings, and so I hope he likes this one; it might not have happened but for his kindly comment.

The words:

Penelope June also answered to Peej
Uganda D. Mouser was fond of the bijou
Rough Justice was dealt twixt boudoir & foyer
Remains to be seen? Maybe so–not today

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Three posts ago I quoted Carly Simon. I then realized that her name might make a doable double acrostic, and that I’d been smitten by her since the mid-70s, and that her spirit is ageless and enduring. Then I struggled for days. I could well struggle more, but I will never do her justice, so I rely on the adage “A work of art is never finished; it is only abandoned” and abandon ship.

The phrase “slow-sculpted as a Bonsai” is a tip of the hat to Theodore Sturgeon and his “Slow Sculpture,” which is just as much a prose poem as a humdinger of a science fiction story.

The words:

Cheerful-mouthed, hopeful-eyed, ageless
Angel-voiced, scalpel-witted, slow-sculpted as a Bonsai
Romance-hearted, nimble-lyricked, at home in the boardroom & on the farm
Lovingly maternal & brimming w/brio
YES!!! is the answer, You LIKE her? the question

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The Devil exists in my heart, thanks mostly to tales told me in my early childhood. He used to scare the Bejeezus out of me, but no more. Some of our fellow world citizens are far, far scarier than the so-called “Prince of Darkness.”

The Devil went down to Georgia, but before he did that he hobnobbed with such as Daniel “Denial” Webster and Alistair Crowley.

The translation of “Satan,” I am told, is “Adversary.” There is inherent wisdom in this, I think. Let us all avoid adversarial relationships.

With my epigram I tip my hat to the Rolling Stones and their two bad boys. See THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST for more info.

Harlan Ellison wrote a long story, “The Deathbird,” that among other things attempted to demonstrate how Satan got a bum rap, with cards stacked against him (until, ironically, Nathan Stack happened along).

The words:

Just an Adversary? He is K I L L E R on the bass
One whose taste in lingerie leans heavily on lace
Underwordly by nature not quick to condemn
Relishing those ladies who would be by him begemm’d

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Just this minute I did an Internet search on Syria. Floating to the top was the headline “In Syria, Anger and Mockery as Obama Delays Plan.” Dare Ya, Dare Ya, DOUBLE Dare Ya–which is about at the same level of maturity as Now Look What You Made Me Do.

For fifty years, intervention has been a colossal failure. Treating a symptom often does nothing for the disease–and with such as insecticides and 9/11, it exacerbates.

So here is yet another never-does-any-good-but-I-gotta Anti-War message. Standing up to be counted is important for everyone, though almost valueless as a tool for change.

Here are the words:

THE WAR OF MADNESS, AND VICE VERSA

7th Street has traffic lights some amber
There’s an antechamber bright & fissile
How the jackals howl to hear a panther hum
Eventide brings humming of a missile
Magistrates may murmur of chrysanthemum
But their yen: a limbered-up Haboob
Ebb tide brings its jetsammed torpid tube
Ridges are a favored place to clamber

The words only make sense as metaphor. They do make more sense than what is happening in battlefields past, present and future.

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…and they are correct. I was delivered by Caesarian section fifty-nine years ago by A. Franklin, M.D. of Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, California. Two women brought me into the world: the A was for Ann or Anne (my memory is a bit sketchy).

The photo above was taken where I now type, the Burton Barr Library in Phoenix, Arizona. I came here from up north in Cottonwood expressly to see the play RENT with my beloved daughter Katharine, whom everyone calls Kate. That will be at the Phoenix Theatre, easy walking distance from here.

The drawing I hold is the one my readers most told me to complete (see previous post “More from the Unfinished Vault”). It is of Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing with great joy, or, at the very least, seeming to.

The words:

Rattling the rafters & raising the roof
Intricate steps is the way of the hoofer
Train with your partner till you got it made
AH to be DANCING unfettered unstayed

So far this birthday has been great fun. I hope to make another post before the day is done.

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Last November I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I wrote over fifty thousand words under the title AULD LANG SYNAPSE, which was about the creation and use of nanotechnologized dust that made it possible for people to switch bodies via wireless synaptic exchange. The novel is still a disorganized, unfocused mess, but I liked a minor character who called himself the Mighty Eater of Food, and here I make a superhero out of him. (EATING as a superpower? You think that’s ridiculous? I invite you to do an internet search on Matter-Eater Lad, late of the Legion of Super-Heroes.)

Lately I’ve been dwelling on my own struggles with weight control (“Belly-Worshipper!” I trash-talk myself with scornful “stinkin thinkin”), and recently wrote a mock children’s song called “Gobble Gobble Gobble.” This is part of that tapestry.

I threw in an additional challenge to my triple-acrosticization, and demanded that each line contain a pun on a color. Why? Well, it’s my contention that many art innovations are arbitrary and/or newness for the sake of newness. But once you decide to do it, do it as best you can.

The words:

EH! Don’t want to con-fuschia
EW! I’ll TEAL ya–let’s climb
Now! Rosed Tuckling is crucial
NEXT: to Beiging–sub-Lime

In the Quantum Multiverse, some of me have done some of these. A minuscule percentage have done all of them. But I only have so much lifetime, and the most I can say for sure about the me who is talking now, in this universe, is that ONE of these will be done by midnight Friday.

Which one? Please tell me, because I really don’t know…

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Here’s a Threefer Wall:

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Joined Shapes

Juxtapositioning makes strange bedfellows
Outcomes often are Hobson’s choicish
Inferences drawn in Freehandia
Never seem to reflect Reality’s grip
Edentate is the lower jaw of Time
Delivering a superfluity of bones

Meteoric Messages

Making contact may not seem
Either metaphor or meme
Till it leads to warm embraces
Expeditious tracks & traces
Or a bite from fly or flea
Rousing more’n Golly G
It’s so easy to confuse
Crankiness with front page news

Self Poor Trait

Soapbox pour esprit de mort
Endocrines do bar the door
Let us cellophane the Sea
First inquiring: Que vous dit

Two posted self-portraits in less than a week. All is vanity. The Poor Trait of the acrostic is an annoying tendency, similar to James Joyce’s, to obfuscate via private language and joke.