Cosmos Combos
C: configures space&time: speed of light is C
Oscillations play the temp–atoms dance allegro
Silver’s born in nova’s cosh…pressured, stars go Boom
Matters dark & otherwise; Womb to Zoom to Tomb
Off on hyperbolic jaunts! Conic secs by Lego™
Seen through a galactic lens, we are but debris
life has try angles
untried angels–CONTROLZ and
an area rug
(or is that aria?)
Cold forces grip
Outside the moon
Recursive paladin
Exits peering
Cold forces recede
On an outward spiral
Relieved, the paladin makes a great
Exhalation
The theme of this spot-welded image and acrostic poem is that it’s a crying shame when evangelical parasites use deific archetypes to bleed believers dry. It is an old, old message, but it still needs to be told, based on what I saw on certain TV channels when I was working graveyard this year. I hope I have told it in a new, engaging way. I hope also that it is not viewed as a slam against any particular creed–just of the ghouls who use the faith of innocents to further their base ends.
The iambic-septameter double acrostic goes like this:
Decisions made by A will leave B’s dreams unrealized
Incentivizing dalliance so often proves unwise
Suspension of one’s disbelief seems currency for bliss
Propinquity of doom will shrink contentment to a wisp
Upending some unending preconceptions on a dare
Takes chutzpah and charisma and a messianic flair
Alliterative declarations guarantee a yea
Tumultuous extravaganzas untrue a parfait
Inside insane aquaria there’s no need to be koi
Osmundium earth’s rarest when it’s found in an arroyo
Unctilio if left unchecked defrauds the citizen
Sedition-sanctified denial scratches up the lens
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.
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]
Dewey is a rat, and a fun one at that; so says my replacement on the Graveyard Shift, who is Dewey’s human.
Why is Dewey in the midst of Erratic? Just my erRATic sense of play at humor, and vice versa.
Here are the words to the quintuplesque acrostic:
Histrionic nonmouse idling-whiskered bulby-eyed
Eats preys scampers madly–synchronicity gone wide
Let the record show and tell a rat’s lot’s tough and low
Loathsome inhumanity yields rocky rows to hoe
O for Pizza cheesy with a crust that’s not too doughy
(Dewey really does eat pizza.)
One reason there are lots of instruments in the cockpit of an airplane is that sometimes pilots cannot rely on their senses. Their semicircular canals tell them one thing, the view out the window another, and the instruments contradict both. To stay alive, a pilot often has to literally fly in the face of what the body says.
In life, a sense of well-being may just mean that the brain chemistry is literally on the high side of the manic-depressive cycle. Ingesting alcohol or other drugs often imbues the user with undeserved confidence. If you don’t have instruments, like a penlight for the Nystagmus test or a Breathalizer for the measurement of blood alcohol, when in doubt, don’t, no matter what wonderful sense it seems to make, whether it be calling that lost love at three in the morning or shaving/tattooing your head or entering the wonderful world of amateur day trading. (Sorry to be so parental.)
Here are the words:
Fate denied me being pharaoh
And you say, it’s best that, Gair-O
Lap up your courvoisier
Lapdogs may include Sharpei
Salvage peace/shalom/La Paz
Serenity is no palazzo
Eternity by daw-do-zen
Ernest earnestly got bent
Rovers flying o’er alfalfa
Race past baffleds on El Al
Carol Hogan is a cutter of sand two ways. First, she’s the editor of SANDCUTTERS, the quarterly publication of the Arizona State Poetry Society. It was she who raised the publication from a black&white chapbook to a color-covered nicepaper showcase with a real spine.
Second, she’s always drawing lines in the sand. She is a female Don Quixote, tilting against the Koch Brothers and other creatures of corporate greed. I’d cast her as Galdalf in a gender-bending version of LORD OF THE RINGS, standing on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and telling the Balrog “You cannot pass!!” in her quivery voice. (Carol says she lost her voice some time ago, but I did not get details.)
Last Saturday Carol came to my mother’s house to photograph various of my ceramic works. She intends to feature me in SANDCUTTERS as the next in her series of poets who are also artists. She and Mom hit it off well, and there is talk of future visits.
Here are the words to Carol’s double acrostic:
Clasp a tempest–Oh! Oh! Oh
And the beaches stir her so
Rioting with verse & blog
OUT the blahs and ON the gaga
Living on a swift toboggan
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:
*****
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!
*****
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:
*****
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.
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.
One with Clay, Image and Text 