This one will neither go away nor allow itself to be finished, so here it is in draft, with hopes that its growth proceeds.
Here are the words to the double acrostic:
He had his genius charm–his diamond rough
Or flawed, though hard–a fear of such as flu
Was long self-exiled, shy of folk & bug
And yet of Flight he never got enough
Romantic leading ladies knew largesse
Detractors harried up a Hellish mess
I’m no photorealist, but I took two days instead of my usual one with my page image in order to take the proper time to be a tourist in Photorealville. Like a marathon, it’s more fun HAVING done it than actually DOING it.
In French, “Il faut que…” means, approximately, “It is necessary that…” I haven’t studied French in more than thirty-five years, but I think whatever follows the phrase must take the subjunctive. Luckily I only needed the phrase to make an international bad pun. This one isn’t just punning for the sake of, though. With Ill meaning Sick and Faux meaning False and Ku meaning Haikuesque, the play on words fits the words of the poem, which are these:
out of the darkness,
into the comprehensible:
uneasily done…
One example is Galileo’s Inquisition-forced recantation of his assertion that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than vice versa. He is rumored to have muttered “Eppur si muove” [“Nevertheless, it [the earth] still moves”] as he walked off to compromised freedom.
A more recent example is Richard Feynman’s bucking of NASA authority in publishing, and demonstrating, his assertion that the material that the O-Rings were made of was the likely cause of the Challenger disaster. Less known is the fact that he was on a supervisory committee for the approval of textbooks in the state of California, and tried to fight senselessness in the textbooks he reviewed, to little avail and in the face of offered bribes and other senselessness. He finally quit in frustration and emotional stress; THAT battle he could not continue to fight.
Bottom line: If you have a Truth that defies societal “truth,” and you wish to defend the Truth, prepare for uneasiness.
You’ll find the circumflex right above the 6 on your keyboard. By itself, it’s called a caret. I mention that only because in posting, entertaining, or teaching, getting your point across is often due to a good mix of caret and schtick.
(Sorry…)
The circumflex is used in French for words that used to have an S. Thus forêt means Forest. The Latin words circum (around) and flectere (to bend) mashed up to make circumflexus. This made me think of Dance, which is a lot of bending around, and also the life-journey step of turning a corner. Thus my image is of an introspective dancer. The Jackson Browne song works with her well.
Here are the words:
Chuckleheads deride & scoff
In their forêt of felafel
Ridicule a Dance de Luxe
Cacophonic at its crux
Understatement will cohere
May observers stand & cheer
…NOT Continuing Sex Education, as you may have extrapolated. CSE is Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow, possibly the heiress to the mantle of Dorothy Parker, but more likely first of her by-her-bootstraps kind. The poetry of hers that I have read is quasi-conversational, but you’ll catch your metaphorical toe on a phrase and find it sprawls you elsewhere…
An alternate title to this post might be “Well, She Asked For It…” The image/poem came to be when Cynthia challenged me on Facebook to triple-acrosticize her name. An early draft of this page was produced and Facebook-posted within an hour of my reading Cynthia’s challenge, which just goes to show what a liberating force severe limitations can be. Had she challenged me to “write a poem in less than an hour” I’m not at all sure I could have done it. (“It takes a fillip in the flanks for my mare to dance,” Rex Stout once had Nero Wolfe say…)
Anyway, I’m glad to know Cynthia, who is vivacious and witchily wise. She’s also won a boatload of awards for her poetry and has been published in more different poetry journals than I’ve ever read. She’s findable all over the Internet, and poetry lovers could do worse than to look for her…
SYNOPSIS: Your narrator began composing a sonnet that had the further restriction of the double acrostic QUINTESSENTIAL BREATHLESSNESS. Four lines into the sonnet he questioned the wisdom of continuing, citing “wonkiness.”
Fourteen lines into the sonnet, it is finished, and I am glad I saw it through, though seeing it through involved a partial de-wonkitization of the fourth line. Nor am I at all certain that this is the final version; but there is enough good in it as is to make me proud and happy: it makes ultimate sense, it all ties together with the final couplet, and it tells my peculiar truth.
Again and again I learn that to see an attempt through to a state of completion is valuable and important. Why do I keep UNlearning it? Probably because it is so often easier to quit than to continue. “Who needs THIS [stuff]?” we are so prone to ask, and it is important to ask; but this time the answer was, “I do.”
Here is a transcription of the words:
Quick learner, thou art never long a newb
Upscaler, we must bid thee au revoir
Inamorata, neither time nor tube
Needs mention when you meet a partner’s Ma
There’s more to life than having needs be met
Encyclicals have ne’er made turmoil smooth
Strife’s ruled the rooster; Inquisition, shtetl
Some hurts may take a Miracle to soothe
Ephemeral events may carve out basins
NOW is YOUR time, you whose desire grows
The chest of hope has room, so put your lace in
It’s HEART that puts the Romance in the rose
As Living teaches, we’re conferred degrees
Lush vistas will reward the one who Sees
This image began with an exercise: look through a newspaper supplement and draw all the faces. The faces turned out to be mostly smiling, so the suggestion was that joy was in the air, and that it was jumbly–Jumble of Joy. Unfortunately, J as an end-letter doesn’t fly much outside the Mideast. Fortunately, J as an end-SOUND is all over the English language, so a little spelling-flexibility–nowhere near what is seen in much of hip-hop–took care of the J issue.
Here are the words:
Jurassick sparks won’t tree-fly if you vej
Umbrellas willn’t get you through a hej
Metropolises bulge & overflo
But Sparseville FREEZES: forty-2 belo
LIFT HIGH your Heart, for THIS will be the day
Enchantment rocks–IF you come out 2 play
More of the same platitudinous crap I’ve been ladling for years, granted. My only defense is it’s true…
A belated (or be-earlied, if you celebrate the Chinese New Year) to you all.
Here are the words to the pseudo-haiku:
cleanslateku
january first
(reboot opportunity)
two thousand fourteen
Here are the words to the threefold acrostic:
THE EARTH & THE SPOON
The local SPACE & TIME become a sheathe
Enamel writhes & metal base enwreathes
A surface vessels & en-Abels slurp
Recall of stirs & Dempsey vs. Firpo
The mother & umbilicus part so
Here thrive a sun & son & song: très bon
Note two important corrections made on the last line. Shame on me for disagreement of subject and verb, and more shame for not having used accent grave originally…
And yes, dear readers & viewers: I am still stuck on spoon. [wry smile]
This is posted in haste on a borrowed laptop. It shows a woman warrior grappling with Death. The woman is derived from Cordwainer Smith’s D’Joan from his amazing story “The Dead Lady of Clown Town.” Smith derived D’Joan from Jeanne d’Arc, better known to people like me as Joan of Arc.
I may come back and add a transcription and/or annotation, but I felt a need to post NOW, but I have to leave for work in TWO MINUTES OR SO. Hope this pleases…
This is my mother, today, one day after her 79th Birthday. I drove down to Phoenix to deliver the gift she’s holding up, which is a mini-portfolio of original pencil drawings of mine, all done over the past year. My conservative valuation of this invaluable collection is $1,000.00. If you want a second opinion, feel free to ask Mom. [smiles]
I took her to The Good Egg for brunch and Harkins Theatres, where we saw AMERICAN HUSTLE, after.
She’s been officially Jewish for about 30 years now, joining her second husband, Marty, in creed as well as in souls. How many of my mom does it take to change a light bulb? None. “Never mind me–I’ll be fine in the dark…” [smile of a loving son]
Here is a remake in pencil of a page I did more than six years ago using an ultrafine Sharpie and Faber-Castell colored pens. You will see when comparing to the below original page that I changed a few of the words, and that I distilled the design elements to the essential and magic-realismed the girl into self-illumination.
I THINK the remake is a significant improvement, but since I finished it less than an hour ago I might be too close to it to be objective enough to judge. I KNOW I can do better, and would have had I more time. Can’t wait to retire! [smiles]
One with Clay, Image and Text 