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death rattle of the new coffeemaker

July 21, 2025
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well, my mr. coffee died quietly two days ago/the on switch simply wouldn’t light up nor activate when pressed/so i being unhandy and incapable of repair slash resurrection called the time of death/and have emptied the reservoir and will give it an improper nonburial

and now I have a new coffeemaker/and have read the instructions/learning thereby that the manufacturers of this charming device/define five ounces as “one cup of coffee”/so i will get about two decent-sized cups per pot/which is ok

and I have just now followed the instructions/of first washing the pot with warm soapy water and rinsing/and next running a brew cycle without coffee/so as to clean its innards

and when i ran it/i learned that the new machine sounds like it dies an agonizing death by copd/as it yields the last fraction of an ounce of superheated water

its agony and final death-rattle sigh/worthy of shakespeare/who famously said

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;/The valiant never taste of death but once.”

may my new fellow-coward coffee machine/die a thousand histrionic deaths/before it really and truly and once and for all and irreparably/dies

traps

October 29, 2024
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the springloaded mousekill the flyeating plant/the holder of grease°line of questioning°web/the finger embracement°thematical rant/the souls being pulled from the beach on the ebb

bland protocol traps us in nets of decorum/deft headhunters trap us with dazzling enticements/swift factchecks trap lies in a broadcasted forum/a verse traps attention with sugerandspicements

and gravity binds us in vast looping spiral/high penthouses pen us in decadence heaven/harsh scripture compels us to stone and go viral/and crap games sing siren songs seven eleven

seduction abduction reduction and rape/enflankment embankment tank airless no breath/the scars of a lifetime are hell to escape/but we are all sprung with omegatrap Death

grim repo

May 26, 2021
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2021 0526 grim repo

Stick around long enough on this slowly-twirling bonbon of a Planet and you’ll get little hints that the Fates want to keep you from overstaying your welcome. Your body begins to betray you, sprouting skin tags and inappropriate hair, gifting you with gout flareups and tooth tragedies, scaring the stuffing out of you with odd sensations in the chest, or the lungs, or the throat. Can’t you take a hint? Time to go.

But, Friends, it is not time to go. Not for me, and I suspect not for you either. Some of us have unfinished business, and that business includes the fulfillment of long-held dreams. It also includes betterment. What kind of difference might we make, in the time we have left? Whose days might me lighten? Which causes are the most worthy of our contributions financial, advocative, or immersive?

Today I went shopping, at Arizona Art Supply and the supermarket Fry’s. I had a less cluttered version of the page above with me. I was especially keen to get an electric eraser, being frustrated with the limitations and ineffectiveness of the erasers I have. A demo online showed a little jackhammer of a thing making precise, superclean erasures. Want!!!

Got!! And now I hope my images will enjoy a crispness many of them have lacked. I mean–look at the page above. Don’t feel bad if you think it’s ugly. It makes its metaphorical point with overlay and Breughel-like misdirection, but damn. The next one better be easy on the eyes, and a joy to behold.

Inventory: there is a grocery list for an art supply store and a grocery store. Art supply items: big paper (got some Stonehenge White 30″ x 40″, three sheets, $7.21 per sheet, and a 99-cent bargain basement whocares practice sheet, 20″ x 30″), electric eraser ( they had three; I got the most expensive one, Sakura’s SumoGrip, $41 and change), scratchboard (didn’t get) and plaster/resin (got modeling clay instead). Grocery items: St. Pell (San Pellegrino, my favorite sparking water; got two glass-bottle bottles at an outrageous $1.99 each, just to tide me over till I get another case), dental floss (got the Glide, two kinds; my personal superstition says that if I ever run out of dental floss, the Universe will punish me severely), bus pass (31-Day Reduced fare because I’m over 65 years old, a STEAL at $32!!), and “old people vitamins” (didn’t get; decided to wait till I used up the ones I had, even though they have probably lost some of their potency).

Lists like these are death-defying. They tell the Fates that the listmaker has better things to do than die. And realizing that fact, as I held the list, the notion of making the list a part of a death-defying image took hold. So, Inventory (cont.): an ominous hooded figure with scythe is saying “Time’s UP, Bud.” Defiant not-THAT-old Gary holds up a “You Shall Not Pass” left palm, balls the right hand into a fist, and says “Get lost. My number’s NOT up–I CHANGED it.”

Inventory, concluded: The double acrostic “grim repo.” Defiant signature beneath

grim repo

go black camel to the rear
rise and trot off far from here
in the prime immortal soup
my bird bathes–so toodle-oo

Defiantly,

G Bowers
26 May 2021

Trivia note: the Black Camel is a symbol of death in some cultures. When it kneels in front of your tent, it is your time.

This has been a time of loss, and many we’ve lost managed to reach the century mark. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was one of them. He was a dreaming visionary, and one of my heroes. I will strive to live at least as long and as dreamily as he did.

Enigmatism

July 26, 2020
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(First published, sans illustration, on July 7 in Facebook group Poets All Call)

2020 0726 enigmatism2

Enigmatism
 
They ate me alive yet I live. It’s perplexing
To walk and draw breath though in stomachs digesting
I guess it’s a metaphor pho, sis, and flexing
Reality’s shape just for grins and for cresting.
 
Before ’53 I was nutmeg and veiling
Then half of me swam to the other half waiting
And storming the cellular castle assailing
Exploding within for the DNA mating.
 
I don’t guess I’ll be here in tangible form
A half century hence, and that gives me the shivers,
But the Universe leaves me to stray from the norm
And I eagerly wait to see what She delivers.

icad lvii: undertones

July 27, 2019
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20190727_052155

undertones

up the line from maginot [search “maginot line”]

no & what or nyet & shto [english or russian]

diploid/diptych bun/chignon [twofolds and hair arrays]

exoskeleton & bone [body frames outer and inner]

rigor mortis/combat zones [telltales of death in progress]

What are undertones? For the sake of this texted image, they are hard-to-hear hints of more than meets the obvious notice. One must pay focused attention to receive the hint, and then one must decrypt it. (“Decrypt? As in exhume?” he said in an undertone.)

This is a fear-of-war poem/image/post. The endword “tones” led me to muse about words ending with t that had a long-o last-syllable pronunciation. I was also mindful of previous use of such words or phrases (remembering, for instance, that I’d used “à bientôt” before) because I don’t like relying too heavily on the same words and phrases to solve the rhyme. Suddenly “Maginot” occurred to me, and a floodgate opened.

The Maginot Line was a barrier erected by the French to save their homeland from invasion, thought to be impregnable. It proved to be not much of a problem for the invading Nazis. Flash forward eighty years, and here in the United States of America, there is advocacy for the expending of resources for a barrier to save the homeland from invasion. It seems as though history’s lessons, though not undertoned, sometimes go unheeded.

That’s how the poem got started. Consider the rest of the message of the poem as a muttered warning. You will need an ear for subtlety to hear and correctly interpret the rest of the message. But you need not work so hard if you wish to simply enjoy an attempt at wordplay through juxtaposition, meter and rhyme.

about to happen

May 6, 2019
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2019 0506 about to happen

Continuing to explore the possibilities of crayon, on a hunch I blocked out a simple pre-death scene, using a couple of widely-understood symbols. The crayon does seem to enhance spookiness.

There are more “suspects” in this Who’s Gonna Die mystery than meet the eye. Some viewers will come up with a far more interesting story than I ever could, and I would love to hear them…

Save the Lama for the Drama

February 18, 2019
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save the lama 2019 0218

Here is an “alternate Universe” version of a thing I did just shy of five years ago. It was in pencil and little of the acrostic poem was done. I made a copy of it, did some more peripheral drawing, inked it up, and added the complete (if occulted) poem and spot color.

Here is the poem, hidden lines and all, and acrostic line breakage disregarded for clarity:

Save the Lama for the Drama

Sown, when our flags and hearts are at half-staff
And self-appointed enemies would laugh
O, vested interests give pause. What for
Each involvement spawns esprit de mort
The Tragedies of living make us sigh:
How often pain seduces us to die.
E’en worse: to odd destruction we are led.
Lo: then more pained apocalypse ahead
Or altered consciousness or Disser A
Make head-in-sand-impostures take their aim.
A LOT of Aitch Why Pea Oh Ex Eye A.

Note: Aitch Why Pea Oh Ex Eye A spells Hypoxia, a condition of not enough oxygen delivered to the brain, inducing symptoms of blue-faced hallucinations.

Finishline 15th: timor mortis

November 15, 2018
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The initial sketch, done recently, was an exercise: Use of Quiver-Lines to Emphasize Fear. Did it and moved on. Came back and learned that it wanted to be finished. Brought it to this stage of completion. It is not GUERNICA, nor the Sistine Chapel ceiling and walls, but it should tell a story a little bit different with each viewer.