Archive

Tag Archives: drawing

Unforeseen Difficulty (an Indictment)

October 6, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

Apologies to Brad Pitt for exploiting his name and face, albeit in a good cause.

Synopsized facts about “Who Killed the Electric Car?” may be found on Wikipedia, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F . It may seem that by now, eight years later, the point is moot, but we’re pumping more than ever out of the ground and into the sky.

“Jean-Luc” is a reference to the character Patrick Stewart played in the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION omnibus. He was a starship captain who certified his orders with “make it so.”

Unforeseen Difficulty

Unto us an Engine framed, full bore & rectified
Now release we Inner Cowgrrr–yippy ki yi yi
Four-speed shift or automatic–really, what’s the diff
Oil & gasoline intoxicate–just take a whiff
Rolling on a highway beats a loll on the lanai
Eminent domain emissions make it so Jean-Luc
Sifting through us like a line of poorly-lit haiku
Even-handed citizens may want to take a Poll
Eco-minders balk if Greenpeace comes for their Renault
Never mind–y’all drive into the Sunset–say goodby

Dewey in the Midst of Erratic

September 25, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

001

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.)

Act Yer Age

September 22, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Here is a sloppy, silly, having-fun one that started serious: What does it mean to “Act your age”? What age are cigarette smokers acting? How about Fred Astaire–working killer hours to make it all look easy as pie? How old was Tom Cruise when he jumped backwards onto Oprah Winfrey’s couch? And does the acting age of a hotel-user plummet when she or he succumbs to the impulse to use the Mini-Bar, and thereby get overcharged for killing brain cells?

So here is a baby addressing Parlaiment, a rock putting on lipstick, a tree forgetting he isn’t the sapling he used to be, the poor Sun suffering a Gout/Flareup, and your humble author proudly displaying his Duncan Yo-Yo. There are five badly-drawn images, but the label Figure 4 is used twice. There are two triple acrostics, hereinafter referred to as Dumb & Dumber. SOMEBODY needs to Grow Up!

002

Paper Caper/Pocket Planet

September 18, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

This is an example of composition as balancing act. About forty years ago Professor Scott of the University of Arizona had us strip works of David (pronounced Dah-Veed) and Poussin (pronounced Poo-Saaan, sort of)  to the essentials of gestural lines. Presumably, if the sum of the angles relative to the bottom edge of a given painting add up to zero, or close, it’s a Good Composition.

I suppose it was an enlightening exercise, but it had all the excitement of diagramming sentences, and about as much practical use.  Then as now I’ll look at a drawing in progress and do my best to intuit how best to engage the viewer with the next enhancement (or, as with some erasure, disenhancement). I’d rather taste the soup of a drawing than diagram its sentence any day.

The acrostics remain without poetry. If the drawing is good enough to remake on non-scratch paper, I’ll do a remake and work out the words. If you’d like to collaborate with an obscure artist/poet, feel free to fill in some poetry. If you do, show and tell via comment, and you’ll make my day!

false horizon falser horizontal

September 16, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

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, Cutter of Sand

September 11, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

001

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

usku

September 10, 2014
Uncategorized
1 Comment

003

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

rare earths

September 9, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

002

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.

Brigand’s Mortar (Brick & Mortar)

September 9, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

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