Here’s about 40% of a drawing I’ve been working on for weeks. A little of the top and about half the bottom is cropped away. This is analogous to a Preview of Coming Attractions. 🙂
Some polishing and cleanup remain, but the main drawing is finished.
runners on your marks
poet on your meter
dogs prepare your barks
coffee black or sweeter
..
meters come with rhythm
potables with bitters
darlings have love withm
hope reduces jitters
..
get set fellow runners
dip ink fellow poet
frisk up doggie funners
take that ebb and flow it
I was watching a YouTube video from 1995 featuring these late greats. Didn’t freeze the frame so it was like being a courtroom artist.
I was doodle-sketching a man looking vaguely like a bald Vincent Price. He looked like he needed a friend, so I added a waifish-looking woman, scaled differently so she would fit, and that enabled me to put her right arm around his head, rather protectively.
Then came consideration of a double-acrostic poem to go with the drawing, and “Scale Model” came quickly to mind: a Model built to Scale, punnish but (I hope) not too punishing.
I have done four acrosticizations of “Scale Model” and they all miss the mark but all have merit. If I did a dozen more I’d undoubtedly be nearer the mark, but there would go another few hours. I have a few other projects trying to be done, so the ghost of Robert Frost whispers
“Oh, I marked the first for another day!/But knowing how way leads on to way,/I doubted If I should be coming back.”
Scale Model
She and he have made a team
Cast and crew are oyster-steamed–O
At the wrap they’re all redeemed
Latent talent makes the theme
Ending well means what that hell
..
Scale Model
Sally 4th 4 new gigs loom
Comes the dawn we worry so
Angst is up til we feel doom’d
Lava flows and ice ergs floe
Every set’s a grassy knoll
..
Scale Model
She is small & he’s her gem
Cowardice has made him moo
And she haws as he has hemm’d
Lady’s skein’s a villanelle
Egomaniac doth swell
..
Scale Model
Sarcasm
Cameo
Adenoid
Lagniappe
Enamel
here we have gone past the end of july
in an interval set long ago
the cæsars remembered two months and a sigh
and a fog with hot charcoal in tow
..
september tempts us to be cool
in attitude and fashion
with falling leaves and back to school
and ends of days to crash in
..
candy acquisition
and a moon on wax and wane
seasonal tradition
we’re allowed to be insane
Presence Felt
Perhaps he is a little stiff
Relief came with a friendly spliff
Engrossed in word and act obscene
Satiety made him serene
Engaged; engorged; it is so swell
Nasturtiums nest in soft pastel
Such moments given and not lent
Enables love unpenitent
I’ve been chipping away at this work in progress a bit at a time for about three weeks now. Today I put in a good hour and a half. It would be thrilling to be done with it by a week from today, but as always with a more ambitious work, the drawing starts taking control and making demands. That is a superb problem to have!
triage
feel for a pulse.
check
for
breath.
now they convulse.
life
or
death?
This is my fiancée, Donna Sue Atkins. She is holding a rough sketch of an engagement ring I just designed for her. The design incorporates the Yin/Yang symbol of Taoism, though we are not Taoists. The design includes our monograms of “gwb” and “dsa” within the dots.
This morning I asked Donna if she wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives. She does. So I asked her again to marry me. “Let me think about it.” Midafteroon I asked her again. “Give me five minutes.” “Take six.” Six minutes later she said Yes.
I got into my car to do errands, and Get A Haircut was on the list. Pushed the Android Auto Search microphone icon and when it beeped I said “Barber shop near me.” It navigated me to a shop on Monroe Street with traditional barber poles, and I walked in, and wow, did I feel white. The clientele and staff were African-American, there was hip-hop playing on the speakers, and a large portrait of Muhammad Ali just inside the front door.
One of the barbers looked up at me and said, “Help you?”
“Just a haircut,” I said, and sat to wait. I felt like an intruder, though no one there said or did anything to make me feel unwelcome. But I also felt as though Fate had handed me a ticket to a new Great Human Adventure.
“What’s your name?” said the big man in whose chair I now sat. He reminded me a little of Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier, former defensive tackle for the LA Rams. (He is still with us at 94 years of age!) When I said Gary he said I could call him JV.
JV listened carefully to what I wanted: short, professional-looking, squared-off collar-length in back, REALLY short on the sides, and enough on top to keep it from sticking up. And in about 25 minutes he produced the EXACT haircut I had described.
“I think I know what JV stands for,” I told him.
“My first name is Jamal…”
“Nah. I’m pretty sure JV stands for Justly Victorious.” That gave him a grin.
I got permission to mention his name and my new haircut in a post,paid him in full with a $10 tip, and went home to show my Sweetheart the work of art on my head.
