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nine the month eleven the day thirteen the years

September 11, 2014
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nine the month eleven the day thirteen the years

hot fuel trickled down a building’s spine

twice

crushed lives and complacency

a five-sided base of operations got slammed

a lovely meadow got scarred

ray charles sang in arizona

out of verse sequence

in his eloquence:

“o beautiful

for heroes proved

in liberating strife

who more than selves

their country loved

and mercy more than life…”

george w. bush threw a perfect strike to kick off the d-backs vs. yanks game

it may have been his finest hour

how his back must have itched

then we went to war

dealt a deck of cards with bad guys on them

got quite a few of them

stuck them on the edge of cuba

one group gets taken out

another materializes–isis?

wasn’t she a saturday-morning superheroine?

or is it isil?

they will be airstricken

and they will pay

and others no doubt

will come out of the thin air of the desert and the mountains

but we must do something

we must look at thirteen years of what we have done

and ask: what works?

what heals?

we must become a different creature

we must become a different world

wisdom is elusive

but mercy is in all of us

let us reward the merciful

yes let us defend ourselves

but may we be clever enough to do so

without attacking others

let it be our way

to never give up on mercy

Carol Hogan, Cutter of Sand

September 11, 2014
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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
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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
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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
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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

 

Sissy & Bubba, Anti-Terrorists

July 12, 2014
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Yesterday I showed Denise’s grandchildren a drawing in progress of a terrifying bug in extreme closeup. With their coaching I was able to de-terrorize the bug a great deal. Before we were done the bug was smoking a cig, wearing a beret and cop-sunglasses, wielding an ineffectual gun, and gaining a sidekick scorpion singing to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot.” Reflected in the cop-sunglasses were Sissy and Bubba’s faces, Bubba mock-scared and Sissy mocking-grinning. All of the enhancements helped make a going-nowhere faked-up study become a showcase of the bravery of children in the face of the unknown. Bless the Beast and the Children! [smiles]

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glory? hallelujah? lazarus come fourth

July 4, 2014
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Friends, today is the 238th anniversary of the presentation of my country’s Declaration of Independence to the world. I feel compelled to write something for the occasion, so here goes.

glory? hallelujah? lazarus come fourth

columbus took slaves
& killed innocents

andrew jackson presided over the genocidal “trail of tears”
flogging the aptly named “indian removal act”

nixon carpetbombed cambodia
he’d barely been inaugurated

reagan mined nicaraguan waters
and even barry goldwater acknowledged that that was a war crime

hillary clinton has a good shot at the presidency
but she lost me when she championed the patriot act

america america man sheds his waste on thee
said george carlin to applauders who were horrendous wasters themselves

america the practice flies in the face of america the theory
in so many heartbreaking ways

but america has the songs of katharine bates and pete seeger and jackson browne
and bob dylan and janis ian and brian wilson and carole king and carly simon and paul simon

america has the poetry of langston hughes and maya angelou
and the musings of ralph ellison and james baldwin–descendants of slaves all

and walt whitman heard america singing long before them
and listen and you will hear her singing still

nonvengeful amish
freewheeling brilliant feynman pohl asimov greg bear poul anderson

thirty-one years ago i declared independence from a sedentary lifestyle
ran a mile in under nine minutes and would continue to do so daily for 420 days
that first mile of the streak began on 19th & indian school
& ended a mile north
& as i turned south to walk home & faced the phoenix downtown
as if on cue the fireworks started telling me i was on a true path
and i a molecule of america received a mandate to renew restore and become

that fourth of july 1983 was more than half my life ago
terrible things have happened since inside my life and out
sweet amazing things have happened as well
i cannot but think that america is wounded perhaps direly
but she still has a spark and a heart
and regenerable tissue
and a mind for the better

Geek-A-Rama

July 3, 2014
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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.