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shadow on the moon/countdown

July 16, 2016
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shadow on the moon

i throw a shadow on the moon
the sun recoils
the planets
S W O O N

2016-07-16 00.03.54

Yesterday there was a Celebration of Life for my friend and classmate Charlie Rhodes. In the chapel, having arrived early, I wrote this before the Celebration began:

******
charlie rhodes, modest colossus

in the framed picture of charlie to the left
of his casket he is wearing number 55 on his
chest and shoulders a bengals cap on his head
and a moustache and his grin on his beaming face
there are three flower arrangements to the right of
his flag-draped casket and a slide show above it
charlie was so full of zest I would not be
too astonished if he burst out of his casket right now
“i really had you going didn’t i guys”
and he would give us his blessed cheerfulness
that charlie
joked at our 20th reunion that he had become an adult film star under the name ‘chuck stake’
the last i saw him was here at the service of his dad
so long, charlie
you were the king of cheer
so long, chuck
save a fluffer for me
*****
After the funeral I worked my shift at the airport and came home and wrote this to the music of Jackson Browne’s “Fountain of Sorrow”:
*****
layers 2016
there are two tabs on my browser now
jackson browne sings “fountain of sorrow” on the other tab
youtube as usual
and i write right now on this tab

but deeper into the background is the bus ride home
and the driver and his colleague talking about a friend
who was forced to take a cab
it bothered them: it was like the shoemaker’s children barefoot

and the next layer down is the shift i worked
and a mistake i made that almost resulted in a reprimand
i had interrupted a server taking an order
and the diner rightfully took offense

and earlier than my shift was a sandwich:
busride/funeral/busride
a friend’s remains boxed and outside the box
grievers “celebrated” as best they could

jackson browne has finished singing
my feet feel better unshod
my shift ended well
my dead friend sleeps without bad dreams

*****

As midnight approached I finished the poem and the drawing above, and here we are.

I have only a handful of posts to do before my 1000th post. I want them to be among the best posts I’ve ever done, and I want the 1000th post to be the best of all. I want it to help justify my existence . . .

. . . and I may try too hard and clench up. So this is the cautionary “SLOW DOWN!” that Darlene Goto, extraordinary Art Teacher of two-thirds of my life ago, wrote by way of critique of my first submitted portfolio, in her Drawing & Composition class at Glendale Community College in the Fall semester of 1973. With the handful of pre-1000th posts to do, and seven weeks or so to work with, I will unclench and unrush and have fun and be loose.

Back in a week or so . . .

 

I.C.A.D. Day 19 — Snow Globe

June 19, 2015
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002

In the Spring of 1973 I was full of myself, and full of beans as well. (Not much evolvement on either of those fronts has been made.) I was a student at Glendale Community College and my pal Evan Bishop was that year’s editor of its literary magazine, The Traveler. Evan let me inflict my then-meager illustrative talent on the magazine, and I can only hope that not many copies of that misbegotten edition are floating around still. But one drawing, an illustration for a poem about a melting snowman, did have a crude charm. The lady who wrote the poem was happy enough to say, “THAT’S my Snowman!” So I feel as though I achieved some modest success with illustration, even forty-odd years ago.

Today the phrase “snow globe” evoked memories of that snowman, so I brought him back.

Cover Story: Three Covers, Forty Years

November 15, 2014
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Recently my e-mail included an attachment of the cover of SANDCUTTERS, the quarterly publication of the Arizona State Poetry Society. The cover design is by Carol Hogan, and features a ceramic work of mine on the front cover, and a journal page of mine on the back. It looks like this:

sandcutter cover 111514

Naturally I’m thrilled about this. I’m no stranger to literary publication covers, but there have been so few in my artist’s checkered career that I am at most a casual acquaintance. I have designed the covers of two out of three of the chapbooks I’ve self-published. (My old and truest friend Steve Boyle designed the cover of SAVAGE SONNETS AND OTHER WHYS, and I here reward him by not featuring that cover on this post. I am a Stinker.) Here is the cover of my first chapbook:

001

Behind The Bird are thumbnails of some of the 600-odd journal pages I’d done, scanned and posted to the now-defunct website Eons.

To see the one other cover I’d done before then, we have to set the Way-Back Machine all the way to 1973, when I was an 18-year-old pup attending Glendale Community College. That year’s GCC literary magazine, The Traveler, featured my white-on-black portrait of my then-girlfriend. There’s awful clumsiness in the drawing, but there is also love. Here it is, courtesy of GCC’s Memory Project:

traveler cover 111514

Bob Dylan’s line from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” comes to mind: “Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift.” Forty years of covers and I STILL am on the day shift. [smiles] C’est La Vie–that covers it!

Wander Window

June 30, 2013
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Image

Here is an oblique salute to comic-book artists, who must think of their multiple illustrations on a page both as individual images and as elements in a greater composition.

I seem to remember an issue of GRAPHIS Magazine, perused in the Glendale Community College Library (which has since evolved, or something, into a “Media Center”) by me in the early 70’s, that was devoted to the comic-book art of old-school Jack Kirby and (then) new-wave Neal Adams. But before the issue got to those two gentlemen they asked themselves who the FIRST Comic-Book Artist was, and they offered Francisco Goya as a possible answer: he’d done a multi-panel sequence of a monk disarming an armed robber.

All two-dimensional artwork is one or more Wander Windows. The quality and delivery effectiveness of the window wander capacity depends on a few factors, skill of the artist being but one of them. Interaction, not mere execution, is key. (Wow, that sounds pompous; sorry!)

Here are my acrostical words:

Wallops whaling with Kapow
As the foe goes Yai-Kai-Yai
Now the damsel frames a frown
Double-Dee’d unless she lied
EC Comics’ Anti-Hero
Rousted bouts down Pain&Fear Row

Calm/Rage/Temper-A-Mental

May 3, 2013
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Image

Many years ago, in Mr. Richmond’s Senior English class at Glendale High School, I wrote an essay in which I admitted knowing almost nothing about the subject. Milnor Richmond, in his profound wisdom, circled the admission in red and wrote “Don’t admit it.” I have never forgotten that…

…but I haven’t always taken his advice, literally, literarily, or figuratively. About this page I wish to admit that it has serious flaws. It doesn’t say all that much; what it has to say is confusing; and the face that is supposed to represent Rage doesn’t: it just looks like a guy about to sneeze.

All that said, I don’t think the page is a waste of time to look at. As another wise teacher, Darlene Goto, former Drawing & Composition instructor at Glendale Community College, would often say to a student, “It has possibilities.” I am creatively arrogant enough to say that if I ever take a decent amount of time to realize the page’s possibilities, I’ll have a text/image for the ages. (Now I hear Mr. Richmond’s gravelly voice saying, “Don’t declaim it.”)

Hear are the words to the two acrostics:

Cold fury’s touch will sear
A blast of HATE is near–a
Lunatic–don’t beg
Methinks Fate will renege

Thoughtful speculators dream
Essays to assay a meme
Many wingbeats tax a swan
Pray consult a clairvoyant [French pronunciation, not American]
End with panicked dash, mach schnell–a
Runaround leaves us unwell