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My friend Joe challenged our poetry group to write a poem about metal, but not gold, silver or platinum. I wrote this:

yum yum yum molybdenum
say it thrice it makes you thrum

with it i am o so chummy
want to be molybdenummy

love it quickly love it slowly
worship it as holy moly

moly ringwald moly hatchet
moly fever let’s all catch it

that is why i gave it chase
wound up with a moly face

This morning I frantically riffled through my archives for a second Holy Moly. Here it is:

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Two Holy Molys will see me safe to Phoenix, where I’ll see my mother, my daughter, and, I hope, my ailing stepfather. Au revoir!

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From midnight to seven today I was doing my Graveyard Shift Front Desk thing. Drove home to Cottonwood, communed with Cookie the cat on the couch and caught about forty-five minutes, then drove back to the Village of Oak Creek for my solo shift at the Village Gallery. It was busy and then not off and on from 10am to 6pm. When it was unbusy I looked through my almost-filled notebook for unfinished stuff, being too beat and disheartened to start something new, and found a portrait of Etta James. It was a welcome distraction to work on the portrait and to concoct some poetry based on the liner notes of one of her CDs, which we have at the Gallery. Now I’m here at home, very tired but wired too, and so I finished the page, scanned it and photoedited it as you see. Ms. James died two years and eleven days ago. I so wish I’d seen her perform.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

Even Angels board the ouija
Elves and trolls and you too mija
Thus goes one LA girl’s anthem
Took her Bleus but shan’t decant them
Thrilled a Fuqua Chessed a piece
Tapped a needle for release
Ahh: AT LAST she’s made good choices
Adding hers to Heaven’s voices

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Corners turned & fates revised–so balances the beam
A splayed delay, then RICOCHET as CHAOS slings the schema
Reveal: A plinth–a LABYRINTH–a HINGE-so creaky door
Outside a bride who’s stir’d & fried her veggies with a spork
Macabre or humdrum? All relies on THIS; the wine uncorks
[or: Macabre or humdrum? All relies on THIS, the road that forks]

Ipse dixit, I hope. [smiles]

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One of the great shames of my 21st Century life is that in this century I have never been less than 200 pounds. I’ve been working hard this year to make that untrue, but I am a glutton whose appetite often becomes a runaway train. This page hints at my struggle.

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

When hunger strikes at three o’clock and cravings grow and grow
I STRIVE to minimize the want–I Strive to stem the flow–I
Strive: austerity with grace: a Winner’s tale to tell
Potential TRIUMPH wrestles with a SWEET TOOTH hard to quell

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This one will neither go away nor allow itself to be finished, so here it is in draft, with hopes that its growth proceeds.

Here are the words to the double acrostic:

He had his genius charm–his diamond rough
Or flawed, though hard–a fear of such as flu
Was long self-exiled, shy of folk & bug
And yet of Flight he never got enough
Romantic leading ladies knew largesse
Detractors harried up a Hellish mess

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I’m no photorealist, but I took two days instead of my usual one with my page image in order to take the proper time to be a tourist in Photorealville. Like a marathon, it’s more fun HAVING done it than actually DOING it.

In French, “Il faut que…” means, approximately, “It is necessary that…” I haven’t studied French in more than thirty-five years, but I think whatever follows the phrase must take the subjunctive. Luckily I only needed the phrase to make an international bad pun. This one isn’t just punning for the sake of, though. With Ill meaning Sick and Faux meaning False and Ku meaning Haikuesque, the play on words fits the words of the poem, which are these:

out of the darkness,
into the comprehensible:
uneasily done…

One example is Galileo’s Inquisition-forced recantation of his assertion that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than vice versa. He is rumored to have muttered “Eppur si muove” [“Nevertheless, it [the earth] still moves”] as he walked off to compromised freedom.

A more recent example is Richard Feynman’s bucking of NASA authority in publishing, and demonstrating, his assertion that the material that the O-Rings were made of was the likely cause of the Challenger disaster. Less known is the fact that he was on a supervisory committee for the approval of textbooks in the state of California, and tried to fight senselessness in the textbooks he reviewed, to little avail and in the face of offered bribes and other senselessness. He finally quit in frustration and emotional stress; THAT battle he could not continue to fight.

Bottom line: If you have a Truth that defies societal “truth,” and you wish to defend the Truth, prepare for uneasiness.

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You’ll find the circumflex right above the 6 on your keyboard. By itself, it’s called a caret. I mention that only because in posting, entertaining, or teaching, getting your point across is often due to a good mix of caret and schtick.

(Sorry…)

The circumflex is used in French for words that used to have an S. Thus forêt means Forest. The Latin words circum (around) and flectere (to bend) mashed up to make circumflexus. This made me think of Dance, which is a lot of bending around, and also the life-journey step of turning a corner. Thus my image is of an introspective dancer. The Jackson Browne song works with her well.

Here are the words:

Chuckleheads deride & scoff
In their forêt of felafel
Ridicule a Dance de Luxe
Cacophonic at its crux
Understatement will cohere
May observers stand & cheer

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…NOT Continuing Sex Education, as you may have extrapolated. CSE is Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow, possibly the heiress to the mantle of Dorothy Parker, but more likely first of her by-her-bootstraps kind. The poetry of hers that I have read is quasi-conversational, but you’ll catch your metaphorical toe on a phrase and find it sprawls you elsewhere…

An alternate title to this post might be “Well, She Asked For It…” The image/poem came to be when Cynthia challenged me on Facebook to triple-acrosticize her name. An early draft of this page was produced and Facebook-posted within an hour of my reading Cynthia’s challenge, which just goes to show what a liberating force severe limitations can be. Had she challenged me to “write a poem in less than an hour” I’m not at all sure I could have done it. (“It takes a fillip in the flanks for my mare to dance,” Rex Stout once had Nero Wolfe say…)

Anyway, I’m glad to know Cynthia, who is vivacious and witchily wise. She’s also won a boatload of awards for her poetry and has been published in more different poetry journals than I’ve ever read. She’s findable all over the Internet, and poetry lovers could do worse than to look for her…

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SYNOPSIS: Your narrator began composing a sonnet that had the further restriction of the double acrostic QUINTESSENTIAL BREATHLESSNESS. Four lines into the sonnet he questioned the wisdom of continuing, citing “wonkiness.”

Fourteen lines into the sonnet, it is finished, and I am glad I saw it through, though seeing it through involved a partial de-wonkitization of the fourth line. Nor am I at all certain that this is the final version; but there is enough good in it as is to make me proud and happy: it makes ultimate sense, it all ties together with the final couplet, and it tells my peculiar truth.

Again and again I learn that to see an attempt through to a state of completion is valuable and important. Why do I keep UNlearning it? Probably because it is so often easier to quit than to continue. “Who needs THIS [stuff]?” we are so prone to ask, and it is important to ask; but this time the answer was, “I do.”

Here is a transcription of the words:

Quick learner, thou art never long a newb
Upscaler, we must bid thee au revoir
Inamorata, neither time nor tube
Needs mention when you meet a partner’s Ma
There’s more to life than having needs be met
Encyclicals have ne’er made turmoil smooth
Strife’s ruled the rooster; Inquisition, shtetl
Some hurts may take a Miracle to soothe
Ephemeral events may carve out basins
NOW is YOUR time, you whose desire grows
The chest of hope has room, so put your lace in
It’s HEART that puts the Romance in the rose
As Living teaches, we’re conferred degrees
Lush vistas will reward the one who Sees

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This image began with an exercise: look through a newspaper supplement and draw all the faces. The faces turned out to be mostly smiling, so the suggestion was that joy was in the air, and that it was jumbly–Jumble of Joy. Unfortunately, J as an end-letter doesn’t fly much outside the Mideast. Fortunately, J as an end-SOUND is all over the English language, so a little spelling-flexibility–nowhere near what is seen in much of hip-hop–took care of the J issue.

Here are the words:

Jurassick sparks won’t tree-fly if you vej
Umbrellas willn’t get you through a hej
Metropolises bulge & overflo
But Sparseville FREEZES: forty-2 belo
LIFT HIGH your Heart, for THIS will be the day
Enchantment rocks–IF you come out 2 play

More of the same platitudinous crap I’ve been ladling for years, granted. My only defense is it’s true…