First movement: Allegro
Second movement: Largo
The above pages represent my output for March 25. There is much to be done with both of them, but their ships have sailed. Perhaps their ships will return to dock, but not today.
Note to REPO MAN fans: the acrostic-within-the-acrostic reads LATTICE OF COINCIDENCERS. You might be thinking Plate, or Shrimp, or Plate of Shrimp…
Daily maintenance of a creative journal is ever-challenging. What do you do when you can’t think of anything? You cuss, and censor your cussing with “blankety-blank…,” and realize the ironic relationship between the Blanket and the Blank, and you’re off and running.
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
Bartleby Beetle–by all rights a snob
Left friendly pheromones gracing a knob
Annie Arabian waylaid her foal
Needing a frisky young stud for a stroll
Kermit Koala gyrated with Leila
Keeping a promise youths make at a gala
Emmett Egret played around with a swan
Easily straying from checkers & flan
Telling such lies stymies joy, but a brick
Though essentially dense, is with dignity thick
What does it mean? It may not mean anything but Blankety Blank. Or it may be a statement about Aesop’s Fabulous absurdity, or it may be a celebration of the Brick similar to the one Woody Harrelson’s character made in INDECENT PROPOSAL. It’s just wordplay and flash-storytelling, really, rated PG-13 for adult themes. I hope it entertains.
More than fifty years ago a Minnesota kid wrote “Song to Woody.” More than four years ago an Arizona kid drew “Song to Bobby.” (He’d just seen I’M NOT THERE.) And just yesterday that same kid did another would-be tribute to his favorite songwriter:
The illustration includes references to “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Mister Tambourine Man,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Jokerman,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat.”
These are the words to the double acrostic:
Begin with a North boy’s decision–he’ll leave Minnesota behind
Beguiled by a Dust Bowl declaimer–by hard times & music defined
On east to a Village whose voice was–just right for the dissolute skinny
On coffeehouse stools for performing–like many a Tom Dick & Vinny
Betokening change for the better–came Capitol Records, & vinyl
Baroquely, the folk went electric–& then came a trauma near spinal
Befuddlement presaged conversion–an episode, not a novella
Bold “Jokerman” waxed infidelic–a multiambiguous fella
Yes, his wont’s to want contradiction–like sallowness under a zap tan
Yet he achieves TRUTH via fiction–& lyrically he is the Captain
I close with the marquee of a wonderful event held annually in Old Town of Cottonwood, Arizona. Last year I was privileged to sing with Joe Neri and the Mystery Tramps, who had audience members sing seven of the ten verses of “Desolation Row.” I got the one with the reference to Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. My voice almost broke on “The Titanic sails at dawn,” but I had a strong finish. [smiles]
This one’s pretty straightforward. It may help to know that I now live in Sedona, Arizona, where there is a plethora of breathtaking sandstone rock formations; also, when I was a kid and in the family car and we pulled up alongside a truck, if I caught the trucker’s eye and made a horn-honking gesture, often he (or she, but there didn’t seem to be any female truckers back then) would oblige me by honking his horn.
Here are the words to the non-acrostic:
from winter sprung
to spend an equinoctial time
in maximal vernal rapture
it may behoove to grow a sparse goatee
that the plucky breeze might riffle
all seventy-three hairs of its chin portion
the while you stride through
& converse with
the array of petrified sand
that is popularly misnamed ‘the red rocks’
when you tell the array it is majestic
it glows a bit more fiercely
tooting its visual horn the way
a truck driver toots his sonic one
if asked to via gesture
when you ask the array what awes it
your attention is directed to trees
fluffy in soft-blossomed lavender
and you are also commanded
to go home
kiss your lovely girlfriend
and feel the g r a t i t u d e
that Spring evokes
First I decided to fill a page with a sonnet. Then I did a search on fourteen-letter words, and “antithetically” just jumped out. So I calligraphed it across the page and down the page, making each letter analogously antithetical. Something compelled me to make most of the rhymes “ee,” it paid off especially with “twee” (look up Alan Turing for verification of appropriateness) and “freak quince see,” which is a glimpse of this word-playa’s Holy Grail.
Here are the words of the sonnet:
a needless thing is animosity
neuropathy takes healers needless time
to tune to Turing testing’s ultra twee
if Touring’s true to taproot reason/rhyme
the hypertensive sensitivity
hermed users of Viagra may evince
elongment of unpleasant taut unglee
turgidity to make a groan man wince
is symptomatic of the irony
conspicuous presumption may confer
across a spectrum Pope to Byron. We
lack focus to slow wisdom from its blur.
laconic lack makes Yakking’s freak quince see
yea/hallelujah’s analeptic key.
I’ve been up all night working the Graveyard shift, and am falling asleep as I type, so I will forgo the usual notes–but I’ll check back in a few hours and cheerfully answer any questions you, gentle Reader, may have.
As I indicate by my signature, I am an admiring fan of Theodor Geisel, known to the world as Dr. Seuss. FOX IN SOCKS charmed my own socks off me, and one of my fondest memories is reading it aloud to my toddler daughter.
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Let’s start with a task that will not anger bees
Leaves zinnias unfettered and gracing the trees
Out where it’s assumed that a favoring breeze
Obscures a disaster with greatest of ease
One way to get smash hits as featured in Hulu
Opine that the seaside has snagged you a lulu
See–he’ll never cease to amaze all us toddlers
Serves up Feats of antics for Mollies & Coddlers
Escape to his Casa–it’s Perfect for Dawdlers
…and please do visit http://www.seussville.com, where the Good Doctor lives on!
I love looking at constellations, though I think Astrology is a bunch of nonsense. The constellation they call Orion looks more like a butterfly than a mighty hunter to me. Scorpio–Bent Seven; Cassiopeia–the W in WTF.
Here are the words of the fractured, partially-blank acrostic:
Concoct a tale told straight
Omit not Doom nor Fate
No one will PROVE it’s bull
Shoot–’twill, if fancy/full
Let witlings crow & hope
Led by their horoscope
Lives thus & so misguided
Lose starlight though benighted
PS–this page is offered for entertainment value only. [smiley face]
The words to the double acrostic:
H A V E A L O C H , E L L I S . . . a monkey named Beppo
Engaged to be merry is F U N if not hep
Lo, tide; hie, poor thermic: Mick hails, re king/Brut
In dust (re: us) Lee seeks a nap — O Lee — Frutti
Can apple us canopied not — or with stadium
An endlessness bodes well des mondes & Dez Tutu
Lest rad (y yo) active . . . . . . unmade of vanadium
Above the acrostic is a drawing of Air Force Two, and above that is the tagline “Featuring AIR FORCE TWO as Candy,” and above that is the double-barreled title ENTITLEMENT, or, Your Guest Is as Good as Mined.
I posted the image in Facebook, and it was met with bafflement, exemplified by my beloved girlfriend’s comment, “??? Well, you done flew that copter right over this poor gal’s head.” I HAD pointed out that, as it was St. Patrick’s Day, I was honoring the occasion by presenting a green-tinted page that was full of Blarney; but that there was a subtext of fiscal conservatism.
The acrostic is loaded with puns. I’ll give you the first one: “Have a loch, Ellis” is a riff on Havelock Ellis, a pioneer in the study of atypical sexuality.
Also, here is my Facebook response to Denise: “Let’s get in the chopper and have a fun ride, Darling. The message is hidden in plane sight: our Founding Fathers did fine with no need for Air Force One, let alone Two. PS: LBJ had a bowling alley installed in the White House basement. PPS: Congresscritters keep voting themselves Louis XVI perks. Sackcloth & Ash em, says I! [smiley face]”
Here are the impossible-to-read-on-the-page words:
Misanthropes are often human–denizens of desks
Others dole out peskiness w/gusto & w/pesk
Sucking vampires if they’re let as deft as Pistol Pete
Quizno-quick & Hoover strong till abdomen’s replete
Unto puddles under trees they hatch, they drink, YOU smart
ICK! to you is YUM! to them–some hot soup à la carte
Tender flesh is Heaven-sent, Maurice Chevalier
Offering A Positive will make a buzzter’s day
Notes: Ironically, I think to call mosquitoes misanthropes is anthropomorphizing. They’re just hungry, which makes them pesky. And is there such a thing as Pesk? Sure, but surprisingly, the word derives not from bugs, but fish.
I’ve wondered sometimes what a mosquito becomes if it sucks blood from a vampire. I’m tickled to express the possibility poetically.
The late Pistol Pete Maravich was a superbly talented but injury-prone professional basketball player. He liked to put some razzle-dazzle into his ball handling and shooting. Tragically, he died at a mere 40 during a pickup game, unaware that he had a congenital heart defect. Don’t ignore symptoms, friends!!
Quiznos is a place that makes sandwiches, fast. Hoovers are vacuum cleaners that suck strongly when new.
Maurice Chevalier was an entertainer and actor. One of the songs he made famous was “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy Magazine, sang that song once, on Saturday Night Live, long ago.
A Positive is a very common blood type, which happens to be my own. And Buzzter is my own corruption of the word Buster.
Questions and comments are most welcome!
Here are the words to the acrostic:
It is wondrous, isn’t it
A soul to keep around & with
Now when the birds tuwit tuwoo
Don’t doubt that they mean You & YOU
No veiled references, no allegory, no twisty wordplay–this is no less nor more than a celebration and remembrance of young love.
I entered one of my latest birds in a juried art show. The poor guy was rejected, and thus we are both dejected. But the elating thing about having a blog is that you are your own juror, and everything you do is juried in. So welcome to my latest one-man, one-bird show!
One with Clay, Image and Text 