Archive

Tag Archives: illustration

Carol Hogan, Cutter of Sand

September 11, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

001

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
Uncategorized
1 Comment

003

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
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

002

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
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

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
Uncategorized
3 Comments

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]

001

Geek-A-Rama

July 3, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001

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.

Picasso was a Jerk

July 2, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

Recently TIME Magazine profiled a retrospective of Jeff Koons. Mr. Koons is a good four months younger than I am, yet he’s seen work of his sold for a cool 58.4 million dollars. Once I sold a piece of mine for $250.00, but then the gallery took its 20%. Sigh.

It reminded me of this page, of a pioneer of not only Art but of an artist’s self-promotion:

001

Here are the words to the acrostic sonnet, with apologies for the clumsiness of Line 5:

What Picasso Had

Well, Pablo had a round head–that’s for starters;
His Bald and Bulbous Noggin was a Moon;
A gorgeous Harem–Demoiselles & Martyrs;
The cheek to make a napkin-drawn cartoon

Pay for three demoiselles’ Euro-Vacation;
Intensity of Focus . . . FEAR of Death . . .
Chicago’s streets to sculpt a Big Sensation;
A knack for Marketing with Every Breath.
Some envy his long life, his wealth, his Women,
Success like that some Art aspirants strive for;
Oh, nothing’s wrong with Fame to smile & swim in,

However, it’s unseemly to connive for.
Ahhh–I’ll not judge him. ART’ll; FATE’ll; GOD’ll;
Don’t know–but I won’t use him as a Model.

(Of behavior, that is. He was a real and true Jerk. See SURVIVING PICASSO for a taste of his Jerkiness, not to mention a stellar performance by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Quoth Wikipedia: “Picasso is shown as often not caring about other people’s feelings, firing his driver after a long period of service, and as a womanizer, saying that he can sleep with whomever he wants.”)

 

Involvements

June 30, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Here is another finally-finished page.

The words to the single-word double acrostic are these:

Index cards & social meme
Novice hack or reader’s dream
Voices shrill can drill to bone
Orders strict tell despot’s notion
Lavish love creates its quotient
Vortex waves have force of oceans

001

The meaning to this one is less elusive if you think of the words with the image as not describing a universal truth, but one person’s relationship/maturation journey, and that person someone you’re just getting to know.

grasp of air/Three With Background

June 25, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

Double Feature day, Friends! First a poem:

grasp of air

the air touches and pushes against my hand
but will not be held by it
eludes my desperate grasp

and the same odd silly desperation obtains
when i try to hold time stiller than one second per second
time pushes against and touches my life
but will not be held by it

instead it mocks with the irony
that i was drooling
and dazed and clueless
a few weeks out of the starting gate
and will be drooling
and dazed and cashing in my last clue
a few weeks before the finish line

it is sixtwentytwofourteen twelvefiftyfourayem
it is sixtwentytwofourteen twelvefiftyfiveayem

seize the day? good luck with that

forge memories? yes you can
some of them will mock you with their irrepetition
some of them will sting you with a new context
some of them will settle you down
some of them will undissolve you

don’t grasp air with your hand
grasp it with your lungs

make memories your art form
your mind the lungs that grasp time

it is sixtwentytwofourteen oneohtwoayem
over but not out for it is and isn’t was

Completing the double feature is the image “Three With Background”:

001