Well, Clay can be plastered to make a mold
And walls too for frescoes the paint to hold
We weep when plastered too soon & too old
But it’s liquor, not plaster, involved.
.
We metaphorize in our so-human race
Infusing locution with power and grace
And a grin may get plastered all over a face
When a meter and rhyme puzzle’s solved.
In twenty twenty-four an alloy sandwich
Stamped by an unrelenting hydraulic press
Became a coin worth twenty-five cents US.
On the obverse is the image of a slaveowner
And above his head is the curved word
L I B E R T Y
While on the reverse is a portrait
Of the Reverend Doctor Anna Pauline
“Pauli” Murray, Episcopal priest
And champion of civil rights.
Dr. Murray’s portrait fills the O
Of the word HOPE
Emblazoned on the coin.
Beneath her name
Is E PLURIBUS UNUM:
“From Many, One.”
Here are in both fact and metaphor
Two sides of the same coin
Minted in the United States of America.
Flip that coin.
Hope that the whirly gig you just gave it
Has it land on the awake, enlightened Tails
And not the asleep, entrenched Heads.
Flip it till it’s right!
for the sauce for your next romance remember/longing is like cayenne pepper/a pinch is essential/but more than that is probably too much
put some sunset in there/and for reheating/hope for sunrise
ease and comfort are your béchamel
as for kisses/season to taste
here is a loon alone/whose mate disapproved of the nesting site he’d chosen/and ended up with another/whose upscale site she loved
the window is closing/for him to seduce another female
and it is not in him/to fight another male/in an attempted eviction
so write what happy ending you will/at this early-spring frigid-lake slice of time/he is a loon alone/totally alone/but for the clicking pebbles in his belly
humans call the pebbles gastroliths/ because they aid digestion/of those vertebrates the loon swallows whole and headfirst
but this poet calls them pebblehenge/and uses poetic license/to arrange the pebbles accordingly
and then brings the loon a mate/who will drive him just the right amount of crazy/and he will give his utmost/to make their united life a waterfowl paradise
the reader may suspect/that the poet is not writing about loons anymore
the poet is uneager to explore this possibility/and so the poem ends/with a happy unalone loon/giving the reader a wink
the umlauted sky
evoked by a photograph by Sharon Suzuki-Martinez
two birds make the smallest formation.
abreast, small against huge tapioca-patterned clouds,
they add to the sky an umlaut,
a diacritical mark that makes all the difference
in heaven.
when we form an alliance
with a friend or a partner
or helpful neighbor or determined sweetheart
or any permutation thereof,
we umlaut the horizon
or the path or purpose
we are trying to acquire,
and though at times it makes more sense
to be a dot/beauty mark/vertex
than half an umlaut
or semicolon or colon,
teamed journeys
against a daunting sky
or looming thicket
are force multipliers
of the story
and its outcome.
don’t you love an umlaut
celebrating an anniversäry?
chickens
to Susan Vespoli
there is a place to stroll in my neighborhood
that i think of as the Chicken District
simply because chickens abound
and stroll like i do. once
a lady was leading a troupe of chicks
to safety off the asphalt of Earll Drive
and i called from down the street
“aha! NOW i know why
The Chicken Crossed The Road!” and she laughed
and declared herself the Crazy Chicken Lady.
today was another saunter in the District
but then in a group of four
i saw a specimen with some feathers
that were the strawberry blonde
described by my poet friend Susan V
in her heartstopping poem “Chicken”
that was really about her son
and the processing of her anxiety and grief
about him–
a golden hen magically appeared
and then disappeared
but the reader must decide
if the bird was real
or manifested by a grieving mother
to step down the high voltage
of her helplessness
in watching her son’s life
take its
tragic
turns.
when i saw that strawberry blonde
my friend and her poem magically popped
into my suddenly unlulled thoughts
and it became not a coincidence
but a needed component of life on earth
that Tragic
and Magic
rhyme.
chickens
cross roads
lay eggs
become fricasseed
pick out dough in breadpans
peck and scratch and look askance
and reveal glory and downfall
and the bond
that shared grief
creates.
Afterword: Susan’s poem “Chicken” may be found in her outstanding collection Blame It on the Serpent, available via Amazon.
For those not in the know, “threefer” is American slang for “three for one.” It is also Gary slang for “triptych.” 🙂
The leftmost card features four similar-sounding words, with an attempt to visually make metaphors of the words. So “deifying” has a celestial tang; “defying” emphasizes the “fy” in the middle, which could well stand for “fuck you;” “DEAFENING” has a huge first syllable, which diminishes the “sound” of the last two syllables; and “defining” has the look of an entry in a dictionary, wherein one may find definitions. Not only does doing this feed my Poetry Beast, it is also a tip of the hat to one of my grade-school art teachers, Mrs. Johnson, who once had us think of a word we could demonstrate, e.g. make the letters of the word TALL tall, grow some hair on the word FUZZY, and so forth.
The middle card has a mesmerized mathematician at upper right, a pole dancer up the pole at center stage, and a festoonment of math symbology and equation fragments throughout. “What the Mathematician Saw at the Strip Club.” This is loosely inspired by Nobel-Prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman’s recollections of his strip-joint experiences, as published in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character. But my drawn mathematician does not bear any resemblance to Dr. Feynman, because his character is quite different, being enamored of the dancer and imagining what the possibilities of Booty were as She [dancer] approaches Me [mathematician]. A bit of combinatorial meandering, mixing playfulness and pathos.
The rightmost card is a drawing of an earthmover that illustrates my double-acrostic poem “Earth Mover.” I do so love the look and dynamics of these mechanized beasts, and do so hate the effect they have on animal habitats. My special Jiminy Cricket in these matters is American/British actress Beth Porter, whom many of you may have seen in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Beth once gave me a stern lecture of the effect of the palm-oil industry on the habitat of orangutans. And she was absolutely right to do so. “Earth Mover” is dedicated to Beth, with gratitude for making me more mindful.
Earth Mover
Engaging Soil to build a dream
Entrepreneurs may break a seam
Anticipating GO/NO-GO
Are machinations to & fro
Reverse & forward brake & rev
Reraise relower D r o p & Lev
The ground resists is indiscrete
Then Horsepower makes a dig complete
Here rises dwelling-place provider
Here falls the Habitat abider
The phrase “train wreck” now seems to apply more to people and situations than trains. Early in my restaurant days a manager used it to describe the trail of maple syrup I’d negligently created that went all the way from the host stand to the dish pit. What a mess!!
here he is again / mister clumsybutt meanswell the romance puppy / and as usual he has made his entrance / right between really interested and fullblown smitten
on the plus side he is playful and joyous / and it’s fun to watch him caper about / and the longing look in his big eyes / which are exactly the color of mine / gives him sleeves to put his heart on
on the minus side he IS clumsy / and often unheeding of signals / and way too overeager / and he tends to chew on the shoes of a comfort zone / and crap on the carpet of possibility
mister meanswell has that look in his eyes again / and his friskiness is unbecoming to a man of mature years / and his pathetic speedfreak little tail is going blur-crazy
calm down pooch / you are going to get me in trouble
Here is an odd approach to an image: quote some song lyrics, and illustrate something related to the lyrics but not directly illustrative of the lyrics. I did the drawing first, and then heard the song in my head, and realized that the last words of the song would add a touch of Storminess to the page.
One with Clay, Image and Text 