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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

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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

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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

 

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]

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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

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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.

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”:

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Today the weather was bright and lightly breezy and good for a rejuvenative, meditative hike. Up Schuerman Mountain Denise and I went in yet a Further Adventure Of Denise And Gary.

Most of the way up I asked Denise to pose, not for a picture I would post, but for a photo source for a drawing I would make and post. Further up she took a photo of me at my request. I post both the drawing and the photo to reveal the vast difference between the one degree of separation from reality of the photo and the two degrees of separation from reality of the drawing. (In my drawing’s defense, the background is a different part of the landscape than the photo.)

 

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From Omar Khayyam to Edward FitzGerald to us: “The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,/Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” But the Finger is indelible, and so is the Pen. The Pencil?

The Moving Pencil, lured by misdirection,
Need not move on through doom or predilection:
The aft end offers quick and easy means
To quickly turn back time and make correction.

My favorite pencil to use is the Dixon Ticonderoga Black #2.

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Here are the words, which are not only snaky but go behind objects:

VelociRapture’s easier to mock than to accept
Or so it seems to one who’s stunned from go go go go go
Recursion’s that divertissement that takes unextra step
To plow through tweaked [infinity] where Tiny makes it so
Inconsequentiality’s what gives the grave its sting
Conversely, knowing that they MATTERED helps most folks feel Super
Understanding Truth it pays to linger on the lingua
Leaving an Escape Clause should you need to fly the coop
A relative positioning will get us low or high
Remaining are unfathomed depths that boil down to Why

This is yet another excursion into Vorticularity. I keep coming back to the subject…inexorably…as if drawn into it…

The truth is, the stuff we’re made of exerts a force on everything else, everywhere. It’s in the equations both Newtonian and Einsteinian. Even a paper clip influences the farthest star.

My own private vortex-maker is my pencil, which is also my ambassador, my spokesmodel, and my toy. I will never be so poor as not to be able to scare up a pencil stub and an illustration substrate. If I were desperate, I’d sneak onto the nearest golf course and lift a scorecard and a pencil from the rack by the clubhouse. They’re complimentary, which is one modest earmark of Civilized Intercourse (that was an awful pun, folks).

I have posted this on a Facebook 30-day artist’s challenge, and a friend of mine commented “Wheeeee!” I’m glad she enjoyed the ride. I hope you do too.