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Acrostic Portrait of Kathryn Petroff

February 5, 2023
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Some of us have Jobs, some Careers. A lucky few have Callings. Here is one such, the vivacious, acerbic Kathryn Petroff, who, so much like my late, great friend Karen Wilkinson, used her legal skills as a criminal-law attorney, defending the downtrodden and the scorned. And when her career took her beyond criminal defense, to judicial review, she became a force for the public interest, her work instrumental in unseating not one, but two bad judges. (Yes, Virginia, there are all kinds of Bad Judges out there!!)

She is also a courageous cancer survivor. When I asked her for photos to use for her portrait, the first one she sent me looked like she’d done battler with Smaug the Dragon himself, yet she had a tiny brave smile on her face. “What a brave smile,” I texted, and her reply was “Radiation makes me sleepy.” Is she a Trouper, or what?

And she has a fondness for Dorothy Sayers and her hero, Lord Peter Wimsey. (Kat, there is no H in Wimsey. I checked.) And her son Toby followed her legal footsteps, going to Harvard Law, and was a prosecutor, then went civil, and now finds his bliss in bond transactions–I think. Being an ignoramus of both law and bonds I may have gotten that muddled.

But mostly Kathryn Petroff is a keenly intelligent, incandescent human being, and I’m glad to know her.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

Kathryn Petroff

Kick/start a life with labor pains and soap
And Independence ready to say Nope
To surface-y success’s col de Mort
Half Frog-marched down Life’s dusty corridor
RIGHT WRONGS became her conjurable Stuff. O
Yes and Sure, Adversity does scuff
NYET Evil DA to Battle–call their bluff

NOTE: a Col de Mort is a way to weaponize an epee, turning a harmless fencing instrument into a deadly weapon via its sharp-pointed “collar of death.”

Acrostic Portrait of David “Croz” Crosby

January 29, 2023
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He was Stardust. And Golden. And he has returned to the Golden Stardust whence he came. But in between his pre-assembled Stardust and his current celestial state, he took himself on a wild ride, acquiring and losing bandmates, habits, dignity and freedom. One story of his extremism, recounted Graham Nash in his memoir, was so beyond the pale that Nash heard from the Legal department of his publisher. They demanded confirmation of the story that Crosby had sold his Porsche for crack, and upon his crack dealer’s death by overdose, Crosby sneaked back to the dealer’s abode and stole back the pink slip. So Nash called Crosby, and Croz told him that not only was it true, but in a scenario reminiscent of the CSN classic “Deja Vu,” Crosby later again sold the Porsche–for crack.

But he also pushed the limits of music, elevating millions with his jazz influence and harmonic entwinings in CSN and CSNY. And he cleaned up, and he got a new liver, and he outlived his old liver by decades, and he showed us oldsters that the best way to go out is in a blaze of creative glory.

As often happens, I choked a little on my portraiture with this image, wanting to convey his careening, pyrotechnic soul, remaining undecided about how old to make him and what expression to put on his face. I’ve overworked it to the point I had to say “to hell with it” and quit before I made it worse. But the words paint a fuller picture.

David CROZ Crosby

Dude was SCRAGGLY, PsychedeliC
And his HARMONIES pure WondeR
As a liquor–like F r a n g e l i c O
Velvet SMOOTH as distant thunderS
Irascibly zappish, a son of a B
Despite aural daZzle and all honestY


George Santos

January 21, 2023
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George Santos, a profligate liar, has been elected to Congress after telling a bushel of lies to help get himself elected. The ethical thing for him to do would be to resign. But telling deliberate, self-serving lies is itself not ethical. It is a dysfunctional pattern in American politics of late, largely thanks to the shenanigans of Donald Trump, whom I depict in this image as Yoda to Santos’s Skyler Liewalker.

Here are the words:

George Santos

Get a load of THIS guy’s BS
Embellished as a drag Contessa
OAN got nuthin on him! In
Regurgitory fakery with lament
Gosh darn the Media–so
WHAT? EVERY Politician LIES

Murder, She Wrought

October 11, 2022
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Murder, She Wrought
(a brief nod to Angela Lansbury)

Chalk that outline,
Call the cops,
Angela,
Despite her chops
Stage and Screen and Animated,
Finds herself now Pearly-Gated.

Just as Calvin
Had his Hobbes,
Brooms have Sticks
And Beds have Knobs,
Sweeney Todd his scalpeled razor,
Angela had Occam’s Laser.

With it she sliced
Through our gloom,
Brightened beach
And parlor room,
Cut the diamond of her skill,
Set up legions for the kill.

Alackaday
That she would leave us,
Fell our crests
And sore aggrieve us,
Murder inadvertent wrought
Of our smiles, now that she’s not.

Rest In Peace, Angie.

Poet, Composing (self-portrait)

July 14, 2022
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2022 0714 poet composing

On my Facebook feed there was a post from a friend of mine saying to the world, “What are you up to? Send a picture!” And what I was up to was composing a poem. So I took a picture of myself staring into the Heavens looking for the words, and attached it to my comment “Composing a poem” on her post.

But the picture…it was different from the other self-portraits I’ve done. So I drew it in HB pencil, and for background put some of the words and some of the self-instructions I’d come up with in the course of composing “Bouquet of Bouquets.” Here is the poem:

Bouquet of Bouquets
Spring wildflowers in a jam jar
FTD delivery twelve long-stemmed roses
A deliberately clumsy Picasso drawing
Cumulonimbus clouds carved by fighter jets
Coffee-charged notes with the nails
Fireworks bursts frozen in time
Acne rosacea on Grandfather’s bulbous nose
Football players breaking from a huddle
The grins of Clark Gable and some of his pals
Arpeggios in a Bach fugue
A dozen cocoons cracking open
A troupe of ballerinas with emotional issues
Flowering
May be empowering
And well-timed bouqueting
Spiritually swaying.

****

Just another day in the life of an oldish codger who every so often takes the pressure off the urge to express by looking into the Heavens, writing down stuff, and sometimes illustrating what he’s written.

field of scenes (ttmorl)

May 28, 2022
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2022 0528 ray liotta

field of scenes
(to the memory of ray liotta)

rest in performance
ray liotta
shoeless joe
and pesci’s con

in memoriam
next year’s oscars
will be saddest
when you’re on

you were un
believably believable
sleazy stalker
sweetheart friend

when that curtain falls
it’s tragic
fade to void but
love won’t end.

The Pain that Poisons Your Heart

March 7, 2022
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2022 0307 corelli
Even people unfamiliar with opera have heard these famous lines:

“Ridi, Pagliaccio,
sul tuo amore infranto!
Ridi del duol, che t’avvelena il cor!”

And they hear an operatic voice in perfect pitch singing these words in declamation. They can tell the singer is portraying someone in deep pain. They may have heard the phrase “Laugh, Pagliacci, laugh.” And they probably know Pagliacci is a professional clown.

But till today I, an almost total opera ignoramus, did not know the meaning of these three lines, nor what exactly made Pagliacci suffer so. Here is the translation:

Laugh, Pagliacci,
your love is broken!
Laugh at the pain that poisons your heart!

Pagliacci, the Clown, has just discovered that his wife has been unfaithful to him.

Even in the 21st Century, well after the Sexual Revolution and in the midst (or so I perceive) of a new, liberating attitude toward polyamorous relationships, the notion that a significant other having sex outside the relationship evokes words like “cheating” and “unfaithful.”

Long ago, and more than once, I felt that pain that poisoned my heart. Though I’ve become more philosophical about it now, those episodes still twist my face. One of my flaws is that I can only let go so much.

However, how I got to thinking about this, and how I came to draw Franco Corelli, is a bit comical. A Facebook friend of mine published a picture of a cat with its mouth as wide open as that of a striking rattlesnake. I saw that cat and in two split seconds thought “Operatic!” and “Pagliacci!” So I did a little digging in order to make a comment that was, verbatim, the famous Pagliacci lines. And one source provided YouTube links to performances by Pavarotti and by Franco Corelli–and to my untrained, ignorant ear, Corelli’s voice was purer and more expressive. And he was a handsome dude, back in the day, so I did the sketch above.

I’m not going to laugh about The Pain that Poisons My Heart. I think it’s healthier to write about it. Hey–I just did!! 🙂

variants, feat. bill campana

March 6, 2022
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2022 0305 campana06
Earlier today I worked on a self-portrait which eventually became “Ukraine Sympathizer.” (See previous post for that end result.) As the painting progressed I posted successive stages as my profile picture on Facebook. I thought my friends would enjoy seeing how the painting progressed…

…and one friend in particular, whom I have repeatedly referred to on this blog as “the funniest man on earth,” poet and humorist Bill Campana, went so far as to do extreme photoedits on my developing headshot, creating a total of SEVEN variants on my originals. Above is one of his two favorites, and I think it’s terrific. It captures a psychological facet of mine that whim compels me to call “Relaxed Bastard Face.” As far back as grade school, friends, especially girls, have remarked on my tendency to scowl, and urged me to smile. Sometimes, truthfully, I’ve responded “But I AM smiling.” Deep-set eyes and naturally downturning mouth corners, plus an undeniable lifelong struggle with non-clinical bipolarity, scowlify me.

These three range from slight solarization to an almost Francis-Baconesque distortion of features. Each is a different experience.

Color and detail variation evoke a ghostliness and then an electricity. And notice in the ghostliness on the left, there is an articulated eye in the orbital shadow on our right. It does not exist in the original. The line between editing and creation blurs.

2022 0305 campana01
And here is Bill’s other favorite. This one is my personal favorite as well. He’s taken the ore of my painting and smelted Mystery and Depth from it.  Here is a shadowy figure with serious matters troubling him. Perhaps it is the weight of the world, perhaps unrelieved sorrow, or he could just be worried about getting home safely. “Still waters run deep” is a phrase that comes to mind.

Profound thanks to my friend Bill Campana, who did something special today, creative and revelatory. Thanks also, Bill, for graciously allowing me to share our collaboration with my readers/viewers worldwide.

Acrostic Portrait of the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona, Rosemarie Dombrowski

September 25, 2021
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2021 0924 rjd ii with texts
One of the blessings of being poets in the Valley of the Sun is that we have in our midst a talented, hard-working, generous Superstar.  How talented? Read her poetry and gasp. How hard-working? Try teaching for twenty years while caring for a child on the autistic spectrum. How generous? She is lavish with her time, having hosted and/or participated many events, both live and on Zoom; lavish with her praise, as I found out when I did an illustration for her publication The Revolution; and lavish with sharing her wisdom, as exemplified by her series of spot lectures under the umbrella “Ars Poetica.” (Latin for “Art of Poetry” and the title of an awe-inspiringly contradictory poem by Archibald MacLeish. Its first line is “A poem should be palpable and mute” and yet the poem is not Mute at all.) (I long ago abandoned my ambition to be any sort of Poet Laureate, but I think I’m an excellent candidate for Arse Poetica. 🙂 )

Rosemarie believes that writing poetry is therapeutic, and frequently she hosts a Therapeutic Poetry workshop. I’ve written a few poems exactly because she says so.  Under that aegis the poems become intensely personal.

In a wonderful demonstration by the Universe that sometimes miraculously fine and good things can and DO happen, some time ago Rosemarie became the first Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona. She was the perfect choice.

Rosemarie Dombrowski

Resilience will meet a special need
Occluding Tragedy, though, offs the feed./O
SEcrets are anathema for whom
Maternity goes far beyond the womb
And so Non-Silence reigns, with child in tow/For
Righteous storytelling makes it so
It makes a fine and free-flow
Ecstasy/To TEACH to Touch to Thrive and with verse Ski

Acrostic Portrait of Patrick Hare

September 23, 2021
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2021 0923 patrick hareThis is my approximation of Patrick Hare, a mordant and acerbic Valley poet who uses his poetry to skewer cultural wrongdoers who interfere with his enjoyment of daily life. His harangue on the grocery-counter ambusher-cashiers who hit you up for a worthy-cause donation when you just want to pay for your stuff and get out is howlingly hilarious, but dark as can be and not for the squeamish. He says out loud what many of us dare not even think. But he’s a real sweetheart offstage, so I tried to say so in my acrostic:

Wild Hare

Wisteria hides a Pariah
Indignant but sweet as Papaya
Lord Snarky gives dummies What For
Delivering Takedowns galore