ICAD 2023, day 8: cryku
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Tag Archives: senryu
selfportraitasrookku
their knight threatens but
my pawn buffers and my queen
stands ready to pounce
synchroscapeku
synchroscapeku
i came to see you
as the moon
b e g a n to wax
i saw so much more
BPBTC and aftermath, 29 Nov 2020
Today I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on Facebook, thus:
Wow, it’s been forever since our last Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. This one here may be easier for anyone who’s been through a pregnancy.
A man and his pregnant companion are in the kitchen. “Wow, I’m hungry,” the man says. “I’m gonna make lunch. Want some?”His companion thinks about it, sniffs the air, makes a face, and says, “No thanks. I _______.”
Fill in the blank with a single seven-letter word that makes a truly wretched Bad Pun of this scenario, and if you’re the first one with the right answer, you win! Win what? We’ll see.Contest ends at one PM Mountain Standard Time, when I’ll disclose the answer, if there is no winner, or congratulate the winner and announce the prize, if someone has answered correctly.
Have fun, Friends!
Almost instantly I heard from Jessica Renee Ballantyne, a frequent flyer with my contests and the winner of the very first contest I had:
“No thanks I gestate.”
“No thanks I just ate”
This is, of course, the correct answer. Jessica went on to explain that she had independently invented, and employed, the Bad Pun when she herself was pregnant.
So I on-the-spotted her prize with this comment:
CONGRATULATIONS, Jess!!! Not only have you Won, you have Won Again! You are one Smart Cookie, with or without a Bun in the Oven!
We don’t have to wait till one PM. It’s my contest and I change rules at whim. So here’s your prize, if you choose to accept it, Jessica: If you provide me with a title, I will write three poems, using three different poetic forms, using the title you provide for each. If you specify a poetic form I will use it for one of the poems. (If you pick Ballade or Sestina it may take a couple of days!!)
If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay too. If that’s the case, your prize will be Bragging Rights.Again, congratulations!
Jess gave me the title “Starry Night” after the Van Gogh painting. So I first wrote a Sonnet.
****
Starry Night
Some see the stars as fixed but VVG
Lent vortices of motion with his paint:
Impasto in impassioned filigree
Illumes a humble town with unrestraint.
He saw stars in his brainstorms, some have said.
Photemic teeming of hallucination
Acquired in his lonely madman’s bed
With kinesthetic sight based on sensation.
But Truth is often found in an asylum,
Beatitude oft had with heart’s expression,
And metaphor turns blandness into ylem
The primal stuff we mix a batch of Fresh in.
The Starry Night sees Vincent’s flag unfurl:
Above a town, a tidal, Cosmic Whirl.
****
Next came a Senryu:
****
starry night
here i am says light
endlessly variable
in shifting array
****
Third and last was a Villanelle:
****
starry Night
“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.
“they full surround the sun, the earth, and me.
exploding, they birth elements gone wild.”
when chandrasekhar’s limit is defiled
massivity begets its potpourri.
“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.
“it’s sweet to think a kind Creator smiled
As pressure built and Chaos was set free–
Exploding, it loosed Elements, made wild.
“this starry Night, so temperately mild
includes some supernovae on a spree–
the stars more than ‘above,'” perceives the child.
“as gold is ringed and silicon is tiled,
as oxygen is tanked, we thank who be
exploring with those elements gone wild.”
the child descends the hill, her entry filed.
she spoke of starry Night, and Majesty.
the stars below, above, around the child
explode anew with meekness fused to Wild.
****
I was jazzed after finishing the poems, and thought I had enough juice left to do an illustration to the sonnet. It was true.
For Vincent’s face I used as source not one of his self-portraits, but rather one of the existing photographs of him. For the suggestion of his famous painting I found a photo of it in its frame at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it is part of their permanent collection.
Big thanks to Jessica, who kept me out of trouble and creatively productive all afternoon doing this project. I feel that this was the absolute best use of my time today, and I’m grateful to Jess for the inspiring title that made it so!
cathartiku
cathartiku
i do not now weep
but i Draw me doing so
because LOSS. age. Woe.
When I was a boy a boy who cried was a Crybaby. There was a huge stigma attached to it. I have not quite shed that skin, but my rational mind tells me that catharsis is good for the soul.
Today I was thinking about sadnesses great and small. Two lovely houses I once called Home are now Home to others, and I am not even Unwelcome to the current residents: I am Unknown. I am superstitious enough to wonder if the houses still remember me.
The World seems in sad shape, despite good news here and there. It is truly fine to hear truly young people try to talk sense into rapacious oldsters at the United Nations, but a long record of lip service lends skepticism to speculation about possible change.
Here in the US, an impeachment inquiry is under way, which is just and a long time coming. But a headline says “Market predicts impeachment but not removal,” and, propaganda or not, it’s bad news.
And I’m 65 years old, and my teeth are going bad, and last year I lost my younger brother, and I look at my creations, including the one above freshly completed, and despair at my simple-mindedness and slipshod execution, and feel that I’m nowhere near where I need to be as an artist or a poet.
But my eyes are dry. But a good cathartic cry would probably help. So I did the next best thing, which was a drawing of myself crying, with the background one of my timeslips, which well represents a lifetime of grinding away day after week after month after year, and I do feel a little better.
I also feel like toddling down to the neighborhood dive bar to have a drink or few, and that too is cathartic.
The Power of Suggestion might help someone out there who needs a cry but cannot cry. If you stare at my drawing with the big goobery tears coming down, that may be the little boost you need. If it works for you, no thanks are necessary, but a Virtual Hug awaits you if you want one here. ❤
a look at darkness
darkness eternal
is i n c o m p l e t e without the
memory of l i g h t
Secrete Identity
Occultationku
A man of few words
Not quite a cipher but close
Hiding in plain psych
cthulhuku
Most of us have heard of Edgar Allan Poe, but H. P. Lovecraft was a greater influence on the fledgling horror writer Stephen King. Lovecraft’s TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS (Kindle-downloadable, by the way) gave me the willies about 35 years ago. This is a long-delayed paying-it-forward.
cthulhuku
h. p. lovecraft had
issues. one of them was a
big fat hairy deal.
the horse fakerer
Today I tried drawing a horse without looking at a horse. I kept using drawing-trickery to disguise my ignorance of horse anatomy–then a Yiddish word popped into my head that I’d seen in Philip Roth’s PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT and also Herman Wouk’s YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE. The word is chazerai. Wouk defined it in HAWKE as “faking, foolishness, trash.”
So here’s my fake horse, under which is some fake haiku, with a bad-pun title to boot.
equinimityku
this is not a horse
an artist ought LOOK at a horse
before he draws one
valentine-ku for the once-loved
This is the first Valentine’s Day since 1988 that I wasn’t part of a couple. Naturally I feel a little strange. The strangeness transliterates into the above page.
valentine-ku for the once-loved
the hole in the heart
is another heart. it makes
sense and yet doesn’t.
Better times are ahead, though, Friends. Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
One with Clay, Image and Text 