Archive for the ‘iPad art’ category

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Descartes With A Dash of Popeye (“I think, therefore I yam.”)

February 11, 2012
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I Think, Therefore I Yam

After Descartes (With a Dash of Popeye)

I think, therefore I
yam.  I think,
I truly love
the yam.  I bake
them almost every day,
not lining their pan
with foil (as advised by those
who think before
they yam) because
almost every time I yam–late–I
yam also
hard put.

Not having planned
for existence, I slam
them fast in the oven, unable to break
for foil, the need
for sweet hot
earth-grown sustenance
surging with a force that must be
met immediately (plus
the baking time) and so
my yams’ essence
overflows, burns, and
later (usually the next day)
must be scraped away
from the pan, to
get down to something
grey again, stained perhaps,
functional.

I break then,
at least, from the brusque
thrust of scrub,
for saved slices (that soft
bright orange), finding,
though I do not think
of anything very much,
that I still
yam, the cold leftovers of being,
sweet,
in morning’s light.

(Happy Saturday!  I think–and I’m jumping the gun a bit–that dVerse Poets Pub, hosted by Charles Miller, is waxing philosophical today.  I am also linking this to Painting Prose.)

If you have any time, and need an escape this rainy cold weekend, check out NOSE DIVE, a comic romp through the brain and life of Celia Pratchett, big-nosed, big-voiced, New York City High School student with a friend in trouble. Only 99 cents on Kindle!  Or if you don’t like teen novels, check out my collection of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book, 1 MISSISSIPPI.  Thanks much!)

(As always, all rights to all aspects of this post reserved.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 27 Comments

Crazy (in Pic)

February 8, 2012

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Not feeling terribly well (physically) today so sticking to a picture rather than words.  Or maybe I’ll hazard one word: crazy.  

Categories: iPad art, news, Uncategorized
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Comments: 2 Comments

“Hands On” (Steering Wheel Poem)

February 6, 2012

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Here’s a new poem for dVerse Poets open link night, and also Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads.  (Check out the great poets at both sites.)

Hands On

When I think of why
we are together,
I think of your hands
upon a steering wheel.
The night was cold,
dark (the car seats stiff with it),
but the tendons–had you given me
your gloves?–ran along your grasp
like lifelines, and I needed
a lifeline.
They caught the ambients
from the headlights–inverse shadows
that I could not turn from
as you took
the curves,
then straightened;
as you laughed
about something seemingly
inconsequential;
as I laughed too, all the time
watching them
heatedly.

(P.S. And while you are checking on things, check out NOSE DIVE, my comic mystery novel, which has been reviewed with great kindness by Charles Mashburn of Marbles in My Pocket and Victoria C. Slotto of Liv2Write2day on Amazon.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 24 Comments

Magpie Tales – “You Too” (Light After Death?)

February 5, 2012

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Here’s a poem for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales.  Tess puts up very interesting photoprompts.  The above and below are my take on this week’s.

You Too

There is that will
in some
that assays a reach
from the grave, that
would pull from raw earth
gems
for barter, that would store
oxidation; that, below
the mine, will still insist, “that’s mine–” those
whose fingers grasp
even as limbs moulder.

And then there are those
who proffer treasure, who, in
their last sighs and beyond, exhale
a gift, their life’s blood like a current
of air a bird
might sail upon, or you too might feel
ruffling your hair beneath
the noon or setting
sun.

These last do not just raise flowers
from their remains, but instead,
a hard brilliance: someday, you too will
pass; someday, you too
will be faceless; someday,
you too will know life
as a stone; catch
light
now.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

“Glue Trap” – Martian Poetry (Or Marital?) (Ha!)

February 2, 2012

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DVerse Poets Pub has a “Meet the Bar” challenge, hosted by the wonderful poet Samuel Peralta, to write like a Martian; i.e. to look at one’s subject from an alien, or at least, different, perspective.  Here’s mine:

Glue Trap

The lie of a long-term love
is like a mouse
caught in a glue trap. Even as
you don’t want to find it, you
want to find it–you have heard
its gnaw in the kitchen, behind
the bed, inside the baseboards,
for some time.  Yet
once you catch a trace of its
stuck self–through a sidelong glance, a blur
of grey matting the glue–you
stand upon a chair, avert
your stare, splay legs,
hold arms akimbo, assume any
awkward stretch to reach
the cupboard, dish rack,
fridge, and avoid
dealing with it, until,
trying to swallow the tea that you’ve
just made from your frail perch, you gag
upon the taste of fur in your
throat, like the taste
of your own dark hair,
greying.  

Torn now by the
squirm that flays even
as it makes its play
for escape, you bend down–
propping with some long-necked
implement and heavy mitts–
and drown that distended pulse,
at which point (as tiny dabs
of air and whatnot
surface), you realize,
mourning, that what’s died
was not like words at all. 

PS – for something totally alien to the above, i.e. FUN, please please please check out my comic novel NOSE DIVE, a steal on Kindle for just 99 cents.  (Slightly more but still a bargain in paperback.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 20 Comments

“Going Home” With a French Ballade

January 26, 2012

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The wonderful dVerse Poets Pub has a “form for all” challenge today to write a French Ballade .  The pompt, hosted by Gay Reiser Cannon, gives clear instructions but, frankly, I found it a pretty difficult form.  For me, the hardest part was the syllabic line (8 syllables), since I tend to write in a modified pentameter (which allows for a bit of play in the number of syllables.)

At any rate, here’s mine.  (It’s still kind of a draft–suggestions welcome!)

Going Home (Last Hospital Stay)

Though angled with no special care,
the tape stains spoke of intention,
as if, by cantilever, there
had been some trick of physics done,
some framework lifted, battle won,
a scaffolding’s dismounted trace–
of orange (glue)–and, too, a notion
of failing beams across a face.

But skin was sore now it was bare
of bands of tube that had just run
from nostril curve to curl of ear
to squeeze and ease the oxygen,
to silently let go let come
what let the lungs slow down their race,
and countenance reflect a sun
of failing beams across a face.

They rushed us home through open air–
each stretcher bearer was a son–
and cold it was, so cold out there–
and you, my dad, my only one–
I put my coat, my hat, upon
you too, though they looked out of place,
their blues too sprightly, too much fun,
with failing beams across your face.

You worried whether I was warm
and offered back, with age-old grace,
all to be had that day near done,
its failing beams across your face.

 

 

(P.S. – have edited since I first posted.  A process this!)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 13 Comments

“Girl’s Beast Heart” (“Ophelia, Ophelia Syndrome”)

January 24, 2012

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I am diabolically busy this week, so am combining my response to two wonderful online prompts: Magpie Tales, hosted by Tess Kincaid, and dVerse Poets Pub open link night.    (The above is my rendering of Tess’s photographic prompt, its mood slightly offered and the “rice” more or less gone)   I urge you to check out both sites.

And here’s the poem, with a cautionary note that the language is more “adult” than typically posted here, i.e. stop right now if you don’t like that sort of thing.

Ophelia, Ophelia Syndrome

Girl’s beast heart, age ten, swims sky,
arms swinging wings, she springs
till body turns spy—
Where does complete go?
Drips from woman’s breast, ass, thigh.
She loves pining, the yearn,
craves the kiss, lick, fuck,
finds contempt, klutz lust, mucks
about in briny shyness.
Making boy-man God-king
slits wings.  Rubs a zipper
into her skin to mend it,
hoards opalescence.


Further notes–the poem was inspired from a discussion, popular a few years back, about many girls’ loss of confidence at a certain age.   It was actually written as part of a “magnetic poetry” exercise (for a party), in which only words on a specific list could be used.  For those interested in the mechanics of prompts and the wayward mind, the other poem I wrote from that same list deals with peeing in the ocean.  (Both poems are in Going on Somewhere, available on Amazon.)

 

(I am also postinf this for Jingle poetry picnic on http://gooseberrygoespoetic.blogspot.com.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 18 Comments

Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday– Growing Up Outside D.C.

January 16, 2012
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My Not Very Good Depiction of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I grew up just outside Washington, D.C.  I don’t want to reveal exactly how decrepit I am, but let’s say that I have pretty clear memories of what some consider the halcyon days of this country, that is, the years pre-1968.

They were really not all that halcyonish.

Yes, there were some aspects which today seem kind of wonderful.  Kids played outdoors, often in back yards, often on not-very-trafficked streets, generally without need of adult supervision, and with zero electronic in-put.  Parents seemed to keep marriages intact (even when one or both was not all that happy).  (I understand that that last bit is problematic.  I’m certainly not advocating unhappy marriages!  I would point out, however, that people who are divorced are also not always that happy.)

But there were other aspects to these times. In my little suburban town, for example, virtually all of the African Americans lived on one run-down road, in wooden broken-down houses, in very conspicuous poverty.  Of course, there were African Americans who were much more prosperous, but they did not seem to live in my town.

It is hard to imagine what kinds of expectations kids living on that road had.  Certainly, from the back window of my parents’ car, which, until the desegregation of local schools, was my main view of that road, life looked very difficult.

Then came Martin Luther King, Jr.  Listening to him was like listening to Prometheus–someone who held the secret of fire–someone who was aflame inside–someone who with that fire and flame would bring true change to humankind.

In an age of hype and spin and bloated political correctness and rabid anti-political correctness, it is difficult to understand how revolutionary and inspirational King was.  Here’s to him today.

Categories: iPad art, news, Uncategorized
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Botero (With Elephant) — Courbet (In Verse)

January 14, 2012

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dVerse Poets Pub has a poetics prompt based on Fernando Botero this week (hosted by Victoria C. Slotto.)

I like Botero’s images (one of which I’ve adapted above), but every time I thought of writing a poem about one, I pictured a person being swallowed by their own flesh.  Instead I’m opting for an older poem about other (more traditional) flesh-favoring artists:

Courbet

All I can say is that
it’s a good thing we have museums
hanging Courbets,
Rubens,
Rembrandts,
the occasional Italian,
with their depictions of swelling bellies,
dimples gathered around spines, flesh rippling
like Aphrodite’s birth foam,
the creep of pubic hair juxtaposed by coy hands
whose curved digits
pudge, slightly sunken cheeks (above, below),
spidery blood vessels
rooting beneath the patina. 
All I can say, as I catch
my face in the glass,
glance down at my folio
of torso, is that
it’s a good thing. 

(This is from my collection of poems, Going on Somewhere.  Check it out!   Also check out my new comic novel–Nose Dive,  a fun look at truth, beauty and the pursuit of harmony–available in paperback and on Kindle for just 99 cents!)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 12 Comments

Art Therapy (With Elephants)

January 9, 2012

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As followers of this blog know, I lost my dear father last week.  He had been declining for some time, but his death has still been very sad, especially for my mother, his spouse for over sixty years.  The above is a collaborative drawing of my mother, myself, my husband and my iPad2 done during the preparation of the first dinner we’ve actually been able to cook since my dad’s death.  (Doing normal everyday things like cooking is difficult after a death.  In my case, this difficulty is compounded by the fact that my mom has an electric stove, and I’m an absolute devotee of cooking with gas.)

One activity that is quite wonderful after a death, however, or perhaps after any trauma, is the making of visual art–even not-such-great art like the painting above. There is something absolutely engaging about making images, one’s own world, a new world–a world that, if you don’t have complete control over your medium, is full of surprises, and yet still self-contained.   It is probably more fun to do the art with paper and brushes, but those may be more dicey to whip out in the midst of food preparation.

As always, I recommend the Brushes App for those working on iPads.

Categories: iPad art, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
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Comments: 5 Comments

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