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“Great Scott!” says Andy (“What ho, Marilyn?)

February 26, 2012

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Move over, Ican

What say you, Marilyn?
Now that he kneels
before the True Icon,
with curves so ho
supreme, lids
silvered, cheeks
rouged, surface
steamy, the object
of heated
exchange all over
the word, spooning with
the Plebian, can-
noodling with
the Sublime.
Great Scott! says
Andy, can this really
be love?

The above is for Mag 106, Magpie Tales, hosted by Tess Kincaid.  My picture is based upon an unidentified photo, posted as Tess’s photo prompt, appearing to depict good old Andy Warhol.   I’m sorry that I cannot resist re-posting another version of Warhol’s icon/can below.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 20 Comments

For The Love of Gorgon (Stone-faced Poem)

February 25, 2012

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Dealing With Problems Head-On Was Not Their Strong Suit

He
was about the opposite of
Medusa, his stare
turning itself
to stone, without aid
of mirrored shield.
She,
in the face of
that stare, usually
transmuted to dust, from which
a few small slivers
of heart
slithered frantically. 

He,
being stone,
did not much care
for dust (a bleak future
for granite) while
she
became increasingly
desperate,
trying to capture the
wriggles of what had
been her life
before they slipped
under the couch, or behind
the wainscoting.

The above is a poem written for a dVerse Poets prompt on “sculpture,” hosted by Victoria C. Slotto.
If you have any time this weekend, please please please check out, my comic novel,NOSE DIVE,  book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.  Pearl, below, likes Going on Somewhere, but Nose Dive is only 99 cents on Kindle.      

Pearl Perusing GOING ON SOMEWHERE

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 15 Comments

Correction to Post re Santorum and Ponderous Nouns

February 24, 2012

I’m afraid that my previous post re Rick Santorum and the use of ponderous nouns was somewhat confusing.  I was constrained by the fact that I was trying to play a game of writing something in 55 words.

I’m not really critical of Santorum’s grammar.  I myself make mistakes all the time, and would be hard put to speak publicly.

My concern had more to do with his grandiosity.  (And disconnection.)

Santorum throws out grandiose concepts and notions and words  without applying them in any truly sensible way to the facts at hand.

Using a noun “courage” to describe himself–rather than, let’s say, the adjective “courageous”–was to me another example of  his use of a high-flown concept without tying it down to the the object, fact, person, question at hand.

I admit that my point was a bit subtle.  But somehow that whole moment in the debate has been niggling at me.

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Usage Matters. Santorum and Adjectives vs. Disconnected Ponderous Nouns. (In 55 words.)

February 24, 2012

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“DESCRIBE yourself in one word.”

“Courage.”

Ahem.

But  I think an ADJECTIVE was called for: “courageous,” “brave,” “inarticulate,” “idiotic.”

ADJECTIVES DESCRIBE, APPLY qualities to persons, things, circumstances.

Disconnected ponderous NOUNS sound grave (“Satan”), but, when spouted in alarmist gulps, don’t make sense; it’s not clear, in other words, how they APPLY to anything real, present.

The above is my somehat ponderous rant for Friday flash 55.  Tell it to the G-Man.  

Perhaps I am an overly sensitive grammarian–my own poor usage leads me to think I am not–but I also feel like I have more license to use words sloppily–I am not running for President. We won’t say anything about humility here.

Have a wonderful weekend and, if you have a mo, please please please check out: my comic novel,NOSE DIVE,  book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.   

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Comments: 12 Comments

“Determined” (To Write Visually)

February 23, 2012

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Here’s a poem written for the dVerse Poets Pub Form for All challenge hosted by Blue Flute and Gay Reiser Cannon about writing visually (as inspired by the beautiful imagistic poems of the Chinese and Japanese.)   I am not sure this fits that bill, certainly not on any formal basis, but here goes.

Determined

Heavy-duty aluminum rods stand
steel straight though their coat of
red paint has worn
in places to a fatigued grey.
Staring into angled reflections
of storefront, he rests
against the braces that cup
his forearms, stretching fingers away
from plastic grips, fisting
and re-fisting free air. What he is looking for,
he says, is a coat, a jacket,
long enough to keep hips warm, but not so
long as to hem a stride
mid-hike, the fabric waxed
to shed rain; it should be green
softened by brown (a collar to turn
up against the wind) like a mountainside
mid-November, after the fall
of much leaf, before the fall
of much snow. The display
cuts light into square fluorescent grids
like nothing found in the wild.  A coat,
he says (not going in), that will fend off
brambles.

(As always–all rights reserved.)

Also, please please please check out one of my books: my comic novel,NOSE DIVE,  book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.  Support a blogger!  Okay, let’s not exaggerate.  Make a blogger happy!)

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Colvin Contrasted With Candidates (Sad day)

February 23, 2012

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I just turned off the Republican debate to read more about Marie Colvin, one of the journalists killed in Syria today. She was a deeply committed and intrepid war reporter, working at the time of her death for The Sunday Times of London.

I do not know what the U.S. should do in or about Syria.  But I am struck, tonight, by the sharp contrast between Colvin and most of the Republican candidates.   (I actually kind of hate to put them all in the same sentence.)

In November 2010, at a Fleet Street church service in honor of slain journalists, Colvin described the role of the foreign correspondent: “our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice.”

Colvin was experienced in the horrors of war, to say the least.  She had reported from scenes of conflict in the West Bank, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, East Timor and the recent Arab uprisings in the Middle East.  She bore witness to suffering, injustice, civilian casualty–the direct and indirect consequences of violence.   (She lost her eye, and temporarily her hearing, from a flare blast in Sri Lanka.)

And now, we come to the Republican candidates.  With the exception of Ron Paul (who, despite the occasional castigation of the crowd, expressed an awareness of the truth that war necessarily costs life,) the candidates seem scarily eager to flex military muscle.  Although they talk frequently of grand theoretical horrors (nuclear attacks), they seem cavalier about rather actual and all too commonplace horrors (plain old shells).  I certainly do not mean to diminish the horror of nuclear attack–it’s just that despite the seriousness of the threats, the candidates come across as unconsidered, macho, extremely inexperienced, almost courting confrontation in order to come across as tough.   Rather than viewing the horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice, in other words, one  senses bravado and fact-avoiding partisanship.

It’s extremely worrisome.  And somehow makes the loss of people like Colvin feel sadder than ever.

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Lavender–“When All Else Fails” (Mag 105)

February 19, 2012

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Here’s my offering for Tess Kincaid’s Mag 105.

(Tess posts a wonderful weekly photographic prompt.  The original photo this week, and basis of my picture above, was by Epic Mahoney.)

I hate to double (or triple) up but, due to onslaught of demands (beside poeticizing), am also linking this to Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.

When All Else Fails

And then there are those times
when one resorts
to lavender–
the scent in a drawer (tempered by cedar),
and folded inside, a kerchief with initials
cross-stitched in bottle blue–
when all has gone wrong, when
there is no
last minute saving grace.

Even honey
can block a throat, lines cut, engine not
turning over, the days of horseback
gallop like the wind
no more.

Still, one pedals/pushes/pulls
through the pale of night as
across a sea or desert, holding,
in the chest of the mind, that drawer, that
handkerchief, the ghost
of lavender worn at wrists
that worked their way
through all of this before
(or something similar), the
lettered threads, cornered by
sieve edge of persistent lace,
signing the possible.

(As always, all rights reserved.  And as always, check out my comic novel, NOSE DIVE,  book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Making the Best of It – Natural Life In Unnatural World (“They Perch”)

February 18, 2012

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They Perch

They perch
on posts in the Hudson above/
below Canal, by the West Side Highway,
downtown.
Walking, we duck
our heads, bob knees, swish shoulders–as if
our moves will motivate their stretch
or intake of wing.
On a sunny day, their still basking
seems so reasonable that it takes some time
to realize that
they are sculpted–Herons?
Seagulls?
On those same sunny days,
New Yorkers stretch
on the jetties, Adam’s apples towards the
sky–there, by the brick/braille ventilation
tower of the Holland Tunnel, all that
putput
below the tide.

We want to think that our life
is natural, here in this city, country, mindset.
We want to believe
that a place where many building windows
do not even open
can support wild birds.

Apparently, there’s even a raptor
or two, aeries wedged
by cornice.

We want
to believe that they like it
here.  That even untempered
by doses of the more rarified Metroplitan (opera or gallery) (which
we too do not experience enough)
life
can thrive.

We strain–eyes, head, shoulder–
just in case a living one
has gotten confused, just in case
a living one
has landed, perhaps even
settled down.

On the opposite side, cars
rush every green light.

Hi all!  Happy Saturday Night!  The above poem is a draft posted for the wonderful dVerse Poets Pub poetics prompt, hosted by Brian Miller, based on beautiful photographs by Reena Walkling.  I don’t like to post other people’s are work so have done my own drawn version of Reena’s photo above.

(As always, all rights reserved.)

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

Friday Flash 55 Back To the Days Before GPS

February 17, 2012

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The map was a book. I drove; she navigated, piecing together freeway from one page to the next.

“Should take ya about 35 minutes,” the gas station guy had said.

After two hours, 70 mph, still within LA city limits–“that guy sure has a weird idea of 35 minutes,” I groaned.

“Oops,” she said.

(The above is my offering to the G-Man, Mr. Know-it-all! Have a wonderful weekend, and please please please check out my comic novel NOSE DIVE in paper and on Kindle–for only 99 cents! A great read if you like escape and aren’t completely thrilled with the way you look!)

Categories: Uncategorized, writing
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Comments: 9 Comments

Vulnerability as Heroic – “My Father (Baby birds)”

February 16, 2012

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dVerse Poets Pub has a “meeting the bar” challenge today, hosted by Victoria C. Slotto, to write about a personal hero.  I thought of an older poem (reposted below) about my father, who, as many of readers know, died recently after a protracted battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

I’m not sure that I thought of my father as much of a hero when I was young.  This may in part be because he was very generous with his time–the generosity of the archetypical hero tends to involve one swift grand swoop,  not a day-to-day slog.  For another, my dad could exhibit both deep tenderness and touching vulnerability–qualities that tends to be  “heeled” in the archetypical hero.  Finally, he was self-effacing, good at bringing out the best in others.  He tended to make us see ourselves as heroes (or at least as competent–which, for the young, is almost as good).

Here’s the poem:

My Father (baby birds)

My father’s voice
when he sang
was deep and cragged and
reminded me of a froggie
gone a’courting.
But this was baby birds.

It was not even a person
who had died.
It was not even a particularly noble dog,
though like all of its species, it was capable
of a self-debasing attachment that could
seem Arthurian.

But after the accident, the rush,
the sad blur home,
my father’s back faced me in my room
with a sound
of birds.
It silenced all gone wrong,
turned me back into a person
who could do things in the world.

(As always all rights reserved.  The drawing in this case was done by my father on an iPad  a few months before his death.)

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