December 5, 2011- “Double Check” – From Zuccotti Park to White House Press Room

Posted December 5, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, Obama, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

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I got back to NYC last night after a couple of weeks away, and took my normal trek by Zuccotti Park this morning.  Lo and behold, there was a Christmas tree and lights.  Very pretty, though the Christmas spirit does seem a bit hemmed in by the layers of metal barricades.

As noted in prior posts, as a downtown resident, I did have some understanding of the City’s issue with all the tents.  That said, in the spirit of both the holiday, and also perhaps the 99%, I urge all to read about or watch President Obama’s comments at today’s White House press briefing on the continuation of (i) cuts in payroll tax and (ii) unemployment benefits, both of which are due to expire at the end of this year.

Here are some salient points from the video transcript:

(Re extending payroll tax cuts.)

“Last week virtually every Senate Republican voted against that tax cut. Now, I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes as long as they live. How could it be the only time there’s a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle class families? How can you fight tooth and nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million Americans who really need the help? It doesn’t make sense….

(Re paying for the continued payroll tax cuts.)

“Now, some Republicans who have pushed back against the idea of extending this payroll tax cut have said that we’ve got to pay for these tax cuts.  And i just point out that they haven’t always felt that way. Over the last decade they didn’t feel the need to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which is one of the reasons we face such large deficits. Indeed when the Republicans took over the house at the beginning of this year they explicitly changed the rules saying tax cuts don’t have to be paid for. So forgive me a little bit of confusion when I hear folks insisting on tax cuts being paid for. Having said that, we all recognize that we have to make progress on the deficit, and I’m willing to work with Republicans to extend the payroll tax cut in a responsible way.”

And now one further point from me, ManicDdaily, about both the payroll tax cuts and the unemployment benefits. Doesn’t job creation have something to do with demand?  And doesn’t demand result, at some level, from putting money in the pockets of hundreds of millions of people who actually need to spend much of that money?  Don’t these consumers also create jobs?

Just some thoughts (though I must confess that I never much liked economics.)

P.S.  The above sculpture is “Double Check” by J. Seward Johnson.

Comments: 3 Comments

Magpie Tales 94– Lunch Counter Painting (Reproduced and Poeticized)

Posted December 4, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

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I am posting this (fresh off the brain and iPad 2) for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales 94. Tess gives a weekly pictorial prompt; this week is a wonderful painting by George Tooker called Lunch, exhibited at the Columbus Museum of Art. (The above is my personal reproduction, which I’ve put up just because I enjoy doing my own and can fit it more to my own post. The beautiful original can be seen at Magpie Tales.)

1960‘s Lunch Painting (George Tooker)

Hunched over lunch
as square as
white bread on
processed cheese, each
in a napkin of his/her own–suit
jacket, collar, sleeves–but
what lurks in the hearts
of the beige people?

My guess–everything.
Don’t discount the
counter, fail to read
between the forehead
lines–rainbows
found even in the surface of
coffee regular; a darker face
sandwiched in, intent on the
same meal, not
alien, not, at least,
in this picture, a
painting.

PS- Please please please for Christmas and any purchasing period, check out my new comic teen mystery novel, called NOSE DIVE, on Amazon, written by Karin Gustafson, wonderfully illustrated by Jonathan Segal, available in print and soon on Kindle (for just 99 cents!) Also check out my poems, Going on Somewhere (illustrated by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin) and children’s picture book, 1 Mississippi (pictures and words by me. A great book if you like counting and elephants.)

Comments: 18 Comments

Not really Comic or Super Poem (For dVerse Poets Pub “Comic” Prompt) (But at least has elephant)

Posted December 3, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPhone art, poetry
Tags: , , , , , ,

Here’s a new poem (too long–sorry–and still very much a draft), written for dVerse Poets Pub “Poetics” challenge relating to comics.    The drawing (done on my iPhone) doesn’t really suit the poem, but I couldn’t resist using it.

Power of Choice or Need

My childhood comic of choice was Archie and heroine
Betty, (fellow blonde and would-be
do-gooder), even though doing good,
in those comics, seemed
synonymous with disappointment.

Of course, the disappointment, was only in the long-lashed eye
of the short-sighted; those impatient
grasping sorts who did not
understand that good-hearted losses,
like all karmic set-backs, must turn golden (i.e. blonde)
at the end, as the universal
balance of good and evil (i.e. Betty’s cute turned-up nose vs.
Veronica’s snooty turned-up nose) righted itself, and a date
with Archie was achieved.

But now that I have no hope of cinched-in waist,
parabolic breasts, or a date with even a
rather bumbling teen throb, my sites turn to the super, those
tragic but helpful figures, only I think
that if I could grow a super power of choice or need, it
would sprout not in my limbs, but inside my heart, taking
the crud of resentment
as its Krypton;
transforming the sting (recurrent)
of abandonment into
the spark of a magic spider’s
teeth.  (With what else
do they bite?)
Morphing the hurt that embeds the claw
into the wide yaw
of empathy; telescoping
that chopped controlling beat into
a galaxy of embrace whose
planets orbit some other sun, where
there are no black holes, and where love, like other
universal forces, can be found in the radial outreach
of just about everything (sound waves from dropped pin,
ringed water round skipped stone, mossy antlers on
rutting stag, maple branches in
wet snow, the listening
consciousness).

It would be a strength, I think,
inked in the unhealed, unhealing heart, allowing it
to flow with the currents of uncertainty,  to
fly vulnerable.

Comments: 19 Comments

Friday Flash 55- Treasure on the Modernist Beach

Posted December 2, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, Uncategorized, writing
Tags: , , , , ,

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Sand Currency?

First day on beach, bend to retrieve bleached disc.  Amazing!  Haven’t found one for ages, and its worn radius is barely graded. Central imprint–bifurcated–strikes me as unusual, but my luck-starved mind grasps for ‘rare!’ ‘modernistic’ and I handle with great care.

Takes me a dip in the cold sea to see….styrofoam.

The above is posted for Friday Flash 55 (a story in 55 words, plus, in my case, title) for the G-Man.  Go tell him.
And have a nice weekend.

Comments: 8 Comments

Image, Simile, Metaphor in Poetry–A Keel To Float Your Poem–(“Family Finishes”)

Posted December 1, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

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DVerse Poets Pub has a prompt today by Gay Reiser Cannnon asking for poems that trade in image, simile, metaphor, allegory, figure.  The poem below was based on an exercise that tended to force one into metaphor (though frankly almost any poem has some basis in these elements.)  The picture, done on my iPad 2, was “filtered” on the Photogene App above.  (Below is the unfiltered image.)

Family Finishes

I.

The perfectionist sands her offspring to her image, or
an image, filing away the
unsightly, the angry, the unspeakable.
Drills a face fit for a pageant, as
smooth as balsam, as modeled as
a keel; then (the child carved
to measure), she steps
down into that keel, careful
of any unseamed tar.

II.

A family levels itself to just folks with enough distance;
an occasional pageant – picnic or funeral – joins the blood,
a biennial application of glue,
occasions muddled with the stickiness of blood;
mother hammering the grandmother, son
nailing father, the family portrait gathering a rich patina.

III.

Steeped in the traditions of the portrait hall,
the young mother thought
to measure out love in spoonfuls,
smoothing away excess, screwing it into a tied-up sock.
Blasphemy to mount to ecstasy over your child.  No.
Passion fit the furniture
like a bowl of tulips or tea set, shaped to
its interval.  But the small white fist that gripped her finger
leveled training,
proper restraint transmuting aged wine to deep wellspring,
casks burst to loose a flow of sparkling clarity. 

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Comments: 8 Comments

Important Numbers To Any Generation

Posted November 30, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

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Important Numbers

My parents, nearly ninety, have a paper posted on the wall just above
the phone on the kitchen counter.
I typed it myself a couple of years ago.
“Important Numbers” it says, and leads off
with 911.
Below that comes the number of a saintly neighbor, then all my various phones,
my brother’s, the local GP–

On this visit, I’ve noticed a new paper–a small purple index card really–
taped up just next to the phone numbers; it reads,
scribbled in my mother’s thin hand:
“50 million – WII.
20 mill Russians
6 mill Poles
6 mill Jews.”

As my mother trudges into the kitchen
increasingly trying to catch up to
the reason she’s there this time,
her eye lands upon the purple card:

“Do you know how many people died in World War II?” she asks
expectantly.  “50 million–can you imagine that?” her voice rises in both
horror and wonder.   Her voice becomes almost strident
with deserved significance—“20 million
Russians, 6 million Poles, 6 million Jews–can you imagine it? And
that doesn’t even include the Japanese.”

(My mother, having lived a couple of years
in Japan shortly after the War, is particularly partial
to the Japanese.)

“I think it does,” I say.

“Oh yes,” she says, leaning over the jars of nuts, the foil bags
of dried fruit, the salt and pepper, to stare more deeply into the card–

“Yes,” she says quietly.  “I guess that’s right.  50 million
in all.”

P.S. Posted for Imperfect Prose for Thursdays.  in the hush of the moon

Comments: 5 Comments

What’s Best Not To Be Caught Doing In the Stairwell (Middle-Aged Version)

Posted November 29, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

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Here’s an older poem for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link night and Thursday4Poets Rally, apologies to those who’ve seen it before.  (The drawing at least is new.)

In the Stairwell

Descending the building’s stairs, she tests her breast,
fumbling beneath her bra to get to skin,
palpating (as they say) but in a mess
of here and there and not all within
the confines of an organized exam.
Silly to do it here, not time or place,
someone else might come, have to move her hand,
and yet fear seems to justify the race,
as if by checking each time it crosses mind,
especially checking fast, she can avoid
ever finding anything of the kind
that should not be found.  And so, devoid
of caution, but full of care nonetheless,
she steps slowly down the stairs, feeling her breast.
PS – A version of this and other poems can be found in my poetry book on Amazon called “Going on Somewhere.”  But, for real fun, check out my new teen novel, NOSE DIVE (written by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by the wonderful Jonathan Segal.)

Comments: 31 Comments

A Shameless Plug on Cyber Monday–NOSE DIVE

Posted November 28, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized, writing
Tags: , , , ,

I am somebody who generally finds the holiday gilding of the overconsumption lily both unsettling and unseemly.   Patagonia, to its credit, posted an ad today, Cyber Monday, urging customers NOT to buy one of its most popular jackets, because of its heavy environmental cost.  (This, by the way, is a jacket that is made of 60% recycled materials.)

But I am making an exception in the last eight minutes of this online shopping day to make a shameless plug for my new novel.  It’s called NOSE DIVE and is a comic teen mystery set in downtown New York City.

The book has some very silly, but (I hope) fun, elements–Broadway show tunes, phone sex, gouda cheese.  The illustrations and cover by Jonathan Segal are especially wonderful.

So, check it out.  It’s available in paperback on Amazon, and will soon also be on kindle.   (Which means that even if you want to save trees, you can buy one.)

Yes, it’s for teens, but anyone who (i) likes music, (ii) has felt unhappy with their looks, and (iii) has had a friend in a tight spot should find something to relate to.

And it makes a great gift!

Comments: 4 Comments

MagPie Tales 93 – “When The Couch Was Saved”

Posted November 27, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

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Here’s a piece for Magpie Tales 93, a writer’s blog hosted by Tess Kincaid, and also GooseberryGoesPoetic.  I have made my version of Tess’s photographic prompt above. The first piece I did for the prompt was about “Hello Dolly!”, but then I started thinking of Novembers in years past, and ended up with the piece below.

When the Couch, at least, was Saved 

It was a time in which couches were saved for company,
their cushions, if not under actual wraps, under threat of maternal bemoan.

It was an age of short white gloves for Sunday School, and
a brand new outfit at Easter–hats with brims if a child, a prim
round edge, if not.

It was a period when the National Anthem was played in movie theaters, and we would stand, conscious, in the projected ripple of stars and stripes on the screen and the echoing thrill in our chests, of the seats at the backs of our knees, the brush of velvet cushion, the chill of metal frame.

It was a day when we parked at McDonalds, its arches like a movie theater too, and from the radio of our white-finned Olds, heard the news about Jack Ruby and his sawed-off shotgun in Dallas.

It was a day we had spent much of standing, down at the Capital, in grieving awe at the jagged prance of the dark riderless horse, the turned-back polished boots.

The news of Ruby, Oswald dead, hit like a third anvil, an odd blank thud on the already crushed. My mother leaned from the car door as if sick, “what in God’s name is happening to this country?”

It was a whisper she would repeat several times over the next few years as we sat on the living room floor before the ultraviolet of aging TV, my mom in a kitchen chair (the couch still saved for company), praying for someone we had loved from afar not to have been shot, or at least, not to die, watching too the riderless wave of what came next and next and next, a velvet place in our aching chests more and more conscious of metal.

 

 


Comments: 15 Comments

Poetics Prompt- Wild Poem – “Kali”

Posted November 26, 2011 by ManicDdaily
Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

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I’ve posted this for DVerse Poets Pub “poetics” prompt “wild” and Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.  It’s an older poem about the Indian Goddess, Kali.  Kali is a  Goddess of Destruction, often depicted in a fairly violent, i.e. wild form,  but it is my understanding that this destructive force is also an energy that can be channeled in a protective manner–against obstacles!  Blocks!   Enemies!  (She seems to me to be kind of like a life coach mother bear.)  At any rate, here’s my effort and a new iPad drawing above.

Kali

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
It is your krazy hair,
and all those men that you wear
at your waist.
It is the way that you waste
them with your big mouth,
that you break them in two with your teeth, 
that you bear down hard.

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
It is the way that you slit,
the way that you split,
the way that you pit
them against each other, heads against heads,
and that sharp spear that you hold
in your hand.

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
Make me your third eye.
Make me the clasp at your waist.
Give me the weight of fifty men, the hook of the chain.
Dear Kali, you are my favorite.

(PS the poem is in a collection of my work GOING ON SOMEWHERE available on Amazon.)

(PPS – I’m so sorry that I’ve not been in a good position to return comments the last few days.  Thanks to all who’ve commented.  I will get back to your work.)

Comments: 26 Comments

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