POEM: Busybody (from Inverse Origami)

Poems curl to a pointlike skunk cabbage in the mind

pungent purple and green verse,

smooth lines speckled with rhyme.

Poets dawdle

over jack-in-the-pulpit in deep shade

assist the variegated wood snipe

in its wordy den.

We poke at the blood root,

saucy ramps and sticky milkweed

and snoop (just a little)

in the fungi of ambitious men.

We note the lichen creeping over ideology

as the ferns uncurl

and the spores fly without apology.

We watch the turkey vultures lurk,

count crows at the roadkill tent

of social-jurisprudence, chaos

and manís manipulative bent.

Oh yes,

we watch the world like poets:

meadow-lulling, rhyming nags

content to meter out the observations

to which these nosy lines are lent.

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998

Poetry poster based on a sculpture

This post was originally made on my Gallery blog on 2/3/07:


A few years ago, I took a sculpture class from the eccentric artist Alex Shundi at the Wooster Community Art Center.

The sculpture to the left was my project or one of my projects in class, and was done from a live model. On the right  is a poster for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series created entirely in Painter Essentials 3 from this same photo of the sculpture. The poster is really a digital collage. The materials are the WNPS logo (the chair) photos of the poet and his various books, etc. A lot of changes were obviously made to the photo. After arranging the collage materials, I did a bit of drawing over them to create the over all effect.

This is the first poster in that series that was created entirely by digital means. Early posters were a long series of hand-glued collage, drawing, then scanning printing, drawing more with digital effects also applied. The poster was for a reading (several years ago) by poet Charles Rafferty at the Wednesday Night Poetry Series.
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Valentine Postmortem

 My odd little marriage began strangely - on Halloween. So, why I did I marry my future "ex" on Halloween? You may be wondering, or not in a million years wondering...

"Hey -- do you want to get married on Halloween?" my ex said blandly as we were driving down Route Seven in the fall of 1974. Notice he didn't say "Want to get Married?" What he said was "Want to get married on Halloween?" The date was not negotiable.

It wasn't one of your more romantic proposals. Especially followed by the pathetic statement "I'd get $180 more //OR SOME NUMBER I AM NOT RECALLING WHAT NUMBER// a month from the Veterans Administration if we were married instead of just living together." Now where's the romance in that? No mention of love anywhere, only money. But then we had been living together for two years which is quite enough familiarity to beat the crap out of your average romance. But heck, it was the mid 70's and we were idiots.

I had a lot of things to consider. My mother had developed a physiological response to our living in sin arrangement. She had mysterious gall bladder attacks following each of our visits. There could only be one answer to his wretched proposal. "Okay," I said flatly with a tightening knot in my stomach. I was 23 and didn't know any better. He might never ask again, and I loved him, I thought.

On the day of our ill-fated union, we both went to work as usual. We came home and had a terrible fight. He wouldn't allow my parents to come to the ceremony because that would mean his parents would have to come too. Now, I am an only daughter and this faux paux of exclusion cast him in a bad light with an entire array of aunts, uncles and cousins for years to come. Some still haven't forgiven him though we have been happily divorced for two decades .

"I'm not marrying your parents. I am marrying you," he said bluntly. He wouldn't even allow mom and dad to take us to dinner afterwards. So we went to Val's Pizza and each ate a slice in icy silence. Then we went shopping at a discount store, like it was just another day. Finally we visited married friends whose babies screamed in the background while they fought and needled each other. Inside my head the regrets had already begun: I've promised to spend my life with this man - I thought to myself in horror. What have I done?
Perhaps those who wield hearts, flowers and hand-trucks full of valentines know something we didn't know then, something we failed to learn during our five-year marriage. "Oh to be young and in love," people say. Well at this point in my journey, I wouldn't go back for all the chocolate in a mall Godiva store! I'll leave that to all the rest of you. So get busy young lovers, in only a few short decades you'll be fully vested old fools like me, trying to recall the debacles of your youth.



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The Blush, a drawing with pastel

This is very early drawing of mine in ink and pastel. I think the degree of embarrassment is quite evident. I was thinking of the look of John Lennon with the granny glasses and sixties haircut -check out that hair!

Unfortunately I never matted nor dry-mounted this piece and now there are two creases in the paper that run all the way across it horizontally. It's not enough to create a work - you have figure out how to put it use and preserve it too.

When I was web mistress for the Wed Night Poetry Series I used this for several years on the web listings and emails for their Erotic Exotic Neurotic Valentines event.

Poetic license

As a medium, oil pastel offers a lot of possibility. This is a none-too-flattering, not particularly accurate self-portrait of the puzzled dragon at the easel. This was just after I came back from Maine when I lived in the attic of the house where I grew up. I like the crazy colors. The curtains were really white but that wasn't that interesting somehow. My hair is not really green either. haha.

WRITING NOTE: Writing fiction or poetry is a lot like that - the details can be altered to good effect on the bottomline of the story. Non-fiction has another standard - but the filter is still the writer's, reflected in what comes first, what details are included, what items had follow up research, etc etc.
 

Valentine's Post Script

Valentine's Day. Whew. So many flower ads, and ads for diamonds and chocolate -- I might have to sue Hallmark for demensia sentamentalis!

After watching all the heart-warming Valentines Day TV specials, I've been reminiscing. And it seem to me that Lover's Lane was always full of potholes and paved with self-deceit. Maybe I only feel that way because I had a brief, odd marriage that began on a truly appropriate holiday - Halloween. To add to the charm of the occasion we were married in a funeral home, by a mortician who was also a justice of the peace. We didn't know just who was being laid out at the time, but they had some really spectacular flower arrangements.

Why Halloween? It's a lot better day to begin a marriage than Pearl Harbor Day when some friends of ours were wed. (I have a poem called Ceremony on this very topic.) After all, a masquerade is safer than a war. Besides, don't most starry-eyed couples clutch their masks tightly, as well as their delusions about the true nature of their beloveds?

Ghouls aside, removing our masks is the stuff of true intimacy, the thing that separates infatuation from love. So, what could be more appropriate for a marriage than Halloween when one puts on a mask only to remove it later?

This leaves the nagging question - just what is Valentines Day appropriate for? Staying home and drawing the blinds has always worked well for me....

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Short poem with digital foolishness

Here's a poem to go with this crazy digital sea:

The mix, the shrift of wave and gilt,
all gnarl or growling storm
All life's atwist in azure time's wild light.
Adapt! Transform!