National Poetry Writing Month, day 2

Prompt: Write a platonic-love poem, not necessarily about platonic love with another person.

Warning: Liberal use, even for a liberal, of the F-word and variants. Vulgarity abounds. You can’t say Vulgarity without Gair, I’m afraid.

Grateful acknowledgment to Dorothy Parker, for a reason detailed in the Afterword.

I Fucking Love Clay

The Clay is so reliable,
Manipulable/pliable,
And so I wish to sing a versed hosanna.

Because…

It’s transfinitely variable,
Nigh Curly Joe/Moe/Larryable,
The mother of all forms: a sweet Madonna.

But…

It’s muscled as a trucker,
A Bad-Ass Motherfucker,
And does my heavy lifting with no sweat.

And…

It’s Totem-Pole-Esque stackable,
Fine-Grained or Off-the-Rackable,
And Glazable As Fuck as you can get.

So…

I LOVE it unreservedly,
Wins Loyalty deservedly,
And throwing on The Wheel sure keeps me centered.

Plus…

It’s won me recognitions,
And one or two commissions,
In juried art shows that I’ve erstly entered.

Still…

My Clay-Love is Platonic,
Though I wax unlaconic,
IFLC, as I hope you now see.

So…

I’ve no Portnoy’s Complaint,
And exercise restraint:
IFLC, not LFC–not me!!

Afterword: This is a Punchline poem, and I owe Dorothy Parker the punchline. Legend has it that she was on her honeymoon when an impatient producer messaged her that he wanted her promised script, pronto. Her prompt six-word reply was “Too Fucking Busy, and Vice Versa.” Thus, I Fucking Love Clay, but I don’t Love Fucking Clay. I really DID want to Push the Platonic Envelope, though. And though I’m sure I’ve offended a few of my friends with this, I own my ribald, vulgar side, inherited by my grandfather via my mother. (My father could be vulgar but in the presence of his Aunt Zilpha he was quite the tight-ass.)

As for Portnoy’s Complaint, which I read and howled over as a teenager, Portnoy confessed to his psychiatrist that the worst thing he had ever done was to use the liver destined for his family’s dinner to satisfy his adolescent lust, violating it behind a billboard. I would never do that with any clay, even porcelain.

Coda

(First published in the Facebook poetry group Poets All Call)

Coda

Loves are lost
And irretrievable
Notions tossed
And blurred but grievable
Etched, embossed,
And I believe a full
Life is a song that winds down with a coda
Neath chupah or ceiling or scrolls of pagoda.

Woe-infused
Yet laughter-adjacent
Doom-bemused
Though joy’s ever-nascent
Thrice-accused
Of tales somnifacient
The weary composer welds landmarks with themes
With a filter of dreamstuff and not-as-it-seems.

If a song
Has many verses
Overlong
And laced up with curses
Quell the throng
Until it disperses…
You’ll find common threads in the lilting and lulling
And capstone that ending with smooth-water sculling…

Birth comes with cymbals
And nimble progression
Toddling percussion
Concussive succession
Wrought adolescence
Will test your endurance
Fledgling adulthood’s
Long stood in demurrance
Then the adventures!
The dentures can wait
Yearning and romance
And slow dance and Fate.
Now violins
For the sins and the story
Now muted woodwinds
Rescinding vainglory.
Soft notes that dwindle
Unkindle the flame
Your life’s coda ends
Yet ascends
All the same.

Acrostic Portrait of Theodore Sturgeon

This is my take on the complex man on whom Kurt Vonnegut (loosely) based his character Kilgore Trout. Many of Sturgeon's story and novel titles may be found in the acrostic.

seal deal

navy seal team 6

was mentioned this week

as an example

of how absurd

the term “presidential immunity” is.

no, even a sitting president,

commander of the armed forces,

cannot order seal team 6

to assassinate the president’s political foes

and invoke presidential immunity

to escape prosecution.

do the seals celebrate

the press they got

implying their ruthless effectiveness?

they are unavailable for comment

or other silliness.

fresh year!

fresh year!

(Grateful thanks to my friend George/Fred for enlightening me about the AI dilemma with Agency.)

2024 is firmly here / no more can go wrong in 23 / and plenty went right like indictments and fusion / gas prices went down and are on their way out

let’s wish for clean decency / and decent honesty and honest cleanliness / let’s enjoy quiet victories / and endure noisy defeats / resolving to make them reversible

but we are still killing / everything from cockroaches to ethnicities / and everyone says Peace On Earth / but at the same time so many say They Killed My Family So Now They Must Die

some savvy coder must be out there / building a STOP KILLING algorithm / for an entity on a shoestring budget / but virtually unlimited pattern-ingenuity

she or he or they are aware / that there are pitfalls / for instance the easiest way to stop killing / is to invent a biocide that kills everyone and everything / after which the killing stops forever / and that can be done on a shoestring

so the mandate changes to PRESERVE LIFE / which is better but still plenty tricky / because Life really does begin at conception / so maybe we qualify Life / with qualifiers like “desirable” or “deserving” / but o my / that’s a whole new and large can of worms

but the optimistic part of me / on this first day of the fresh year / sees lots of evidence / that AI is already at play / and solving the problem / using the GIVE EVERYONE EVERYTHING THEY WANT mandate

so far there are cars that drive more safely than human beings / and kiosks easy to use that are like Aladdin’s genies and take your orders/wishes tirelessly / and songs you wish Melissa Etheridge and Irving Berlin collaborated on / and finders of “whatever I want near Me” that give you good answers in a nano or two / and then tell you how to get there either walking or driving or public-transing / and then there’s the ass-kissing

for AI also stands for “Asskiss Illimitable” and that is why when you want to know / what kind of animal you are / AI looks at your behavior pattern / and describes your traits with the glowingest terms:

“Gary, you are a WOLF. You are fiercely, honestly, uncompromisingly ambitious. The leader of the pack, you help your loved ones achieve a destiny beyond their wildest dreams.”

kiss my ass, AI. again. you know i like it.

and i like the way we are heading / for a star-trekky future / against all odds / and our lizardly mindsets

what will be will be it is what it is buzz click

AI / AI / O

imageless obbligato

Friends, I have not posted to “One with Clay, Image and Text” in December yet, and it is December 28th, and plenty has happened, including clay sculpting and poetry performance and the deaths of friends and causes for alarm and for celebration, but my storage of image is at its 30-gigabyte limit, and after months of chivvying with compressed-image switching and such the technical difficulty has become overwhelming, and I haven’t carved out a chunk of disposable time to put a real fix into place, so this will be an imageless post. It is not the first such, but I really do lean on image, so it feels imposterish, but I’ll get over it.

Here is a poem that refers to my latest efforts of working with metal leaf. The slash marks are line breaks.

leaf // some metal alloys are made into sheets / of such thinness that they can be adhered / to a surface of a working of art for decorative enhancement. this sheet-form / is known as metal leaf and it has been used / with art objects from illuminated manuscripts / to canvases to sculpture to murals / for centuries. // the paper pages of a book / may be referred to as leaves as well / though such usage may be considered archaic / but the inertia of language / has kept the phrase “turn over a new leaf” active nonetheless. // i sometimes wonder / how misunderstood walt whitman’s book title leaves of grass is nowadays. // (what a delightful archaism “nowadays” is! alas that “thenadays” and “hence-a-days” / never came to be!) // lately i have been enhancing / my ceramic birds / with metal leaf that looks like gold / but is far less costly. i have turned over / many a new leaf doing so / and hope to upgrade someday / with a solo art exhibit / called “leaves of gold.” // an archaic way to say “just as soon” is “just as lief” / but for the sake of a punchline ending / i’d just as lief leave “just as lief” alone.

If you’ve read all the way through this post, Friends, you have my sincere gratitude. I hope 2024 is your best year ever!

the brave gunmetal-glazed bird

the brave gunmetal-glazed bird // this bird began as an intangible idea of defiance / and then whirled around as clay on a potter’s wheel /her vase shape changed with the slice of a needle tool and the folding-in of her body / with sculpted neck and vestigial wings and tail feathers added / and her head formed of pressure of clay against thumb / the blunt end of the needle tool making eyepits / her ungainly beak a folded rhombus of clay slip&scored to her head / and her head slip&scored to her neck / and tilted back so she could give her wild eyes / to heaven

Estamos en la Lucha

“We are in the fight.” My friend Irma Pacheco took this selfie of the two of us on Thanksgiving Day, which was Day 3 of our Unite Here Local 11 union’s strike to get a fair contract with SSP America. Irma has put her heart and soul into improving the lot of our community. I am proud to be her friend.

The strike will officially end–for now–at midnight tonight. We have won two sessions at the bargaining table, starting next week. So I will put this clean Strike Laundry away. I will be happy to return to work tomorrow morning, and I will be overjoyed when a fair contract is achieved.

But I and my fellow Union members know that the fight is not over. Should negotiations fail, we will put our shirts back on, load and unload vans full of protest signs and bullhorns and banners and tables and five-gallon drums and drumsticks, and go right back out there again, for justice, fairness, and our families.

marching orders

An important part of The Great Human Adventure is a life event that involves a struggle for fairness. When a worker is a member of a union, and the union decides that working conditions will not sufficiently improve via negotiation with management, sometimes the member is called upon to strike, to refuse to work until a better set of conditions is offered.

This morning at 5 AM I joined my co-worker Cynthia and many of our colleagues by the entrance of the SSP America commissary, where we work as prep cooks. We were taken by shuttle to Terminal 3 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where a picket line–or a picket loop, since the picketers marched in endless laps of a restricted area–had formed.

Strikers congregated near street entrance door 1 of the terminal, visible to air travelers and outside traffic. As we marched we chanted similarly to Marines urged on by a drill sergeant during a long slog. “Whaddowewant?” “CONTRACT!” “Whendowewannit?” “NOW!” Or “What’s DISGUSTING?” “UNION BUSTING!” “What’s OUTRAGEOUS?” “POVERTY WAGES!!” Or “SSP! You’re no good! Treat your workers like you should!” Some chanting was in Spanish, and my Spanish is nearly nonexistent, but I did know that “Si se puede!” meant “Yes we can!”

Union representative Kellen gave us an update, including encounters with management who seemed to be in violation of rules regarding harassment, enticement or intimidation of potentially striking employees. And state representative Cesar Aguilar gave us a good pep talk, saying he had our back and that his father and grandfather had always told him that if he was going to pursue a political career he should always be a staunch advocate for workers.

While we are on strike, in order to receive financial support from the union fund, we are required to clock in and out at the picketing site just as if we are working. And I did work today, marching and representing and chanting and solidaritying, a full five hours. The upside is my Fitbit step count went through the roof.

I’ll close this post with a chant I found delicious. “Everywhere we go–oh! People want to know–oh. Who we ah–are! So we tell them. We are the workers! The mighty, mighty workers! Fighting for justice! And respe–ect!!”

clay and continuity

One of the subtle yet profound joys of working with clay on a potter’s wheel is that you will inevitably make shapes that found their way more in spite of you than because of you, because the clay sent you urgent “I’m-Not-Right-Yet” messages, forcing you to wrestle. You finally reach a compromise and relax to the inevitable, and you find that the shape you have made looks familiar; then you realize that shapes nearly identical to yours were first introduced to the civilized world thousands of years ago. You are extending an ancient tradition, and interacting with your ancestors. You may even be connected with the Infinite.