JA Jure: Sojourner

She says to pronounce her first name Jay. She tells me her life took a turn in New Mexico. She lays five bucks on a kid soliciting for his youth group, and he tells her a joke. She speaks of life casts she made at the former arts venue Paper Heart. Phrases like “trying to impress the Universe” and “never drive faster than your angels can fly” come easily to her. She went from taste-testing soup to test-driving cars. She is a broiler chef, a mother, a force of nature, an outlaw, and a hell of a woman.

Words to the double acrostic:

Jaunting through a lifelong Hajj

Juxtaposng wound and badge–U

Are the Broth–no soup du jour

And have the instinct to be sure

Roscoe Turner serendipity

My girlfriend, Melony Terry, is a hair stylist par excellence. Many call her Mel. I started to do her portrait today, using the double acrostic “Stylin’ Mel,” which refers obliquely to comic-strip character Smilin’ Jack, about whom I knew little. I found his image online, drew him for Melony’s page, then called her to ask for a photo of her with her styling shears. Alas, she cannot accommodate me till she goes to work tomorrow, so my page on her skidded to a halt.

Meanwhile, I learned that the real-life physical model for Smilin’ Jack was Roscoe Turner, who was a colorful character indeed, being perhaps the first human being to take his pet lion (Gilmore, named after a sponsor) into the sky with him.

Today is also the birthday shared by two of my closest friends, Steve Boyle and Tom Sing. My post “Two Finest Friends” has more information on these gentlemen.

Honesty & Decency Honored

It is the first day of the month. It is my personal superstition that it is important to do things on the first day of the month that I want to, or ought to, do every day. It has been a long time since I did a blog post. This First of August ends the drought.

The United States of America, personified by the incompetent, incoherent President Who Would Be King, Donald Trump, has lost its honest, decent way. Incompetent and incoherent as this illustrated sonnet may be, the acrostic of it has its heart in the right place: Let us honor Honesty and Decency.

Words:

Have Love and Care, should Uh-Oh morph to Oh.

Horse fed and curried–curry on, O Pooh.

Omit!! and disregard downed Jericho:

Omniscience and egocentrists do.

 

No Hands on deck means mutiny anon

Nor strand induces cries of oui, c’est bon

Etceteras and gestures à la Bono

Etch handiworks pegged by both Pegg and Ono.

 

Since candied snow does not exist,and deer

See thousands of near misses, the affair

That grandees of Compulsion make cohere

Tell sandy waves of crazies not to stare.

 

Yet fake and zany posts unstay the staid

Yield fine fandangos for the Chambermaid.

My thanks to my marvelous new Girlfriend, Melony, for providing on request a word to get me going on this post. The word she gave me was “Honesty.”