Archive

Uncategorized

emit a nopu ecno

June 11, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library         (search on “Vizier”)

emit a nopu ecno

the frustrated prince

hurled the slipper

forcibly into

the brick and mortar of the castle wall.

it would have shattered

had not his vizier

slowed its flight

with time-slice magic

and plucked the slipper from the wall

before

it more than bent with the impact.

the prince brightened with an idea.

“use your magic to reverse time

back to the party and her in my arms

but let me keep my memory of now.”

“that i cannot do,” said the vizier.

“time may be slowed, or sped,

but what is done cannot be undone.”

the prince growled.

then he brightened again.n

“speed me up, then.

make me so fast

that I can search my kingdom

dwelling by dwelling

and be gone before anyone sees me.”

“majesty,” said the vizier,

“i could do that, but think it through.

your subjects deserve dignity

and privacy. your search

would shatter their privacy,

would destroy their dignity,

while you feasted your eyes.”

there was a silence.

the prince’s face looked

like a gathering storm. at last he said calmly,

“well, but after all, they are MY subjects.

slow time for me. now.”

with an inscrutable face

the vizier put his hands to his temples

and spoke an incantation

in a long-dead language. “prince,

it is done. time outside you will slow

from hardly at all to stock-still

depending on how fast you move. do not

go faster than a brisk walk.” he paused

and then said with some bleakness,

“farewell.”

the prince grinned lasciviously

and vanished from the vizier’s sight.

“if he follows my instruction, he will live,”

the vizier mused. but he will not.”

as if on cue,

there were screams from the greensward

not fifty feet beyond the castle’s drawbridge.

the charred form and burning raiment

of the prince of the realm

had suddenly popped into existence

near a group of villagers.

the vizier went up to the battlements

for a proper view. “he couldn’t wait,

the lustful knave.

he ran,

and became like unto falling star,

burned by the air

that flensed him as he sped.”

he sighed.

“we are better off without him.”

he allowed himself a playful smile.

“well, after all,

there was always

too much friction

between us.”

scrap

June 8, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

to not remember much of a day

is to have a scrap

of memory. to wrestle

with decaying memory is to have a scrap

with the second law of therm

odynamics. to knock an e

off a scrape is to have a scrap. if you

don’t care for th

e ran

domeness of this mess

let us cons

ign it to the scrapheap

of non-history, which viewed

through a mag

nif

i

er

is a lovely

crazy

quilt of chao

s.

boom x 3

June 7, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library

boom x 3

butter is

oleaginous

oleo is

mucilaginous

..

bartholomew in the zoom

outlasted his confreres

or orchestrated doom

made ripostes after parries

..

bindlestiffs are difficult to find

of late the backpack is the better lugg

obtaining one takes mere goodwill of mind

make camp make peace make everloving hugg

Phoenix Memories

June 4, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Eponymous cityscape by Kathleen Plasko

Phoenix Memories

She put an airplane in the sky

Of the Phoenix cityscape she made

And indeed my first memory of Phoenix

From 1958

Was of landing at Sky Harbor airport

After seeing moonlight on a blanket of fluff clouds

Below us.

..

She put a skyline in the middle of the cityscape

And it compelled the memory

Of the Bowers family driving down Central

When I was very young.

There was a big blue building

That headquartered Guaranty Bank

And one of the corners of the top two floors

Boasted the giant monogram GB

And someone, probably my mother, joked

That we were approaching the Gary Bowers Bank.

It was wonderful, that joke–made me feel

Like a Big Shot

At three feet something.

..

Below the skyline of her cityscape

Are gridded lines that evoke the Phoenix Street grid

With a thick through line that might be the 202

Or I-10.

When I was growing up

We just had the Black Canyon Highway, I-17,

And the Buckeye exit was what you used

To get to the airport.

The intersection of 59th Avenue and Camelback

Was stop-signed dirt when we moved

Into our nearby house on Pasadena Avenue,

Technically in Glendale

But really it was Greater Phoenix,

And across t9th

They later built Grandview, our shopping mall

With the Valley National bank

Where I got my first savings account

And the A J Bayless for groceries

And Cox’s Bakery with their deep discount

On day-old bread

And W T Grant that had a terrarium full

Of little bitty turtles.

..

The cityscape she made is awash with red and yellow

Colors of the Phoenix bird

Everlastingly burned to ash

And everlastingly rising from her ashes

And red and yellow also evoke

The relentless furnace heat

That yields a summer from April to October

And in my prime I came to love that heat

Loved walking in it till I was sweat-lodge soaked

Ran 5 miles in a July midday in 1992

And felt as if a blacksmith had forged me

Into a broadsword, sturdy and sharp.

The maker of the cityscape has seen to it

That Phoenix will always be with me.

..

broth and bhoy

June 2, 2026
Uncategorized
3 Comments
Beef broth, orange and yellow peppers, diced sweet onion, stew meat,Yukon Gold mini-potatoes, coarse kosher salt, fine-ground black pepper

one hour on high and the potatoes were still hard and woody. two and a half hours and the onion was caramelized and the potatoes were softish but firm.

with each successive bowl the broth became more agreeable. even the meat softened and chewing ceased to be a chore.

the ingested broth is becoming a part of me. of course it became non-broth as i ate it; became an acidic slurry and was enzymed and shunted over finger like absorbers,

and its warmth dissipated delightfully, euphorically;

and a search was sent to my brain;

broth. comic books.

and it turns out that in the comic book

Fantastic Four

Stan Lee

had an Irish doorman think about Ben Grimm,

The Thing,

some wistfulness including the phrase

“…what a fine

broth of a bhoy

he would be.”

even in my tweens,

though i loved comics and read them voraciously,

i thought Stan’s characterization of the doorman

hackneyed, a rather god-awful caricature.

the storytelling was superb, though,

thanks to the plot-assists of illustrator Jack Kirby.

..

I have digested the broth to the extent

that i am now partly former broth,

and have integrated the search

within my pop-culture continuity,

and so now am ready to face the day

with a bhoyish smile.

wombwater revisited (first incarnation)

June 1, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Photo Library

once upon trochaic times

nelly floated in a sac

very like a uterus

wore a latex fetus suit

snorkeled-air umbilicus

saw just shadows and vague shapes

licked the slicks of nutrients

on the innards of the mask

(having had colonic flush

there’d be meconium)

..

five days passed in fetal bliss

nell hallucinated with

shades of blobbed angelic choirs

hallelujahing away

then bright light bedazzled her

with the sac forthwith unzipped

with the fetus suit split wide

hose-off in her unitard

..

“it’s a girl!” the tech exclaimed

“you’ve been billed,” the front desk said

nelly took the subway home

climbed the stairs and was reborn

failures

May 31, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

there are dnfs

(dnfs stands for did not finish and a dnf can be devastating for a long-distance runner)

and on a report card the letter f is a failing grade

(the student of sufficient shame may also think of f for fool, for frustrated, for feeble-minded)

there are divorces and bankruptcies and estrangements and mass shootings

..

there are creative failures

but we can turn them into misfires if we try try again and pay attention to concept and execution

..

there are also melting glaciers

cardiac arrests

but the mother of all failures is cowardice

(failure of nerve)

and in this year and last we have borne witness to cowards in power cowed by a presidential coward who in turn kow-tows to a muscovite who has enthralled him

and this has engendered a failure of national enlightenment

the silencing of the voice of America

death and destruction abroad

and everlasting shame

..

but some few of us fight against and fight whole-heartedly

stansbury of new mexico

king of maine

schwartzenegger of california

valenzuela of washington state

..

so let’s not call a time of death on this beloved nation just yet

we have heroes

we have receipts

and we have fierceness where it counts

isogi, friends

there’s a snag or two

May 27, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

there’s a snag or two

the toescape reveals unsmoothness

that may plague the sockwearer

curl his toes though he might

he is too old and fat

and his nails too impervious to clipping

to attempt trimming

when his out-the-door drop-dead deadline

is six minutes

so he bunches his sock down its shank

so his bunched toes touch sock-end

and he carefully unbunches sock up foot then leg

..

one snag or two avoided

and as he drives to work

he strategizes his imagined

conversation with his boss

who abhors criticism

yet behaves it a way that costs the company money

and her the respect of her subordinates

it will be a tricky navigation

akin to having a foot with eight toes

of which three toenails are jagged

and socks of a fabric a cousin to burlap

..

he smiles

and wraps his bunched eight toes

in silk handkerchiefing

pulls carefully

and coos at his unsnaggy strategy-sock

it will be smooth as well-whipped cake frosting

on a piece of cake

Hail Mary, Full of Grace (People’s Artist Last-Ditch Appeal)

May 25, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

As a participant in The People’s Artist competition, presented by Johnny Depp and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, with today’s votes doubled and Thursday the deadline to vote for the Top Ten tier, and I firmly entrenched in 12th Place, and never having attained higher than 11th, this post shall act as my Hail Mary pass, to appeal to all those who are eligible to vote to please vote for me as The People’s Artist IF, and only IF, you enjoy and value my artwork and think I would be an outstanding People’s Artist.

Here is the link that will lead you to my own private ballot box:

peoplesartist.org/2026/g-bowers

And here is a synopsis of my credentials:

My first coherent drawing was a portrait of my mother made when I was two and a half years old. She had ten fingers and ten toes, lines going all over the place, a big smile on her face, and a circle in the middle of her body that may have been her belly or her navel.

First worked with clay at 7. First attempted to raise a cylinder on the potter’s wheel at 20. First succeeded raising a cylinder at 35. I have made thousands of vessels, hundreds of birds, and scores of individualized chess pieces. I have dozens of ribbons from art shows, mostly honorable mentions.

I have repurposed tons of clay into useful and/or expressive ware. And some day soon I will reporpoise clay into a bottle-nosed dolphin.

Thanks for reading my Bad Pun of the Day, and please vote for me!!

a trio of imperfectly

May 24, 2026
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

a trio of imperfectly

peeled hard-boiled eggs

huddle in a potter’s bowl

where they will be fork-mashed and -hacked

to a unified mush to which will be added

store-brand mayonnaise in three dollops

and Plochman’s mustard in an air-forced squirt.

this condimented mush will lie

on a store-brand potato bread hot dog bun

and on this bed of food

thin-sliced roma tomato will be arrayed.

1% butterfat milk will be the beverage.

coffee with splenda and french vanilla dry creamer

will follow

as with a sauntering walk

to aid digestion.