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
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
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.
..
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
Again, to my sweetheart Donna
when my faraway love and I talk on the phone
sometimes it is a playful random subject-walk
sometimes it is important nuts&bolts of plans
but probably most often it is being-together
touching . . .
“just wanted to hear your voice”
“you come over right now”
“i embrace you. i kiss you”
“my heart is full
but my bed is half empty”
these are not sweet nothings
they are sweet little-bitties
saying yet again
what we say every day
..
we pass the time apart
together
we entwine
churning the yearning
into a frothy parfait
One with Clay, Image and Text 