OTI:two poems and notes:8/31/16

Open To Interpretation

Baubles And Songs
from Black Dragon Lore

Black Dragons become deliriously happy
Listening to humans sing and play their instruments. 
Next to treasures fashioned by humans, it is their favorite. 
A Dragon Clan with a stable of singers and musicians,
And crafters too,
Is set. 
Tall nests encrusted with human treasures,
Long summer evenings of human music...
Nothing could be finer, the best of Dragon things. 
Dragons are clumsy, claws and wings being such,
And while they have visual and hearing acuities next to none,
They can't make a thing, or sing a note, themselves.
Dragons will die for a bauble, and a song.

When Asleep When Awake

Dragons dream together,
Awake, disparate paths they take.

DolphinWords

Notes:...I..hmmph...I dreamed a dream about the Black Ship tale!...when I awoke I thought nothing of it, then did a double take...'DavidDavid, you just dreamed about the Black Ship!...Write it down!'...so grabbed my iphone and poked the keypad...this is just how I recorded, misspells and all...tempting to try and meld it into the narrative, but it don't make much sense!, and would take some fiddling!

quote

‘O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

Songs Of Experience
William Blake

unquote

The Pogo Stick Poles

He catches me on the soft pole I'm hopping on...he on one too...I've stolen mine from across the field along the fence where I had seen them atop the connected ones in the village. I had climbed up the one to make it drop it's string pouch and wS kind if stuck at the top the string below so hopped back to the group pillars for some reason nearly there I was waylaid by him on his hopping pillar he was going to arrest me I thought do you know where you are we are atop the walls of a labyrinth like group of open to the air celadon I see antique buildings across a street and I'll remember those your at a zoo he says. We're hopping on the pillars to the fence pillars and he's asking about the tale forget some here I describe the black ship carefully repeating how it isomer a obsidian Neolithic spear point I don't think he likes that and he asks about the poles what about the poles and I think and say oh the black ship masts. In battle they shoot out lightning and he s excited mimiciing like the masts the poles connect earth and sky whew !A dream about the black ship!

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem and notes:8/30/16

Open To Interpretation

Deal

The Dark Red Stage,
The stone disc at the center of Origin,
Mirrored the spiraling pillars to the crater's rim
With bowl like dimpled depressions over its surface,
And into each of these,
Fledgling Dragons
Carefully placed Nemo's treasures.
Finished, the Stage glittered with gold and silver and gems.
Onyx, Black Dragons all take names from treasured gems,
Loomed over Nemo...
"Have I your approval?" asked Nemo.
"Yes, surely, the Ceremony of the Midnight Sun will be a grand success!" said Onyx.
"And you understand?" Nemo enquired.
"As to the rest..." Onyx hesitated.
"Yes..." Nemo prodded.
"We have it that we declare war on the Southern Dragon Flight...afraid of certain defeat, they will sue for peace...and we offer in trade for peace that they give us your daughter...and we return your daughter to you in exchange for the treasures you brought."
"You have it exactly!" said Nemo.
"One more thing..." said Onyx..."Your daughter remains with us to sing at the Midnight Sun, afterwards she joins you."
This was more than Nemo bargained for...
"And another thing..." added Onyx,  "you and your crew assist in the capture of Dulcinea....we met defeat in battle with the Black Ship..."
'I dealt Dulcinea to the Southern Flight....some arrangement can be made, similar to the one with my daughter." explained Nemo.
"The Black Ship?" speculated Onyx.
"Not a problem...without Dulcinea, the Liz is adrift, and will be nowhere near the Southern Reach." said Nemo.
Onyx ruffled his wings, lost in thought.
"Deal?" said Nemo.
Onyx looked over the glittering treasures on the Dark Red Stage, imagined Maya singing at the Midnight Sun...a duet with Dulcinea...stretched out his wings, belched flame and smoke...
"Deal."

DolphinWords

Notes:...hmmph...a morning at the smog place after replacing the kitchen faucet, and then return to DMV...it is too hot to stand in lines and wait!...and back and forth for plumbing parts...and...success...title transfer made, and I put a utility faucet, cheap!, with a threaded spout in the kitchen so I can run hot/warm water through a hose out to the niche beside the porch, which I'm going to fence in with gate, and thereabout I can contain Maya, my dog,  while I give her a bath!...she can sing, once I heard her howl to the sirens...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:twelve poems and notes:8/29/16

Open To Interpretation

Light Years Away

So,
You finally hear from someone,
Say, a hundred light years away.
Then, what are going to do,
Say hello,
And have your
Children's children's children's...
Listen for you?

I've Learned How

I've learned how not to wait...
I just don't ask.

Stars Are Black

Stars are black
Their fossil light
Delivered to us
Encased in space.

Immediate

Can you be immediate?
Ever?
Without delay?
Never.

Photon

Miss a starlight photon?
Hop on your
Faster than light futon.

Matter

It's a jealous matter.
All of that
Can't be energetically
Me,
Or you.

Peril

Impaled by peril?
Oh,
For many,
The contingency
Is to sit somewhere pretty.
For solace,
Ride the bus
With the rest of us.

Grandstanders

No worry for the grandstanders'
Grandstands,
Or the hands that feed them...
They're empty.

Salt

Sometimes, sometimes,
It's like it's raining salt
And I'm a snail.

Antenna

These are my eyes
You know
On the ends of these long antennas.

Cupid

Cupid!
You're a snail!

Midnight Sun

Red volcanic rubble
Crunched beneath their feet,
And Nemo's caravan
Reached the rim of Origin,
A shallow crater,
Ancient as the Northern Black Dragon Flight.
Below they could see the Stage,
A wide round disc of dark red stone at Origin's center. 
From the disc outwards,
Up the sloping crater walls,
Black monolith pillars spiraled,
Counter spiraled,
To Origin's rim.
When the Dragons come
And perch astride each
Their ancestral pillar,
Origin becomes
A red and black flower,
The Midnight Sun.
Nemo motioned his crew forward.

DolphinWords

Notes: Light Years...yep, that's what's in the works...reference SETI...I've Learned How...in truth, I haven't...seems everything is in waiting at times!...I've Learned How, Stars Are Black, Immediate, Matter, Photon...more of the 'Black Tombstones' refrain...Peril...I never know how to respond when I see the posts of Peril...'sitting pretty'...not knowing how to respond is often the seed of a poem...Grandstanders...reference the Kaepernick brewhaha...Salt...'salt on a wound'...Antenna...reference Garden Snails...Cupid...reference Garden Snail 'love darts'...ral...Midnight Sun...Nemo and his crew at the Northern Reach...oh, the morning browse turned up 'pseudocraters'!

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem and notes:8/28/16

Open To Interpretation

Mama

Tenaya Creek far below
My rest on a granite bench,
And from around the trail bend downhill
Comes a lovely lovely girl,
Hiking fast,
But sees me with my repast,
And has a seat.
I offer her my open baggy of trail mix.
"Thanks!" she says, and asks,
"Have you any water?"
"Sure." and hand her a full halogen bottle.
"Can I have that one too?"
By now I'm lost in her tattoos,
And feel a flirt coming on...
"Sure..."
And from around the bend uphill,
A handsome ranger,
Long downhill strides,
Joins us.
Seeing the lovely lovely girl,
He grins,
"Where you headed?"
I smile,
"Clouds Rest, we're not together."
"Half Dome." she says.
"Can I see your permit?" the ranger asks her.
She raises her hand
To brush back her hair from her eyes,
Locked together now with the ranger's.
"I don't have a permit."
His grin widens,
"Okay this time. You can go on ahead."
My smile becomes a smirk.
And from around the downhill bend they come,
Quiet,
Except for the clump of their boots,
Breaths,
And the rustle of leather vests
Emblazoned with their colors.
My halogen bottles get passed from one to the next,
And I offer another two,
As a bit dehydrated they seem
And dry with dust.
"Where you all headed?" the ranger asks.
"Oh, they're with me."  says the lovely lovely girl.
I whisper,
"Potato potato potato..."
As they all clump past,
The ranger last
Around the bend.

DolphinWords

Notes:  reference the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre...and She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain...ral...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem and notes:8/27/16

Open To Interpretation

Hand In Hand

Can I, with word chisels,
Sculpt you and I?
Maybe two word brush paintings,
One of me,
One of you.
Oh, scrub that.
You and I, on one canvas,
Closer,
About to kiss.
Oh, I hear you laughing,
Aphrodite.
Are my words nearing our likeness?
Pray I so,
And by your magic
We can walk off this page together
Hand in hand.

DolphinWords

Notes: reference Praxiteles...and magic kisses...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:six poems and notes:8/26/16

Open To Interpretation

Promises?

Promises?
You won't own them,
Nor give a smidgen.
Why do I look forward?
I've seen enough to know
Not to be your pigeon.
Unbidden, I carry mine.
I would put them down
If my wings could open.

Imposition?

This conversation again,
Where I do all the talking,
What are you planning to do?
Imposition?
Yes, that's me,
In my fantasy.
Asked of me
In yours,
You say,
Who?

Bored Tongue

Time was
It was popular
To go to one's doom
For a righteous cause,
Any cause would do,
And this before
Radio TV web.
You could get tongue bored
Speaking
Blasphemy
In an eye blink.

Conclusion

One,
In time,
Arrives at the conclusion:
Don't give a damn about them
And they won't give a damn about you.

Montana

Be precious,
Like the eclipse in Montana
You are.

DMV

Be patient
When in the DMV
You are.

DolphinWords

Notes:  Promises...reference Robert Frost's poem Stopping In The Woods On A Snowy Evening...Imposition...the first three lines I had as a poem by itself...then noticed it went together with the next one...so, glued them together!...Bored Tongue...reference David Joris ...1501-1556...Conclusion...reference Gone With The Wind, Frankly, my dear...Montana...a full solar eclipse viewable from Montana next year!...DMV...inspired by St. Peter's Gate surely...I've been sent to the smog place, again...change of title:...It's smogged...Have you had it done in the last ninety days?...I think...What month?...May?...check this box (smogged in last ninety days)...a pause...You smogged it last year...Oh, my mistake...pause...Do I need to uncheck the box?...I did it...Thanks!...Fifty dollars, bring all this back with the smog certificate...of course that info, I'm thinking, was on her computer screen the whole while!...meanwhile, security asked three times if I belong to a blue Maserati...no no no, and I want to say, Do I look like I belong to a blue Maserati!?...maybe...some kid in the gym told me I look like Bill Gates...one must keep one's screaming mimis in check!...signs all over DMV saying just that!

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:six poems and notes:8/24/16

Open To Interpretation

Erinyes

No light matter,
Oath breaking;
False oath taking,
False oath forcing.
The furies will come.
They have no special regard
For those who swear
With fingers crossed.

One And Only

Yes,
You're my one and only.
We tease one another plainly
Arms around one another's
Others.
Or it would seem.
I said yes,
You know,
And I know,
You have it no.

Amputees

No ear tearing noises
Imperiled them
Yet.
In quiet,
Hands at their sides,
They left in falsehood's
Blackmailing trap,
Like Coyote does,
Their own gnawed off limbs.

Bauble

Love?
It's a rare bauble
To hold up to the light
And see colors and sparkle.
Away from brilliance,
Keep it close always
Though dull and common.

Demeter

Open eyed
Open mouthed
Screaming
At you Hades.
Haven't you learned by now
She's not someone to set hunting?
Driven up the tree,
I still grip, frozen.
No way I'm coming down.

Marlow

What is it, Demeter?
Oh, another daughter...
If I didn't have daughters...
I wouldn't have cases...

DolphinWords

Notes: Erinyes...reference Erinyes/Furies...One And Only, Amputees, Bauble...too about oath like loyalties...Demeter...reference Demeter myth, Demeter's dedicated driven determination to find Core, her daughter abducted by Hades...Marlow...reference Raymond Chandler's mystery fiction detective, Philip Marlow...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem and notes:8/23/16

Open To Interpretation

Contrapposto

I don't wait to be seated,
I wander in,
Find my place
Beside the tall windows
Across from the Sycamore.
Back and forth traffic stopped,
Time for here to there cross walks.
On dolly wheels, a young musician
Has his giant cloth covered bass
In his embrace,
His bow, encased, slung across his back.
Oh!  Rainy Monday,
Shiny Toy Guns,
Carah on electric bass
Bending her right knee inward.

DolphinWords

Notes: reference song music video Rainy Monday by Shiny Toy Guns...update: changed the title from Shiny Toy Guns to Contrapposto...see wiki's take...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem and notes:8/23/16

Open To Interpretation

Pausanias/Law of Demeter

Computers need to be user friendly,
Poems too least they astonish...
How'd I come to that, Pausanias!?
Sorting through confusing poems,
'Wheat from the chaff'.
Through the riddles' withes
I find the Law of Demeter
Not unlike you found
The xoanon of Demeter
In the Phigalians black cave,
Traveling about, eyes open.

DolphinWords

Notes: I am not on easy familiarity with old Greek mythology...this to say, words like 'xoanon', and names like Phigalians, are not in my day to day...but I like the old myth words and names so much!...I read the tales and commentaries with rudimentary understanding, but enjoy just seeing the words and names!...Pausanias/Law of Demeter started out as something about the Erynines, the Furies, vengeful winged goddesses that torment those who break laws, oaths, and such...and in reading, I found that Demeter too was vengeful at times, and read some more on Demeter, much of this familiar, and found the passage from Pausanias that I've quoted before about a cult figure of Demeter..

quote

 She had the head and hair of a horse, and serpents and other beasts grew out of her head. Her chiton reached right to her feet, and she held a dolphin in one hand, a dove in the other. Why they made the xoanon like this should be clear to any intelligent man who is versed in tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter

unquote

I just saw on facebook a quote from Robert Frost, one of those slogan things, where he says he never wrote a poem knowing how it would end...me too, though sometimes it's the other way around, I have an ending, and need the beginning!...an aside...anyway, the 'see also' lists in the wiki takes are a marvel, and I took note that there is a computer term called The Law of Demeter, or LoD....

quote

The fundamental notion is that a given object should assume as little as possible about the structure or properties of anything else (including its subcomponents), in accordance with the principle of "information hiding".
It is so named for its origin in the Demeter Project, an adaptive programming and aspect-oriented programming effort. The project was named in honor of Demeter, “distribution-mother” and the Greek goddess of agriculture, to signify a bottom-up philosophy of programming which is also embodied in the law itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Demeter

Demeter could shape shift...taking on different human forms, or animals, or anything really...she was the Earth, and anything 'earthly' she could be...

quote

Karl Kerenyi noted,^[45] "she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of grain or a mare."

same as above

unquote

But I'm beginning to acquire familiarity with the old myths, and interleave them, and twig by twig build my own Black Dragon nest!

quote

Aganippe "the Mare who destroys mercifully" was an aspect of Demeter. In this form she was a black winged horse worshiped by certain cults. In this aspect her idols (such as one found in Mavrospelya, the Black Cave, in Phigalia) she was portrayed as mare-headed with a mane entwined with Gorgon Snakes. This aspect was also associated with Anion (or Arion) whom Heracles rode, who later inspired tales of Pegasus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aganippe

unquote

much fun...Black Dragon Pet asleep in her Black Cave...Oh!...not to skip the Furies...that would be trouble...when first portrayed in a Greek play, they 'astonished'...

quote

The Erinyes' first appearance on stage is haunting: they hum in unison as they slowly wake up, and seek to find the scent of blood that will lead them to Orestes' tracks. An ancient legend says that on the play's premiere this struck so much fear and anguish in the audience, that a pregnant woman named Neaira suffered a miscarriage and died on the spot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia

unquote

In one of the songs of Pirates Of Penzance there was a lot of humming...oh, 'astonish' is a computer programming word...

quote

Law of Least Astonishment

For years, people have tried to come up with a set of laws to define what is user-friendly and what is not. Many of them involve complex standards and lots of rules; but the best law that I've seen governing program design is the Law of Least Astonishment: the program should act in a way that least astonishes the user.

http://www.oualline.com/books.free/style/c08.html

unquote


"I never started a poem yet whose end I knew. 
Writing a poem is discovering."

Robert Frost

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem,notes, one illustration:8/22/16

Open To Interpretation

Gilbert And Sullivan

Oh, if I had just known
To tell them I'm an orphan too.
Sigh,
A Pirate's life it is,
And merciless this side of midnight.

DolphinWords

Notes:  According to Gilbert's and Sullivan's Pirate lore, the Pirates of Penzance are all orphans, and in sympathy with other orphans, who, if they capture any in a fight, they release...this curio having gotten around the Seven Seas, once in the clutches of the Penzance Pirates, captives immediately claim to be an orphan, and so spared, and can run away free....and too, apparently, Penzance Pirates indenture youths until the passing of 21 birthdays...about to turn 21 years old, Fredric, an indentured Penzance Pirate, is joyous, thinking to be free at the strike of midnight, his birthday, but to his dismay, finds that years don't count to Penzance Pirates, only birthdays, and having been born in a leap year, on Feb. 29, he's only had five birthdays...and being dutiful, sets aside his hope for freedom until 1940, and his marriage plans to his new found sweetheart, Mabel (in all his time with the all male Penzance Pirate crew, Frederic had only seen one girl, the scullery maid aboard ship, prior to seeing Mabel and her siblings on a beach raid)...Mabel, like minded dutiful as Fredric, agrees to wait, and postpone their marriage...and, Fredric discards his plans for turning on the Penzance Pirates when he turned 21, after midnight...a concealed scheme, as he's not fond of Pirate life...he would show them mercy, he says...so the notion of before midnight, 'merciless', afterwards, 'merciful'...with his indentured status clarified, he remains with the merciless lot, who are gleeful to keep him!

Oh, I was sitting in a very odd circumstance, watching all this, thinking on all this...it's the scheme of an old Greek tragedy...up to that point...afterward, deux machine Queen Victoria rescues a happy ending...I mean, only the old Greek playwrights' Olympian gods could come up with something so devious as being waylaid by being born on Feb. 29!...hmmph...I went and saw the Pirates Of Penzance performance at the outdoor theater in Town's old Main Street district...where I saw Hamlet...and the seating was nuts...close to the stage was seating for 150 on folding chairs positioned on a temporary wooden bleachers sort of scaffold...very close to the players by design, as the players interact with the audience now and then...I saw a heads up on facebook to buy tickets, and went to site on web, but all sold out, except last night...tried to buy on line, but click on 'tickets' didn't work, so rolled over just before show time, thinking maybe still seating available...and I got a seat easy, and once inside, realized why...the regular amphitheater seats were all empty except the last three rows...these were high enough up to see over the bleachers close to the stage...and maybe twenty of us took seats thereabout...I could see and hear fine from there, but with all the empty seats in front that had no view, and, well, we felt left out...one fellow complained, I think..a back and forth with usher had that look...anyway, I really liked the play, the girl lead playing Mable was great, and Fredric looked the part, had a good voice, but couldn't project it over the recorded music...no pit orchestra...lot of the other singers had the same problem...sound mixers nowadays seem to have no notion of what accompany means!...I have a couple tickets for next Sunday, hopefully up close, tonight's was just ten dollars...the two are full price...oh, I'm going to have to check back to see where 'general admission' seats one...thought to give them as gifts...but it's no good to sit in the back at this performance...my stay awake one beer dulled my annoyance...that, and the nostalgia for when I was stage hand at Melodyland's Pirates of Penzance with Mary Ann Mobley, 1966 or '67...Illustration...I made a little book of basketball things, using the simple art programs back then...I'll have to put the whole thing online sometime...I'm fond of them!...fondness seems to be my criteria for most things!...even from others for me...my most hoped for response!...it was a fond worthy performance of Pirates of Penzance!...my Black Ship crew was paying heed!...Dulcinea: "Pirate 'King' indeed..."

quote

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I'll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!

http://www.gilbertandsullivanarchive.org/pirates/pirates_lib.txt
unquote

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:two poems, notes, one illustration:8/21/16

Open To Interpretation

Continue

I'm here because of you
You're here because of me
In general
And particular
I mean
The likes of you
The likes of me
Make this place eternally
Where I am because of me
Where you are because of you
Because of them being them
We being us
Our history our future
In general and particular
Continue must.

Elephant

An elephant on the drum
Tum tum ti tum

Po8
1991

DolphinWords

Notes:...hmmph...have to figure this one out my own self...reference song We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel...brb...oh, I forgot...Joel's is an American Pie by John McClean like listing...I was just thinking of the chorus...oh, and it has 'on and on and on', which Journey has in Don't Stop Believing...'like a movie it goes on and on'...and, and I was going to post them up...I happened on an old 'listing' in my sorting storage boxes...I'm not sure what to do with my old poems...reading them makes me blush and sweat!...current ones should too, I guess, but I've found the brashness to continue!...and I did back then too...this would be '91 about...I saved some of my old GEnie bulletin board posts, some printed, some on the floppy discs...have to fire up the old mac plus to see those!...oh, I found my receipt for that purchase...over 3,000 dollars at the time, '86?...included I think a laser printer, and software...oh, I can remember in detail, setting up on the little wooden table with folding leaves that was on the porch, putting in the guided tour disc...'What's he doing?'...He's got a computer...'He's gone crazy.'....I hadn't gone, I was!...In and out of the Apple Store (very exclusive), I overheard about modems...'What's that?'...and purchased one...'Just one other on your street!'...Thinking back, I wonder how they knew that?...anyway, I found GEnie, it was free, and the little modem sound became a familiarity...and I realized, right away, the lazer printer was superfluous!...I found the Writer'sInk roundtable...everything was divided into 'roundtables', and it was just text...though one could upload homemade software...'HyperCard city'...I was a novice...still am...and precocious!...after a couple years of posting and reading, and making my own topics and such, I made a topic called 'Po8'...and peopled it with characters, my early toons!...I had a fascination with Black Bart, the old west robber that waylaid folk in the foothills of the Sierra, leaving behind a short succinct poem...and I, night to night, much like now!, posted up short poems, most of them self references, and so obscure...much like now!...a posting looked like this:

quote

Topic 45                     Sat May 25, 1991
NAUTILUS                    at 0.2:35  EDT

Sub: Po8

Another of her electric nights--The smell of popcorn, And the vendor
wondering...
84 message(s) total
*******************
-----------------
Catergory 3    Topic 45
Message 1                 Sat May 25, 1991
NAUTILUS                  at 2:36 EDT
Oh, not to puzzle, but the poems I post here will be against teh(sic) background of s a (sic) special place...
;)
    -----------------------
Category 3,     Topic45
Message 2            Sat May 25, 1991
POETRY(Charlotte)             at 23:02 EDT

I promise not to fawn, David.  Maybe you stick around this time. 
 
But hey, does Po8 mean something?  Or do you want me to edit the topic header?  Normally I am able to understand you, but I'm not clear on the meaning of this topic.

Oh hell...I've got to fawn just a LITTLE.  David here is an acquired taste, but only those with superb taste will acquire him!    He's quite brilliant, and sufficiently modest, and excruciatingly elusive!  And he is annoyingly immune to brownie bribes :)
   -------------------------

NAUTILUS I was using as a nickname...as Charlotte was using POETRY...she was the sysop of the Poetry chat room....I could never fathom the chat rooms, or chat...I'd lurk...still so...in World of Warcraft, I'm a clam...though I must say, chat then, and today, like in the comments of web topics, was/is always bedeviled by trolls, and just generally speaking, topic hijackers...trying to keep things 'on point' is always very hard...the 'background' my little poems referred to was my work at Disneyland in the maintenance division...I was taking poetic snap shots of things I'd see...my job took me everywhere in the park...Po8 may have been how Black Bart signed his left behind notes...brb...

quote

When Bowles was wounded and forced to flee, he left behind several personal items. These included his eyeglasses, some food, and a handkerchief with a laundry mark F.X.O.7. Wells Fargo Detective James B. Hume found these at the scene. Hume and detective Harry N. Morse contacted every laundry in San Francisco about the laundry mark. After visiting nearly 90 laundries, they finally traced it to Ferguson & Bigg's California Laundry on Bush Street and were able to learn that the handkerchief belonged to a man who lived in a modest boarding house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bart_(outlaw)

unquote

what can I say, for awhile I lived in a one room across from the China Gate on Bush Street...brb...yes, it was Bush St....across from the Dragon's Gate...:)...Illustration...a tracing of a Tieopolo drawing...used it to make a T-shirt for air brush class...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:two poems, notes, one illustration:8/20/16

Open To Interpretation

Specimen

I'm your specimen
With your knife again
You've gone too far again
Took my heart again
I'm your specimen.

I'm your alien
Through your door a sin
When I look a sin
All I say a sin
I'm your alien.

I'm so reptilian
I'm like a snake skin
Claws and scaly skin
Tear at your skin
I'm so reptilian.

I'm your not again
Don't come around again
Don't ever call again
Don't even wave again
I'm your not again.

You're so reptilian
Like some alien
Like some evil sin
Looking for a specimen
Maybe me again
Maybe we again.

Sirens

So,
I struggle through,
And nearly near you,
But stopped at the stoplight
Waiting for sirens to go through.
I follow, surprised
We both arrive at your door...
Ah...
I'll come back tomorrow.

DolphinWords

Notes:....Specimen...Poe's eyebrows raised..."wth?!"...I might be able to work it into another Dragon Song...hmmph...Sirens...as it happened...19th century meter and rhyming didn't go away...song writers continue to this day....in poetry the 20th century made meter and rhyme passé in poems....though done, it always looks archaic...songwriters too can make, and have made, meter and rhyme passé in their songs...but show me one such that has ten million youtube hits!...Illustration...for a final in our life drawing classes we were to make up a knight...idea being to put armor on a figure, which was kind of a relief to do!...this was a preliminary sketch, all from imagination...eventually it became a full pastel in color, but I never did get her left arm right...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:four poems, notes, one illustration:8/19/16

Open To Interpretation

Twilights

I hate my mind's twilights,
To awake with a lingering dream,
Or when thought makes sleep distant seem.

Sparrow's Song

A few more stories
More or less:
A sparrow's song,
Like a hummingbird,
Seldom rests.

Polygons

Polygons grow
From line to line
One, Two, Three,
Triangularly, and on.
Communities just so
Though large ones
I decline to know.
Too many sided,
Things become misshapen.
A band of two, three
Or four,
Five, maybe six,
No more.  Paired,
Triangle, Square,
Pentagon, Hexagon,
Those sides I can connect
And hear.

...and found

...and found a place on the shores of Nevermore
that between its scalloped cliffs and rock
had a sand beach to put ashore the slender craft...

DolphinWords

Notes: Twilights...oh, 'hate' is too strong a word, and curious as to what a dream I had was about, 'lingering' is probably my fault!...reference the Ladyhawke tale...not sure why...Sparrow's Song...thought to check on just how notable sparrow singing is...so searched: sparrow song poem...and found The Song-Sparrow Poem by Philip Henry Savage...and then found an edited collection of his poems, that has an eloquent biography by Daniel Grabriel Mason, who was a composer, and his friend...and this reminds me of Dana's introduction to Allston's poems...and thinking on this, as I do, I'm seeing a chorus going on about an actor's lines, or a qawl with notes!...that's kind of how things are!...there's a poem, event, incident, story, and such, and then there's all the gossip...along with the gas stations video footage!...anyway, the old Greeks had it right to have a chorus in their dramas...Polygons...reference the new marriage arrangements...

quote

"Geometric" configurations, which are described by the number of people involved and their relationship connections. Examples include "triads" and "quads", along with "V" (or "Vee") and "N" geometries. (See: Terminology within polyamory.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory

unquote

...sometimes one happens on a notion and it just hangs around!...and Found...a handhold reach for the Black Ship tale...I have to write these down, or I lose them...a notation...Illustration...an idea sketch for a class project...I made illustrations for Put Up A Parking Lot/Big Yellow Taxi  by Joni Mitchell...this was for the laughing at the end of the song...ral!...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:five poems, notes, one illustration:8/18/16

Open To Interpretation

Fear

Fear
Arrives in the morning
With the sun rise,
At night it was for others.
Daylight your shift begins.

Alone

I'm not alone
In the sense of being unique,
I mean,
You know,
Uniquely alone?
That I'm not
So I'm not
Alone.

Dragon Song

Stick by stick
We build our nests
Twig by twig
To impress our guests
A treasure here
A treasure there
To show how much we care
Our angels sing
Our angels dance
And celebrate our romance.

Dragon Song 2

Dread the night
The dark with no light
With eyes to see
You weren't meant blind to be.

Dragon Dreams

Dragons dream dragon dreams
Clouds made in imagination's glade
Flowers crowd a mottled shroud
Over mountain meadows
Waterfalls fountain
Roaring descending
Dragons dream unending.

DolphinWords

Notes: Fear...ah, hmm, thinking it's like an addict admitting addiction...some ever present underlying menace...hmmph...Alone...I studiously avoid abstractions...words like love, hate, fear, alone, loneliness...all good words, but very hard to make concrete...what's the antonym of abstract?...brb...oh..'real'...concrete to like cement...but here I go on about 'alone'...Dragon Song...the dragon nests of Never...Dragon Song 2...the Dragons of the  Southern Dragon Flight have this inordinate fear of darkness, blindness...they obsess easy...Dragon Dreams...and they're only peace is when they dream, and sleep...Illustration...pen and ink sketch on blue paper...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:two poems, notes, one illustration:8/17/16

Open To Interpretation

Pastrami

It's some kind of ouija board magic,
I know,
Because I use it,
Poking my finger at the keypad letters.
Sometimes it doesn't work:
At the sandwich counter
I wanted to order a pastrami
But couldn't remember 'pastrami',
Perusing all the sandwiched names
Confused me,
I think.
I stood there transfixed,
Waiting for it to work,
Holding everyone up,
The tension making me stupider still,
And...
I ordered roast beef.

Void

You forget a name
Now and then
And with age more frequent
Until this void like drops rain begins
And you become a babbling brook.

DolphinWords

Notes: When healthy, we find our memories so quickly, so effortlessly, so transparently, that we think nothing of it...nearsighted from an early age, I just live with it, my glasses correct the blurriness, though up close in front of my nose I can see fine...I don't know if we'll ever find something to correct memory loss in similar fashion...Pastrami and
Void are about such a thing... lenses bend light, and that's how glasses work...I was reading more about sieves, and the moment at the Subway sandwich counter came to mind, and too, how I came to thinking about sieves some more: from the storage boxes, I grabbed a handful of old Poetry magazines...I had subscribed for a few years in the '80s...and they sit on the lower shelf of my night table...and with nothing to write in mind, I find something to read...and I opened one, September 1989, and in the table of contents, spotted a poem about sieves....Going To Sea In A Sieve by Robert Cording, and in the poem he references a book, Soap Bubbles, by C. V. Boys, and even a page, page six...I happened on this haphazardly...reluctant to suggest it was the library angel...but nonetheless...oh, it's even worse, Cording is a contemporary, '49 to my '48, and has some of my writing manner...anyway, page six is explaining surface tension, and of course, that was the import of Tuccia carrying water from the Tiber in a sieve...see yesterday's post...but the memory lapse at Subway gave me pause...actually was a pause!...thinking on it, it was like the 'surface' tension of the word 'pastrami' broke, and it just popped away, like a burst soap bubble...it wasn't 'there'...where ever 'there' is...and then there's ouiji boards...they only work if someone's cheating...but our thoughts and dreams aren't cheats, and it's a marvel just how we happen on this and that!...when healthy, it is like we are carrying water from the Tiber in a sieve!...or happy with our soap bubble memories like those colored plastic ball swimming pools the kids dive in...Ilustration...junior college professors have a lot of things to do, and if they can divert a class, set them off on their own awhile, they do it...in Graphic Design we were assigned to do these designs over and over...take a few elements, and arrange them in thumbnails....just hated doing it...next to the worst, making color chips for a color wheel!...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem, notes, one illustration:8/16/16

Open To Interpretation

Rap Rap Rap

Kannon beside Ishmael at the Red Wheel,
The crew free from scrubbing awhile,
Rain squalls keeping the Black Deck clean.
The sails wind full,
And the Black Ship galloping over the Black Sea,
South.
Pip, Ned, Watteau, Madeline,
Sing and play a tune,
The crew coming in on the chorus.

(chorus)
Rap rap rap
There's a Raven at your door
Tap tap tap
And her name is Nevermore
Rap rap rap

Who'd ya think was there?
Rap rap
D'ya  think that she will care?
Tap tap
Let her in if you dare
Rap rap

There's a Raven at your door
Rap rap rap
And her name is Nevermore
Tap tap tap

Ignore her if you can
Rap rap
Tell her you're not a fan
Tap tap
Don't want her pot and pan
Rap rap

And her name is Nevermore
Rap rap rap
There's a Raven at your door
Tap tap tap

She'll sit upon your lap
Rap rap
And take your ugly cap
Tap tap
And make you take a nap
Rap rap

She'll have your kids and more
Rap rap rap
If you let her in the door
Tap tap tap
And her name is Nevermore
Rap rap rap
There's a Raven at your door
There's a Raven at your door...

The Ravens in the Black Ship's rigging thought the song a wonder,
The Gulls not so much,
Poe was non-committal...

DolphinWords

Notes: ral (running around laughing)...Edgar Allen Poe and Music...Illustration...I thought maybe to be a technical illustrator, like for biology books...Ant Lion a copy from a drawing in an instruction book...6/?/75...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:four poems, notes, one illustration:8/15/16

Open To Interpretation

Teeth

Maya, my dog, beside me
Chewing her plastic bone,
While I puzzle my jig saw puzzle.
They're good for our teeth.

Cargo Cults

Oh, it's hard to accept,
History a parade of cargo cults,
And nothing's flown over,
Ever.

St. Augustine Of Hippo

Well, Dickens,
You went and did it,
Overlaid your Tale Of Two Cities
On St. Augustine's
City Of God
And City Of Man.
You know why he wrote that,
To refute the blame laid at the feet
Of the Christians by the Pagans
For the fall of Rome to the Visigoths.
Pagans sprung up again in your time,
Being as the Terror in Paris
Was distracting everyone.
Opportunistic, Pagans are,
And still about,
Kind of like the Moon.

Friendly

Bears are friendly.
Rangers say otherwise,
Rightly.
People are friendly,
Some say some
Are otherwise.
And if Bears
Had Bear Rangers,
They'd agree.

DolphinWords

Notes: Teeth...Maya, my dog, is beside me now when I putter on the porch, sorta...I have one end of the bunk beds screened with a side of the dog cage I took apart, and between the bunk bed and the wall, the porch is a narrow room, I have the refrigerator...so Maya can't get at me...the lower bunk has a plywood flooring that Maya can rest on, and see me fine...and through the glass doors she can see into the living room, and the new arrival's comings and goings, and their three cats, and fish...the empty back bedroom is now occupied by my grand niece...and pretty much the rest of the house as well!...she brought along furniture, so inside the house looks fine now...and I finally finished sanding and staining the wood floor in the back bedroom...and her boyfriend has a way with dogs, and familiar with dog training, and is taking Maya for walks...I try, but I'm still her chew toy...have taken to wearing rubber rain boots, and welders gloves...they work well...and I think, and hope, she's beginning to forget about my ankles and hands...she has forgotten about chewing on the house, and content with toys I get for her...Cargo Cults...wrote that one so I can write a note to it...I found something, and going to look this up right now...brb...

quote

The qawls are full of cryptic allusions and usually need to be accompanied by čirōks or 'stories' that explain their context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis

unquote

hmmph...the Yazidis have these qawls (a fine scrabble word!), characterized as hymns, which have been orally passed down to this day, but are now being written down, which is turning their religion into a scriptural religion...join the crowd!...and they also have a Black Book!...and a Black Mountain!...the book may be a modern tourist guide sort of thing...and they have reverence for an angel, the Peacock Angel, that gets mistaken for Satan by outsiders...it's complicated...I'm guessing the Peacock Angel is the Sufi's Khidir...brb...but I don't think anyone else has come to that...I was reading wiki's take on the Manicheans, and in the 'related' list, I saw Yazidi, and clicked on it, recalling their travails in the current war...St. Augustine of Hippo...and I was reading wiki's take on St. Augustine before, and took note he started out as a Manichean...and he must have been friends with Symmachus, who I wrote up yesterday...and Symmachus was a Pagan...at Rome, Symmachus became Augustine's benefactor...both were from Roman aristocracy...at the time of the Fall of Rome, the city, to the Visigoths, St. Augustine converts to Christianity, and writes up the City of God...a 22 book defense, and explanation of what the Catholic Church was about...and it's complicated...the Christians were blaming the Pagans, and the Pagans were blaming the Christians, for the sacking of Rome...Theodosius became emperor, and the aristocracy fell in line, pretty much, converting to Christianity...it's very complicated!...right away, I took note of the two cities St. Augustine imagined, and thought, oh, that's Dickens' Tale of Two Cities...others have noted this too...and it gets even more complicated as one follows Augustine's tenants through Europe's travails, right up to today...hmmph...Friendly...on facebook, was a clip of a family in a European campground, and Bear comes out of the woods and joins them...at first they are standoffish, but after a bit, it becomes a picnic for Bear and Family!...and I was punked...the Bear is domesticated, the family Russian...Illustration...I made up this little peace dove...instructor I think thought I ripped off Picasso...but no...it's original...and I drew it often as a 'stamp'...I should get a stamp...or an embossing tool with it...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem, notes, one illustration:8/14/16

Open To Interpretation

Tuccia

So, Tuccia,
You carried water from the Tiber
As proof.
I sip a bottled water,
And wonder.
Here there is no truth,
Just sieves sorting beauty,
And beauty collecting proofs
To maintain their flame.

DolphinWords

Notes:  Tuccia...reference the old Roman Vestal Virgins...it was their task to maintain Rome's sacred flame, the source of all household hearths...oh, hearths so close to hearts!...and there were just seven or so virgins, with a term of like thirty years...for indiscretion, they were punished...buried alive, in a chamber as it were supplied with a last meal or two, which was then covered with earth...Tuccia avoided such a fate by boasting she could carry water from the Tiber to the their temple in a sieve as proof she was still a virgin, which she succeeded in doing...the Vestals, and their flame, was maintained for a thousand years, until, again, along came Theodosius I, who extinguished it...thenabout, the Vestals had a champion, a roman aristocrat that tried to defend Rome's old religions...ah, a massive triangle of rivalry!...anyway...found an old quote for our time...

quote

"We gaze up at the same stars; the sky covers us all; the same universe encompasses us. Does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the Truth? The heart of so great a mystery cannot be reached by following one road only."

Symmachus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Aurelius_Symmachus

The Romans could be sublime, and barbaric...

quote

In other letters, Symmachus describes preparations for his shows in the arena. He managed to procure antelopes, gazelles, leopards, lions, bears, bear-cubs, and even some crocodiles. Symmachus also purchased Saxon slaves to fight and die in the games. He was annoyed when twenty-nine of the Saxons strangled each other in their cells on the night before their final scheduled appearance.

unquote

hmmph...I came to this study of the Vestal Virgins recalling the goddess carried a sieve...which the study diverted me from finding!...brb...hmmph...took a guess, and googled 'Demeter sieve'...and got this:

quote

In the most common version of the myth, all but one of them killed their husbands on their wedding night, and are condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device. In the classical tradition, they come to represent the futility of a repetitive task that can never be completed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Danaus

unquote

hmmph, try again...brb...heck....an algorithmic sieve!

quote

The sieve of Eratosthenes is one of the most efficient ways to find all of the smaller primes. It is named after Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a Greek mathematician; although none of his works have survived, the sieve was described and attributed to Eratosthenes in the Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes

...which is something to think on, algorithms as sieves...and Tuccia must have chosen the sieve with that in mind, and what comes to mind from her effort, is an algorithm that lets nothing through...chastity, innocence...(oh!...so long as the flame was maintained, Rome, the city, was safe from conquest, a thousand year run...and when it was extinguished, there were a lot of 'I told you' sos)...and what I was reaching for was love as a sieve that, well, lets love through...not quite innocently...maybe Hestia has a sieve...brb...well, when the sacred fire went out, and after punishments, not all were fatal, like if the reason was just poor maintenance (a caution to Brazil and the Olympic Flame!), the Virgins would gather wood from a 'lucky tree', light it with a sacred fire drill, and then carry it back to the shrine in a bronze sieve...I'm guessing, fires for hearths were transported in bronze sieves (too let ashes fall through?)...brb...oh, 'Vestal', in Vestal Virgins, is Hestia, a name derived from 'essence'...the old philosophers go on much about Hestia/essence...Hestia too, like Artemis, is a rival to Aphrodite...hmmph...maybe I'm thinking of something like a sieve, picturing the winnowing of grain...brb...oh, 'riddle' is a synonym for sieve...have to keep that...brb...oh, and a wooden riddle has withes...oh...and I knew this...the golden fleece was used to sieve gold from streams...and the adventures of the Argonauts was for the golden sieve...and, if love sieves love, than chastity sieves chastity...and, just thinking here!...but the Romans and Greeks thought much of sieves...I know them from grinding flour...those tin cans with the crank that makes the metal ring go round reducing the flour so it goes through the mesh screen...oh, c'mon, there must be another poem in all this somewhere...it's late!...brb....oh, now I've done it, landed on a modern song...oh, reference Keats' 'beauty is truth, truth beauty'...its in there, somewhere...

quote

fucking with a goddess will get you a little colder

Goddess
by
Banks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S98Q11zhS-g

unquote

ah...brb...I've been diverted from the diversions!...that's a very good song, and a very good music video...I go to lyric versions of youtube music videos (somehow sieve took me to that one)...helps...and a lot of the new artists, I've noticed, are doing lyric music videos, experimenting with text graphics, Train's Soul Sister a good example...bit afraid to look up the urban dictionary definition of 'glitch'...brb...'now you gotta deal with this glitch on your shoulder' is the song's line in mind...hmmph...it could read 'bitch', and that would be with the songstory sense...guy neglects his girl, loses girl, gets another girl, second girl is trouble, and first girl's revenge...using unexpected 'glitch' is genius...like Tiepolo throwing in a completely black line or two, the 'black'; here being that 'glitch' doesn't have sense in the context, but its alluded too rhyme, 'bitch', does!...it draws the attention...I'm getting used to the profanity...these songsters keep at it, they'll make profanity normal talk, not profane at all!...anyway, harsh as it is, the song has some of the sentiment of the sieve in my poem Tuccia!...so enough looking for sieve...Illustration...Giraffe sketch...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:seven poems, notes, one illustration:8/13/16

Open To Interpretation

Time Was

Time was
My accompanist forget places in their piano part,
And I soured my trumpet's notes
For the audience that sat in silence,
But it was church
And applause not the custom.
Afterwards, handshakes and hugs,
Encouragement
For return engagement.

Puddle

Men can be gentlemanly,
You know?
Sir Walter Raleighish,
Spread their coat over the mud puddle
For their lady's step,
But not without expectation!
If there's no glimmer,
Not even a photon,
Next time
They'll keep their coats on.

Who Am I

Who am I
To think again
What you thought
Or make again
What you wrought
Or teach again
What you taught
Or reach again
What you sought
Who am I again
Your love caught?

Triangles

Triangles can represent relation,
They say,
One person for each side,
And the sides' lengths describe
What love is betide.
Like the fire triangle
We all knew in safety school,
Heat oxygen fuel,
Eternally hot
Or cool,
Make ignited
Love's flame caught.

Rocky Slope

Near Ishi's village
There was a small cave
In the forested rocky slope
The village backed up against,
And this Pet now called home,
And curled inside,
She was sleeping her kind's long winter sleep,
And dreamed dragon dreams,
Except, and this she found annoying,
When Petra woke her up
To fly Petra hither and yon
To the snowbound Humankind villages of Nevermore.
Ishi's fellow Villagers, only knowing Black Dragons
From when being traded,
Did what they always do,
And brought crafted treasures,
Along with driftwood logs from the Conifer Forest,
And set them at the entrance to Pet's cave.
In the Spring, Pet would awaken to the makings of a nest.

Monarch

One butterfly
From the flock
Love caught,
Examined,
Exclaimed,
'You rock!'

That

Having been there
And done that
You know?
I'm that too now,
And that's that.

DolphinWords

Notes: Time Was...reference my trumpet playing in school band and orchestras from like sixth grade to my senior year in high school, when, in a thrown together pit band, I and my friends performed for an amateur musical production...I can't remember how it all went, but the music was more difficult to play than I could manage, and I hadn't even tried very hard, and I wasn't alone...the music was over the head of some of my band mates too...but we were trying to support our leader, and failed miserably...felt very bad afterwards...one of my last times playing...last, was high school commencement...pomp and circumstance for four years...enough of that, and I closed my trumpet case...there were other things afoot...it was 1966...but those musical times came to mind going through the stored stuff...in particular, a newspaper photo of the rag time band I was in with my band mates...that music was easier, and we did well as a vignette piece in band performances...and Tom was our leader, and after a performance, he told me I was too damn loud, which I took to heart and remember still!...Tom went on to become a very accomplished professional...Brian too, I find looking about the web...wonder how others did...and I'm glad my lackadaisicalness didn't trip them up!...it sure did me...:)...mom had wanted to be a piano player, and was...my accompanist in church performances...I think we did two...at mom's and pop's funeral services, '92, '94, some still recalled...I didn't stay on with church going, they did, and to their credit...and pop was a sign painter, had taken art lessons from a white Russian refugee in Chicago like during or before WW2...it was his ticket for getting a better job than pumping gasoline, or machining cannons...my taking up trumpet was kind of mom's push...I took it up because my best friend had gotten a trombone, and we were always competing...musicians compete with one another, and that compulsion kept me going...I liked being first chair!...anyway, all the time as a kid I was making models, and drawing, and you would think, pop would have stepped in and given me art lessons...and worse, I had a private music teacher...three dollars for half hour once  a week...and a newspaper photo of him was in the stuff too, but not for his music...it was about his giving watercolor lessons for the recreation department in Garden Grove...I'd never seen this, and didn't know, and heck, wish he'd given me art lessons!...between him and pop I had an art start!...sometimes we're so close to going this way or that...from Chicago in '52, family arrived for temporary stay in Gardena, and pop assessed homes in Garden Grove, and Newport Beach, both in the same price range...settled on Garden Grove, where I'm much settled now, same house, same room, where I built models and practiced my trumpet!....Who Am I...a goof, a tumble in the style of poet John Skelton...Puddle...a goof...studied out Sir Walter Raleigh...a gawdawful poet, but a fine adventurer!...Triangles...a goof, but I'm thinking on these rivalry triangles...didn't realize how really fundamental they are to story telling...and a curio is that mom encouraged my music, while pop more or less ignored my art efforts...later, I learned the maybe why for that...I worked for a summer as helper in a billboard factory with the sign painters and helpers...pop had gotten position then as union secretary...and it was a rough and tumble job in big city downtown Los Angeles...not a path to follow on on!...Rocky Slope...reference the Valley's rocky slopes/Camp 4!...Monarch...a goof...having done two poems with, 'love caught' and 'love's flame caught', I thought, to do another 'love caught'...checking the online rhyme dictionary, I pretty much exhausted 'ought' rhymes that tumbled together in the Who Am I sentiment...and I resorted to the dictionary again for something to go with 'flock'...'rock' a very popular pairing, and I used it, but with the sense of rock and roll praise...and that works!...That...a goof...I gotta lot of this and thats...Illustration...unfinished sketch on blue paper...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:four poems, notes, one illustration:8/11/16

Open To Interpretation

What I Would Hate Most

What would I hate most to do?
Oh, be a golf caddy,
You know?
Take the flag stick out,
Watch the golf ball roll in,
Take the golf ball out,
Put the flagstick back in.
Why do you ask, Dante?

I'm Always Early

I'm always early
Sit awhile
Think awhile
Hate to be late
And I'll stay to the very end.

Ticket

And may I have a window seat, please?
Happily I wait ticket in hand,
Rolling away.
"Ticket please."


A Long Walk

It was a long walk back
From section 6 row J seat 37
Where the half moon overhead
Aligned perfectly
With the final bows center stage.
A long walk to row B1...
"What's the chances of that?"
The young mom with husband and baby in stroller says
As we return simultaneously
To our respective cars
In the jammed packed giant parking lot.
I laugh and smile.
"Have a good night!" she says.

DolphinWords

Notes: What I Would...reference Dante's Divine Comedy,,,,Comedy had a different meaning back then...brb...'a medieval narrative that ends happily'...well, one would hope...I've never been able to read it all, not even wiki's synopsis...just not of Dante's congregation...the next three poems are from the Carah Faye/Lindsey Stirling concert I went to last evening in Costa Mesa at the Fairground Pacific Amphitheater...the fair is going on too, so I went early enough, I thought, to walkabout the fair a bit...wanted to see the art exhibits...but parking was problematic, the lots all full, and I zig zagged about awhile with everyone else until I got lucky and found a spot...picked up my ticket at will call, then sat out front for an hour...I was two hours early!...but it was pleasant weather, people to watch, always enough to content me, and I poked at my iphone keypad, but made just the two, Always Early, and Ticket...the Dante one I had in my head for several days, contemplating employments I just couldn't do...A Long Walk I wrote up today, just as it was...Lindsey has a 'congregation', loyal and excitable fans!...Carah, as the opening act, borrows the audience for start up of her own solo career...I went to see Carah, Lindsey a plus...oh, Carah's back up band was just too loud, and self possessed, and her singing got lost in like a long tonal avalanche...Lindsey would have been lost too, her back up band different fellows, but the same...hardnosed  rockers...but the electric violin can overtop traditional rock instruments...guitar drums organ....and remarkably, when Carah does a duet with Lindsey, who is dancing with the violin always, Carah's singing voice overtops the violin and steals the number!...I think she did it again in the last number before the encore, which has a singing part recorded while Lindsey and band play live...I think...there was no program, so I don't know the particulars of the song, and whose voice singing it was in that one...there may have been some lip synching, and violin synching, in both acts, the stage lighting, graphics and sound antics being such...but I don't think anyone cares about synching anymore...one's favorites are on stage live, and that's all that matters!...an entertaining show, and both girls allude to being 'straight edge', a term I picked up from reading Carah's wiki...sort of what I am, and so I fit in with their audience congregation!...now and then, waiting for this and that, I'll take out a drawing pad, and do a sketch of something, anything, from my surroundings to pass the time...not unlike how I take out my iphone/ipad now!...Illustration...somewhere in Fallbrook waiting, 6/23?/03...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:six poems, notes, one illustration:8/10/16

Open To Interpretation

No

No
The Olympics are on
No
Like a four year cicada
No
And sandwiched between commercials
No
And animated graphic introductions
No
Events rarely seen
No
And the commentators!
No
Can't get enough of talk talk talk
No
Divers showering
No
Yesterday's volleyball snippit clips
No
Interviews
No
It's the rose parade waiting for floats
No
It's the antique road show TMI
No
Oh, the gymnast the camera's love
No
North Korea South Korea selfie embrace
No
Fellow marches in with go pro on a pole
No
No
No
Soccer in the soccer stadium
Noooooooooooooo!

Oh

Oh
We sit entranced
Oh
Youths' beauty
Oh
Like five litters of five puppies
Oh
Playing with their five mommies
Oh
Cheers and arms raised
Oh
Tears and brave efforts praised
Oh
Solemn pains
Oh
Crashed and lamed
Oh
Precarious odds
Oh
Over came
Oh
The laurel wreath
Oh
From the Olympian gods
Oh
A treasure chest lotto
Oh
Oh
Oh
Winners and losers pack their bags
Ohhhhhhhhh

Finish Lines

Nature has no finish lines
No celebratory celebrations
Hawks Squirrels catch
Like I'd eat a sandwich.

Push Back

Time was I pushed back
After getting knocked off my feet
By the incoming surf,
A silly unnoticed thing to do.
Hand open, I splashed the sea
Sending ripples the other way.
Thing is,
Water is incompressible
So even still
Though a candle in daylight
I arrived across the sea
Like starlight.


Today Is Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day, Mother Dear,
I hope you didn't fret or fear,
For Daddy will get you a present I'm sure,
Right now he may be buying you a coat of fur.


The Eight Second Conspiracy

The eight second conspiracy...
I didn't notice it
Until I took a class explaining it,
We were making animations for it.
'No scenes longer than eight seconds,
Preferably shorter...'
What's it done to us?
Our attention spans chopped up like celery?

DolphinWords

Notes: No...at the Dungeon (my gym), riding the stationary bike, the televisions are overhead...and I was thinking how little what I was seeing has to do with me...I can't afford the cars in the ads, the vacation spots in the ads, and don't want most all the stuff in the ads, so I was mumbling as each one came on, no, no, no...and then just kept on for each eight second or less scene (see The Eight Seconds Or Less Conspiracy), as so much of it is just fluff...the Olympics were on, but it could be any show...I watched an hour show last night that had so much web lag that it lasted over two hours...I didn't care...conditioned as I am, I can tolerate frozen screens, and just wait them out!...it's by design I'm sure...I was watching a free sample show on cbs, but they'd like to have me pay for subscription...or just paranoid I guess!...(stuff like this happens on my iphone on facebooks all the time)...hmmph...no,no,no, I was going on on on...and the poem is just a sketch...I haven't worked it up....a no no...and I thought to do another...oh oh oh...and I could probably do more so so sos!...ral...enough of that...Finish Lines...a goof...but one of the fundamental differences between Humankind and Animalkind....and it brings to mind, how God, in a passage in the Bible where He is about to administer, again, disaster on the wayward, says He takes no pleasure in it...justice is blind and implacable...there was an old time painting of Armageddon I saw, the good angels fighting the bad angels, and the caption noted the 'implacable' expressions on the good angels' faces...all serene, all calm, all the same...and needless to say, the bad angels' were expressive!...thought to call Finish Lines, Punch Lines...Nature doesn't have those, they thrive with us!...Push Back...this is one of my 'I'm thinking on this...' poems, and I'm not sure what I'm thinking on!...Today Is Mother's Day...oh, I was going through old stuff, taking digital photos of old family photos...everything smells musty from long time storage, and time to toss it...but I'll try to save things with the digi pics...anyway, among the pics, was a handmade Mother's Day card, and inside this poem...unsigned, but the handwriting is mine, and the manner of writing too!...I must have been like six or seven...oh, we are fated from the start!...anyway, it's one of only two poems I wrote throughout my youth...and the other was self similar...lost now I think, but I recall the punch line...it was a Valentine handmade card, with much the same conceit, that ended with Pop kissing Marilyn Monroe...clearly, well, not so clearly, as no one understands it clearly, this is the stuff of the Freudian triangular rivalries!...in back handed fashion, I was bringing attention to Pop maybe forgetting Mother's Day gift, or on Valentine's Day, being flirtatious with another gal!...undercuts are how rivals undo one another's efforts...witness the current political back and forth!...there are psychological depths to the candidates shenanigans...public beware!...I just deleted a poem a couple days back that had 'voting booth' rhymed with 'John Wilkes Booth'...the conceit, a vote as a stylized shot in the dark theater...too extreme, I thought...

quote

In a political environment where Trump supporters chant "lock her up", say Mrs Clinton should face a firing squad or worse, the Republican candidate's open-to-interpretation remarks likely throw gasoline onto a smouldering fire.

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37029170

unquote

...or yelling fire in the theater...beware the October Surprises!...I don't know if writing has the equivalent of drawing gesture drawings...maybe the spontaneity of describing a shrink's ink blots!...Illustration....one small gesture drawing...we did tons of these in life drawing class...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:one poem, notes, and five illustrations:8/9/16

Open To Interpretation

Chickadee

Oh, I have had to walk a ways again
To hear your song
Low high low
Once again
My plaintive footsteps have never been too strong
Persistence brings me to your song
Somewhere you are with the soft wind roar
River flowing in the pine tree tops
I look for you
Oh, dont go
Don't go
Oh, I'll find you again.

David
Idyllwild
5/24/02

DolphinWords

Notes:  ...from an old notebook...low high low are the notes I remember...seemed the same in the Sierra too...checked Cornell's bird page, and different tunes a bit...that date may be the last time I was in Idyllwild...it's just an eighty mile drive away or so...but the summer heat and crowds...and Silver, my jeep's, death wobble (messed up front end suspension on these model jeeps), makes me hesitate to go...and have to get an Adventure Pass now to park at Humber Park...thought was to take along Maya, my dog, but she's too wild, and feel remiss to leave her behind...hmmph...and here's five illustrations from my life drawing class, 2003...keep in mind I was a student!...proportions and  such are off...but in those classes it was a bold thing to do pen ink with brush wash, and include the model's head!...I was studying the old masters like Tiepolo...when drawing the human figure there are like landmarks where underlying bones show...and tendons like the two big ones on our necks...one needs to know where those are in relation to everything...and I had reached the point where I almost had that, and it was the last hoop to leap through really...I just needed to go to the anatomy illustrations and memorize by rote all the bones, tendons, and muscles...and then I should be able to draw people, and animals, from just my imagination...though one can never get the expressiveness of live models, especially facial expression...poses were like ten, fifteen minutes long...so a panic all the time to handle the pen and the brush, or charcoals/chalks...in life drawing, one is never 'slack', lazy...the model is working too hard to sit still, and out of respect for that, and just the model's effort, one does their best...the 8 x 10 card stock has gotten wrinkled, but for sometime, I'll try to frame them together...a souvenir...

:)

DavidDavid

OTI:seven poems, notes, one illustration:8/8/16

Open To Interpretation

So, Dancer

So, Dancer,
You pluck me from the wall
And I put on a brave face.
I know little and with humble attention listen,
But I know this,
You know,
I have my own expertise
And dancing's not so different.

Mendicant

I don't want to be
Your mendicant
Far across the raucous music faced room.
Just forget I'm here
Like the parade that doesn't notice.


Like Death

Like Death itself
I should sweep away
My former selves
Which would be just as well
As surely on meeting some
You'd say,
Go to hell.

Stone Face

One can get
Climbing a stone face
Stuck
No way
Up
And
No way
Down
And
Out of
Luck.

Without Applause

Without applause
Beauty wilts
In solitude.
Without applause
Homely dares
Intrude.

Natural Prisons

Natural prisons
Grow within,
Labyrinthian thickets
You're maybe out
Or maybe in.

Prison Is Ugly

Prison is ugly,
Homely isn't
"Fair is foul, foul is fair."
So, don't unfairly compare
You with me
And make prisons two.

DolphinWords

Notes: They're all goofs...but I worried over Without Applause a lot...I got as far as 'solitude', and tried to find a rhyme and keep the sentiment, sense, conceit...sometimes I get lucky, and the rhymes I find further the sense...but I was really stuck (yes, like Stone Face!), 'solitude' didn't seem to go with anything that might fit...so, so, I resorted again to the rhyming dictionary, and made a discovery that may have me going to it often!...the dictionary not only gives rhymes, near rhymes, odds and ends rhymes, but gives little snippets from poets' poems that have a rhyme for the word one is looking up...for 'solitude', there were 88!!!...Thomas Jefferson's home had secret passages in the walls that the slave servants would use going about their duties...during a dinner, one would hardly know they were about as they popped out and in from hidden doors...all the things on the web remind me of this, the anonymous sorts who do these dictionaries and encyclopedias, unheralded and invisible...anyway, I had great fun reading the sample bits of poems with 'solitude' and another rhyming word...and out of all of them, there was only one I found that had rhyme and sense/sentiment/conceit in really close alliance, which is my goal to do!...and it's not sublime, or over the top deep, it's a 'just is' bit of poetry...another goal...in fact, I think it's the whole poem, not an excerpt...

quote

From "Fake Your Beauty" by Bertine Zetlitz:

Sister, sister, solitude Likes her swimming in the nude

http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=solitude&typeofrhyme=exa&loc=gwicbar

unquote

...didn't notice they linked to where poem quotes are from...brb...oh...that blue texted link takes one to a youtube...it's a song!...and, and, I've got a segue with the title, Fake You Beauty...this whole bunch of poems started out as a contemplation of Beauty...and it's opposite...in the poetic philosophical sense that Allston, Poe, Coleridge, everyone, goes on about...and right away in that study I went to Shakespeare's Sonnet 130...

SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

unquote

...and too of course in trying to figure this out I contemplated Miley Cyrus' bum...she's cute, and she's looks to be trying her best to lose her cuteness!...our culture has a monomania...Beauty...but I realized right away, scribbling, ugly isn't Beauty's opposite...the opposite of harmony isn't dissonance, things being out of tune...I don't think Beauty, or harmony, have opposites...which took me to Shakespeare again, and Macbeth's three witches...'fair is foul, foul is fair' which I found in a real good article...

quote

In every century, philosophers and artists have supplied definitions of beauty, and thanks to their works, it is possible to reconstruct a history of aesthetic ideas over time. But this did not happen with ugliness. Most of the time, ugliness has been defined as the opposite of beauty. But almost no one ever devoted a treatise of any length to it.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/

...so, I went about changing 'ugly' to 'homely'...but it is a real word use problem...consider the slogan, 'black is beautiful'...well, wait, lemee go to the 'servants'...wiki's take...

quote

Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that was started in the United States of America in the 1960s by African Americans. It later spread beyond the United States, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in South Africa.
It aims to dispel the notion in many cultures that black people's natural features such as skin color, facial features and hair are inherently ugly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_is_beautiful

and that about has it...oh...I have a pic...lots in fact...I've been wanting to have illustrations to go along with OTI...and not illustrations that 'fit', are derived from the poems and notes...there's an art term for that, when there's text and an illustration that has nothing to do with the text...forgotten...anyway, I'm in the garage in and out, trying to make room, and trying to sort through old stuff...and found my old Palomar art class notes...I actually did something foresighted...I'd gone to Staples and bought a ream of acid proof card paper, vellum color?...tan...and I took my notes with a pen and ink steel pen...I wanted to get used to using such...and too, on occasion, in life drawing class, my instructor would have us do black ink washes, or pen and ink...kind of a break from just charcoal or pastels...all my big pastels and charcoals are gone...tossed 'm...no where to keep them...and this was before digital, so I didn't photograph them...wish I had...anyway, on the card stock note paper I was using, I still have some of my life drawings, and scribbles and sketches from other classes...some of them are very small, like Hokusai's, covering the whole 8 by 10 card paper, but photographed, they can be blown up big...the detail of pen and ink, or black ink wash, allows that...kind of like scratchboard...so, anyway, I have plenty of illustrations now!...but, I'm going to go get some card stock, and find my pen and ink, and take class notes again...it was fun!...

:)

DavidDavid