Art

Friday Fictioneers for December 1st, 2023

For a December first kickoff, Fleur Lind and the sensational Rochelle, Mistress of the Friday Fictioneers Realm, joined forces in a flowerily display of automotive genius.

Click on the pic to taxi over to Madam R’s blog page for instructions on the care and feeding of planted stories of 100 words or fewer.

PHOTO PROMOT © Fleur Lind

Title: Advertising Inspiration
Genre: Fire Sky Fiction
Words: 100

***

 

It was all Christmassy in C-City.

I said, “Hey, Dewey. Let’s tow that old flatbed truck to your boutique and park it outside. You can put your potted plants on it and under the open hood. Maybe even displays or dressed mannequins in or on it. A Santa too, maybe?”

“It is not a boutique, Dad. Kind of, but not really. I don’t know if the city will allow it, but I can ask. It’s a great idea. How did you think of it?”

“When I woke up last Wednesday morning, it just came to me. Pure freakin’ magic. Right?”

***

 

Look both ways for ideas and plants.
Mind the gaps, steal like an artist, and bend the rules.

Click on Julie’s (Dewey to me) plants to read more aromatic #FF stories.

Photo courtesy of Fire Sky Arts, Colorado City, Texas

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 18)

Today, I am NaPo-challenged to compose an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the order of the alphabet. It may be a 26-word piece in alphabetical order (a boy can dance… etc.), or a poem of 26 lines with the first letter of the first word of each line following the order of the alphabet. I chose the latter.

I decided to free-style a poem using alphabetized band and singer names with comment.

Music by the Letters

ABBA set the stage for glam-bands
Blondie, Boston, or Brooks & Dunn: you choose
CCR Cream(s) Chicago, but love ‘em all
Dire Straits did the Walk of Life into self-destruction
Elephant Revival caught the White Rabbit best
Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” inspired my marathons
Grateful Dead’s name was Garcia’s dictionary find
Haddaway had his heyday in the nineties
Isaac Hays might have gotten off the Shaft, but
Journey, like some greats, never won a Grammy (dumb)
Kiss, likewise, but was named for “Psycho Circus”
Lynyrd Skynyrd, another no-Gram, not for Free Bird or ‘bama
Melanie still roller skates without a brand new key
Neil Young barely dances these days under a Harvest Moon
Otis Redding still longs for his songs from The Dock of the Bay
Patsy Cline still makes me Crazy and I Fall To Pieces
Queen rocks this boho as champions of rhapsody (no Grammy?)
Roy Orbison was a Traveler, but got me with Pretty Woman
Stealers Wheel stuck me in the middle with you looking in
T. Rex bangs a gong when I Get It On with Hot Love
Uriah Heep’s Lady in Black had some Easy Livin’
Village People remind me the Y.M.C.A. is In the Navy.
Willie Nelson will live forever On the Road Again
XTC sang Dear God and now is no more
Yes still thinks Love Will Find a Way, but hey ho,
ZZ Top bottoms the list like a Tush in La Grange.

Look both ways with music finding better days.
Mind the gaps and carful not to scratch them records.
Just what is a Grammy, anyway?

 

*Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

Monday’s Rune: The final week

Why so Happy?

As Hanukkah ends
Kwanzaa begins, and it is boxing day in Canada.
Because yesterday over two billion enlightened
of the eight billion humans alive
decide a religious thing and dispute
coffee cups and well wishes,
which must be specifically selfish.

It’s also the climaxing week of
collegiate football bowls
so schools can decide who to fire
or to obscenely overpay with locked down
contracts having nothing to do
with anything educational (or successful)
except that we are better than you—
more near neurotic selfishness. Yay,
we’re number one (so what?).

But it is serious business
for calendars. The end of another
elliptical orbital trip around the
minor star we call Sun,
and another 365 days bite the dust.

In the meantime, libraries close,
school music programs falter
or are cancelled to reduce cost,
and art blows in the wind.
Happy holidays. Congratulations,
it’s a wonderful life, Mister Potter.

Look both ways except this week.
For twenty-twenty-two, it’s over.
Mind the gaps for “what have we done?”

Now that is art.

Friday Fictioneers for September 16th, 2022

For mid-September, our fantastic Mistress of Friday Fictioneering fantasy, Rochelle, poked us with the picture of Pincushion Hakea flowers provided through the good graces of Trish Nankeville.

The lovely photo inspired my memory, and I considered a quote by Henry David Thoreau that Rochelle has posted on her blog in the past, it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. Some say it was written as, “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” (From the essay, “Walking.”) Whatever—close enough. What you see is a good theme.

I’m fascinated by the work of people who see around us the things I miss: the artists and photographers who’s work I often borrow to enrich my world. Through their art, I get to see what they see: a lovely natural world.

Click on Trish’s photo of the red pincushion flowers to be transplanted into Rochelle’s blog where you can learn how to set your roots into the Wednesday, Friday Fictioneers writer community.

PHOTO PROMPT © Trish Nankeville

Genre: Autobiographical Fiction
Title: Thoreau’s Pincushion Hakea
Word Count: 100

***

We walked the path near the lake. Jay was a talented amateur photographer who did all his own film processing.

He said, “It’s like hunting. Look there. What do you see?”

I replied, “Weeds and stickers.”

We knelt and he spritzed water on the weeds.

“Look closer.”

I looked. “Wow. I didn’t even see the flowers much less that spider’s web. Now it all glistens.”

He said, “Everything is a subject or a scene. I use other things, lighting, angles, and point of view to enhance it. I do more in the lab. It’s the beauty of nature artfully staged.”

***

Look both ways. What you see matters.
Mind the gaps for the hidden fruits of nature’s beauty.

 

Click on Waken Pond to float over to the FF squares page where more wonderful stories are linked.

Friday Fictioneers for April 22, 2022

Mistress Rochelle, the colorful manager and FF maven of artistic madness, prompts us today, with the aid of a Carole Erdman-Grant photo of an abandoned building with a marvelous paint job.

PHOTO PROMPT © Carole Erdman-Grant Click on the picture to zip on over to Rochelle’s page for all the news and graphic rules.

Genre: Family Fiction
Title: Overheard Gen Art
Word Count: 99

“Mom! Look at that! It’s beautiful. Let’s get dad to buy it.

Julie, that is junk. It’s sad—the worst of gang graffiti. It’s ugly.

Mother, you have no taste. That rocks—it is the fucking bomb. That’s great urban art.

Sweetheart, that is not art. It’s gang turf tagging and watch your language. This was once a nice place to eat. Now look at it: a concrete canvas for bored morons.

It’s metaphorical, Mom. You’re so shallow. If dad doesn’t buy it, I’ll kill myself.

And if he does you won’t have to because I’ll kill you both.”

Look both ways for all that is seen and felt.
Mind gaps and don’t touch the wet paint.

Click on Mels (sic) drive-in from the American Graffiti movie to find more fictioneering.

Midweek Poetry: My White Rabbit

My White Rabbit

I like beer, pizza, and poetry.
And those mysterious rabbit holes.

Poetry is to life
what hearing is to sound,
what thunder is to lightning, what love is
to marriage,
what sex is to love,
what water is to thirst.

I like dark beer, such poems
I love to hear. Poetry
is to me what color is to art.
It’s the butter
upon life’s devolving bread.

Poetry is to life as dreams
are to sleep, like light is for day,
poetry is rain ending a drought.

Life and poetry, infinity woven
together like two heads for sister.
A poem is my White Rabbit.

Life without poetry is sad,
dysfunctional and ignorant,
like breathing without air.
It lacks reason and purpose.

Poetry is as human as skin,
as thoughtful as mind, it goes
deep – beyond any abyss.

No culture is without poems.
The poem-less are like sailors
without songs or sirens,
poetry is a beacon for living,
it’s an eternity for the dead.

Not every poem is perfect, but poetry is
the ancient sound of a beautiful gift
waiting at the core of a newborn,
as the eye of a painter or a touch
of the sculptor forms art,
the words of the poets
are the pipes and drums of humanity.

Look both ways.
Be skeptical of all you see but shed foolish ignorance as soon as you smell it.
Mind the gaps. They didn’t put themselves there.

And this, just cuz I can…

Poem: Holy Knickknacks, Batman

Holy Knickknacks, Batman

Got my Indian Buddha statue
the next day
after some Catholic Answers lecture guy
told us it was a mortal sin to have one.
First Commandment (Catholic version), no less.

My graven image now sits with my Dragon Chalice,
lion statue, and cowboy with horse bronze art,
family photos, among other things.
He’s been lotus sitting around my house,
mostly in my room, for more than 20 years.
The best years of my life
have been with Siddhartha.

My family has conquered many demons.
I’ve beaten cancer (for now), completed 15 marathons,
written hundreds of poems, cheated death
and heart disease (also temporarily),
lost twenty pounds (several times),
and today I mark 75 years since I squeezed
through Mom’s birth canal. Sorry, Mom.

My mother claimed I was a contrarian.
Dad said I was only half-Irish and my sibs
considered me a spoiled brat (that’s still true).
The (younger than I) lecturer from the diocesan chancery
died two years afterwards.
Wrong statue or just superstition, I guess.

Look both ways at life and nature.
Question scripture. Make room for doubt.
Mind the gaps where you find them.
Buy a buddha. Acquire art because you can.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #215 (ink)

Click on graphic for Sammi Cox’s page and links to other works.

 

What a wonderful little word and inventive subject. I’ve written of pens and paints, but not of ink, before now. I even read the history of ink and how it was and is made. Forgive me brother and sister writers. I got so excited—I wrote two twenty-two-word poems. Like money and sex, only too much poetry is enough.

5K Years Since

Inks. Invisible,
permanent. India’s art.
Printing or pens.

Words on paper,
not electronically;
ink, a catalyst to creativity,
with words and art.

Lines of Magic

See the flow on paper,
watch lines, curves, and shapes
appear in history, law, art;
even in silent music on a page.

Look both ways for waves of imaginative creations.
Mind the gaps for innovation’s utility and art’s beauty.

Poetry: Sijo for Two (NaPoWriMo day 20)

The NaPo prompt for day 20 was to write a poem in a traditional Korean poetic form called sijo, in English of course. Sijo is a specific form with a little flexibility unless one wished to exercise poetic license to color outside the lines. Since these are only three lines of 14 to 16 syllables each, I wrote two for Tuesday.

Marvelous Melancholy

I forgot about something important. What being bored feels like.
Oh, how I long for the days when I could do what I wanted.
Now I can’t just up and do, up and go. I mustn’t fall on my ass.

***

A Taste of Tint

Like yellow, it has never been one of my favorite colors.
Did I ever favor any one color over another?
I’m starting to like orange. Never saw a color I didn’t like.

Look both ways. Then smile. Sing a song, “I’m Alive!”
Mind the gaps for forgotten sorrow or the taste of color.

Poetry: Me in Drawing Class (NaPoWriMo day 5)

For this prompt, I was to select an existing poem and write my poem using the shape (form, style, beat) of the original. Each of my lines must begin with the same first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem.

For this assignment, I selected two Billy Collins poems. For shape, I chose “Class Picture 1954” (click to read it). I picked “Drawing Class” for subject and musings. Mr. Collins enjoyed his drawing class much more than I did. But we both like to draw.

Me in Drawing Class

I took the art class
for my drawing to improve.

To the instructor I was not
special nor obedient because
to me, she was retentive and inflexible.

The first day she belittled tardy.
I was early. Most were on time.
Is she too good to teach me?

At the front and center
in my surgical mask,
was I to be her basic class problem?

Because I claim my work
instead of me making art her way;
oh, how we entertained the others.

What’s so bad about using graphite?
And why is it carbon or charcoal
you think superior to what tool I use?

And now we’re done.
So class is over,
another moody artist goes his way.

Look both ways in dealing with the artsy types.
Mind the gaps, but graphite works equally well.