Uncategorized

Cover to “The Dark Knight Returns” #1, Frank Miller, 1986

Leave a comment

DC Comics.

DEC058055A._SX1280_QL80_TTD_

Uncategorized

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost.”

1 Comment

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

— German proverb

 

Horseshoe_detail_(FindID_78328)

Photo credit: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D

Uncategorized

Cover to “Iron Man 2020” #1, Bob Wiacek, 1994

Leave a comment

Marvel Comics.

Iron_Man_2020_Vol_1_1

Uncategorized

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair.”

Leave a comment

Do not get lost in a sea of despair.  Be hopeful, be optimistic.  Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.  Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.

— United States Representative John Lewis (D-GA 5th District)

 

Lewis is far right in the photo below.  The man second from right is the late civil rights leader James Farmer, who was a professor of mine at Mary Washington College.

1024px-Rustin_Young_Ryan_Farmer_Lewis

From Wikimedia Commons: Lewis (far right) with Bayard Rustin, Andrew Young, Congressman William Fitts Ryan, and James Farmer 1965.

Photo credit: Stanley Wolfson, World Telegram staff photographer, via Library of Congress.

Uncategorized

Have a Happy New Year, guys!

Leave a comment

I hope that you have a safe, fun evening and that your year begins tomorrow with joy and hope.

 

800px-Page_412_of_Fairy_tales_and_stories_(Andersen,_Tegner)

“THEY WERE KEEPING NEW YEAR’S EVE, AND WERE DRINKING SUCCESS TO THE NEW YEAR.” — from Hans Tegner’s Fairy Tales and Stories, 1900

Uncategorized

“I raise as a goblet of wine the skull filled with my poetry.”

Leave a comment

To all of you —
those I liked or like —
cherished as icons in the cave of my soul,
solemnly, I raise as a goblet of wine
the skull filled with my poetry.

I contemplate —
so often —
ending my days
with the full stop of a bullet.
This evening,
for all of you —
just in case —
I am giving a farewell concert.

Memory,
pack the brain’s auditorium
with inexhaustible swarms of beloveds.
Spatter laughter from eye to eye,
sate the night with former weddings’ glory.
Fill every soul with a jocular mood
so that this night is forgotten by no one.
Today I shall play the flute —
my backbone.
⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

— from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Backbone Flute, 1915

 

Mayakovskiy_1927

Uncategorized

Cover to “The National Sunday Magazine/The Boston Sunday Globe,” Oct. 8, 1916

Leave a comment

Original artwork by Norman Rockwell.

nr

Uncategorized

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds.”

Leave a comment

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Goethe_(Stieler_1828)

Uncategorized

It would be a hell of a lot of fun.

Leave a comment

My latest brilliant idea — somebody should make a board game based on Dante’s Inferno. Like a send-up of Monopoly or Sorry.

Hell, you wouldn’t even need advertising art. All those Gustave Dore illustrations are in the public domain.

RUN WITH THIS, people.

 

Pur_12_aracne

Pictured: fun.

 

 

Uncategorized

Poetry, 2019

Leave a comment

Hey, guys — if you happen to be amused by any of these poemy-type things that I repeatedly fumble at, you can find all of my 2019 publications right here:

Poetry, 2019

 

20180914_122602 (1) f

Nurse Your Favorite Heresies in Whispers