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Tomorrow is not promised…

…In fact, I have not yet survived today…

But before I fold my wings and die…

I promise I will have my say.

Look into the future and you will plainly see….

A time when planet Earth will tend to be so hot

That fire will bloom in every field, and death hangs from a tree,

With stupid people all around soon to feel the knot.

There was a former President with a pumpkin for a head.

He tried to wreck the government for profit and for pride.

And damage done may turn our world to a place where most are dead.

Those who kill our fragile world will take their gold and hide.

Pain and chaos confront us now and badness lies ahead.

And yet we’re standing in the queue not ready to avoid this ride.

Foresight’s the thing most useful to us now to keep ourselves alive

But Nostradamus I am not. I know not how to thrive.

Editor’s Note***

A Sonnet, like those masterfully written by whoever Shakespeare really was, is a fourteen-line poem, each line written in iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme often symbolized as ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.  If you look closely at this evil poem, it is clearly not a Sonnet.  At least, not a correctly written one.  And it is more of a gloom and doom poem like the quatrains of Nostradamus rather than a courtly love poem or celebration as written by Shakespeare or Petrarch.  More evidence of evil incompetence, then.

For teenaged girls who probably should not be reading evil poetry, you can look Sonnets up on Google and find out how to write one.  I know that this would be the only reason you are reading here.

The clown stumbled to the center of the stage,

Into the spotlight for a tinker’s age,

“I’m guessing that I now must talk,

Since I am no longer allowed to walk,

And I cannot claim I am a mime,

So, now I have to deal in rhyme.”

The seats were empty, so no one cheered,

But that also meant that no one jeered.

The Silent Orchestra of the Universe

“Poetry is Music,” the clown said, “And there is music in the stars,

Silent music, of course, made of light and novas, asteroids. and comets,

Dancing through the cosmos, and not stopping in at bars.”

Then he burped the alcohol inside him with a face portending vomits.

“Words are music, rhythm, rhyme, and melody.

We make our way from day to day upon the primrose path they lay.

I speak now, fulfill my part, and so, I speak my soliloquy…

As my very instrument, in the universal orchestra, I play.”

A ghostly moan in the empty seats was nearly really heard

And the clown, he gawked and stared about in every spin-necked way.

“I do not believe I find relief in this absent throng… with words

That come from no one nowhere… so, I’ll be on my way.”

I am a writer. Even if I never sell another book, I am that. But the last three months have been really kind to me. I have sold multiple Kindle books in three straight months now. I have had multiple readers reading numerous pages from Kindle Unlimited. The Naked Thinking book’s publication seemed to be the start of the cascade. I am guessing that it is unique enough to be the book everyone was hungry for. It does have full-color illustrated nudes in it. But it has good content too.

I have been able to draw more than I have in years of late due to the ease of using digital art tools for drawing, so much easier than struggling with pencils and pens and arthritis.

So, I am happy now.

Yes, I used the AI Mirror program as a digital art editor to put my original drawing over a photo background. I still have to put black on the birch trees, but otherwise, I finished this today in half an hour.

I finished the finger-crossing picture from yesterday, finally getting the hand right despite the complications of the white halo effect (needed to separate the white highlights and dark lines from the background house of brown and mostly white. It’s a comic book thing.

My favorite thirty-minute drawing of the day, “The Haunting Stare of Jenna Ortega.” Yes, I know it doesn’t look like her. No dimples and blue eyes instead of brown. But honestly, I did it from a photo of her.

Where do we go from here, my dear?

Where do we go from here?

Whisper it now in my queer little ear,

Is it someplace near?

My fingers are crossed in the rear, my dear.

I’m hoping the world has beer,

And Ideas are all quite clear, my dear,

Cause the future may cause great fear.

This is what you must hear, my dear,

My plan is to be more of a man this year,

I’ll play the game better than all of my peers,

And that’s where we’re going from here.

***Note*** There is lots of repetition here in this poem, internal rhyme, and echoing phrases, I even used the same basic picture, and changed it with digital art tools into three slightly different pictures. Economy of words, spare use of actual ideas, and extreme economy of actual effort… It is truly terrible poetry.

Time for something thoughtful… and quiet.

I have long been an artist addicted to large, luminous eyes. I have long been accused of drawing too much like I am a Japanese anime or manga artist. Point taken. I was first inspired to draw characters like the ones in Astroboy which I was addicted to in the 1960s.

I know the big eyes can be overdone. They make a character like Big-eyed Benny above look positively alien. E.T. phone home style of stuff. But they can also be extra expressive. And many child faces do indeed have eyes that are more like a doe deer than a human. These lend a vulnerable quality of open-faced cuteness, an endearing quality that activates parental instincts.

And, some of these drawings that I do, portraits made from faces in the Walmart catalog or from Instagram, are actually started with a tracing layer laid atop the photograph. Here the eyes may have been exaggerated a little because I can’t help myself, but they are basically the same as the subject of the portrait. This girl does goofy comedy and dances on Instagram and has a really infectious grin that I can’t even begin to draw accurately.

But the result of this big-eyed obsession of mine all comes down to the fact that I have been retired from teaching now for an entire decade. I retired in 2014. And I miss working with kids. So much it hurts. Maybe I can’t make them laugh and learn anything anymore. But I can remember them as an artist. Drawing comes more from the heart than it does from the pen anyway.