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Icarus

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This is a re-post of an old poem with a new Paffooney.

 

Icarus

 

“You never believe in me,

You only hear the lie,

You never believe in me,

You never even try,

 

You never see the good in me,

You only fear I’ll die,

You never hear the words I say,

You never tell me why,

 

You never care how I plan,

Or why I touch the sky,

You’ll never lift me up,

You never let me fly,”

 

That’s how it always was,

Between my father and I,

Until the day I reached the sun,

And burned my hands on high,

 

And so it is he’ll never know,

How much his son was worth,

Because he couldn’t understand,

The day

I fell

To Earth.

 

My teenage son and I have been through some rough times.  One time, though, we sat down and talked about him wanting to be a music composer.  I realized then that the things I have been through as a writer, being discouraged by other, more sensible people, having to defend my art, and not even being believed in by my own family, were the very things that he was talking about.  So I wrote a poem about it.  The central metaphor is Icarus from classical mythology.  I even suggested he use it as lyrics and turn it into a song.  Of course he told me how stupid that idea was.  So let me put the poem here and see what you think.

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The Thumb-Sucker

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The Thumb-Sucker

 

Darkness surrounds us

As the nighttime moves in

And we feel overwhelmed

And burdened by sin

 

But comfort can come

From a place we’ve all been

Just open your mouth

And shove your thumb in

 

Our childhoods were happy

And made us all grin

And simple we were

With our little thumbs in

 

So as we’re all worried

And all feeling dumb

We can make it all better

By sucking our thumb

 

 

 

(Silly poems and blue cartoons are a specialty of mine.  I’m no Ogden Nash, but I make it all rhyme.)

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Why Sci-Fi?

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In 1969, the summer after I had to travel to a new school in another town, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.   I stayed up and awake that entire summer night, as did my whole family, watching everything the TV was able to show.  I vowed to myself that summer that I, too, would one day walk on another world.  My fantasy was, as I’m sure most thirteen-year-old boys in the entire world agreed, was to be the first Earth man to set foot on Mars.

I set out to get myself into the Air-Force Academy in Colorado Springs.  We visited there during one of our yearly family tent-camping car trips.  It was an elegant, pristine dream.  But life has a way of putting needle holes in the balloons that make up the loftiest of dreams.  I developed bursitis and eventually arthritis by the time I was eighteen.  My eyes were always too myopic to ever become an astronaut.  Then Challenger blew up.  Reagan, who didn’t believe in the U.S. Government as a way to accomplish important things, or at least, didn’t believe in spending money for such things when that money didn’t go into the pockets of his rich friends, changed young boy’s dreams.  Our trajectory towards Mars was slowed.

So, do you let dreams die?  Never me.  No, not I.  I would still travel there.  But I could not take my physical body.  I would have to go by the ship of imagination.  I would have to rely on the fantastic inner eye.

Some of my junior high English students and I took up role-playing games.  We graduated from Dungeons and Dragons into the space fantasy game called Traveller.   We fought space wars, built space colonies, absorbed Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Last Starfighter.  All things were possible.   With a role of the dice, you could save the universe.  And so my novel Aeroquest was born.

Catch a Falling Star and all the stories I have percolating now continue that plan, that goal, that young boy’s dream of placing his feet on another world.  Today’s Paffooney is a symptom of that illness, not an absolute definition of it.  Young Buster Crabbe, if you can’t tell, is the human boy in the picture. 

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Hear the Music

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Hear the Music (a love poem)

 

The singer sings his song,

And wants the world to sing along,

Though the world has gone all wrong,

And the darkness stays too long.

 

The singer warms and croons,

Under bright romantic moons,

And carries hopeful tunes,

To the listening dolts and loons.

 

Can a song bring truth to light?

Can it help us win the fight?

Does it ease the world’s plight?

And set the wrongs aright?

 

Yes a song can save the world,

Though the truth must be unfurled,

And the listeners’ ears are twirled.

So the hurts will all be pearled.

 

 

 

 

Okay, okay… goofy poetry, I know.  That’s the way I am.  I have a goopy-sappy-goofy faith in the power of words.   I call the chapters of my fiction Cantos because I believe them to be musical compositions and pieces of poetry.  Ooh, what a goof that I am!  But I really do believe that the words of a song, the stories in a book, or the beat of a poem can save lives, change worlds, and make all things better.  Why would I believe that?  Because words and ideas have power.  And as I feel my mortality creeping nearer and nearer, I am feeling more and more power in my words.  I almost have to burst into song like some sappy musical… like Camelot, like My Fair Lady, like Man of LaMancha.    Like the stupid boy in the Paffooney, I have to sing.  I have my impossible dreams.

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The Making of Paffoonies

ImageAs creative projects go, I think the best ones I am currently undertaking are the Paffoonies. These, of course, are the colored-pencil and ink cartoon-o-matic creations that come out of my fevered little-boy mind as it has been stretched and contorted to fit into my old-man brain.  

There are rules to this stupid creation game.  First of all, a Paffooney must tell a story and have a piece of writing to go with it.  Naturally, though, the picture must come first.  The tortured elements of the Sci-fi or Fantasy that comes out of it result from the need to explain every oddity, punkitation, and warped perception that went into the picture.  I draw pictures from dreams.  I also draw from the monkey-shine metaphors that well up in my overly-wordy conscious mind.  I do not take drugs to accomplish this.  I do not drink alcohol.  I am on numerous medications for numerous medical conditions… but I like to think there is no pharmacological element to my creativity.  I am just your basic goofy old man with an exploding right brain.

You remember the writing that went with the first Paffooney in this post, don’t you?  If not, you can still see the post here on WordPress where I wrote a poem that convicts  the average school teacher of being a serious clown and puppet master.  Some Paffoonies are poetic in nature.  Others require a piece of fiction, like the one I wrote about Mai Ling’s encounter with the plant people of the planet Cornucopia.  Here is a another version of it…..Image

So, a Paffooney is a creative project, a game, an exercise if you will, that will hopefully make me a better story-teller, writer, and cartoonist.   I hope to post a lot of them on the web.  So-called social media marketing experts tell me this kind of thing will get you, dear reader and viewer, to buy my book Catch a Falling Star, a sort of extended Paffooney of its own.   The theory is, if you like the stuff I give away for free in these posts, you will want to actually pay money to see more of what I can do.  I really think that is a big black Hoo-Ha, though, as I have not seen any evidence that social media marketing experts know anything more about marketing than I do.  Are they really worth that expensive salt I put on their tails to trap them into to telling me their secrets and lies?

Ah, well…  here is one last Paffooney that does not yet have a story to go along with it.  At least, I am not aware of a story yet.  Hmm, I think something is coming to me even as I post this picture.

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