featuring that funny pirate

look! we’re in britain!
two women sucked into dreams,
how dare you, you slut.

awesome dude on fire,
creepy doll in the basement,
new age hippie shit.

one more and kathleen wilhoite aka the voice of pepper ann aka luke’s sister will be a hall of famer!

A rejection of my memoir The End of Boys by the editor at Counterpoint Press went like this (well, sort of – he didn’t write in haiku).

He said:

The opening scene

seemed forced, and I don’t like the

memoir form anyways.

I think he meant:

Your memoir was like

eating at a McDonalds

for Sunday dinner.

far worse than facebook
blogging on the internet
prying fingernails

Metal Bowl in Mokume-gane Style.

Bryan Lee Brown

11 am.-5 p.m.

Images Art Gallery
1520 Walnut
Kansas City, MO
816.221.2006

Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Runs through: May 23

Artist’s site: http://imagesartgallery.org/htdocs/BryanBrown.html
Gallery site: http://www.imagegallery.org

One of the great things about our ever-shrinking world is that once-inaccessible art forms are now open to a greater number of practitioners.

Then again, that’s also one of the worst things about the ease with which styles and ideas leap state lines, national borders and even oceans. Ask anyone who’s ever been forced to sit through endless faux-tribal drumming, eaten a microwaved burrito from a convenience store or read a particularly brutal attempt at haiku.

Bryan Lee Brown’s metal work counts among the pluses. Brown, one of three artists now showing at the co-operative, not-for-profit Images Art Gallery, is one of only a handful of American artists working in a 400-year-old Japanese style called Mokume-gane. That translates literally as “wood burl metal”, referring to the swirling deformities prized by many woodworkers.

Real burls can be caused by all sorts of things, but are most often the result of insect attacks or mold infestation. Replicating the gnarled grain in metal, a process originally used for katana swords, is a painstaking process — but with beautiful results.

Brown, a former jewelry art instructor at the Gemological Institute of America, describes Mokume-game  as an intricate process that involves the layering of different colored metals in an alternating pattern and bonding these metals using only heat and pressure. After the bonding, the solid stack is cold forged to a desired thickness, and then is ground into to reveal the layers of color and further cold forged until the metals are flush again.

Only then, when the metal is in a sheet, can the artist begin crafting the final work.

The results, as shown in the bowl pictured above, does take on the look of gnarled, knotty wood — but with the gleam of metal giving it an entirely different sort of warmth. Brown also crafts jewelry through the Mokume-gane process — and here, too, the glow of metal intensifies the effects of Brown’s smithing.

(Hot tip for any potential buyers: Images Gallery is moving across the state line, from the Crossroads to 7320 W. 80th St. in downtown Overland Park. The gallery  is holding a moving sale this Saturday. Go today to check out the show, which also includes paintings by Suzy Perkins and Teri Kay Willett … and if something catches your eye, make a return trip to the East Crossroads this weekend.)

And even if you’re just looking for the sake of looking, Brown’s work is worth the drive, walk or bus ride. One concept holds true in every culture of our little tiny world: You have to see something in person to truly appreciate it.

High card in the deck
Twenty mil sounds about right
More hype than Barack

1.2 Seattle Mariners – Dustin Ackley

Z’s first draft as boss
Will defense dictate the pick?
 No, instead Gwynn twin

1.3 San Diego Padres – Aaron Crow

Pads secret code
Yes, “the Crow flies at midnight” 
Sorry, that was lame

1.4 Pittsburgh Pirates – Grant Green

Recent failures sting
Imagine this young core group
Green, Wieters, Upton…

1.5 Baltimore Orioles – Alex White

O’s new strategy
Slay East goliaths on mound
White needs his slingshot 

1.6 San Francisco Giants – Donovan Tate

First prep player popped
Same tools as Carlos Beltran 
Football? Zero chance

1.7 Atlanta Braves – Tyler Matzek

Home state player gone
Choice of prep port or starboard
Can’t beat the upside

1.8 Cincinnati Reds – Kyle Gibson

A perfect marriage
Groundballs and overworked arm
Fits ballpark, Dusty

1.9 Detroit Tigers – Shelby Miller

Grab righty and pray
System as down as GM
Cars and Dombrowski

1.10 Washington Nationals – James Paxton 

Signability
Target rising college guy
Hey, I’d sign for slot!

do you have my copy of this? i wants it back.

WARNING?: NSFW?

(the A+ is sarcastic, this movie is hilariously bad)

I will wear short sleeves
on purpose so our arms touch
while we are dancing.
 

Laura at Catholic Teacher Musings hosts a Bad Haiku every Friday. Since we’re all still feeling bad, it seemed to fit.

First Logan, then Burke;
Maggie, Daddy, then Mommy.
Virus, go away!

(Kept the twins home from school again today. Burke threw up again last night and there’s a 24 hour no vomit rule. Maggie woke up last night and thought she was going to throw up, but didn’t. Logan has exploded out of many, many diapers.)

  
My resolution
No more resolutions
I can’t keep, like this one

(this one is so bad that it is not even 5-7-5!)

  Tree’s all taken down–
year’s end–where is Christmas now?
Deep within each pulse.
   

  
Mustard on my shirt,
Discovered in the morning.
Parking lot hot-dog.
  

Laura at Catholic Teacher Musings hosts a Bad Haiku every Friday, but this Friday is Yuktoberfest, so how could I resist? (just keep in mind that it’s SUPPOSED to be bad…even though I couldn’t really make it good if I tried.)

To entertain you:
Halloween, Zimmer Zoo style
in bad Haiku form

Scarier than ghosts,
Crazier than five goblins,
I have three children.

We tried for a theme:
a cheerleader, a football,
a football player.

We thought it’d be great
(It’s much harder than you’d think)
They have their own minds.

Of all the costumes
my little girl can think of,
Maggie’s a princess.

We searched through the store,
Daddy saw it before son,
Burke’s a Fire Man

It wasn’t his choice;
Because it’s Mom’s favorite,
Logan’s a Tiger

Informative…yes
Intrgiguing…yes
Life changing…for the most part

…and if those were not enough reason to visit my website I have now added even MORE humor to your day with our new weakly feature… BAD HAIKU!

Lectured to not do
Two things at once, he obeyed
And always did three.

The heart is pink
lips are blue
revolutions are lost

red is a liar

EL SEBBO

White is the easiest metaphor

EL SEBBO

If writing poetry
is like pissing against the wind
remember that the wind
often changes direction

EL SEBBO

A beautiful car
is nothing
compared to
a good conversation

EL SEBBO

if my words were colored
like heads and then hands
then sometimes they could be
red machine or red lips
but mostly red silence

EL SEBBO

What we could say
is hidden
behind our words

EL SEBBO

Sunny day at IMMA*:

Wheelchair ramp to crappy bookshop

None to ladies’ toilets

*Irish Museum of Modern Art

sun goes down moon comes up
I hold one in each hand

EL SEBBO

the apple-tree is blossoming
the songs of the birds again have meaning

EL SEBBO

I am writing a poem in my garden
the sun at the periphery of my thoughts

EL SEBBO

When things fall
objects happen

EL SEBBO