Category: comics

Refrigerator Magnets 016 Jackalope

I saw my first jackalope at the Wolverine Fundamental Basketball School

Circa 1973, camper counselor, “Superman” really had the campers going.
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Refrigerator Magnets 015 Range Time

5 mm Bucky Balls at 2 m

ears plugged and covered
muffled pops of cannon shots
ready to defend

of patriots with hearts of steel respect
of metal blue and powder cased in brass

chests reverberate
groupings tightening each day
holes punched through paper

[blank renku] by Paul Guernsey, 2019

blank renku – a form of linked verse, written by one or multiple authors in alternating collaboration. Blank renku differs from renku in that stanzas alternate between haiku form, and blank verse. The shortest blank verse stanza would be a couplet. The longest would fill a Post It note, the original (fictional) medium of blank renku, as invented for The Blank Verse Mystery. Variations are expected.
Blank renku can be played as a game, in the original spirit of renku. It merges poetry from East and West. Writers can choose to write in their stronger form or in their weaker one, and in this way it is similar to Terry Pratchett’s game of THUD.

Refrigerator Magnets 014

Jupiter Life Forms

Arthur C. Clarke’s gas-based life forms on Jupiter can grow to be several miles in length. Their delta-shaped predators cut them in half. Like Earthworms, each surviving half regenerates and resumes growing to full size.* This is the creature’s only known reproductive method.

*I read Clarke’s book several decades ago and may have made some of this up. Corrections are welcome.

Paul Guernsey, 2019

Refrigerator Magnets 013 The Joy in Mudville

[Hats] Baseball Cap

“…And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, …”

from Casey at the Bat, by Ernest Lawrence Thayer – 1863-1940

The Joy in Mudville

The joy in Mudville was not wholly ground in dust that day,
For cellebration on the mound rewards the victors’ play;
And while each Mudville fan did sigh and bow his head,
A mighty whooping dogpile crushed the pitcher without dread.

They raised him up upon their shoulders high for his campaign,
and brought him to the lockers as they doused him with Champagne.
They set him soaking back to Earth, still grinning victory,
And raised a boisterous chorus shouting, “Phinney! Phinney! Phinney!” [1]

[fourteener/ballad] by Paul Guernsey

In honor of “Casey at the Bat”, by Ernest Lawrence Thayer – 1863-1940

[1] “The poem was originally published anonymously (under the pen name “Phin”, based on Thayer’s college nickname, “Phinney”).[2]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_at_the_Bat
[2] Gardner, Martin (October 1967). “Casey At The Bat”. American Heritage. 18 (6). Retrieved 20 October 2012.