Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price

By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.

’Twas the Night before Retirement (A Farewell to Moristotle & Co.)

By Bettina Sperry

’Twas the night before Retirement, when all through the blog

Not a keyboard was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stories and poems were all hung with care,

In hopes that Goines On soon would be there;

The writers were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of agents danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

Formality (a sonnetFarewell to Moristotle & Co.)

By Eric Meub

For Morris Dean












 
 
 
 
Formality

Elizabethans and Romantics taught
Us that the sonnet needs a plot to tend,
A garden walled-off from the world, where thought
May blossom for a lady—or a friend.

Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [11]

Billy Charles Duvall

By André Duvall

La Vision de Guillermo: The idea for the first painting (see below) came from a pamphlet purchased at a book sale at the Little Rock public library entitled “Bolivia,” from Nov. 1, 1917. The pamphlet contained many photographs, including one taken at night with the caption, “A Pack Train of Llamas in La Paz, Bolivia – Twilight.” Dad’s llamas are based on the first two shown in that photo. Lights from the buildings are shining, casting shadows.

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Pat Hamilton

Vale, Moristotle!
    When I was down, Morris lifted me by publishing me. I know all other contributors feel the same. He increased my joy by becoming a brilliant penpal, too, taking me along to France and to Duluth, Minnesota. I treasured his friendship as a private joy, until I realized everyone else knows and feels it, too.
    The nightly news tries to convince us of a dark new world of hate and division, but Morris and Goines return us to a world of love and family.
    Let’s hope he’s a David Bowie, whose every tour was a “final” tour...until the next one.
    Keep living, loving, writing, and inspiring, dear Morris!

Copyright © 2023 by Pat Hamilton

Highways and Byways: Salsa Dancer

By Maik Strosahl

In younger days
he poured in a shot of Cuervo,
stirred it into the
peppers, onion and tomato—
booze and a salad he joked
as he chugged from a jar
chewing chunks,
enjoying the burn
as he jumped
on out to the dance floor,
sharing his heat with the ladies.

Limerick of Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Michael H. Brownstein

There is a blogger named Mo

Who engaged intelligent Joe.

    His writers could write—

    So witty and bright—

We’re sad to see our Mo go!

Copyright © 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Ed Rogers

Morris, I once told you that if we weren’t writing or editing we would be dying. I’m not sure that is the case, but we are closer to that truth today than when I said it. It has been one hell of a ride. You edited nine books for me and I have no idea how many stories. You have not only been my editor and close friend but you have also come to know more about my life than any other person on this earth. I am sure I am not the only one who can say that. People have opened themselves up on your blog like no place I have ever seen before. You gave us a place to share, to vent, and even to become friends with people we would never meet in person.

All Over the Place: “The Set of Her Body” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Set of Her Body

I look at the set of her body, the style of range, the linoleum on the patio, the robin’s nest in the eave of the front porch, the wino sipping whiskey out of a glass bottle in a paper bag on the front stoop. She is afraid to go outside until he leaves. I go outside and sit next to him.

Acting Citizen: Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

–30– (look it up)

By James Knudsen

Whose idea was it to put the fourth Saturday on the 22nd?
    Whose idea was it to fill this week with all manner of things to run around attempting to accomplish in July San Joaquin Valley heat?
    Whose idea was it to have a scatter-brained, unemployed actor contribute one column a month? It happened so long ago that I’m not sure who should receive the credit... or blame.

Farewell ​to Moristotle & Co.

On Behalf of
Rolf Dumke

By His Daughter,
Sibylla Dumke,
from Olargues, France

Dear Morris, you have stimulated and showcased the works, ideas, expressions, writings, and pictures of all kinds of different and interesting people. One of them was my dear Dad, whose 82nd birthday would have been this July 16^th.

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

James T. Carney & Mo Dean
Yale, June 1964

By James T. Carney




Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of print
Before him only wordless seas.
Moristotle said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Reader, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, Blog on! Blog on! And on!”

Highways and Byways: Radar Love

By Maik Strosahl

Sometimes I wonder
at the storms that hit
without warning.

Sometimes,
popcorn rises from
green fields,
invisible to the Doppler,
building into a shelf,
unpredicted,
missed by the
10 o’clock report,
weather on the 6’s,
the farmer at the grocery
who smells tempests brewing.

Goines On: Wrapping everything up

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Goines felt something like a shroud tightening around him. It was getting so tight he could barely wind his thoughts around it. Whatever it was kept grabbing at his thoughts, entangling them within its grasp, holding them, stifling them, preventing them from cohering.
    Was it time to give in, give up, stop trying to manage so many projects, to let the more difficult ones go and attend only to the simpler ones he hoped he might still be able to carry out?
    He would sound some of his friends out about what seemed to be happening. Was it dementia, was it too much stress?
    He would consult his son and his daughter too, to see what they made of it, what they might advise him to do or not to do.
    He needed to do something.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

Goines On: Outside of a dog

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While tidying his office, Goines spotted the bag Mrs. Goines was given a few years earlier at Shakespeare and Company in Paris to carry a book she had purchased there. The bag‘s front side quoted Groucho Marx:

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

    But Goines couldn’t help smiling at the whimsy that James Joyce might actually have penned the joke in a lighter moment during the writing of Finnegans Wake.

All Over the Place: “Water and a Lack of Wire” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Water and a
Lack of Wire

Stress lines are not the stretch marks of love

the way a man is more notable from the outside

as if chicken wire can drill barbs into skin,

bring the power of anger against the scrotum,

Bibliophile (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

I like it when you’re looking into Pope:

His was an age of rhymed enlightenments.

The Essays and Epistles give me hope

We’ll make a couplet of our common sense.

Lord Byron, though, would have your lover drawn

More like a rugged, weather-beaten Giaour.

And really, did they ever get it on,

Or was it only talk? Give me an hour.

In and out of pout (a limerick)

Detail of a sketch by
Bev Johnson (2016)

By Moristotle

That little girl is often in a pout,
No one can figure what it’s all about;
    One moment she’s jocose,
    The next she is morose.
Just wait, you’ll see her lower lip push out.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

One Leptoglossus, two Leptoglossi

Spotted lounging on
our compost tumbler

By Moristotle

Are you interested in bugs? I spotted one of these on Monday morning, a Leptoglossus oppositus, or leaf-footed bug – at least according to Siri Knowledge, after it (or she?) performed the photo-search I requested on my iPhone (aka my camera).

Image from Siri Knowledge,
with link to Wikipedia

Highways and Byways: The Aging of Water

By Maik Strosahl

    Inspired by a photograph from
    Heather Cox Richardson’s
    Letters from an American
    (July 9, 2023)

The Aging of Water

This mirror still flows,
this glass still reflects,
but it has become
clouded with murk,
rippled with time and gravity,
wrinkled to the sky and
to my bespectacled eyes.

Amber Alert (flash fiction)

By Moristotle

His cell phone made a startling, eerie sound as he was chewing his first mouthful of lunch. He struggled to extract the phone from a thigh pocket.
    “Damn those amber alerts!” he said to his wife, whose phone was now sounding as well.
    “Humph,” he said, “it’s a severe thunderstorm warning. Hey, we might get some rain!”
    Still thinking about amber alerts and how often they sounded, he asked his wife whether she thought they actually helped.
    “I think they do. They help locate the vehicle that somebody’s child has been abducted in.”
    His phone rang. “Hold that thought,” he said, “it’s our daughter.”
    “Dad, Sally’s been abducted. A neighbor got their license plate, and we’ve requested an amber alert.”

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

A Look into Flash Fiction

[Click on image for a
flash fiction challenge]

By Moristotle

I found challenging Michael H. Brownstein’s examples of flash fiction (and micro fiction) stories. I have so far managed to write a few that I thought were okay. One of them, “Jesus on a High,” even adhered to the exact upper limit of the prescribed word count of 100, including the 9 words of its opening quote from Karl Marx. I remember the pleasure of whittling the words to exactly those 100, which took me many drafts. They were not an easily found 100 words, just like an article I recommend says:

All Over the Place: “The Laurel Tree—Because....” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Laurel Tree—
Because Daphne Prayed
to the Gods for Help
When Apollo Wouldn't
Take No for an Answer

This is how magic works against us—

how being in hell is not always necessarily a bad thing—

how the odor from the man sitting nearby decomposes oxygen—

how the feral cat bites the hand that feeds it—

how newspaper headlines promise to lie

and skin sickness spreads into leaves of hair—

sorrow bends tears into strings of bark—

a minute slaves into an hour, the lecturer going on and on,

an hour becoming a day, a day a week, the pen out of ink,

the pencil lead broken, a time to sleep, a time to stretch,

a heart stone, the grain in laminate, rings of tile,

the number of seats in one row, the moon, the sun,

the moon, the sun, the moon, the sun, the moon,

clouds, rain, snow, frost, the moon, the sun, the moon,

the sun and the man at the lectern still speaking

clears his throat finally, swallows an imaginary wind,

begins to sing—the sweat of swamp, the swamp of musk,

a triage of lips/tongue/throat: an eczema of wood.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Goines On: Wind rushings

Image from
Juan de Valdés Leal’s
“Finis gloriae mundi” (1672)
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In perusing his archives, Goines was reminded of something from thirteen years earlier. The passenger window in their car had stopped working, and as he was driving with both front windows open to a repair shop, a cattle truck passed him on the interstate, and he got a nose full of the aroma of livestock.
    The cattle were presumably on their way to a slaughterhouse, and Goines had felt bad about that.
    He still felt bad about animal slaughter. Those animals were related to us, as his 2010 reading of Richard Dawkins’ 2004 book, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, had underscored for him:

Goines On: تونِس

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Mrs. Goines’ chuckle reached Goines in the kitchen. She was at the dining table reading the day’s features while he prepared breakfast.
    “What?” Goines inquired, in the shorthand that had evolved from his various ways of asking her what she was finding funny or otherwise interesting.
    “The people of Tunisia are obsessed with tuna. They put tuna on pizza, pastries, and in many other dishes.”
    Goines joked that was probably why the country was named “Tunisia.”
    And then he wondered why Tunisia (تونِس) wasn’t spelled “Tunasi,” pronounced “tuna sea,” but he didn’t have the Arabic for that thought, nor the pronunciation.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

Boldt Words & Images: Sawdust (a poem and its back story)

By Bob Boldt

Not much talk in my father’s shop.
I stood for hours watching him work
helping where I could. 
I remember how it felt when my sweat
caught the ticklish maple dust,
in Tinley Park, Illinois, 1947. 
 

Shots (a true story)

By Pat Hamilton

Nick and I walked home from the campus movie, knowing that a few cold beers in the breeze on the front porch would cap the end of a long stifling summer day.
    “Help! Help!” someone cried next door. “They’re killing us all in here!”

Goines On: Is today a sex day?

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The Goineses had just had sex, something they hadn’t had in weeks.
    Or was it months? Goines remembered groping Mrs. Goines more than she wanted when they were in Paris the previous year. Had that been the last time?
    They had had sex right after lunch, after a few pieces of Hershey’s milk chocolate. Chocolate was indispensable, he said aloud because of the occasion.

Goines On: Holy days, holidays...all folly days?

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Looking for something old to fill the day’s posting slot, Goines discovered that exactly 14 years earlier he had railed against holidays, including both the secular ones like the Fourth of July and the holy ones (“holy” was in quotes). He had declared that about the only good thing to be said for holidays was that they excused us from going to the office.

    Had Goines been going through hard times at the office 14 years ago? He doubted they were hard times. They were midway through the tenure of UNC President Erskine Bowles, and Erskine was delightful, more outgoing than Molly Corbett Broad had been.

All Over the Place: “Rootworks” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Rootworks

This is the length of tree

and this is the impression a tree makes of root

anaconda long, hooked buffalo thick, yak swayed.

Flame and earth broil over, wind throws out its back,

rain a thunderstorm without lightning, without darkness,

but thunder, lots of thunder

and later, rain a storm of darkness, without thunder,

but lightning, lots of lightning.

Links to First Appearances of “Goines On” Covers

A Visual Index

By Moristotle

While applying the finishing touches to “Links to André Duvall’s Father Billy Charles Duvall’s Art,” I thought of the rather obvious possibility of constructing a similar index to my “Goines On” vignettes, using the column’s unique cover images and linking each one to the very first (or only) vignette that used it.
    What you see here (and can also see in the sidebar) is the result. Try out a link or two.

And that wasn’t all (or even half of it), because I felt a strong inspiration and motivation to get on with fulfilling a commitment I had made to my son and daughter, that I would begin publishing book collections of my “musings & perusings” before the end of 2023. My initial book would be (and might still be) a collection of some of my better poems.