unclouded

June -
a walk on An Unclouded Summer evening
is Glorious 

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The OED word of the day for the erasure poem is 'maillot.' A clear tip of the lads' caps to Le Tour de France that began today. I too can tip my cap, rather cynically, with a different erasure:

The hungry hero
steps forward on 30 June
prepared to survive…
heart thudding…
In a not quite clean Great Race

friends

In this world
As long as a man hath many friends
Then the whole world were happy

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'eurous.'

Had to look twice at that one. Back in the day (15th cent.) it meant prosperous or lucky. Guess they didn't know that six centuries down the road it would look like an adjective for someone with a lot of euros!!

a city

a city is
A melodic sequence of
emotional expression

Rejoice and draw
a Stylin' rhythm
to illustrate the jazz

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'melisma,' a melodic sequence of notes.

Federer can play a melisma with his racquet. Just sayin'...

past experience

Love

in full confidence
deducing the present
from past experience and emotion

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'analysand.' I guess we are officially over the tennis :)

retirement

I guess I just wasn't willing
to stay there

frustrating/
endlessly on edge

retirement

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'moonball,' which continues the Oxford geeks awkward tip of the cap to Wimbledon.

Who in their right mind would associate moonballs with a grass court?

weather

Morning in June...
watching the Skies 
for better Weather

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The OED word for the day for the erasure commentary is 'advantage point, ' perhaps a clumsy bow to the start of Wimbledon.

will

the will overwhelming the work -

Living In the end was Love 

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'stitch-up,' a word the Brits use to mean manipulating a situation to reach a desired outcome by dishonest means.

intervention

Abstract—
an intuitive idea carried out
with creative intervention

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'Turing machine,' named for an English mathematician with an idea for a computer in the 1930s that was never built. More confusing than this urban abstract...

fads

Undue reliance
on Fads & imitations;

honest doesn't count
in a psycho world

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The OED word of the day is 'quantophrenia.'

Did you, like me, look too quickly and see 'quadrophenia' and space off into Who land?

Quantophrenia is the inappropriate application of stats and such in sociology and anthropology. So don't do it :)

wonder

wonder -
a spell by which
miracles can be performed

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The OED word of the day for the erasure poem | commentary is 'mirific,' which means causing wonder.

The process of resuscitating dead/weak watercolors with collage elements has a touch of the mirific for me!

solstice

summer solstice —
sixteen plus hours of sun
salutations

cackling

wearing a ball cap
I escape the crows' notice —
who's cackling now?

steamed up

mid-June —
the glass conservatory
all steamed up

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The statue in front of the Volunteer Park Conservatory - celebrating its centennial - is William Seward. Seems like the title should be "Folly and Folie"!

Given the space constraints of my format here, the full collage is once again on Flickr.

abstract

What we find to be abstract
will be so because we have abstracted it,
and what we have abstracted we can simplify

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'redintegrate.'

No, not a typo. Reintegrate is to restore to a previous position, whereas redintegrate is to restore to a state of wholeness. Had to go back and forth a few times between the two words before I figured out that slight difference.

After that effort, I feel the need to use it. So, let me say that with all the stuff stapled and nailed to this telephone pole, I'm not sure it will ever be redintegrated! :)

fear

Originally
touching every doubt,
is fear

I’ll content myself in managing,
until I sort out the details

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'home affairs.'

joy

joy doth make
the soul its answering
prayer

. . . . . .

The OED word of the day for the erasure poem | commentary is 'anamnesis.'

I think I am going to have amnesia when it comes to anamnesis, which means remembering things past.

Pass the madeleines, please.

form

the element of form

an informal pattern playing
with every conceivable experience

a couple were successful

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'base jump.'

The collage began as a Brommer 'bridge' design exercise, but the accidental placement of the blue-tinted washi instantly turned the landscape stripes into Old Glory. Happy Flag Day!

an original

an Original
is a passport
to Where There is
no Time 

Did you notice?
—just now

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The OED word of the day for the erasure poem | commentary is 'thingummy.'

weeds

weeds -
saving little Flowers in them
was the noblest reward of June

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The OED word of the day for the erasure poem | commentary is 'obsidional,' which means relating to a siege. I love Sir Walter Scott using it once to mean "Inclined to bore people by staying too long."

This collage didn't photograph well, but I hope those acquainted with Portland might see how I was inspired by the bridges on the Willamette for this horizontal design exercise.

a whiff

poetry...
a Daily Encounter 
May have a whiff of the Spiritual

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'jazzetry,' which I hadn't heard of before. It's the reading of poetry with jazz accompaniment. Sounds cool (finger snaps, please!)

The recent collages are from a design workshop with the revered watermedia collagist Gerald Brommer. He's 85 now and a role model for us all, and not just in the studio.

jacaranda

the sidewalk underneath
the jacaranda trees —
purple-on-purple

love

Love…
The elemental nucleus for the Cosmos

. . . . . .

The OED word of the day for the erasure poem |commentary is 'framboid.'

Claremont, California labels itself 'the city of trees and PhDs.' Some of the big eucalypti, cypresses and palms on College Avenue and several I don't know pictured here.

self-indulgent

self-indulgent,
Folk would say,
born of a drowsy nature
these Poems

& that was understandable

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'hoggish.'

The Verbal Building in Claremont, CA spoke to me (you surely didn't think I was gonna pass THAT one by), not least because you can get yoga and pizza in the same building. And, of course, because it had the one crucial characteristic I look for in a sketch: it was smack across from the table where I was having a coffee.

the Mystery

the Mystery...
Joy and awe
in the pit of his stomach

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The OED word of the day is 'minacious,' which to me looks too much like 'minnie' to mean menacing or threatening.

The only thing better than Spanish Colonial Revival architecture is having it under jacaranda trees in bloom!

dive bombed

dive bombed by crows —
if they're so darn smart, why don't they know I'm not a threat?

enough

mentally Release things.

Today is enough.

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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'eco.'

June

June /
Time to make up for
opportunities lost

. . . . . . . .

The OED word of the day for the erasure poem | commentary is 'oenophile.'

birdsong

morning air filled
with the chattering of birds —
daily worm report?

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Just for the record the OED word of the day is 'murder,'  as in a flock of crows; surely the strangest of all the odd herd/flock words.  Almost seems like a Stephen King nonce word!

a long walk

things (material and immaterial) amaze me,
So a long Walk bounded by memories
is glorious

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It is the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, so no surprise that the OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'majestic.'

sanity

Sanity  

I thank god for it,
because Trust, can be used quite cynically Today


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The OED word of the day for the erasure commentary is 'greenwash,' a clever ecological play on 'whitewash' that I hadn't run into before.

Just can't get enough of cloud play on YUPO!