What I don’t know: what happened to yesterday’s post (this is it, again). I could swear I’d posted this and even gotten a comment or two on it already. Where it went baffles me. Apparently it’s now keeping company with the magically disappearing previous post about coulrophobia, which I also had to re-post. Go figure. So here’s Round 2 of Yesterday’s Post.

That slyly generous character ‘Nessa, over at her Stronghold, has tagged me once again, this time to participate in a bit of speculative introspection via the medium of the ABC award. I am happy to state that she did not give me the ABC award in the sense that I knew it as a young squirt, when we generously offered our playmates ABC gum (Already Been Chewed). So while I know from reading her post that ‘Nessa did indeed ruminate on the award before sharing it, I am glad to announce that there was no saliva whatsoever on the award when she passed it along. In fact, it was much like getting a good and playful cyber-hug, something I would call quite the opposite in a very nice way. So I send many thanks to dear ‘Nessa and will give many thinks to the alphabet I am to present to you as a response.

Awesome Blog Content Award

Rules of this award:

1. Pass this on to unlimited fellow bloggers.

2. Share some things about you, using the alphabet.

You know that I am going to put my own spin on the whole thing, because that’s just how my strange little brain prefers to work. While the award’s tradition appears to be that one offers a personally resonant word for each letter of the alphabet with a couple of words of explanation for each choice, I feel compelled to do some of my rhyming play with the puzzle, for no good reason of course, so I’m off to scrawl an alphabet of quatrains.

And as for sharing the award, I must tell you that the reason I subscribe to your blogs and read them as faithfully as time will allow (whether I have a moment to comment or not every time) because your blogs are simply brimming with awesome content. So I would be horribly remiss if I didn’t share this award with each and every one of you with whom I am so happily carrying on commentary-conversations and from whom I am delightedly learning new and funny and moving and useful and otherwise wonderful stuff every single day via my subscriptions. That means that if you’re reading this and we have conversed about our blogs, I am offering you the opportunity to play this amusing game yourself and consider me a grateful sharer of the fun. If you’re too busy, private, tired of blog tagging, or committed to more meaningful activities, believe me, I will not be insulted by your opting not to join in the play. I bless you for choosing to do or not do what suits you best.

Here, then, is today’s Alphabet of Me. I cannot promise to mind my Ps and Qs despite the alphabetical mandate, because behaving properly tends to chafe me. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A is for Art

Art I seek, and fain would honor Art

with skill and courage, for the larger part

of life and love and light that may be found

awaken to Art’s call, no other sound.

Balance neatly conjured from unlike, unequal parts

is best achieved by using that most delicate of arts

which we might call diplomacy or mediating care

or just the coaxing of agreement from the thinnest air.

Community is my desire: I would the flame become a fire,

the bloom become a garden whole, the note float into barcarolle,

the morsel be a meal complete enough for everyone to eat,

the joy be broadcast far and wide until there is no Other Side.

Doggerel dances its jigs in my brain

until, irresistibly, I can’t refrain

from making up poems as silly as dogs

would be to write doggerel verses for blogs.

Ethereal loveliness, sweetness and grace

all whisper their zephyrs of breath as they chase

my sorrows and fears and my troubles away

and replace them with lyrical words night and day.

Flora, garden goddess thou,

wreathed with flowers upon thy brow,

what scented bowers have you grown

that leave my senses overthrown!

Gothic grotesqueries fill the abyss

of night in my cranium; stranger than this

is that, while they are creeping their hideous way

into my grey matter, it still feels like play . . .

Hungry every minute,

always looking for a spoon,

my midst has something in it,

but I wanna eat more, soon!

Idiosyncratic me,

how idiotic would it be

if I should be less odd? Absurd–

also unlikely, ‘pon my word.

J is for Jester

Jester to the king and queen and to the populace,