100 POETIC iCARDS
Greetings
This page is dedicated to digital postcards that I created back in the day when Apple still offered a variety of online services connected to.Mac: iCards being one of those. ‘Among the various casualties from the. Mac to MobileMe Switch was the loss of iCards, a simple online greeting card feature of .Mac that let users select a topical card for various occasions to customize and e-mail to a friend. iCards made up one of the features that Apple retired when MobileMe assumed the throne, even though they weren’t restricted to .Mac subscribers’.
During a critical time in my life when I was unemployed and transition from Los Angeles to Colorado, I spent roughly 9 months writing poetry which became a manuscript of approximately 175 poems. I called the collection: ‘How I Spent My Nervous Breakdown’ (HISMNB). The writing of these poems took place daily, longhand in pencil, and with final drafts being ‘typed’ afterward. The whole process was quite therapeutic, and I was indeed experiencing a breakdown of sorts, but this creative process, along with guitar, swimming, cooking, and resting stabilized my emotional derailment (also of sorts).
In the collection: HISMNB, the poems are of different lengths, some long, some short, but mostly vignettes that were to the point. Many were quirky, many somewhat confessional. There was quite a bit of silliness, but also some deep reflective distillations of what I was experiencing at the time. Los Angeles was in a state of racial upheaval due to the Watts riots and the incident with the beating of Rodney King (caught on film). All of this was going on in the background during my personal catharsis.
What I like about the iCard format was that is was small: offering half of the the card for an image and the other half for text (limited to a small number of characters). There also was a cool postmark that was dated and indicated that the card was posted in Cupertino, CA which is the home of Apple. Having completed the manuscript of How I Spent My Nervous Breakdown (which is available in a custom format should one be interested), I began creating a collection of iCards for the next 2 or so years. The artwork provided by Apple for the digital postcards really sucked. But there was an option to fly in your own artwork which I did. Also, the space provided on the right side of the card (which was a tad bit smaller than the left side of the card which contained the image) could accommodate about 60 words at the most (contingent on font selection).
I liked this challenge, as many of the poems from HISMNB were considerably longer, and this gave me an opportunity to distill the original poems and get right to the point. Both versions, however: the original and the edited have merit. Among the iCards, there is a small group that was distilled from a collection of poems called: ‘Poetry My Ass’ which I wrote specifically for my late sister-in-law who had cancer; and I was sending her in addition to the whole body of works these additional silly iCards that had a variety of images of donkeys accompanied by ridiculous commentaries meant to cheer her up.
If you resonate with the enclosed iCards please feel free to copy them. If you are interested in the original manuscript, feel free to contact me and I will create a customized manuscript for you. Think Charles Bukowski meets Dr. Seuss, with a bit of Ogden Nash thrown in and you’ll get the idea. rP
Some of the various signatures:
◯ How I Spent My Nervous Breakdown ✍
◯ Poetry My Ass ✍
◯ From The Desk of Dick Prickoff ✍
◯ nYRd ✍
☯ rP Yingity Yangity
Dweller and Room
sawing wood
disillusionment
addiction
golden guru
work of forgotten men
endless summer
i make no claim
day after tomorrow
coming of age
change
and i can sing!!
consumed
Mello-phant
No Man’s An Island
be still
One Night Only
happy hour
Blue Guitar
in my mind
¡whirred!
blind man
Crow
eight directions
rubberduckie
empty galleries
Extraordinary Man
facing
fear’s motherlode
first the pudding
Flamingos
Tavern Door
Fractions
Frosty Must Die
Gonzalez
hokie pokie
I Go Bye Bye Now
impulse item
lederhosen
Maharishi
make it so
mapmakers
mobius
Mr. Bigalow
my liege
Nanking
night rain
not do i prefer
oxymorons
Point to Point
prospect
Ram and Babe
restful is the merging of the day
ring it
rush hour
Sensei
shades
speckled hen
Shut the Fuck Up (Won’t You Now?)
standingovation
states
strapped on
stroke of one
swept away
swinging doors
Take This Coat!
tendriled
test drive
the song of gulls
they nod
this and that
tickets
to own a shadow
Vow
wax and wane
we 5 men
wet horizon
What is the Sound?
what say yee?
what’s that dear?
when my ship comes in
Whence & Wither
Wooden Man
word!
Yes! Mr. Peikoff
yesh sahib, yes
yon & hither
coconut
when my fears arise, on any given day,
i feel the rush of anxiety;
and breaking with propriety,
aye aye! withdraw from society.
all because of anxiety..
anxiety, anxiety.
when i was young i yelled a lot.
i cried a lot, and i ran a lot.
but i also played the guitar a lot.
guitar a lot, guitar a lot.
now i’m older, i’ve aged somewhat 🙂
i no longer yell, but i cry, so what!
i’m ‘running’, ‘still’, and i’m still a nut:
a betel nut, a hickory nut,
a buffalo nut, a coconut.
but i still play guitar, play guitar a lot.
this helps with my sobriety;
and also my anxiety!
and sometimes for variety…
i rhyme a lot, i rhyme a lot!
after all it’s not a crime a lot,
in fact it’s quite sublime a lot…
to rhyme a lot, to rhyme a lot!!
i put the lime in the coconut,
and drank ’em both together,
i drank ’em both up,
Woo Woo i feel better!
POETRY MY ASS COLLECTION : Silly Poems Sent to My Dear Sister-in-Law While in Hospice Care
(In Memory of Dee (Posner) Zenith: ICUCharge R.N. @ St. John’s, Santa Monica, CA :: Dedicated 47 Years)
An Ass and a Half
My Ass is Part Irish
Ass Freche
4 Asses
My Little Ass
1st Class Ass
Grande Sombrero
Fernando
Your Face, My Ass!
Fin