yellow polkadot bikini

“She wore an itsy bitsy teenie weenie, yellow polkadot bikini.”

—Paul Vance & Lee Pockriss, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie, Yellow Polkadot Bikini, 1960.

what beautiful diamonds!

“‘Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!’

‘Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.’”

—Mae West, in Night After Night, 1932.

I used to be Snow White

“I used to be Snow White . . . but I drifted.”

—Mae West, quoted in Joseph Weintraub’s Peel Me A Grape, 1975.

a purple glow

“There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”

—W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, 1892.

great black oxen

“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.”

—W.B. Yeats, The Countess Cathleen, 1895.

the sparks blown out of a smithy

“When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?”

—W.B. Yeats, To The Secret Rose, 1897.

London 2012

I like work

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

—Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat, 1889

primary-color splendor

“Now it was Be-In
and this one event set the
cultural tone of the year
along with the rhymed doublet: Flower Power

There were 20,000 there to surge
in primary-color splendor
with the fine Pacific psyche-light
at last outshining
the Puritanical searchlight
from Plymouth Rock

as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, Jerry Rubin, Gary Snyder, Tim Leary,
Lenore Kandel, Ginsberg & others
made words and music.”

—Edward Sanders, The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg: A Narrative Poem, 2000.

Incense And Peppermints

Paul Dean, Incense And Peppermints, collage, 14″x14″, 2007.