This week’s submission is brought to you by the word, sauce, the color, brown, and the number, three.

Since I don’t have time to produce anything new, I’m brown nosing by pulling three illustrations I completed for my recycle bins a few years ago. A few months after I created twenty four illustrations to identify my sorted containers, the recycle center changed their policy regarding separating materials eliminating the need for multiple containers.

Sometimes an exercise in organization shape shifts into an exercise in futility.

delayed submission of last week’s word, chain.

First, shed. Untitled poem, or random thought? You can decide, I’m feeling non-committal.

Pieces of me fall away in a seasonal fashion,
obsolete, no longer defining who I am.
Shedding like skin,
Once purposeful, now unnecessary.
Change, the only constant.

Last week’s word, chain reminded me of grade school, when classrooms would compete against each other to prove who had the most “school spirit”. To declare your “spirit” you brought in pocket change to buy paper links for your classroom’s spirit chain. Links cost a nickel or a dime, and the classroom with the longest chain won the spirit award.

I can’t remember where the money raised went. Maybe cheerleading uniforms, or decorations for the homecoming dance. In retrospect it seems like a horrible scheme designed to extort milk money from gullible children.

This was a small private school that relied on car washes, magazine and bake sales to operate, so its possible the money put books in the library or toilet paper in the restrooms. First world problems, but how is ingenue supposed to know without an education?

Neutral Cause Paper Chain in White
mixed media on colored paper

This week Lynnea offers up ghost for Poetry Friday’s inspiration.

Through the years I have accumulated an obscene amount of art paper. Ordering excess art supplies, I feared one day living hand to mouth and choosing between ph neutral drawing paper and minimum coverage car insurance. Based on that criteria, I pronounce my life so far a success. With all these paper choices, I steal paper from the printer to do preliminary sketches for Poetry Friday. Not the package in the closet, or the office supply box on the floor, but the actual printer drawer. Don’t know if I am lazy or frugal cheap.

This weeks submission is pencil on printer paper, with digital color adjustments and highlights. The model is the dog we adopted in January. I envy her confident easy-going posture.

It’s Poetry Friday and for the first time in uh, I dunno months, my submission is complete upon the due date. The word this week is screen.

Basically this is just an excuse to go braless in the name of art, not that an excuse is necessary. For a while any given Tuesday was sufficient. After staring at functional lingerie for twenty minutes, it occurred to me maybe I should focus more on clothing for subject matter. It eliminates the need for a contrived narrative and tells its own story without wasting words.

Years before I entered a physical relationship, I overheard a women say, when shopping for lingerie, you should always base your final decision on how it looks on the floor, because thats where it spends most of its time.