Resigning One's Self to the Inevitable

The restless wind never waits

For us to catch our breath,

We have to run

Just like it.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poetic Dysfunction

As in penis, stud—

When you think you’re in

Doubt of the outcome.

Moderator’s comments: Even though one senses a self-indulgent literary poseur at work here—one who revels in letting himself drift headlong towards the literal pornographic as opposed to the artistic—one can still envy Cinquor’s masterly albeit quirky handing of an overworked but still controversial phenomenon whose occurrence continues to be on the rise, judging from the increased exposure it’s been getting lately. 

What's in a Name?

Well, if it’s Huuklyeand Cinquor’s, just the sight of it should be enough to send most readers into convulsions; those who get over the initial shock of seeing such an odd name are still faced with the daunting task of pronouncing it, not to mention examining its etymological roots. As a matter of fact, ever since Cinquor selected me as a conduit for his apophthegmata, my incoming email box has been inundated by a steady stream of inquiries about his unconventional moniker, so I think it’s high time I did some serious speculating about it.

So where is one to start? For a start, let’s examine the spelling and separate the words into their five respective syllables: Huuk-lye-and Cin-quor. Stress? ( ’- -’- ) To my romantic ear, this meter sounds suspiciously like Byron’s romping anapestics in his poem "The Destruction of Sennacherib" i.e., “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”, but I could be mistaken. However, if it is anapestic, we must examine the possibility of Huuklyeand being an Assyrian name and Cinquor a Hebrew one, basing our interpretation as such on Byron’s poem, which is a rendering of the famous battle for sovereignty over Jerusalem written from the Hebrew point of view, viz. Huuklyeand (Assyrian) and Cinquor (Hebrew)—an amalgamation symbolizing the assimilative bi-polar properties of the imagination whenever it’s faced with a situation requiring the deployment of imaginal space as defined so eloquently by Joe Hutchison in one of his recent, illuminating posts.

So far so good, but we have to be a bit more cautious when approaching the thorny subject of pronunciation, so let me take a stab. The first syllable is most certainly pronounced as the double “o” in “look” rather than “Huck” as in “Finn” or “Hulk” as in The Green Giant, a claim based on the fact that there was no Huck Finn, Hulk or Green Giant when Byron composed his poem; the second syllable looks like “lye” but on closer investigation, there could be a diphthong lurking in there, making the syllable sound like “lie-in”, “line” or “lined”—your guess is as good as mine (not as in “mien”). “Cinquor” poses no problem and should be pronounced as “sinker” and certainly not “sank-her”, or worse yet, “canker”.

Of course, this blog is always open to other speculations regarding Huuklyeand’s name, as long as they have that inimitable air of gritty conviction we have all come to expect from his apophthegmata.

It Happens Every Time, Mr. Frost

Asleep, I need to keep awake

Poems that plow deep furrows,

Nurturing seeds of promise

I must find time to reap;

When I wake, I find reams,

Reams of shallow promises

Still keeping me asleep.

Coming upon a Dead Toad, I Remember an Old Friend from the Vietnam Era

When I saw what had happened

To the toad that only yesterday

Had been reconnoitering my garden,

The first thing that shot through

My mind was my buddy’s strange

But now too, too familiar

Nickname splayed out

Cross the road there.