The death of proofreading?

By Jack Brummet
Social Mores Editor

Proofreading and stringent copy-editing may not be dead, but they seem to be wheezing, and almost ready for life support.  While it hasn't happened in The New York Times yet, I suspect it will one day.  Even now, it's not uncommon to find a typo/transposition on the front page.  And sometimes incomplete edits, page breaks where words are missing, etc.   I wonder if the person responsible for this headline kept their job?

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Jack Brummet poem: Scarred For Life

Scarred for Life
By Jack Brummet

It could be watching your family
Diced up in slow-motion

By a sick biscuit with a machete,
Or the day your brother let you down.

It might be when you were wrongfully accused,
Whether they figured it out or not.

Maybe you discovered your wife sleeping
With her Yoga teacher,

Or remember the night your parents
Let you cry yourself to sleep.

It could be the motorcycle accident,
Or the time you saw your Uncle naked.

Under a bad moon,
It can all leave you scarred for life.
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Poem: The Moon Race, 42 years later

The Moon Race, 42 years later
by Jack Brummet


And the race was on —
Movie star Jack Kennedy
V. the spooky shoe pounding Nikita Kruschev.


We charged 226,000 miles
To that pale toenail,
Hell-bent for leather,


To claim title
With old glory or the hammer and sickle
And impale the moon on a dusty pole.


The paramecium of the Milky Way,
We wind in time and untick in the heavens
Under the weather and under the gun.
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Poem by Jack Brummet: The World Seems Especially Verisimilitudinous Tonight

The World Seems Especially Verisimilitudinous Tonight
by Jack Brummet

Swim run fly crawl and creep —
Animals don't kill time
And time loves them back.

Threading high fidelity cirrus,
The sun unloads the last of its rays
And blesses the mountain palisade

So much depends upon
Keeping this up.
And a red wheel-barrow.
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Digital Art: Three - Mona, Pablo, and Jack

click to enlarge

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Analog art - The Jury, by Jack Brummet

acrylic on rough canvas - click to enlarge

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The Suspect, Or, Person Of Interest

click to enlarge

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Digital art by Jack Brummet: Sasquatch 2

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Poem: The Painting by Jack Brummet

The Painting

by Jack Brummet

Stuck under a static sky,

The figure you brushed in

Wants off canvas.

He will not be Man With Blue Banjo anymore.

He wants to be what he will be,

Not sailing a scumbled ocean

Under impasto thunderheads.

He is tired of the dark sun

And wants to lie down and rest.

No news comes from a far country.

The real estate around him —

A confabulation of blue and red stone —

Chills in an un-harbored sea.

The black sun was pushed, fell, or jumped,

To shine back upon itself.

He knows the sun will never set.

He cannot open his mouth to scream.

The oars will never move.

The island of color

Will always be eight inches away

And the boat

Will always be sinking.

The tattered sails hang in the wind.

The next day refuses to begin.

He clutches that blue banjo

As his ship tilts toward heaven.

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Started in 1997, finished 2011

Poem: The Quest by Jack Brummet

The Quest
by Jack Brummet

It’s all one story—
A ragged shape-shifting tale
Of incredible coherence and constance,
Encompassing all you know,
All you don’t know you know,
And all you one day will know.
There is more
To be seen, tasted, heard, and felt
Than can ever be known or told.
Our myths flourish and spread,
Person to person,
And the mysteries of the seas and skies and stars
Fill our collective conscience
With mystical scenes,
Quests, and tales of greatness.
These myths, tales, and fables
Cannot be invented, ordered, or denied.
When you strip away the stage flats, makeup, and costumes,
It’s all one story
Starring our private heroes and dreams.
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Poem: The Peacekeeper by Jack Brummet

The Peacekeeper


by Jack Brummet


1
A roiling thunderstorm clears the air
Like Wyatt Earp's peacekeeper

2
A bad beginning can be overcome,
But a good ending lasts forever
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Poem: The island from eight miles high, by Jack Brummet

The islands from eight miles high

By Jack Brummet

Beneath a chiseled frieze of cerulean blue
Islands recede into the water
To settle on the sea floor

Like an archipelago of Atlantises.
Islands come and go,
Bobbing up and bobbing down

Like lost corks
Drifting the seven seas,
Treading continents,

And the islands and straits.
They crest the waves
Beneath gathering clouds

As flocks of birds
Circumnavigate the globe,
Shuttling from landfall to landfall.
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