The dbqpnacci Sequence in the Clouded Skyboard

I am struck, when looking at the obverse of each postcard I received today (one from Roy Arenella and one from Mick Boyle), how similar they look. The qbdp subsequence of the dbqpnacci sequence in Mick’s card, which forms almost a star in its center, resembles the crooked curvilinear “hinged clouds” in the photograph on Roy’s card.


Roy Arenella, "Hinged Clouds" (2 Nov 1985)
Roy’s card is numbered 392 (but without any additional characters—we’d expect “p/c” for “photo/card”). Dated 14 Sep 04, his quasi-cancellation includes a rubberstamping of a cloud, within brackets and surrounding a minus sign, which he says equals “zero cloud” (or no cloud at all). For his stamp, he uses a 32-cent stamp (the anagram of the Postal Service’s required denomination) of the Wright Brothers’ Model B biplane suspended in a delicately clouded sky.

In his note—punctuated as usual with attractive tree-like I’s—Roy wrote that he enjoyed my visual poem “o’cloud” because he found it “manual, low-tech, black & white, constructivist (or at least visably structured) ‘imaginative’ & a little wacky. And it’s about ‘NĀTCHĂ.’” He goes on to point out that there are few good visual poems about nature. Very true, I believe, but his point made me realize that I’ve made quite a few vispoems about nature including my favorite, “HY,” which appears (a big scraggly) here.


Mick Boyle, "qbdp" Obverse (Sep 2004)
Mick Boyle creates clusters of dbqpnacci sequences on his cards, in toto reminding me of the diagramming of a chemical or a DNA sequence. A wonderful sense of design on this card, which he


Mick Boyle, "qbdp" Reverse (Sep 2004)
extends, almost surreptitiously onto the reverse of the card, where a bit of the qbdp subsequence appears in the northwest corner of a picture of men on a beach we cannot see, before a large body of water, and beneath a sky of schematic clouds that appear to’ve been created out of punctuation marks.

un violon d’ingres