Fuck it, blogtalk! I write to final draft at GAH! and then c/p it to BLCKDGRD. I publish as I go at GAH! so if I accidentally delete everything (which I've done three too many times) I have the published blog to help me recreate the post; also, if I accidentally hit Publish Post instead of Save As Draft (done four too many times) before I want to publish at BLCKDGRD I've no way to pull back the feeds. I am a roobyhoor.
A good friend of the blog wrote to welcome me home from Britain, and in the email chain she mentioned the Noxzema Bottle Blue (NBB) background with white type hurts her eyes. Perhaps she will comment please if her existence is called into question. NBB isn't going anywhere; it's my favorite color, but blogfriend isn't the first to dislike dark backgrounds and since GAH! is default black type on off-white and it's the very same post, GAH! if you like better.
- Your president.
- Yes, I know Obama turned populist during yesterday's presser, but since it's certain to be a point of conversation tonight, more tomorrow.
- Now Somalia.
- Ideology and rivalry, part three.
- Yes, giving away GAH! requires a pre-GAH! GAH!
- Capitalism.
- Capitalism.
- No longer Rome, not yet Greece.
- Dateline Hell.
- Yes I am such a motherfuckingly happy roobyhoor.
- Austerity, bitchez.
- j30strike.org
- (h/t)
- Ode to work. Mine is in February.
- Singing penis.
- Yes, please let me know what you think, though I hasten to say I make no promises on the sustaining of Gah and, as I type this, NBB is not going away.
- A rhetorical question.
- East Bethesda?
- Rockville is silly.
- Clarksburg!
- Some new places in Because Left and Because Right.
- A Mask of Motion.
- Gass. Reread Omensetter's Luck earlier this year, plan to reread The Tunnel late this year, early next year.
- Tom Sleigh.
- Revolution wavers.
- Dead ripe.
- Mining the audio motherlode.
- Ten to one.
- Heart in your heartache.
- I didn't see it coming.
ARMY CATS
Tom Sleigh
1.
Over by the cemetery next to the CP
you could see them in wild catmint going crazy:
I watched them roll and wriggle, paw it, lick it,
chew it, leap about, pink tongues stuck out, drooling.
Cats in the tanks’ squat shadows lounging.
Or sleeping curled up under gun turrets.
Hundreds of them sniffing or licking
long hind legs stuck in the air,
great six-toed brutes fixing you with a feral,
slit-eyed stare . . . everywhere ears twitching,
twitching as the armor plate expanding
in the heat gave off piercing little pings.
Cat invasion of the mind. Cat tribes
running wild. And one big pregnant
female comes racing through weeds to pounce
between the paws of a marble dog
crouching on a grave and sharpens
her claws against his beard of moss
before she goes all silky, luxuriously
squirming right under the dog’s jaws,
and rolls over to expose her swollen belly.
Picture her with gold hoop earrings
and punked-out nose ring like the cat goddess Bast,
bronze kittens at her feet, the crowd drinking wildly,
women lifting up their skirts as she floats down
the Nile, a sistrum jangling in her paw.
Then come back out of it and sniff
her ointments, Lady of Flame, Eye of Ra.
2.
Through the yard the tanks come gunning,
charioteers laughing, goggles smeared with dust
and sun, scattering the toms slinking
along the blast wall holding back the waves
from washing away white crosses on the graves,
the motors roaring through the afternoon
like a cat fuck yowling on and on.
The gun turrets revolving in the cats’ eyes
swivel and shine, steel treads clanking,
sending the cats flying in an exodus
through brown brittle grass, the stalks
barely rippling as they pass.
3.
After the last car bomb killed three soldiers
the Army Web site labelled them “martyrs.”
Four civilians killed at checkpoints. Three on the airport road.
A young woman blown up by a grenade.
Facts and more facts . . . until the dead ones
climb up out of the graves, gashes on faces
or faces blown away like sandblasted stone
that in the boarded-up museums’
fractured English “leaves the onlooker
riddled and shaken, nothing but a pathetic gaping . . .”
And then I remember the ancient archers
frozen between reverence and necessity—
who stare down the enemy, barbarians,
as it’s told, who nailed sacred cats to their shields,
knowing their foes outraged in their piety
would throw down their bows and wail like kittens.
Over by the cemetery next to the CP
you could see them in wild catmint going crazy:
I watched them roll and wriggle, paw it, lick it,
chew it, leap about, pink tongues stuck out, drooling.
Cats in the tanks’ squat shadows lounging.
Or sleeping curled up under gun turrets.
Hundreds of them sniffing or licking
long hind legs stuck in the air,
great six-toed brutes fixing you with a feral,
slit-eyed stare . . . everywhere ears twitching,
twitching as the armor plate expanding
in the heat gave off piercing little pings.
Cat invasion of the mind. Cat tribes
running wild. And one big pregnant
female comes racing through weeds to pounce
between the paws of a marble dog
crouching on a grave and sharpens
her claws against his beard of moss
before she goes all silky, luxuriously
squirming right under the dog’s jaws,
and rolls over to expose her swollen belly.
Picture her with gold hoop earrings
and punked-out nose ring like the cat goddess Bast,
bronze kittens at her feet, the crowd drinking wildly,
women lifting up their skirts as she floats down
the Nile, a sistrum jangling in her paw.
Then come back out of it and sniff
her ointments, Lady of Flame, Eye of Ra.
2.
Through the yard the tanks come gunning,
charioteers laughing, goggles smeared with dust
and sun, scattering the toms slinking
along the blast wall holding back the waves
from washing away white crosses on the graves,
the motors roaring through the afternoon
like a cat fuck yowling on and on.
The gun turrets revolving in the cats’ eyes
swivel and shine, steel treads clanking,
sending the cats flying in an exodus
through brown brittle grass, the stalks
barely rippling as they pass.
3.
After the last car bomb killed three soldiers
the Army Web site labelled them “martyrs.”
Four civilians killed at checkpoints. Three on the airport road.
A young woman blown up by a grenade.
Facts and more facts . . . until the dead ones
climb up out of the graves, gashes on faces
or faces blown away like sandblasted stone
that in the boarded-up museums’
fractured English “leaves the onlooker
riddled and shaken, nothing but a pathetic gaping . . .”
And then I remember the ancient archers
frozen between reverence and necessity—
who stare down the enemy, barbarians,
as it’s told, who nailed sacred cats to their shields,
knowing their foes outraged in their piety
would throw down their bows and wail like kittens.
