2011/12/26

Nothing Is Plumb, Level, or Square



The blogroll reorg has been completed. I use the blogrolls as my bookmarking system. The primary (but not only) reason I moved from typepad fourteen months ago is I wanted the floating blogrolls Blooger provides, the self-updating function: I love it. Still, there are, for whatever reasons, blogs and sites that don't or can't feed the burners, and they sink to the bottom. Look! Over there in the left column, a new blogroll, just beneath the above photo of Fleabus, Feedless. All are worth your time.

Blegsylvania still in Giftmas slowdown, so yes, this is another mail-it-in post. As for Giftmas, I made out like a thief, especially thanks to SeatSix and Earthgirl - I now own my very first piece of Apple machinery. Tell me what apps I should download for the iPad, you fellow complicit capitalist stooges! And as much as I'd like to write about my MiL and BiL, you'll have to make do with songs, links, and poem.










LOVE SONG: I AND THOU

Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
     the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
     any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
     dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
     I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
     for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
     hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
     at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
     Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
     it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
     for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
     skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
     but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
     will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
     to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
     I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.