Dennis the Peasant is sixty-nine today. This guy bought me lunch yesterday. Thanks! for the book and tunes and bleggalgazing! Drones. Yogurt gives mice big balls. Police state. Sympathy for Obama. He, um, posted a link to that on twitter, he's gonna get mauled. Call me when Feingold runs in primary v Obama. Dissident defined. Motherfucking Obama. American exceptionalism. Topics in the bleggalgazing included reminiscing over long-dead blogs, dour predictions for Blegsylvania's present and future. The long and short of capitalism's demise. Zombie politics. Beholden. You calling me a maggot? Speaking of bleggalgazing. Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
It's true, and they play this afternoon in Toronto against a winless team. O fuck. O fuck-me-jig. The Milky Way as a subway map. History as apocalyptic dream. Hamster sent me the first review of the new Mantel I've seen. I've been debating whether to reread Wolf Hall for the third time before reading the new one, but fuck that. Need finish what I'm in first, then Mantel. Margaret Atwood reviews the new Mantel. Anti-epiphany bookmarks project. Peace to people mourning Adam Yauch: I didn't get, smart people I know did. Twilight Singers cover My Bloody Valentine.
VIETNAM EPIC TREATMENT
Donald Revell
It doesn’t matter
A damn what’s playing—
In the dead of winter
You go, days of 1978—
79, and we went
Because the soldiers were beautiful
And doomed as Asian jungles
Kept afire Christ-like
In the hopeless war
I did not go to in the end
Because it ended.
The 20th century?
It was a war
Between peasants on the one side,
Hallucinations on the other.
A peasant is a fire that burns
But is not consumed.
His movie never ends.
It will be beautiful
Every winter of our lives, my love,
As Christ crushes fire into his wounds
And the wounds are a jungle.
Equally, no matter when their movies end,
Hallucinations destroy the destroyers.
That’s all.
There has never been a President of the United States.
And the 21st century?
Hallucination vs. hallucination
In cold battle, in dubious battle,
No battle at all because the peasants
Have gone away far
Into the lost traveler’s dream,
Into a passage from Homer,
A woodcutter’s hillside
Peacetime superstition movie.
On a cold night, Hector.
On a cold night, Achilles.
Around the savage and the maniac
The woodcutter draws a ring of fire.
It burns all winter long.
He never tires of it
And for good reason:
Every face of the flames is doomed and beautiful;
Every spark that shoots out into the freezing air
Is God’s truth
Given us all over again
In the bitter weather of men’s
Hallucinations. There has never been
A President of the United States.
There has never been a just war.
There has never been any life
Beyond this circle of firelight
Until now if now is no dream but an Asia.
