I said yesterday that May must have more Egoslavian Holy Days than any other month. Ligeti was born ninety years ago today. Xenakis is tomorrow, then a couple of days off, then the 31st, birthday of the Patron Saint of Autoblogography (hint: look on Left Blogroll; without doubt the past, current, and future most posted youtube on this blog forever, amen). Serendipity, when Kind, is glorious, providing kayfabe-rich bleggal festivals to front-end the first weeks of the Blog Days of Summer and ease the pangs of seasonal bleg-ennui and blogblahs.
New stuff there, will be here tomorrow (or not) when I've not someone's birthday to blogwhoringly celebrate.
- I'm so fucking nuts I think it deliberate that within a week of Obama's speech on terrorism that news is leaked by officials that OFUCK! THE CHINESE!
- Teaching children to fear dissent.
- Disaster porn and elite panic.
- Data mining and digital death.
- Ken Cuccinelli, hard-right winger Virginia gubernatorial candidate, is absolutely correct to call Terry Motherfucking McAuliffe a carpet-bagger. He symbolizes Democratic Party decadence and corruption as well as anybody.
- MOCO parents upset with new report cards!
- Humans can be assholes.
- Things. Something he said reminded me of a favorite trick I do before starting any novel: open a novel more than one-third but not more than two-thirds and read one - only one - paragraph and then shut the book. When you come upon the paragraph in the regular course of reading a book get a cheap rush of deja vu. Fun!
- Catholicism, freedom, Patti Smith.
- Silliman's always generous litlinks.
- Coetzee, for those of you who do.
- Lontano.
ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT RESCUE
M.L. Smoker
The time is important here—not because this
has been a long winter or because it is my first
at home since childhood—but because there is so much
else to be unsure of. We are on the brink of an invasion.
At a time like this how is it that when I left only a week ago
there was three feet of snow on the ground,
and now there is none, not even a single patch
on in the shadow of the fence-line.
And to think I paid a cousin twenty dollars
to shovel the walk. He and two of his buddies,
still smelling of an all-nighter, arrived at 7 am
to begin their work. When I left them a while later
and noticed their ungloved hands, winter made me feel
selfish and unsure. This ground seems unsure
of itself for its own reasons
and we do not gauge enough of our lives
by changes in temperature.
When I first began to write poems
I was laying claim to battle.
It started with a death that I tried to say
was unjust, not because of the actual
dying, but because of what was left.
What time of year was that?
I have still not yet learned to write of war.
I have friends who speak out—as is necessary—
with subtle and unsubtle force.
But I am from this place and a great deal
has been going wrong for some time now.
The two young Indian boys who almost drowned
last night in the fast-rising creek near school
are casualties in any case.
There have been too many just like them
and I have no way to fix these things.
A friend from Boston wrote something to me last week
about not having the intelligence
to take as subject for his poems
anything other than his own life.
For a while now I have sensed this in my own mood:
This poem was never supposed to mention
itself, other writers, or me.
But I will not regret that those boys made it home,
or that thee cousins used the money at the bar.
Still, there are no lights on this street.
Still, there is so much mud outside
that we carry it indoors with us.
