Day Two of the pilot project Lazy Ass Weekend Archival Blogging (LAWAB; it's an onomatopoeia) and new rules already. If I read stuff on a Friday or Saturday night that is not directly and topically connected to that particular night's Daily Clusterfuck I will pass it along. For instance, a return of an old avatar at the back-up place and a sensation of hollowness and an indifferent man and a twist of perception and prophets agree on one thing and { feuilleton }'s weekend links and Autumn Chronograph: a Chapbook (and thank you, Red). Went back to September 2006, discovered I wasn't daily poeming and songing then, discovered 4/5th of what songs I did post then are now dead, discovered 3/5th of the songs posted two years ago are now dead, so going lawabing for songs might relatively soon be problematic. Was reminded of some old friends, though, they've been added to Blogrolls Left, another lawabing benefit of LAWAB, in which Fuck It, to no one's surprise, is trouncing Fuck This early in the first half.
1945: THE DEATH OF THE GODS
Randall Jarrell
In peace tomorrow, when your slack hands weigh
Upon the causes; when the ores are rust
And the oil laked under the mandates
Has puffed from the turbines; when the ash of life
Is earth that has forgotten the first human sun
Your wisdom found: O bringers of the fire,
When you have shipped our bones home from the bases
to those who think of us, not as we were
(Defiled, annihilated - the forgotten vessels
Of the wrath that formed us: of the murderous
Dull will that worked out its commandment, death
For the disobedient and for us, obedient) -
When you have seen grief wither, death forgotten,
And dread and love, the witnesses of men,
Swallowed up in victory: you who determine
Men's last obedience, yourselves determined
In the first unjudged obedience of greed
And senseless power: you eternal States
Beneath whose shadows men have found the stars
And graves of men: O warring Deities,
Tomorrow when the rockets rise like stars
And earth in blazing with a thousand suns
That set up there within your realms a realm
Whose laws are ecumenical, whose life
Exacts from men a prior obedience -
Must you learn from your makers how to die?
I WAS AT CONGRESS WITH MYSELF
Catherine Wagner
I was at congress with myself to conclude
should I tax myself, to strengthen my
reserves and strictly exercise
myself, so I'll haul myself back up
if I fall down
or should I ratchet down the tax, release the lever
and run outside and see what's there to do
and give myself a job, or blow it
on one bamboozle eve extravaganza
the world at night was twitching and flapping out
from my congress, and I gathered it in and dreamt
to my outnumberment
AFTER A FEW WHIFFS OF ANOTHER WORLD
Thomas Lux
After a few whiffs of another world
he decided to stay with the stench
of the present: dumpster lids everywhere
rising like cakes, garbage scows
moving in long orderly lines
across the harbor.... The olfactory - he loves it
even when it wafts, wracking all points
of the compass. It's always invisible
and takes its direction according to the whimsy
of wind, or fans, or the waves
of a hand. Cave dwellers knew it,
and dogs. The bare smell
of dirt on cabbage, the snow-
on-your-arm smell. Even
in the abstract: fear-smell, like spit
on a knife blade. And
what the worms inhale, and then
the smell of dew on barbed wire, the sweet,
thick smell of sex, slick,
our lungs giddy and pink with it....
It's not the world which is good or bad
and so we run our noses over everything.
Even the dumb have this sense.
