Then Up and Pipes the Major, Leave the Hand In or Change the Vows

• For her loved ones who didn't see it last night, here's Planet's hand working on a final art project, photo taken by her friend E, who has the same first name as one of Planet's loved ones.
• Help please. I am looking for word combinations made up of the exact same letters. Adobe/abode. Destiny/density. Preserve/perverse. Please and thanks.
• How many have we killed? Here is the telling sentence: International law acknowledges that killing is not always illegal or wrong, and that a government has the authority to do so as a last resort in genuine self-defense.
• Building a case for self-defense.
• The lunatic fringe that rules the West: The behavior exhibited by Western leaders, especially since the launching of the Terror War -- and especially in the Anglo-American alliance -- would be regarded as criminally insane by any dispassionate diagnosis. This is seen in large matters -- such as the hundreds of thousands of innocent people slaughtered in their criminal aggression in Iraq -- and in small matters. For example, a story in the Guardian this week related how the courageous statesfolk in the U.S. Senate once again kowtowed to their masters in the National Security apparat, and removed a very mild requirement that the United States government issue an annual report telling us how many civilians it killed with its drone-assassination programs the previous year. No dice, said the security archons -- and the Senate said, OK, boss!
• Technocapitalism: Time, Value, and Labor.
• Fucked-up America.

• People lined up this morning in torrential rain to see Bill Clinton speak at Hilltop. Those at the front of the line have been there since Tuesday morning. The line goes down the hill to the left.
• No fences in valley. Frances checks in from New Mexico.
• Is this your homework, Larry?
• Rothenberg's complete Airplane Poems.
• Canetti's Auto da Fe. This should give Jim a chance to rerun some blogposts.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Yes, the Mick Turner below the poem, I've posted it before, his Don't Tell the Driver is my most listened to album of the past year, it gets better each time.
• Piano smashing. I've posted all eleven parts of this in one post, today just have part five, head over to youtube for the other ten parts.

LEAVE THE HAND IN

John Ashbery

Furthermore, Mr. Tuttle used to have to run in the streets.   

Now, each time friendship happens, they’re fully booked.   

Sporting with amaryllis in the shade is all fine and good,   

but when your sparring partner gets there first   

you wonder if it was all worth it. “Yes, why do it?”   

I’m on hold. It will take quite a lot for this music   

to grow on me. I meant no harm. I’ve helped him   

from getting stuck before. Dumb thing. All my appetites are friendly.   

Children too are free to go and come as they please.   

I ask you only to choose between us, then shut down this election.   

But don’t reveal too much of your hand at any given time.   

Then up and pipes the major, leave the hand in,   

or change the vows. The bold, enduring menace of courtship is upon us   

like the plague, and none of us can say what trouble   

will be precipitated once it has had its way with us.   

Our home is marshland. After dinner was wraparound.   

You got a tender little look at it.   

Outside, it never did turn golden.

We Each Bought an Hour with the Grief Puppet

The traditional aarghy Egoslavian song cocktail, posted last night in response to a conversation I had with the obamaphile friend telling me of the existential importance of this Fall's midterm election, re-posted this morning with context and content. Sterling Bundy, don't you know. But, Democrats, I said. Fleabus on drums and guitars, Stanley singing on the above.

• But, Democrats.
• Piketty Diketty Riketty.
• On civility, again. I hadn't thought about McArdle in months.
• Colton Burpo, all grown up.
• Marking territory.
• Pain and parentheses.
• Hilary Mantel interview. (h/t Hamster)
• On Damon Albarn's first solo album.
• Albert Camus dancing.
• XTC's Skylarking fixed?
• Doom and gloom from the tomb: The Clean live 1981!
• I played this a couple of months ago, h/t today to Scarlet Tracery.

GRIEF PUPPET

Sandra Beasley

In the nearby plaza, musicians would often gather.
The eternal flame was fueled by propane tank.
An old man sold chive dumplings from a rolling cart,
while another grilled skewers of paprika beef.
Male turtledoves would puff their breasts, woo-ing,
and for a few coins, we each bought an hour with
the grief puppet. It had two eyes, enough teeth,
a black tangle of something like hair or fur,
a flexible spine that ran the length of your arm.
Flick your wrist, and at the end of long rods
it raised its hands as if conducting the weather.
Tilt the other wrist, and it nodded. No effort
was ever lost on its waiting face. It never
needed a nap or was too hungry to think straight.
You could have your conversation over and over,
past dusk when old men doused their charcoal,
into rising day when they warmed their skillets.
The puppet only asked what we could answer.
Some towns had their wall, others their well;
we never gave the stupid thing a name, nor
asked the name of the woman who took our coins.
But later, we could all remember that dank felt,
and how the last of grief’s flock lifted from our chests.

That Spasm Hymned as Repose

• We thought we would hike Sugarloaf Sunday but when browsing through 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of DC trail guide while watching The Special One kill Scousers' dreams I came upon Bull Run Mountain Conservancy, we thought try something new. It was a terrific (kinda Sugarloafy) hike, a six mile circuit with a thousand foot climb to gorgeous cliffs with a great western overlook.
• We left at half-time actually. Once Steven Gerrard cemented himself forever in Scousers' minds for a monumental fuck-up which gifted Chelsea a goal at half and cost Liverpool the title (provided City win at Everton next week) there was no way Liverpool was going to breakdown The Special One's buses.
• A love letter to Elizabeth Warren. I wrote something catty then whittled it down to this: Elizabeth Warren will never be POTUS if she is who her advocates claim her to be. Which isn't saying she will never be POTUS.
• Welcome to the Age of Meta.
• Los Angeles: Double Face. Today's must, please.
• Storck reminded me Sunday morning of Slugfuckers.

• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• New Inquiry's Sunday reads.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• The Idea of London.
• The Dream of the Novelist: American fiction in the 1960s.
• Bill Knott died sometime in March, I didn't know until Mark posted some Knott poems yesterday. This is true: I've posted Bill Knott poems for years, and every time except for when I posted one March 31st of  this year he sent me a thank you email.
• Three Knott poems I posted last night.
• Sonnet.
• Music for Steamed Rocks.

DEARTH DEMISE

Bill Knott

Satiety help me I have inhabit
of this world. Extant upon its designs
to be more aimlessly fluttering at
the window, to shadow all the patterns

it offers each sun. In frames far as eye
I draw my words towards a juggler's shards
as if our fallings-down our deaths occurred
but did not involve a lot of colloquialized

arm movements, the body language throws. Thus
the shape of your silence when it speaks me
is different than mine in saying you,

though both of them resemble that spasm hymned as
repose lifepause a happen of sorts the way
the horizon's a long way without meaning to.    


    

You True Communicants?

A MEDIUM TO DOUBTERS

Bill Knott

How can I make you sit
Beneath the clairvoyent's
High table at seance,
And, while her tongue transmits
Some tremulous spirit's
Long-withheld voice in a trance,
Make you tongue her clit,
You true communicants?

 *
 
POEM

Bill Knott

The most private part of the clock is the hour,
no, I mean the minute,
or wait, the forever.

The most private part of me is the heart,
no, I mean the nipple,
or wait, the never.

*

FLASH

Bill Knott

Photographs -
lightning bolts which,
their shadows having caught up with them,
perish.

Theme Song Futile Weekend Blegging April 26-27 2014

Patapsco Disc Golf Course, first round = 43343344/333433453 second round 433443333/333433434. Was using one of Dr Z's putters, heavier than I use, I was missing low, it was lame, since I left my new Aviar on my piano bench. I like almost unto love Patapsco, especially before the long grass and ticks, some great unique holes. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17.  Only minus? Fucking Route 29 through East Moco.

United 4, Dallas 1. Motherfucking drench me in cold rain anytime for a 4-1 win. United has won as many league games by April 26 this year than it won all of last year. Happiest walk across to LOUD SIDE! I've seen in ages.

But Where, Oh Where Is the Holy Idiot, Truth Teller and Soothsayer, Familiar of Spirits, Rat Eater, Unhouseled Wanderer Whose Garble and Babble Fill Rich and Poor, Homeless and Housed, with Awe and Fear?

I'm fine, thank you loved ones and friends analog and digital who emailed or texted wondering. I sat at my computer with a cup of coffee yesterday morning just like I always do and... it wasn't a fuck it, it wasn't a fuck this. It wasn't aargh or meh or dare. It wasn't feinting a bleggal hiatus. It wasn't frustration at Dead Blegsylvania. If there was an itsy-bitsy epiphany it wasn't sought. I decided to shut off the laptop and pick up the novel I'm reading* where I left off Thursday night. I do take days off every once in a while. I always give notice so people don't worry. I know my bleggal OCD makes me regular as a digital clock posting-wise. Thank you for worrying. I intended to post yesterday then just decided I wasn't. It seemed too blogslutty even for me to post a post that there will be no post today.

Later yesterday morning, at the dentist for a check-up, the waiting room flat screen was tuned to CNN and CNN was going Full Metal Bundy. The receptionist and hygienist tried to explain in whispers to the other what was going on in Nevada. I kept my mouth shut and my ears averted from flat screen, receptionist, and hygienist. It had occurred to me Thursday night when I was link-fishing for this post that once I would have written something about Full Metal Bundy - the actors, the producers, the audience. I didn't think about it again until I was in the dentist's waiting room and it was on CNN and the receptionist and hygienist were whispering about it, and I didn't think about it again until I wrote this paragraph Friday night after hearing WTOP tease a segment on Full Metal Bundy when I was tuning in for traffic and weather. I once would have written about my barometric pressure re: Full Metal Bundy, and apparently I still am.

I have, of course, thought about little else than my bleggal OCD since getting texts and emails - thank you - asking me if I was dead.

• Which of course means I again post a post that means more to me than most of my posts on the slowest day of the week in Blegsylvania. I do it too much to be the accident I tell myself it is.
• I'm playing Patapsco Saturday morning with Dr Z, going to United v Dallas tonight with SeatSix, if there is blogging tomorrow (and there might not be tomorrow) it will be Disc Golf Blogging and Soccer Blogging (with photos!), so tune in!
• The Fashionable Crackpot.
• Technocapitalism: War Machines and the Immortalist Imperative.
• What is money?
• Hillary Clinton says exactly what you think she would say when asked about Edward Snowden.Has anyone asked Elizabeth Warner what she thinks about Edward Snowden? I'm curious. I bet a pint she says what Hillary Clinton said. Someone should ask her.
• Why nations can't resist austerity.
• Unbuilding II: What is the sense of ruination that we have now?
• The busiest intersection in MOCO? My daily hell! 
• Purple Line! and eminent domain.
• davidly reviews Jacob.
• Now you can by Dave's book digitally (at a ridiculously low price).
• *Melville's Confidence Man.
• The End.
• Defacing the Monument: on Muriel Rukeyser. Click the tag for poems.

FABLE

Tom Sleigh

But where, oh where is the holy idiot,

truth teller and soothsayer, familiar

of spirits, rat eater, unhouseled wanderer

whose garble and babble fill rich and poor,

homeless and housed, with awe and fear?

Is he hiding in the pit of the walkie-talkie,

its grid of holes insatiably hungry,

almost like a baby, sucking in the police sergeant's

quiet voice as he calls in reinforcements?

Oh holy idiot, is that you sniffing the wind

for the warm turd smell on the mounted policemen

backing their horses' quivering, skittish

haunches into the demonstrators' faces?

Oh little village among the villages,

the wild man, the holy Bedlamite is gone,

and nobody, now, knows where to find him...

Lying in mud? lying caked in mud, hair elfed into knots?

Some poor mad Tom roving the heath

for a warm soft place to lie his body down,

his speech obsessed with oaths, demons,

his tongue calling forth the Foul Fiend, Flibbertigibbet

as the horses back slowly, slowly into the crowd

and he eats filth, he crams his ravenous mouth with filth—

and then he sits on his stool in the trampled hay

and deep-rutted mud, he anoints himself

with ashes and clay, he puts on his crown

of fumiter weed and holds his scepter

of a smouldering poker and calls the court to order.

The Disc on the Installer's Desk

See that red star center top of map, off the Tobacco Farm Trail? I lost my Star Wedge there Sunday, the day after playing Seneca with SeatSix when I said, I don't need to order any discs until I get back to my standard level of sucky play. Earthgirl and I love the woods, we are determined to hike every weekend possible. We're old, it was a long winter, we're starting modestly so as to not get discouraged as we build up to lengthier, more ambitious hikes. Little Bennett Park is up 270 near the once charming now hideous town of Clarksburg. The highlighted are the three circuits we've done the past week. I often carry a disc with me when hiking to throw now and then. We were on an open stretch of trail, I threw the Wedge (an Innova Putt and Approach with a low profile and gentle fade), it hit the trail and skipped, I figured three feet, into crushed grass not yet Spring revived, I couldn't find the damn disc. So.

Ordered Sunday night, received yesterday. The blue is the replacement Wedge in the same plastic. The magenta is a beaded Aviar, also in the star plastic, the yellow is an old DX Wolf, I used to throw and roll Wolves all the time for their understability. Innova has a new plastic, the GStar, it's grippier than other plastics. I throw Roadrunners for stable drives, Beast for overstable drives and forehands, and you can't really tell because of the photo, but that Beast is a beautiful school bus yellow, next to Noxzema bottle blue my favorite color.  Best news of all?

The disc company sent me a Missing Low Is Lame sticker, I promptly adhered it to the bottom of the Aviar. It's true. Missing low is lame. A rule to live by. Fine metaphors abound. Here's a self-portrait in a sign about ant mounds, taken yesterday at Bennett.

• Quite accidental. Yes, there is a misspelling in the last sentence.
• Dead Blegsylvania? I've got your disc golf and hiking blegging, Dead Blegsylvania, because missing low is lame.
• A specter is haunting precarity. Since this talks about adjunct professors I am reminded that I am probably correct in maintaining my ban on writing about Hilltop. It has been a point of discussion multiple times at Whatever Night Pints.
• Nothing new under the sun.
• The world of tomorrow 75 years later.
• MOCO Green Party candidate.
• The Great Poets Brawl of 1968.
• The Beginning.
• I'm pretty sure I've posted the Matthea Harvey poem below, not apologizing - it occurred to me when writing this post, it fits this post - just acknowledging.

WAC-A-MOLE REALISM™

Matthea Harvey

At the carnival, Robo-Boy sees only things he recognizes. The Ferris Wheel is an overgrown version of his own bells and whistle eyes. His Flashers, his mother calls them. The Tilt-A-Whirl is the angle his head tilts when the Flirt Program goes into effect, usually in the vicinity of a Cindy or a Carrie, though once he found himself tilting at the school librarian which caused him to wheel in reverse into the Civil War section knocking over a cart of books that were waiting to be shelved under B. There’s a dangerously low stratosphere of pink cotton-candy clouds being carried around by the children. If Robo-Boy goes near them, the alarms will go off. It’s the kind of sticky that would cause joint-lock for sure. In a darker, safer corner Robo-Boy finds the Whack-A-Mole game. He pays a dollar and starts whacking the plastic moles on their heads each time they pop up from the much-dented log. He wins bear after bear. It’s only when he's lugging them home, the largest one skidding face-down along the sidewalk getting dirt on its white nose and light blue belly, that he remembers the program: Wac-A-Mole Realism™—the disc on the installer’s desk. Suddenly it all fits together: the way a deliciously strange thought will start wafting out of his unconscious—and then WHAM, it disappears.

The Dormant Listening Posts Activate

• Working on other projects (and diverting bleggalgazing, of a sort, there). Links for you.
• Four reasons this list will kill you.
• Understanding landscape.
• Another post about hashtags.
• The rhetoric of violence.
• The definitive oral history of a TV classic, or: No Elton John, no MST3K? Universes hurl into oblivion.
• Food links.
• davidly's Kate Bush's London concert misadventure, an update.
• UPDATE! Just got two emails from blooger saying two folks had blogged anonymously on today's post (or one person twice) but neither comment appeared on blooger to approve or delete. I'd post them but I don't know who to attribute them to, so if you care please comment again and sign a name. I'm guessing that I get so much anonymous spambot comments that blooger now just sends to oblivion all anonymous comments. 
• You.
• You.
• UPDATE! Old Dirty Bama, I don't use that email anymore and only check it sporadically, sorry for late response to your email of a fortnight ago. Check your email!
• A riff on birthday boy William Shakespeare.
• Of course I want praise (diverted bleggalgazing). And yes, K, I reserve the right to edit until I abandon, since you again called it cheating.
• In praise of Joyce Carol Oates. It's the freaking italics of interior dialogue that drive me nuts.
• So, guess what I was listening to when falling asleep last night.

SURVEILLANCE REPORT

Vijay Seshardri

The omni-directional mike and the video camera, both tiny,
hidden in the bonsai cypress
are picking up my sunrise self-help talk show,
in the makeshift kitchen studio, in a bathrobe and bunny slippers.
First the opening monologue,
then the body banters with the mind, then queue up the callers.
Caller X is unhappy with the latest dream interpretation.
Caller X is cut off with a flick of the wrist.
Caller Y wants to share that my fearless candor has given her permission
to become utterly transparent herself.
Thank you, Caller Y. Your inner light can be seen from here.
Night-visiting revenants, clerks of the underworld,
gnawing the half-buried roots of being,
spirits of the burning trees, kiss me goodbye.
The tape shows me checking my chronometer and exiting for work.
Observers posted along my morning commute observe the usual detours,
the purchase of potables and comestibles.
Flash forward the digital feed.
At ten hundred hours, the current workplace asset texts,
“Subject agitated. Begging colleagues,
‘Please have the courtesy not to be conscious of me.’ ”
Of the three or four scenarios employed
to predict my next location, during the interminable lunch hour,
when the terrible questions of where to go and what to eat
among choices once enticing but now exposed in all their bitter banality
assault even the most cheerful of our targets,
today, which is a Tuesday, is burning-house-scenario day.
Cloud after cloud of smoke and flames
sweep through and over the turrets,
the widow’s walk, the pergolas, the port-cochere.
Fire boiling through the leaded windowpanes immolates the gillyflowers.
Though I haven’t been located, for reasons I don’t understand,
in the crowd shots pirated from the Eyewitness News feed,
what the crowd feels I would feel if I were there to feel it.
But I’m not there to feel it,
I’m not there at all, there at the next disaster,
the last disaster but one but one but one . . .
The dormant listening posts activate.
Windowless vans crammed with information technology
park on the corners of all the streets.
Oh, the wailing in the control room, the recriminations,
the pointing of fingers, the blame game, the pleas
of the pragmatic to move forward, not backward, and solve this problem,
find me and put me back on the grid.
Where will I be scanned for first? Maybe I’m in the trashed, padlocked
public restroom in the park. The pipes are hissing.
The concrete floor is littered with syringes and treacherous
with pools of chill and fetid standing water.
The mirrors are shattered, and the sinks and urinals are shattered.
This is the restroom nobody ever visits
in the park abandoned by humankind,
the dead zone where the transducer and the infrared lens quail,
where all the signals ricochet.
Or, alternatively, I could be on a beach somewhere.

[Of Course I Want Praise]

Of course I want praise
as weathervane Cassandra priest canary.
I think people want to hear what I think.
I am a normal monster.
Poets fish,
I chum maze carpets and labyrinth drywall.
That sentence reminds me edit.
There can be a second draft that doesn't obliterate the poem
Cassandra canary priest weathervane
fool say, my heresies guaranteed
by persistent flickerings.
Fishing, my lips have decades of scars.

Born Ninety-Two Years Ago Today

No, I didn't forget, and my apologies, the large collection of Mingus youtubes I've archived on the blog to be posted on his birthday - those I've found, those suggested by Hamster and Greyhoos and others - are all dead, removed by demand of some right's holder. Send me working Mingus youtubes and I'll add them.

My standard Mingus birthday paragraphs:

I don't know as much about jazz as I wish - there are only so many hours - but I was turned onto Mingus by an English professor at Anne Arundel Community College (there's a story) about the time Earthgirl and I first lived together in a marina house in Deale MD (google map 6064 Drumpoint Road, Deale MD and you can see it), and while true that Mingus' music strikes pleasure tines in my brain most jazz - most music - doesn't, I also associate Mingus with wonderful times sitting in the backyard listening to Mingus, watching the sailboats come and go while steaming the blue crabs we pulled from our pots we threw off the docks and BBQing fresh bluefish friendly fisherman gave us, and awful times too, sitting in the backyard listening to Mingus with my friend Henry, a black man, and his white wife Donna, and being called over in private by two boat owners who demanded I get the fucking nigger and his white whore off the property, waking up in the morning after I told them to fuck off to find my car tires slashed. The local cops taking the police report thought it was funny.

There was a big gun control vote in Maryland during POTUS 88 when we were living in Deale, I had a bumpersticker on my car advocating whatever the liberal position was (I don't remember the details), I woke up one morning to find my tires slashed and my car encased in pro-gun bumperstickers. The local cops taking the police report thought it was funny. 

We never intended to live for long in Deale - the marina house belonged to a family friend from Earthgirl's side, he rented it to us to give us a place to see if we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, but we both worked in DC/MOCO, the commute was hell, we would have moved back sooner or later, the incidents with the locals just made it sooner. 

Yes, that story is related to my incipient ismlessism, both its necessity and its futility.

My Attic Hurts, and I'd Like to Quit the Committee for Naming Tornadoes

• Dave's book arrived, thanks for the extra goodies! Order yours here.
• The Geography of Poverty. Gorgeous, sad, disturbing, provocative website.
• The Limits of Libertarianism. Offered for consideration, not chum. OK, for chum too. I confess I now try to maintain a state of Ismlessism, I'm willing - am eager - to hear all flavors torture their contradictions and hypocrisies and attendant justifications while trying to sell me a set of encyclopedias I desperately pray I don't buy.
• Ismlessism? L asked at Monday Night Pints. You don't make up words nearly as much as you used to, she said. Apathyatrophyitus, I said. K brought up POTUS 16, Team Democrat (serendipitously mentioned this morning by Corrente's Clinton v Warren). Warren isn't running if Clinton tells her not to, L said. I'm fuckbarren, I said.
• I also confess I've seen Piketty-this, Piketty-that, but have only read this Piketty profile.
• Re: turning back the inexorable oligarchic slow tsumami in a peaceable manner is not an option, cause they aren't turning back peaceably.
• Joseph Conrad and contemporary terrorism.
• The roots and fruits of terror war.
• Torturers, looters, and oligarchs get freaky.
• Péladan, for those of you like me who never heard of him.
• Joanna Russ, for those of you who do.
• Hamster just told me I missed Robert Smith's birthday yesterday. Don't know how that happened, but he'll have another one next year.
• And yes, it's John Waters' birthday today, here is the standard youtube.
• Woke up with Teardrop Explodes in my head. This is one of dozens of my favorite songs ever.

SCHWINN

Matthew Zapruder

I hate the phrase “inner life.” My attic hurts,

and I’d like to quit the committee

for naming tornadoes. Do you remember

how easy and sad it was to be young

and defined by our bicycles? My first

was yellow, and though it was no Black

Phantom or Sting-Ray but merely a Varsity

I loved the afternoon it was suddenly gone,

chasing its apian flash through the neighborhoods

with my father in vain. Like being a nuclear

family in a television show totally unaffected

by a distant war. Then we returned

to the green living room to watch the No Names

hold our Over the Hill Gang under

the monotinted chromatic defeated Super

Bowl waters. 1973, year of the Black Fly

caught in my Jell-O. Year of the Suffrage Building

on K Street NW where a few minor law firms

mingle proudly with the Union of Butchers

and Meat Cutters. A black hand

already visits my father in sleep, moving

up his spine to touch his amygdala. I will

never know a single thing anyone feels,

just how they say it, which is why I am standing

here exactly, covered in shame and lightning,

doing what I’m supposed to do.

Gravity of a Self-Consuming Self-Proliferating Blind

• Iggy is sixty-seven today. It's OK, I'm old too.
• Remember, the financial sector clusterfuck is a Democratic Party clusterfuck.
• Desperate or evil?
• Singing the praises of power.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• New Inquiry's Sunday reads.

• Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning. Today's monologue.
• Map of the above.
• Maps.
• Poems on surveillance.
• He can be a science fiction writer if he wants to be.
• Which poet are you? Bogus but fun.
• Above found in Silliman's incredibly generous litlinks.
• Ceravolo, for those of you who do, for those of you like me who will try again until I get it.
• So, I made it to Season 1, Episode 15 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before saying fuck that, looked at NetFlix, thought I'd try Breaking Bad since I've seen people rhapsodize about it being the best TV show ever, I made it to Season 2, Episode 6, and fuck that.

VANTAGE

Alan Shapiro

From where I watch, there are no highest leaves,
no leaves that don’t have over them more leaves
impeding what they open up and out for,

darkening downward as they feed on green
diminishments, as if dark, if it still
can darken, could be itself the light

the darker leaves beneath are hungry for.
From where I watch even the shade hungers
And is hungered after—all along the chain

past bark, root, leaf, ghost speck of leaf,
microbial scrapings, and beyond them, flakes
chipped off of flakes off of a now-

no-longer anything sucked dry, unsifted
and unsiftable into so fine a green
even the dark shines through. What’s hunger but

a hole to fill, gravity of a self-
consuming self-proliferating blind
and densely tangled maze of this from that,

from this, somewhere inside of which a cry
for mercy isn’t heard, or is, and the jaws shut,
and the very dirt becomes the dirt of it.              

[Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning]

Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning
Run Trail to Purdum Trail to Hard Cider
Trail Friday, Pine Grove Trail to West Piedmont
Trail to Browning Run Trail (a different
section than Friday) to Tobacco Farm
Trail to Timber Ridge Trail to car today.

Pines were dark green as they always are, bright
green popped on awakened oaks on ridge lines
like slopes of mountains in Bob Ross paintings,
and my first thought is a cartographer's.
I'm also trying to lose a quarter
of body mass, so poetry is third.

Theme Song April 20, 2014

The Game Enforces Smirks; but We Have Seen the Moon in Lonely Alleys Make a Grail of Laughter of an Empty Ash Can, and Through All Sound of Gaiety and Quest Have Heard a Kitten in the Wilderness

• Napoleon update as promised: that's him half-an-hour ago. Vet came yesterday, Napoleon's infection is completely gone, he got his stitches out. I said to the vet I'm surprised Napoleon has been so unprotesting about his confinement, the vet said most cats are OK with it. And at two this morning the protesting began. He wants out.
• Civil disobedience for an age of total surveillance.
• Cor.
• Walter Benjamin, for those of you who do.
• William Carlos Williams, for those of you who do, who should.
• Read ten Gabriel García Márquez short stories. 
• Transylvanian Trilogy? Anyone?
• Listened to Sea and Cake yesterday, it'd been too long.

CHAPLINESQUE

Hart Crane

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step, and know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

And through all sound of gaiety and quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Reading What Little Text There Is on the Graves

   

• Of all the songs on my massive WFMU DJ premium playlist that's the one I can't get out of my head, which is not a complaint.
• Thanks to those of you who've asked/offered good wishes for Napoleon. Vet is coming today at noon to take out Nap's stitches and start rabies shots. Will give update tomorrow.
• To cat or not to cat, that is the question.
• Thanks to those of you who've asked/offered good wishes for the Goat. No news, no new entries on the neighborhood listserv.
• Thanks to those reading. There are some new links added to blogrolls, please check them out as they float to the top. As always, if there is someone/thing you think I would enjoy reading please let me know, and as always, if you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know. 
• Futile Weekend Blogging starts today in Dead Blegsylvania.
• Via Agi, your Good Friday song.
• Two East German defectors walk into an art gallery....
• Black Dog bark bark barking. Not me.
• RIP Gabriel García Márquez. I'm not going to immediately promise a rereading, I'm not going to flood you with RIPs besides this one and the below link, though I will assert that whenever I see more than one butterfly in my eyesight I think of Gabriel García Márquez, especially if they are yellow.
• A compilation of Gabriel García Márquez links.
• Though please please please read this.
• Vollmann, for those of you who do.
• Muriel Spark on how to write a letter.
• Robert Fludd's Temple of Music.
• Fire Matt Williams!
• Always thus.
• Mary Ruefle draws a giraffe.
• Via the youtube below, sought for this reason, I've learned her name is pronounced ROOF-lee.
• I am on my second trip through her lectures collected in Madness, Rack, and Honey.
• If I played my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game for currently working poets....

THE BUNNY GIVES US A LESSON IN ETERNITY

Mary Ruefle

We are a sad people, without hats.
The history of our nation is tragically benign.
We like to watch the rabbits screwing in the graveyard.
We are fond of the little bunny with the bent ear
who stands alone in the moonlight
reading what little text there is on the graves.
He looks quite desirable like that.
He looks like the center of the universe.
Look how his mouth moves mouthing the words
while the others are busy making more of him.
Soon the more will ask of him to write their love
letters and he will oblige, using the language
of our ancestors, those poor clouds in the ground,
beloved by us who have been standing here for hours,
a proud people after all.

[Yesterday's Tsunami]

Yesterday's tsunami
billed as
worse since ever

Every day
taxes, clothes
donated estimated

Horned at stoplight
don't give
that addict quarters

Despite delete
commands
my cache saves

Beloveds, What Do We Do but Keep Breathing as Best We Can This Minute Atmosphere

No, I didn't forget yesterday was Ian MacKaye's 52nd birthday, there was another post in the queue.

So, I did write the listserv re: goat-napping -

Hey, someone stole a life-size fiberglass goat from our frontyard. One of us is an elementary school art teacher, takes it in for classes occasionally, grazes it in our front-yard the rest of the time. We live on Saul across from KPES. If you've a child there you may have seen it. If you see our goat on any street but Saul across from KPES (our neighbors on Saul have a second of ours in theirs) please let me know so I can retrieve said goat while not pressing charges against the goat-kidnapper. No doubt if it's your jerk kid you know s/he's a jerk kid and thief, we just want the goat back.

• One response to the listserv email so far: I have seen that goat in your front yard and I hope you get it back. These are hopefully pranks and nothing malicious as we used to steal our rival fraternities mascots, hijack them to Florida and take Polaroid’s of them on the beach in Lauderdale with ransom notes. Ended up mailing them back freight collect. Let’s hope that somebody has a goat sighting soon. Smiley on Oldfield.
• Yes, I was all of these Fugazi shows.
• The End of Employment.
• Calling it an oligarchy isn't enough.
• The ideology of focus.
• The carcass of myself.
• Millennial Rising.
• Holiday weekend - Spring holiday weekend - upcoming, Dead Blegsylvania be even deader than usual, I no doubt will dedicate extra effort into blogposts that few will read.
• Juliana Spahr.
• Five questions for Juliana Spahr.
• Prynne week (via).

DECEMBER 2, 2002

Juliana Spahr

As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night sleeping uneasily the world went on without us.

We live in our own time zone and there are only a small million of us in this time zone and the world as a result has a tendency to begin and end without us.

While we turned sleeping uneasily at least ten were injured in a bomb blast in Bombay and four killed in Palestine.

While we turned sleeping uneasily a warehouse of food aid was destroyed, stocks on upbeat sales soared, Australia threatened first strikes, there was heavy gunfire in the city of Man, the Belarus ambassador to Japan went missing, a cruise ship caught fire, on yet another cruise ship many got sick, and the pope made a statement against xenophobia.

While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.

While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed.

While we turned sleeping uneasily the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of whether university admissions may favor racial minorities.

While we turned sleeping uneasily poachers caught sturgeon in the reed-filled Caspian, which shelters boar and wolves, and some of the residents on the space shuttle planned a return flight to the US.

Beloveds, our world is small and isolated.

We live our lives in six hundred square feet about a quarter mile from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five thousand miles from the nearest land mass.

Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how many days are left in the Iraq inspections.

The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those other time zones.

Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside of our bed.

It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no relevance to the rest of the world.

How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation have so little power outside the space of our bed?

Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of the shuttle one can see the earth.

"How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere," one of the astronauts notes.

Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this minute atmosphere.

Steal My Goat

Was a wonderful time with Planet in Ohio, pull up to the front yard, SOME MOTHERFUCKER(S) STOLE OUR GOAT! Earthgirl wants me to write to the neighborhood listserv, I started:

Hi All, someone(s) stole a life-size fiberglass white goat from our front yard, should your asshole kid have brought it home tell him to die a goat's worst enemy's death.*

* Yes, I know, but I never stole anyone's animal.

While this is playing (LOUD! yo):

Small Reprieves of Coffee and Birdsong

• Was listening to a playlist of WFMU Marathon DJ premiums while driving through Glouster Ohio Monday with Earthgirl and Planet. The song is Hana No Kajimaya by Shoukichi Kina on Rich Hazleton's Floating Around the World with Inflatable Squirrel Carcass CD. 
• Upon review, the rental car is actually a Ford Fusion, not a Ford Focus, but....
• No long drives yesterday - Planet had classes. Went to dinner, hung out in the room after, was wonderful. Finished Jake's book (Jake (IOZ) interviewed) - no reviews here other than to say it had both the strengths and weaknesses of most first novels, and I encourage you to try it  - then link fished while Earthgirl read and Planet wrote a paper.
• We leave to take Planet out for breakfast in minutes and then we abandon her. 

  

• Was it ever so simple? Is an obsession with the past the sign of a morbid disposition? Obsession in the case meaning a constant rehashing of past occurrences and achievements – done for the sake of assuaging an anxious sense of stasis, degeneration, impasse, or reversion in the present. I find myself wondering this in recent months, as the news offers an incessant series of anniversaries – of this or that landmark legislation, historical milestone, technological innovation, tragic event or horrific massacre, etcetera etcetera etcetera. This, admittedly, might simply just another example of the news cycle doing what it does – filling news holes and broadcast time with whatever it can, especially if that whatever is easier to explain than (say) what's going on in Syria or Crimea.
• Metaphors for an Age of Surveillance.
• Power cannot be talked into giving itself up: If privilege is a relation between persons, then it will not go away until those relations are changed. It is unrealistic to expect those who have advantage to surrender it. They cannot be shamed. They will not be persuaded. No volume of study will present a factual enough case to change the thinking of those who use power and feel its many desirable effects. The more facts are presented, the more likely they will be suppressed. No amount of inspiring narrative or good will or forgiveness will cause hierarchies to dismantle themselves.
• Food links. 
• Two Carl Dennis poems.
• Merrill, for those of you who do. There does seem to be a stirring of interest again after years of his fading from his once superstar status.
• Like a honeymoon suite. 
• Lifehacks with Doctor Turin Horse.
• Yes, the above link logistically belongs farther up, but it made me think of Turin Brakes and songs go here:

I AM LEARNING TO ABANDON THE WORLD

Linda Pastan

I am learning to abandon the world

before it can abandon me.

Already I have given up the moon

and snow, closing my shades

against the claims of white.

And the world has taken

my father, my friends.

I have given up melodic lines of hills,

moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.

And every night I give my body up

limb by limb, working upwards

across bone, towards the heart.

But morning comes with small

reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

A tree outside the window

which was simply shadow moments ago

takes back its branches twig

by leafy twig.

And as I take my body back

the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap

as if to make amends.

Gambier to Martinsburg to St Louisville to Newark to Somerset to New Lexington to Corning to Glouster to Chauncey to Athens to Chauncey to Glouster to Ringgold to McConnellsville to Meigs to Chandlersville to Zanesville to Nashville to Fallsburg to Martinsburg to Gambier

Long two, Earthgirl took over a 15K photos. I had to reduce time per photo to a second a shot to get it to two slideshows uploadable by youtube. This is what we do for fun: long long day-long drives. Many of the photos are from The Rim of the World, easily one of the coolest roads I've ever driven, this being the third time. Planet had never seen Ohio University, she was curious, for me, driving 78 over the Rim of the World again from Glouster to 284 east of McConnellsville and then 284 north to Chandlersville - my third time - was the fun.

• Then pizza - SeatSix, we finally tried Donatos, it was very good, good enough to get again - in the room while Planet did homework and Earthgirl painted and I link-fished, it was wonderful. 
• A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF BOB ROSS PAINTINGS!
• David Harvey interview. (I don't think I've posted this one yet, if yes, oh well.)
• Gardening and imperialism.
• Ames v Greenwald et al continued: I’ll start by saying that the fact that Marxists and anarchists now call a billionaire by his first name is reason enough to keep looking at/writing about the social phenomena that brought that about. So getting accused of monomania for doing so is getting very old, especially since people like Henwood are no less obsessed. They’re just obsessed in a different way.  The right way. Accusing people who are making a point of not applauding of obsession is just another way of getting people to shut up — another form of ostracism.
• Naming Bethesda for marketing profits. 
• Sandy Spring. 
• The view out my window at 7:00 this morning in Gambier looks like an Earthgirl painting.

• And very well could be someday. 
• Yes, that's snow.
• Lust for life (not Iggy).
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Tangerine Dream.
• Chris Forsyth.
• For Alvin Lucier.
• Harry Partch.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Planet has told me she wants to be picked up May 14th and 15th. I have a ticket to see Swans at Black Cat on 14th. Planet wins, but damn. Hey! New Swans!

FATHER, IN DRAWER

Lucie Brock-Broido

Mouthful of earth, hair half a century silvering, who buried him.

With what. Make a fist for heart. That is the size of it.

                                                             Also directives from our  DNA.

The nature of  his wound was the clock-cicada winding down.

                                                            He wound down.

July, vapid, humid: sails of sailboats swelled, yellow boxes

Of   cigars from Cuba plumped. Ring fingers fattened for a spell.

                                                            Barges of coal bloomed in heat.

It was when the catfish were the only fish left living

                                                            In the Monongahela River.

Though there were (they swore) no angels left, one was stillbound in

The very drawer of salt and ache and rendering, its wings wrapped-in

                                                            By the slink from the strap

Of his second-wife’s pearl-satin slip, shimmering and still

                  As one herring left face-up in its brine and tin.

The nature of  his wound was muscadine and terminal; he was easy

                 To take down as a porgy off the cold Atlantic coast.

                 In the old city of   Brod, most of the few Jews left

Living may have been still at supper while he died.

That same July, his daughters’ scales came off in every brittle

                                                            Tinsel color, washing

To the next slow-yellowed river and the next, toward west,

                                                            Ohio-bound.

                This is the extent of that. I still have plenty heart.

Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier to Mt Vernon to Marengo to Ashley to Delaware to Ashley to Marengo to Mt Vernon to Gambier

From Kensington to Frederick it's 31 miles, Frederick to Hagerstown 24 miles, Hagerstown to Hancock 28 miles, Hancock to Cumberland 37 miles, Cumberland to Morgantown 65 miles, Morgantown to Washington 43 miles, Washington to Wheeling 36 miles, Wheeling to Zanesville 70 miles, Zanesville to Gambier 40 miles (Zanesville to Nashville is 14 miles, Nashville to Fallsburg 10, Fallsburg to Martinsburg 10, Martinsburg to Gambier 6). I know this by heart. The halfway point between Kensington and Zanesville is the Bruceton Mills exit on I-68 six miles west of the Maryland border in West Virginia. The halfway point between Kensington and Gambier is the interchange of I-68 and I-79 in Morgantown. PennDot finally completed and opened the new flyover interchanged at I-79 and I-70 in Washington. I thought there was going to be a new soccer stadium in DC before that interchange was completed, and there will never be a new soccer stadium in DC.





   

• In search of found time.
• To think is to always follow the witches flight.
• The slaughter bench of history.
• Ames v Goodman & Greenwald, an update.
• Maggie's weekend links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• New Inquiry's Sunday reads.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• 177 pages of good. Buy it! Dave, the paypal link won't work for me, please email me your address and I'll send you old-fashioned currency.
• Josephine Miles' Reason. Thank you, Tom, for reminding me of Miles. It has been a while.
• On Harry Partch. Serendipitously I found a collection of his work last week at the library, plan to begin listening/burning this coming week. I don't know enough about him.
• Told you there would be Lampchop.

ON INHABITING AN ORANGE

Josephine Miles

All our roads go nowhere.

Maps are curled

To keep the pavement definitely

On the world.

All our footsteps, set to make

Metric advance,

Lapse into arcs in deference

To circumstance.

All our journeys nearing Space

Skirt it with care,

Shying at the distances

Present in air.

Blithely travel-stained and worn,

Erect and sure,

All our travels go forth,

Making down the roads of Earth

Endless detour.

Wind Grieves at the Corners of the House and Rain Distills Pity to a Purity That Is Irresistible and Poison

Played 27 yesterday with Mr Z. Seneca consists of three nine hole circuits that all start and end at the parking lot. It's brilliant. Normally we start on whichever of the three seems to be the least crowded, all were open today, I can't remember the last time I played 1-27 in order. 333564344 445644543 454433444. I suck, fucking Winter. Excellent time. Earthgirl started a new painting in the woods off the first tee.

This is true, Earthgirl can vouch. Mr Z. (who I met more than ten years ago when he was a bartender at Dietles) has a ten year old daughter with a woman from Minnesota. He mentioned to Earthgirl that the woman went to Northfield Not St Olaf. Earthgirl goes, Me too! They did the math, Mr Z. said her last name, Earthgirl screams LAURIE? I was reminded that infinity runs into the small as much as the large.







We Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier to visit Planet today. Another way to put it is we 270 to 70 to 68 to 79 to 70 to 146 to 586 to 62 to Grove Church Road to 229 to 308 today. Slideshows when photographers provide me with them. Next few days, links if I fish, none if I don't. Travelogues of course: what viewership Napoleon and now disc golf haven't killed - thank you, regulars - slideshows and commentary on rural Ohio back roads will. Distill.

The soundtrack, at least today's, by Edict of Earthgirl, will include Lampchop. By my edict, you are going to hear a fuckload of Lambchop if you're tuning in the next few days.







AS EVER AS EVER

Charlie Smith

I step back from the homespun,
the naturally dyed. Fresh vegetables
unnerve me with their husks
and peelings and little ruddy bits
to save for compost. Grass stains
and leaves choke the gutters and
berries ponk ponk and you can't
remember what you were thinking
bark chafes and flesh if you eat it
lies like a lump of chalcedony in
your gut, stopping the action.
Wind grieves at the corners of
the house and rain distills pity
to a purity that is irresistible and
poison. All know a flower's dumb stare.
Fruit is home for small black worms.
Trees thrive in mass groupings
that close behind you and shudder
and stir complex imaginings
we are wholly unsuited for. Better
a quiet nook uptown. A room
with faded yellow light and Monk
on the piano. The buckle
and belting of life are beside the point.