- I am the bullets: On Gaza.
- And then the Alien turned towards Zanna: On Gaza.
- Am I going to die tonight, Daddy?
- Dehumanization? Here's today's monologue: of course dehumanization is the project, but the project isn't the dehumanization of the other. That shit's already been done.
- And it's working. The hate seething through me now scares the fuck out of me. My lizard brain is far too easily stimulated.
- Ladies and Gentleman, the wit and wisdom of Fuckface Hiatt, who I daydream of braining with a shovel over and over and over and...
- The rule of lizards.
- The grey light of morning: As real as the political subtext was, it’s a mistake to see the myth of progress purely as a matter of propaganda. During the heyday of industrialism, that myth was devoutly believed by a great many people, at all points along the social spectrum, many of whom saw it as the best chance they had for positive change. Faith in progress was a social fact of vast importance, one that shaped the lives of individuals, communities, and nations. The hope of upward mobility that inspired the poor to tolerate the often grueling conditions of their lives, the dream of better living through technology that kept the middle classes laboring at the treadmill, the visions of human destiny that channeled creative minds into the service of existing institutions—these were real and powerful forces in their day, and drew on high hopes and noble ideals as well as less exalted motives.
- America.
- the wearing-out of language.
- Motherfucking gunfucks fuck with Sugarloaf.
- Food links.
- Vollmann in his studio.
- Drummage.
- Bosh reminded me of Leatherface last night.
STREET MUSICIANS
John Ashbery
One died, and the soul was wrenched out
Of the other in life, who, walking the streets
Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on
The same corners, volumetrics, shadows
Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever
Called, through increasingly suburban airs
And ways, with autumn falling over everything:
The plush leaves the chattels in barrels
Of an obscure family being evicted
Into the way it was, and is. The other beached
Glimpses of what the other was up to:
Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other.
So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain, the year turning over on itself
In November, with the spaces among the days
More literal, the meat more visible on the bone.
Our question of a place of origin hangs
Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,
In coves with the water always seeping up, and left
Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared
On the landscape, to make of us what we could.
