Cradles in the Milkiest Arms of the Universe

  
Yes, it's sure to disappoint, these comebacks are never fully satisfying (though the two songs from 2011 are pretty effing good, one of them below), but still, blessed news, the chance to post Mazzy Star. Have I ever mentioned I love Mazzy Star? There, that's one of the rhetorical tics I referenced earlier today. The song below the Goldbarth poem has to be one of this shitty blogs five most posted songs ever. Two more tics in that sentence. Thanks to Hamster for the heads-up (he also sends news of a capella versions of Bowie's *Starman* and *Five Years* - I'm glad he reads Slate because I always forget too until I remember William Salatin and Matthew Yglesias write there and deliberately don't read it - though I do like Dahlia Lithwick). Anyway, bad mood gone for me but not for thee. I've never been called an *ipecac wretcher.* And the Goldbarth is claimed.





...one of whom had apparently died in childbirth; we found the skeleton of an infant within her remains

Albert Goldbarth

- it was, in it's way,
a pietà.

And the pictures in the planetarium gallery
of a star in all the stages of its last progression,
dying - first a "white dwarf," then a "black dwarf,"
then a "black hole," that the composition
cradles in the milkiest arms of the universe. 

The Callow Power of Preservation

• So. Standard aargh, not different format than ever but different than standard, at least for here.
• So. A friend makes a good point and offers a timely warning, so the details of this episode of fucking blooger/google is scrubbed.
• Greyhoos has a tumblr.
• Blogfriend Lisa has a new blog. 
• I have a tumblr too, remembered when I saw Greyhoos has a tumblr.
• More new places over in Newest Gag the Second.
• The day the world finally ended.
• Not linking to clusterfuckage, especially on a four-day holiday weekend shortens the link list.
• Pynchon on the European soul.
• Narrative clocks.
• The 25 most-hated novels.
• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• Mistaken memories of medieval Manhattan.
• Sounding the body electric.
• Beckett chess pieces.
• Three hours of covers you may or not have heard in a long time if ever.
• Prunella goes to a The Evens concert.
• I fell into Mazzy Star last night. Must have been the Galazie 500 yesterday, that and the attempt at aarghlessness.

FEAR OF AN EMPTY LIFE

Jennifer Moxley

All the long imprint of a smooth utterance - a single adhesive
word slips away, snuggles beside the accusatory newborn
thought which, barking from lack of care, might trap in a moment
of serious sorrow me and my dirty heart, we twist the arm
of friendship 'til the ancient swing by the nonchalant body
is rewritten as a trembling, angry, grudge. Split along
the physique axis of wrested love and that human pulp
the wealthy mock, old need, a shuffle from the coffin lip
silences mind into fiddlehead body, bobbing in the fifty-fifty
sheets, weighty yet so pitiful it cannot coax solution - Darwin
was a fool, conductor of teeming masses, I see them now
in sedimentary patterns, crushed umber colors and a hint of green.

I am content when I do not think the disclosure of love is a
weakness, I imagine myself invincible like a bully who sees
in the fear he coerces from his weaker brother the only version of
truth he'll believe - satisfied sleep. I awake drenched, the sweat
between my breasts which are so small they cannot touch is slick
as mucous. The surface of beauty is awful and enormous to all of us
who are left behind and yet we seek our coordinates, willfully
follow them just the same as the moon might seem from certain
angles to willfully follow the earth. Choking pink ribbon of thought
fails the ferry crossing. Who cannot push life-sustaining rationalization
away without remembering, as though an error of judgment,
the callow power of preservation turned to resentment of the race.

It cannot, no matter, in verse, be real. Fucked up beauty
subtracts the awkward ugly plain ache of tripped-up memory stores
where I see you as a taut wing of fragile older skin whose pride
of effort flaps in an attempt to fly amidst its own disintegrating
structure, a sight so ridiculous that all but the buried are unable
to suppress their laughter and turn away. That's an image hovering
above me here where there is still in my imagination a cool carpet
underfoot, a flavor of drug's seductive distances, the expense of
early exits but no gun, never a gun. That weapon steals time for it
knows not what's in a minute. Tiny blindfold box of selfish stomach,
parasite life, the measure of a second is insufficient
to leave you behind, you and all your crippling indifference.

Many Trophies Show Us Frozen

Yes, this is the second consecutive Meerkat Thursday, as long as Ken keeps posting meerkat gifs on his Wednesday morning radio show there will be Meercat Thursdays. So we didn't go to the US Open Cup game. One of Planet's uncles woke up with a grippe and bagged, logistics from work would have made making it by game-time iffy (fucking United even starts these games at 7:00, Germantown Maryland, a 7:00 start, cause there's no rush hour traffic in Montgomery County, like there aren't just two two-lane roads into SoccerPlex), and wicked thunderstorms were predicted to start by late game (as it turned out, that was a false concern). Fine metaphors abound, where once I wouldn't miss a United game in Germantown because United, the whole point of the evening was a family reunion. And United won, there will another game in Germantown in two weeks, though of course no one saw that coming when we decided not to go.

• I'm not going to do the research, but I'm certain that the need for Sun Kil Moon cascades are often followed by the need of Mazzy Star cascades.
• Story about a relative (a panopticon technician) who is thoroughly disgusted with me re: Manning/Snowden, I could tell you the story but won't because it's private .
• Story about a friend (whose wife is a upper tier panopticon poobah) who is thoroughly disgusted with me re: Manning/Snowden, I could tell you the story but won't because it's private.
• Overheard conversations about Snowden and fucking peasants by professors at work who couldn't give a flying fuck what I think,  they are influential motherfucking Grand Poobahs of the Royal Order of Buffalos (identify that allusion!) I could tell you what they said but won't because I'm just the hired help and I've two years left in the commitment I made 25 years ago. 
• Fine metaphors abound.

• Red room with spooks.
• Living in a virtual panopticon.
• The five stages of living in a national panopticon.
• Fed up with all the bullshit.
• Insubordination and the surveillance state.
• The banality of condemnation.
• One in three.
• BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
• Own to rent.
• At least one David Thomas song each day for June

• Tomorrow his birthday. Requests solicited.
• Ten Mile Creek!
• Meditations of an oaf.
• Gaddis, for those of you who do.
• Rachel Kushner interview. I'm halfway through Flamethrowers, it started fast, is slowing down, I have no idea if it's the book or if it's me.
• Love triptych.

DANGERS

Rodney Jones

From the first, I was too reluctant, achieving by dribs and drabs,   

Happy to linger in shallows while others jackknifed from cliffs, wrong

To exact perfection from a sad piece or add notes to a proven tune;   

But ever the classicist:

                                     in swimming lessons, slowest to learn;

In fights, tentative, preferring the hammerlock to the jab and hook; cautious

In the earliest romances, choking in the clutch, fumbling the caress; or shy

Among the crew-cut Cupids bristling at the armory’s weekend dances;   

But shifty in every game, keeping it close. Always holding still   

And adjuring others to go slow

                                              until we leapt forward that night out of control

And pinned to the seats of Tyler Wilson’s outlandishly unstock Ford   

While, from the opposite side of the valley, scalding in each curve, came the black din

And brunt of Sonny Walker’s highjacker Chevrolet, everyone screaming   

And bearing down to be first across the bridge at Hurricane Creek.

Many trophies show us frozen: a leg poised for the hurdle, an arm cocked for the unanswerable spike.

What I remember through the windshield’s splintering lens is time, a mailbox

Rushing by, the letters TURRENTINE,

                                                      then darkness rolling inside;

Though memory, at best, retrieves maybe six percent in studio light,   

So even now I think we might have turned:

                                                               smart with his hands,

There is a kind of savior who blusters through the South, good with animals and machines,

Who surely somehow would have found a gap, through an open gate   

Into a marshy cornfield

                                    or up a logging road into a hillside wood.   

At any rate, there is just a little while, shy of any bridge, just as judgment

Balances its two blind alternatives and a third accelerates head-on.   

I’ve made a careful study: things that can only be accomplished in deep space,

In another language, in far history, at an almost incalculable speed. Courage is not included, or much foolishness.

They spin the purest glass, they split the atom, they speak with God.

They make a sort of Teflon hip and attach it with metal screws,   

Only the threads upbone keep stripping

                                                          so they have to operate

Again and again, and what she’s accomplished is more of a gait, really,

Than a walk, so when she moves toward me, across any room,   

I think too much of my own will

                                                implicated in that dragging brace.   

Each step is obviously trained, and the whole earned motion full   

Of muscle, plastic, and bone

                                           is coordinated by nerves even the   

Strictest dance does not require. She has said there is no fault,   

But even in such talk,

                                  grace occurs as an accident someone caused.   

If what I require is a thing too certain, braided from probabilities,

There is another thing

                                  articulated in the scars that saved her face—   

And no right now in that night we were shaken and rolled like dice, no right to

Say this guilt to be alive is love, or the opposite of lucky is wrong. 

Well, Monumental Isn't the Word, but... I Put a Lot of Thought into It, Dave

The month of birthdays end on a High Egoslavian Holy Day, Chris Elliott, fifty-three today, one of only a few people born after me that gets an Egoslavian Holy Day. Twenty years give or take before I remembered that gag after two weeks of blogging ten years ago and made it Official Anthem of Autoblogography, Theme Song of Bleggalgazing and Apex of Fine Metaphors Abounding I harshed my lungs on a bong hit of very good Colombian laughing at the line in this post's title the first time I saw the skit, it makes me giggle like the first time each time. It is without doubt the most posted youtube on all iterations of this blog the past ten years (people can vouch, including one who may have been in the same room at the same time I harshed my lungs). I wouldn't be surprised if I don't comprise at a minimum 10% of that youtubes 8K+ views.

To celebrate the Holiest Day of Brazen Self-Indulgence and Ritual Revelations of Brazen Motives of Sloppy Look-at-Me-Fuckers as Superior Bleggal Sophistication (plus, for the accountant in me, the End of Bleggal Year 12-13 and the Start of Bleggal Year 13-14), one of this blog's most posted songs ever, one of the most posted poems ever, one of the most posted songs ever:






JUBILATE AGNO, FRAGMENT B

Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
     quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon
     his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring
     eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness      he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit
     without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the
     spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of      the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God
     to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence
     perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven
     to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Packing for a Transatlantic Box, or Paper for Essays on Schadenfreude, or Timber for Dollhouse Dressers, or a Twenty Baht Note for the Thai Rubber Trade

What, reaction? I am small, it still pleases me too much that 70% of motherfuckng Oklahomans are pissed this morning, I'm so small I'm still going to enjoy too much the schadenfreude over Rush Limbaugh's listeners' anguish, the anger of the asshole cracker four doors down from me who's a dick to my ferals and steals Obama signs from front lawns and is stupid and/or arrogant enough to leave them uncovered in the back of his pick-up. I'm small, it pleases me someone - either - won and won clear cut, that a concession speech was made by one of the fuckers, that this isn't going to recounts and courts. I'm small, it pleases me that loved ones are pleased even if I still maintain that for advancing oligarchy's interest Obama is the best salesman, that the country will be farther right in 2016 for Obama's election than had Romney won on matters economic and imperialistic and police state. I'm small, this was my first election cycle in which I didn't vote my tribal heritage, it gives me no joy they won except for the disappointment of the arch-rivals they beat. I like my side less than once; I still hate the other side the same as always.

• UPDATE! Schadenfreude?
• America lost the election: The United States Army is developing a weapon that can reach -- and destroy -- any location on Earth within an hour. At the same time, power lines held up by wooden poles dangle over the streets of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy ripped them apart there and in communities across the East Coast last week, and many places remain without electricity. That's America, where high-tech options are available only to the elite, and the rest live under conditions comparable to a those of a developing nation. No country has produced more Nobel Prize winners, yet in New York City hospitals had to be evacuated during the storm because their emergency generators didn't work properly. Anyone who sees this as a contradiction has failed to grasp the fact that America is a country of total capitalism. Its functionaries have no need of public hospitals or of a reliable power supply to private homes. The elite have their own infrastructure. Total capitalism, however, has left American society in ruins and crippled the government. America's fate is not just an accident produced by the system. It is a consequence of that system.
• On the election.
• UPDATE! Karl on Earth.
• A Liberal fantasy.
• E.J. Dionne's silly snoopy dance.
• Things will be different this time.
• He wuz right.
• Over/under Marco Rubio is 2016 GOP VPOTUS nominee? Ted Cruz?
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Geoffrey was an idiot.
• YAY! FOR MY STATE!
• On the above, a dead hibernating bleeger reappears.
• Question Seven passed.
• HEY! United plays second leg v Metros tonight in a nor'easter!
• Simplistic and inaccurate.
• Satie!
• More Elliott Carter tomorrow, including requests that have been Kindly submitted.

HANDS ARE WOOD

Seth Abramson

Come see the woodpile behind the cannery.

Come through the wall

            to where the wood was chopped

and the difficult wood was hewed.

There is a short history of commotion here,

where a sudden bonfire spat its surprise

            at the sky—

a hundred feet or more the shavings swept

through disturbed air, and made their own

music, the music hands make, such a yellow

crackle and such a thrashing

in the morning.

Come wait for the heavy trucks to arrive,

            the men in dusters cutting the twine,

loading the long ghostly planks like ballast

            into iron barges.

This will be packing for a transatlantic box,

or paper for essays on schadenfreude, or timber

for dollhouse dressers, or a twenty baht note

for the Thai rubber trade. These matchsticks

will burn whenever you strike them, and this,

hack at it however you like, is nothing more

than deadwood for the fire. Come see—now

even the men are doing only

                        what they were made to do.

The Perfect Voter Has a Smile but No Eyes

Elliott Carter died yesterday. He changed the way I listen to music. There will be much here the next few days. As for POTUS and today and tomorrow, I found it tremendously funny and charming that when I went searching for Carter works last night the youtube you might like this too algorithm came up with Mazzy Star which I love love love too, look, here's a screen shot to prove it.

• Nobody knows anything.
• Election Day.
• Oh, POTUS today and tonight. I went to vote local issues this morning, the line was 350 deep, out the door of the elementary school across the street from my house, I said Fuck That, I'll vote this afternoon. People at work report long lines at their precincts.
• Any doubts who this fucker is gonna vote for?
• The cruel majority.
• Put alternatively.
• UPDATE! Just got a phone call from Bamgier - someone has cancelled one Romney vote.
• Ginormous pile of crap. Posted as much to mention I'd completely forgot about Somerby, not out of malice or intent, I just did.
• Vote.
• What is an American political party?
• On conventional Villager wisdom.
• You do realize whichever side loses will think the election stolen, yes?
• The fascist push. 
• Motherfucking nuts. I've never said they're not motherfucking nuts.
• Motherfucking Republicans. I've never said they're not vile motherfuckers.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• In a career full of asinine punditry, Pastor Sanctimonious wrote his stupidest column yesterday.
• Why I voted the Socialist ticket.
• Conservatives taken for a ride by Romney. He's a corporatist, not a conservative.
• Learning to talk to Southern white men.
• Cue the permanent campaign.
• Leftist liberalism?

• Election Year.
• Joyce Carol Oates on the election.
• Beckett, for those of you who do. 
• Why are poets aligned with the Left?
• Children of our era.
• C.K. Williams and Jack Gilbert poems, plus more.
• I've assigned myself learning about and listening to Richard Maxfield, who I've never heard of until now.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Elliott Carter.
• Elliott Carter.
• Elliott Carter.
• Elliott Carter.

EXQUISITE POLITICS

Denise Duhamel

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes,
maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes,
maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium.
Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden.
Politics is a grain of rice stuck in the mouth
of a king. I voted for a clump of cells,
anything to believe in, true as rain, sure as red wheat.
I carried my ballots around like smokes, pondered big questions,
resources and need, stars and planets, prehistoric
languages. I sat on Alice's mushroom in Central Park,
smoked longingly in the direction of the mayor's mansion.
Someday I won't politic anymore, my big heart will stop
loving America and I'll leave her as easy as a marriage,
splitting our assets, hoping to get the advantage
before the other side yells: Wow! America,
Vespucci's first name and home of free and brave, Te amo.

Crashing By Me

More from last night's light. Yes, stanchion porn of course, but blogwhoring or attention sluttery too? You decide! Trick question: death to the either/or. Haven't used that gag in a while. More photos below fold, plus Mazzy Star song cascade because someone put one of the songs in my head an hour ago.