Theme Song June 23 2014 0728 EDT

It's So Self-Indulgent to Think You Like This Song

That has been this blog's Bleggalgazing Gag from Day One. It is by far the most posted youtube in this blog's history. I've watched it at least a dozen times each time I've posted it. Of the almost 12K views, I'm guessing 1K are mine. It gets better, deeper with each viewing. I'm writing this sentence at eight o'clock Friday night. I've already watched it seven times, by the time this is posted Saturday morning I'll watch it a half dozen more. There is nothing I can write - nothing I can imagine anyone far more talented than me writing - that bleggalgazes better, deeper. It restores my faith in my fuck it, my fuck this. Chris Elliott is fifty-four today. Today is an Egoslavian High Holy Day. Here's this blog's official Bleggalgazing Anthem:







So today I bleggalgaze. Friends analog and digital have told me they like when I write. I like when I write. One of this blog's oldest mantras is I do this for me and mine. I need occasional reminding. There will be no hiatus, no abandonment, Egoslavian Holy Days will be observed. I will, however, try to release myself - how successfully and for how long I'll find out - from the obsessive bleggal obligations masquerading as responsibility to the reader I use to feed my attention sluttery. It's not that I want to post less, it's that I want to stop posting like a motherfucking addict. Fuck it, fuck this, fuck that. That includes not posting daily. It includes not not posting daily. It means not posting compulsively, it means not posting for pings, it means posting what I know will drive away pings (hiking, travelogs, and, especially, bleggalgazing) because they are my favorite posts. It means not spending two hours an evening fishing for links every evening if I don't feel like spending two hours that evening fishing for links. It requires distinguishing when I want to post and when I don't, when all I want is attention when I've nothing but fished links and songs and a poem to offer, it means posting when all I have is a song I want you to hear and a poem I want you to hear. I do know the difference, will try to honor it.

As always, thanks for reading. If you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know. Here, this shitty blog's Number One Theme Song, has been since Day One:

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.

Theme Song January 2014

Another Way of Putting It Is Like Slathering Jam on a Scrape

Did you see yesterday's maroon (and bleggalgazing explanation)? Gone. The maroon, not the bleggalgazing: blooger can only one template at a time. As predicted, ended up with Scuba Dog. As requested, dark type on white background and larger print for easier reading. By request, no more bleggalgazing theory today. By request, more bleggalgazing theory soon. By indirect request, I've reduced the number of blogs displayed on page so page loads quicker; use the expansion avatar to see other blogs - no one has been purged. By personal edict, more fuck this and fuck it and a different flavor of damnlessness. I know this looks much better on wider screens than narrower, I don't know what to do to fix it, suggestions solicited. Please let me know of other bugs and shit should you find any (and suggestions how to fix if you know how). I'd say regular programming returns soon, but it never left. Here's Bleggalgazing Anthem Number Two, played here far too often:

• Today's Maqroll, Precept Number Two: Every day we're different, but we always forget the same is true for others as well. Perhaps this is what people call solitude. If not, it's solemn imbecility.
• Scuba-Dog is default background but there will be swaps.
• The essence of NeoLiberalism and the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
• A Christmas Speculation: Democrats, Republicans, bible-wrestling, much more.
• Very serious populists: voting and maintenance of hegemony.
• Status of Fuck-Me-Jig: latest on DC United's new stadium.
• The Hot Mess: new work by Frances.
• Nightly encounters: new work by Tom.
• Intro to Oulipo.
• A review of the new Coen Brothers' movie, The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug.
• Three-Mountain Pass: beautiful post on Vietnamese poetry, serendipitously found this morning a few days after a discussion with a friend who was telling me of the wonders of Vietnamese poetry, she a native speaker and poet.
• Guess which of three poems was written by a student.
• Prunella's trip to California and latest playlist.
• Ira and Georgia (these guys) DJed last night on WFMU.
• Here's Bleggalgazing Anthem Number Three, played here far too often, and below the poem Bleggalgazing Anther Number Four, played here far too often.

ONE LOVE STORY, EIGHT TAKES

Brenda Shaughnessy

Where you are tender, you speak your plural.
                                    Roland Barthes

                                               1

One version of the story is I wish you back—

that I used each evening evening out

what all day spent wrinkling.

I bought a dress that was so extravagantly feminine

you could see my ovaries through it.

This is how I thought I would seduce you.

This is how frantic I hollowed out.

                                                   2

Another way of telling it

is to hire some kind of gnarled

and symbolic troll to make

a tape recording.

Of plastic beads coming unglued

from a child’s jewelry box.

This might be an important sound,

like serotonin or mighty mitochondria,

so your body hears about

how you stole the ring made

from a glittery opiate

and the locket that held candy.

                                                    3

It’s only fair that I present yet another side,

as insidious as it is,

because two sides hold up nothing but each other.

A tentacled skepticism,

a suspended contempt,

such fancies and toxins form a third wall.

A mean way to end

and I never dreamed we meant it.

                                                    4

Another way of putting it is like

slathering jam on a scrape.

Do sweets soothe pain or simply make it stick?

Which is the worst! So much technology

and no fix for sticky if you can’t taste it.

I mean there’s no relief unless.

So I’m coming, all this excitement,

to your house. To a place where there’s no room for play.

It is possible you’ll lock me out and I’ll finally

focus on making mudcakes look solid in the rain.

                                                    5

In some cultures the story told is slightly different—

in that it is set in an aquarium and the audience participates

as various fish. The twist comes when it is revealed

that the most personally attractive fish have eyes

only on one side and repel each other like magnets.

The starfish is the size of an eraser and does as much damage.

Starfish, the eponymous and still unlikely hero, has

those five pink moving suckerpads

that allow endless permutations so no solid memory,

no recent history, nothing better, left unsaid.

                                                    6

The story exists even when there are no witnesses,

kissers, tellers. Because secrets secrete,

and these versions tend to be slapstick, as if in a candy

factory the chocolate belted down the conveyor too fast

or everyone turned sideways at the same time by accident.

This little tale tries so hard to be humorous,

wants so badly to win affection and to lodge.

Because nothing is truly forgotten and loved.

                                                    7

Three million Richards can’t be wrong.

So when they levy a critique of an undertaking which,

in their view, overtakes, I take it seriously.

They think one may start a tale off whingy

and wretched in a regular voice.

But when one strikes out whimsically,

as if meta-is-better, as if it isn’t you,

as if this story is happening to nobody

it is only who you are fooling that’s nobody.

The Richards believe you cannot

privately jettison into the sky, just for fun.

You must stack stories from the foundation up.

From the sad heart and the feet tired of supporting it.

Language is architecture, after all, not an air capsule,

not a hang glide. This is real life.

So don’t invite anyone to a house that hasn’t been built.

Because no one unbuilds meticulously

and meticulosity is what allows hearing.

Three million Richards make one point.

I hear it in order to make others. Mistake.

                                                    8

As it turns out, there is a wrong way to tell this story.

I was wrong to tell you how muti-true everything is,

when it would be truer to say nothing.

I’ve invented so much and prevented more.

But, I’d like to talk with you about other things,

in absolute quiet. In extreme context.

To see you again, isn’t love revision?

It could have gone so many ways.

This just one of the ways it went.

Tell me another.

A Man Marooned No Longer Looks for Ships, Imagines Anything on the Horizon

So, um, yeah. Return to maroonish. This blog's Theme Song and Theme Songs Seven (the Official Bleggalgazing Anthem), Two, and Three required to celebrate the shameless self-indulgence. The green was driving me nuts, not the color, the inability to manipulate the template. Changing BLCK2DGRD to dynamic also made the inability to manipulate the template here exponentially more maddening. I needed to stop thinking about not being able to change the template. It doesn't surprise people who know me it got to be an obsession, not being able to change the template. I needed to stop thinking about it, it had long ago creeped into other territories, was becoming a main topic, had passed from metaphor to topic. So I changed the template this morning to dynamic then changed it back to basic, the conversion freeing the Apply to Template functionality, so yay me if not you. I didn't deliberately wait for the second slowest day of the year in Blegsylvania, I woke up this morning and said, Fuck it, do it or shut up, and I'm incapable of shutting up. Fine metaphors abound. More dicking around to come! yay me if not you. If I can figure out how to add blogrolls to dynamic templates, might end up there.

• Marooned.
• The Laid-Back Guy.
• As promised, the Thirteen Precepts of Maqroll the Gaviero, one a linky post until done. Number one: Thinking about time, trying to find out if past and future are valid and, in fact, exist, leads us into a labyrinth that is no less incomprehensible for being familiar.
• Hints of others.
• A midwinter celebration. 
• Bleggalgazing. I'm flattered the term stuck elsewhere.
• Bleggalgazing and remembering Jon Swift.
• Proust, for those of you who do.
• Bomb Party's Top Ten songs of year.

MYSELF I SING

George Oppen

Me! he says, hand on his chest.
Actually, his shirt.
          And there, perhaps,
The question.

Pioneers! But trailer people?
Wood box full of tools—
               The most
American. A sort of
Shrinking
          in themselves. A
Less than adult: old.

A pocket knife,
A tool—
          And I
Here talking to the man?
               The sky

That dawned along the road
And all I've been
Is not myself? I think myself
Is what I've seen and not myself

A man marooned
No longer looks for ships, imagines
Anything on the horizon. On the beach
The ocean ends in water. Finds a dune
And on the beach sits near it. Two.
He finds himself by two.
               Or more.
'Incapable of contact
Save in incidents'
               And yet at night
Their weight is part of mine.
For we are all housed now, all in our apartments,
The world untended to, unwatched.
And there is nothing left out there
As night falls, but the rocks

I Am the Snouted Creature That Bites Through Anything, Root, Wire, or Can

Always with the Theme Songs. Long-timers here can vouch that the bottom live song has been Theme Song of a Month more than any other song. Also too, here, this shitty blog's back-up and archive renamed and reworked to display history of this blog in images - gifs working - plus a favorite poem (probably the poem posted here most often) and futile second use of a tag.







MOLY

Thom Gunn

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.

I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,

Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,

Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.

What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.

No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?

Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.

My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.

If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.

Oh a man’s flesh already is in mine.

Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine.

    I root and root, you think that it is greed,

It is, but I seek out a plant I need.

Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,

To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,

From milky flower to the black forked root.

From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin

And human title, putting pig within.

I push my big grey wet snout through the green,

Dreaming the flower I have never seen.

We Must Have Heard the Same Dogs Barking, or: Tricky Work Sometimes Not to Smell Yourself, Ferment Being Constant, or: I Had All These Precious Things to Burn, or: Theme Songs December 2013

HARD WORK

Roddy Lumsden

Tricky work sometimes not to smell yourself,

ferment being constant—constant as carnival sweat

(a non-stock phrase I palmed from a girl from Canada,

a land where I once saw this graffiti: life is great).

And I have tasted myself, especially when I spilled

sinigang all down my arm in a Pinoy workers' caff

in Little Manila. I drank sinigang (is soup drunk?)

in Big Manila too, with all its dead skyscrapers.

Seen myself? In looking glasses or, looking down,

stocky as a shift working cop, maybe a Mexican cop

full of beans (frijoles, I mean, not vim), paunch full

of sopa de vigilia, pulling over a sozzled bus driver.

Heard myself speak fluently in my own language,

have heard myself too described as hard work

(as hard to get through as Scotch broth), though once

someone rather bladdered told me I was magnetic.

And I may as well admit that I have touched myself

(who hasn't?). In a forest, on a train, in New York

and Paris with unparalleled handiwork, sinning   

as I go, merry as an office boy spooning onion soup.

Theme Song August 2013

             
It's true: I've a beginning of the semester bad mood and I was toying with the idea of naming the permalink something along the lines that could cost me my job (then chickened out), but I never intended to close comments and have no recollection of doing so. Open now.

As long as I'm here have a Dead Can Dance song plus: Thom Gunn's birthday is day after tomorrow so Gunn poems today, tomorrow, day after:


MOLY

Thom Gunn

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.

I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,

Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,

Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.

What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.

No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?

Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.

My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.

If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.

Oh a man’s flesh already is in mine.

Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine.

    I root and root, you think that it is greed,

It is, but I seek out a plant I need.

Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,

To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,

From milky flower to the black forked root.

From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin

And human title, putting pig within.

I push my big grey wet snout through the green,

Dreaming the flower I have never seen.

Me, or: Theme Song 5/20/13 8:54 PM EDT

What Was Needed Here Was Not as Much a Sharper Eye as a Higher Order Eye, a Whole Other Orb Altogether

• Yes, I know, Watford is Reginald Dwight's team, but I envy the Watford fans' joy, vaguely remember when I felt capable of it if never actually felt it.
• Well fuck me, fifteen minutes after posting the above video the copyright assholes took it down. Fine metaphors abound. I can assure you it was the greatest motherfucking youtube ever of one of the most remarkable one minutes in footballing history! Sorry you missed it.
• Best bleggalgaze ever, one I'm totally incapable of creating.
• Yes, my shitty soccer team lost over the weekend. The effort was better, the lack of talent was the same.
• Someone at Salon stole Abonilox's idea.
• Ask yourself, what kind of person wants to be a cop.
• Jamie Dimon profits!
• The ideology to end ideologies.
• Imagine Edroso's opinion had Benghazi happened on Bush's watch in which Edroso would mock the Right for not taking Benghazi as seriously as Edroso is not taking Benghazi seriously now. Verily, I'm the asshole because I think the truth lies somewhere between the inviolable doctrinal truths of the two motherfucking tribes.
• Adding, I'm the asshole to point out that had a story broke in 2007 that Bush's IRS targeted Liberal groups for special scrutiny the noise from Tribe Democrat would be equal to the current noise by Tribe Republican.
• The End of Liberalism.

• Purple Line.
• Anthony Brown is Maryland's Lt Gov, candidate for governor in 2014? Never heard of him.
• How to blog. Fine ironies abound.
• How not to blog: don't post birthday tributes to obscure dead novelists and forgotten dead stand-up comedians on gorgeous May weekends.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Maggie's weekend links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• Anthony's links of the week.
• On kittens.
• Frank O'Hara.
• I can't speak to science fiction, whether these novels are good or not, but SciFi for Economists, for those of you who do SciFi.
• Auden.
• Excerpts from Blood Meridian.
• The Wipers.
• Nancarrrow.
• Three hours of drummage.
• This was going to be the blog's Theme Song for May 2013 but fuck that in celebration of fucking that.

WHY I NEVER APPLIED MYSELF TO POOL

Dan Brown

Not that I lacked an eye entirely,
But give me an oblique enough kiss
To visualize, and my eye said "See ya later."
A little practice might have sharpened it,
But what was needed here was not as much
A sharper eye as a higher order eye,
A whole other orb altogether.

Theme Songs March 2013

An Egoslavian tradition I may or not have just made up, I'm counting on your not checking archives to find out because you give the proper shit, but March is annually the Theme Song Month of Bleggalgazing Anthems, so have two.

And If He Cries Put His Heart Out with a Lantern's Goat

Insomnia, cold, botched root canal, work suck, shittiest mood in months, and now this, motherfucking Obama's inauguration playlist:

1. Signed, Sealed, Delivered - Stevie Wonder
2. I Was Here - Beyonce
3. Mi Gente - Marc Anthony
4. Carry On - Fun.
5. New Day - Alicia Keys
6. Mud On The Tires - Brad Paisley
7. Turn Up The Love - Far East Movement, Cover Drive
8. Edge Of Glory - Glee Cast
9. Your Smiling Face - James Taylor
10. Ordinary People - John Legend
11. Firework - Katy Perry
12. Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson
13. My Mic - Nick Cannon ft. Biz Markie
14. Something Special - Usher
15. Higher And Higher - Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago
16. Get Ready - Smokey Robinson
17. Future - Mindless Behavior

What a motherfucker. What a lame-ass motherfucker. What a despicable lame-ass motherfucker. Hey, despicable lame-ass motherfucker, eat this:






HELEN: A REVISION

Jack Spicer

zeus: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

thersites: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

zeus: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.

thersites: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

zeus: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

thersites: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

zeus: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]

*       *       *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost

And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost

Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge

Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge

Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat

Where they say all passages to pay the debt

The lighted yet.

*       *       *

The focus sing

Is not their business. Their backs lay

By not altogether being there.

Here and there in swamps and villages.

How doth the silly crocodile

Amuse the Muse

*       *       *

And in the skyey march of flesh

That boundary line where no body is

Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms

And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there

And mud and fire

Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud

and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs

The battlefield has harms. The trees have half

Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord

From hair and mud and flesh.

1000

  
This is not my 1000th blog post ever but it is the 1000th at this location since I migrated here from typepad twenty-six months ago. I promise I did not schedule the past week's posts to land #1000 on Giftmas, though, Bless Serendipity, it worked out when I noticed I was at 999 last night. So, in typical clumsy, inept, and graceless self-indulgence, here, Happy Giftmas, this blog's theme songs in order they were so designated, minus any other bleggalgazing, of which there is lots, though not today.


*
*
*
*
*

Long Red Nights in His God-Studio

So, no slide show of Kensington-Frederick-Hagerstown-Hancock-Cumberland-Morgantown-Washington-Wheeling-Zanesville-Bamgier. Caution won: it can't be a good sign winter storms now get names, but Draco, at the time when decisions needed making, made the Cumberland-Morgantown part at best potentially clusterfuckful, at worse dangerous. Planet flies in tomorrow, we'll pick up the skunk and goats that need to come home when we take her back. O! Fleabus photos by way of request. The renaissance of Fleabus (Sarah's death was pivotal) is remarkably lovely, she's herself again, the best cat ever. Photo above is by me a few nights ago; her old photographer, that's one of her Fleabus photos below, flies home Saturday. Yay!
   

• What the fuck did you expect? Obama will dismantle more of security net before his second inauguration than Romney could have by his reelection campaign in 2016.
• People concerned about the leadership chaos in House GOP, don't worry, Obama will save the party.
• And visa versa. His obamapostasy will never be ready.
• Celebrate the failure of The Great Betrayal?
• Call me when Obama steps to a microphone and calls bullshit on his own creation.
• Bug splats.
• This week in war.
• Pundits wrong about $$$ and 2012 election?
• Left Side of the Aisle #87. 
• Things you might have missed.
• Сеча кнезова. 
• MOCO to try fucking over PG yet again. It's a rite.
• Here: Cup an ear and listen very, very carefully. Hear that high-pitched squeaking noise? That's the sound of thousands of Geordie buttocks chafing in unison at the prospect of Saturday's home match against Queens Park Rangers.
• Can anyone tell me why motherfucking blooger shrunk the maximum width of blog headers from 910 to 760, the motherfuckers?
• The photography of Marion Post Walcott. Goodness.
• Bought myself these for Giftmas. Will share, as soon as today.
• My fatal flaw.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• Why yes, the song at postbottom is this shitty blog's Theme Song. 
• Happy Holidays from Yo La Tengo.
• Oh my. There's your Giftmas present.
• Was reading some subobobosubsubobjest last night when I clicked the song below. Guess what won!

50

Julie Carr

My son is wroth. Dear summer, dear aging, the bottoms of cups:

If bearing children is a game one plays
with fate and

is a joke: trees as yet unleaved, a sunny -


     My son is wroth, my daughter too, and me, myself, I am wroth. A fugitive

     on the earth, and a vagabond. Dear opposition, dear trashed strollers, dear

     torn to pieces: Wasn't, won't be, isn't me

     collecting swords, hanging them on my living room wall, that's my

     neighbor, he's recording God-songs, God-songs for the radio, suited up for

     long red nights in his God-studio.

     Their ordinary cloths, their rubber gloves: "Have you seen a body?

      Have you seen one?"


Wroth.

If I Woke I Never Knew It

  
I'd promised a friend I'd post his Raincoats playlist next post which is this post, I'm pretty sure this is his second Raincoats playlist here, I thank him and encourage him to send me a third Raincoats or a first of something else. I beg each of you to send me playlists, I want to hear things I've never heard before and things I haven't heard in ages that reward a homecoming. Or don't, no pressure, never mind. I'm shouting out loud about adventures close to home while in love with odyshape and need go away. And will, at least until Monday, after a song I love, a poem I love (no, not this one, flashed into my head by this tweet minutes ago, though I love it) (yes, this one, I love it, but you try c/ping that in blogger), a song I love.







PSALM TO BE READ WITH CLOSED EYES

D. Nurkse

Ignorance will carry me through the last days,
the blistering cities, over briny rivers
swarming with jellyfish, as once my father
carried me from the car up the tacked carpet
to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.

Theme Song October 2012

It Is the Great Arguments We Are Proud of, Over a Nibbled Peach, Hair in the Comb, a Faulty Lube Job

THE DEAD REMEMBER BROOKLYN

D. Nurkse

It is the great arguments

we are proud of, over a nibbled peach,

hair in the comb, a faulty lube job;

the reconciliations were always naked

in borrowed rooms, sometimes in Queens

or Staten Island, we touched each other

shyly—we reminded each other

of loneliness and funk and beautiful pigeons

with oil-slick necks, cooing bitterly—

but there we lost each other

in forgiveness; keeping score,

being wounded even in triumph,

walking home down leafy avenues

etched with the faint double line

of extinct trolleys, caressing

carved hearts under a sheen of sap

with a ragged nail, sleeping alone,

choosing the dream of betrayal,

entering by the wide door

and waking dead—there

we were superb. In Brooklyn

we held our own.

 





Bonus Fugazi! for a fuck-it post on a deadblog Saturday. Going hiking.

By the Road to the Contagious Hospital

That's at the top of the hill before the descent to Brunswick, photo taken yesterday on way to Harpers Ferry, deliberately stopped for the photo, it's been decades since Maryland put Maryland on a Maryland state route shield, this is the only one I know of.  My apologies, you wanted actual game analysis of United's 2-1 win over Ningland? Shambolic, United's defense. Read that first word in the last sentence again as you'd imagine a third tier British announcer doing a Bolton-Blackburn relegation battle last Spring, that accent. Now do Marv Albert saying "Yes!" This is just to say. Reminder, I'm closing comments after 24-hours stagnation not to shut you up but to fuck with spammers. I hate the captcha, assume you too do. Meanwhile, the not-clusterfuckage-but in what I can't talk about here continues even if perhaps it nears finish while the clusterfuckage I can talk about here but don't want to continues now and forever, un-amen.

• One year ago today.
• Pre-anniversary Occupy arrests.
• The logic of Occupy.
• What happened to Occupy?
• 7,453 - 0. That's 0 as in bankers, but could also apply to motherfucking crackers dressed as revolutionary war heroes at Tea-Party rallies. Hmmm.....
• Occupy is not over. Earthgirl has had her obamapostasy, details to come or not (though see above poem), she asked yesterday, What would benefit Occupy more, Romney's election or Obama's?
• Dear Bankers....
• Seeking stories.
• The descent.
• I for one have no problem with Obama's Czechoslovakia policies. 
• The howling.
• Complete destruction.
• UPDATE! Today's Shostakovich, his birthday in eight days. Requests solicited though not expected.

• Faith in faith.
• The symbolic and the utilitarian.
• Foxes, perennialists, hedgehogs, revolutionaries.
• Peace on Earth.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• The object of criticism.
• William Carlos Williams was born 129 years ago today.
• The uses of poetry.
• I never got Elvis Costello but I've many friends who did and still do.
• Kate Bush cover. Yes, posted before but reminded just now.
• The best Kate Bush cover ever:

SPRING AND ALL

William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.

Fear Not the Tarnish and Diminishments of Age or Its Insane Revelations as You Creak, Leak, and Freak Your Way to the Grave

So I went to bulletpoint today's links. I bold them all then hit the bullet option on blooger's toolbar but I brainfarted and hit the Link link which ate all the links, hours' work poofed. Here's what you're missing: Teacher pay versus selected others. Two visions for Chicago schools. Class warfare in the classroom. Carbon Democracy. Spooked-up asshole. Villager Court Jester dances on Romney's grave. Professional progressive dances on Romney's grave. For the record, I've been offering 4-1 pint bets since 2008 that Obama wins POTUS 12. Ring of Fire. Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready. Look! Corpse of bin Laden! Obama lies too. Same as Bush (with more killing). Compromising positions. My future hell. Some poems, some songs. You know the lyrics, can fill in the (b)links all by yourself, but blessed serendipity of a brainfart, I'm reminded of a lesson in dance and damnlessness I already knew but mostly ignore.





MIDLIFE LULLABY

Amy Gerstler

Fear not the tarnish and diminishments of age
or its insane revelations as you creak, leak, and freak
your way to the grave. Never relinquish ties
to exiles, to juiced-up boozers and the bamboozled.
Like you, they're solid citizens anguish nearly polished
off (but not yet!), burnished veterans gilded by loss,
who glint like old bowling trophies in the right light.
"Extinguishment is still far away," we repeat under
our breaths at bedtime, like children who can't
remember their prayers. Come morning we'll step
out for a meatloaf sandwich (one our grown son
dubbed "meat-load" sandwich back when he was a ticklish
kid squishing it flat with his little hand so it'd fit into
his mouth). A humble dish with radish garnish,
it gives sagging spirits a life and beguiles our tongues
with onions, mustard, and mortal sweetness welling
up from deep in the beef, which, if meat could speak
might moo or sigh: "Yes, I too was well fed in my time."