A Blue Muscle Roping Future In As Past

• Lots of Robyn Hitchcock, who was 59 yesterday.
• What is there to say about Limbaugh's inevitable apology? No one will be happy, not his detractors, especially not his devotees, and all will be forgotten within weeks if not days, replaced with the next fury over the next distraction on the path to Obama's reelection.
• Please note that in this YFWP article on Iran supplying weaponry and logistical help to Syrian government for crackdown on Syrian citizen uprising there is not a single mention of the US supplying weaponry and logistical guidance to Bahrain during its crackdown on citizen uprising. Hey look! Rush Limbaugh!
• Which is not my denying the odiousness of the motherfucking cracker assaults on women's rights nor the just and deserved outrage against them. What pisses me off is being forced into an either/or dead-end binary that only exists as a corralling accusation: either sanction Obama's assaults on civil liberties or sacrifice women's reproductive rights. Reject the false equation.
• Along those lines.
• Koch v Cato.
• Counting your blessings.
• Yes, old news, but here, some words for your twitter feed to amuse DHS fuckers.
• Lindsay Graham, R-Israel.
• Whirled peas.
• Animal crackers.
• What is each cities most sacred uniform number? Here? Sonny's 9. 
• The Present.
• Hitchcock covers Roxy Music.
• Balloon Man has inside baseball. 
• Yes, I know he's performed with The Dotherfucking Mecembrists - I once went on a date with Vanice Jetter. We clowns all seek and need forgiveness.
• This is now BLCKDGRD - Official Theme Song 7:

EVERYONE IN THE ROOM IS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WORLD AT LARGE

Catherine Wagner

Things mean, and I can’t tell them not to.
Things they moralize, to meet
my expectation, because I want advice
on how to live. The seaweed says:

This is a river; I am river-weed.
Which of these/my clumps do you want me to be (say)?

The closest one. That more animated brown one
rolls and unrolls its lengths of hair
and makes me feel unwell.
You quieter green clump, why don’t you speak.
Then

A most beautiful bright blue bird
knifed down the stream
and veered left at the oak,
where the stream bends. A
male bird. He says: I am the
excellent wanderer
flashing above
the stream,
a blue muscle that centers past
and future

a blue muscle roping future in
as past behind me cedes

blue muscle flying future into past

blue muscle flashes future

instantaneous wingbeat pasts.

Under the bird, forest and water. Above
the bird, forest and cloud.

The twig trails in the water.
Twig-end disappears, twig resurrects
in reflection and continues down,
leads back to the tree, the undertree
that lives on the top of the water.
If I penetrate (look beneath) the water, the twig end
dangles and the forest
disappears.

The bird was a flying fist

It smashed up nothing

I pursued it round the corner,
a blue punch

my violence goes on out along the stream.

when your keyboard dissolves in the pit of nations to write in echoes is the clock of the age

• Do I think Obama believed what he said yesterday about Limbaugh's slut and whore declarations? Sure. Do I think he'd have said it if it wasn't in his political interest? No, of course he wouldn't. His statements are vetted by professional political actuaries who, this time, probably didn't need to calculate the weight of each response to carefully crafted focus group questions before releasing Obama to speak the words they put in his mouth.
• Obama interviewed by former Israeli prison guard. Yes, Obama practiced his canned responses beforehand, and yes, he's bright and lithe enough to riff and stay in key. Do you have ANY doubt he's going to win reelection?
• Obama doesn't bluff.
• Do I think Quicken Loan just noticed Rush is a vile sack of shit just yesterday? 
• The point of this post being that I've lost my indian drum and need to either enjoy rubying the kayfabe or stop kayfabing the ruby and re-embrace my emancipation from the either/or.
• (BTW, Hoya Jack's statement? I wrote exactly as many words in it as Jack did, yo)
• Thumbsuckers. Speaking of motherfucking NPR, I was driving last night and caught ten minutes of Diane Rehm's Villager Circlejerk, they were talking about Limbaugh, one of the guests - I have no idea who the fucker was - hummed and hahhed for ten torturous seconds before finally spitting out the words "slut" and 'prostitute." WOE! the tribulations of the sensibilities of the motherfucking Villager. 
• Do I think the motherfucking Villagers just noticed yesterday that Rush is a vile sack of shit? 
• Ask yourself, whose ass is Fred Hiatt covering in that editorial.
• Mad.
• Corruption and the citizen, American-style.
• Yes.
• Remember when Andrew Breitbart died a few dozen hours ago and everybody rushed to get their piece of flesh? Good times.
• Rooting for Frothy.
• See essay's title, note Garry Wills utter lack of self-irony.
• BBBB's Rush post can represent everybody else's appropriate disdain for the fat fuck that is Rush.
• You will never die.
• What is the difference between giving bonuses for kill shots in NFL and giving bonuses to bankers for kill shots?
• Help Silber if you can.
• A problem w/bllogger.
• Boatload of links on intellectual property in a digital age.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• The Cat's Dream.
• This is not a complaint, but I have no idea why I woke up with Steve Hillage in my head:

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PRESENT

John Lane

when rivers are intoxicated
with dioxide you gather lotus shoots
to pick their pockets is
the clock of the age

when the last songbird
shivers with undue cold like wires overhead
to handle harsh metals is
the clock of the age

when your keyboard dissolves
in the pit of nations
to write in echoes is
the clock of the age

when you forge transparencies
in the foundries upstream
the bridges are blocked by karaoke
their digital sand is
the clock of the age

the cell phone's face is always
time-dependent on fingers somewhere
today opens to the nearby delta 
and tomorrow 
is the clock of the age

canning involves brine and fish we simply don't have

I have a friend who was standing ten yards from Breitbart when he screamed at Occupiers to "stop raping people," I said last night at Thursday Night Pints. L said, he was as big an asshole as Limbaugh, have you heard what he's been saying about that Hilltop student? Yeah, I said, the boycott-Limbaugh's-sponsors posts in Left Blogosphere and facebook and twitter and stuff are up and outraged. K said, I noticed the corpse of Breitbart is the new chew toy for left/right tug-of-war. Sure, I said, the same people who are dancing on Breitbart's grave would be outraged when the right danced on, say, Glenn Greenwald's grave and the same people who would dance on Greenwald's grave are outraged at those people dancing on Breitbart's grave. You're not comparing Greenwald to Breitbart and Limbaugh are you, K, aghast, said. And by extension you and a Limbaugh fan, I asked. No, I continued, I mean yes too, I'm just saying do you want another drink.

• Dancing on Breitbart's grave.
• Dancing on Breitbart's grave.
• Dancing on Breitbart's grave.
• Breitbart and the problem with Liberals.
• On the Y-Chromosome. Last two sentences sum up Obama perfectly.
• Motherfucking Obama tells former Israeli prison guard Motherfucking Obama don't bluff, yo.
• The Saudis? What's the lowest gas price per gallon since 911? When has the U.S. military presence in the Middle East ever been greater, the Saudi monarchy more protected?
• On the above.
• On stupidity as philosophical keystone.
• Begging to be hunted by a mob.
• DHS monitoring the above (and more) terms.
• Purple Line.
• Mostly redneck.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Karen Carpenter was born 62 years ago today.
• Sonatina.

to have been, instead

Stephen Motika

instead, insulted. to look, in green light. redact. can you read... the oracular, such indifference. failing in the halls of an unknown.

to have powered down. mission. some sort of calvacade, plane flight caucus to indifference. a mission, museum, the night in the unknown. a city.

raked forest leaves, consorted with compost fires, down in steam, walked an incline, slipped to fall. the clatter of bones on buried stones, on those leaves fallen, but not as fast as I fell.

in Turrell's dim light, I realized the failure of the art official. an artificial stance, an impossibility: to speak and listen simultaneously.

the train bed, we call them tracks, where two ties swim beneath. a gossip, these gadgets, soaked in white scrimmed preamble. I made the mistake of coming closer, again.

ihe rejection, a mastication of the brain, those thoughts that fuel the day. I can't, besides, canning involves brine and fish we simply don't have.

in the sea farm, large carp. in the lake, a new cat finds our resources, our swims, those precious summer waters, where the between marks space.

the train from platform; here, everything in an elevated series of windows, lighted, in yellow mirrored fashion. large tower rests on the ground. the pavement gives way, the grinding of breaks.

came across a few seats, edits, and large empty doors. there were paintings, an elderly man. a slipped space to look aside guards and walls. I can't think of how many steps it takes to escape.

platformed, clasped, we waited to circulate, encased, dined within curator's task, lips sown in a silence of those emeriti.

caustic, in bold approach, pallid lips, rouged face, nearly quaffed and ensconced. I edged the red, a rage lost in the linen weave, a time.

Words, Which Can Make Our Terrors Bravely Clear, Can Also Thus Domesticate a Fear

Another Holyday of Egoslavia, Chopin born 202 years ago today (depending on which calendar one uses), Richard Wilbur born 91 years ago today. My mother is a pianist whose love of Mozart drove me fucking crazy, whose love of Chopin taught me love of Chopin. And, as in the case of Frost and Auden and Marianne Moore, it was Hecht who showed me the wonders of Wilbur.




A BARRED OWL

Richard Wilbur

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

• Planet is home for Spring Break tomorrow night. Yay! I'll badger her for new Fleabus (& Stanley & Rose & Nap & Sara) photos.
• Have these while they're fresh:
• The dead have no victories and the hangman is a fraud.
• The Dead.
• Grid, not goal, part three.
• Where is the line between us?
• Social Darwinism.
• Your civil liberties.
• Obama faith.
• Capitalism.
• DoD on Jenny Craig (w/side of fries).
• Remember this? Dozens and dozens of ordinary days ago.
• Chain of fools.
• No time for time w/Iran.
• Not free, expensive.

• I saw neither the US-Italy game or United-Battery game, though Fullback did. The new USMNT road blues - this drives me nuts: pick a fucking template (this is as good as any) and fucking stick with it.
• Here's the Albanian Hammer's second goal for United.
• And United's road kit should ALWAYS be white/black/white. And it's a good thing United got rid of that MOTHERFUCKING HIDEOUS RED THIRD KIT, yes? No.
• Effects are born of agreement.
• The badness of bad faith.
• Double-dose of Mieville.
• You've bookmarked and/or rssd Our God Is Speed, yes?
• Also too The Quietus?
• Josipovici for those of you who do.
• I have an extra copy of Wilbur's collected somewhere in my shelves. I can dig it out and mail it to you if you want it. First come first served.
• The Dead. One of the best nights of my life, that.
• This is the Chopin my mother plays the most:

ADVICE TO A PROPHET

Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?

Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

And the Kids Just Don't Understand

We used to play Monkees. I was Mickey (I was the oldest, I got to choose), my cousin Jennifer was Davy, Elric was Michael Nesmith, my cousin Wayne-Matthew was Peter Tork. I used to argue with Nadine Kneidler, who was my age, had cooties, lived two houses down, that The Monkees were better than The Beatles. I unsuccessfully badgered Mr Filsinger to change the Cub Scout pack meeting, held in his cat-piss smelling basement, from Mondays at seven to any other night at seven so I could watch The Monkees on Monday on NBC. I wanted to be Mickey because Mickey got the power-pop songs I loved while Davy got the bubble-gum songs I hated, though I do like the song above, noted because Davy Jones died today, noted because it's another mile marker past the halfway point passed.

Here and here and here and here, my favorite Monkees' song:

No One Could Have Assumed a Stiffer Welcome Than the One We Got

Flutterings! o! DHS monitored Occupy! Wouldn't any of you who participated in any way, from keyboarding to occupying, be offended if they didn't? Also - I assume the FBI and DHS is infiltrating rightwing militias as well as Occupy and Muslim mosques, don't you? When DHS flies drones over Oklahoma monitoring crackers in home-made uniforms war-gaming I feel __________ about it.  Also too, here's a Martin Luther Insult Generator.

• Battle lines.
• Drones, baby, drones.
• Drones over the Philippines.
• Lying the world into war is always an option.
• We have the technology.
• We have the technology.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• I used to say this all the time. Go ahead, Alabama, secede again.
• That shithouse of an Eastern Shore discovered by European Stone Age hunters!
• Shithouse of an Eastern Shore is trademark Billy Don Melonhead.
• My imminent hell. Construction shit already off-loaded onto the grass at the corner of Cedar Lane and Rockville Pike.
• Things you might have missed.
• Owen gets reviewed by Self in LRB.
• When did writing become a career?
• I work at a Catholic university that requires all freshman take a Problem of God class, I see Walker Percy assigned all the time, though I imagine many my age haven't thought about Percy in years.
• The new Ashbery poem below made me think of my reaction to the new Magnetic Field's album. I'm going to try to wait until I get my hands on the new Mantel novel this May and even then maybe until I get my hands on the new Ishiguro whenever it's released, but there's definitely something going on that is either me or them or, most likely, and most likely the option I'll choose regardless, both.
• Stream the new Xiu Xiu for those of you who do.
• A Brendan Benson song for those of you who do.
• Waiting for Wotan, continued.
• Complete work of Carl Ruggles.
• Here I would normally post a youtube of a Ruggles piece, but my new obsession with Richard Youngs wins, so instead, the two pieces you didn't hear when you didn't see last nights WTF12HRMAX post:

POEM: ETUDES SECOND SERIES

John Ashbery

A cloud blew up and like
that: OK fun’s fun but we’ve got issues,
to wait until tomorrow. At least that’s
what I heard, a kind of rushing
as of water over steep slabs. More ants to fry.
I was placed on administrative leave, you
had to be there, nevertheless it sucked,
went back years. No one could find the original
copy, there were bats in the belfry.
Finally one comes down to me and says where were you.
I was only asking. Or if he had been there recently,
why there were more rafters to be removed
before you get to the roof, the actual core.
So I imagined there was infinitely more
copies like these and that we would recover
all of them. A dormer of truth sparkled.

And we were caught up, embarrassed in the shine
that hadn’t meant to spear us away like that.
Parts of it were yours. When it came back
to the truth that was there, nobody could imagine
otherwise. Where once lack had been, now
was embarrassment of riches. The riches themselves
were embarrassed for what they had brought us.
So it was time to go, even if it was
that other time when nothing came in or left,
a period of ragged glare. And why not? Why shouldn’t
the other trap have sprung? Its vagueness was sweet
for once. No guest could have assumed a stiffer
welcome than the one we got. The deputy was frazzled
and his sidekick hamstrung, but all came up
for the cause, there was no fighting ways about it
as long as mercenaries shuddered and satin slunk
along the shores. After all, it was the way it had
been ordered. Now I want you to just sit over there,
it’s June in February and a passel o’
wild things be headin’ here. If that’s the case
I think I’ll just be off. Oh no you don’t,
you sit over there, and more’s the pity.

So hours and hours were spent tapping the studs
until the requisite hollow sound whooshed forth,
making monkeys of us all. And do you think the
boy on the gourd took any notice of us? Naw, he
was too full of himself to be another’s. The end
result is eponymous, like they say. If no name clings
to the door’s outside you are all free to pick up
your things at the cashier’s desk and mosey outward,
I suppose, if that is the kind of thing that gets recorded
hereabouts. Only let no man call the spire a skyscraper,
or angle for further farthings in the dust. Shucks,
a salesman can call that tune, honest injun, he
appropriated. It happened on a remote median, six miles from the world.

Pull, You Know, Favor, Drag

I play the single from the new Magnetic Fields' album again just because inside baseball but mostly because I like it, unlike the rest of the new Magnetic Field's album which can be streamed here. Six times through, each time I like it progressively less. In my brain of hearts I knew when I voted for Obama in November 2008 exactly how February 28, 2012's obamapostasy would feel: my disillusionment at the Corporate fuck that Obama is is no rubier or kayfabier than my fantasies of Obama as progressive hero were, but in faith's marrow, I never expected to not adore a Magnetic Fields album.

• The absurdity of game theory.
• The hurt is on.
• On Freedom Plaza versus McPherson Square.
• The NYPD was just the hired help.
• The NYPD was just the hired help.
• Microcosm. 
• As expected, President Obama and major Democratic power brokers, including Chuck Schumer, D-Wall Street, have spoken out against the NYPD spying program. 
• Meh, I made a funny. Fuck Democrats.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• The global war on women.
• Anarchy as a personal relationship.
• Anarchist geographies.
• A last chance for Christianity?
• Odds and ends.
• Yes, I've been motherfucking motherfucking crackering more. Here's Robert Reich motherfucking crackering. Speaking only for me and acknowledging the self-justifying and self-serving intent of this statement, I am largely small enough to simultaneously understand the use of motherfucking crackers to control my behavior and still enjoy loathing motherfucking crackers.
• On the Robert Reich.
• Blooger is getting shittier faster.
• (Happy Birthday, Elric, if you're reading - or if you're not too.)
• The Garden of Effort.
• Burning down the architectural house of failure.
• The return of Silliman's incredibly generous lit links.
• The songs on the new Mag Fields that sound like I thought they would sound tired, the songs written to sound different sound forced. I'm the same age metaphysically as Magnetic Fields. I should have more sympathy for selfish reasons alone for the projector's predicament. Such is my loyalty to my addiction to faith that I'll listen to the album over and over until I like it.
• I've no problem loving this boatload of live Bonnie Prince Billy.

[In the great snowfall before the bomb]

Lorine Niedecker

In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road

I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie
I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,
I'd never get anywhere
because I'd never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.

I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.
But what vitality! The women hold jobs—
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

When I Was Younger, When I First Made These Rules for Myself, I Would Always Carry Up to Three Suitcases, However Large or Heavy

• Busy, I'm behind on links because of my new weekend lazyass blegging policy, plus last night's post covers what I'd been thinking about, plus the new Tindersticks album is so good, have more again.
• Won't stop until there's nobody to kill.
• Grid, not goal.
• On carbon democracy.
• Coercion v control.
• Social class of teachers.
• Mapping stereotypes.
• EJ Dionne fears the end of the GOP cracker-baiting, prays for Frothy.
• Clarence Thomas for POTUS! No, really.
• College educated crackers are stupider than non-college educated crackers. I've no doubt this is true for college educated pwoggles like me too.
• Frothy (B.A., M.B.A, J.D) tells crackers don't go to college.
• The cracker obsession with ladyparts.
• They are motherfucking crackers.
• Posted because the guy with the shoe phone is my avatar's nemesis.
• My new second favorite soccer team.
• You are forewarned. I'm fully inhabited by The Unconsoled, my third time now. No author hits the chords in my head like Ishiguro. Love love love. See below in the usual poem spit
• Looking at birthdays, I notice that Peter De Vries was both 102 years ago. When was the last time you saw mention, much less read, a novel by Peter De Vries?
• I think the Oscars suck when it's good; I'm told by those who like the Oscars that last night sucked. I can't imagine the depth of that suck, except to guess it's the same to me.
• Stuart Staples interview.

Gustav the porter, first chapter, Ishiguro's The Unconsoled:

"I should be honest with you, sir. It's only fair. When I was younger, when I first made these rules for myself, I would always carry up to three suitcases, however large or heavy. If a guest had a fourth, I'd put that one on the floor. But three, I could always manage. Well, the truth is, sir, four years ago I had a period of ill-health, and I was finding things difficult, and so we discussed it at the Hungarian Cafe. Well, in the end, my colleagues all agreed there was no good reason for me to be so strict on myself. After all, they said to me, all that's required is to impress on the guests something of the true nature of our work. Two bags or three, the effect would be much the same. I should reduce my minimum to two suitcases and no harm would be done. I accepted what they said, sir, but I know it's not quite the truth. I can see it doesn't have nearly the same effect when people look at me. The difference between seeing a porter laden with two bags and seeing one laden with three, your must admit, sir, even to the least practiced eye, the effect is considerably different. I know that, sir, and I don't mind telling you it's painful for me to accept. But just to return to my point, I hope you see now why I don't wish to put down your bags. You only have two. At least for a few more years, two will be within my powers."

Doesn't This Remind You of Those Things We've Done Before?

That pink putter in the basket is my bird on hole three at Seneca, though the four on 13C and three on 21B and 24C were sweet but the three on 26D was gold. Played back 9 then middle then front. Back: 3-4-3-5-3-3-4-3-4. Middle: 3-4-4-4-6-3-3-4-3 (but wasn't in the water - didn't go in all day, Dr Z twice). Front - skipped first, newby group of six-4-2-3-5-4-3-4-3. I've never putted better. I haven't played in two months. Holyfuck, beautiful day.

That's Stanley shot this morning from inside the stairwell to our basement looking out underneath the door to hallway. I need note that while I don't watch many movies - it's not a principled thing, I like them when I do, I just don't, I think to do other stuff - I recognize, as someone who organizes his music and poetry and fiction and everything into Desert Island lists, why the Oscars - and Emmys and Tonys and - are so popular, that popularity, like everything else, reminds me of my training. I've been warned to stay away from twooter the next four hours to avoid people who often complain about the taxonomies and methodologies of our ruling hierarchies competing to be the wittiest, wisest, and archest - what do you think of my entry submitted here? - twootergod of a popularity contest that celebrates the taxonomies and methodologies of our ruling hierarchies. I don't know movies to play this one, that's why I'm sitting this particular tournament out. Let's play Best Furs Song Ever!

Born One Hundred Thirty-Three Years Ago Today

BTW, I have access to a huge and excellent database of classical music, whateverthefuck the sillyass phrase classical music means, covering whenever until now, including most of Bridge. Glad to give friends access. Email me.

Matins

Here, all of All Things Must Pass.

Here, a post from last September with all of Wonderwall Music in links.

Holiest Day of Egoslavia

George was born sixty-nine years ago today. I love George. Love love love. I can say with utter certainty that I have listened to All Things Must Pass more than any other album. In that sillyass desert island game, it's one of five.

Ric Flair is 63 today:

His shoes cost more than your house.

Clause of Claws

No Thursday Night Pints, bad week work-wise, grippe-wise, work-wise, and husband-wise respectively. Somebody would have mentioned Feingold or I would have, somebody would have mentioned Santorum or L would have, somebody would have mentioned the latest Hilltop gossip or K would have, somebody would have mentioned I'd sure write and read more if I stopped blogging or D would have. Once the first person bailed the rest of us quickly OKed. Fun gets old too.

Re: Feingold - tells me Obama's election is cake. Cake. I wonder what Cabinet position Feingold's been promised in Obama's second term, if he's been offered an audition for heir apparent.





A friend reminded me last night it's be a year or so since I ran my Official Autoblogography, so here it is again. Also, my apologies: I have so hopelessly fucked-up with my incompetence the coding to this blooger site, if you want to see the expanded version of last night's poem, which I assumed was expandable on this fucking blog but wasn't, it's over at the backward blog where it is expandable.

• Symposium on Graeber's Debt.
• Two opposing views of POTUS 12 here and here.
• GOP candidate update.
• Obamadickswinger.
• Category error.
• Which is worse, that he's lying, that he believes what he's saying?
• Pastor Sanctimonious: incoherently hysterical or hysterically incoherent?
• The Iranian threat.
• Drone wars as way of life.
• Fatfuck Thiessen complains that drones prevent torture.
• Baboons on the loose.
• Hey, Michel Foucault! (Thanks, AYV)
• Oh, heard another radio commercial yesterday, this one for Capital One Bank - a dweeb is bragging to the She-Bitch who dumped him at the prom about the points he accrues using his Capital One credit card. He tells the She-Bitch that he's earned enough points to take his yoga-instructor wife - she's very fit, She-Bitch, because of the yoga, he emphasizes - on a vacation to Hawaii flying first class. Did you know, She-Bitch, that seats in first class are made of supple leather? Know what the leather smells like, She-Bitch? Victory, that's what.
• Yay Maryland!
• Rescue cat saves owner's life. Adopt a cat today!
• In which we learn the world will be taken over by cats.
• A poetics of radical evil.
• Literature in times of crisis.
• Map of the Voyage of the Pequod.
• Sun and Necessity.
• If you dig Zeppelin, try this Janacek.

FORECLOSURE

Lorine Niedecker

Tell'em to take my bare walls down
my cement abutments
their parties thereof
and clause of claws

Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace

I'd Never Get Anywhere Because I'd Never Had Suction

New Sun Kil Moon was here but the widget was messing with motherfucking blooger.. Was going to write at length about Babs, Patron Saint of Spies; post another link and bitch re: Antiwar's pro-bombing fuckery; was going to cut myself for knee-jerkingly twooting a gross and predictable gif of Frothy to expand on the reflexive depth of my training cited yesterday; was going to post about the wisdom or lack thereof of outing myself onblog as a 52 year old happily married upper-middle class white male, but have an old Sun Kil Moon song instead.





Yes, there was more here last night, and Red House Painters too. Now here.

Also too:

WFMU widget was below, was messing with motherfucking blooger. See widget in blogroll left.

• I pledged Mouse of the Day! I'm getting: Dan Bodah's Break the Tabs & Check Dolby B, Julie's Living in the Dark, Irwin's I Want to Be a Singer, Fabio's O S T-The 2012 Marathon Premium for Strength Through Failure, Stan's Stoned in the Garden of Eden, Inflatable Squirrel Carcass Coloring Book III - Revenge of the Tints, Martha's That's Not Punk, You F**king Poseur, and a WF-MU tee. Yay!
• NYPD Zagat Guide to best and most threatening Newark Muslim restaurants.
• Yes, this occurred to me too.
• She Who Is As Shitty pronounces Frothy dead.
• Yes, but they are motherfucking crackers.
• E.J. Dionne is astonished - astonished! - re: motherfucking crackers.
• Drumbeat.
• Wawa creeping closer. Posted because months ago I asked why there are no Sheetz and Wawas in MOCO. I now vaguely remember hearing once years ago that gas stations in MOCO got some law written that protects them from Wawas and Sheetzs. Anyone?
• Floor, a new online poetry magazine, is worth your eyes.
• Who was Lorine Niedecker?
• I get email. PlayGround, a new online music magazine, asked nicely for a bump so here it is. Please note: Grimes is a motherfucking idiot.
• On Throbbing Gristle.
• Some The Clean to listen to.
• Something that occurred to me when posting Sun Kil Moon is how utterly Modest Mouse - who Kozelek clearly loves, he covers so much - has vanished from public consciousness.
• New Rufus Wainwright.
• Was asked to post some Brendan Benson, who I'd never heard of, in part because BLCKDGRD is a completely Jack White-free zone. 

IN THE GREAT SNOWFALL BEFORE THE BOMB

Lorine Niedecker

In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road

I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie
I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,
I'd never get anywhere
because I'd never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.

I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.
But what vitality! The women hold jobs—
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

How Many Traits Must a Thing Have in Order to Be Singular?

Driving home last night I heard two commercials back to back. The first was for Verizon Wireless, how much faster its 27-G wireless is than your sucky device; the voice-over was a teenage girl , the punch line of the commercial is that "Jenny doesn't know her boyfriend just changed his relationship status to single, but she will in three... two... one..." and then dumped teenage girl scream. The second was for Infinity from Comcast. A husband excitedly says to his wife, Honey, I bought this for reasons A, B, C, and she naggingly says, Aren't we supposed to be saving money? Husband says, But we are saving money with Infinity, what have you done, to which she defiantly says, I bought a new purse, it can hold all the money you're saving. Have you seen the new GEICO commercial where a middle-aged white male trying to save money on diet-plans hires three junior high girls in Valley Girl drag to follow him around and say in sequence whenever he put food to mouth "Ew" and "Really?" and "That's so gross" yet?

I'm a 52 year old American white heterosexual male faithfully married 24 years this summer with an almost 19 year old daughter in an elite liberal arts college. I'm three years from fully vesting in my pension at the elite university I've worked at for 22 years and from which I have two degrees. I've four years left on a mortgage for a house I bought 20 years ago for half a million dollars less than I could sell it today. I apologize for writing this post for the 3Kth day in a motherfucking row, but I want it clear I'm commenting on, not competing in, Stringtown's latest outbreak of King of Anarchists. I am not anarchier than thou, you win. I work to be less of an asshole in my complicity, part of which is recognizing my training and how it is constantly reinforced as in those three "comedic" misogynistic ads above reminding me that in our society, as power is constructed and imposed, women are designated as catty bitches and scolds and dependents sucking the marrow of male productivity who are spared deserved punishment only by men's restraint and benevolence. It's also part of my training that benevolence is as much threat as gift, its granting a reminder of its withdrawal and opposite. All I  can do is be consciously kinder for fair's sake and urge you to be too, though I also recognize power's use of that matrix to divide us from each other.

• Remember when I used to say I wish John Roberts would get hit by a bus at the height of POTUS 12 so that Obama would have to pick not only a new SCOTUS but Chief SCOTUS? Well, sure, though I think we all know how that will turn out.
• Yet another appeal to non-existent gods.
• Anti-war too?
• Germany's new Greek colony.
• Virginia governor considers his POTUS ambitions, backs off Virginia cracker/christer abortion bill.
• She who is as shitty turns on Frothy.
• Actually, Corporate, GOP Division, is turning on Frothy.
• Surveillance state.
• Things you might have missed.
• Waiting for Wotan, continued.

TWO, THREE

Rae Armantrout

Sad, fat boy in pirate hat.
Long, old, dented,
copper-colored Ford.

How many traits
must a thing have
in order to be singular?

(Echo persuades us
everything we say
has been said at least once
                                           before.)

Two plump, bald men
in gray tee-shirts
and tan shorts

are walking a small bulldog -
followed by the eyes
of an invisible third person.

The Trinity was born
from what we know
of the bitter

symbiosis of couples.
Can we reduce echo's sadness
by synchronizing our speeches?

Is it the beginning or end
of real love
when we pity a person

because, in him,
we see ourselves.

Everything Turns Away Quite Leisurely from the Disaster

W.H. Auden was born 105 years ago today.

 

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

• Lifted from my post, where I related some personal history.
• Where I noticed effingblooger has changed the font size on every single poem I posted that month. Effingblooger has also changed how my headers work, plus effingblooger is pissing me off in myriad ways. I'm effingsick of effingblooger. I'm not going to move to another effingplatform, but if any of you who've Kindly offered in the past to help me with effingblooger effingcoding are still willing, please send me an email.
• Objects collecting subjects.
• Humans are nice. It's used against us.
• The repressed never really went away.
• I wonder if Obama weighed the political benefits of antagonizing Iran versus the political liabilities of $5 a gallon gas and decided antagonize.
• Ten excellent reasons to bomb Iran.
• Yes, they are effingchristers.
• Pastor Sanctimonious acknowledges w/o using the term effingchristers that effingchristers help Obama.
• Eugene Robinson dances on effingchristers graves.
• Frothy and the construction of whiteness.
• Radical thought for the day.
• An alternative to the consumption model.
• Rachel Maddow is now goading Romney's billionaire (who has still not responded to Greenwald).
• Sorta like a conversation Earthgirl and I had last night over Indian.
• My past hell. Good riddance, though future hell will suxxxxxxx.
• More good United news.
• Stockhausen.
• Go throw the coins in your pocket at WFMU. Widget on left.
• Yes, I posted these songs last night. And?

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
   saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content 
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
   generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
   education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

This Is the Topic We Discussed in Your Kitchen This Winter

I confess, this post's tone needed changing after I read news last evening that for the first time in recent memory there is potentially positive news regarding United's short term and fuck-me-jig long term survival in DC. I acknowledge that news, if it proves true, represents nothing more than a reprieve; it's strange and terribly good how nothing more than the prospect of a reprieve feels. The original post was going to sourly and darkly tie in my blegangst - I'm running three different blegs for three different purposes, what the fuck am I doing? - with the predictable but still demoralizing reading slump since finishing 1Q84, a slump so deep I don't trust what I think about 1Q84 though what I think is that Murakami wanted me to not trust 1Q84. Weird fucking days. Anyway, I think I know a way out, though I'm going to try rereading - it's been four years - Mason & Dixon first (and it's working so far, the capitalized nouns aren't pissing me off), but it's been two years since I last read The Unconsoled, it chirps at me from the bookshelf next to my bed at 530 in the morning, and a cryptic tweet from Paris Review about Ishiguro soliciting suggestions for his almost finished new novel and....

• Can we synchronize our souls? This song will not leave my head. I blame Stevie Zoom. It's now BLCKDGRD - Theme Song 6. 
• Sanctions are to war like foreplay is to....
• Well, if Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman are for it, it must be a good idea.
• Syria's curious transformation.
• Of course.
• Robert Reich might have his obamapostasy yet.
• E.J. Dionne will never have his obamapostasy.
• Concerning violence and nailing jello to walls.
• You know, they are motherfucking crackers.
• On the above.
• Of course they're motherfucking crackers.
  
• On circumscribing the unspoken.
• Romney's billionaire backer hasn't risen to Greenwald's bait yet.
• I need confess I've caught myself thinking of going to a Nat's game or two this year.
• Littell on Blanchot.
• Duplessis is my next poetry assignment.
• Look at Rich's playlist, same set, Archers of Loaf and David Thomas and Two Pale Boys. Now look to the left column, click on the WFMU widget, throw them some coin, it's marathon time.
• Kathleen Edwards live.
• Peter Broderick.
• Stephin Merritt interview.

THE STRICTURE

Lisa Robertson

'The 69 heads of Messerschmidt cast in lead are not heaven.'
'The magnetic cures of Mesmer on the plastic soul are more
     difficult to characterize.'
'The heavens of Flanders are like textile in lustrousness -
     a bridal textile.'
'We see the classic theme of a woman suffering, with pearl-
     sized nipples, pink cotton billowing or nacrous skin
     spouting feathers.'
'Here is a perfume burner of Khorasan, a bird sitting on top.'
'Birds perch on heaven habitually. They are not certainty-
     seekers.'

I wanted to think into the stricture of appearances.
There was a time when I came close.
To help the problem I changed into a clematis, I changed into
     a dog, I changed into a perfumed smoke.
Some of my organs were outside history, which gave me an
     advantage.
Place here the idea of a necessary inconspicuousness.

'This is wrong'
'This is beautiful'
'This is social'
'This is not thinking'

It is the handiwork of appearing only.

This is the topic we discussed in your kitchen this winter.
I said I didn't know what thinking is.
You said you were trying to understand your sense of an
     inner voice, which was separate from thinking.
I didn't understand.
I let myself go blank.

I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing
     it out, like sand.

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

It's true, and fuck-me-jig, in news I just heard that I shouldn't be celebrating yet as a done deal, I can't explain to you how much I knew I needed but had no idea how much how much this completely unexpected and cathartic KABOOM OF JOY! would joy me.

Yes, I know I'll pay for this. And I just noticed Benny's wearing a Gax shirt when he's interviewed post-game; I wonder whom he swapped with.

All Day Something that Refuses to Show Itself Hovers at the Corner of His Eye

Serendipitous gah - when I re-packaged the old pregah site from the beta-post safe house into VNTY'SGRVYRD I didn't create a new site to act as beta-post safe house, so when I accidentally deleted last night three paragraphs of holiday weekend bleggalgazing prompted by someone sending me an invitation to Pinterest you were, despite my fully-hearted but ultimately half-assed attempts at recreating the paragraphs, spared. I am reminded to compose in tablet, not on screen, I am reminded to create a new beta-post safe house, I am reminded today is Dave Wakeling's 56th birthday which reminds me of the above, easily one of the five most air-guitared songs of my life.

• UPDATE! Verily fuck the fuck who blocked the original Save It For Later promo video on youtube. Verily, with a rusty spork.
• I have a waiter's access to Villagers, and when Robert Reich made his "no responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich" he was reflecting Villager doctrine that while Gingrich is an occasionally useful idiot the Villager's think he's batshit insane: Newt doesn't know he's a useful idiot, not only doesn't he know he's no more than a Villager jobber, he thinks he's working the Villagers and that makes Gingrich monstrously unimaginable as Emperor of Villagers to Villagers. You'd expect the history faculty at Hilltop to think Gingrich batshit insane, but the neo-liberals in government and the assholes in econ think Gingrich is batshit insane, by which they mean they've no faith they can control him. I've heard this yesterday in the sandwich line of Wagshel's from the mouths of two Villagers who've publicity-stills on Wagshel's walls: "Newt is fucking batshit insane." And no, I said nothing, ran neither fucker down in the parking lot.
• Hard-hitting, dissenting journalism w/out the hard-hitting and dissent.
• Scoring the global war on terror.
• Admitting you have a problem.
• Virginia is for shovers.
• Re: pinterest - apparently you need give them access to either a facebook or twitter account and they populate your page for you from who and what you read and post and fuck that. Which isn't what I wrote about and lost other than the fuck that.
• Cindy Sherman.
• Reading list from Barthelme.
• I officially give up on Flame Alphabet. I blame me. Only thing working now is poetry, and that not that well either.
• Poets in performance. (h/t Sasha)
• Charts and diagrams.
• It's also Stephen Dobyn's 71st birthday today.

IT'S LIKE THIS

Stephen Dobyns

Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible

      cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark,

      the cord that makes him always dissatisfied,

      has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes.

He greets his family, looking for himself in their eyes,

      but instead he sees shorter or taller men, men with

      different degrees of anger or love, the kind of men

      that people who hardly know him often mistake

      for him, leaving a movie or running to catch a bus.

He has a job that he goes to. It could be at a bank

      or a library or turning a piece of flat land

      into a ditch. All day something that refuses to

      show itself hovers at the corner of his eye,

      like a name he is trying to remember, like

      expecting a touch on the shoulder, as if someone

      were about to embrace him, a woman in a blue dress

      whom he has never met, would never meet again.

      And it seems the purpose of each day’s labor

      is simply to bring this mystery to focus. He can

      almost describe it, as if it were a figure at the edge

      of a burning field with smoke swirling around it

      like white curtains shot full of wind and light.

When he returns home, he studies the eyes of his family to see

      what person he should be that evening. He wants to say:

      All day I have been listening, all day I have felt

      I stood on the brink of something amazing.

      But he says nothing, and his family walks around him

      as if he were a stick leaning against a wall.

Late in the evening the cord around his neck draws him to bed.

      He is consoled by the coolness of sheets, pressure

      of blankets. He turns to the wall, and as water

      drains from a sink so his daily mind slips from him.

      Then sleep rises before him like a woman in a blue dress,

      and darkness puts its arms around him, embracing him.

      Be true to me, it says, each night you belong to me more,

      until at last I lift you up and wrap you within me.

Born Eighty-Six Years Ago Today

CALLED INTO PLAY

A.R. Ammons

Fall fell:  so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or

should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is

something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I

could draw up an ancient memory which would
wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill

out my dreams with high syntheses turned into
concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust

for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition
and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite

perfected yet: the gods could get down on 
each other; the big gods could fly in from

nebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4
interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guess

I can jostle those. . . .

...........


h/t self-portrait and interview with Ammons.

Here's another. Time to read all but especially Sumerian Vistas and doubly especially Garbage again.