2012/08/16

they're not going to let you sit at a front table at some cafe in Europe in the mid-afternoon sun









RELENTLESS AS THE TARANTULA

Charles Bukowski

they're not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody's going to
drive by and
spray your guts with a
submachine gun.

they're not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren't going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you've got to go
their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix - which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.

as long as there are
humans about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth or
anywhere else
they might
escape to.

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.


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2012/08/15

Hal Looked at Me as If to Measure My Trust



There's Lauren's Curl Up and Dye, mentioned yesterday. That's it. Busy with real life fun and unfun and fake life's other projects fun and fun and may be with both for a few days if I'm lucky and unlucky. Updates on yesterday: same there, and now I'm taking that offline at my own request, but life stirred in Blegsylvania! It wasn't me, it was serendipity. Look at the blegrells! Look at links then song then James Tate poem I've certainly posted before then song.







DIAMOND TERRIFIER || Shrine Flu from grossymmetric on Vimeo.


A CLEAN HIT

James Tate

A bomb had exploded down the street. I got dressed and
walked down to see what happened. The Whalen's house had
been flattened. But Hal and Rebecca were standing in the street,
apparently unscathed. Everyone in the neighborhood was pouring
our of their houses and into the streets. "What the hell happened?"
I said to Hal. "We were in the garden, thank god, when this
plane flew over. The next thing I know, the house explodes to
smithereens," he said. "It must have been some kind of accident,"
I said. "Well, I voted for this president. They shouldn't be
targeting me," he said. "Friendly fire," I said. "What the hell's
that?" he said. "They mistook you for somebody else," I said.
"Well, they shouldn't be bombing in this neighborhood, I don't
care who they thought I was. Children and old people live here,
and dogs," he said. "I'm sure you'll be getting a letter of apology,
and maybe a new house," I said. "It's lucky I didn't have a heart
attack," Rebecca Whalen said. Joe Mizelle walked up. "That
sure was a clean hit. No collateral damage whatsoever," he said.
"How do you know they didn't mean to hit your house and just
accidentally hit mine?" Hal said. "Jesus, I hadn't thought of
that. But I haven't done anything wrong. I voted for him, even
though I think he's a shifty bastard," Joe said. "Everything we
had is gone," Rebecca said, whimpering into her tissue. "When it
cools down, we can sift through the wreckage," Hal said, comforting
her. "I'd be glad to lend a hand," I said. "Maybe your silverware
survived, if it didn't melt in the heat," Joe said. Other neighbors
had gathered around and were whispering amongst themselves. "This
is the price we pay for our protection." "Thank god we live in a
democracy." "I'm sure they know what they were doing." "I'm going
to write my congressman." Hal turned to me and said, "Maybe I
am guilty. Maybe I did do something to deserve this. It's hard to
remember, on a day-to-day basis, everything you've said and every
little thing you've done. I can be kind of a free spirit sometimes.
I probably brought this on myself. And someone filed a report on
me. Oh god, I don't want to think about it, it's awful." "Listen,
Hal, I still think it was a mistake. It happens all the time.
Those reports pass through so many hands, by the time they reach
the top somebody has gotten the wrong address," I said. "All the
photographs and all the precious mementos of the children that can
never be replaced," Rebecca sobbed. "One of your boys works for the
government, doesn't he?" Joe said. "He's just a clerk in Washington,"
Hal said. "Still, I wouldn't rule him out," Joe said. "You're
beginning to irritate me," Hal said. The neighbors were drifting back
to their homes, their curiosities satisfied. Joe, too, turned
and left, but not before adding, "I was just trying to interject a
little humor. Sorry, no offense intended." Hal failed to dignify
this with a reply. The three of us stood there staring at the smouldering
rubble in silence. "Well, you're welcome to stay at my place," I
said finally. Hal looked at me as if to measure my trust. Then he
said, "This wasn't our real home. We have a secret home where we
keep our valuables. Nobody knows its whereabouts, not even our
children. There was nothing in there but junk. I figured they'd come
sooner or later. And they didn't get the car, so we'll be fine.
Rebecca, here, just had to put on a little show for the neighbors.
You can't trust most of them, if you know what I mean." We shook
hands and embraced. Then they got in their car and were gone forever.
I memorized their license plate number - 357 O19 - for good luck.



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2012/08/14

Could Have Been Otherwise and Birdsong Make Us Nauseous



Lauren's Curl Up and Dye, last night's header, is in Millersburg Ohio. We discovered it last April on one of our hours-long drive with Planet to give her a break from campus. There won't be a drive when I take Planet to Bamgier in two weeks, Earthgirl not joining us - she has to stay here while her dying and demented mother's dying and demented husband is driven north from Florida so they can say goodbye to each other. Plans may change: my mother-in-law is in the hospital now: she started coughing up blood last night. We will have an hours-long drive in October when we visit for Parents' Weekend, I'll gladly miss United's last regular season home game for that drive. Also, apologies: I sent out a batch of knocks last night to moribund bloggerfriends, regretted it within minutes. Who am I to badger? I mean, while I embrace the what-the-fuck, even what-the-fuckedness has its limits.









THE THOUSAND SOMETHINGS OF SOMEONE

Forrest Gander

Could have been
otherwise and
birdsong make us
nauseous. And
gigantic roiling sunsets
give us vertigo. The
world of flowers is
for insects, not
us. But tonic
is durance among.


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2012/08/13


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Wet Kindling from an Orchard of Wooden Spoons




Hey! Remember when that cracker went into a Sikh temple and killed a bunch of Sikhs? Lordy, eons ago. Sheesh, I can remember when Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan his VPOTUS nominee. Rereading Vollmann's Fathers and Crows (I have an extra copy if you're first to say please)  reminds me of story's mysteries, how THIS turns to this turns to            depending not only who tells the tale but how often, telephone-gamed into unamendable lore in the rare case it's not forgotten. Don't worry, I won't play either Tones on Tail or Motherfucking Love and Rockets.










THEIR STORY

Stuart Dybek

They were nearing the end of their story.
The fire was dying, like the fire in the story.
Each page turned was torn and fed
to flames, until word by word the book
burned down to an unmade bed of ash.
Wet kindling from an orchard of wooden spoons,
snow stewing, same old wind on the Gramophone,
same old wounds. Turn up the blue dial
under the kettle until darkness boils
with fables, and mirrors defrost to the quick
before fogging with steam, and dreams
rattle their armor of stovepipes and ladles.
Boots in the corner kick in their sleep.
A jacket hangs from a question mark.



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2012/08/12

Kansas City 2, United 1



Worrisome if not distressing. Minus DeRossario, minus Woolard (replaced by some journeyman with two workouts with the club) against arguably one of the top three clubs in MLS, on the road (in a tremendous venue), and the result was predictable, including the admission that the score wasn't as close as the game. That's not what was worrisome. Any result would have been a surprise.

Here's what: it looked like Kansas City was playing eleven on five. There were three Kansas City players swarming any United player on the ball, no United players on any Kansas City player on the ball until the ball was within 25 yards of United's goal. Shatzer thinks this a tactical deficiency on Olsen's part, and yes, sure, but I wonder how much of it is United's lack of athleticism versus Kansas City's. Man for man, Kansas City was bigger, stronger, faster. They swarmed because they could. United panicked on the ball because they had too. Here's what's worrisome: United looked like the proverbial minnow good teams dispose of handily by brute routine effort.

Few bullets:

  • Someone is going to take out Kitchen. He's dirty (and I'm not thinking about when he was shoved into the goalie and the scrum insued - three minutes later he's tracking Kamara back around midfield, Kamara backpasses to a defender, the ref turns his head, Kitchen both whacks Kamara in the head and whiplashes Kamara's ankles). He's also United's best player, but he's dirty.
  • Santos out with a toe, Salihi out with a "virus," I don't care, Long Tan sucks. Sucks.
  • Harkes was calling out Boskovic for being soft, wimpy, and when Boskovic was subbed out at half I wrote in notebook another failed audition, though Goff says in match report he left for kneeknock. But watching Branko that first half my thought was, what a dumb motherfucker I am.
  • Saragosa sucks. Sucks unto suck.
  • This is why this team is at least a year away - they would have lost this game with starters. Their second-stringers suck, and in MLS, you need good second-stringers. United doesn't have any.
  • Harkes sucks. I miss The Bow-Tie, and The Bow-Tie sucked.
  • Nap's home.

Here's Goff. Here's Webb. Life is busy for Fullback. All best to him and his. More later, or not.

UPDATE! Here's Landru's game analysis and retort to this post. We agree about Kitchen. Counter-retorts, no, I'm off to test-drive a Honda Fit w/Planet. She's never - never - given me a reason to say no, but dang, how come she gets a new car?
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2012/08/11

NAP'S HOME!



Called him at ten, twelve, two, three (right before we left for BWI to pick up Planet whose been away for a week on vacation w/SO), five (when we got back from BWI), six (before we went out to dinner), eight (when we got home), and nothing. Called at 8:25 just before settling down to watch United, and he's home. The Nap Signal worked.

United's down one after thirteen minutes, looks like they could lose by ten. My apologies, but I'd make the same deal again.

UPDATE! The combination of admitting my selfishness plus my supplications to Lord Etcheverry result in DeLeon being both offside AND handling the ball to score the tying goal.  1-1 25th minute.
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It Was Always a Wen Releasing a Small Electrical Jolt to the Brain of Napoleon, Alexander, Attila



Yes, the Nap Signal will be displayed as header at night until Nap's reappearance, will appear in posts during the day until his reappearance. Once he reappears I will never pull this stunt again, so it will be over soon or go on forever. I fear the forever - MCPS is redoing the trailer classrooms at the elementary school across the street; Nap napped under them, I think he's freaked out and ran farther from home than he'd before. The future of header stanchion porn is in the balance. Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?





It's true! and they play an important game tonight in Kansas City which we will but probably shouldn't cast as runes, though a loss will make me silly and a win yet sillier. Very curious the line-up, who's not one of eighteen. Looking forward to it, tweet or text during the game, yo. O! I'm not going to go blind, there's medication for it and a new RX for glasses. That was scary. OKOKOKOKOK, you can have some links after this song.





  • What, now you want autoblogography?
  • Verily.
  • From a purely entertainment pov, I'm delighted that Romney has chosen Ryan: Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead. This is unimaginable to those of us who lived here under Romney's barely perceptible stewardship of the Commonwealth (God save it!). If he'd even hinted that he agreed with a fraction of a smidgen of a portion of the policies on which Ryan has built his career, Romney would have been hanging from the Sacred Cod by the middle of 2005. And it's hard not to notice that the way the decision got leaked — in the dead of a Friday night, with the Olympics still going on, after two weeks in which Romney and his campaign had demonstrated all the political skills of a handball — fairly dripped with flopsweat. Pierce could have come up with something for Portman, but not as vicious.
  • Which isn't to say Ryan isn't an asshole. 
  • Asshats. (h/t Sasha via twitter). 
  • I'm certain the Obama campaign and DNC are delighted too.
  • Thought experiment: Joe Biden clutches his chest and slumps over this afternoon - imagine the noise.
  • Police state.
  • Domain Awareness System.
  • Torture state.
  • Looterism.
  • Fuck each and every one of them.
  • Standard operating procedure, both the crime and the eventual non-punishment.
  • Couple more new sites in Because Left and Because Right. New places to see solicited.
  • Misunderstanding with Queequeg. 
  • Borges.
  • Woke up with Ivy in my head, don't you know.





IF WE WERE HONEST

Albert Goldbarth

When I tell you that cultural ritual is an artifice
composed of simultaneous social-dynamic complexity vectors acting
     in anthropometric units,
I’m thinking of sex. I mean it.
We all are. It isn’t just me. Or when I say
the war, or the god, or the list with the juice and the cereal...
sex. What is it the psycho-experts are claiming?—every ten seconds?
When I tell you that I’m thinking of sex,

I’m thinking of death. Its worm is always
in my eye, its sour and dirt-blown web is always
a catch in my throat. It was always a wen
releasing a small electrical jolt to the brain
of Napoleon, Alexander, Attila. It was funereally
in the black, black ink of the Brontes;
why should I be any different? Why can’t we

be honest?—every poem is “Sex.” (Or “Death.”)
If we were honest, half of our poems would be about
the making of poems, the conference on the making of poems,
the resume of poems successfully made...you know, the way
that half of the time is actually spent. And did
ten seconds pass just now? If so, then
sex. (If so, then death.) Not too long after

the Dolphin first made port in Tahiti, it was discovered
the crew were trading its nails
for dalliances with the pliant and welcoming
women of that island—“to such a great extent, the ship
was in danger of being pulled apart.”
Inside the cradling waves of moonlight
on those waters...smiling...consummating...human

nails into smooth, bamboo-brown human grain...
how did they know, how could they foresee, that
my mother would die from her own lungs
shaping hundreds of obstinate fists in her chest,
my father would die with his own blood turning
into a useless negative of itself?
And yet they must have known, they must have seen the lesson,

they were trying to deny it with the drive of such
combustive, zealous engines! This is my topic
tonight, and how the craft of poetry and the role
of the postmodern in a society of gender-defined relationship roles is yes
     a bare knee like a beacon,
like a skull beneath the face-skin, and a question
from the audience on a quasi-political sense is yes in my mind, yes
     in yours, yes
sex and death—the one thing.


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2012/08/10

There Comes a Time in Every Man's Life When He Thinks: I Have Never Had a Single Original Thought in My Life Including This One & Therefore I Shall Eliminate All Ideas from My Poems which Shall Consist of Cats, Rice, Rain, Baseball Cards, Fire Escapes, Hanging Plants, Red Brick Houses



We haven't seen Napoleon* for a week after he'd been home steady for months. He's been away before, often, sometimes as much as two weeks. Still, this, discovered last night via googling after hearing a conversation in the grocery line at MOMs, both soothes and frightens. It's not the second or third families - I can share - it's the possums and, where we live, the raccoons, huge, fearless, potentially rabid. Regular programming will return - I insist it never leaves - but it's been a truly weird week - the weirdest week ever since the last until the next. Ask me offline cause I won't talk about it here. In the meantime, I woke up with Juana Molina in my head (it's been a while) so have two of her two songs plus a poem that uses the word cat which I needed for this post's title though it is blessedly serendipitous on multiple other levels.


UPDATE! via Prunella:





UPDATE! *Napoleon (a friend suggests I explain for her and others new here) is one of three feral kittens born in our shed five summers ago. We trapped the three plus mom, had them spayed and neutered; you can see the square cut the vets do to feral cats they use as a marker on Nap's left ear in the photo below. Gray Cat, one of the kittens, disappeared over two years ago. Mom Cat, Frankie, and Napoleon still live in the shed and we feed them daily. Mom Cat and Frankie will come within feet of us but still won't let us touch them. Napoleon is fully domesticated, comes in and out of the house, sits in my lap, love-bites my calves. Click ferals tab for more.









A QUICK ONE BEFORE I GO

David Lehman

There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice,
rain baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized religion even if it means
despair is a logical possibility that can't
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five
senses and what they half perceive and half
create, the green street signs with white
letters on them the body next to mine
asleep while I think these thoughts
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was there ever a man who felt as I do
like a pronoun out of step with all the other
floating signifiers no things but in words
an orange T-shirt a lime green awning


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2012/08/09

But Like Any People, They Called Themselves the People



A little north and east of the country of the Iroquois (or, as they called themselves, the Haudenosaunee), past the Montaignez and Algoumequin Nations, lay the Country of another People where the moose were yet more plentiful, the forests were much thicker and sometimes swampier, and osiers and speckled adlers lined the banks of rivers up and down which these People paddled their canoes when they hunted and fished and made war and visited; here mosquitoes whined in multitudes and the forests rang with the scoldings of chickadees and there were so many beeches that the sunlight was changed and became green. Flowing down from the dark mountains whose grey-lichened sides were wet with fog, clear streams swelled the rivers, which often rose above their banks after a rain, and the fishing was good in those places, and the rivers swept down through the green beech forests and widened further until they met the sea, where the People lived, gathering mussels and fishing for cod. And they were the People of KLUSKAP. They knew His ways, and the ways of the PLANT PERSONS and ANIMAL PERSONS, and their Shamans had Power. They swore by the SUN; they smoked tobacco for wisdom. In after times they became know to the Black-Gowns as the Souriquios, and, later still, the Micmac, but, like any other People, they called themselves the People.

The photo above and poem below are from Sugarloaf yesterday, the quote from Vollmann's Fathers and Crows, the second (and my favorite) of the Seven Dreams. I'm determined to woods more than I've recently, I hope to reread all four of the published dreams before the fifth comes out early next year. I hope to type this sentence much more: regular programming will resume tomorrow, or not.


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2012/08/08

The Ninth Floor, No Hydrants, No Fire Escapes



Blogbud emails last night re: This Heat. I had commented at his place, thanks for reminding me of the band, they had fallen off my playlist. They are fifth or sixth on his Sillyass Desert Island Game, he wanted to mention. I wrote back: Hey, thanks for email. It scares me how much I've forgot. Literally twenty minutes ago I flashed on Thomas Berger's novels, thought, when was the last time anyone thought about.. More often than not I'm glad it's a too full world. That's not true. I'm always glad it's a too full world. As for blegging, verily, what the fuck if it's our hydrant? He wrote back, Verily, yea... hydrantizing and all. Verily, blgglgzng the blgdysfsmmr.














SHIRT

Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.


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2012/08/07

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The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game Shall Be Open to Whosoever of Ye Writes a Poem about Following thy Captain into the Maw of Hell to Kill the White Whale




Friend Richard sent along a link to an article by Rick Moody published July 11, 2012 in NewMusicBox on Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time which Moody calls, his italics, the scariest album ever made. My first response is, any excuse for a Pere Ubu cascade is a good excuse.





Have I ever mentioned that I love Pere Ubu/David Thomas projects here? Love them so much I've given them permanent status as one of three permanent members of My Sillyass Desert Island Five Game, then badgered you repeatedly with song cascades? Eight-plus years? Cause even if I responded point by point to essays - and fuck that - I'm far too immersed in my mwah to respond to this one. By and large it's fair both to the music and to Pere Ubu's history. I've never suggested that David Thomas isn't weird, difficult, Ahab, driven by demons, that he doesn't speak in tongues, a flame above his head.









RULES FOR CAPTAIN AHAB'S PROVINCETOWN POETRY WORKSHOP

Martin Espada

  1. Ye shall be free to write a poem on any subject, as long as it’s the White Whale.
  2. A gold doubloon shall be granted to the first among ye who in a poem sights the White Whale.
  3. The Call Me Ishmael Award shall be given to the best poem about the White Whale, with publication in The White Whale Review.
  4. The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game shall be open to whosoever of ye writes a poem about following thy Captain into the maw of hell to kill the White Whale.
  5. There shall be a free floating coffin for any workshop participant who falls overboard whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
  6. There shall be a free leg, carved from the jawbone of a whale, for any workshop participant who is dismasted whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
  7. There shall be a free funeral at sea, complete with a chorus of stout hearties singing sea chanteys about the White Whale, for any workshop participant who is decapitated whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
  8. Ye who seek not the White Whale in thy poems shall be harpooned.


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2012/08/06

Stop Repeating Yourself. You Old Motherfucker. Your Skies Are Bad Enough. [He Looks to the Ground.] A Parody Is Better Than a Pun




Looking for cheap gag for today's monologue I went back to four years ago today to see what I was yodeling. In typepad, since I archived by month rather than weeks, I have to scroll from August 31 backwards. I rarely use the gag - today being an (not the) exception, but I look back often because every one in a while it sparks a Guided by Voices cascade. In fact every Guided by Voices cascade except for Pollard's birthday. Hey, have a complete show which has a serendipitous surprise!





So, August 6, 2008, I posted.... um, a lazyass August Blog Days of Summer linkful placeholder, what a motherfucking attention whore I was am and will always be. Hey, look what I found looking for August 6:









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.


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2012/08/05

United 1, Columbus 0



So yay and all, but something is off-key if not outright wrong (though in fairness everything everywhere is off-key if not outright wrong so it might just be me). DeRossario seems extra slow, extra petulant, extra divey, doesn't play nice with Boskovic. See, it is me. Maybe DeRossario doesn't like playing withdrawn, maybe it's mileage and lingering knocks and not his head, but it's been games since he even flashed more than one or two hints of the dominating player he's been (and who he has to be for United to make a run).

Dudar's best game for United, good game for McDonald too (whom I'm told I rag too much on), steady game from Korb (who's a minor revelation), poor game, first in a while, for Woolard who was surely concussed and now gone for games. Jakovic on the left defensive line? Oh shit. Najar will be back from the stupidass Olympics for next Saturday's important game at Kansas City; suppose he'll start left back if Woolard is eskandarianed. Salihi has been frankonealed.

Here's Goff, here's Shatzer, here's Webb, here's the video. More iawon.
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2012/08/04

Currents Worry Themselves Coiled




  • Woke up with that in my head. So, string quartets today.
  • My apologies, I by no means meant to suggest that I would, or you should, regardless even if you think it the yummiest sandwich ever, eat at Chik-Fil-A and give the motherfucking christercrackerpig (and by no means did I mean to suggest the motherfucking christercrackerpig isn't a motherfucking christercrackerpig) money to motherfucking christercrackerpig front groups. What I was suggesting: I mentioned Uncle, my favorite person at hilltop, a conservative economist and an academic department Cold War vet, and when he gives me shit it's about a Rahm Emanuel not only censoring speech but suggesting legislating against speech Rahm Emanuel doesn't like. I know visa versa. So here's my problem: playing the visa versa.
  • Now, whether or not local governments can deny licenses to Chik-fil-A based on their business practices (as opposed to thought crimes) is another and far more complicated issue.
  • Why is McDonalds in my twitter timeline promoting its crap as Food of Olympians? Rhetorical question, that.
  • But don't forget: on America's descent to Britaingreeceserbia, on the matter of your future catfood allowance measured against the Empire's estimate of your minimal caloric sustenance needs versus your usefulness to the Empire, our Overlords, regardless of which tribe they play for, are in complete agreement.
  • Alternatives don't exist.
  • Obama the pioneer.
  • Police state.
  • YMOBMC.
  • YMOBMC.
  • Landru and Ilse. after their visits to each other's in-laws stopped in Asheville, visited the Biltmore, the Vanderbilts' monument to themselves. Earthgirl, Planet and I visited seven years ago (I had just bought my Matrix, it's a 2005) on our way home from the Smokies, we, like hundreds of thousands of peasants, paid money to see a robber baron's family honor the legacy of their family's robber baroncy. Capitalism, bitches.
  • Figures with meat.
  • Another book from his generation's greatest academic fraud - I say that admiringly.
  • Grammar of the real.
  • So, the aargh: it's eased in four of five places, in the fifth it hasn't so much eased as been resigned: I won't go into details here (though up the road, who knows), but my MiL received her death sentence, three to six months. Both a good and sad thing. She and I reached an armistice a decade ago. We like and respect each other begrudgingly. Gonna be tough on Earthgirl. 
  • I've always wanted to suspend my native English fluency for five minutes to hear what English sounds like to a non-English speaker.
  • I didn't listen to Payne and Olsen on Kojoshow, because what the fuck else is Payne going to say.
  • Home game tonight. I'd like multiple primal screams at multiple beautiful goals, please. 
  • Why cats are better than people. When I said it was both a good and sad think, I was of course thinking about my MiL when we needed to euthanize Sarah. What is quality of life worth?
  • The painter dreaming in the scholar's house.
  • I'd forgot about This Heat.





IN MEMORIAM MAE NOBLITT

A.R. Ammons

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star’s

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight’s

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves—
and grief—did we design

that—or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.


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2012/08/03

Where My Studebaker Takes Me




Real life busy good, busy blah, busy sad, busy suck, busy shitty. Back soon, or not. Think, it's been forty years since Roxy Music's first single. Holyfuck, we're old. Also too, have live Crooked Fingers.


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2012/08/02

Not Actually Inherent in Substances



>>>Deleted bleggalgazing<<< >>>Deleted clusterfuckblarging<<< Instead, yes, I know Herman Melville was born 193 years ago yesterday.  Time to re-Confidence Man, re-Pierre, Moby Dick's xteenth rereading due 2014, every World Cup year, makes scheduling easier. From Moby Dick:

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tassled, the sharks, also, with the jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside-down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet there is no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.












Melville, Moby Dick

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?



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2012/08/01

Once in a While You Get Shown the Light in the Strangest of Places If You Look at It Right




Jerry Garcia was born seventy years ago today. Yes, the above is a cover, but I listened to all of Europe 72 yesterday and I hadn't heard this in a decade. I see people writing - I've been writing - about the pathology of nostalgia as signature key of the clusterfuck, and a run of High Holy Days provokes from me the pangs I program it to, I'm a fucking romantic, I'm predisposed to the disease in good times. Anyway, I loved The Dead unto a lifestyle, fell away when I needed leave that lifestyle to save my life, cold-turkeyed to the point of self-disdain: Hey, what did the two Deadheads say to each other when the dope ran out? Hey Man, this music sucks. No, it doesn't.

















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