United 1, Columbus 2

Here's my theory: Najar's absence makes United too easy to defend. With Najar on the field other teams couldn't one-on-one press, which is all teams are doing, marking one-on-one, relying on constant pressure on good but clearly limited players or mediocre players to bad pass into space. The only United player on the field who frightens in a one-on-one is Pontius, but only going right, Columbus let him run into the left corner, into open space, rather than let him go right. DeLeon looks (looked, he ripped his hamstring yesterday) terrible. Pajoy not only doesn't scare anybody, opposing teams are delighted to see him on the field (he did hit post, late, on a free header). DeRossario looks grandpa, so washed-up and grandpa. Najar on the ball, whether from the back or on the wing, drew multiple defenders, created space for others when their markers ran at Najar. No one on United does now. SeatSix declared himself done with Benny, this guy declared Benny a fucking idiot, and maybe - it is the coach's responsibility to make adjustments to his system with the players he's given. I'm just unclear whether Benny isn't making best use out of what he's been given or - what I fear might be true and a worse-case scenario - he is.

No Layoffs from This Condensery

That's the promised slideshow from this past Wednesday night's Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds show at Strathmore Music Center in South Rockville. Maybe the acoustics of a hall designed for classical music defuses the noise of a rock crowd, but seems to me Nick Cave worked harder than the audience, certainly on our tier, where one guy stood up to clap after the second song and was tugged down by his girlfriend before anyone had the chance to tell him to sit the fuck down. And watching the Strathmore docents’s faces as Cave sang Stagger Lee’s lyric I’ll crawl over five good pussies to get to one fat boy’s asshole was almost worth the price of admission itself.




  

• That was the first song in the encore.
• Shown no mercy in St Francois County Missouri.
• Facing denial in climate change debate.
• This is my daily contribution to my surveillance.
• Foucault, for those of you who do.
• Abonilox surrenders. 
• Who is God? So asked our dog. 
• Why the rich don't give to charity.
• The Honest Courtesan's weekly links.
• Skull-blogging.
• Ugly carpets.
• Cities of sleep.
• No other result was conceivable.
• MLS isn't the only thing rinkydink in American soccer.
• Rinkydinkness in American ice-soccer. I thought they were on strike.
• Achebe and damnation of faint praise.
• Photographs of the interior of dictators' houses.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• darkblack's Weekend Overnight.
• Hand-farting Simon and Garfunkel.
• I realize you're not going to listen to these Swan whole albums here now, so listen a few minutes each and bookmark for when you've the time.

POET'S WORK

Lorine Niedecker

Grandfather
          advised me:
                    Learn a trade

I learned
          to sit and desk
                    and condense

No layoffs
          from this
                    condensery

I Investigate So Much That in the End It Is For Form's Sake Only, Only a Drop Comes Out

Yes, I know whose birthday is tomorrow (meaning today) I said when asked by L last night at Thursday Night Pints, Shatner eighty-two today (meaning today). L held Planet when Planet was two and three years old, she suggested I add the St Clairsville video just now (meaning last night in another post) to today's (meaning yesterday's) Planet Birthday Cascade. Know who else has a birthday tomorrow (meaning today), born eigthy-seven years ago tomorrow (meaning today) I asked?


 


Yes, this Rostropovich bit is ceepeed from last May, apparently I forgot to wiki Slava's birthday then to verify the shitty lists I use for these gags is correct. I said then, Next to piano, I love cello most. Here's Rostropovich playing Shostakovich's Cello Concerto Number 1, first, second, third, fourth movements. Here's him with Benjamin Britten on piano playing Shostakovich's Cello Sonata Opus 40 first, second, third, fourth movements.

• Don't Spock and Frost share a birthday in a week or so, if I remember from last year, said D. Yes, yes they do.
• It's important to remember that even though we fucking hippies were right we were right for the wrong reasons and those who were wrong were wrong for the right reasons. The fucking hippies still need punching. All our former bleggal overlords now paid by Corporate demand order.
• Jesus, you hold a grudge, said K, getting up to buy a round for a twitter bet she made with me and lost.
• Why Mr Fish misses George W Bush.
• Wall Street, War Street.
• Some lies never die.
• Worse than Nixon.
• On my contributing to my surveillance.
• Culture of monsters.
• Maryland Wombat. Hamster sends, wants the youtube, at least the Divine, IT DOESN'T FIT THIS POST, or does fit this post but I can't get past my motherfucking format rules. Tomorrow. This is not the only time this post.
• Climate deniers and the cycle of abuse.
• Only Number Six?
• Number Six?

• Electric Fence.
• Berryman interview.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Archie Ammons.
• Joanna Russ, for those of you who do.
• Celebrity Britten.
• HEY! Mr Alarum's band!
• HEY! Yes, we did see Nick Cave Wednesday night, there is a slideshow, tomorrow maybe, there's no room in this post. Here, a quick review of the concert. 
• Every day. And Happy Anniversary!
• (A) Good on Mark and (B) our last dog was named Rudy and (C) this is the fourth time in the past four days I was reminded of the James Tate's Yoko, posted below the Webern.

YOKO

Thom Gunn

All today I lie in the bottom of the wardrobe
feeling low but sometimes getting up
to moodily lumber across rooms
and lap from the toilet bowl, it is so sultry
and then I hear the noise of firecrackers again
all New York is jaggedy with firecrackers today
and I go back to the wardrobe gloomy
trying to void my mind of them.
I am confused, I feel loose and unfitted.

At last deep in the stairwell I hear a tread,
it is him, my leader, my love.
I run to the door and listen to his approach.
Now I can smell him, what a good man he is,
I love it when he has the sweat of work on him,
as he enteres I yodel with happiness,
I throw my body up against his,
I try to lick his lips,
I care about him more than anything.

After we eat we go for a walk to the piers.
I leap into the standing warmth, I plunge into
the combination of old and new smells.
Here on a garbage can at the bottom, so interesting,
what sister or brother I wonder left this message I sniff.
I too piss there, and go on.
Here a hydrant there a pole
here's a smell I left yesterday, well that's disappointing
but I piss there anyway, and go on.

I investigate so much that in the end
it is for form's sake only, only a drop comes out.

I investigate tar and rotten sandwiches, everything, and go on.

And here a dried old turd, so interesting
so old, so dry, yet so subtle and mellow.
I can place it finely, I really appreciate it,
a gold distant smell like packed autumn leaves in winter
reminding me how what is rich and fierce when excreted
becomes weathered and mild
but always interesting
and reminding me of what I have to do.

My leader looks on and expresses his approval.

I sniff it well and later I sniff the air well
a wind is meeting us after the close July day
rain is getting near too but first the wind.
Joy, joy,
being outside with you, active, investigating it all,
with bowels emptied, feeling your approval
and then running on, the big fleet Yoko,
my body in its excellent black coat never lets me down,
returning to you (as I always will, you know that)
and now
filling myself out with myself, no longer confused,
my panting pushing apart my black lips, but unmoving,
I stand with you braced against the wind.

Also Too Two

Also Too

Also too.

Twenty

Twenty. T-W-E-N-T-Y. Twenty.

We'll be visiting her in Ohio next Tuesday through Sunday, *!wOOt!*

The Ruined Banisters of the A, a Bridle-Ring of the O, the Saddle of the U

Wowee, this was on a new book cart yesterday, I've already read the first five poems, I've already bought my copy from the publisher, I hope I get it by Monday before we head for Ohio Tuesday - more tomorrow, someone turns twenty - so I can beat it up in my hands and write in the margins like a book of poetry needs to be read and held and dog-eared and underlined and loved, here, have this poem:


THE VOWELS PASS BY IN ENGLISH

Brenda Hillman

          -& the owl drops flowers
     from its eyes [Dentaria californica]
   the raceme, the stubbed stem lands straight
in the woods - as the ancients do;
on a hazel branch, a cocoon
     hoists itself.... with a worm's mind -;

i-eee is released in winter
     as humans hold bones to the fire -
they were there a long time,
                    (interpreting the dead loves
as meaning seeped through the cracks
     of centuries held by everyone --);

     the ocean rises by inches -- when
the wave withdraws, plovers pick evidence
     from married footprints as the lyric does,
                   or sanity... Luminescent creatures
           sink red in the sand --
for they have swallowed... all 3 sunsets!

& the vowels pass by in English,
   the ruined banisters of the A, a bridle-
ring of the O, the saddle of the U
         brought from the underworld;
I had to negotiate with devils
   to retrieve even this much
from the language of the colonizers.


Wowee, huh? I tweeted in defeat Monday night that I am utterly incapable of reading fiction, as in I can read it for half an hour but none of it sticks. I've bitched about as it's steadily got worse the past three years, but here's good or bad news depending on moment: the guilt, the panic is easing. If I can just stop buying fiction I can't read in effort to fix the problem I'll save money too. HEY! tonight me and Earthgirl and Hamster see this guy:

• You won't hear about it or see photos from the concert until Thursday because tomorrow is Egoslavia's Most Sacred Day.
• No links tomorrow either tomorrow, Egoslavia's Most Sacred Day. Have some today.
• But not many, besides the link directly below I'm going to skip the Iraq scab-picking not because the scabs don't need picking, they just don't need re-picking here.
• UPDATE! Heroes in error. 
• Barbarian Rhapsody. Yes, again, icymi.
• Yves on Cyprus.
• Steubenville and Jock Culture.
• Scoffing at the sacred cow.
• Oldblogbud Ed's latest project. I'm good for a postcard, more if he makes it to Indiana, then...
• There are new places to read over in New Here, go look for them.
• For instance, on the death of google reader. Google has removed the link to reader in my gmail accounts, can still get by - fuck me - googling google reader.
• Anacostia.
• Dickens and Blegsylvania.
• Archie Ammons.
• Another anthology I need get.
• UPDATE! Zombie playlist for a lost one.
• Most of the poems in The Arcadia Project are too long for me to type out, I may jpeg some and post, but below song, another.

OPERATIVE SPRING

Eric Linsker

near/gaseous twigs lacking fluency in the chunks of branch pipe
rot centered shade, and the shade of the thrush
          stained by the suthering wind, loosens from the
other, bit-green/brown flap of sound, restart, touring on its side, a grass/attempt
     sticking
with snow seen by, it brushing/delineated yellow ashes of human dropped
forsythia like thrush, who handles its world when it looks away, the
powers are marching hitherward it is known before
            where they arrive they move
belike some things I know not what/whatever, cannot hear them, cannot hear
thrush now, I think we should slaughter them

There's a Dead Archer in the Tower

RIP Jason Molina. I'm not as familiar with Molina's music as I should be relative to how much I like it when I hear it. I've only so many hours and only two ears that feed into only one brain. All songs here from friends, thanks much, the cascade is for you.

Infinite Finitude

         
So I moused twice for WFMU this marathon, once early then once again when Yo La Tengo, for the eighteenth straight year, played three hours of requests in exchange for donations. I asked them to play their favorite Guided by Voices song (I am curious what it is) but they never got to it. No big deal, I think, they got hundreds of requests. Saturday, I get this email:

Hey Jeff,

   When we were cleaning up the mess we made of the Berlin studio at 5 pm German Standard Time, there was band-wide dismay when we uncovered your generous pledge that somehow was overlooked amid the chaos.  We all hope you'll accept our apology.  We hate to let any request go unacknowledged (that's why they invented medleys), and especially a Mouse.

Ira, Georgia and James

Love. Also love for WFMU, which made their goal. If you gave, thanks.

• Barbarian Rhapsody.
• State of Play, Spring 2013.
• Even Democratic loyalists?
• Of course it is. Something I debate: how often do I yodel the same point here? For instance, for all my bitching and moaning about the surveillance state, no one contributes more to my surveillance than me. I post on internet, I pay my bills on internet, I use a cell phone, my cell phone has a GPS.
• Cops are here to protect you, cont.
• On Steubenville and ruining promising lives.
• The assholes of CNN.
• Predators of the First Amendment.
• The point of intersection.
• The Litany Against Beers.
• Idea for a movie.
• His Generation's Greatest Academic Fraud writes soft-porn for Abercrombie & Fitch.
• Is Francis a fraud?
• I know nothing about the crisis is Cyprus. Here's Yves w/background.
• Capitalism, Fuckface Hiatt's rag, morality.
• Tactics for the revolution of everyday life.

• The New Inquiry's awesome Sunday link aggregation.
• The Honest Courtesan's awesome link aggregation.
• davidly's 500th post.
• Silver Line.
• Things I had forgotten: beets are yummy, especially roasted, and beets turn your piss pink.
• Anyone have an opinion on Feedly?
• On Philip Roth.
• The inscrutable brilliance of Anne Carson. I need investigate.
• Listen to Finnegan's Wake.
• Glück, for those of you who do.
• The letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer.
• Babbitt, for those of you who do.
• Randal's latest playlist.
• darkblack's Weekend Overnight.
• Mining the audio motherlode.

THE ANNIHILATION OF NOTHING

Thom Gunn

Nothing remained: Nothing, the wanton name

That nightly I rehearsed till led away

To a dark sleep, or sleep that held one dream.

In this a huge contagious absence lay,

More space than space, over the cloud and slime,

Defined but by the encroachments of its sway.

Stripped to indifference at the turns of time,

Whose end I knew, I woke without desire,

And welcomed zero as a paradigm.

But now it breaks—images burst with fire

Into the quiet sphere where I have bided,

Showing the landscape holding yet entire:

The power that I envisaged, that presided

Ultimate in its abstract devastations,

Is merely change, the atoms it divided

Complete, in ignorance, new combinations.

Only an infinite finitude I see

In those peculiar lovely variations.

It is despair that nothing cannot be

Flares in the mind and leaves a smoky mark

Of dread.

               Look upward. Neither firm nor free,

Purposeless matter hovers in the dark.

Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia, or: Four Hours Left, Give

Streaming video by Ustream

Watch! Give! Yes, for me mostly, but it's in your interest too.

Metros 0, United 0

Enjoy watching Bill Hamid through this season if we're lucky, the August transfer window most likely. Oh, game was early afternoon, I had no one to talk to so I talked to myself on Evernote trying to beat it's auto-correct. I won't use this gag again until I do. I mention Hamid early because he (and the crossbar) is clearly man-of-the-match, but also because Evernote calls him humid in the transcript below:

Revenge is here says the metro fans TiVo

Korb, jakovic, McDonald, Riley/Saragossa, kitchen, Pontius, Deleon/ derossairo, parody.

230 Riley horrible giveaway ny free kick.

300 Henry fouls parody, glares at parody, who the fuck are you?

500 dero earns freek kick deep right, Pontius takes, nothing, leads after scramble to weak shot bt dero

730 Henry shot save by humid leads to corner, nothing.

Replay if Henry had it it square humid wouldn't have got.

900 united breakaway dero has ball keeper out nothing but leads to ck. nothing.

1230 after midfield dancing ny gets fk, nothing. First ten minutes adrenalin done.

1540 Lordy Pajoy has no touch, brilliant ball from dero and gack, suck.

1830 ball in ny half, not dangerous but discovering holes.

1900 united touches either too fast or too slow, no rhythm yet, but just earned s ck on dumb touch by ny.

2000 Saragossa airball s on cross, Deleon kicks it 20 wide 20 high.

2200 nodax still sucks.

2330 jakovic bad pass leads to ny header off crossbar. 

2400 yellow card Cahill for bad tackle on Deleon. 

2600 don't know if that was on Pajoy oar Deleon but they don't plat we'll together.

2700 united pressing everything deep works third doesn't two thirds ny breakaway.

2800 Lordy Pajoy sucks, doesn't play we'll with Deleon.

2900 ny dominating possession, creating chances.

All damn day - deleon's hair is stupid, as is announcers talking abut Deleon being on klinssmanns radar.

3100 dero cross to Pajoy nothing he could do another long ball to Henry, third or fourth, it's working, lead to ck. nothing.

3300 Henry in his shirt with us flag, so stupid, so American, insist of flags on uniforms.

3500 jakovic ok in defense but with ball is crap.

3700 ny dominating, earns ck.

3800 humid hacks ck, bobbles, recovers.

3900 metros already warming up.

3900 united fk rift 40 yards, dero, wasted.

4000 ny in box again, thank Baal they suck too.

4100 Pontius should have earned fk but also should had done better.

4200 derossairo not involved enough, barely touching the ball, he's asking not getting.

4300 Henry shoots again catches on chest, drops to foot, pretty, no power thoug, right at humid.

4400 if united has had a decent fk or ck today I've forgot it, very sh itty.

4500 just eleven seconds stoppage. 

Benny smiles into microphone, says metros putting two on Pontius wherever he goes, united need defend against breakaway, tale better care of the bal. 

Second half no changes united. No changes metros.

4530 Pajoy runs himself offside on set play off kickoff. Totally stupid.

4600 kitchen fortunate to not get yellow on bad tackle.

4730 Henry soft header right at humid. 

4800 united breakaway slows outside to Pajoy who crosses, dero whiffs on bicycle. united has had at least three rushes man up or equal and doesn't seem know what to do.

5000 unlisted fk, Deleon good fk, punched sesy, Saragossa hits rebound off ny for ck nothing.

5150 excellent should to shoulder tackle. Box by jakovic, RSI,t his best play of game.

5200 good thing ny sucks too.

5400 secretly riffed so far, Geiger starting to lost a bit of control.

5500 off cross bar ny, too much possession in box.

5630 didn't Pontius used to be 13, changed to 11?

5700 Pontius barely touching ball, derossairo anew touching ball.

5730 Henry gets behind McDonald misses high from tough angle. 

5830 feels like ny score inevitable.

5900 although good entry from dero to Pontius who touches well, spins, saved.

6000 kit hen foul on the impressive Espindola, close to yellow on next foul.

6030 pajoy fucks up breakaway, leads to ny breeasksey leads to ny ck, nothing.

6200 Espindola fouls a kitchen like he meant it.

6300 then fouls Saragossa, takes yellow.

6330 graphics - shots ny 16 united 4.

6400 Deleon and Pajoy don't play we'll together.

6500 screen shot shows Benny telling asst to go to warming up and tell someone to get ready fast.

6530 screamer from ny from 30 yards, just misses top left corner. 

6600 united back line looking tired, slow,

6630 Hamada saves Cahill at goal mouth, united cant clear, great wave humid,

6700 united being completely outclasses.

6730 ny first sub, NBC hasn't told me who.

6800 gervinho for Steele.

6900 united hasn't had possession n five minted, Saragossa saves goal on line.

7000 Ruiz in for Pajoy. Fuck Pajoy, he sucks.

7100 bit of lull, united passing around back to catch breath. 

7200 ny pushing seven forward, has few concerns re united count attack.

7300 no that wasn't s handball Henry you ass.

7500 united has no energy, their passes are slow the are slow to the ball. There are fitnes issues.

7600 derossairo oz out Sanchez in. Door didn't look good at all.

7700 united playing ping in midfield,

7730 juninho, not gervinho. In either case, yellow card.

7820 Sanchez dispossessed. He's small, not strong.

7900 good thing metros suck too.

8000 kitchen on breakaway, there's a reason he's a defensive mid,

8200 united now playing for point

8230 so many weak slow passes that united does hurry to.

8300 take 40 seconds to take a fk from own zone. Killing time. 

8430 cross almost makes it to Ruiz, first time in box in ten minutes. 

8600 united doesn't bother to build out for back, it's whack e ball downhill.

8630 psst.. Henry isn't very good anymore.

8730 and he cries for pk on weak header.

8800 and may have just blown out his knee. Just kidding he's washed up diving bastard. He's up now, being removed.

8900 kit)3! Whacks Espindola, heh,

9000 NBC won't say how much stoppage.

9100 ny ck. ny claiming goal, humid saved goals,, looed like good save.

9200 ny didn't protest that much.

9300 ny cries for handball, no. 

9330 that's that. Steal a point. humid is man of the match. No one else in con station.

We need to talk about Pajoy. Notice how at first Evernote's auto-correct called him parody, me thinking, hey, an auto-correct with an ironic sense of humor, which maybe it does since I typed Pajoy sucks so often it let me have my way.

Midfield is a mess. Saragosa is slow and heavy-touches and soft-passes, when I think better John Thorrington or Lewis Neal, why are they the three choices? Olsen commented on NBC at half that Metros were doubling Pontius everywhere (so much a threat Metros considered Pajoy), Pontius rarely touched ball anywhere near danger (with one good exception around 60th), and when he went right (cause he can't go left) right meant backwards towards humid. And I don't get the anointing of DeLeon as special (the NBC voices said DeLeon had worked himself onto Klinsmann's radar), his first touches are almost Pajoy shitty, his passes behind the moving target to start and slow to boot to boot. Badumpdump.

Early and yadda. Three games, two difficult road games, four points, incoherent play because of DeRossario's suspension, the back line looks good (though Jakovic can't pass for shit and Riley seems good for two brain farts a game), Kitchen is excellent, and Bill Hamid is the future of American keepers, barring injury (and USMNT not making Brazil, a very real possibility) Bill Hamid is first keeper in Brazil in 2014 and starting for some European top division team as early as this September. So, Columbus at home next Saturday at 330. More next Sunday, with photos!

Objects of Value or Virtue, However, Are Also to Be Picked Up Here, Though Rarely, Lying with Bones and Rotten Meat, Eggshells and Mouldy Bread, Banana Peels No One Will Skid On, Apple Cores That Caused Neither the Fall of Man nor a Theory of Gravitation

• Did you know the University of Maryland at College Park is located in that shithouse of The Eastern Shore? It's true! And while I can't summon a damn about Terpistan basketball anymore, it's still rewarding to delight in Duke losing. And no, I don't know if the allusion to Big D's Underground Man was intentional.
• Facepalmistry. 
• Brand new products.
• Cosmetics as police regime. 
• Which is shittier: that Obama wants to gut the New Deal because he is enthralled to his handlers or that he wants to gut the New Deal because of his legacy?
• Total Information Awareness.
• Object-Oriented-Whatevery. (h/t) Word.
• World's Dumbest Public Intellectual! Whew.
• Someone I know who knows Jennifer Rubin says Rubin is genuinely batshit crazy, scream at the neighbors batshit crazy.
• My state does a good thing.
• Blogbud Brad tweeted last night It's amazing how suddenly visible to the world one becomes to the world when carrying a copy of Moby-Dick. and I replied, Depending on what copy it is (I have one of those wonderful tiny old B&N Moby Dick in red cloth), I think people think it's >>>> it's a Bible, it's interesting to get the looks I probably used to give, the looks of those who hope it's a Bible.
• Althusser, for those of you who do.
• HEY! United v Fucking Metros on NBC at 12:30 EDT today. Watch!
• New Murakami novel! It's called  色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年.
• Anthony's litlinks.
• Hey, JCO has a new novel out. It's been awhile since I read her, this one sounds interesting (from what I've seen beyond the Stephen King review that's linked), plus she's fun on twitter.
• Untitled.
• The Thinning.
• Hey, throw WFMU the coins in your pocket please. Listened to Pseu last night, surely a coincidence she played the same Sparks song that is one of two of this shitty blog's March 2013 Theme Songs, but here's what's surprising - she played a Fleet Foxes song that didn't suck. What Fleet Foxes I had heard were the same three dreadful songs on Hipster KEXP. Not going to seek out more, not going to post here, but I heard a Fleet Foxes song that didn't suck.
• Here, because I love you:

THE TOWN DUMP

Howard Nemerov

A mile out in the marshes, under a sky

Which seems to be always going away

In a hurry, on that Venetian land threaded

With hidden canals, you will find the city

Which seconds ours (so cemeteries, too,

Reflect a town from hillsides out of town),

Where Being most Becomingly ends up

Becoming some more. From cardboard tenements,

Windowed with cellophane, or simply tenting

In paper bags, the angry mackerel eyes

Glare at you out of stove-in, sunken heads

Far from the sea; the lobster, also, lifts

An empty claw in his most minatory

Of gestures; oyster, crab, and mussel shells

Lie here in heaps, savage as money hurled

Away at the gate of hell. If you want results,

These are results.

                          Objects of value or virtue,

However, are also to be picked up here,

Though rarely, lying with bones and rotten meat,

Eggshells and mouldy bread, banana peels

No one will skid on, apple cores that caused

Neither the fall of man nor a theory

Of gravitation. People do throw out

The family pearls by accident, sometimes,

Not often; I’ve known dealers in antiques

To prowl this place by night, with flashlights, on

The off-chance of somebody’s having left

Derelict chairs which will turn out to be

by Hepplewhite, a perfect set of six

Going to show, I guess, that in any sty

Someone’s heaven may open and shower down

Riches responsive to the right dream; though

It is a small chance, certainly, that sends

The ghostly dealer, heavy with fly-netting

Over his head, across these hills in darkness,

Stumbling in cut-glass goblets, lacquered cups,

And other products of his dreamy midden

Penciled with light and guarded by the flies.

For there are flies, of course. A dynamo

Composed, by thousands, of our ancient black

Retainers, hums here day and night, steady

As someone telling beads, the hum becoming

A high whine at any disturbance; then,

Settled again, they shine under the sun

Like oil-drops, or are invisible as night,

By night.

             All this continually smoulders,

Crackles, and smokes with mostly invisible fires

Which, working deep, rarely flash out and flare,

And never finish. Nothing finishes;

The flies, feeling the heat, keep on the move.

Among the flies, the purefying fires,

The hunters by night, acquainted with the art

Of our necessities, and the new deposits

That each day wastes with treasure, you may say

There should be ratios. You may sum up

The results, if you want results. But I will add

That wild birds, drawn to the carrion and flies,

Assemble in some numbers here, their wings

Shining with light, their flight enviably free,

Their music marvelous, though sad, and strange.

Vigilant Bears of Insecurity and Jealousy Padded Hungrily Behind His Eyes Each Night

Jack Applebaum and his running mate, Maggie Cleary, pose in Lauinger Library in front of their campaign poster when the two-week campaign period began.
      

• That's the caption beneath that photo in today's WaPo's story about a secret society at Illtophay, like I don't belong to and am excluded from secret societies with and from myself, and um, NO! that's the Intercultural Center, Red Square, morons. And they are standing outside, not inside.
• The banality of evil revisited.
• On an effective macroethics.
• Progressive movement as PR-front for rich Democrats.
• Today in Motherfucking Obama.
• Oh, this too.
• The government is engineering cyborg spy animals.
• MOCO is not like the rest of most of America.
• Um, oops, this was going to posted tomorrow, but a once every other month brain fart - I thought I had saved it to publish tomorrow morning, because...
• Lectures Mary Ruefle will never give.
• I haven't read Brian Moore in twenty years. Maybe I should.
• ... believe me, posting mid-afternoon on a Friday is not the best time to draw eyes.
• The savage wit of Mark E Smith.
• The boy with the spirograph eyes.
• The man with the child in his eyes.

KEAT'S PHRASE

Albert Goldbarth

My father’s been dead for thirty years

but when he appears behind my shoulder

offering advice, or condemnation, or a quiet pride

in something I’ve done that isn’t even thistledown

or tiny shavings of balsa wood in the eyes of the world

—“Albie, grip in the middle and turn

with a steady pressure”—it’s measurable,

if not the way the wind is in a sock,

or ohms, or net-and-gross, it registers the way

an absence sometimes does, and I listen to him

with a care I never exhibited when he was a presence,

alive, in his undershirt, chewing his tiny licorice pellets

and radiating a rough-hewn love. “Negative

capability”—the phrase of course is Keats’s,

from his letters, but we make it ours a hundred times

a day. A hundred times we do our own pedestrian

version of early maritime cartography: the known world

stops, and over its edge the fuddled mapmaker writes

Here There Be Monsters and then illustrates

their non-existing coiled lengths and hell-breath

with a color-splotched vivacity he wouldn’t waste

on inhabited shores. Or: “Don’t think

of a polar bear!”...the game one plays

with a child. But I say with adult certainty that

when Eddie’s wife Fiona went back to stripping

he couldn’t stand to be at the club and see, and yet

those empty hours in his mind were populated just

as unbearably—and indeed, yes, there

were monsters in that void, and the vigilant bears

of insecurity and jealousy padded hungrily behind

his eyes each night until her return. For Keats,

however, the force that emptiness makes kinetic is

a positive one, the way that the invisible, unknowable

“dark energy” is seminal, a kind of funding agency

or sugar daddy powering the universe in all

its spangled beauty and veiled mystery

from behind the scenes. Last night, a woozy few of us

were mourning the demise of The Dusty Bookshelf.

“Well I tried to support it,” I said, “by stopping in from time

to time.” And B, the king of local kleptobibliomania, with

his nimble touch and expando-capacious overalls, said

“I tried to support it by not going in.”

Sometimes, Not Often but Repeatedly, the Past Invades My Dreams in the Form of a Familiar Neighborhood I Can No Longer Locate

• Sure, easy. It wasn't the first thing you thought of?
• Blegsylvania fascinates me (you may have noticed), looking at the blegrells at 6:30 this morning, saw how many blegs had not updated since the announcement of the new pope. I admit, I too have no impression of the new pope beyond my lack of surprise he's against abortion and gay marriage and supports the continuance of celibacy and the all male clergy, but my point here is that, after ten years of doing this shit, I'm still counter-intuitively amazed that big news events quiet Blegsylvania rather than shake it like a hive.
• Progressive bleggal overlords discuss the A-List.
• Google Reader - the soon to be dead, Google insisted I acknowledge, Google Reader - was emptier than normal too this morning.
• Poll: over/under date Google kills Blooger. July 1, 2014 is my guess.
• Neoliberalism's theater of cruelty.
• Police state.
• Of course it is.
• The character assassination of Bradley Manning by NYT.
• The Re-Yodeling: John Podesta, Clinton henchman, calls on Obama to be open about drones, and you know what, eventually Obama will pass on whatever documentation necessary to end the kabuki over drones, the idea that POTUS can kill anyone anywhere for any reason at anytime by any means will be routinized though anesthetized by the salve that if it's by drone senior Democrats need tsk-tsk before approving.
• A preliminary sketch of a thesis on what it means to be Midwestern.
• Wittgenstein, for those of you who do.
• Walter Benjamin, for those of you who do.
• Borges' Aleph.
• The Third Hour of the Night.
• Scelsi's Hurqualia one, two, three, four.
• Fell asleep listening to Scelsi, woke up thinking of Scelsi.

NIGHTS ON PLANET EARTH

Campbell McGrath

Heaven was originally precisely that: the starry sky, dating back to the earliest Egyptian texts, which include magic spells that enable the soul to be sewn in the body of the great mother, Nut, literally "night," like the seed of a plant, which is also a jewel and a star. The Greek Elysian fields derive from the same celestial topography: the Egyptian "Field of Rushes," the eastern stars at dawn where the soul goes to be purified. That there is another, mirror world, a world of light, and that this world is simply the sky—and a step further, the breath of the sky, the weather, the very air—is a formative belief of great antiquity that has continued to the present day with the godhead becoming brightness itself: dios/theos (Greek); deus/divine/diana (Latin); devas (Sanskrit); daha (Arabic); day (English).

—Susan Brind Morrow, Wolves and Honey
    

1

Gravel paths on hillsides amid moon-drawn vineyards,

click of pearls upon a polished nightstand

soft as rainwater, self-minded stars, oboe music

distant as the grinding of icebergs against the hull

of the self and the soul in the darkness

chanting to the ecstatic chance of existence.

Deep is the water and long is the moonlight

inscribing addresses in quicksilver ink,

building the staircase a lover forever pauses upon.

Deep is the darkness and long is the night,

solid the water and liquid the light. How strange

that they arrive at all, nights on planet earth.

2

Sometimes, not often but repeatedly, the past invades my dreams in the form of a familiar neighborhood I can no longer locate,

a warren of streets lined with dark cafés and unforgettable bars, a place where I can sing by heart every song on every jukebox,

a city that feels the way the skin of an octopus looks pulse-changing from color to color, laminar and fluid and electric,

a city of shadow-draped churches, of busses on dim avenues, or riverlights, or canyonlands, but always a city, and wonderful, and lost.

Sometimes it resembles Amsterdam, students from the ballet school like fanciful gazelles shooting pool in pink tights and soft, shapeless sweaters,

or Madrid at 4AM, arguing the 18th Brumaire with angry Marxists, or Manhattan when the snowfall crowns every trash-can king of its Bowery stoop,

or Chicago, or Dublin, or some ideal city of the imagination, as in a movie you can neither remember entirely nor completely forget,

barracuda-faced men drinking sake like yakuza in a Harukami novel, women sipping champagne or arrack, the rattle of beaded curtains in the back,

the necklaces of Christmas lights reflected in raindrops on windows, the taste of peanuts and their shells crushed to powder underfoot,

always real, always elusive, always a city, and wonderful, and lost. All night I wander alone, searching in vain for the irretrievable.

3

In the night I will drink from a cup of ashes and yellow paint.

In the night I will gossip with the clouds and grow strong.

In the night I will cross rooftops to watch the sea tremble in a dream.

In the night I will assemble my army of golden carpenter ants.

In the night I will walk the towpath among satellites and cosmic dust.

In the night I will cry to the roots of potted plants in empty offices.

In the night I will gather the feathers of pigeons in a honey jar.

In the night I will become an infant before your flag.

Most Popes Are Called "Babe" Because Growing Up to Be Pope Is a Lot of Fun

 

HOW THE POPE IS CHOSEN

James Tate

Any poodle under ten inches high is a toy.
Almost always a toy is an imitation
of something grown-ups use.
Popes with unclipped hair are called “corded popes.”
If a Pope’s hair is allowed to grow unchecked,
it becomes extremely long and twists
into long strands that look like ropes.
When it is shorter it is tightly curled.
Popes are very intelligent.
There are three different sizes.
The largest are called standard Popes.
The medium-sized ones are called miniature Popes.
I could go on like this, I could say:
“He is a squarely built Pope, neat,
well-proportioned, with an alert stance
and an expression of bright curiosity,”
but I won’t. After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he’s the new Pope.
He is then fully armed and rides through the wilderness alone,
day and night in all kinds of weather.
The new Pope chooses the name he will use as Pope,
like “Wild Bill” or “Buffalo Bill.”
He wears red shoes with a cross embroidered on the front.
Most Popes are called “Babe” because
growing up to become a Pope is a lot of fun.
All the time their bodies are becoming bigger and stranger,
but sometimes things happen to make them unhappy.
They have to go to the bathroom by themselves,
and they spend almost all of their time sleeping.
Parents seem incapable of helping their little popes grow up.
Fathers tell them over and over again not to lean out of windows,
but the sky is full of them.
It looks as if they are just taking it easy,
but they are learning something else.
What, we don’t know, because we are not like them.
We can’t even dress like them.
We are like red bugs or mites compared to them.
We think we are having a good time cutting cartoons out of the paper,
but really we are eating crumbs out of their hands.
We are tiny germs that cannot be seen under microscopes.
When a Pope is ready to come into the world,
we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
Some of the full-bodied popes are a million times bigger than us.
They open their mouths at regular intervals.
They are continually grinding up pieces of the cross
and spitting them out. Black flies cling to their lips.
Once they are elected they are given a bowl of cream
and a puppy clip. Eyebrows are a protection
when the Pope must plunge through dense underbrush
in search of a sheep.

• What the hell is wrong with me, why did it take me until 5:56 this morning to remember Tate's pope-poem? My apologies. 
• My apologies, I need point out again that when Obama is confronted (their word) w/questions about drones, especially by Democrats, weigh what's worse, they know it's kabuki, they think it's not kabuki?
• Trick question: insert whatever question behind that freaky backward E-thing of power and under that skeevy square root thing of greed and fuck me, your motives can be - probably are - purer than mine and thus more concussive than a depth charge dropped from PT-73.
• My apologies, after Get Smart and F Troop allusions yesterday, I thought a McCale's Navy allusion was necessary today, Old Leadbottoms.
• My apologies, this was going to be an aarghfree post.
• the moon gazed  my midnight labors...
• Taco Cat is a palindrome.
• Hey, look what was waiting for me when I got home last night:

• Arsenal line-up for tonight: Fabianski, Jenks, a mop, dust, Gibbs, dark matter, no tomato, inanimate carbon rod, Bergerac, Akers, a merkin.
• Devotion of rubes.
• Hey, if you listen to WFMU and/or appreciate what they do for music, they are way behind on their goals for the annual Marathon, throw them even a Snacks Sticker Sheet's worth of $$$ please. Look how much Arvo Pärt they play!
• Will there be a WFMU in 2046, when Planet is my age today, when I'm 85, when this fucking blog is 42, imagine how old the gags you hate now will be then.
• The ten least hipster cities.
• Baltasound.
• Bailter Space.
• A guide to Arvo Pärt's music.
• bX-62m038 - that's what motherfucking blooger told me after it ate this post last night - the part written before I remembered the Tate poem this morning - keeps telling me up to three minutes ago. What is an idiot blogwhore and attention slut to do?
• I had two interesting conversations blog-sparked yesterday, sincere thanks to you both, one - hehful - by phone, say no more say no more, the second by email, asking me to clarify one of my habitual spasms, not the following one, but related to Have I ever mentioned I love in this case Arvo Pärt's music? Because I do love Arvo Pärt's music, I mention it, play it all the time. Usually in this situation I would use the italicized question above as a brick in a gag lamely rhetorical to you perhaps but sophisticated as an anchor link to echoes to me, but not this time, just like this time.

It Was When the Catfish Were the Only Fish Left Living in the Monongahela River

One of my earliest crushes, my avatar's nemesis' partner, lover, mother of his twin children, code name Barbara Feldon, real name 99, was born 81 years ago today, oh my. I'd be curious how much Mel Brooks and Buck Henry say they consciously stole from and lovingly parodied the two Emma Peel Avenger years, at least 99 the first few seasons of Get Smart, but learning would entail research, and fuck that.

• Max quick, I'm weakening, dang, me never Max. One of my great sadnesses is that my avatar called in sick and was unavailable for this scene and Brooks and Henry had to bring in Corporal Agarn from Fort Courage Kansas, get him out of his Union blues and into my avatar's costume, had my avatar been there instead of crashed on mushrooms and Mad Dog it would make a far better, far sexier youtube than this one for 99's birthday.
• Canned laughter.
• Not the end of times but the end of time: We went from a future focused society to a present-based one. The leaning forward that had characterized our civilization since the invention of farming and text became more of a standing-up. I think this another facet of shock doctrine, this one more towards our conditioning for control by our owners rather than harvesting us for meat - America is still ten years behind Britain, twenty years behind Spain, thirty years behind Greece - but it reminds that because I got sick of saying and assumed long-timers were sick of hearing it I haven't been yodeling recently that the core of my rubiness is that until the past decade I believed unto a faith that in America each generation leaves the next generation a better America than the parenting generation was bequeathed. Cue violins for my daughter's future, it's an old and melodramatic gag, but what world will she live in when she's my age in 2046?
• Canned laughter.
• Life is cheap in the New World Order.
• Fucking Americans.
• Zizek on Chavez.
• One more idiot with a twitter account.
• So it seems I'm back to bullets, fucking blooger, it's the only fucking thing here it will let me change. If enough of you stop reading I can crash this and start start again elsewhere happily bitter at my involuntarily invisibility. Fuck me.
• Chance is a good librarian.
• What makes dogs dogs?
• A young William Carlos Williams writes a letter to his brother.
• OK, for MOCOMOFOs: a friend just tweeted that Bret Michaels (who the fuck is Bret Michaels?) likes curly fries. Ken Beatrice doesn't like curly fries, though he's told they're very good. Try the Jamocha Shake.
• At Matanaka Farm.
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Roth, for those of you who do.
• Jim's latest playlist.
• I don't play enough Morton Feldman here.
• Holyfuck, forgive me, I love this below, this is the direction my ears are sprinting, I'm so stupid for it I can't believe you're not stupid for it too. Fine metaphors abound.

FATHER, IN DRAWER

Lucie Brock-Broido

Mouthful of earth, hair half a century silvering, who buried him.

With what. Make a fist for heart. That is the size of it.

                                                             Also directives from our  DNA.

The nature of  his wound was the clock-cicada winding down.

                                                            He wound down.

July, vapid, humid: sails of sailboats swelled, yellow boxes

Of   cigars from Cuba plumped. Ring fingers fattened for a spell.

                                                            Barges of coal bloomed in heat.

It was when the catfish were the only fish left living

                                                            In the Monongahela River.

Though there were (they swore) no angels left, one was stillbound in

The very drawer of salt and ache and rendering, its wings wrapped-in

                                                            By the slink from the strap

Of his second-wife’s pearl-satin slip, shimmering and still

                  As one herring left face-up in its brine and tin.

The nature of  his wound was muscadine and terminal; he was easy

                 To take down as a porgy off the cold Atlantic coast.

                 In the old city of   Brod, most of the few Jews left

Living may have been still at supper while he died.

That same July, his daughters’ scales came off in every brittle

                                                            Tinsel color, washing

To the next slow-yellowed river and the next, toward west,

                                                            Ohio-bound.

                This is the extent of that. I still have plenty heart.