Exchanging Skin for Bark, Bark for Scales, Scales for Hollow Bones of a Bird

Magachoads chant *Genocide Joe, Genocide Joe* at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania this past weekend and they are not wrong. You can support Israel blindly and attack Biden for blindly supporting Israel. Reminder: those of us who do not support Israel blindly and attack Biden for blindly supporting Israel are the evil fucks destroying America and ushering in World War 3


Hinkiest war ever (except for those killed, maimed, orphaned, and starved, etc)...

Decision from an Idiot: the wordpress will remain main hexjeff platform, the hexjeff blooger sent to minors, archive when dope remembers. Idiot promises himself he will learn how to widen the center column of the wordpress hexjeff platform though doesn't promise you he will. Hey, make sure you click the link in grid to understand why Linda Thompson called her new album *Proxy Music.* 

Meanwhile, one of my favorite novelists and essayists now writing neither novels or essays but has taken up painting and is only posting drawings and paintings so I sympathize with yinz tolerating me, I'm happy he's happy

Decision from an Idiot: this Sparklehorse song may already be one of this blog's Theme Songs, I don't remember, I may have wanted to already but didn't because of the youtube black blockage before, *I Fucked It Up* it's called, and I certainly don't remember what number it already was and if it wasn't yet what number it will be and don't know how many Theme Songs there are now and certainly couldn't name them all much less get them in the correct order. Bleggalgaze scratched. Regulars know what abounds and in what condition

What we are witnessing is moral suicide
The Exchange Rate On Palestinian Life
The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth
Israeli mobs set homes, cars ablaze in West Bank pogrom
Israel and US deliberately gutting international law in Gaza
The moral truth of Israel’s war against Gaza is not difficult to grasp
Every bomb dropped is added to a bill we pay
A historical take on defunding the UNRWA
Killing Humanitarian Workers as a Strategy: Israel’s Endgame in Gaza
"You violate a mountain of UN resolutions, condemn the UN at every turn, bomb UN schools & shelters, murder UN employees, & then you demand a UN meeting over another country responding to your bombing of their consulate"
Where is America's "rules-based order" now?
It is SO totally different and worse when Trump does this, shitlibs tell me
Alabama harvested the organs of inmates without consent, families say
The Persistence of Global Capitalism’s Long Depression
Young People Finally Starting to Recognize the Super Rich and Not Oldsters Are the Problem
A Class Analysis of the Trump-Biden Rerun
Did Trump break the kayfabe of his idiot christer faithful?
How should socialists think about political tradition?
The Flooding Will Come No Matter What
Never say bipartisanship never happens in America
Louisiana High Court: Priests Have a “Property Right” Not to Be Sued For Sexual Abuse
"Virtually all commentary on the topic has come to the same conclusion: that for better or worse, Sweeney’s breasts are a locus for the power struggle between patriarchy and the feminists who want to smash it"
Maggie's weekly				Why you are lost
Take a drive over the Key Bridge in this poignant short student film from 1987
"impossible to calculate the bullshit quotient of this image"
TICK RESEARCHER’S TIPS FOR STAYING SAFE OUTDOORS
The therapist who hated me					2024 Aprilgah
Avedon Carol's occasional links
{ feuilleton }'s			How to make a map of smell
Whales and other aliens				TIME EXPLAINED
Hand and Mind: Rothko and appearance versus the essence of appearance
50 ways to end a poem				Why you should have a cat
What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse?
Louise Bourgeois on how to peel a tangerine artistically
The Rejection Plot				The Tale of a Wall
Classical music is in crisis?						◀	I now find classical music, even those composers I once loved - Bartok, for instance - completley uninteresting and unlistenable, fuck me
What’s Next for Music Criticism?
Proxy Music: Linda Thompson's new album
"We were once paid $50 to quit": new wave heroes Devo on boos, Bowie and retiring after 50 years
Eight questions for Esther Kinsky
The Bohman Brothers playing live tonight on Daniel's show!

TODAY, MY HOPE IS VERTICAL

Jane Hirshfield

Today, my hope is vertical.
Tomorrow it will be horizontal.
The next day, cloudy.
My hope is like a Greek myth:
exchanging skin for bark,
bark for scales,
scales for the hollow bones of a bird.
In these ways my hope
attempts to escape its fate.
In myth, hope surely knows,
escape is useless.
Still, hope will try.
I, who will someday leave behind
this three-dimensioned puzzle,
pity my hope.
Poorling, I say to my hope,
even I cannot spare you,
even I cannot make you mortal.
Winged, rooted, finned,
roofed or roofless,
of all my shapes, only you, hope,
know nothing of irony,
only you cannot be cynical
or cloak yourself
in the objectivity of grammar.
Only you
cannot suffer suffering.
You exempt, you deny,
you protest with speech and with silence.
You forgive—helpless to not—
in speech and in silence.
I, citizen of perspective,
born into the tribe of time,
will vanish into its blurring distance.
But you—most intransigent,
most stubborn of all my parts—
will be forced to continue.
How tenderly, with two open hands,
you reach again today for hunger’s apple.

Who In the World Despises Our Work as Much as We Do?

Who I'd like to be:



Who I am:



Will never be like the one at the top and terrified on dark days I will never be anyone but the one directly above (and terrified I will cowardly stop being the one directly above). Current plan which will never happen is no digital in Maine for two weeks this summer beyond phone in case a loved one needs to reach me, my dreaming about doing this fully aware I'm incapable of doing so just punishment as is thinking if I can get through 2024 then 2025 will be less electric by dint of recent election and I can be less compulsively sideways as if I don't enjoy being sideways but just can't help it, witness this grid I just harvested, something's gotta change, I just wish I have an alternative to yes but for the worse

Biden: ‘Israel Has An Obligation Not To Harm My Reelection Chances’
Brutal, Chaotic War – Norms, Conventions and Laws of Conduct Are Being Erased
"Importantly, it is not *remotely* unusual for people to care about issues/causes that don’t benefit them materially, or cost them. It only surprises those trapped in a paradigm of “interest” derived from classical political economy that never described how people really behave."
Also too: because it reminds us that there but for privilege is me and mine and will be delivered upon us when we lose that privilege							⇧
Am I going to vote in Maryland primary, but Vote Uncommitted Maryland? No, but now not a Fuck No
Meetings about massacre					Sick cultures
Gaza And The Corporate Media
Netanyahu killed a top Iranian general in Syria to provoke a regional conflict — and the U.S. media is hiding his true motivation
"One thing that's happening at the moment is that zionist ultras are making arguments in public that they've previously only made in private to already sympathetic audiences. but these arguments fall flat in the general arena. which amusingly they don't seem to have noticed"
Review: A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation
Donald Trump’s Amnesia Advantage
Extractivism in the Anthropocene
Beyond Left Melancholy: Understanding the psychological toll of political defeat
What the Next Civil War Will Look Like
Killing and its names				Why capitalism won't save the world
Six Degrees of Plant Extinction
How a DC stream became a sewer, and then a secret
Reason # 73946109 I don't want to move to Michigan: sheriffs
CHEAP ‘N PAINLESS LESSONS IN WRITING, SESSION #5: THE KITSCH-BALANCE
STOP MVP: Artists From WV, VA & NC Against The Mountain Valley Pipeline
{ feuilleton }'s				Maggie's weekly
Clay Pigeon's real name is Kasy Ross
yes you said no				Time explained
Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Para-Academic Venues for Discussing Gaddis and Other Innovative Fiction
THE INCOMPARABLE MOJO NIXON
Tree, Chair, Cone, Dog, Bishop, Piano, Vineyard, Door, or Penny: On Lyn Hejinian
The Best Neil Young Songs, Ranked

THE PHANTOM AGENTS

John Ashbery

We need more data r: our example, earth - how it would behave in a 
crisis, under pressure,
or simply on a day no one had staked out for unrest
to erupt. What season would fit its lifestyle
most naturally? Who would the observers, the control group be?

For this we must seek the answer in decrepit cinemas
whose balconies were walled off decades ago: on the screen
(where, in posh suburbia, a woman waits)
under the seats, in the fuzz and ancient vomit and gumwrappers;
or in the lobby, where yellowing lobby cards announce
the advent of next week's Republic serial: names
of a certain importance once, names that float
in the past, like a drift of gnats on a summer evening.

Who in the world despises our work
as much as we do? I was against campaigning again,
then my phone started ringing off the hook. I tell you...
But to come back to us, sanded down to the finer grain
and beyond - this is what books teach you, but also
what we must do. Make a name, somehow,
in the wall of clouds behind the credits, like a
twenty-one-vehicle pileup on a fog-enclosed highway.
This is what it means to be off and running, off
one's nut as well. But in a few more years,
with time off for good behavior...

Nonetheless I Smiled, Leaned on My Stick, and, No Troubleder Than Mom, Gimped in to Meet the Guards Halfway, or: Rest in Peace, John Barth

I would not read and think like I do if Gary Pittenger, English 101 professor at Montgomery College, Rockville, had not pushed Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor into my hands in 1980
The Paris Review interview				An RIP: John Barth
Lost and Found in the Fun House: The John Barth Collection
Barth's massively influential essay The Literature of Exhaustion
A novelist who found possibility in a "used-up" form
The case for John Barth				On Giles Goat-Boy
On The Sot-weed Factor part one, on The Sot-weed Factor part two
Discovering The Sot-weed Factor				Below the fold: the rest of The Publisher's Dilemma, the opening of Giles Goat-Boy

Publisher's Disclaimer

The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity. We ask him to believe in the sincerity and authenticity of this preface, affirming in return his prerogative to be skeptical of all that follows it.

The manuscript submitted to us some seasons ago under the initials R.N.S., and by us retitled Giles Goat-Boy, is enough removed from the ordinary and so potentially actionable as to make inadequate the publisher's conventional disclaimer: "Any resemblance to persons living or dead," etc. The disclaimer's very relevance-which we firmly assert-was called into question even prior to the manuscript's receipt, as has been everything about the book since, from its content to its authorship. The professor and quondam novelist whose name appears on the title-page (our title-page, not the one following his prefatory letter) denies that the work is his, but "suspects" it to be fictional-a suspicion that two pages should confirm for the average reader. His own candidate for its authorship is one Stoker Giles or Giles Stoker- whereabouts unknown, existence questionable-who appears to have claimed in turn 1 ) that he too was but a dedicated editor, the text proper having been written by a certain automatic computer, and 2) that excepting a few "necessary basic artifices" * the book is neither fable nor fictionalized history, but literal truth. And the computer, the mighty "WESCAC"-does it not too disclaim authorship? It does.

When a Master Stares at Himself in the Future What He Fears Is That the World Will Do to Him What He Did to the World When He Was the World

Above from the Bidart poem below, is True, not only for masters but masters' favored subjects and down each tier of the pyramid, there is no cruelty inflicted on another human the inflicting human doesn't think the inflicted would inflict on him



Another headshot, crayon, clear elmer's glue infused with acrylic ink, if you have empty elmer's glue squirt bottles please mail to me, apply infused glue directly by squirting. Yesterday Israel murdered seven World Central Kitchen workers who dared to feed the people Israel starving to death AND bombed the Irani consulate in Damascus, yawn, and another professor-friendly acquaintance at Hilltop told me it will be my fault when Trump beats Biden, I call this Monday. 

As for blogfutility: went to prune the blogrolls to move the dead or unconscious to the moribund purgatories but discovered some of the dead or unconscious neither but their feed be dead so I made an executive decision to give zero fucks and do fucking nothing. Fine metaphors abound. So zeroed are my fucks it occurs to me as I type this sentence that I have not checked blogstats since last Friday or Saturday, I should just delete the counter but still can't, fine metaphors abound

Trump yesterday said, I'm paraphrasing, Israel! If you gonna fucking slaughter all the fucking Gazans just fucking get it over with, you're wasting time and money, it's bad for business, a distinction from Biden who no doubt tells Bibi, if you gonna fucking slaughter all the fucking Gazans can you at least do it more discreetly and finish up before the Democratic National Convention if at all possible, here, have more bombs (both have since been called antisemitic by Zionists). In protest I've switched from ink to pencil in daily journal. Fine metaphors abound

"If you try to feed starving Palestinians, Israel will murder you"
Plan Is To Turn Palestine Into A Historical Footnote So It's Too Late To Save It
"I believe if the IDF dug up the body of Beau Biden and ran it over with tanks, Joe Biden would do nothing"
The Road to Famine in Gaza
We Were Lied Into the Gaza Genocide
Black Lives Matter and Palestine
The Business of War & The Cost of American Delusions
"Your occasional reminder that libs are absolutely preparing to turn on “ungrateful” trans people as their leftist scapegoat when Biden loses because the alternative would be taking responsibility for that whole “let’s just ignore mass murder” thing"
Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?							Gonna go with No
You too can put a dash of Huat behind your ears
POLITICS IN A BURNING WORLD
Zero fucks given in different languages
Venting Doesn't Reduce Anger, But Something Else Does, Study Finds
Nowhere in this article on the county I've lived in for sixty years mentions county executive Marc Elrich who pushed for this and pissed off the Moco shitlords who all give money to whoever is running against Elrich
Maggie's weekly				NOTHING MATTERS
two philosophers drill a hole into a wall
What hath the blog wrought: a bleggalgaze
Ishiguro, long ago				{ feuilleton }'s links
I was reminded of Teardrop Explodes and the greatest clean fresh orange sunshine tripping song ever, fight me

Frank Bidart

THE MORAL ARC OF THE UNIVERSE BENDS TOWARDS JUSTICE

is an illusion. It’s true, it’s human nature to try to
unbend

what for centuries human nature—with great wisdom, great
pain—bent.

What had to be built we knew instinctively must be built
without

asking permission of the ignorant doing the building. But natural
pity

soon ends
when what pity unleashes is CHAOS, is

horror.
The cauldron that has always been the source

of force
we have learnt slowly, in time, how to control. Have learnt to

enslave
(you would harshly say) more subtly. More, you would say, cunningly.

Think the American Civil War,—
. . . followed by a century of Jim Crow.

If you do not become a master
you are a slave.        

•

The voice of What had to be built leaves certain
words bodiless. The Lost Cause, strange

fruit, was lost, for us, in a song about lacerated flesh.

When a master stares at himself in the future

what he fears is that the world will do to him what
he did to the world when he was the world.

I Am Unable to Understand the Forms of My Vanity

While fume-laughing and laugh-fuming yesterday at crackers blaming the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse on Baltimore's n****r mayor I got the wonderful news that Joe Lieberman now dead dead dead, what a shitsmear this jowly motherfucker was. Not in the competition for Lead Actor in My Apostasies Feeding My I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. movie (the Clintons second and third, Obama gets the Oscar), Lieberman the clear leader for Best Supporting Asshole and perennial contender for Who Would I Hit in the Head with a Garden Shovel If I Only Get One Swing. My hate is visceral and true: Roast in Piss, you walking but now fallen turd





My ecstasy at Lieberman's DEATH! DEATH! DEATH! bolstered by news that local DC shitlord Wizard Capital and Virginia's probably genuinely cracker but definitely performative cracker governor give up trying to spend Virginia tax-payer money for a new arena which no one who lives near where it would have been wanted, gave up! (crackers complaining about the n****r state senator from Portsmouth who blocked it), but the rush of joy at the combined news dissipated by this morning, the clusterfuck proceeds apace - Larry David, responsible for the atrocity called Seinfeld, I'm told, who, I'm told, is a cranky anti-social white guy, has disappointed his cranky cracker white guy fans by bad-mouthing President Diaper, calling him a baby, a sociopath, so whatever show Larry David now has, if he has one, banned from all big-screens anchored to the wall between two antlered dear heads in wainscotted cracker rec rooms, while tonight, at Madison Square Garden, the Clintons and Obama gather with the shitlords charged with funding Motherfucking Professional Democrats to raise millions for Joe Biden who, remember this? most people don't, it's so yesterday, is genociding Palestinians. Taking my medicine = Robert Ashley born 94 years ago today

People ask me, just who are these shitlords you won't shut the fuck up about, read about this guy
People ask me, just who are these shitlords you won't shut the fuck up about, read about this guy
Shitlords want Trump, episode infinity
Toward an Intellectual History of Genocide in Gaza
Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud
Imagine If Russia Or China Did The Things Israel Is Doing In Gaza
Deterrence by strategy?					Job of consent
Fine metaphors abound: Kamala Harris Accidentally Claps to Song Protesting Her Visit
12 Things He Learned from René Girard
"The elite layer of US media is just an upper-class cronyism network"
Companies Spent Decades Hiding Health Risks Tied to Gas Stoves
Today in Motherfucking Democrats
⇧	Adding, "Israel is not nearly as sloppily barbaric as we are" isn't the win this fuckstick thinks it is						⇧
Biden’s budget fuels war machine: 68% for military and police
Today in Motherfucking Democrats
Today in Motherfucking Democrats
⇧	Biden Cozies Up to the World’s Worst Dictator						⇧
The Lessons Of Jesus (Or “Why Conservatives Hate Francis”)
Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation
The Project Censored Newsletter- March 2024
What is it like to be manic?
Style As Survival: On Writing After Death
Rest in Peace, Richard Serra, Moco, Nova, and DC friends, you can see three giant Serra installations at Glenstone off Glen Road in Travilah (also too: Serra's verbs)
RIP Richard Serra				RIP Richard Serra
Anyone who does not choose Neil Young/Sonic Youth is a dope. Anyone who chooses Sting should be shot in both kneecaps and left to bleed to death
Yesterday Frank O’Hara’s (Real) Birthday — But Not the Day He Thought Was His Birthday [again]
On the Threshold: on Wayne Koestenbaum
In Conversation with Kate Pierson of The B-52’s and Pylon’s Vanessa Briscoe Hay
Gastr del Sol Announce First Album in 26 Years!

TO THE HARBORMASTER

Frank O'Hara

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught   

in some moorings. I am always tying up   

and then deciding to depart. In storms and   

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide   

around my fathomless arms, I am unable   

to understand the forms of my vanity   

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder   

in my hand and the sun sinking. To   

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage   

of my will. The terrible channels where   

the wind drives me against the brown lips   

of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet   

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and   

if it sinks, it may well be in answer   

to the reasoning of the eternal voices,

the waves which have kept me from reaching you.