Wednesday, February 8, 2012

There's Death by Taxi, by Blood Clot, by Slippery Rug. Death by Oops and Flood, by Drone and Gun




That's the new Chuck Prophet. Hey, guess what? American liberals dig drones, killing Muslim civilians: The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party... But fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year. This is the centerpiece of this post, but what the fuck is there to say? There's a new Fucked Up song at post's bottom. Here's a new poem on top of an old poem.








DEATH GETS INTO THE SUBURBS

Michelle Boisseau

It sweats into the tongue and groove
of redwood decks with a Tahoe view.
It slides under the truck where some knuckles

are getting banged up on a stuck nut.
It whirls in the egg whites. Among blacks
and whites spread evenly. Inside the chicken

factory, the Falcon 7x, and under the bridge.

There’s death by taxi, by blood clot, by slippery rug.
Death by oops and flood, by drone and gun.

Death with honor derides death without.
Realpolitik and offshore accounts
are erased like a thumb drive lost in a fire.

And the friendly crow sets out walnuts to pop under tires.

So let’s walk the ruins, let’s walk along the ocean
and listen to death’s undying devotion.


6 comments:

  1. Only 77 percent? Wimps.

    Link thanks, but shit, real-time Google mapping? Now the feds will know I try to be late coming back from lunch, officially.

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  2. "There is a kind of minor writer who is found in a room of the library signing his novel. His index finger is the color of tea, his smile filled with bad teeth. He knows literature, however. His sad bones are made of it. He knows what was written and where writers died. His opinions are cold but accurate. They are pure, at least there is that.

    "He's unknown, though not without a few admirers. They are really like marriage, uninteresting, but what else is there? His life is his journals. In them somewhere is a line from the astrologer: your natural companions are women. Occasionally, perhaps. No more than that. His hair is thin. His clothes are a little out of style. He is aware, however, that there is a great, a final glory which falls on certain figures barely noticed in their time, touches them in obscurity and recreates their lives. His heroes are Musil and, of course, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Bunin."

    James Salter, "Via Negativa" (page the first)

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  3. Black Bloc: A bunch of guys with too much time, testosterone, and love of attention on their hands. I don't agree with Hedges or Against Hedges, it's a red herring.
    ~

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  4. you're wrong about Black Bloc, dude; your very formulation suggests you see it exactly as Hedges does... to clarify: I'm saying that if you disagree with the tactics of Black Bloc you're necessarily wrong, I'm saying it's wrong to see it as an entity, as "a bunch of guys". It's not. It's, in fact, a tactic; a tactic we can argue about, but a tactic. That's the point. Another point is that quite a lot of the actions Hedges decries as Black Bloc were not Black Bloc. So what were they? Be smarter.

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  5. Oh, there are ladies in Black Bloc?

    Thanks for the tip, Richard.
    ~

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  6. So, naturally, my comment had a missing word. I meant to type: "I'm NOT saying that if you disagree with the tactics of Black Bloc you're necessarily wrong, I'm saying it's wrong to see it as an entity, as "a bunch of guys"."

    That is, it's perfectly fine to argue about the tactics, disagree with them, not perfectly fine to see it as a group of people, or movement, or anything like that, because that is simply factually inaccurate. Meanwhile, typo or not, your comment is impertinent and dickly.

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