Thursday, April 16, 2015

What Is the Poet's Job Out of Numbed Slumber?





If you don't own and listen regularly to Wedding Present's George Best, do yourself a kind. Guess what I listened to last night. Hey, twenty-four hours from the time stamp of this post Earthgirl and I will be on an airplane to Detroit. Planet's Air is an Art Major at Michigan, his senior show opening is tomorrow night, we get to see Detroit, Ann Arbor, rural Michigan this weekend. Planet and Air have been together five years, we get to meet Air's parents for the first time. I'm told they are nice, please pray for me anyway. Despite few look at the slideshows I post I will possibly if not probably post at least one since Planet thinks I will find Detroit fascinatingly photographic, and she will be driving so I will have two hands free in a moving car for the first time in, um, ages. I doubt there will be links though that's because Dead Blegsylvania be deader than ever even if I had the time to link-fish which I possibly if not probably and hopefully won't. And what would you have me yodel? Yes, the below is possibly if not probably one of the ten most posted songs of this shitty blog's history.








MAELSTROM: ONE DROP MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN

Anne Waldman

All the world is one, like an angry deity’s essence dropped in the ocean
becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris
What happens Vicenza U.S. Base or Prodi, Kyoto Accord, XL Pipeline
advanced warplanes to Japan—what happens?  Egypt, Yemen, Syria
NASA’s five space probes or Aurora Borealis where we study shimmering light
What happens on the Lunar New Year
I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial moves?
A lexicon & vibration touch the complexity of gestural motion
What happened with Augustine & his mother in Ostia?
I want to know what happens Nicea 325 perhaps God creates the  world!
Let’s go back and check this out: Ex nihilio ardore/splendore
Europe still riding the pull of Zeus a nuclear reactor not dismantled
Heads coming off in cruelest acts, unspeakable
And how that is part of your story too—flooding in Mozambique,
in Morocco, in Indonesia a part of you all suffering a part of you
What happens Rwanda, Darfur, Chad, Ukraine, glaciers shrinking what happens
when carbon-capped bombs fall on Natanz? on Bushehr
What is the poet’s job out of numbed slumber?
Entering post-poet-modernity I gave my larynx a workout
Started chanting for the redemption of Irreparable
Om Ah Hum for the Year of the Shy but Cunning Metal Rabbit,
Inshallah O Peace Brutal Year of the Wooden Horse
The Gentle Sheep Year O Help us Now, Shalom Ah Hum, Shanti



2 comments:

  1. Do indeed have the WP George Best lp. Good stuff. Be safe. If you get a chance pop over to Canada—if for no other reason contrast.

    Frankly, I'll be praying for Planet & Air—2 artists trying to make it in a world that devalues it. Also Air's parents because, well, BLCKGRD! ;-}

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    1. Nah, they're safe. This is true, people can vouch - one of my primary responsibilities at work is chief diplomat with the rudest, nastiest, most self-entitled fucked-up and assholish library patrons. I'm exceptionally good at it - people can vouch. Is one of many reasons I can't seem to shed the angry here, but.....

      We're going out to the parents' farm for dinner Saturday. Not a bad word will be said here, and hopefully that won't be self-censorship. They're safe.

      Self-preservation? Don't ask a college senior what s/he plans to do after graduating. If s/he wants to talk about it let her start the conversation.

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