Tuesday, December 27, 2016

When All Is Become Billboards



  
  • Out of nowhere, I woke up with ▲ Hula in my head.
  • My sister-in-law (is that the correct term for my brother-in-law's 2nd wife? not the mother of my not-blood niece and nephew?), yesterday at lunch, in a noisy restaurant, wanted to scream about Trump. Aren't I terrified both morally and practically? We were at Black Market Inn in Garrett Park, one of many expensive and mediocre restaurants owned by Jeff Black (Old Dirty Bama - are you here? - can tell Jeff Black stories), with one saving grace - it's next to a busy railroad. Before I could continue not answering her demands, a long freight barreled by, by the time it passed so had the conversation. 
  • So I didn't have to say, motherfucking Obama, motherfucking Democrats: Obama the candidate ran on allowing bankruptcy judges to cut balances on primary mortgages; Obama’s administration actively whipped against the policy. Obama’s transition team earmarked up to $100 billion in funds appropriated through Bush’s bank bailout to mitigate foreclosures; eight years later only around $21 billion has been spent. Obama the president promised 4 million mortgage modifications; to date less than a million have been successfully achieved. No Republican sign-off was necessary for Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Treasury Department alone decided to run it through mortgage companies that had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. Treasury never saw the program as a relief vehicle, but a way to “foam the runway” for the banks, allowing them to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly. Homeowners were the foam being crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario, squeezed for as many payments as possible before ultimately losing their homes.
  • Here was to be a video of a train shot after lunch as we were standing outside the restaurant saying goodbye, it works beautifully and in full screen on Windows Media, is cropped and shitty in youtube, so..... 
  • Light from another world.
  • Mourning has broken.
  • Teaser and the Firecat (1971) was one of the first albums I bought with my own money, I was eleven, I bought it at Zayres, corner of Veirs Mill and Randolph. It's a giant Asian grocery store now.
  • On Syria, use your own principles.
  • It's my indoctrination.
  • We are all trolls.
  • A no-nonsense Machiavelli.
  • Against fake paradox.
  • The Trumptini.
  • XTC history.
  • Dan reviews another novelist I've never heard of. Past experience has taught me to check the novelist out.
  • Charles Olson was born 106 years ago today.
  • As the Dead Prey Upon Us.
  • Maximus, to Himself.






I, MAXIMUS OF GLOUCESTER, TO YOU

Charles Olson

Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood   
                                        jewels & miracles, I, Maximus
                                        a metal hot from boiling water, tell you   
                                        what is a lance, who obeys the figures of   
                                        the present dance

1
the thing you’re after
may lie around the bend
of the nest (second, time slain, the bird! the bird!
And there! (strong) thrust, the mast! flight
                                                                  (of the bird
                                                                  o kylix, o
                                                                  Antony of Padua
                                                                  sweep low, o bless

the roofs, the old ones, the gentle steep ones
on whose ridge-poles the gulls sit, from which they depart,

                                                                  And the flake-racks
of my city!

2
love is form, and cannot be without   
important substance (the weight
say, 58 carats each one of us, perforce   
our goldsmith’s scale

                                           feather to feather added
                                           (and what is mineral, what
                                           is curling hair, the string
                                           you carry in your nervous beak, these

                                           make bulk, these, in the end, are   
                                           the sum

                                           (o my lady of good voyage
                                           in whose arm, whose left arm rests   
no boy but a carefully carved wood, a painted face, a schooner!   
a delicate mast, as bow-sprit for

                                                      forwarding

3
the underpart is, though stemmed, uncertain   
is, as sex is, as moneys are, facts!
facts, to be dealt with, as the sea is, the demand
that they be played by, that they only can be, that they must   
be played by, said he, coldly, the
ear!

By ear, he sd.
But that which matters, that which insists, that which will last,
that! o my people, where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you listen
when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?

when even our bird, my roofs,   
cannot be heard

when even you, when sound itself is neoned in?

when, on the hill, over the water
where she who used to sing,
when the water glowed,   
black, gold, the tide   
outward, at evening

when bells came like boats   
over the oil-slicks, milkweed   
hulls

And a man slumped,   
attentionless,
against pink shingles

o sea city)

4
one loves only form,
and form only comes
into existence when
the thing is born

                           born of yourself, born
                           of hay and cotton struts,
                           of street-pickings, wharves, weeds   
                           you carry in, my bird

                                                            of a bone of a fish   
                                                            of a straw, or will   
                                                            of a color, of a bell   
                                                            of yourself, torn

5
love is not easy
but how shall you know,
New England, now
that pejorocracy is here, how
that street-cars, o Oregon, twitter
in the afternoon offend
a black-gold loin?

                              how shall you strike,
                              o swordsman, the blue-red black   
                              when, last night, your aim
                              was mu-sick, mu-sick, mu-sick   
                              And not the cribbage game?

                                                          (o Gloucester-man,   
                                                          weave
                                                          your birds and fingers   
                                                          new, your roof-tops,   
                                                          clean shit upon racks   
                                                          sunned on
                                                          American
                                                          braid
                                                          with others like you, such   
                                                          extricable surface   
                                                          as faun and oral,   
                                                          satyr lesbos vase

                                                          o kill kill kill kill kill   
                                                          those
                                                          who advertise you   
                                                          out)

6
in! in! the bow-sprit, bird, the beak
in, the bend is, in, goes in, the form
that which you make, what holds, which is
the law of object, strut after strut, what you are, what you must be, what   
the force can throw up, can, right now hereinafter erect,
the mast, the mast, the tender
mast!
                              The nest, I say, to you, I Maximus, say
                              under the hand, as I see it, over the waters
                              from this place where I am, where I hear,
                              can still hear

                              from where I carry you a feather   
                              as though, sharp, I picked up
                              in the afternoon delivered you
                              a jewel,
                                             it flashing more than a wing,   
                              than any old romantic thing,
                              than memory, than place,
                              than anything other than that which you carry   
                              than that which is,
                              call it a nest, around the head of, call it   
                              the next second
                              than that which you   
                              can do!


2 comments:

  1. 1)there are two martinis on offer at the trump tower - i conclude the trumptini critiqued at harpers is apparently the first one listed, because it contains an olive

    Signature Cocktails

    The Billionaire Martini…20
    Premium Chopin Vodka, Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth, Castelvetrano olive, pearl onion, cornichon

    Classic Cocktails

    Gin Martini…15
    Greenhook American Dry Gin, Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth, lemon twist

    http://www.trumptowerny.com/bar-cocktails

    2)The Good That Trump Could Do
    December 23, 2016

    Exclusive: Despite fears about the many negatives from a Donald Trump presidency, one positive could be his shattering of the monopoly that neocons and liberal hawks now hold over U.S. foreign policy, says Robert Parry.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/23/the-good-that-trump-could-do/

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1)when i see francine prose's byline i wonder if she picked the surname herself

    2)i was struck by this passage near the end of her review of the movie manchester by the sea -

    I would rather go through the world thinking that we are all suffering human beings than trying to figure out which of my fellow shoppers at Target might have made a political decision inspired by racism, xenophobia, and misogyny—which of them had had helped to put a dangerous man, surrounded by a cohort of dangerous men and women, into the White House. Who wouldn’t prefer compassion to condemnation, seeing the depths of another person rather than drawing conclusions based entirely on the surface? But we’ll have to see what happens now.

    ReplyDelete