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
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)
I'm stuck, manic, between my least-favorite favorite place and favorite least-favorite place, talking myself into ambitious goals while simultaneously telling myself to gauge responsibly and disengage all fucks, as always I will end up half-assing, I blame crayon and acrylic ink infused clear Elmer's Glue for current eager despair
and the rediscovery I prefer pencil to pen in Boorum and Pease tablet for yapping and typing in simplenote for versing for current despairing eagerness
Hey, I've extra copies of both of these, Dying Grass by design, Miss MacIntosh by forgetfulness and publishing delays, I vouch for both but Dying Grass vouch vouch vouch, if you'd like one or the other let me know, you are not obligated to finish but you are obligated to start, I'll take your word for it
Meanwhile, about me: I went back to CVS yesterday to see if the insurance issue with my eyedrops has been resolved, and no, and I politely and without anger thanked the cashier who checked records and gave me the news. Saturday, over a pint with a better than acquaintance but less than a friend my better than acquaintance but less than a friend frothed in full, Hold Your Nose and Vote Against Trump and I politely and without anger didn't mock or fight, the one positive side-effect of my manic needle pointing down: I don't bark. How many fucking years has it been since I posted Unwound, the fuck?
THINKING THROUGH THE SOCIAL REPRODUCTION OF PALESTINIAN LIFE
"There is truly no statement that more perfectly encapsulates the mentality of the American liberal than sneering “you don’t care about marginalized communities” at someone for saying they don’t support a president who’s financing the slaughter of an entire ethnicity
The Empire Doesn't Hide Its Worst Deeds, It Just Manipulates How People Think About Them
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ "Faced with a choice between parasitic capitalism and emerging neo-fascism, it is no wonder that Western societies are increasingly pessimistic. While pessimism has pervaded previous eras, today's mood is sustained, and partly defined, by the absence of a redemptive vision" ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
About the time this blog started people were yammering about Object Oriented Ontology, this is the first time I've seen those three words in more than a decade
Hey, if you dig Broadcast like I do you'll be interested in this, newly released previously unreleased, one of the songs is at the article too
LIGHT TURNOUTS
John Ashbery
Dear ghost, what shelter in the noonday crowd? I'm going to write an hour, then read what someone else has written.
You've no mansion for this to happen in. But your adventures are like safe houses, your knowing where to stop an adventure of another order, like seizing the weather.
We too are embroiled in the scene of happening, and when we speak the same phrase together: "We used to have one of those," it matters like a shot in the dark.
One of us stays behind. One of us advances on the bridge as on a carpet. Life - it's marvelous - follows and falls behind.
I have bad eyes, I may have mentioned that here, especially my left. I once used three different drops to slow the inevitable blindness and all three were covered by insurance, the newest one works wonders, but then big pharma blended two of them, including the newest one, into one, and now insurance won't cover the new one or either of the old ones much less both. The full price for one month out of pocket for the new combo = $400, that's almost $5K a year. My eyedoc's office manager found me a coupon for $30 a month for half the year (supposedly rolling over year after year). When I went to pick up my prescription Sunday the cashier rang up $400? That's wrong, I said, I'm good through August, can you confirm that, I asked the white-robed High Priest of CVS #2537, and he said, Yes, but the insurance company hacked two weeks ago they can't verify, I said, and there are witnesses though I did not get names, How the fuck is this my problem, *you* pay the difference and get the money yourself, and the High Priest of CVS #2537 said, You pay now and mail the receipt and they will reimburse you and I said, They will never send me the money and you know it (against his better judgment but before he could stop himself he shook his head in agreement) and in any case, how the fuck is this *my* problem, *you* pay the difference and get the money yourself, and the nine people in line behind me clapped. It was fun! I am more blind today than had I paid the $400. Fine metaphors abound
That's actually a headshot self-portrait and not one of my eyes, I can't stop painting headshots. Do you know, I still encounter people - neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, friends, loved ones - who think our accelerating enshittification and immiseration - bridges failing, two-mile long freight trains ferrying carcinogens on deteriorating rail beds that derail and explode poisons over entire counties, airplanes that lose side panels and doors and landing gear tires while in midflight, the pothole on northbound Rockville Pike in motherfucking Borth Nethesda - a result of shitlord incompetence multiplied by mismanagement not deliberate shitlord-ordered dereliction (via, in part certainly, incompetence times mismanagement) in service of wealth extraction and accumulation?
Immediately afterward I was embarrassed at my outburst (and my enjoyment of it especially) at the High Priest of CVS #2537 and shocked at how intense and spontaneous and out of my mouth before knew it my anger was and frightened in aftermath I'm turning into Sarek and am now counting to three if I must say something and counting to ten in hope I don't say anything. The High Priest of CVS #2537 was just following orders but because Mr CVS wasn't there to bark at (I did ask to speak to Mr CVS but the High Priest of CVS #2537 didn't get the joke, which made me angrier, laugh), did I need to bark at the High Prienst of CVS #2537 who I knew couldn't do anything different than he did when I was barking at him? Have I written here about my whiteyelloworangepinkaddiction? That's for my eyes. New: my whiteyelloworangepinkredaddiction. That's for my anger. Please scream back at me if I unfairly scream at you.
Posted today to purge, two days from now one of my personal two High Holy Days, venting anger to replace, at least for Thursday, with love, but first, Swans, seeing them in twenty-four days, you could to, Baltimore, Moco, DC, and Nova friends!
Even Joe Bucking Fiden, who was the 2020 nominee solely because of it, doesn't understand that nothing is more precious to top-of-the-ladder Royal Democrats than maintaining the integrity of the ladder, though Obama drives the bus now they, Obama in command, will never permit another Obama, laugh
The above fails to mention Ten Mile Creek Rd, destination for keggers, nights parked by the ford over Ten Mile Creek with friends or girlfriend, and where Willy Dayne ran down the cat in his green Dodge Dart, is now underwater, a very old story
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I rarely look in the mirror: Spent Light by Lara Pawson
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Was gifted this by someone who knows my belief in the sentience of my favorite objects, I vouch for the book
An alternative list to The Atlantic’s “The Great American Novels” list (Part I, 1924-1974)
An alternative list to The Atlantic’s “The Great American Novels” list (Part II, 1975-1999)
I've been listening to Niblock daily since his death
Once again, someone falls in their first falling–fall of two bodies, of
two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born
in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in the loss), you
haven’t been able to recognize the voice of your dull silence, to see
the earthly messages scrawled in the middle of one mad state, when the
body is a glass and from ourselves and from the other we drink some kind
of impossible water.
Desire needlessly spills on me a cursed liqueur. For my thirsty
thirst, what can the promise of eyes do? I speak of something not in
this world. I speak of someone whose purpose is elsewhere.
And I was naked in memory of the white night. Drunk and I made love all night, just like a sick dog.
Sometimes we suffer too much reality in the space of a single
night. We get undressed, we’re horrified. We’re aware the mirror sounds
like a watch, the mirror from which your cry will pour out, your
laceration.
Night opens itself only once. It’s enough. You see. You’ve
seen. Fear of being two in the mirror, and suddenly we’re four. We cry,
we moan, my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my visceral words,
my words are keys that lock me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone.
And I am well aware what night is made of. We’ve fallen so completely
into jaws that didn’t expect this sacrifice, this condemnation of my
eyes which have seen. I speak of a discovery: felt the I in sex, sex in
the I. I speak of burying everyday fear to secure the fear of an
instant. The purest loss. But who’ll say: you don’t cry anymore at
night? Because madness is also a lie. Like night. Like death.
I know I've thought this and am sure I've written and/or typed it but typing it now: there are no second chances painting so there's no editing, no fixing, no anguishing over what was done, no dicking with done shit, just moving forward, abandon sooner than later. The five lines above: how I heard that in my head times the edits already by counting to ten, I can't make it less shitty by editing but I *could* fuck it up more and lessen the rush of completion, I know this disqualifies me as a poet down to the level I am not an artist but I've known this since I edited my first poem in 1971
My left eye. Told yesterday by Eyedoc Jr he wants to yoink out my cataracts this Fall, says otherwise any RX for glasses will grow obsolete within a year after filling, he wants to spare me the cost of new glasses each year, fine metaphors abound
Too, 16 years since my obamapostasy viz motherfucking professional Democrats, I'm deeply embarrassed and ashamed to find myself angry at my congressman from MD-8, Jamie Raskin, a still-enslaved shitlord kapo who performatively prances as a cracker-ridiculing populist progressive Democrat, who not only supports the Zionist genocide of Palestinians (while receiving generous AIPAC donations) but voted yesterday to ban IcToktay, if asked he no doubt would say he did so to prevent the corpse of Mao from reading my texts to my daughter about her new puppy. National security, see? My right eye (both bigger here)
National security? Shitlords' frenzied you're hearing/seeing unauthorized content that breaks shitlord kayfabe, look at the on-demand bipartisanship of congress to limit the sources you use to inform your thoughts and life, borg implants (you think I'm just making a shitty Next Gen allusion, this IS in the works, I guaranfuckentee) will have eager bipartisan support. The deeper the broken kayfabe the more irreparable the kayfabe, the more determined are shitlords to insist you eat their kayfabe, so, fascism, so: fucking duh I needed to puke
"Young voters, black voters, Arab and Muslim voters are fleeing the Democratic Party at a critical electoral juncture because of our anti-Palestinian policies. To win them back, our plan is to ban their favorite website."
"They are clinging to Israel, not because they have a genuine belief Israel is a force for good, not because they believe in religious Zionism, not even because they believe it is a necessary colonialist project in the Middle East, but because it has been for decades their totem, the very badge of political respectability, the membership card for the political country club. Israel is now toxic to the public and the entire history of ethnic cleansing, massacre and long genocide on which the very existence of Israel is based, is now laid bare. The political class are now in a panic, and lashing out everywhere. Police powers to limit free assembly were already hugely increased just last year by the Public Order Act 2023, where any demonstration which is noisy or causes inconvenience can be banned. Now we have calls from the responsible ministers for pro-Palestinian demonstrations to be banned because they offend their sensibilities in a way they are finding difficult to define"