Fiercely Phlegm

• Well, that's been a while I fucked up a birthday, off by a month, fuck me, I can't just remove and leave a blank, Egoslavian regulations. 
• Meantime, yesterday, beloved Potomac just below Harpers Ferry for something I not only can't tell you about unlike most times I don't want to, click yo, and there's another one here (this one shot by Earthgirl)
• plus, as promised, another poem from Shaughnessy's *The Octopus Museum*

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train full of pig iron ingots

• Day one of this weekend's hikes, Thudner's vacation stomp, Cacapon State Park, near Berkeley Springs, eastern West Virginia panhandle, Ziler Loop, good hard uphill, hard, rocky (and rockwet) downhill, I said to Earthgirl I can't find my sticks, you can't find my sticks, I (k)need new sticks for rockwet downhills, the photo below the start of the downhill, it was 8o and humid and thunderstorm caught us but Fall is coming (update! day two):

• Dinner Saturday night in Wincester, pedestrian mall, small private outdoor store, scored not only good maps of northern-most George Washington National Forest hiking but a new pair of Black Diamond FLZ sticks, break into three, fit into pack, don't have to strap to back, there's a reason all but two posts a year tagged My Complicity.

• The television in the breakfast lounge of this Comfort Inn in Wincester Virginia has the Weather Channel on, perhaps this is a corporate dictate (or at least suggestion).
• Contrast/Compare
• Landmark of my youth demolished (was a duckpin bowling alley before it was a restaurant, I bowled in the first, never ate at the second)
• Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right
• I vouch for The Octopus Museum, it's in daypack back in room where Earthgirl's still sleeping as I type this (I will scan another poem for next post with poem, meanwhile here's an earlier poem, Postfeminism)
• Stream three Stereolab reissues
• 10 Links from a Balcony in Toronto (also too an experiment, if what happened before happens again I'll elaborate)
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links

                       
AND STILL IT COMES

Thomas Lux

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train

full of pig iron ingots, full of lead

life-size statues of Richard Nixon,

like an avalanche of smoke and black fog

lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips

of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal,

remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back,

faster when you turn to face it,

like a fine rain, then colder showers,

then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail,

fist-size, then jagged

laser, shrapnel hail

thudding and tearing like footsteps

of drunk gods or fathers; it comes

polite, loutish, assured, suave,

breathing through its mouth

(which is a hole eaten by a cave),

it comes like an elephant annoyed,

like a black mamba terrified, it slides

down the valley, grease on grease,

like fire eating birds’ nests,

like fire melting the fuzz

off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute

and gorging, never

to cease, insatiable, gorging

and mute.

[First Thursday Night Pints last night with a new Warrenite]

• First Thursday Night Pints last night with a new Warrenite
• colleague (he argues Warren sole demturd can beat Trump
• beating Trump the existential be-all) maybe (?) friend
• Political science statistician weekend Democratic operative (I
• like, seems a good guy, worth another pint two months from now) he asked me what I think and I told him and he said (like
• people on my speed dial) you're not wrong but you're nuts
• 
  
• As in (this is me accusing me, not my Thursday Night
• Pints date, nor the people on my speed
• dial) yes, but life, my day-to-day life
• enough without the constant our sociopath overlords this 
• our sociopath overlords
• that (I did not tell my Thursday Night Pints date
• about this blog, I'm a psychopath work
• ing my sociopath PhD)
• 
  
• J (he's a J too) said, slowing the boom (after
• I badgered his hedges) preferable than current rocket
• sled, and sure, I said. To honor this one-off Thursday Night
• Pints post (though I hope and will badger for more
• pints with J) I offer periods. in. this. stanza. (and. up.
• dates. till. abandon.).

Double Hike Coup

Also too, John Martyn born 71 years ago today:




 
Arvo Part turns 84 today





REALISM

Tom Clark

The smashed weirdness of the raving cadenzas of God

Takes over all of a sudden

In our time. It speaks through the voices of talk show moderators.

It tells us in a ringing anthem, like heavenly hosts uplifted,

That the rhapsody of the pastoral is out to lunch.

We can take it from there.

We can take it to Easy Street.

But when things get tough on Easy Street

What then? Is it time for realism?

And who are these guys on the bus

Who glide in golden hats past us

On their way to Kansas City?

I Am Going to Take My Last Nourishment of Measure from a Dark Blue Ripple

• Pruned the bloograals of the hibernating, unconscious, and/or dead
• Current score:

Living, as in stirred at least once last four months 157
Hibernating, unconscious, and/or dead 154

• Reminder: nobody is offed, if you were on bloograals you still are on bloograals
• I've moved you to one of two bliig cemeteries so your zombie-ass floats to the top should you fart
• If there is something/someone you think I'd like and/or should be reading please send me
• I have been touching the Egoslavian stations of late, but believe me, the >>deleted bleggalgaze<< (that >><< a major station itself) in tablet for this post will stay in tablet
• If you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know
• This station sacrosanct - I should wait until Monday to post posts I like, must post on Sunday, slowest traffic day of Egoslavian week
• today The Holiest Day in the American Year, motherfucking Helmetball's motherfucking collar on motherfucking all of you.... 

   

• this window makes me feel
• UPDATE! a cannibal in the dumpster 
• Low frequencies
• Coetzee on Assholestralia
• Robber baroncy
• His favorite Glenn Kessler fuck-up
• Maggie's weekly links
• The meritocratic failure of classical music
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links

A WAY TO MAKE A LIVING

James Wright

When I was a boy, a relative

Asked for me a job

At the Weeks Cemetery.

Think of all I could

Have raised that summer,

That money, and me

Living at home,

Fattening and getting

Ready to live my life

Out on my knees, humming,

Kneading up docks

And sumac from

Those flawless clerks-at-court, those beautiful

Grocers and judges, the polished

Dead of whom we make

So much.

I could have stayed there with them.

Cheap, too.

Imagine, never

To have turned

Wholly away from the classic

Cold, the hill, so laid

Out, measure by seemly measure clipped

And mown by old man Albright

The sexton. That would have been a hell of

A way to make a living.

Thank you, no.

I am going to take my last nourishment

Of measure from a dark blue

Ripple on swell on ripple that makes

Its own garlands.

My dead are the secret wine jars

Of Tyrian commercial travelers.

Their happiness is a lost beginning, their graves

Drift in and out of the Mediterranean.

One of these days

The immortals, clinging to a beam of sunlight

Under water, delighted by delicate crustaceans,

Will dance up thirty-foot walls of radiance,

And waken,

The sea shining on their shoulders, the fresh

Wine in their arms. Their ships have drifted away.

They are stars and snowflakes floating down

Into your hands, love.

I've Enjoyed Making You Miserable for Years

A tweet from @theMagFields one hour and twenty minutes ago I type this sentence:

On this day in 1999, we released 69 Love Songs. We’re not sure we can top all of the stories that you’ve shared about what the album has meant to you, so we’ll celebrate today by continuing to read and share your stories. Thank you all for listening.

One of my five most-listened to albums (even though I like pre-69 Magnetic Fields more), listened to at Earthgirl and Planet's request each Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier and back for Planet's four years at college, here, have five of my favorite 69 songs. Click for LOTS more Mag Fields, not just 69.

 
  

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