Summoned By This Self-Indulgent Ouija

• From 2016, above, I have not voluntarily used a pen on paper in a tablet in months, at least two, I think four, maybe more.
• Uwe Johnson? Annivesaries? Anyone? Deronda isn't working.
• Trump photo-optd standing in California ashes, the forest wasn't raked enough, he said.
• Everything you thought you knew about Western Civilization is wrong.
• Empire's Racketeers.
• How fascism happens.
• Drifting rightward. 
• On the problem of civility.
• Cheated out of both Spring and Fall this year here, I didn't walk at lunch last winter like I walk at lunch now, I'm walking through this winter whenever able, configuring my shells now, and I need new boots to break in for Spring on dry days while I ruin the boots I own wintering wet.
• They will never fuck off to the sea, and she or her corpse are running in 2020.
• Notice how Kayfabe has withdrawn Trump's breaking? broke his invincibility...
• Trump thinks Pence Trotsky,
• wrong there, but Trump's soft Khashoggian ending now tops Power's agenda.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• >>                            <<
• My handwriting now, I can't read it, is finest of skunky metaphors abounding...
• I think it a better, or at least different fuckit than past Darks, bit I think the same about every new tablet
• Leonard Cohen's afterlife.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Horses is forty.
• Wojnarowicz.
• When Husker Du covered The Byrds.
• I had cause to think of Minor Threat.

MY LIMBO

Roddy Lumsden

It doesn’t take the full-wind sickness,

just the mere, the constant threat of it,

just the salt trace, its faint knocking

to bring the spirits of chance and chaos

into this house - they stand in doorways:

quaint, foul allies, swivelling their ghost hips,

tugging at their gowns of transparency

and mischief. They buzz me with lust,

and I’m undone.

                        Remember these: the Cupid

who ducked up from behind a wall and aimed

an arrow, one evening on Broughton Street;

whatever grabbed my shoulder at Earlshall;

a sound of heavy boxes pushed up and down

the empty hallway; the past is the self’s ghoul.

What is it, Roddy, you know you’ve blocked out?

What left your brain so empty that it gushed full

with circus music and the safe bet of trivia?

Here I am swinging on the fence of fences, in limbo,

where the other world loves to try my pragmatism

and it’s I who have invited them, summoned

by this self-indulgent ouija.

                                        But what is it

that folds my clothes as I sleep and leaves them

on the edge of the bed? Who hides my slippers,

re-hangs the paintings? Deja vu. Did a minor

goddess filch me in Manila and follow me home,

prone, as they are, to easy-led mortal men.

And I’m easy, easy. So, come now, teach me

to believe in the soul. Hurt me with the truth. Press

me back down on this cheap, wine-coloured carpet;

let me know for once and for all how fucked I am.

My Right Thigh Vibrates in Loneliness

Emoshon (Comment on Obsession)

• I've collected links for a post but have nothing to say beyond the links, a song, a poem.
• I am not going to engage in debating motherfucking Democrats with friends energized by the midterm elections and justifiably furious at Republicans for voter fraud in Georgia and Florida.
• Last night looking at last year on blog to see if I'm missing any birthdays I thought, I don't want to do this any longer, or at least as often, as much, as clockwork.
• Part of this no doubt the diminishing stats not just at me but everywhere as Blegsylvania continues to atrophy, I could also claim apathy but was taught apathy is a disease.
• I have extra fucks to give now that I stopped spending all of them on flags and replica uniforms, my fucks bark let loose and bark in kennel, barkfuck fuckbark.
• It occurs to me often that quiet might be the proper resistance to the noise, if not for anyone's sake but my own.

• From 2014, noise when I think about shutting up, bigger at other place.
• Who doesn't think she or her corpse is running in 2020?
• Money: 5000 years of debt and power.
• The 2019 Global Recession.
• Motherfucking Democrats.
• Be grateful Trump never embraced The Motherfuckerer.
• This.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• At the Reading Experience.
• His life as a crossing guard.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• A second look at second books of poetry.

LIKE A SIMILE

Tom Raworth

emoshon                 (comment on obsession)
patterns                  patterns turning in
his tonsure painted red
we think
we know
what we'll do tomorrow

All the Birds Call Your Name As They Land on My Kitchen Roof

• Andy Partridge, born sixty-five years ago today, XTC (& Dukes ) in innermost rotation of My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game,
• also notable: my collection was played at Earthgirl's request every Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to and from Bamgier to visit Planet at college, and (thank Baal for shuffle) each time through better than the last.
• An email sent yesterday about yesterday: Adding, like advil, Timicin.
• Also too: Who leaked the galley of my Knausgaardian autonovel to you?
• I bought White Music at Sights and Sounds in Gaithersburg, opposite Grace United Methodist Church at Walker and Frederick, 1977.

• I can still replay in my head all 385 miles of Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Bamgier, I love much of the 385 miles of Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Bamgier, I never need to drive the 385 miles of Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Bamgier again.
• Click for more XTC.
• TODAY'S SHITSTORM! (Psst. Trump was sulking plus afraid his hair would get wet on live TV so stayed in hotel room, watched Fox, tweeted, called in sick on big deal re: using dead soldiers as props for Capitalist glories, 
• and while it's true if a Democratic POTUS did this every fuck defending Trump would call for the Democratic POTUS to die slowly, cut out his heart and let him watch it stop beating, please shut the front door, they all have their scripts and a job to keep,
• and I want my American POTUS to skip all commercials using dead soldiers as props for Capitalist glories, don't you?)
• I never designated an Egoslavian Theme Song Nine, it's been years since I designated Theme Song Eight, would probably need do research to remember designated Egoslavian Theme Songs Three thru Eight, but ta-da, Egoslavian Theme Song Nine!

Q&A: INSURANCE

Alicia Ostriker

If time is an arrow, what is its target
          

If a Flexible Flyer is the sled I had as a child, when may I become a child again
           

Do you need help digging the potatoes out of your garden of insults
            

Do you plan to vote in the next election
         

Is our country headed in the right direction or the wrong direction

             and what did the bulldozer tell the yellow helmet’s ear
         

Which part of your body is like biting into a ripe peach

             which part shames you like a rotten banana
           

Would you like to find out how to lower your interest rate
           

When you go to heaven how old will you choose to be

             will you have cocktails on the well-watered lawn

                         where Bach conducts Bach
          

Will you still chase after the Grateful Dead
           

Is your life like air leaking out of a balloon, or like rain falling on a pond

            dot dot dot      dear pocks     pocking the surface     dot dot dot
        

Can it be like snow falling on the ocean
            

Can desire drown you like syrup over pancakes
              

When an ambulance siren wakes you at 3 a.m. do you feel relieved

            not to be strapped to that stretcher

                         speeding toward the grim unknown

                                       do you then snuggle next to someone
           

Are you satisfied with your detergent
        

Can you name a more perfect irony than the new world trade center, sacred icon of

            capitalism, revered lingam of profit, soaring above the 
memorial pools

                                        of people killed when the first towers fell
                 

Can you describe the scent of dried blood
                   

What about the smell of iron chains in your cell

             can you sing the threnody of the maggots
                    

When I removed my mask did I frighten you

             like a drone crossing your sky
            

Are you satisfied with your auto insurance
               

When ecstasy approaches why do you resist

             What are you afraid of

                          Can you please unbutton your shirt now

I Look in That One Kind of Dwindled

• I'm not a Bernie guy, my fascination pivots on professional Democrats versus Bernie.
• I know stopping leftist populism is Job One! for professional Democrats,
• but read Sanders' diagnosis of midterms and prescription for going forward 
• and how much professional Democrats hate him for saying this shit
• not because it's true but because none of it will ever happen
• even if professional Democrats wanted it to, which
• Bernie certainly knows
• (which explains why it's personal, the seething Bernie hate, to professional Democrats, who
• can't? won't? triangulate why people like me seethe at them).

• My eye meds make my eyes red, the new Library Grand Poobah asked my boss two tiers up if I'm a stoner, would like to be, but no.
• So, a reminder (or, how did populism come to mean right-wing racism?): What does it tell us when liberals, faced with epic political corruption, spectacular bank misbehavior, and towering inequality, take that opportunity to declare war on populism? It tells us that they’ve lost any sense of their own movement as an expression of the vast majority. It tells us they have no idea why they believe they should be entrusted with power in the first place. And it reminds us that their particular brand of class-based self-delusion is a luxury that the rest of us can ill afford.
• Today in Rhetorical Questions.
• Unconstitutional, fuckconstitutional.
• Civilizational suicide.
• How to prepare for Doomsday.
• 21 unforgivable one-liners.
• How to protect yourself from the barrage of bad news.
• Please give the coins in your pocket to Arthur.
• Why Bolsonaro won: a primer.
• Three months inside New York's alt-right.
• The geneology of the worse, the better.
• Cussin' in the classroom.
• I caught myself thinking of changing this blog's background, layout, colors, going white like the other place, caught myself thinking of just moving to other place, talked myself down by recognizing any decision I make in a fit of seething I make because it feels good.

ALBUM: A RUNTHRU

Clark Coolidge

I look in that one kind of dwindled. And in this,

look up, a truncheon in my fist, tin pot

on my head, the war. My father, I’m looking at, is my

age then and thin, his pants streak to the ground,

shadows of rosevines . . . His father sits beneath

a cat. Here the shadow has more flavor than my

trains, elbows on livingroom floor, bangs that

curl, opera broadcast, The Surreptitious Adventures of

Nightstick. I lie in the wind of the sun and hear

toots and smell aluminium smoke. The tiny oval

of my mother’s youth in back and the rest is dark.

Sundays, the floor was black. At the beach, here

I’m a nest of seaweed, an earlier portrait of

surrealists I saw later, a stem of grey what

rises from my scalp. My hair is peaked in brine.

And this here hat, dark green fedora over same green

corduroy suit for a trip to the nation’s capitol,

how far askance I’ve been since and never another

hat. Cromium rods, the hand in the guide’s pocket

seems far removed. Blurry shoes on sandstone steps,

double and over exposed. Then in this one the SECRET

points to my head, shaved, and emblem, OPEN, striped

in “pirate” T-shirt and HERE IT IS. My elbow bent,

upright this time, behind a pole. I had yet to

enter at this snap the cavern beneath my sneakers.

To the right my soles protrude from beneath a boulder,

for I had trapped my mother and she asked Why.

Taken. Given. Flashlight brighter than my face,

another grotto, where the ball of twine, indirection,

gave out but we never got very far in, Connecticut.

I swim out of another cave in a further frame, cramped

gaze of sunlit days, apparel forgot. Later I reel

in a yell as my cousin takes a bite from my shank

beneath ranchhouse breezy curtains of Marion. On a trudge up

from the gasoline rockpit in the gaze of Judy Lamb,

she carries my pack, my jeans rolled as I step on

a pipe. Estwing in hand and svelte as only youthful can.

Most of those rocks remain and she married a so-so

clarinetist. My greygreen zipper jacket leans against

a concrete teepee, my father looking bullchested stands

before. Perhaps we had just argued. Central Park cement

steps of pigeons, the snow removed. Overexposed

whiteshirt at the drums, stick fingers ride cymbal

at the camera raised, livingroom Brenton with orange

& black “sea” wallpaper and orange&black tubs. I wore

a wristwatch then and never again, drumtime hitching

me past it. I graduate from highschool in white dinner

jacket and diploma and frown, too many hot shadows

back of the garage. Must roll up the bedroll with

skinny arms and lam for the caves. Dave & A. Bell by

the Ford Company Squire first time allowed alone to tool

Bleak grass scapes of Knox farm. Rope down a crack,

mosquitoes and Koolade, sun dapple leaf moss sandwiches, ache.

Then in this group more drums on the roof, the gravel

and the flat, a cover attempt for no album even thought.

I tap and step in the dim known street. Lean on a

chimney to inhabit the sky, deep with drops. Here

I’m pressed on a wall of Tennessee limes, stones-throw

from mouth of the underground we camped in. Too many

thoughts, elide. Then lie on a beach in a doughnut

pattern shirt with a stick, a pipe?, in my mouth as my

cousin grins shiny beyond. Truro, also waiting for the

caves. With the poets then I’m fat and the driveway is

dark, the clapboards all white in a day of all talk.

This then all ends in color, my red bandana and shirt out

on Devil’s Pulpit, open hand addressed to the grey

where Hawthorne and Melville now view of a highschool.

While the water still spills, and the cat squints at leaves

blown, my father wears Brahms, families lean in on one

for a group shot, and the rock remains shattered in a star.

I Won't Tell You Where It Is, So Why Do I Tell You Anything?

• Fleabus two nights ago, above life-sized at other place.
• Theory: Now Trump has an actual foil instead of making foils up, we only think we've seen shitty Trump, and it'll work.
• UPDATE! Today's Trump takeover of Justice, for instance.
• Grim irony: This midterm result was the worst possible one for the Democrats, and thus for the United States.  They did just enough to be able to continue to claim that the Clintonista methodology - the 'donor' model - is a successful, winning one, and so they won't have to change it.  They won't be able to gum up Trump's agenda completely - enough of them are really covert Republicans and will vote for many of his policies - and they will make fools of themselves with Russiagate and similar guaranteed losing attacks on Trump personally, which will ensure Trump's reelection.  Still, as usual the voters did their job as best they could, with the wonderful first-past-the-post voting system allowing their collective wisdom exactly the choice they wanted, the best choice available to them when one of the parties has thrown in the towel, reining in Trump while not emasculating him.
• A short take on last night.
• The elite have decided you cost too much to maintain, yo, your return-on-investment not worth it.
• American Fundamentalists and Trump, a excellent concise primer from an ex-insider.
• Driving home from Catoctin past Sunday, car radio tuned to WTOP for 270 traffic on the eights, I heard top of the hours ABC News, sound clips, Trump bullhorning hate, Joe Biden whispering a sermon on motherfucking civility.
• Elrich beat Floreen, by a lot, three times the votes, so mine wasn't important,
• I can summon one fuck more than no fuck on the above.
• Now for the Clinton v Biden 2020 duel for the soul of the Democratic Party.

WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE

Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

       

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

   

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

   

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.