And the Loaf

• Old gags (as in bound mouth, choking, stupid joke) like comets looping back every eon or two
• Yesterday was Andy Partridge's 66th
• Partridge's "Stupidly Happy" is the shitty blog's Theme Song Nine
• This constitutes a bleggalgaze though I anticipate a >> deleted bleggalgaze << next post, it (not deleted) already started in red tablet (the above
• deleted bleggalgaze started in beige tablet then amputated out of beige piecemeal then trimmed like pork and cut and pasted into orange tablet)
• I last did this almost a year ago, I can't remember current Ten Theme Songs and if I could I couldn't remember the order beyond one, two, and three, so, revised:

Ten:

• Newly designated in 2018, I can't believe I had no Beefheart, fixed that.

Nine:

• I no longer put XTC on though I still listen when comes on radio or shuffle

     
                                                   
Eight:
 


   
             
Seven 

• New last year, replaced Robyn Hitchcock's "I Want to Destroy You," permanently ruined when used as bed music for a Subway commercial regardless whether Hitchcock gave permission or song was out of copyright

         
                             
Six

• NEW! this year, replacing Grinderman as I find I just can't Nick Cave any more, he has a new album out this year, it sounds exactly like I thought it would and I can't listen to any of the previous albums that sound exactly the same.... I...
• I still listen lots to all the Macs, and speaking of this shitty blog's gags, here's my new favorite, what a great happy angry happy song:

                 
     

Five:

• Also official Egoslavian Bleggalgazing Anthem and the single youtube posted more than any other on this shitty bloog all versions by a factor of many:

         
             
               
Four

• Theme song of Kind, constant reminder I'm not, should be, or at least try more
• Not that trying to pretend to Kind is a gag here any more

                 
                                   
Three

       

               
                         
Two
 


                   
                               
One: 





             
MORE BLUES AND THE ABSTRACT TRUTH

C.D. Wright

I back the car over a soft, large object;

hair appears on my chest in dreams.

The paperboy comes to collect

with a pit bull. Call Grandmother

and she says, Well you know

death is death and none other.

In the mornings we’re in the dark;

even at the end of June

the zucchini keep on the sill.

Ring Grandmother for advice

and she says, O you know

I used to grow so many things.

Then there’s the frequent bleeding,

the tender nipples, and the rot

under the floormat. If I’m not seeing

a cold-eyed doctor it is

another gouging mechanic.

Grandmother says, Thanks to the blue rugs

and Eileen Briscoe’s elms

the house keeps cool.

Well. Then. You say Grandmother

let me just ask you this:

How does a body rise up again and rinse

her mouth from the tap. And how

does a body put in a plum tree

or lie again on top of another body

or string a trellis. Or go on drying

the flatware. Fix rainbow trout. Grout the tile.

Buy a bag of onions. Beat an egg stiff. Yes,

how does the cat continue

to lick itself from toenail to tailhole.

And how does a body break

bread with the word when the word

has broken. Again. And. Again.

With the wine. And the loaf.

And the excellent glass

of the body. And she says,

Even. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling.

My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom.

The Past Is So Horribly Fast

• Jeff Bezo's owned Washington Post front webpage story as I type this, America's sociopath overlords fight back! against accusations they are motherfucking sociopaths whose sole goal in life is to have more of whatever counts to sociopaths than the other sociopaths.
• I like this paragraph

But the efforts at redistribution pushed by Warren and Sanders have elicited a fierce and sometimes personal backlash from the billionaire class who stand to lose the most. At least 16 billionaires have in recent months spoken out against what they regard as the danger posed by the populist Democrats, particularly over their proposals to enact a “wealth tax” on vast fortunes, with many expressing concern they will blow the election to Trump by veering too far left

• There are 640 billionaires in America according to the article
• Trump goes to a helmetball game in the lower intestine of Dixie to get cheers
• Think about that paragraph: our sociopath overlords agree to kill King Diaper if a suitable motherfucking Democrat promises to do nothing that decreases by 1/10000000000000000000000000000000th of a penny our sociopaths' profits 
• Michael Bloomberg's ego
• Our sociopath overlords in that paragraph are not saying they fear the Democrats' left turn will alienate moderate voters, they are saying they will not allow a Democratic left turn
• >> Deleted tabletgaze <<
• Our sociopath overlords, if you don't want Sanders up by 20 on November 1 2020 you're no fun

• First my favorite Earthgirl-made hat shot of this cold season
• Our sociopath overlords take profit for granted 
• it's obedience they require
• it's worship they desire
• History of the near future
• Anna, Illinois 
• Death and surrender to power in men's clothing 
• UPDATE! Avedon's occasional links 
• Maggie's weekly links
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links 
• 100 novels
• Poetry and resistance
• Another RIP Stephen Dixon
• Lit Hub's weekly links  
• Cutting Odette's fingernails

  

I HAVE A TIME MACHINE

Brenda Shaughnessy

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future

at a rate of one second per second,

  

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant

committees and even to me.

  

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next

moment and to the next.

  

Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—

well not zipping—And if I try

  

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,

I'll fall into space, unconscious,

  

then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that.

So I stay inside.

  

There's a window, though. It shows the past.

It's like a television or fish tank.

  

But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim

in backward circles.

  

Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance

to see what I'm leaving behind,

  

and sometimes like blackout, all that time

wasted sleeping.

  

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment

at having lost a library book.

  

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting

to be found charming.

  

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down

so I can smoke.

  

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me

because the explosion

  

of some dark star all the way back struck hard

at mother's mother's mother.

  

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.

I thought I'd find myself

  

an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.

But I haven't gotten far at all.

  

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like;

the past is so horribly fast.

Blunt Scissors Cutting Out Careful Squares

• Bell's Dead Man claimed, woof
• The bipolar self-portrait 
• I will not fly it daily to signal up or down not only because I don't know minute to minute but don't know which face up which face down

• Dietles reopening?
• Ghost Town Disc Golf. I have not thrown a disc in at least six months, I hike with Earthgirl every possible day instead, I miss throwing discs
• Serendipity be blessed, Dr Z, who I met at parties to nod in familiarity but only got to know when he bartended at Dietles emailed me earlier this week about disc golfing again, then today, the article on Dietles (possibly) reopening then within an hour an article about a disc golf course
• My warrenite colleague apoplectic about Bloomberg, I said, he won't take one vote from Sanders but you think he'll take votes from Warren and if so why? and she said, it *is* going to Clinton isn't it, and I said, yes
• Crackers, the best weapon of professional Democrats and their sociopath overlords
• Group photo
• my miracle now
• Remembering Stephen Dixon. Again, I respected more than liked. I read at the time of Frog and Interstate more from obligation than desire, much as I read Sorrentino and Mathews, to keep abreast of whatever I then felt necessary to keep abreast of. I know but don't remember what that was.
• Artless
• John's playing this just now on WFMU, I was listening to Ashley two nights ago, blessed be

PROOF OF POETRY

Tom Sleigh

I wanted first to end up as a drunk in the gutter

and in my twenties I almost ended up there—

  

and then as an alternative to vodka, to live

  

alone like a hermit philosopher and court

the extreme poverty that I suspected lay in store for me anyway—

  

and then there were the years in which

  

I needed very badly to take refuge in mediocrity,

years like blunt scissors cutting out careful squares,

  

and that was the worst, the very worst—

  

you could say that always my life

was like a patchwork quilt always ripped apart—

  

my life like scraps stitched together in a dream

  

in which animals and people,

plants, chimeras, stars,

  

even minerals were in a preordained harmony—

  

a dream forgotten because it has to be forgotten,

but that I looked for desperately, but only sporadically

  

found in fragments, a hand lifted to strike

  

or caress or simply lifted for some unknown reason—

and in memory too, some specific pain, sensation of cold or warmth.

  

I loved that harmony in all its stages of passion,

  

the voices still talking inside me . . . but then, instead of harmony,

there was nothing but rags scattered on the ground.

  

And maybe that's all it means to be a poet.

Call It the Prior Future or the Posthumous Present

• I goofed, double-ordered the below from the publisher, want one?

• I vouch.
• First-timers who've never got a book get until twenty-four hours dibs, then it's first come first served amongst those of you who do all the time.
• Rest in peace, Stephen Dixon, whose fiction, forgive me, I admire more than I like, though fuck me, I probably haven't tried in ten or so years, short story at bottom
• Dixon short story, In This One
• Today's links tomorrow or not, not clusterfucking (here) today
• Found my Peter Jefferies CDs last night looking for my Dixon novels

                     

THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN (RECENT DREAMS)

Marvin Bell

1. About the Dead Man's Recent Dreams

Call them ravaged castles in the air.
Think them fancy, fantasy, reverie, or romance.
Dismiss them as head trips and chimeras.
He sees them day and night, call him a woolgatherer or stargazer.
He cannot stop seeing what is not there.
Call it the prior future or the posthumous present.
For his sight when asleep is that of a brain loosed from the mind.
The dead man shuffled the deck, he crumpled the map, he trashed the tea leaves.
Now he must strain to hear the springy squeaking of life among the deciduous messages of fall.
Think him the fool, if you like, the one who closed his eyes to better see.
For now there is only the sea sweeping.
There are only the clues left gasping when the tide recedes.

2. More About the Dead Man's Recent Dreams

The dead man's dreams disappear in the light.
They make no promises, they are the body's dance, they are happenstance.
Who has ever died in his dreams and told?
He cannot see the face of the one whose hand reaches for the door.
And have not many of his visions taken the bit and run from view?
He has tried repeatedly to go to sleep in his dreams.
The dead man is not one to go flying when asleep, he is grounded.
He has walked hot coals, lingered among auras, and be taught if one says a thing three times it will happen.
Wake up, he has said to himself, wake up, wake up.
He has blamed his dreams on the hours, on life, on a bite of sweets.
He knows that dreams are not an effect but a cause.
Last night he spoke aloud the word "joker" but does not know why.
He dreams of living forever for a few minutes at a time.






WIFE IN REVERSE

Stephen Dixon

His wife dies, mouth slightly parted and one eye open. He knocks on his younger daughter's bedroom door and says "You better come. Mom seems to be expiring." His wife slips into a coma three days after she comes home and stays in it for eleven days. They have a little party second day she's home: Nova Scotia salmon, chocolates, a risotto he made, brie cheese, champagne. An ambulette brings his wife home. She says to him "Wheel me around the garden before I go to bed for the last time." His wife refuses the feeding tube the doctors want to put in her and insists she wants to die at home. She says "I don't want any more life support, fluid or food." He calls 911 for the fourth time in two years and tells the dispatcher "My wife; I'm sure she has pneumonia again." His wife has a trach put in. "When will it come out?" she says, and the doctor says "To be honest? Never." "Your wife has a very bad case of pneumonia," the doctor tells him and his daughters the first time, "and has a one to two percent chance of surviving." His wife now uses a wheelchair. His wife now uses a motor cart. His wife now uses a walker with wheels. His wife now uses a walker. His wife has to use a cane. His wife’s diagnosed with MS. His wife has trouble walking. His wife gives birth to their second daughter. "This time you didn't cry," she says, and he says "I'm just as happy, though." His wife says to him "Something's wrong with my eyes." His wife gives birth to their daughter. The obstetrician says "I've never seen a father cry in the birthing room." The rabbi pronounces them man and wife and he bursts out crying. "Let's get married," he says to her, and she says "It's all right with me," and he starts crying. "What a reaction," she says, and he says "I'm so happy, so happy," and she hugs him and says "So am I." She calls and says "How are you? Do you want to meet and talk?" She drops him off in front of his building and says "It's just not working." He meets a woman at a party. They talk for a long time. She has to leave the party to go to a concert. He gets her phone number and says "I'll call you tomorrow," and she says "I'd like that." He says goodbye to her at the door and shakes her hand. After she leaves he thinks "That woman's going to be my wife."

Nostalgia Implies a Kind of Andromeda

• The relief not being Siegfried where forever I'm BLCKDGRD surprises me

• the new Fleabus twiitar avatar will stay forever until I change it 
• Peter Hammill 71 today, last year this time one of the great doses of Serendipity ever so I'll skip the Bavid Dogosian story this year, send you back in time

• The new twiiiter avatar will be Fleabus until it isn't
• Climate change and Lake Superior
• How clusterfuck's end
• One personal side-effect of my creeping inevitabilityism, the tablets I now find myself in more than others where I used to spend all my time
• Our overlords are sociopaths
• On fire this time?
• Our overlords are sociopaths
• On the Nationals' visit to the White House
• Reason 233 I don't invest in baseball more than I can help it until I get my self-nostalgiaectomy successfully performed: the majority of players are crackers
• Animals and racism in the Age of Trump
• Three decades of whiteness studies and the Left
• Space taught me everything
• John Ashbery's reading voice

WHY SHOULD ONLY CHEATERS AND LIARS GET DOUBLE LIVES?

Brenda Shaughnessy

That is, why should they get two stabs at it while the virtuous
trudge along at half-speed, half-mast, halfhearted?

If an ordinary human can pull the fattest cashwad
out of the slimmest slit,

and the fullest pudding out of the skimmest milk,
then it might be possible

  

to insert a meager life in Andromeda
into, at the very least, our wide pit of sleep.

  

Duplicity after all takes many, not merely two, forms,
and just the very idea

of doubleness, twinniness, or even simple, simpering
regret, or nostalgia, implies

a kind of Andromeda,
a secret world, the hidden draft, the tumor-sibling,

   

the “there-are-no-accidents” plane we could learn to fly.
There’s always that irreducible “something extra”

  

to life on Earth:

The way some men won’t “talk that way” in front of women,
not wanting to astonish us with their secret man-ness,
as if there is another world bisecting ours,
living among us like an unspeakable mold.

The recent invention of the double-decker pill,  

equally effective on sunny and rainy days.

On the wall, a plural mural: a diptych of Paula ‘n’ Wally’s.  

What fallopian and what fellatino! Like a Nan Goldin oldie,
but an impostor. Okay. Why not try to offer more
squalor no matter who the photographer?

When someone’s called a “lifer” it means that person is trapped.  

A “lifer” has no real life but what do we call the rest of us?

How terrifying it is to try trying!

Which frying pan will best
kill the loved one? Which will
make the best omelet?

The books on the bookshelves are touching themselves
like virgins. But I’ve had them.

Although You Could Not Speak You Were Not Lost?

• Self-portrait, 2019 November 2, bigger at other place
• Changed my twitter avatar, gotta start deKaos somewhere
• I think I mentioned this last Koppel birthday, I couldn't sit through five minutes of a Get Smart episode (or a five minute episode of *anything,* including my new avatar's television show)
• UPDATE! Avatar now set, finally found the Fleabus photo I thought I farted away
• I can't imagine reading Roth or Updike now 
• I can imagine reading Kolář’'s User's Manual, and it came in the mail two days ago

• Four ways falling back from daylight's savings time can kill you
• California, third world state
• Avedon's occasional links
• Impeachment theater, or, they *do* want Trump to win
• I stopped at art supply store in downtown Bethesda yesterday, on Woodmont near Bethesda Ave a car with flashers on waiting for a parallel parking slot to open held up traffic while the person leaving the spot stood outside his car talking on his phone, backed up traffic twenty cars deep on Woodmont, everyone honking and cursing, and this is music to our sociopath overlords, their drones acting in concert per direction
• Things are only going to get weirder
• Work sucks 
• Maggie's weekly links
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links
• Love versus Frankenstein
• UPDATE! on Charles Wright
• More new Richard Dawson

   
            

AFTERNOONS AND EARLY EVENINGS

Louise Glück

The beautiful golden days when you were soon to be dying
but could still enter into random conversations with strangers,
random but also deliberate, so impressions of the world
were still forming and changing you,
and the city was at its most radiant, uncrowded in summer
though by then everything was happening more slowly—
boutiques, restaurants, a little wine shop with a striped awning,
once a cat was sleeping in the doorway;
it was cool there, in the shadows, and I thought
I would like to sleep like that again, to have in my mind
not one thought. And later we would eat polpo and saganaki,
the waiter cutting leaves of oregano into a saucer of oil—
What was it, six o’clock? So when we left it was still light
and everything could be seen for what it was,
and then you got in the car—
where did you go next, after those days,
where although you could not speak you were not lost?