Tuesday, March 1, 2011

There Is in Fact a Certain Sadness to Pockets, Going in Their Lonesome Ways and Snuffling Up Their Sifting Storms

Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?





It's true! and they now have a kickass Olsen's Army truck! As I type this opening kickoff is eighteen days, four hours, three minutes, and ten seconds away! And HEY!  We get a USOC game v Phunion in Germantown in early April! !wOOt!

I've seen questions at a few blegs since I saw this article on BLAWG! decline. I ask, when did blegs succeed and what did they succeed at, then note that this post deploys the very three elements that most drives readers away, DC United/soccer, poetry, and bleggalgazing. It's intentional of course, though it's not my fault three poets I like and admire were all born on March 1, nor is it my fault that I first saw the youtube of the Benny Truck yesterday and I am required, by all Codes of Protesting I Only Bleg for Me and Mine, to write about the Benny Truck in the first post subsequent to the Benny Truck's sighting. As for bleggalgazing, that's entirely my fault, but might as well do here since many stopped reading at the tired United gag.

OK, that covers it. United, check; poetry, check; bleggalgazing, check. Wait, what about the half-dozen Guided by Voices songs?...









    POCKETS

    Howard Nemerov (born 2/29/20)

    Are generally over or around
    Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
    In the direction of those
    
    Dark places, and indeed
    It is their nature to be dark
    Themselves, keeping a kind
    
    Of thieves' kitchen for the things
    Sequestered from the world
    For long or little while,
    
    The keys, the handkerchiefs,
    The sad and vagrant little coins
    That are really only passing through.
    
    For all they locate close to lust,
    No pocket ever sees another;
    There is in fact a certain sadness
    
    To pockets, going in their lonesome ways
    And snuffling up their sifting storms
    Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.
    
    A pocket with a hole in it
    Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?
    What is a pocket but a hole?





    THE DRUNKEN FISHERMAN

    Robert Lowell (3/1/17)

    Wallowing in this bloody sty,
    I cast for fish that pleased my eye
    (Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
    No pots of gold to weight its ends);
    Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
    Rose to my bait.  They flopped about
    My canvas creel until the moth
    Corrupted its unstable cloth.
    
    A calendar to tell the day;
    A handkerchief to wave away
    The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
    Pouching a bottle in one arm;
    A whiskey bottle full of worms;
    And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
    To mete the worm whose molten rage
    Boils in the belly of old age?
    
    Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
    O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
    Let suns stay in or suns step out:
    Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
    The fisher's fluent and obscene
    Catches kept his conscience clean.
    Children, the raging memory drools
    Over the glory of past pools.
    
    Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
    Its bloody waters into holes;
    A grain of sand inside my shoe
    Mimics the moon that might undo
    Man and Creation too; remorse,
    Stinking, has puddled up its source;
    Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
    This is the pot-hole of old age.
    
    Is there no way to cast my hook
    Out of this dynamited brook?
    The Fisher's sons must cast about
    When shallow waters peter out.
    I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
    And when the Prince of Darkness stalks
    My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . .
    On water the Man-Fisher walks.





    STILL, CITIZEN SPARROW

    Richard Wilbur (3/1/21)

    Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call   
    Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air   
    Over the rotten office, let him bear
    The carrion ballast up, and at the tall

    Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you’ll see
    That no more beautiful bird is in heaven’s height,   
    No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller flight;   
    He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free,

    The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you   
    Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he   
    Devours death, mocks mutability,
    Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new.

    Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget   
    How for so many bedlam hours his saw   
    Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw,   
    And the slam of his hammer all the day beset

    The people’s ears. Forget that he could bear   
    To see the towns like coral under the keel,
    And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel   
    How high and weary it was, on the waters where

    He rocked his only world, and everyone’s.   
    Forgive the hero, you who would have died   
    Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide   
    To Ararat; all men are Noah’s sons.


    7 comments:

    1. Hey, you cheated on the first selection!

      Instead of Euro sports, crap no one reads & belly button staring contests, how about Facebooking up the place with more status updates. Sheesh.

      [Bilking the taxpayers to pay for fixing the muffler on a 17-year old rustbucket.]
      *Internets likes this*

      ReplyDelete
    2. All praise the noble Pollard! Some of my favorite GBV tunes there!

      ReplyDelete
    3. “I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

      Facebook? What is Facebook?
      ~

      ReplyDelete
    4. About 10 mos ago I tried to use Facebook for the same purposes as I'd used blogs for the preceding 6 or so years. All I got was a bunch of friends and acquaintances telling me to shut up with all my sociopolitical observations, and to change into "giving stoke." No wonder this new modern distorted Xtianity (fake-positivity) has taken flight.

      ReplyDelete
    5. One other major fault of this shitty bleg, IMFHO, is that it's constantly linking to even shittier blegs—meaning, of course, mine. My gratitude notwithstanding, punching down when you should be punching up, too, no?

      You ever think about monetizing this joint? Heh.

      FYI: I have a sock puppet on the Facebook who shares a name with the protagonist of my unpublished novel. I'm going to populate the place with the other characters and set up a social network. Not a bad way to get in character, actually, and I plan to do that going forward with future books. Intertextuality. Now you know one of my deep, dark secrets. Let the ersatz Big-Brother marketing info-gleaners choke on that...

      Shhh. Don't tell Zuckerberg.

      Best,
      Jim H.

      ReplyDelete
    6. On further reflection, maybe you should post some Arcade Fire videos. And some White Stripes, too!

      Rock on!

      ReplyDelete
    7. I think it's pretty noteworthy that United put "PAST SUCCESS MEANS NOTHING" in their truck video.

      ReplyDelete