Friday, August 12, 2011

A Little Purity to Sand the Rough Edges, a Slow Downpour from the Dark Ages, a Drizzle from the Pleistocene




Special guest T at Thursday Night Pints, good friend of L, was telling us of the vicious curriculum revision fight in X Dept of X University, how the faculty were breaking into utterly predictable factions. The young tenure-track professors - and the young star dept head - want to expand the width of the department, the tenured and full insist what's in place is fine, what's needed is depth. Each side has a firebrand, subordinate but enforcer, making threatening noises against possible defectors. Depth, snorted L, is code for the fat fucks reinforcing their status - remember the fights here, she said, once a fierce Width firebrand and enforcer. The world is full of revolutionaries, said D, smiling at L, most of whom could lead the NKVD but not the people, winning a Fuck You and last night's round of ridiculously priced scotch.












RAIN ON TIN

Rodney Jones

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.
Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.
As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.



10 comments:

  1. Kraphammer is glad we're finally 'facing the debt crisis'?

    And not one mention of where that debt came from.
    ~

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  2. I'm sure World's Shittiest will rip up his social security checks in gleeful rejection once he starts receiving them.

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  3. If only higher edumacation and the entertainment wing of MIC finally tied the knot. Curriculum troubles? Steel cage match. Sell popcorn, make a few extra rubles for the department.

    Hopefully the future rioters of America will have learned from the mistakes of their European forebears and, before any looting commences, shoot out the CCTV cameras blooming across the land. THEN go lift the plasma.

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  4. The riots here started last year with the Tea Partiers, remember? If O is re-elected and a Dem congress w/ him, they'll be out in force—this time with a vengeance. That's their threat. That's why they carry such clout.

    Don't be fooled by Boehner's whiny "I can't do anything with them" BS. He's using them to gain leverage in the negotiations. They're useful. And they know how to keep up the Kayfabe.

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  5. Jim,

    A bold statement. I tend to agree, as much as I think the Teaps are a neutered dog, politically, as a faction which has any power in Congress.

    But, I'm not sure what you mean by "riots last year." Is there a reference I'm missing, kindly?

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  6. I'm thinking about the Tea Party rallies, the angry Town Hall confrontations, etc. It's the corporatized riot: 'We want to be a threat—but not really. Yet we're lurking.' I'm thinking of the violent rhetoric they used when squawking about O, the witch doctor imagery, Nazi/Socialism claims, the guns at rallies, etc. The cry for FREEEDOM from BIG GOV'T. and the "Let's take OUR country back". All that.

    Some more anarchic types have been making noises at the G8 summits, etc. They're dismissed in the media b/c they don't have PR firms giving stories to FoxNews and the rest of the media like the Tea Party.

    London, after the initial outrage, was mainly hooliganism. It was the first weekend after school let out for the summer vacay.

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  7. Pshaw, Jim. It's not like I'm fooled that the London riots started pretty much the very hour you left Europe.

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  8. Will do. And, thanks for all the fish.

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  9. @Landru: Heh heh! I can take no credit for planting the initial seeds of riot. It's just on Friday morning the airport was swamped—even worse than ATL. The Brits all told us it was their first day of summer vacay. 2 + 2.

    You boys enjoy the game tonite. Go the VW Uniteds!

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