It Was Time to Leave that Town for an Empty Drawer into which They Sailed

Sorry, no sound, listen to this while watching the video and considering this:


The National Park Service said Monday that the Washington Monument will be closed indefinitely and that the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in August had done more damage to the monument than had been previously disclosed.


The Washington Monument will never reopen: Yes or No?





That's another sign of the times in POTUS 12, the game where all metaphors, however strained, are valued and honorable metaphors because and until (plus I'd written something about Blegsylvania that turned out far snarkier than intended, so I ate it, because and until).

• What a great song, listen to it again. In the top 20 of most air-guitared.
• Advice for children, unsolicited.
• Women under capitalism.
• Women in Labor.
• Kaboom.
• Theduh. Strained metaphors will continue because and until they please me less than daily theduh.
• Anarchy, State, Moore's Law.
• The motherfucking senators hate the motherfucking representatives.
• Romney and The Apology Tour.
• Crackers.
• Figures with meat.
• Obama's everyone problem.
• Alarm.
• I want United to reacquire Nodax just so they can trade him to Metros again.
• The first of these I've seen this year.
• Classical music and the layman.

INSTEAD OF LOSING

John Ashbery

Anyone, growing up in a space you hadn't used yet
would've done the same: bother the family's bickering
to head straight into the channel. My, those times
crackled near about us, from sickly melodrama
instead of losing, and the odd confusion...confusion.

I thought of it then, and in the mountains.
During the day we perforated the eponymous city limits
and then some. No one knew all about us
but some knew plenty. It was time to leave that town
for an empty drawer
into which they sailed. Some of the eleven thousand
virgins were getting queasy. I say, stop the ship!
No can do. Here come the bald arbiters
with their eyes on chains, just so, like glasses.
Heck, it's only a muskrat
that's seen better years, when things were medieval
and gold...

So you people in the front,
leave. You see them. And you understand it all.
It doesn't end, night's sorcery notwithstanding.
Would you have preferred to be a grownup in earlier times
than the child can contain or imagine?
Or is right now the answer—you know, the radio
we heard news on late at night,
our checkered fortunes so pretty.
Here's your ton of plumes, and your Red Seal Records.
The whole embrace.