The Phlegm Is Thick and Fast and the Bartender Says Time to Wallow in Byproducts

Better, sorta, not, but thanks for asking. The best of the fever is gone but the phlegm sea awaits a mucus Moses. Plus United plays today at 430 in Ningland. Plus Yay! for Planet! News! !wOOt! Choice One! plus scholarship! Then my complicity! whose innards I don't want to poke today.

So, songs for crashing, !!! links while they're fresh. The always necessary poem.

• Today's fury is motherfucking pigs pigging like assholes but (maybe? probably?) well within their legal rights against a University of Wisconsin (and thus a state employee) professor who wrote a NYT op-ed that employed the McC against Wisconsin's pig governor and pig GOP, but shit, all the GOP did was introduce a new tactic motherfucking Democrats are (a) wishing they'd thought of first and (b) will begin using tomorrow. This is an example of The Fallacy of the .06% Less-Shitty.  
• Lose the future.
• News is fun.
• To the editor of the NYT, Julian Assange = James O'Keefe.
• Obamaking.
• Heh! Obamamotherfucker.
• No-Fly-Zone for Syria! Obamadumbmotherfucker.
• Bitch set him up.
• Obamamotherfucker. 
• The Liberal defense of murder.
• Capitalism.
• Who the gov't works for.
• America is not Greece.
• Panopticon, or: paying for your own surveillance.
• Please please please please please.
• Please please please please please.
• Couldn't resist. I'm small this way.
• What's the real Ward 9? 
• Against fiction. Not an original argument, but one I haven't read in a while.
• Modernity's undoing?
• $15.
• DJ Handi's archive picks.
• For the birds.

SENTIMENTAL ATOM SMASHER

Darcie Dennigan

So this guy walks into a bar and asks for a beer. Sorry, 
      the bartender says, I only sell atom smashers 

      And the guy says well isn't that America for you—
every happy-hour Nelson's a homemade physicist and no thank you, 

just an ice cold one, but it's too late—suddenly, he's on his butt 
      in a ballfield where handsome men are chasing a ball over grass 

      sad grass, yellow like the hair of his once-young mother! 
and again he says, no thank you—I've seen this movie before 

And the bartender says it's a joke and you're inside its machine... 

      Hey, the guy wants to say—I'm not the guy—I'm me 
I'm just a guy who walked into a bar. I'm just a guy who retreats 

to his car for a private cry. Instead he sniffs and cries out—
      The sky smells like the bologna from when I was a boy! 

      Ahh, says the bartender, ahh yes. Someone has left 
the refrigerator door of the cosmos open a crack 

And the view! cries the guy. The beauty of an atom smasher, 
      says the bartender, even from the cheap seats you see 

      clear into 1952. And the guy, squinting into the distance, 
starts to bawl. Maybe it's the vendors hawking 

commemorative popcorn, or the programs promoting emotion 
      ("the matter of the universe!") printed on material whose pulp 

was milked from the trunk of a winesap apple tree, but— 
      What's the matter? says the bartender. And the guy says, 

I'm confused. Am I allowed to be homesick in a joke? 
       Yes, the bartender says. It's elemental, the bartender says—

 
       How streets are downtrodden atoms and falling leaves are aflutter 
atoms and beer is over-the-moon atoms. The moon's an atomizer 

of all matter's perfumes: And the guy starts to parse it out— 
       Wait, I'm not smart, but if emotion's a material substance 

       then when a leaf falls in my lap and I hold it, 
like an about-to-be-abandoned baby, I'm touching "aflutter" in 3-D? 

Dear fluttering leaf! 
Streets—I'm sorry for stepping on you! Apples—for coring you, and beer—

* * *
 
A guy walks into a bar, 

—actually just the beer-drinking bleachers of a ballfield—and says 
       is this some kind of joke? 

       Well, says the bartender who has observed the little lamb 
and the tyger burning bright and tickled their particulates, 

because your life has lately been stagnant, we have yoked you 
       to a joke and we await the gasp that will gas up the cosmos... 

       Just then, there's a hit at the plate—and it's going, 
it's going—gone to smash the guy in the skull 

       And since baseballs are made of nostalgia atoms, the guy, 
with concussion, says I want to buy a coke for a nickel 

       I want to install apple pie perfumemakers in the crotch of every tree 
Bartender, bring me dried nosegays! Start the stalwart pageants! 

        And the moon's spritzing its perfumes and the phlegm is thick and fast 
And the bartender says time to wallow in byproducts: 

        Where we planted peanut shells, we got shaky, palsied trees 
Where we planted nickel cokes, we got nicked cans 

Where we planted baseballs we grew large, sad eyeballs 
        as we watched for something to grow. Still, still 

        we atom-probe: In a dark building a child is 
about to be born. The smell of bread is about to 

        break. And our guy is going, O spring evenings! 
How I used to stand yelping in the alley by the bakery... 

        Who are these boys throwing baseballs? Who is this baby? 
O bartender, tell me, what is the message in this light rain? 

But the bartender's dark eyes are flying 
        over centerfield, over the rooftops and watertowers of the joke's 

        universe, over alleys and cold valleys of refrigerator light 
toward an aptest eve where these street kids are hurling a ball into 

the moonlight and the moonlight is curdling into freon... 

Somehow a Dog Has Taken Itself & Its Tail Considerably Away into Mountains or Sea or Sky, Leaving Behind: Me, Wag

While I celebrate serendipity, I hold in awe its ability to fuck with me. A few days ago a friend reminded me of Blood Meridian - a novel you must read if you haven't, forget all the post-Blood Meridian McCarthy you may have read or film adaptions of his novels you have seen. I commented in agreement about the graphic violence and mentioned a particularly gruesome scene in the novel. I went and found my paperback, was going to start Wednesday night but came down with a bug and high fever, can't do much but noodle online and, SHAZAM! look what gif serendipity just now gave me while I aimlessly looked for something else:





Holyfuck. There's nothing to do but offer a traditional fever dream song, my favorite Dream Song (forgive me, friends, this is the first time I've ever used the same line from a poem to title a post twice, but it's my fever), then another traditional fever dream song in tribute to serendipity, and then go back to sleep. Be back when.

DREAM SONG 14

John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.   

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,   

we ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy   

(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored   

means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no   

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Peoples bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,   

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes   

as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.   

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag   

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving            

behind: me, wag.

UPDATE!

DESIGN

Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Bats, Lisps of Pride

In last night's fever dream I was reminded of the scene in Barth's Sot-Weed Factor (Barth being in my mind) when Ebenezer Cooke, upon landing in Maryland to take claim the plantation he inherited, stumbles upon a legal argument about private property and, fashioning himself a legal expert as well as poet, passionately argues for fairness to win and, with sanctimonious nobility, forfeits his rights to his fortune.

Me. Who'd you think I was talking about? After I lost my property, Obama screamed at me, calling me a pussy for expecting him to make decisions based on right and wrong. I've always loved fever dreams. Could do w/o the sore throat. In any case, I promised The Bats. Requests solicited and posted if I can find them:

UPDATE!

• Moral sums and inquiries. 
• On intervention. Please read the comments too. All other arguments considered, what I pivot on is that I cannot believe Corporate intervenes on anyone's behalf but its own. 
• On the above. On the above.
• Giving up smoking. All best! one way or the other.
• Toddler or 85? Fight the Either/Or-Man, man
• CWCF?
• Heh! Now do one for Democrats! 
• Just your run of the mill Satan. 
• But how would Boeing make money? 
• Congenital liar.
• Fuckface. And Obama's best weapon.
• Fuckface.
• Fuckfaces.
• Capitalism. 
• Stoke.
• While I enjoy the fever dreams, fevers also make me, in waves, furious, give me Bendii Syndrome-like outbursts, make me want to purge blogrolls of unKind borderline plagiarists, so until this blows over this is the last post until the next post, which it would have been anyway.
• Charles Wright. I confess he's never worked for me, but since I wield Kind like a kid holding his pointed finger like a death ray out the backseat window of a moving car and, bored, mow down everything - telephone poles, trees, barns, people - I'll try again.
• Barnes and Noble next.
• Collapse of the poetry economy.
• Many meanings can have one word.
  

WOOD'S EDGE

Brenda Hillman

Infinity lifted: 
a gasp of emeralds.
 
I thought I felt 
the tall night trees 
between them,
 
no exactitude, 
a wait not even 
known yet.
 
I held my violet up; 
no smell. 
It made a signal squeak 
inside, bats,
 
lisps of pride;
 
ah, their little things, 
their breath: lungs of a painting,
 
they swept me 
in four ways, their square
plans, as I have made 
a good square saying,
 
you I 
you not-I 
not-you I 
not-you not-I,
 
ritual of hope 
whose weight 
has not been measured—

Deaf as Cassandra to Any Note but Warning

The pint bets I won from Dennis and Leona were paid off last night (the original Thursday meeting was set before discovered that was St Patrick's Day). Talk was of Libya (since Japan is so, like, last decade): my cynicism is shocking, I'm told.

I didn't pursue beyond saying that it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best. Is that why you capitalize the word Kind on your blog, asked Leona. Excellent wry and amber three hours.

• Torture and stupidity. 
• What I said yesterday said better.
• On propaganda.
• Again.
• The view from Scotland.
• Obamagoat?
• On the shaky prospects of meritocracy.
• National pride.
• Metro.
• Olney.

• Raw thoughts.
• Social media and the future of poetry.
• This week's new releases.
• Agalloch. It says something about these days that I wait all week for the death metal sets on Diane's Kamakazi Fun Machine. 
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, wanna drive up your hits? Make a link with the name of the band in the above bullet point and watch google spin.
• Wire.

BEACH GLASS

Amy Clampitt

While you walk the water's edge,
turning over concepts
I can't envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
the wind may change,
the reef-bell clatters
its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra
to any note but warning. The ocean,
cumbered by no business more urgent 
than keeping open old accounts
that never balanced,
goes on shuffling its millenniums
of quartz, granite, and basalt.
                    It behaves
toward the permutations of novelty--
driftwood and shipwreck, last night's
beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up
residue of plastic--with random
impartiality, playing catch or tag
or touch-last like a terrier,
turning the same thing over and over,
over and over. For the ocean, nothing
is beneath consideration.
                    The houses
of so many mussels and periwinkles
have been abandoned here, it's hopeless
to know which to salvage. Instead
I keep a lookout for beach glass--
amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase
of Almadén and Gallo, lapis
by way of (no getting around it,
I'm afraid) Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare
translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst
of no known origin.
                    The process
goes on forever: they came from sand,
they go back to gravel, 
along with treasuries
of Murano, the buttressed
astonishments of Chartres,
which even now are readying
for being turned over and over as gravely
and gradually as an intellect
engaged in the hazardous
redefinition of structures
no one has yet looked at.

The Whir of I Should Be, I Should Be, I Should Be Slows to Silence

Not winning is winning: the debate between Right Corporate and More Right Corporate isn't between no war and war, it's about how much war is the best amount of war to keep the helium-balloon economy afloat, the best way to market the war so that patriotic serfs forfeit their benefits as docilely as possible. Corporate needs enough time to broil the kidneys, boil the tripe, suck the marrow out of the bones of what's left of the real economy. This is a strategic retreat, Corporate hopes a slow retreat, maybe twenty more years of Masters slow. War is the business model.

Consider Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, who may have done as much for the perpetuation of the permanent war against our current Other as any drone-bombing of wedding parties:

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men.

The magazine, which is planning to publish only three images, said that in addition to the crimes the men were on trial for there are "also entire collections of pictures of other victims that some of the defendants were keeping".

In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.

The group's leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.

Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man's little fingers and removing a tooth.

For further enflaming anti-American sentiment, for making the war that wins by not winning even more un-winnable - in other words, for advancing Corporate's interests in a significant but sloppy fashion - Staff Sergeant Gibbs will likely spend the rest of his life in the brig (where I hope he's treated humanely, the motherfucker) for violating Corporate's public relations rules. We all serve Corporate on multiple-levels.

Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

Yes, we're all aware of the devastating consequences Abu Ghraib wrecked on both George Bush's reelection campaign and Corporate's ability to maintain public support for not just perpetual war, more perpetual war.

• Ugly truths.
• The lesson of Libya.
• Libya, for your consideration. 
• Oh my. Read the comments too. Then this (and its comments).
• This time for sure.
• Godlike powers of Obama.
• Winning hearts and minds.
• $157M worth of democracy. No heating oil for grandma, though.
• Death and after in Iraq.
• Good question.
• You'd have to be on glue.
• Orwell allusions work.
• Your president: Under cover of the quasi-war against Libya and the Japanese nuclear crisis, the Justice Department released two significant and long-outstanding Bush-era legal memoranda on Friday evening. Both deal with an intelligence community program so secret that even its name has to be redacted. Referred to by Bush Administration lawyers as simply “the program,” it apparently granted the Defense Department (and particularly its National Security Agency) authority to sweep through millions of communications—on telephone, by fax, in emails, through Internet visits, at home and abroad, involving U.S. citizens and foreigners.
• Small victory!
• Meanwhile.
• Motherfucking self-entitled pussy.
• On the above motherfucking self-entitled pussy.
• Quelle surprise!
• Anti-anti-racism.
• Oopsy!
• Another report from Japan. Two things: (a) Seb used both canary and Cassandra in reference to himself, which is halfway to me and my CWCF, and (b) he can't comment here  - other friends have told me the same - and does anyone know why blooger lets some people comment but not others and how I can fix that? I'm a dope - I see nothing on my dashboard that would unblock.
• Book of the Month Club.
• Žižek on tact in the age of wikileaks.
• Žižek hates tulips.

• What a clown, and I mean that in the best way. (h/t)
• Yoga-store murder: more. More.
• Donkey-botherers.
• On disappearing bookstores. I feel no sadness - which once would have surprised me - at the demise of Borders.
• The decline of second-hand bookstores, however, sucks.
• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• New formats.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• I will not sing hateful songs.
• Please take.
• Now was.
• Moreover.
• Jeff the Brotherhood.

THE MOMENT

Marie Howe

Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment

when,   nothing 

happens 

no what-have-I-to-do-today-list 


maybe   half a moment  

the rush of traffic stops.  

The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be 

slows to silence, 

the white cotton curtains hanging still.

Eighteen

Oh my, my kid is an adult.

A testimonial.

what i have to say will be lost in this quiet for which i was never quite successful at promoting an antidote

Do you doubt Qaddafi when he says he and his loyalists and his military and his mercenaries would show no mercy to any man, woman, or child they decide deserves no mercy?

Do you doubt Obama, immensely grateful for Qaddafi's statement, would have launched his tomahawks regardless had Qaddafi not handed Obama the perfect PR platform for launching his tomahawks?

• Familiar patterns.
• War and hypocrisy.
• The invaders. 
• UPDATE! Traveling salesman.
• Muammar don't surf.
• First as kitsch, then as custom.
• Decent Democrats. Drop out and form a new party.
• Declare independence.
• The stigmatization of the unemployed.
• Please master.
• Maoist douchebags.
• Also, Hitler.
• Motherfucking cracker.
• World's most expensive dog.
• Silver Line.
• ICC!
• A reading list. Blood Meridian is required reading if you haven't. 
• My new love.

the second hundred: for sid luft

David Antin

1.

there are two sides to every story and to abbreviate one side is to diminish a side of a wall    creating an absence that is stronger than any presence and making any attempt at accurate construction hopeless    sid luft is such an accusative absence    perhaps you have never had to address yourself to a wraith    to proceed adverbially    naming effects as of the wind upon trees or Van der Waals forces on a surface    but sid luft was a test pilot    had flown grumman p 47's called thunderbolts and twin-fuselaged p 38's called lightnings    and thought it an agreeable task    his eye proceeding over the control panel checking the readings on all of the luminous dials    letting his ear discriminate among the complex series of metallic sounds that would allege a private relaxation    the way it takes the sharp eyes and quick ears of an astronaut to foresee a future failure in the allusion of a single dial    what is out there is altogether conjectural    that is the attraction that can take a smart boy out of his apartment and suspend him over an entire atmosphere    this applies also to arctic explorers whom also some bubble must arouse    let this be an attempt at assessment

2.

you know how a small deviation in the suspension of a balance wheel can lead to a barbarous inflection of the entire mechanism?    bringing a belgian police dog to sit in your lap or a bicycle to rest under a moving van    and the imperfection is only borne in upon you once it has passed a certain boundary?

3.

and in a car a defect in the low speed carburetor circuit will leave the entire carriage sucking for air at anything below the highest throttle speeds    so it is necessary to go on a splurge in cincinnati and choose a tomato soup red oldsmobile before going to chef's college    to infuse a vessel with air here becomes a commission    it is required to create a sense of competition where there isnt any    on a farm by the connecticutt    then to stand back at a street corner refraining from criticism like roger de coverley    as much of a spectator and as kindly    a moss covered rock coolly withstanding the current

4.

such a machine is guaranteed to bring you to despair precisely when the situation isnt desperate    because a mounting anxiety approaches a maximum when you have nothing to record in your diary and you have nothing to fall back upon except a tenuous self-discipline

5.

which supposes not only a set of earnest resolutions    promises made to Eliot for a regimen of self-improvement to be undertaken in the doldrums    dance lessons at 12:00    voice in the afternoon    and strict control of your diet    the problem is how to go on being enthusiastic about swallowing air in the evening    it means being equipped with the sense of a soft worm under the shell of a mollusc    which is an excellent image but finally fails to exhilarate if you have never seen it

6.

yet what continues to fascinate us in the shell are the continuous depositions of calcium    which we undertake to unwind like a bandage    while each roll is just like the last    allowing for minor accidents    and merely somewhat smaller    it does not fulfill our expectations    but the belief that there is something to fulfil in our expectations is fundamental

7.

a guard outside of a warehouse suggests there is something to protect

8.

the idea of hypocrisy is expensive

9.

for someone to scream incidentally and interrupt lunch

10.

similar cases in "temporary amnesia" are also known

11.

all you have to do is go to the library to become convinced that they are very likely    energy coming from somewhere striking like lightning

12.

annulling a marriage in a minute    such impulsive behavior modifies the entire history of a landscape    when a car breaks down it appears there was always something wrong with the motor

13.

to a man on a tightrope the Falls at Niagara are the truth of a river    and living to ninety appears like a sudden nomination

14.

its hard to maintain your obedience to impulse when you know that at 5 o'clock you're about to enter Mercy Hospital for a colitis operation    which leaves you nothing to do but pretend that under the ether you're going back for a look at your origin

15.

have you noticed how psychological states are all nouns    Happiness  Sorrow  Rage  Fear  and Shame  are never named participially say    like Smiling-Preceding-the-Storm or Lining-the-Depths-of-an-Outer-Darkening or Something-Preferred-to-Nothing?    its almost worth becoming a professor and obtaining a right to prophesy    erecting a science of naming and calling it Pyschology    finding a net in our hands meaning that there is something we pursue

16.

Judith what i have to say will be lost in this quiet for which i was never quite successful at promoting an antidote

17.

the knack of a child cupping a radio to his ear on his walk through the traffic    i would really have liked to wrap you in music in elevators and airliners    which i could recommend over amphetamine for its more regular rhythm

18.

to engineer another moment in the wings at the palladium and wait for an illumination from the scene to come and seize you    what we can expect of speaking sincerely is an elevation of feeling that we can equate with sincerity    which makes Wearing-Your-Heart-On-Your-Sleeve more than a becoming fashion that can fit any college sophomore and be successful    it needs a desire to be stretched while you are still superintendent of your passions    to which you will ultimately surrender

19.

and recalling the moment of your triumph is a roll call of reporters in which i even remember Ted Thackerey of the Compass    the last time we were truly together

20.

though in your memory it was undoubtedly different

21.

maybe you remember a village where i was a villain

22.

and the weather was bad    yet you didn't know whether to leave or take Joey and Lisa to the movie    the separate inventories of facts in the memories of people who have shared common experiences are weird    though perhaps only this division preserves the welfare of individuals and is insurance against the inevitable separations of pairs of men and women

United 3, Columbus 1

That? was as full and loud and electric as RFK has been in years. LOUD SIDE! was JUMPING! Put a good product on the field, United will draw 25K. Be very interesting to see how big a crowd shows up for Galaxy, especially if United can grab at least four of six points in the next two (road) games (at Ningland - winnable; at Colorado - not so much).

OK, read this (and see if you can see me and Landru and Ilse and Bromark in the photo there!). I agree with much, including the notion that we have no idea what this season will bring, and I will not make broad assessments based on one game, but:

Defense: Having mocked Burch for years, I need credit him for saving a goal in the 15th and playing as good a game I've yet seen him. It's a matter of time before his feet break - I think it's in his contract - but he looked a better than competent left back. Jakovic and Kitchen might - with time to cohere -  be better than competent central backs. Kitchen showed inexperience but also remarkable composure for a rookie in his first start. Jed Zayner, fuck yeah. He left hurt. Fuck.

Midfield: Bad day for Dax. Dependably excellent and invisible day for Simms. Underwhelming day for Najar - and this is slightly worrisome: we couldn't figure out what Olsen was trying to do with Najar - he was either running four yards off the sideline or wandering aimlessly in the middle of the field. I do see what Olsen was trying to do with Pontius, who looks a better midfielder than striker, and who will, until he rips a hamstring, keep Quaranta and Boskovic (who will be gone by mid-July) on the bench.

Strikers: We were bitching about Josh Wolff literally seconds before he scored. I joked that he must have a start first game bonus in his contract that Benny, being a bud, honored. If Josh Wolff is - while others are healthy - starting a majority of games than this season will not be magical. Ditto Ngwenya, who didn't have a good first touch all night. Quaranta came on for him late. Davies and somebody other than Wolff and Ngwenya, yes? Brettschneider!

More pluses than minuses, especially on the back line. I'm out of shape writing about a United with more pluses than minuses. United now has 10% of total points of all of last season after only one game! That's all the Ba'al-taunting I'm going to hazard as of now.

O! great great great time. 232 was great, and wonderful seeing friends at halftime, including Mr X-DCenters! Vid courtesy Bromark!





O! The Oklahoma Kid says get four-times as many beer vendors, motherfuckers. Ditto, I say, and make sure they sell something besides Modelo, Bud, or motherfucking Miller Lite. Every fucking opening game of every fucking year. MORE BEER VENDORS, motherfuckers. xoxo.