The Dead Man Has a Grassy Disposition But No Cow Stomach for Flappy Leaves and Diced Croutons

It seems to me, said K at Thursday Night Pints, that the anti-SOPA drama is useful in that it reinforces memes about Corporate that Occupy has been banging, doesn't it? I'd mentioned it had not gone unnoticed that google didn't run a stunt and nobody blacked out their sites or feeds when Obama signed the NDAA, so whack with the hypocrisy stick if you participated in any SOPA protest. Did you see the Post story about how an Occupier confronting Romney will help Romney in South Carolina, asked D. There are multiple meanings of the word prop, I said, winning last night's shot of ridiculously priced Scotch, which I turned down, my prop hops-based.

• It's the end of the world again and again.
• The state of the 18th Brumaire.
• Penetrating rhetoric.
• Wasted sentiment.
• Through spectacles we see we're blind.
• Motherfucking Democrats.
• Obillionaire.
• Regime change doesn't work.
• Threshold of Lift Hill.
• I am appalled you'd begin a presidential debate with that question.
• Those knees are looking ragged.
• Nietzsche for those of you who do.
• Does metaphotography on a blog constitute bleggalgazing?
• Should art tell you what to think?
• New Springsteen for the two of you I know who do. I'm not a hater, just not a liker.
• Live Jon Spencer Blues Explosion for the one of you I know who does.
• Acoustic Minutemen.
• Stream the new Nada Surf for the one of me I know who does.
• Woke up with this in my head:

THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN

Marvin Bell

Live as if you were already dead.
                          Zen admonition

1. About the Dead Man and Food

The dead man likes chocolate, dark chocolate.
The dead man remembers custard as it was, spumoni as it was, shave
          ice as it was.
The dead man talks food with an active tongue, licks his fingers, takes
          seconds, but has moved on to salads.
It's the cheese, it's the crunch of the crunchy, it's the vinegar in the oil
          that makes a salad more than grass.
The dead man has a grassy disposition but no cow stomach for flappy
          leaves and diced croutons.
The dead man remembers oysterettes as they were.
He recalls good water and metal-free fish.
Headlights from the dock drew in blue claw crabs by the bucketful.
A flashlight showed them where the net lay.
If they looked bigger in the water than in the pail, they grew back on the
          stove.
It was like that, before salads.
The dead man, at the age he is, has redefined mealtime.
It being the quantum fact that the dead man does not believe in time, but
          in mealtime.

2. More About the Dead Man and Food

The dead man's happiness may seem unseemly.
By land or by sea, aloft or alit, happiness befalls us.
Were mankind less transfixed by its own importance, it would be harder
          to be happy.
Were the poets less obsessed with the illusion of the self, it would be
          more difficult to sing.
It would be crisscross, it would be askew, it would be zigzag, it would be
          awry, it would be cockeyed in any context of thought.
The dead man has felt the sensation of living.
He has felt the orgasmic, the restful, the ambiguous, the nearly-falling-over,
           the equilibrium, the lightning-in-the-bottle and the bottle in shards.
You cannot make the dead man write what you want.
The dead man offers quick approval but seeks none in return.
Chocolate is the more existential, it has the requisite absurdity, it loosens
          the gland.
The dead man must choose what he ingests, it cannot be anything goes
          in the world the world made.
So we come back to chocolate, which frees the dead man's tongue.
The dead man is every emotion at once, every heartbreak, every falling-
          down laugh riot, every fishhook that caught a finger.