We Here at Progressive Health Would Like to Thank You for Being One of the Generous Few Who've Promised to Bequeath Your Vital Organs to Whoever Needs Them. Now We'd Like to Give You the Opportunity to Step Out Far in Front of the Other Donors by Acting a Little Sooner than You Expected, Tomorrow, to Be Precise, the Day You're Scheduled to Come In for Your Yearly Physical, or: Sixty-Four Today

Yes, I played these a few months ago, a WFMU DJ put Buckingham in my head which always means a cascade. Forgive me, I love Lindsey Buckingham's music, and today is his 64th birthday, meaning I'm old too.

• I've friends who've told me, friends who've hinted, friends who've told me by not telling me, how pissed off they are that I am not sufficiently angered at and not sufficiently blaming Tea Party Republican congresspersons and their constituency for the current clusterfuck. Lordy, the harangue from my obamaphile Hilltop friend yesterday. I'm not reciting and/or re-paraphrasing the old arguments. My damnlessness is catalyzed primarily and powerfully by my revulsion at the prospect of reciting and/or re-phrasing the old arguments of the rationale for my apostasies. Again, to those loved ones and friends personally affected, I sympathize that you're fucked, I hope you are unfucked soon.

INTERRUPTION FOR SILLYASS STAR TREK ALLUSION!

• PICARD: You let their emotion sway you.
• SPOCK: On the contrary, I am pursuing the most logical course.
• PICARD: You are as sceptical as I am. Is it logical to ignore your own good sense?
• SPOCK: I fear the influence of Sarek has colored your attitudes, Captain, toward reunification and perhaps toward me.
• PICARD: That is the second time you have accused me of speaking with another man's voice. It's true he will always be a part of me. His experience, his spirit. But I speak with my own voice, not his.
• SPOCK: Curious that I should hear him so clearly now that he is dead. Is it possible that I have brought my argument with Sarek to you, Captain? If so, I apologize.
• PICARD: Is it so important to you to win one last argument?
• SPOCK: No, it is not. But it is true that I will miss the arguments. They were, finally, all that we had.

• But speaking of my complicity, I just put down a deposit for my and SeatSix's seats next season for DC United. Foremost, it gives me a chance to hang out with SeatSix, second, I want United to be good when I quit on them for my peace of mind, third, I'm curious to experience how they move LOUD SIDE! to endzone, fourth, I'm a fool.
• Fred Hiatt plays terrorism card on shutdown.
• Shutdown and fucking helmetball and priorities.
• The furlough of reason.
• The political economy of zombies.
• Feral politics.
• The end of public space.
• Joanna Russ, for those of you who do (with a request for help).
• The shape of poetry.
• The Glass Essay.
• William Gass interview.
• Prunella's latest playlist.

PROGRESSIVE HEALTH

Carl Dennis

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you   

For being one of the generous few who've promised   

To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.   

Now we'd like to give you the opportunity   

To step out far in front of the other donors   

By acting a little sooner than you expected,   

Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you're scheduled   

To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients   

Are waiting this very minute in intensive care   

Who will likely die before another liver   

And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys   

Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,   

Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain   

Of these patients might total more than a century.   

To you, of course, one year of your life means more   

Than six of theirs, but to no one else,   

No one as concerned with the general welfare   

As you've claimed to be. As for your poems—

The few you may have it in you to finish—

Even if we don't judge them by those you've written,   

Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,   

It's doubtful they'll raise one Lazarus from a grave   

Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed   

To work six wonders. As for the gaps you'll leave   

As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,   

They'll close far sooner than the open wounds   

Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,   

Parents and children, by the death of the six   

Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful   

They'll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.   

Summer and winter they'll visit your grave, in shifts,   

For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it,   

And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,   

While your friends, who are just as forgetful   

As you are, just as liable to be distracted,   

Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep.   

If the people you'll see tomorrow pacing the halls   

Of our crowded facility don't move you enough,   

They'll make you at least uneasy. No happy future   

Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience   

Will ask him to certify every hour from now on   

Six times as full as it was before, your work   

Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods   

Six times as restorative as anyone else's.   

Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life   

Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,   

You could be a god, one of the few gods   

Who, when called on, really listens?