Wednesday, August 13, 2014

A Man Who Needs Fire Will Soon Enough Hold It in His Hands





OK, go look at this. I haven't been able to get that image out of my mind. Here is my visceral reaction: I want to kill those motherfucking poachers, I really want to kill the rich motherfuckers paying the motherfucking poachers. My instinctive response to motherfuckering has always been to out-motherfucker them, but for decades I was trained to squelch that instinct as a moral choice, to accept as natural order motherfuckers monopoly on motherfucking, and I bought in. For decades I naively believed that humans were progressing - painfully but incrementally - beyond their innate motherfuckingness, just give the motherfuckers time to evolve into lesser motherfuckers, and I bought in. Fuck that. I don't think my epiphany came naturally - motherfuckers no longer bothers to hide their motherfuckingosity. Motherfuckers today are rewarded and celebrated, and if you fail as a motherfucker it's your own motherfucking fault - this is not by accident, it's preparation for the motherfucking horrors of the future. He who once did Good Eats now does Cutthroat Kitchen, motherfuckers. I may have more insight and foresight into depression than once, but what feels in my stomach like the sound of a empty beer bottle thrown into an empty oil barrel is unappeasable anger at my motherfucking voluntary impotency, nurtured over decades as a moral virtue.















HAND GRENADE BAG

Henri Cole

This well-used little bag is just the right size

to carry a copy of the Psalms. Its plain-woven

flowers and helicopter share the sky with bombs

falling like turnips—he who makes light of other

men will be killed by a turnip. A bachelor,

I wear it across my shoulder—it’s easier to be

a bachelor all my life than a widow for a day.

On the bag’s face, two black shapes appear

to be crows—be guided by the crow and you

will come to a body—though they are

military aircraft. A man who needs fire

will soon enough hold it in his hands.      



6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. ...the things I cannot change...

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  3. 1) i am a loved one, although not in relationship to you in particular, and i'm glad to read you're fine - if once in a while you're not fine, that's ok too - we breathe in, we breathe out

    2) comin' back to me is a marty balin song - so also is one by the kbc band - it's not you - me - a favorite of mine although this videotaped live performance doesn't seem as powerful to me as the vinyl

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbj7hQRAefI

    3) kbc, like jefferson airplane, also included paul kanter - recently i websurfed to a letter i wrote which was published in rolling stone about the paul kanter and jefferson starship album 'blows against the empire' -

    from Rolling Stone, 76, Feb. 18, 1971
    Correspondence, Love Letters & Advice, p. 3:

    "I enjoy the new Paul Kantner album very much. It's great to get stoned to. But it really bothers me on another level, because of a flaw in its basic assumptions.

    The whole hijack-the-starship science fiction movie on side two is, basically, a repetition of the underlying theme of American history: 'Things are shitty here; let's leave.' ...Right now it looks like Western civilization is going to make Earth not fit to live on. If I were in charge of the galaxy, evidence like that would convince me that human beings ought not to be allowed off their home planet unless they can evolve new ways of getting themselves together. A starship full of humans, even freaks (freaks aren't really so different, you know) is a grave danger to the rest of the universe.

    If we can't make it here, where we were born and raised, then we can't make it anywhere. Can you dig it?"

    AL ZAREX, Somerville, MA


    [end of quote from Rolling Stone]

    someone posted this on their blog in 2003, from which i retrieved it recently

    i actually did live in somerville in 1971, although i did not use that pen name for any other purpose

    at that time i did not have any college degrees or certifications

    wikipedia asserts that the jefferson starship album in question got the second most votes for the 'hugo' - science fiction fandom award - in the category 'dramatic production' - it lost to 'no award', however

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  4. anne and Charley: I'm meh with most Balin Airplane songs but do dig this one. I'm a Jorma/Jack guy, which reminds me I haven't played Hot Tuna here in a while.

    Jim, I did call myself manic and melodramatic.

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