It Burns Whatever Body Lives into Extinction

• Beefheart born seventy-four years ago today. High Egoslavian Holy Day. You know of my love, my love love love, rather than repeat it again here have boatloads of songs and love here.
• Oleka.
• The propaganda war: the horrow of the Paris rallies.
• I find myself hollowed and enraged by the general reaction to the Paris shootings to the point I still have trouble typing a coherent paragraph capturing that hollowness and rage. We are being prepared to slaughter and be slaughtered. The diminution of the value of life - human, animal, planet, all living things - is accelerating. I... my daughter will be my age in 2047, what the fuck world....
• As I type this, the screaming banner across the top of the Washington Post is..... OSCAR NOMINATIONS! Fuck me.
• Fear, the ultimate trump card.
• American priorities.
• Caught up in the Cult Wars.
• On the supersonic track to extinction.
• Joe Biden is the creepy uncle you avoided at family reunions.
• March of the Squirrels.
• Food links.
• Gaddis, for those of you who do, for those of you who should.
• Why he listens to sad music.
• Panda Bear's favorite albums. WFMU has been playing the new Panda Bear, it's freaking good. I mentioned to a friend a couple of weeks ago how strange it is that Animal Collective has fallen so far from my consciousness considering how much I once listened to them.
• Advertising in poetry.
• Anthony Hecht's birthday tomorrow.

THE PLATE

Anthony Hecht

Now he has silver in him. When sometime

Death shall boil down unnecessary fat

To reach the nub of our identity,

             When in the run of crime

The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth,

And chemistry has eaten from the spine

Superfluous life and vigor, why then he

Will show a richness to be wondered at,

             And shall be thought a mine

Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath.

The body burns away, and burning gives

Light to the eye and moisture to the lip

And warmth to our desires, but it burns

             Whatever body lives

Into extinction though it wear a plate

Of armor in it: therefore do we thrive

In fear of fire, in terror of the ship

That carries us to fire. A soldier learns

             To bear the silver weight

Where in his head the fire is most alive.