Friday, February 5, 2016

We Welcomed One Poor Hackneyed Christ, Sad Bastard, Croaking of Pestilence. The Basement Holds Him Now





  • I was down in the rec room last night looking for a book. We redid the rec room after we moved in 1992 (Earthgirl pregnant with Planet). We re-tiled the floor, re-drywalled, re-painted, re-spackled the ceiling, moved chairs and sofa and TV down. First social event of new rec room - we hosted dinner then watched the 1992 Election Day results. Landru and Hamster were there, I think, and Effjay Ichaelsmay... we all cheered Bill's election as the end of the Reagan/Bush era of rightwing fuckery. So there's that regarding my inability to let the current motherfucking POTUS cycle go.
  • Not that I knew there was a debate last night, or would have watched had I known.
  • Call me when Hillary Clinton releases the full - and fully verified complete - texts of her promises to the Lloyd Blankfeins - and while I may not like what she says I'll at least credit her for, in this one, and probably only, case, for honest transparency.
  • Here, in one sentence, my problem with Hillary Clinton: When Cooper asked how she thought the speeches would appear during a presidential campaign, Clinton suggested she hadn't thought about such implications because she wasn't sure whether she would run for president.
  • Goldman Sacks Rome.
  • Because it was offered.
  • Inevitability.
  • Your Democratic Attorney General of Maryland.
  • Who is the real stasisist?
  • The NFL experience - all the great ideologies packed into thirty seconds.
  • White America's "broken heart."
  • The new American dream (not reanimated corpse of Dusty Rhodes).
  • >>>>> Blegsylvanian fine metaphors abounding....
  • Globus Hystericus.
  • I am a fool for pop songs. I am a FOOL for pop songs with a female vocalist.








EIGHT VARIATIONS

Weldon Kees

1.
         Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns,   
         But that was quite some time ago.
         Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs,   
         Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant.

         Moving through ivy in the park
         Near drying waterfalls, we open every gate;   
         But that grave, shell-white unicorn is gone.   
         The path is strewn with papers to the street.

         Numbers that once were various
         Regarded us, were thought significant, significant   
         Enough to bring reporters to the scene.
         But now the bell strikes one, strikes one,

         Strikes one—monotonous and tired.

         Or clicks like a sad valise.

    2. Note to Be Left on the Table
    This ghost of yours, padding about the upper halls,   
    Given to fright-wigs Burbage might have worn,   
    Moaning in doorways, jumping out at maids,   
    Has not convinced me even yet. Can this be you?   
    Your life was frightening enough, but this   
    Poor pallid counterpart who fuddles in its role   
    Is inexcusable. Go haunt the houses of the girls   
    You once infected, or the men who bore   
    Your company far oftener than I; annoy the others   
    For a change. Is this, my house, the medieval hell
    You took to at the grave’s edge, years ago,
    After a dozen other hells had burned themselves away,   
    Or are we purgatory here? If not,
    You make it one. I give you until noon.

3.
Ruined travelers in sad trousseaux
Roost on my doorstep, indolent and worn.   
Not one of them fulfills despised Rousseau’s   
Predictions. Perhaps they are waiting to be born.   
If so, the spot’s been badly chosen.
This is a site for posthumous investigations,   
Pillows stuffed with nettles, charnal notions:   
Apoplectic executioners, bungled incisions.   
Indeed, our solitary midwife fondles the hemlock.

We welcomed one poor hackneyed Christ,
Sad bastard, croaking of pestilence. The basement
Holds him now. He has not as yet arisen.
The tickets are ready; the line forms on the right.
Justice and virtue, you will find, have been amazingly preserved.

         4.
         As water from a dwindling reservoir
         Uncovers mossy stones, new banks of silt,
         So every minute that I spend with you reveals   
         New flaws, new features, new intangibles.   
         We have been sitting here for hours—
         “I spent that summer in Madrid,
         The winter on the coast of France—
         The Millotsons were there, and Farnsworth.
         My work has perished with the rest
         Of Europe, gone, all gone. We will not see the end.”

         You said goodbye, and your perfume   
         Lingered for hours. At first it seemed
         Like summer dying there, then rank and sharp.

         And yet I did not air the room.

      5.
      Among Victorian beadwork and the smell of plush,   
      The owls, stuffed and marvelously sinister,
      Glare from dark corners, waiting for the night.   
      High up, the moose’s passive eyes explore
      Candles, unlit, within cut-glass. A door
      Is opened, and you enter with a look
      You might have saved for Pliny or the Pope.

      The furniture has shrunk now thirty years
      Have passed (with talent thinning out, and words   
      Gone dead), and mouths of friends in photographs   
      Display their hopeful and outmoded smiles.   
      You counted on at least a sputter of nostalgia,   
      However fretful. That was a mistake. Even the moose   
      Regards you with a tired, uncomprehending stare.

         6.
         Signboards commemorate their resting place.   
         The graveless of another century
         Came and were conquered; now their bones   
         Are dust where idiot highways run.
         Land in their eyes, unquiet ancestors
         (On fences yellow signs clang in the wind)
         Unstirred by suns drying the brown weeds   
         Above them now in parched and caking land.

         But when they speak of you, they feel the need   
         Of voices polished and revised by history,   
         The martial note, words framed in capitals.

         It is good to be deaf in a deafening time   
         With the sky gone colorless, while the dead   
         Thunder breaks, a cracked dish, out of the mind.

      7.
      The eye no longer single: where the bowl,
      Dead in the thickened darkness, swelled with light,   
      Transformed the images and moved the artist’s hand,   
      Becomes a framework for our mania.

      And haunts the stairway. Friends depart,   
      Taking their last look from the roof,   
      Saying goodnight and carrying their view   
      Of grapes the model ate in Paris years ago.

      Blue in the morning, green some afternoons;   
      The night, ambiguous, forgets the signature.

      The dust in attics settled and his stove
      Grew cold. About the model nothing much is known.

      It ends the wall and complements the view   
      Of chimneys. And it hides a stain.

         8.
         And when your beauty, washed away   
         In impure streams with my desire,
         Is only topic for ill-mannered minds,
         Gifted and glassy with exact recall,
         Gossip and rancid footnotes, or remote despair,   
         Let ruined weather perish in the streets   
         And let the world’s black lying flag come down.

         Only in calendars that mark no Spring
         Can there be weather in the mind
         That moves to you again as you are now:
         Tired after love and silent in this house,
         Your back turned to me, quite alone,
         Standing with one hand raised to smooth your hair,   
         At a small window, green with rain.




6 comments:

  1. Benefit of the doubt for HRC: My guess is those speeches are the property of G-S & whomever paid $$ for them, just as emails are now p'ty of Dept. of State. That's, granted, a legal technicality, not a political argument, but I was trained as a lawyer. One other point: every former Sec'y of State gets massive speech honoraria. Does it create indebtedness? Can't say. Does it ensure access? Probably. That is all.

    BTW: I hope you didn't lose music. I lost a shit ton once b/c iPad couldn't be read any longer by updated OS/iTunes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was able to download the photos without committing to updating iTunes, plus my music on on an iPod, the biggest there storage space they sell, so I think I'm safe if I every need update (and house music on my iPhone).

      Everything Clinton has done her entire life was with an eye to running for president. That's no doubt true of EVERYONE who has ever run for president. Why deny that to justify taking blood money from vampire oligarchs? It perfectly captures why Clinton sparks visceral antipathy towards her - at least in my case. When Bill opens his mouth to talk, same. Just say I'm a power hungry monster with an unquenchable thirst for money who will support liberal social issues to keep the herd American left pacified while serving the evil economic agenda of my Triskelion overlords. I'd still hate the Clintons, but I'd credit them at least this once with honesty.

      Delete

    2. Everything Clinton has done her entire life was with an eye to running for president. That's no doubt true of EVERYONE who has ever run for president.


      2 quibbles -

      re entire life - from a psychosocial developmental perspective, presidential aspiration syndrome, i suggest, could have its onset at various ages - during latency, adolescence, young adulthood, or possibly even later, depending on how inner urges interact with outer social circumstances

      re everything x has done - people are not so self-consistent - they are large, they contain multitudes, as the poet has said

      Delete
  2. debate last night

    Now Bernie gets a nationwide boost in poll which shows him almost neck-and-neck with Hillary and able to beat Trump in a match-up

    Hillary Clinton has lost her 31-point edge nationally, now only besting Bernie Sanders by 2-points
    Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would win against Donald Trump, but Sanders would beat the billionaire by double-digits
    Marco Rubio and Bernie Sanders are viewed the most positively by voters across the country

    By Nikki Schwab, U.s. Political Reporter For Dailymail.com In Portsmouth, New Hampshire

    Published: 11:32 EST, 5 February 2016 | Updated: 13:17 EST, 5 February 2016

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3433767/Now-Bernie-gets-nationwide-boost-poll-shows-neck-neck-Hillary-able-beat-Trump-match-up.html#ixzz3zKK4oPV2

    ReplyDelete
  3. Little Lloyd of the Many Homes allows the Peasantry to take a brief pause in their labors to consider how Wise and Good he is.

    http://beforenine.blogspot.com/2009/11/goldman-sachs-thanksgiving.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. speaking of POTUS16 - as i may have mentioned before, noam chomsky and i spent many hours together back in the 1960s - i took his course 'intellectuals and social change' - i got an A - actually, all of us got A's

    i saw a recent interview with him in which he said bernie sanders is not really a socialist - he's a new dealer (not that there's anything wrong with that, as chomsky sort of implied but did not say in so many words)

    the interviewer brought up hillary, and whether it would be worth the trouble to vote for her instead of the republican candidate, and noam said yes, it would - small differences, multiplied by enormous power, lead to important consequences for many people

    in states where the outcome is in doubt, in other words, noam said, it was worthwhile to practice "less evilism" in the voting booth - not voting for the democrat is, in effect, voting for the republican

    it was not noam, nor bernie, but irving berlin (who was born in siberia, by the way, not germany, as one might have inferred from his adopted surname - the circumstances of his family's emigration, while by no means unique, are worth reading about in wikipedia) who wrote this line, which i have slightly adapted and often think on - perhaps even more often than hillary thinks on the importance of keeping an attitude of gratitude, as she stated earlier this week in response to a rabbi bringing up simcha bunam's 'two pockets' saying, although i am not in a position to know hillary's heart , naturally - 'may the Creative Forces of the Universe stand beside us, and guide us, through the Night with the Light from Above' - metaphorically speaking, of course

    ReplyDelete