Wednesday, June 15, 2016

The Clerk Stacking Cans of Carrots in the Night











  • You know what? I bet a pint that neither Trump or Clinton are on the November ballot.
  • Here, haikus

Trump's done he's aiming
for relegation many
huge his terms only

but Clinton's Putin's
puppet* It's a fucking Bush
Biden election
-

* News breaks as I write
   Russians hacked Clinton's
   email/DNC


  • The former will jump, the latter will be pushed.
  • GOP elite and Trump.
  • My governor is a motherfucking liar re: Trump. My motherfucking governor rallies his white support by shitting on Baltimore, the fuck.
  • Delusion at the gastropub. On food and food politics.
  • On Bruce Jay Friedman.
  • Invisible Priest: Wallace Stevens and contemporary American poetry.
  • Jim has asked me for help finding happy poems, I don't know any motherfucking happy poems, but I did remember Jane Kenyon's heartbreaking *Happiness,* posted below (and here many times before), it makes me cry every time.
  • Nilsson born seventy-five years ago today.







HAPPINESS

Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.




5 comments:

  1. "4711" is a brand of Klönischwasser made famous (aber natürlich) in Cologne since 1799 by the firm of Mäurer & Wirtz -- though who knows which titanic, octopoidal global corporation ultimately owns them now. It has a pleasant odor, nothing like the standard men's aftershaves; my grandfather used it, and so do I.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I kid you not when I say that I saw a container of just this brand of Klönischwasser right around the corner last Sunday at the flea market, which I wouldn't mention if I'd recalled having ever seen it before.

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the poem! (and the effort)
    We have a saying around here (possibly stolen from B. Kliban): "cats see things people don't" That's one of my favorite cat pics you've posted.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haikus!

    T's'come to my 'tention
    you're not paying attention
    t'th'way you space the cans

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stacking cans in space,
    spaghetti-o's and grace;
    nights are long here.

    Burma Shave.

    ReplyDelete