i would be eight people each inhabiting the others' dreams

I've stopped writing in tablets. I write here still but not to the exclusion of writing there. I've never not wrote there, I take days off here. Nothing written in a tablet for eight days. I was in Montgomery Mall yesterday to get my glasses straightened, just down the upper terrace from store I bought my glasses a tiny pen & ink joint, I instinctively veered in, looked for good new colors of fountain pen ink, this burnt pink is excellent, twenty-five fucking dollars, I.... haven't written in tablets for eight days, nine by the time you read this. I'm more fascinated it took me eight days to notice I hadn't written in tablet in eight days than fascinated I haven't written in tablet in eight days.

• I've always suffered reading slumps but I've never suffered one of such glut. I am 2/3rds through and stalled on twelve and counting novels. The latest, Rachel Cusk's Outline followed the same pattern as all the others: This Will Save Me! what? fuck me. The twelve include three of my bibles. Fuck them.
• Poems still work, though I can't read more than one poem by one poet at a time.
• If music ever stops working I'm doomed.
• The Last Days in Aleppo.
• The burnt pink ink looked excellent. I didn't buy it. Victories where you can find them.
• Bannon hearts Moldberg. Of course he does.
• AmRen and suits & ties.
• How Democrats made DeVos possible.
• Eraducation. DeVos sucking doesn't mean education doesn't need fixing.
• Trump and the Resistance.
• Avoid eye contact.
• On Tom Raworth, I Serendipitously posted one his poems yesterday.
• Serendipitously, Raworth died  two days before I posted his poem, which means I actually added the poem to the post on the day he died. The fuck?
• Serendipity giveth and taketh away, but always be Blessed.

YOU RUINED MY EVENING / YOU RUINED MY LIFE

Tom Raworth

i would be eight people and then the difficulties vanish

only as one i contain the complications

in a warm house roofed with the rib-cage of an elephant

i pass my grey mornings re-running the reels

and the images are the same but the emphasis shifts

the actors bow gently to me and i envy them

their repeated parts, their constant presence in that world

i would be eight people each inhabiting the others’ dreams

walking through corridors of glass framed pages

telling each other the final lines of letters

picking fruit in one dream and storing it in another

only as one i contain the complications

and the images are the same, their constant presence in that world

the actors bow gently to me and envy my grey mornings
      

i would be eight people with the rib-cage of an elephant

picking fruit in a warm house above actors bowing

re-running the reels of my presence in this world

the difficulties vanish and the images are the same

eight people, glass corridors, page lines repeated

inhabiting grey mornings roofed with my complications

only as one walking gently storing my dream

grinding to fill a prescription

• Any one else find it strange that the Shitgibbon Shitstorm didn't shitstorm?
• Major League Baseball to experiment w starting extra innings w a runner on 2nd base.
• My damns, the ones I give, the ones I don't, some of them migrate between the two to my worrisome amusement. My local baseball team is owned by ogres even by oligarchal standards but the PxP local radio team is a tonic, the best broadcast I've ever. I'm curious to check my damn.
• I'm guessing they'll suck the damn out of me: it's gonna be a plodding 83 win season. This team had a window and it is called Last Year.
• I was indoctrinated to think damns must be held. That not giving a damn is akin to moral failure, a sin.
• I hope I will always have enough of a damn to say, Fuck the DH.
• But the Shitgibbon Shitstorm: someone got to Trump and talked him down from responding and/or took the phone from him. Last time Trump was banned Twaater it was 72 hours before he won POTUS. I'd have thought loofa-faced too much temptation.... 

   

• Some bad materialisms.
• Against Normalization: What I want to suggest is an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought. It’s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media. And they’re not joking. If you’d received the threatening words and pictures I did during the campaign (one Tweet simply read “I gas Jews”), as did so many Jewish reporters and people of color, the sick bloodthirsty lust to terrify is unmistakably sincere.
• Political discourse in the time of Trump.
• A short history of the Trump family.
• Two blind rescue cats play. (h/t Hamster!)
• Lambchop LIVE! Sept 8, 2016! I know I'm a biased Lambchop fanboy, but this is motherfucking gorgeous.
• Lawrence English has new music.

BEAUTIFUL HABIT

Tom Raworth

greetings

as the door opened

ticking

please listen to this

food alone for all

the f.b.i. will continue

maybe you dozed off

i hung by that phone all night

suppose he talks

*

vida

later

aria

*

once upon a time

not looking for any thing

*

you’re on

your own

it’s off

it’s on

*

perhaps it means

ragged like that

golda my-yeer

         pre-meer

*

and pour the old box

down a drain

*

too  much news

said the news

*

r e  o l e

*

it’s us

or rust

listener

*

deep

personal

regret

looking

up

monday

*

we can save

your head or your body

we can shave

*

even

his admission

is

a subtle lie

*

in suspense

what is cut into

the smallest of the

*

grinding

to fill

a prescription

*

drum to the wobble and a roll on the sea

come to mind an article of light

distance through distance unfinished

*

piano

*

willing to believe

*

national

anthem

hearer

*

 

perfect rhyme to some

all cars

kept in doors

*

sophisticated

newsmen

show how

it could have been

*

retreat

from the swiss

legation

*

numbers

for an event

*

corruption

why not?

*

infinite

detail

is no more real

*

thought

             against

                          power

*

answer

it

*

hooked

to just another

piece of tape

hooked

to just one more

little piece of tape

*

through words in to

no

record

*

writer

righter

riter

*

am:

i

on replay?

*

all you

do is

expand

the system

*

a polaroid

of la

with the wrong

voice print

*

astronaut

amazed

at what

was expected

They Send to Us Exploding Ambassadors of Peace

• Obama is kitesurfing with Richard Branson on Branson's private Caribbean island.
• Important news from Fortune Magazine! Obama won the kitesurfing competition!
• Fucker can go anywhere, he goes to the fucking beach? I hate the fucking beach. People can vouch.
• Mimi on the Beach.
• Echo Beach.
• New Six Organs of Admittance!

1. What would I have me have Obama do?
2. What would I have me bark about it?
3. I did change the post title.
4. The Alley Cats of Istanbul.
5. The Foxes of London.
6. One last Lux for now:

Banishment for the Poet of Pulselessness

• All poems by Thomas Lux, rest in peace.
• On Breezewood.
• In other times.
• Our part in the darkness.
• Kitsch Authoritarianism.
• When it's too late to stop fascism.
• Surrender agency.
• How political fear works.
• The Age of Total Lies.
• History of Green.
• Ed reviews Coover's Huck Out West.  Yes, that Huck.
• I don't want to read it. I love Coover, some more than others. I read Vollmann's Dying Grass, I think about it everyday, I'm not ready to revisit the American genocide for reading pleasure again, it's true.

The Runned-Over Dog You Loved, or: Rest in Peace, Thomas Lux

A LITTLE TOOTH

Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone.  It’s all

over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail.  And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing.  You did, you loved, your feet
are sore.  It’s dusk.  Your daughter’s tall.

*

Damn. More poems HERE.  

*

RENDER, RENDER

Thomas Lux

Boil it down: feet, skin, gristle, 
bones, vertebrae, heart muscle, boil
it down, skim, and boil
again, dreams, history, add them and boil
again, boil and skim
in closed cauldrons, boil your horse, his hooves,
the runned-over dog you loved, the girl
by the pencil sharpener
who looked at you, looked away,
boil that for hours, render it
down, take more from the top as more settles to the bottom,
the heavier, the denser, throw in ache
and sperm, and a bead
of sweat that slid from your armpit to your waist
as you sat stiff-backed before a test, turn up
the fire, boil and skim, boil
some more, add a fever
and the virus that blinded an eye, now’s the time
to add guilt and fear, throw
logs on the fire, coal, gasoline, throw
two goldfish in the pot (their swim bladders
used for “clearing”), boil and boil, render
it down and distill,
concentrate
that for which there is no
other use at all, boil it down, down, 
then stir it with rosewater, that
which is now one dense, fatty, scented red essence
which you smear on your lips
and go forth
to plant as many kisses upon the world
as the world can bear! 
BLUE WITH COLLAPSE

Thomas Lux

The devil’s in my neck.
Everything I hear is overviolined,
even the wind, even the wind.
It’s like walking in nurdles up to my chest,
squeaky and slow.
It’s spring, the blooming branches
nearly hide the many dead ones.
A squirrel, digging for a nut, upends my frail
tomato plant and fails
to replant it, even though he has the tools.
I find this kind of squirrely oblivion everywhere.
I was a man filled to the top
of my spine, filled to the lump
on the back of my head, with hope.
Then I read a few thousand history books.
Little, and nothing, perturbs me now.
Even the beheadings, even the giant meat hooks
in the sky, more frequent each day,
bother me not
a tittle, not a jot.

He Camels His Back to Bear the First Notion of Business

It's the Spurtiest Ickiest Grossest Sloppiest Day of American Nationalist Jerkoffedness in the Mirror of the Year. Fuck you and your helmetball, the finest metaphor abounding.

• John Gray (whose Straw Dogs I am Serendipitously reading right now) on cats.
• H/T friend Barry Astoria who retweeted both the Rousseau bit and the Gray link.
• Olive, above, continues to develop one of the most unique and complex personalities of all the cats I've loved. She's funny.
• Chelsea Clinton's "edgy" political voice. Fuck you and your helmetball.
• Trump's willingness to break kayfabe is his strongest political weapon.
• On the above.
• The Anti-Empire Report #148.
• "Hard Arguments."
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Couplets encoded for Ma.
• Well, this was predictable, the songs, the poem:

FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY CAT JEOFFRY

Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary. 
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel 
            from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. 
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion. 
For he is of the Lord’s poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry!
            poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better. 
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection. 
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the 
            bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.