All Their Kissy Little Knives

  

• Forgive my new tic, but I am telling you three times (hit me up for Vollmann's Dying Grass): we're being reprogrammed pragmatically for realistic life in the Assholocene.
• Goons.
• Goons. 
• Goons and an old joke.
• The Return of the Repressed.
• Bauman on being outside.
• Ailes is a symptom, not the disease.
• Eigengrau.
• Incredible sorcery ≠ credible sources.
• Crimes and misdemeanors.
• Yes, the Stroke Walking post bombed. I like Sparks. I love Richard Youngs.

  

  
   

• This is how small I am: after the post about Landru's phone call with a DC United ticket agent and the death of LOUD SIDE! I emailed United. I emailed United from a different email than they had on file, on purpose. I never revealed my name - if you want to know it's at the bottom of this shitty blog. I pretended interest in joining Screaming Eagles.
• Landru, in comments, said that when he asked the ticket agent who had called where Supporters Clubs would go in the new stadium the ticket agent tried to sell the wonders of end-zone seating but would not definitively confirm the death of LOUD SIDE! 
• Here's what the ticket agent emailed back: I wanted to follow up on the email you sent us regarding memberships with the Screaming Eagles. I'm happy to help you out in any way possible. To answer your question, our Suppoter Section will be located directly behind the net in Audi Field.
• Audi bought naming and branding rights to new stadium.
• Of course I forwarded the email to Landru and he can vouch I typed exactly what ticket agent typed me.
• When new stadium ground was broke at Buzzard Point video was shot of Screaming Eagle leaders doing ritual spitting against Metros. 
• For all I know most in the Supporters Clubs are realistic, pragmatic, fine and down with it. 
• One thing great about long-timing in a section: every year is different same.
• I never joined a Supporters Club - I don't join any clubs but our secret one here - I wanted interactive tribalism without tainting my independence by club dues and tailgating.
• Why would you go to your club's game and not stand?
• I bet there are some in Barra who were disgusted on Day One of United they weren't in an end-zone curve as all great Supporters Clubs are.
• I'm glad DC United stays in DC for United fans' sake.
• Landru has promised to consider an effort - hey, you too, SeatSix - to go to one more Saturday night game at RFK. I'm curious who's still there in 232, on up and down ramps between circles, in line for a pint.
• United could not survive at RFK, may thrive in new stadium.
• They play in a league with 73 teams, 59 get into the playoffs. 
• There's quitting, quitting quitting, quitting quitting quitting infinity.
• Not anger, at last. I was am and will be a fool.

   
 


SLANDER

Franz Wright

I can just hear them

on the telephone and keening

all their kissy little knives

 

or voraciously taking turns

nursing a lie

still in its early white whisperhood

 

and I could do something

bad back to them

someday, I guess—

 

but why

 

Exclusion doesn’t hurt

that much, in fact

 

I’ve visited the stars on foot

 

Come disdain of the dreamhand for grammar

and fame, this Boston’s

gothic chilly April

night (new leaves the color

of her eyes) beloved

booknight real

real world, oh

prasini arachnid

s'agapo

 

Light green eyes dusk distant

tolling now fading

to heartscar

which says

 

I was loved, always

loved

 

And then they wounded me

so usefully—

  

When the Stroke Came, Every Bottle Winked at Its Neighbor

• These three songs been sitting in draft for a week. I just listened to them again, here.
• Forgive me, I enjoy the latest trumpster-fire episodes.
• What do you do with Trump when his usefulness ends and they tell him get out? He serves at Triskelion pleasure. He can't be let loose to talk into microphones, give speeches, form a party.
• Trump's usefulness has many days ahead. 
• Kayfabe is still Kayfabe even broken, soon enough. Those flashes get appropriated almost instantaneously, almost, but were yours once, are still, are stale to all but you.
• When over, poof, stroke - he is a stroke walking. Our nation mourns.
• (Even if they don't off him, I am telling you three times: he is a stroke walking.)
• When he does have a stroke and is disappeared, no one will believe it's a stroke.
• As my avatar's nemesis 86 says: The old bring in the old white square-headed jowly Corporate grandpa as Neutral Observer Trick. Fell for it twice this week.
• Kayfabe WILL be reestablished, session by session.

BOTTLES IN THE BOMBED CITY

Les Murray

They gave the city a stroke. Its memories

are cordoned off. They could collapse on you.

Water leaks into bricks of the Workers’ century   

and every meaning is blurred. No word in Roget

now squares with another. If the word is Manchester

it may be Australia, where that means sheets and towels.

To give the city a stroke, they mixed a lorryload

of henbane and meadowsweet oil and countrified her.

Now Engels supports Max, and the British Union   

of beautiful ceramics is being shovelled up,

blue-green tiles of the Corn Exchange,

umber gloss bricks of the Royal Midlands Hotel.

Unmelting ice everywhere, and loosened molecules.

When the stroke came, every bottle winked at its neighbour.

Seventy-One Today, Eighty-Eight Today, United Yesterday

My Fripp story, posted every Fripp birthday, today being his 71st: Fripp had a touring workshop called Guitar Craft and a performing ensemble, The League of Crafty Guitarists. A bunch of us (Elric, you were there, yes?) got in Phavid Dillips lime-green VW van and drove to an old yellow mansion in West Virginia, not far, past Harpers Ferry, up near Shepardstown. Phavid, who we thought an excellent guitarist - or at least the best guitarist we smoked dope with regularly - had been invited to sit in a circle of other guitarists with Robert Fripp leading the workshop. Incredibly cool actually. Guests were invited to sit in the circle; guess who refused. Afterward, going out for a smoke, I ran into Fripp on a porch and apologized. He asked me why I didn't sit in the circle. I said I didn't want to. He said, then you've nothing to apologize for, and shook my hand.

• Bowie May 14th, Eno May 15th, Fripp May 16th, blessed be Serendipity.
• There's one other run like this, end of July.
• Saturday night I was spinning channels for weather and whether and landed on a DC United game at RFK. When the camera scanned up LOUD SIDE! just a bit I could see Section 232, Row 10, Seats 4, 5, and 6, Landru's, mine, SeatSix's for years. 
• LOUD SIDE!'s diminished. I mean, damn, it was only five minutes of one game for the first time in two years, but damn, those seats are still orange.
• We abandoned each for our own reasons, but shared was the conviction that United would (a) not invest in a quality team until and unless a new stadium, and (b) there never would BE a new stadium* and the team would move, but (c) if there was a new stadium there would be no more LOUD SIDE! and if I'm paying for cheezy tribal chills there had better be a LOUD SIDE!
• *Me the LOUDEST! promising a Fuck-Me-Jig, a bet, looking back now, stupidly wagered, not for the jig but because I'd never go to new stadium for the reason cited above.
• United's ticket agents no longer call me - I politely asked them to stop - but Serendipitously called a friend yesterday trying to lure him back. Friend told the agent of his concerns for LOUD SIDE! what happens to the Supporters Clubs, and shazam, as predicted, they are going to an end-zone. I assume the other end-zone is for long-time season ticket holders of modest disposable income with damn fine sideline seats at RFK. I'm guessing prices double or triple for equivalent of Section 232, Row 10, seats 4, 5, & 6.
• UPDATE! Landru doxxes himself in comments, reports much more at length about his conversation with the DCU ticket agent. 
• 2010 was United's worse season. RFK was a hoot. Best cheezy tribal chills of all seasons.
• I first made the Fuck-Me-Jig bet back in 2004. That same year I canvassed for John Kerry in Harrisburg, so har-har me.
• I never tailgated, I understand why folks dig it, and Supporters Clubs means tailgating. NO PLACE TO TAILGATE AT THE NEW STADIUM.
• No one asks me anymore how I separate my politics and my soccer. Or something like that.
• 
  
• May is the birthdayiest month in the Egoslavian calendar.
• It occurs to me I haven't posted recent youtubes of poets reading their poems out loud. I don't want them to read to me out loud. I want to read the poem out loud to me. 
• Though hearing a poet read a line out loud rhythmically different than how I read it out loud fascinates me, always has, I struggle not to make it a fine metaphor abounding.
• Today is Adrienne Rich's birthday, she was born eighty-eight years ago today.

  
BALLADE OF THE POVERTIES

Adrienne Rich

There’s the poverty of the cockroach kingdom and the rusted toilet bowl
The poverty of to steal food for the first time
The poverty of to mouth a penis for a paycheck
The poverty of sweet charity ladling
Soup for the poor who must always be there for that
There’s the poverty of theory poverty of the swollen belly shamed
Poverty of the diploma mill the ballot that goes nowhere
Princes of predation let me tell you
There are poverties and there are poverties

There’s the poverty of cheap luggage bursted open at immigration
The poverty of the turned head, the averted eyes
The poverty of bored sex of tormented sex
The poverty of the bounced check the poverty of the dumpster dive
The poverty of the pawned horn the poverty of the smashed reading glasses
The poverty pushing the sheeted gurney the poverty cleaning up the puke
The poverty of the pavement artist the poverty passed-out on pavement
Princes of finance you who have not lain there
There are poverties and there are poverties

There is the poverty of hand-to-mouth and door-to-door
And the poverty of stories patched-up to sell there
There’s the poverty of the child thumbing the Interstate
And the poverty of the bride enlisting for war
There’s the poverty of prescriptions who can afford
And the poverty of how would you ever end it
There is the poverty of stones fisted in pocket
And the poverty of the village bulldozed to rubble
Princes of weaponry who have not ever tasted war
There are poverties and there are poverties

There’s the poverty of wages wired for the funeral you
Can’t get to the poverty of the salary cut
There’s the poverty of human labor offered silently on the curb
The poverty of the no-contact prison visit
There’s the poverty of yard sale scrapings spread
And rejected the poverty of eviction, wedding bed out on street
Prince let me tell you who will never learn through words
There are poverties and there are poverties

You who travel by private jet like a housefly
Buzzing with the other flies of plundered poverties
Princes and courtiers who will never learn through words
Here’s a mirror you can look into: take it: it’s yours.

Dog Ran at Them Barking, or: Sixty-Nine Today

• Eno is 69 today.
• May is the birthdayiest month in Egoslavia.
• Serendipitous, as May is the shittiest month of the year at work, like I need help to Dark.
• A Parliament of Owls. As in, about owls.
• Josipovici, for those of you who do.
• Matryoshki: Eggs o'Jesus.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Byrne's birthday yesterday + Eno's today =

A COMMON MISPERCEPTION

Carol Potter

It's quiet like that. Bucolic.
Looks like nothing's going wrong anywhere at all.
Bare trees rocking back and forth. Three crows
chasing an owl across the field into the woods.
Yesterday, men appeared at the top of the drive—
rifles, orange vests, big boots, at the same moment
dog ran at them barking and a 350 ton C-5 Air Force
cargo plane grazed us all. Its 200 foot wingspan at tree top,
the noise of it making each of us hold his or her
breath for a moment. Dog didn't bite the men.
Men didn't shoot dog; plane didn't crash.
Of course they were puzzled by the woman shouting
from the doorway of the house.
 
*

I wasn't shouting. I was swearing. At dog. At men
with rifles. Cargo planes. Forest. One week after
San Bernardino. The inexplicable mother and father.
It gets confusing. Which was which. When and where.
We heard the shots. Saw someone fall. The plane.
Boots on the ground. Dog barking.
One thing blending to another. Linkage disequilibrium, yes.
Something vestigial in us all. You might be the enemy
you were fighting from the air. What you know
might be useful information if you could shake your own self
down. Could remember what country you came from. What
language you were taught to speak. If you were the men
in the plane or the men the plane had come to take.
If you were the plane or if you were the bolts
on that plane or simply a passenger. What feeds us. What
we feed on. The men faded back into the woods. The plane
disappeared. Dog came back into the house.

If That's What You Wanna Do, or: Sixty-Five Today

The tradition Egoslavian David Byrne birthday post:

Was there ▲. I never listen to the Talking Heads any more because I can hear any song I want any time I want in my head, so much were they on my daily soundtrack for a decade. Only other band I saw more live was the Dead - and perhaps Elric can vouch the memory, there were always Talking Head shirts at Dead concerts, Grateful Dead shirts at Head concerts. And if I give no fuck for what Byrne is doing now, his birthday is still an Egoslavian Holy Day.