That Time May Find Its Sound Again, and Cleanse Whatever It Is That a Wound Remembers After the Healing Ends

• That's Teddy, rescued by Rob and who rescued Rob. Click that link, yo.
• Today's Saturday, a good day to be rescued by a cat or dog that needs rescuing. 
• UPDATE! We saw two rescue pitbulls on hike today, including a beautiful pink/brown one year old male on his first hike with his lucky human. Once the old cats pass, once one of us retires.....
• Ol' Dirty Bama's Catzilla be end of days.
• Be Kind, my motherfuckers. Even to humans who aren't loved ones.
• I haven't done this in a while, but send me your cat's photo. Or not.
• Rest in Peace, Ed Griffin, a good guy, an unofficial uncle of Earthgirl, husband of Jane, Earthgirl's unofficial aunt and lifelong bestfriend of Earthgirl's mom Joan. 
• Ed and Jane's daughter kept an open house for neighborhood ferals in the Griffin basement: our liked-but-not-loved Jess and our beloved Fleabus! were rescued from that colony the two times MOCO Animal Control showed up to thin the herd because of neighbors' complaints. 
• Once upon a time every post at this shitty blog had a Fleabus photo. Click Ask Fleabus.
• Serendipity be Blessed. Uncanny, too.

SMALL PRAYER

Weldon Kees

Change, move, dead clock, that this fresh day
May break with dazzling light to these sick eyes.
Burn, glare, old sun, so long unseen,
That time may find its sound again, and cleanse
Whatever it is that a wound remembers
After the healing ends.

Pierre Henry, Rest in Peace

• Rest in Peace, Pierre Henry.
• I was playing the Psyche Rock at my desk this morning and the Striker overheard the piece and told me, O! that's the theme song to Futurama, a TV show I've never seen but was highly recommended (if I remember correctly) by Mr Alarum. If it wasn't Mr Alarum in was Omar. Now that I think about it, it might have been both but I'm thinking it was Omar, who the Striker and Mr Alarum never met. I had no idea Psyche Rock is the theme song to a TV show. I don't watch TV, as I no doubt told Mr Alarum and/or Omar. It's a shame Mr Alarum and Omar never met, they'd have been friends. I love the piece for the bells, Henry loved bells, I love bells. Lots. I love Herny's music for all the noise, his and all his influenced.
• I am not allowed to play most of Henry's music on my iPod when Earthgirl is in the car.
• Fabio's playlist from yesterday.
• RIP, Pierre Henry.
• RIP. Pierre Henry.
• More links when I find them, more pieces in next post. Or not.

Meekly But Loyally Exploding the Oath of Circles

• The End of "Capitalist Realism?"
• Going back is the new going forward?
• Austerity and crisis?
• Race to the bottom?
• The rise of private government?
• Reasons for Corbyn?
• The Limits of Resistance?
• In the long run we're all dead?
• The handmaid of nativism is amnesia?
• Battle of the Brands?
• Hollywood promotes war for CIA/NSA?
• Self-subordinated and deeply confused?
• The Rise of the Internet's Dirtbag Left?
• Who wants to be  Liberal anymore?
• The Hillarium will never fuck off to the sea. 
• What replaces discourse?
• Stanley w Olive's paw?

• Above by Planet.
• Far above, me, recent. Seemed pertinent. Broke promise to self.
• I will say this about the Dirtbag Left - when I have initiated contact with My Dirtbag Left Overlords via tweeter, usually to either acknowledge an allusion one made or to make one I hope s/he gets, the Dirtbag Left Overlord usually graciously replies.
• We should be together.
• The Blog Days of Summer bring out the moribund and dead.
• Paleo 101, my dear Old Dirty Bama, was that you on my statcounter?
• Summer is forgotten digibuds blogroll crawling to see who's still alive.
• The bitter fish phish.
• Not here, but in Twooterville, a friend reappears and the wars start anew.
• We should be together.
• Some remember to tread water, remember treading water, fuck themselves off to the sea again.
• The trouble with reading James Tate is he hijacks my writing (more than, at this moment, Ashbery or Ammons), so haikus still yes, not meter exactly in others but....

CRYPTOZOA

James Tate

I wish the stone lady would come to me.
Parakeet or no parakeet
the night is a vial of lighterfluid.
And I have been good, composing the perishable song
of my childhood: one dollar, one frond
meekly but loyally exploding the oath of circles.
I have been the best wound a diamond ever knew.

But what can I do for you? Write an encyclopedia
to which the least gnat could gain entrance?
I love you and I do not love you, perambulating utensils,
street names. An old man is giving mirrors
to a young girl. The meek have inherited the flypaper.
The past is more present than this moment.
I am drinking at a spring, my skin
is red and white. A little burning sensation,
a little joy I leave forever.

Oh well, I keep singing: I sing the song
of utensils, and there is one of street names,
and one of the names of dead pets.
The next day I am giving mirrors to a young girl.
I give free shoes for life to a stone lady.
She walks on air, she walks near the earth
in a region called the cryptosphere.

The Sudden Pressure to Act Normal Was Killing Me

  

• A Day at the Beach.
• Last year's most annoying every fucking half-inning commercial on Nat's radio was Budweiser's Brewed the Hard Way, Not the Easy Way. 
• This year's every fucking half-inning Budweiser commercial on Nat's radio climaxes with, When We Stop Calling Ourselves a Start-Up Cause We're Not a Start-Up Anymore! 
• The giant European beverage conglomerate swiveled from patriotism to capitalism to move product.
• USA! USA! USA!
• This year's most annoying every fucking half-inning commercial on Nat's radio is Innova Health Care's That tingling in your heart might be love BUT YOU'RE DYING MOST LIKELY! come get a heart scan, concerned female voice over a bed of treacly, tinkling, melodramatic piano.
• The Return of the Repressed.
• People who have freaked at Trump (w this comment by one BLCKDGRD: it's the relentless feminization as mode of attack - all sides do it http://bostonreview.net/politics-gender-sexuality/bonnie-honig-he-said-he-said-feminization-james-comey - and then the blind horror when it's done to one's own that's old, tired, and will never stop. One thing different about Trump than his predecessors - he hurls insults back (and sometimes first). Then those who hurled at him whinge about decorum. Life in the Assholocene - too many people are enjoying it, though too few of those will admit it.
• WTF? The future of the Democratic Party?
• July 4th, 1899 in Pynchon's Against the Day.
• Cringe-worthy poets?
• Post title taken from today's poem (James Tate's Bounden Duty) linked here since (Poetry Foundation has completely revamped their website, is nice, but...) I want to Galaxie 500 bracket the post.

Here We Are, on Top of the Utopian Arc

• I dreamt that last night (wrote it five years ago); a friend's double-death watch reminded me of one of ours.
• So yes, this is a bleggalgaze.
• The colonial logic of Grenfell.
• Mud-wrestling pigeon seeks chess-playing pig.
• How's that for commenting - of sorts - on Trump's wrestling gif and Christie's private beach?
• Bump again: the rise of the thought leader.
• If only someone who used to post his shitty poems on his shitty blog had been yodeling that politics is professional wrestling his entire conscious political life.
• Reminder: Every other word out of HRC's mouth during campaign was not SCOTUS or DOJ - that would have broke kayfabe.
• When A Giant Dog covers Sparks:

• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Something is happening.
• On Milosz' new biography (h/t Hamster).
• Alan Vega.
• The slow secret death of the six-string electric guitar.
• Listen to new Broken Social Scene! Is OK if not kaboom (after two listens).
• There is recent stuff in tablet, colors and washes. With luck and jinxes, this takes care of the occasional urge to put these here. And there.

IN THE STREET

Mary Jo Bang

Here we are, on top of the utopian arc. The water is shallow. An oil spill shimmers on the surface like a lens catches light and folds it in front of a mirror. If someone stands next to you, they are there, even when outside the picture. Which makes total obscurity relative to luck and such. Unlike the law, architecture lasts. A façade, like an ideal, can be oppressive unless balanced by a balcony on which you can stand and call down to those in the street, Come over here and look up at us. Aren’t we exactly what you wanted to believe in?

Should We Negotiate Life and Death at a Round Table or a Square One, or: Born Ninety-Four Years Ago Today

CHILDREN OF OUR ERA

Wisława Szymborska
Translated by Joanna Trzecia
      
We are children of our era;
our era is political.

All affairs, day and night,
yours, ours, theirs,
are political affairs.

Like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political cast,
your eyes a political aspect.

What you say has a resonance;
what you are silent about is telling.
Either way, it's political.
 
Even when you head for the hills
you're taking political steps
on political ground.

Even apolitical poems are political,
and above us shines the moon,
by now no longer lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Question? What question? Dear, here's a suggestion:
a political question.

You don't even have to be a human being
to gain political significance.
Crude oil will do,
or concentrated feed, or any raw material.

Or even a conference table whose shape
was disputed for months:
should we negotiate life and death
at a round table or a square one?
Meanwhile people were dying,
animals perishing,
houses burning,
and fields growing wild,
 just as in times most remote
and less political.


   
ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

___

More below the fold.