Wednesday, November 27, 2019

In the Past That Might Have Meant an Important Conversation



  • Obamapostasy yet? I said to my disenchanted Democratic stalwart friend at impromptu Tuesday Night Pints and she said yes, he'd, she said, campaign for Trump against Bernie wouldn't he.
  • If you don't want to our overlords freaking the fuck out when Bernie is up by 20 on November 1 2020 the fuck is wrong with you.
  • Trump is crackerbait, I said, Obama is the motherfucking enemy










THE YEAR BEFORE THE ELECTION

Stephen Dunn

It was a time when all the poets
seemed to be dying, my favorites
and a few I couldn’t bear.
I folded back everything I knew
into everything I thought I knew
until I was a man living in a world
of his own crazy postponements.
The weather there was calm,
then tempestuous, then calm again,
an inner weather I felt at the mercy of.
A good friend dropped out of my life
without explanation, wouldn’t answer
my letters or phone calls. A woman
wrote to me saying she was sorry;
I had no idea who she was.
Only a few of the now-dead poets
committed suicide, or drank themselves
into oblivion. Their deaths were blamed
on natural causes. What could be stranger?
A prolonged silence began. In the past
that might have meant an important conversation
was about to occur. It had, I was told,
but hardly any of us were ready to hear it.

2 comments:

  1. on this thanksgiving eve i am grateful for the chance to comment here, and that even though there is no new cat photo there is a colourful graphic referring to the stencilocene

    i am grateful for the visit of my niece in law and the nephew in law in law and their young son - it has motivated me to throw out the 25 year old printer that hasn't worked for five years, and to aggregate all the 'forever' stamps we have - at our current rate of sending things by snailmail our collection will outlast our consumption of it even if we live in this country for the rest of our lives

    i am grateful i still hope that spouse and self might not live in this country for the rest of our lives - i have sent in all the documents asked for by the canadian department of citizenship paperwork and will probably have a decision from them in about five months on whether i have inherited the canadian citizenship that my father renounced before i was born, and which in fact he never had - his u.s. naturalization certificate said he was previously 'british' - canadian citizenship as a legal construct did not exist until after world war ii

    if this 'as if' citizenship does devolve to me then i will be grateful to have the chance to move to someplace which is, in my view, more humane and reasonable, although colder and more expensive - on balance i think spouse and self would be better off

    last, and perhaps least - i am grateful that before i connected the new cd player component to the stereo system that i tried to make the old one work again, and it did, and it was easy to return the new one to amazon by just sealing up the box and taking it to kohl's - actually amazon said i didn't even need to pack it, i could just take it to kohl's and THEY would pack it - all for no additional charge as part of my prime membership - amazon may cripple some of its workers, but on balance it seems that I'M better off

    may the creative forces of the universe smile in the general direction of all who read these words - and especially those who go on to read the story about caroline dye, thanksgiving, and mistah charley at

    http://www.conjuredoctors.com/aunt-caroline-dye-the-gypsy-in-st-louis-blues.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete