Sunday, January 17, 2021

& now the strident are strident about all the stridency

Pasteboard MasksI make myself read out loud the whale-killing and especially the whale-harvesting chapters of that effingingly American biblical whale novelMy brother-in-law *yesterday* gave Earthgirl for her birthday last Tuesday mega-million tickets for last Tuesday, surprisingly there were no matching numbers
I love my anger but building silos for them harder than building tunnels for them unless and until I figure out how to set font sizes for them not provided by motherfucking google sheets, I need sixteen for this silo and only have 14 or 18, fine metaphors for my complicity abound, so today this cathole
Eff me, I keep going back to your Frownland
My wife and daughter are both public school art teachers, Earthgirl elementary, Planet senior high. Both want to be back in classrooms, parents want children back in classrooms, outrageous as it where teachers rank on the Save Me chart, if there *is* available vaccine, which there *isn't*, why can't shitlords get it into arms? today in motherfucking rhetorical questions regarding our motherfucking shitlords ignoring you to death as they extract your motherfucking rentsI make myself read out loud the whale-killing (I don't mind the people dying) of the effingly American biblical whale novel and force myself to read the gruesomest parts out loud twice

 


The planet dying faster than we thoughtLiberalism's war on the internet<<<< To make curated pluralism credible as genuine pluralism, the state must not be seen to enforce the curation. The curation must appear to be the natural consequence of reasonable, mature arguments winning out over unreasonable, immature arguments.Better off w/o Trump on twitter, worse off w twitter in chargeWhat would Jesus coup?
Signal is not your friendTwo faces of US empireFascism, fascisation, anti-fascism<< ^^^>> If only someone kept yodeling *it's never policy, it's always decorum*Neoliberalism is fascism with better manners
Hideous strength<<<< The Democrats have always been extraordinarily complacent about the affective pull of such inchoate fascism (let alone their own role in creating the conditions for its rise). In 2016, as Trump delivered his vatic jeremiad of America’s decline, victimisation by other countries, economic devastation at the hands of globalists and of China, immersion in violence and chaos brought by immigrants, and descent into Third World conditions, Obama intervened with cheerful bemusement, insisting that all was not so bad. The ‘birds were chirping and the sun was out’, he said the day after a Trump speech. People were watching their kids play in sports teams and getting ready for the weekend. What could be more innocent, less suggestive of End Times? That Trump’s paranoid and hateful messaging was far more efficiently wired into the emotional world of masses of voters, that it articulated and gave form to real experiences of injury and loss, would shortly become apparent. The birds chirped, the sun came out, the rustbelt died, the wildfires raged, Flint’s water was poisoned, migrants were detained and deported at record levels, real wages continued to flatline, unions were demolished. And Trump was elected.
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SUBURBAN PASTORAL; REJOINDER; ANNIVERSARY; prayer for the young

Rebecca Foust

& now the strident are strident about all the stridency
meta-screeds acid-etching each earthly beauty
into carnal indulgence      even the toyon berries
diploid with raindrops     even the sweet pudding pulp
of the ripest persimmon     even the tang
of eucalyptus in rain     yes there is cancer
caused by factory runoff     & war     & ever
more cancer & war     yes in our rich land
the same people get shot & deported & stay poor
& the earth endlessly burns     yes we have killed
cecil the lion     & wiped out entire species of fish
with the micro-beads in the paste that polishes our teeth
yes the years once lay before us like a banquet
of tulip-shaped glasses stroked to resonance
& singing their million crystalline promises     kept
for one or two nights before the shards got carted away
but may I say     you need not foreswear     everything
need not take up our lament     tear your hair
flail the poor bleeding backs born decades too late
to have caused any of this     somewhere war
followed peace     & will be followed by peace again
somewhere a sad clown-faced lion still paces the veldt
& you will be loved with all the tenderness you crave
a life is a line containing an infinity of points like this one
but none with any specific gravity     the liars
will say this does not apply     O do not listen to them
& their naysaying     may you live long     you young bitter ones
may you live long     & learn to cherish even the blighted hours

2 comments:

  1. speaking of whale-killing - i encountered a buddhist argument once that if you were eating meat - and typically tibetan buddhists do - it was kinder to eat beef than chicken - more nutrition provided per sentient creature slaughtered - evidently this is even more true of whale meat

    i thought rebecca foust's poem sounded quite contemporary and indeed i see it was published in 2020

    a brief c.v. is found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rebecca-foust

    she was born and raised in hollidaysburg, pennsylvania but does not appear on the list of 13 notable people cited in that borough's wikipedia article - of those 13 names, i recognized hedda hopper and harold l. ickes





















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  2. speaking of frownland, i am reminded of the song "smile" by will powers, the stage name of lynn goldsmith

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16-TNPyyKE0

    a computer animation video accompanying the first part of this song [omitting the testimonial of former bag lady wilma fox] is asserted, by our friends at wikipedia, to be in the collection of the museum of modern art

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g43lzoRamWE

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