a commercial promises to reduce plaque more effectively in this same tone

Get Madge off the top of the page, Violence? You're soaking in it! yo, here're mountain laurels last evening at Rachel Carson, one of two best trails in Moco for mountain laurel (the other being Seneca Greenway between Old Seneca and Berryville Roads which we'll do this weekend), we are four or five days away peak mountain laurel.

Best cat reminder from two evenings ago right before Fleabus partook of leg valley:

Seething: I must have enjoyed it to the point of addiction once, did I ever think seething unto itself a sign of posed righteousness and if yes of what? Duty? When I went to youtube to find the Crumb I had to sit through an ad created since the Uvalde Massacre by motherfucking Senate Democrats asking for donations to their reelection campaigns to help them curb gun violence, fund raising off an event regularly expected (if not each event specifically scheduled) by shitlords to maintain Shitlordistan Exceptionalism: the events themselves may be random but their occurrence planned, prompted, anticipated, profitable! If you're reading this shitty blog, why do I scream this at *you*?

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS

William Jay Smith

Because I believe in the community of little children
Because I have suffered such little children to be slain:
I have gazed upon the sunlight, dazed, bewildered,
As is a child by nothing more than rain.

Not until I can no longer climb,
Until my life becomes the tallest tree,
And every limb of it a lint of shame,
Shall I look out in time, in time to see

Again those who were so small they could but die
Who had only their vast innocence to give:
That I may tell them, pointing down to the sky,
How beautiful it was to live.

RESPONDING

Julianna Spahr

I

This is a place without a terrain a government that always

          changes an unstable language. Even buildings disappear

          from day to day.

[gendered pronoun] wanders in this place

                                                                       [searching

                                                                                                [waiting

the condition of unbearableness is the constant state of mind

            for all occupants

we read all day in the village square during the rule of [name

          of major historical figure] a book that is so subtle

                                                   [its political content goes unnoticed

what is political content?

                                                          [the question or the statement

[gender pronoun] creates

                                        [a reader culture

                                        [generic plural pronoun] prefer both

                                                      II

realism's authenticities are not the question

the question [role of art in the State

we know art is fundamental to the [New State] as is evidenced

         in village scenes, majestic ancient views, masses and

         masses of [generic human figures] marching in columns,

         swords coded as plowshares, image as spectacle

we kn0w [name of city], [adjective], [name of major composer]

to recode [reduce] it: Linz, ambiguous, Wagner

we know [name of major historical figure] calls, authentically,

         for a more total, more radical war than we can even

         dream in the language of the avant-garde

we know a commercial promises to reduce plaque more

         effectively in this same tone

but sometimes we exceed even our own expectations to

          surprise even ourselves

something encloses the impossible in a fable

an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric

we can't keep our fingers of connection out of it

it is a ride in the country, the car crowded with children

                                                   [each child represents a different

                                                              ethnicity of [name of nation]

it is a moment of standing with light resonating around [major

          historical figure

it is a guiding of the child towards the right path

it is a picnic in a field, the spread is bountiful

[the spread of [name of nation] is represented through the

          arrangement of food on the checkered tablecloth

it is [name of major historical figure]'s Art Collection:

           figure after figure

           each carries spears, lunges, draws the arm back to pull

                   tight the bow

a ruined plaza has a [gendered human form] at its en

        trance

a [generic child] draws a sword under the guidance of

[generic possessive pronoun] [honorific denoting repro-

ductive role]

a [generic human form] raises [generic pronoun] arms and

four horses turn away

another plays a lute

an eagle holds a symbol

fake [name of nation used as an adjective] heads

while the end of lunacy in art was explicit in [name of major

         historical figure]'s rhetoric

while when nation turns to art, art loses its divergence

while the [generic human figures] come back from war, their

         legs in fog

while a [generic human figure] sculpts, small against the

          expanse of marble, giving into the monumental human

          form that symbolizes eugenic possibilities

while another [generic human figure] pedantically draws

          postcards of village centers, operas, mountain vistas

while overwhelmed by an opera [name of major historical 

          figure] plans genocide

                                                    III

we know we respond resistantly as faked children's books of

         realist adventure tales have turned into military instruc-

         tion manuals

or [name of major historical figure] hails a cab, [generic

          possessive human pronoun] hand raised here, beckoning

          as the red flag with [name of fast food chain] waves

          behind [generic human pronoun] and the red star on top  

          of the [name of cultural landmark in major city] twinkles.

many people raise their hands for different purposes all day

         long

we are always waiting for our cab to come

the question here is the same as that of a relationship

where does art define our vocabulary?

the margin declares

[it is impossible to speak about something

it is only possible to speak beside it