Thursday, May 26, 2022

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

2 comments:

  1. 0/that's a beautiful cat photo

    1/in julianna spahr's poem - and i note you have not quoted all of it - we see the phrase the red star

    2/just yesterday i was noticing the red star in front of the name macy's at the montgomery mall

    2.1/the apostrophe in the store name is also styled as a star - but smaller and, like the rest of the name - painted black instead of read

    2.3/i was sitting in my car listening to a piano concerto - about which our friends at wikipedia tell us

    The Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103, popularly known as The Egyptian, was Camille Saint-Saëns' last piano concerto. He wrote it in 1896, 20 years after his Fourth Piano Concerto, to play himself at his own Jubilee Concert on May 6 of that year. This concert celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his début at the Salle Pleyel in 1846.

    This concerto is nicknamed "The Egyptian" for two reasons. Firstly, Saint-Saëns composed it in the temple town of Luxor while on one of his frequent winter vacations to Egypt, and secondly, the music is among his most exotic, displaying influences from Javanese and Spanish as well as Middle-eastern music. Saint-Saëns said that the piece represented a sea voyage.

    Saint-Saëns himself was the soloist at the première, which was a popular and critical success.

    2.4/i was waiting as the apple store inside the mall installed a new battery in my iphone purchased in 2017 - they charged me fifty dollars

    2.5/it was my first visit to an apple store - i didn't like it and probably won't ever return but i didn't tell them that


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 2.15 New Macy's logo commits a huge type design sin

      https://www.creativebloq.com/news/new-macys-logo



      2.6/while at the montgomery mall during my wait for the battery installation i thought i might visit the amazon four star physical store there, which appeared on the directory maps - of which they have too few, i might add - but eventually a security guard - a middle-aged woman of colour - told me i was two months too late for that

      i replied "no wonder i can't find it"

      so instead i went to back to my car and listened to the previously mentioned piece of classical music on the radio

      on reflection, listening to the music was a better choice anyway

      while looking for a remark kurt vonnegut made about music i serendipitously came across

      https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2016/11/02/some-fun-facts-for-a-dystopic-future/#comment-51058

      Delete