Thursday, November 9, 2023

Glintless Monotones of Graveyard Weather

For twenty-four hours this past Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, driving around Pennsylvania Wilds, going out to dinner, breakfast, hanging out and talking with my wife and daughter, hanging out and not needing to talk with my wife and daughter, I wasn't sideways at the world and didn't realize I wasn't sideways at the world until I was sideways at the world again, for twenty-four hours I was



Above done the evening after getting back from Pennsylvania, below done two nights ago, sideways again. I remember my sideways at America's 911 Vengeance Tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as much less visceral than today's sideways, dope that I was then I could curse the Supreme Court for gifting Bush the 2000 election and Bush for the Vengeance Tour, yes I know major Democrats supported but enough major Democrats objected that I could pretend my (then) team not as bloodshitty as Republicans, jesusfuck, what a dope, I should have been as sideways then as now but now's sideways makes then's sideways seem a joy ride

  • Friendly colleague, tenured professor (edited and paraphrased for brevity): But Hamas attacked first and Gazans getting just retribution delivered upon them
  • Me: Sigh
  • FC, TP: I didn't peg you for an antisemite

I did not remind him that Netanyahu created, funded, and supported Hamas as a bulwark against any two-state solution, that Israelamerica deliberately set policies towards Palestinians guaranteed to provoke armed resistance to occupation, that Israelamerica is DELIGHTED Hamas attacked, that this war as presented for consumption is.....

Sigh. Links today done before this typed, when I scream at this Israelamerican war of choice and its atrocities and its barkers and cheerleaders and bloodshitty backers and especially the shitlords who profit by it (reminder: if this wasn't in shitlords interest - and this war is about MUCH more than Gaza and Israel - it wouldn't be happening on this scale with these goals) I hope it will only be through links and in the grid, I'm done typing about it here and writing about it in journal





The monsters that rule the world have bigger and broader goals in this genocide beyond the extermination of Gazan Palestinians (though they consider that an excellent side benefit)
Reminder: our shitlords are preparing for their war against you
Inside the Israeli Crackdown on Speech
Apartheid Defense LeagueThis is me
The ten dumbest things we're being asked to believe about Gaza
How (not) to Relativize the Holocaust
"This has nothing to do with Judaism and it's antisemitic for anyone to suggest it does."
Sign the letter protesting Poetry Foundation pulling a review of the poetry of a American Jewish Anti-Zionist
Motherfucking crackerchrister zionists
Motherfucking corporate Democrat zionists
"Tlaib is an embarrassment to other Democrats. She's an embarrassment because she exposes as a sham their claim to defend human rights. She's an embarrassment because she endures so much when they sell out so cheap. She reminds them that their lack of courage is a choice"
EVERY DEMOCRAT NEXT YEAR
Voting will not save you, America
Meanwhile, in black southern towns
Maggie's weeklyEKGMOWECHASHALA
Cats have 300 facial expressions
{ feuilleton }'sEVERY DAY
Collected Tony Hecht, the best thing that happened to me in my 35 years at Hilltop is meeting and working with Tony Hecht
The new Sloppy Heads album is !!!!!





CURRICULUM VITAE

Anthony Hecht

As though it were reluctant to be day,
         Morning deploys a scale
         Of rarities in gray,
And winter settles down in its chain-mail,

Victorious over legions of gold and red.
         The smokey souls of stones,
         Blunt pencillings of lead,
Pare down the world to glintless monotones

Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen
         We reckon through our pores.
          Save for the garbage men,
Our children are the first ones out of doors.

Book-bagged and padded out, at mouth and nose
         They manufacture ghosts,
         George Washington's and Poe's,
Banquo's, the Union and Confederate hosts',

And are themselves the ghosts, file cabinet gray,
          Of some departed us,
          Signing our lives away
On ferned and parslied windows of a bus.

2 comments:

  1. i hadn't heard of the pennsylvania wilds by that name before now - it sounds like it could be a nice place to visit

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i should have said it is a nice place to visit

      1/my maternal grandmother was from there, and in my childhood my family of origin would go visit relatives there - my great-grandfather lived to one hundred, and my brother has his clock

      here's johnny cash singing the relevant song


      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0o8A4RccUY

      1.5/i was told that his wife was concerned that my infant christening at first parish (unitarian) in framingham, massachusetts - where my parents were married, soon after world war ii - did not qualify as a "christian baptism" - with water, in the name of the father, son and holy spirit - putting my fate in the afterlife at risk - later the catholic priest who married missus charley and i also inquired about this - our own wedding was NOT a mass, so there was no problem, and my protestant relatives did not experience exclusion from the eucharist

      2/soon after that wedding - at st ignatius r.c. church, baltimore - spouse and self traveled to punxatawny - also in the pennsylvania wilds area - a pilgrimage in honor of the spiritual journey immortalized in the film atrapado en el tiempo, also known as "el dia de la marmota"

      3/as i've been writing this comment, youtube has gone from "grandfather's clock" to "cortez the killer" to "heart of gold"

      4/all things must pass away

      Delete