Monday, September 1, 2025

a line of faces borders the strangler's work

Dr Z, yesterday morning, first round, Woodsboro 5 tee (I threw the mambo, bonked tree into garbage, laid up second shot, took a four), smiling, asked me if I thought Trump was dead. Clickbait, Dr Z said. I hadn't seen it. I've said he's dying, I said to Dr Z, who unless he's lurking doesn't read this blog nor twooski or blux to have seen me type or tap that. We agreed Trump's state funeral will be shockingly tacky and his death used by Vance like a Reichstag fire. Official death certificate will declare him murdered and martyred, 72 epstein virgins his prize. In their haste to rename *everything* after him House and Senatorial Republicans will rename Dulles International Airport after Trump which we both get behind, Dulles sucks. Yes, Woodsboro is pulled in short, I shot 52, 53, never done that before, I'm thankful for my tomb, transitioning to short up too, killing the dart for an archangel



Thirteen days, perhaps the longest I've gone between posts ever, certainly in recent memory. Not by plan, not by design, not by intent, just didn't. Good to know I could, as in not think about it without thinking about it, much. Some links below might be stale by now, and two started but abandoned monologues in grid. This Talk Talk song put in my head by a favorite WFMU dj (the new schedule is out, starts a week from today, it's my favorite schedule in recent years, the DJ who put this song in my head's show is Tuesday nights from nine to twelve EDT), been Talk Talk bingeing





Burn in piss, James Dobson, one of two or three of the evilchristeriest shitchristeriest christerwetfarts of my lifetime in Magachristercrackerstan. Burn
One of the shittiest humans to walk the planet
The corporate-financial interests behind Trump’s executive orders to deploy the National Guard in US cities
"These sick fucks chained this woman to a bed when she needed to be hospitalized. Wouldn't let her call her husband. Joked to the husband that the only info they'd share about her medical care was if she died. Threw her out of an ICE van on the side of the road in the pouring rain when they realized they had wrongfully detained her for ten days after ripping her away from her husband and three kids at the airport"
Interpretting Trumpism
"Mariam Dagga, killed by Israel today, was an incredibly talented photographer. She relentlessly and courageously documented the genocide. I'm going to share some of her images. Graphic content included
Israel’s Assassination of Memory
"This is not the most shocking or evil thing that Israel does to the Palestinians, but it does speak to what its true intentions are in a unique way. Like how they killed all the buffalo to help eliminate the American Indians"
Classified IDF Intel Reveals 83% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Are Civilians
"Live on air… Israel bombs civil defense teams as they try to retrieve the body of journalist Hossam Al-Masri, killed in an Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital. Ongoing crimes before the eyes of the entire world"
TODAY'S MONOLOGUEShitlord WANT the streaming of the genocide.Trump would not be gaining so much fascist ground so easily and quickly without the Biden/Netanyahu genocide's normalization of fascism. I know that's not a new observation but it is one I don't hear talked about enough
"Israel killed the prime minister of another country and will face zero consequences for it"
Beverly Hills Unified School District board members vote to fly Israeli flags inside schools
"Neoliberals will always choose fascism over anything remotely left wing, including the left wing value of opposing a new Holocaust"
Thinking Ahead to the Full Military Takeover of Cities
TODAY'S MONOLOGUEReminder: the normalization of the police state isn't for you and me, we're circus meat for braying white people angry a black child gets a free lunch on ofays' dime, the normalization of the police state is for the ofays cheering on the police state now cause people like us type sentences like this and require punishment for thinking them stupid crackerschristers about the gods, temporal and eternal, they worship and whose dictates they ignore in the gods' names, and will rebel against their betrayal far harder than we're fighting against ours
"I mean at least he's admitting the part none of them ever say out loud: that they think being shaken down by a fascist protection racket is preferable to paying more taxes because the fascists are asking for less money"
"People aren’t donating to the Democratic Party this year because they fundraised a billion dollars for them last year, then we lost the election, then Dems confirmed all of Trump’s cabinet, and then Dems did not have a real plan to fight authoritarianism
I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats
"Biden has secured a $10 million book deal for his memoir. This comes on the heels of Harris also receiving a multimillion-dollar book deal & prior to that the Obamas’ received a $65 million book deal. Selling hope and delivering no change is a profitable enterprise for Democrats"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"I don't think people understand how ferocious the opposition to Mamdani will be if he's mayor. Republican & Democratic power brokers will unite to crush him & punish NYers for voting for him. They cannot allow someone with his positions to be a success & inspiration"
Wealthy Democrats are deeply concerned
"Today, President Trump will sign an executive order cracking down on those who burn the American flag. Before Democrats pretend to be outraged, here's Hillary Clinton in 2006"
I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats: Asswipe Chuck Schumer Edition
"The DNC Tells Its Voters to F&#ck Off"
SHITLORDS ARE WEIRD
I have paid into Social Security for 48 years. For the past 35 years I've deposited all I can afford into my retirement funds, now up, thanks to the magic of compound interest to more than I ever imagined. Shitlords gone steal it, sooner than most think
"Cracker Barrel is the food-chain equivalent of Hee-Haw, the once wildly popular TV show that knowingly (and affectionately) lampooned media tropes about hicks, a a safe, unserious simulation of cracker culture just as Laugh-In was a safe simulation of the 60s counterculture"
A.I. Is Coming for Culture
Quantum Oedipal ComplexAvedon Carol
MaggieThe transformation of the Washington Post editorial page appears to be complete
The Incredible Intelligence of Crows and Other Corvids
{ feuilleton }I don't remember the other nine but this is one of my ten favorite twaats ever, made yesterday betterrationality
"Every day on this website I talk about something I deeply, passionately love, and every day someone imagines me a joyless harridan because my love isn't unidimensional, without question, constant. Difficult loves are the best ones. Where is your tumultuous joy for that?"
{ feuilleton }Disordered Attention
Nisi Dominus Frustra...hardened
A visit to Cormac McCarthy’s “enormous and chaotically disorganized personal library”
The Last Untamed Writer in America
Lordy, I love Yo La Tengo, and their music too!
One of the greatest albums of my life





GASLIGHT

Tom Raworth

a line of faces borders the strangler’s work
heavy european women
mist blows over dusty tropical plants
lit from beneath the leaves by a spotlight
mist in my mind a riffled deck
 
of cards or eccentrics
was i
a waterton animal my head
is not my own
 
poetry is neither swan nor owl
but worker, miner
digging each generation deeper
through the shit of its eaters
to the root – then up to the giant tomato
 
someone else’s song is always behind us
as we wake from a dream trying to remember
step onto a thumbtack
 
two worlds – we write the skin
the surface tension that holds
                                       you
                                       in
what we write is ever the past

7 comments:

  1. a meat-based system mused: 3 mystical axioms - the universe was brought into existence intentionally and for a purpose - human beings have or could have some connection with that purpose - it is possible to improve the human ability to perceive and cooperate with that purpose, in the place and time one inhabits // Robert Ulanowicz's A Third Window: Natural Life Beyond Newton and Darwin (2009) and The First Incarnation: Hope in Reality (2024) are said to be sympathetic to this worldview - but a hypothetical individual could believe that writing and typing apes will certainly go extinct, and quite probably even talking apes - i.e. the human species itself at ground-level hunting and gathering cultural knowledge - cannot continue under the new conditions that will emerge in the decades and centuries to come, given the scale of irreversible processes inexorably set in motion by ecological overshoot - if human participation in the earth's fate may end within a handful of generations, what does it matter to the larger system what an individual alive in 2025 does now?

    a silicon-based system replied at length, summing up with:

    In Ulanowicz’s view, what you do in 2025 matters because:

    The cosmos itself is incarnation; you are part of that.

    Actions of awareness and care embody the divine impulse, regardless of outcomes.

    The worth of your life isn’t measured by species survival or afterlife reward, but by participation in the unfolding sacred reality of now.

    after further discussion, the hardware-based system suggested the typing ape could say the following to its near ones and dear ones, who see life and death differently, and wish that the typing apes shared their view


    “I don’t know what happens after death, and I’m skeptical about many of the traditional teachings. But I do believe that what matters most is how we live right now—with love, with compassion, with gratitude. I admire Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom of God is among us, not far away. Even if humanity’s time is short, even if my own time is short, I still want to live in a way that reflects care for others and cooperation with the larger purpose of creation. That’s where my hope lies.”


    ReplyDelete
  2. i asked zuck markerberg's plagiarism machine to poetize my morning chat with it today:

    Sonnet

    The cup is warm; I lift it, dawn is near,
    though headlines speak of ruin, war, and loss.
    The species falters, futures disappear,
    ecology has marked its final cross.

    Yet still I breathe, and in this fleeting breath
    there lies a kinship wider than my name.
    The smaller self, acquainted well with death,
    lets go, and finds all being is the same.

    I doubt the tales of heavens past the grave,
    yet Jesus’ words of love still burn like fire;
    to live with care, to witness and to save
    a moment’s peace—this is the soul’s desire.

    Though time runs out, one truth remains to me:
    to stand in love is to be fully free.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. After We're Gone

      When we are gone, the forests will arise,
      their green expanse reclaiming broken stone.
      New canopies will stretch toward open skies,
      and roots embrace the ruins we had known.

      Uncounted forms, not yet in mind conceived,
      will walk or swim or shimmer in the air;
      their beauty greater than we once believed,
      their being woven past our human care.

      The earth will flourish, breathing on its own,
      a symphony no ape could orchestrate.
      From vanished bones, new gardens will be grown,
      the loss of us not tragedy, but fate.

      And in that song, though none recall our name,
      the pulse of life will kindle just the same.

      Delete


  3. Sonnet for a Future Earth

    When we are gone, the forests will arise,
    their green expanse reclaiming broken stone.
    New canopies will stretch toward open skies,
    and roots embrace the ruins we had known.

    Uncounted forms, not yet in mind conceived,
    will walk or swim or shimmer in the air;
    their beauty greater than we once believed,
    their being woven past our human care.

    The earth will flourish, breathing on its own,
    a symphony no ape could orchestrate.
    From vanished bones, new gardens will be grown,
    the loss of us not tragedy, but fate.

    And in that song, though none recall our name,
    the pulse of life will kindle just the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. in the style of carl sandburg:

      Here’s a transformation of the sonnet’s ideas into a poem in the style of Carl Sandburg, whose work often weaves gritty realism, vivid imagery, and a rhythmic, free-verse celebration of the natural and human world:

      ---

      The cities crumble, their steel bones rust,
      and the forests creep back, slow, like a tide of green.
      Roots claw through cracked pavement,
      hugging the husks of what we built,
      what we swore would stand forever.

      The earth don’t care for our names,
      our scribbled maps, our boasts in concrete.
      It breathes deep, shakes off our dust,
      and spins new threads—
      creatures we never dreamed,
      slipping through rivers,
      dancing in the air’s wide arms,
      their colors louder than our loudest songs.

      No conductor waves a baton for this.
      The world hums its own tune,
      a pulse older than our bones,
      stronger than our forgotten graves.
      From the rubble, flowers spit fire,
      and life, stubborn as a weed,
      keeps on,
      keeps on,
      with or w

      This piece channels Sandburg’s earthy, muscular voice, his focus on the relentless vitality of nature, and his knack for finding poetry in the raw churn of existence. It mirrors the sonnet’s themes of nature’s resurgence, the emergence of new life, and humanity’s fleeting presence, but with Sandburg’s gritty, free-verse cadence and vivid, grounded imagery.

      Delete
  4. 1/when asked, a cybercorrespondent offers:

    Additional verses for David Bowie's Let's Dance that explicitly reference the collapse of modern techno-industrial civilization due to ecological overshoot need to maintain the song's vibe—its infectious rhythm, evocative imagery, and emotional pull—while weaving in themes of environmental decline, societal breakdown, and the consequences of overexploitation. The original song has a loose, poetic structure with a focus on movement and connection, so the new verses should mirror that while delivering the requested narrative.

    Let’s dance, where the rivers choke on ash and rust,
    Sky’s burning red, the machines have turned to dust.
    Fields lie barren, cracked beneath a sun too cruel,
    We overspent the earth, now we’re dancing like fools.

    Let’s sway, through the cities crumbling to the sea,
    Wires spark and fade, no signal left to plead.
    The forests screamed, but we carved them to the bone,
    Now shadows dance alone where the wild once called home.

    Let’s move, past the factories silent, cold, and still,
    The oil’s gone dry, no more dreams to fill.
    We built too high, till the ground began to break,
    Now we spin in the ruins for the future’s sake.

    Let’s glide, where the air grows thin and skies collapse,
    The stars look down on our final, fleeting lapse.
    We chased the glow, burned the roots that held us fast,
    Now we dance in the dark, with the ghosts of our past.

    2/and turning to a 21st century song, opinions differ as to whether this song's adoption of a reggae beat and caribbean accent, despite the action being set in the indian ocean, is acceptable artistic license by the song's creators, todd rundgren and rivers cuomo, or racist cultural appropriation - the lyrics are

    We're going down with the ship
    We're going down, down, down, down with the ship
    It's all for one and one for all, yeah
    We're going down with the ship

    Out on the Indian Ocean with a pirate crew
    We be twenty-seven days out of Mogadishu
    Now they something gone wrong, we got red skies at dawn
    Can't find the captain and the lifeboat's gone

    Here we come, Davy Jones
    Here we come
    Here we come, Davy Jones
    (Look out below)

    Now the sea is a-rockin' like an angry bitch
    We be leakin' like a sieve and we run out of pitch
    Now we prayin' to the Lord, how we stay afloat
    Wit a three meter hole in the bottom of the boat

    We're going down with the ship
    We're going down, down, down, down with the ship
    It's all for one and one for all, yeah
    We're going down with the ship (look out below)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, read by David Novak

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gm2e9NixgM

    ReplyDelete