Its Sense of Loitering Lights on My Shoulder

• Yesterday news that Robert F Kennedy Stadium be demolished! by District within two years
• how much it costs to maintain deteriorating nothing
• I'd explore that stadium before games only getting to 232 ten minutes before kick, SeatSix and Landru can vouch, lordy I loved that building
• We made noise of going to last match at RFK but had long divorced United before new stadium a certainty, I owe Landru and SeatSix a Fuck-Me-Jig: I never thought an Audi Field
• I found stanchion porn for you:

• Slays me, that, it re-bodies, sorta, that being there thump
• I crave uniforms and tribal chants (and there's a new Swans song off the new album out in October (already ordered), see below) more than ever
• while hating people in uniform chanting tribal (I
• post) my every
• other day small tribe speed date
• (insidest joke since last Danny Allsopp joke, I bid you Adu)
• Life in the Danny Allsopp Era Ocene!

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Mary Ruefle

I take the bird on the woodpile,

separate it from its function, feather

by feather. I blow up its scale.

I make a whole life out of it:

everywhere I am, its sense of loitering

lights on my shoulder.

The Only Sound Is a Shovel

• That's old, but mood, bigger here.
• Tomorrow's post already made, best to get you links today.
• The things I can't write about here.
• Ruling the world with the Sun King.
• Youly.
• Worst drivers ranked by state.
• I am telling you three times, we are being reprogrammed.
• Heartsnatchers.
• There will never be a Fuck-Me-Jig, praise Baal for my United apostasy before they officially fucked over Loud Side!
• The things I can't write about here.
• I hate it when seething ceases pleasing.
• Will add links today and tomorrow as I find them, or not.

IN ANOTHER ROOM I AM DRINKING EGGS FROM A BOOT

Frank Stanford

What if the moon was essence of quinine

And high heels were a time of day

When certain birds bled

The chauffeur is telling the cook

The antler would pry into ice floes

Swim with a lamp

And we’d be shivering in a ditch

Biting through a black wing

There would be boats

There would be a dream country

The great quiet humming of the soul at night

The only sound is a shovel

Clearing a place for a mailbox

A Continual Division of Halves

• Fleabus, full-size.
• My apologies, the West Virginia teachers strike is not over, reports two nights ago notwithstanding.
• Striking teachers in West Virginia made sure their students had food.
• Did you know there is a teacher strike in WV? I heard and saw twaated that MSNBC's prime time hosts have made no mention, is this true? Not only would that be research, I would watch a motherfucking NBA game before I'd watch MSNBC.
• Still not on the front of Washington Post or New York Times webpages as of post timestamp.
• #777 is my lucky number.
• When Corporations became people.
• Desperate cornered animal.
• Modern violence, resistance, and the calculus of revolution.
• The critical zone of science and politics.
• Wait! New Richard Youngs!

• Innermost circle of rotation MSADI5G.
• DC United's season starts tomorrow. Remember when? Here are the probable starters: GK David Ousted; Ds Nick DeLeon, Steve Birnbaum, Frederic Brillant, Oniel Fisher; MFs Junior Moreno, Paul Arriola, Ulises Segura, Zoltan Stieber, Yamil Asad; F Darren Mattocks. I've heard of one of them.
• UPDATE! Fuck MLS, fuck United.
• Poetry and the Experience of Contact.
• >> Deleted bleggalgaze <<
• Poets' strike.
• New Yo La Tengo! (and old Yo La Tengo below the poem).
• Innermost circle of rotation MSADI5G.

IMAGE-NATION 9 (HALF AND HALF

Robin Blaser

there are shining masters

when I tell you what they

look like    some of it is

nearly false   their blue hair

but they are not ourselves   they

are equivalents   of action    they

compose forms,    which we hear

sound within a context

as if that action we are

images of    used us

the body becomes an instrument

sometimes the harp pierces the body

and a man only hangs on the strings

I hear the airborne-fire, the dead rebels’

second speech, which follows their live words,

and the rice, and the motorcycles

but public life has fallen asleep

like a secret name    the wrong-reader

will say he has pity for others

where the thought is born in hatred

of pity, which is only feeling    the action

we are only images of    hates pity

and its reduction of horror to sentiment

wordlessness   no thing is so simply

personal    I put my hand out to catch

beauty in the act of    I know no beauty

which is not permanent    not invoked

in splendour     the words are meaningless

until they emerge in the action     they are

images of

I was once a youth,   and I was

a maiden,     a bush, a bird, a fish

with scales that gleam in the ocean

they come from the dark    under

many names    the blue    wind

they are not ourselves,    not even

the moon drawn down     into our

breasts    that we may strike others

with eros                                      the

body gleamed so                           wind

master                a bone, a ball, a top

an apple, a mirror, a skein of wool

wind   —   words      wind   —  hair    we

have dismembered the earth    and

are born lifeless on the moon     mouths

to the wind

unthought the many mountains, the many

cities,   the many houses

I was once    another man’s heart

an eagle, a wolf    cloud, smoke,

splash

           psychron    (cold, refreshing

anapsychsai   (to be refreshed from evil

we have eaten ourselves   luxurious and

careless    I must bathe at the

gates of the city    I must tell you

they have been blue in the heart,

in the wind

                          I have opened my mouth

they have come from the black-fire

                                                   we have stiffened

the terror of earth,     as if terror were the only unearthly

thing in our hearts

                          we have given her rivers

of our own salt    earth then remains uncanny,

sublime    water is fear’s movement    grief cries

in the air like birds    fire is hidden in the imageless

self

            the blue hair    the face of gold    the clothes

like snow    the blood

                                       is light

                                                           zero

enacts it

            Jack Clarke’s ‘we are under image’

rythmos    (form’s movement)   to walk into    ‘the

primordial always exists’    face to face    always outside

ourselves    the astonishment is

                                     that it is kosmos

playing out with one man   entheos

                                                 they are

the flowing boundary    taking birth    taking leave

at the point of the heart              a continual

division of halves

which we must nibble on as if nibbling on donuts, by which I mean rubrics, glittering rubrics in the dry heat of an empty test bank

• Earthgirl's blazes.
• Beloveds and Mocomofos, she has a show opening next month, check your mail for postcard. 
• Alternatively, email me, I'll send info.
• We were supposed to do a long hike yesterday in Shenandoah, but my direct report, who works weekends, fell down, went boom, broke ankle Friday. I worked most motherfucking yesterday.
• Fuck work, fuck being a boss, and for more, see previous post.
• New Pere Ubu:

• The new album clicked - finally - last night around 1030.
• Selective Feminism and the Myth of the Bernie Bro.
• I hate motherfucking Democrats posts with angry documentation drives pings by three.
• No more documentation today. 
• DC United plays its last game ever at RFK today.
• When I blogged every DCU game it drove down pings by ten.
• My need to Fine Metaphor Abound this one last time sign of how small I am.
• Was there for this:

 

• I remember the year I started United season tickets, not the year I quit.
• After the 2013, 2014, or 2015 season? 
• It was midway through a season I knew there would not be another season.
• It was before the new stadium was a done deal, when I was convinced there would never be a new stadium - I quit when something that would have made me quit seemed an impossibility.
• See Fuck-Me Jig tag in bumper. 
• That this distinction is dear to me speaks to how small I am. 
• Was there for this.

• Blunt Force Trauma.
• Noah and Shoah.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Leave novelists out of fiction.
• Sparks.
• Heaven on their minds.
• Jim's Icelandic Adventure, continued....
• I want to trip. Someone buy me clean orange sunshine, some for you too.
• Listen to this:

SENTENCE

Daniel Borzutzky

Ain’t nothing more beautiful than a French diplomat in an

Italian suit discussing the intimate ties between

poetry and constipation with a United States

Senator in a discount blazer from the Men’s Wearhouse bought

especially for the occasion of proposing the

Anti-Chimera Act, a prime indicator that if children were

once the future, they are not the past, which is growing

hairier every moment, so as to keep us from

penetrating its insides, which we must nibble on as if

nibbling on donuts, by which I mean rubrics, glittering

rubrics in the dry heat of an empty test bank full of

raccoons with flexible snouts and long tails that

materialize in the shrubbery as thick-set stocky

fraternity brothers suicide bomb colleges full of free

thinking mavericks with tuning forks in their ears and rubber dicks

in their pockets, a veritable cure for loneliness and

its side effects, including the desire to fantasize

about mythological genitalia in the pants of

pundits who declare that to be alive is

fundamentally okay as long as poets test their

verses on guinea pigs before submitting them to us

humans as we exit the amalgamated marshland of

surplus value and enter an ordinary evening on

which ordinary people dream of lubricated condoms

for dogs, of mules who practice the pull-out method, of birth

control pills for cats, of floating trousers that haunt city squares

in search of red-walled boutiques where silk stockings and boot-cut

chinos fight for the attention of disembodied legs

while merchants masturbate, aroused by visions of painless

castration, aroused by hands without arms scribbling conjunctions

into dusty ceilings, aroused by hands without arms stirring

infinite bowls of soup, aroused by module-makers who

insist only on the metaphorical value of money

as represented in the hieroglyphics painted on the

walls of financiers who accumulate capital through the

unjustified sexual behavior of adulterous

women who appear asymmetrically—legs over heads, hands

coming out of butts—in public ceremonies in which

syringes suck out erroneous feelings from their bodies

while suits and ties stuff bones and ears into decorative

bottles and jars.

 

Seventy-One Today, Eighty-Eight Today, United Yesterday

My Fripp story, posted every Fripp birthday, today being his 71st: Fripp had a touring workshop called Guitar Craft and a performing ensemble, The League of Crafty Guitarists. A bunch of us (Elric, you were there, yes?) got in Phavid Dillips lime-green VW van and drove to an old yellow mansion in West Virginia, not far, past Harpers Ferry, up near Shepardstown. Phavid, who we thought an excellent guitarist - or at least the best guitarist we smoked dope with regularly - had been invited to sit in a circle of other guitarists with Robert Fripp leading the workshop. Incredibly cool actually. Guests were invited to sit in the circle; guess who refused. Afterward, going out for a smoke, I ran into Fripp on a porch and apologized. He asked me why I didn't sit in the circle. I said I didn't want to. He said, then you've nothing to apologize for, and shook my hand.

• Bowie May 14th, Eno May 15th, Fripp May 16th, blessed be Serendipity.
• There's one other run like this, end of July.
• Saturday night I was spinning channels for weather and whether and landed on a DC United game at RFK. When the camera scanned up LOUD SIDE! just a bit I could see Section 232, Row 10, Seats 4, 5, and 6, Landru's, mine, SeatSix's for years. 
• LOUD SIDE!'s diminished. I mean, damn, it was only five minutes of one game for the first time in two years, but damn, those seats are still orange.
• We abandoned each for our own reasons, but shared was the conviction that United would (a) not invest in a quality team until and unless a new stadium, and (b) there never would BE a new stadium* and the team would move, but (c) if there was a new stadium there would be no more LOUD SIDE! and if I'm paying for cheezy tribal chills there had better be a LOUD SIDE!
• *Me the LOUDEST! promising a Fuck-Me-Jig, a bet, looking back now, stupidly wagered, not for the jig but because I'd never go to new stadium for the reason cited above.
• United's ticket agents no longer call me - I politely asked them to stop - but Serendipitously called a friend yesterday trying to lure him back. Friend told the agent of his concerns for LOUD SIDE! what happens to the Supporters Clubs, and shazam, as predicted, they are going to an end-zone. I assume the other end-zone is for long-time season ticket holders of modest disposable income with damn fine sideline seats at RFK. I'm guessing prices double or triple for equivalent of Section 232, Row 10, seats 4, 5, & 6.
• UPDATE! Landru doxxes himself in comments, reports much more at length about his conversation with the DCU ticket agent. 
• 2010 was United's worse season. RFK was a hoot. Best cheezy tribal chills of all seasons.
• I first made the Fuck-Me-Jig bet back in 2004. That same year I canvassed for John Kerry in Harrisburg, so har-har me.
• I never tailgated, I understand why folks dig it, and Supporters Clubs means tailgating. NO PLACE TO TAILGATE AT THE NEW STADIUM.
• No one asks me anymore how I separate my politics and my soccer. Or something like that.
• 
  
• May is the birthdayiest month in the Egoslavian calendar.
• It occurs to me I haven't posted recent youtubes of poets reading their poems out loud. I don't want them to read to me out loud. I want to read the poem out loud to me. 
• Though hearing a poet read a line out loud rhythmically different than how I read it out loud fascinates me, always has, I struggle not to make it a fine metaphor abounding.
• Today is Adrienne Rich's birthday, she was born eighty-eight years ago today.

  
BALLADE OF THE POVERTIES

Adrienne Rich

There’s the poverty of the cockroach kingdom and the rusted toilet bowl
The poverty of to steal food for the first time
The poverty of to mouth a penis for a paycheck
The poverty of sweet charity ladling
Soup for the poor who must always be there for that
There’s the poverty of theory poverty of the swollen belly shamed
Poverty of the diploma mill the ballot that goes nowhere
Princes of predation let me tell you
There are poverties and there are poverties

There’s the poverty of cheap luggage bursted open at immigration
The poverty of the turned head, the averted eyes
The poverty of bored sex of tormented sex
The poverty of the bounced check the poverty of the dumpster dive
The poverty of the pawned horn the poverty of the smashed reading glasses
The poverty pushing the sheeted gurney the poverty cleaning up the puke
The poverty of the pavement artist the poverty passed-out on pavement
Princes of finance you who have not lain there
There are poverties and there are poverties

There is the poverty of hand-to-mouth and door-to-door
And the poverty of stories patched-up to sell there
There’s the poverty of the child thumbing the Interstate
And the poverty of the bride enlisting for war
There’s the poverty of prescriptions who can afford
And the poverty of how would you ever end it
There is the poverty of stones fisted in pocket
And the poverty of the village bulldozed to rubble
Princes of weaponry who have not ever tasted war
There are poverties and there are poverties

There’s the poverty of wages wired for the funeral you
Can’t get to the poverty of the salary cut
There’s the poverty of human labor offered silently on the curb
The poverty of the no-contact prison visit
There’s the poverty of yard sale scrapings spread
And rejected the poverty of eviction, wedding bed out on street
Prince let me tell you who will never learn through words
There are poverties and there are poverties

You who travel by private jet like a housefly
Buzzing with the other flies of plundered poverties
Princes and courtiers who will never learn through words
Here’s a mirror you can look into: take it: it’s yours.

Combat Is Conducted According to a Ritual Formal as Song

• Me, once. Olive now.
• I'm not Dark, my eyes have stabilized. My autobark however....
• United broke ground yesterday on a stadium I predicted would never be built, see Fuck-Me-Jig tag, and promised to dance in front of my season ticket seat and post here as payment against dare. I quit United before this stadium was proposed; I have no season ticket to dance before.
• I don't miss United as object of rituals.
• I no longer take pride in abandoning United.
• If I felt obligated to mention this for Blog's sake how done with ritual am I?
• What I miss most about United games other than being at games with Landru and SeatSix: the long drives through Mongolia County out past Laytonsville, Hawkings Creamery Road, Griffith Road, Howard Chapel Road, on the way to RFK. 
• On a Moco map from 1855 SeatSix gave me that country is called Cracklin.
• I do miss RFK.
• I wish I could abandon and not miss other dry wells of rituals.
• Unrelated to post but related to me: Happy Birthday, Elric.
• I'm the clown referred to ▼, not Elric.

ETERNITY

Tom Clark

The god of war assured King Arsounas, “Do not be fooled by words. No life is taken. Know that no one was ever born, nor does anyone die.” In the violent mini-eternity of the warrior, combat is conducted according to a ritual formal as song: no one is ever born, no one can ever die. The left-handed rockabilly guitarist whose left arm was severed by an RPG round at Dak To has come back to life in a part of my body that died long before we started to patrol this part of the river of eternal woe. His life is mine though I never lived it. The violent backwash of the rotors is crimsoned by a fine aerosol spray of blood while a loudspeaker amplifies the goddess’ excited laughter.

Hamster Sends Cellos

Beloved Hamster, who knows of cello's (and Arvo Part's) medicinal power, after reading of my desperate need for cellos, sent me (THANKS!):

Arvo Part- Fratres

• Original (12 cellos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibkseZA9Jpo

• Large ensemble/film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02h6vpPK3dQ

• Cello and piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHEjiuYBuM

• String Quartet (Kronos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApVdPzivhDM

He has arranged it (and allowed others to to do so) for many sets of instruments-- cello/guitar, cello/harp, violin/piano, violin/orchestra, cello choir/percussion, etc. You can poke around the Internet if you are interested. 

Another Arvo Part piece, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror). Again, he has arranged this for multiple instrumental combinations but this is a recording of the cello/piano version.

[Things I used to believe]

Sadder Sad Joy

New Yo La Tengo! New album out on my birthday!

This is true: DC United plays Chicago tonight at RFK. I had season tickets from 2003 through last year and until last year rarely missed a game and those only for extraordinary reasons (Hamster's 50th birthday party in Baltimore) and an acquaintance of mine who I used to meet at halftime at home games for a beer has an extra ticket for tonight and asked me if I wanted to go.

Quick: While DCU contributed to my fall from love - primarily their refusal to promise LOUD SIDE! would get equal seating at a new stadium as currently at RFK  - my fall from love was, as is everything, about me. I no longer wanted to dress in tribal colors and stand and chant tribal lyrics at Corporate mercenaries. The yodeling of the past few weeks here about sports and tribalism and Corporate apply. I was delighted that United had a wildly successful 2014 season so I could quit while they were good rather than bad for a recovering zealot's self-congratulatory reasons.

I considered going for old time's sake plus to hang with a friend. Yesterday, just as I was about to decide whether to go or not, news that DC United is considering reneging on a deal with the District on a new soccer stadium at Sparrows Point. Look, I realize this is DC United seeking leverage on the final deal with the District, and I acknowledge it's entirely possible - probable, even - that District government weaseling on the deal's fringes forced United to go public with threats to move to Loudoun County. Long-timers here remember my promise of a Fuck-You-Jig: I've never thought there would be a new stadium in the District and promised to video record me dancing in front of my new seat in a new stadium if I was wrong, and that sentiment was based on the asshats who run the District, not the assholes that run United.

Imagine how unsurprised and delighted I unthinkingly was at the delicious waves of fury pulsing through me at United for the transparent stunt. I impulsively tweeted anti-United angrily, recklessly, was fun! cathartic! (If only temporarily, and left me with this guilty - but not too guilty - hangover.) Yes, it's just Corporate that United dicks with the emotions of its zealots, but it pissed me off, I loved it! I loved it. Hate: the reason I don't believe in apostasies as much I claim to have them. Transferring hate from one object to another doesn't dissipate the hate, it redirects it. Consider my anger at Democrats and professional Liberals, it's the same hate I happily stoked for decades at Republicans and professional Conservatives. Silly stupid pointless hate. I love it. Love love love hate. Time for this extrapolation reduction formula: Fine metaphors abound. Time for this extrapolation reduction formula: Fuck me. Time for this Delgados song again:

• So, I'm not going tonight.
• STREAM A BOATLOAD OF SUNNO)))!
• While you gloat about Snowden, the FBI is watching you.
• NSA on the brain.
• The Wall Street Jounral trolls the internet.
• How not to spend your summer vacation.
• Memory is a word.
• May's scifi short stories review.
• Pynchon, philosophy, ethics.
• The reviewer's obligation.
• There's a new Sun Kil Moon EP. Does it matter is Kozelek is an asshole?

I HATE

C.K. Williams

I hate how this unsummoned sigh-sound, sob-sound,

not sound really, feeling, sigh-feeling, sob-feeling,

keeps rising in me, rasping in me, not in its old disguise

as nostalgia, sweet crazed call of the blackbird;

not as remembrance, grief for so many gone,

nor either that other tangle of recall, regret   

for unredeemed wrongs, errors, omissions,

petrified roots too deep to ever excise;

a mingling rather, a melding, inextricable mesh   

of delight in astonishing being, of being in being,

with a fear of and fear for I can barely think what,

not non-existence, of self, loved ones, love;

not even war, fuck war, sighing for war,

sobbing for war, for no war, peace, surcease;

more than all that, some ground-sound, ground-note,   

sown in us now, that swells in us, all of us,   

echo of love we had, have, for world, for our world,

on which we seem finally mere swarm, mere deluge,

mere matter self-altered to tumult, to noise,

cacophonous blitz of destruction, despoilment,

din from which every emotion henceforth emerges,

and into which falters, slides, sinks, and subsides:

sigh-sound of lament, of remorse; sob-sound of rue,   

of, still, always, ever sadder and sadder sad joy.

Boarded the Train There's No Getting Off

Serendipity marches, must be honored. This is true: superstition keeps me from creating a Serendipity tag - I worry it will abandon me. Saw this yesterday, the 52nd anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death. Serendipitously, this past weekend I sent this brilliant Plath poem to a friend in the morning-sickness stage of her pregnancy:


METAPHOR

Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.


Wasn't going to post anything until five minutes ago when I clicked on the archives to DJ Stashu's latest show and the first song she played was (wish I could find the studio version, but....):

As I Say, These Roses, No Matter What the Apparent Background, Training, Tropistic Tendencies, Age, or Color, Do Not Demonstrate the Least Inclination Toward Categorization, Specified Allegiance, Resolute Preference, Consideration of the Needs of Others, or Any Other Minimal Traits of Decency

• h/t @biblioklept.
• Remember when we were all going to die of ebola? 
• Anemoia.
• Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. Not watching Fox for rightwing hysteria or MSNBC for American Liberal cowardice even less than I never do. Remember, as America lurches towards fascism, American Liberals will remain -.06% less shitty no matter how much shittier the American Right gets, which makes Liberals worse. 
• Hollywood, the police, and the poor.
• Why people blame themselves: In her lead essay for the most recent Boston Review forum, “Beyond Blame,” Barbara Fried points out that the last four decades have been “boom years for blame,” with neoliberal policy increasingly holding the individual solely responsible for his fate. Freedom and dignity have become intertwined with personal responsibility—and blame is our new rallying cry. The growing fragility of our communities and families over the same time period has solidified the notion that one has only oneself to rely on. Former representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul epitomized the spirit of blame in 2011 when he passionately argued in a televised debate that the decision to forego health insurance was a fundamental right of Americans. When the moderator asked him if this would mean that someone without health insurance who was critically injured should die rather than receive government help, audience members could be heard shouting, “Yeah!” Take a risk and succeed, and you are a hero. Take a risk and fail, and you are to blame—even if it costs you your life. Risk and blame are the hallmarks of worthy personhood in contemporary American society.
• Infernal.
• What I leave behind.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• The triumphant rise of the shitpic.
• Anne Carson, for those of you who do.

LETTER TO THE LOCAL POLICE

June Jordan

Dear Sirs:

I have been enjoying the law and order of our

community throughout the past three months since

my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous

photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to

our previous neighbors (with whom we were very

close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly

prospering under your custody

Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my

vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover

a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern,

much less complaint

You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that

I write to your office, at this date, with utmost

regret for the lamentable circumstances that force

my hand

Speaking directly to the issue of the moment:

I have encountered a regular profusion of certain

unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose,

and according to no perceptible control, approximately

one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern

side

To be specific, there are practically thousands of

the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot

of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only

the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting

of promiscuous cross-fertilization

As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent

background, training, tropistic tendencies, age,

or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination

toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute

preference, consideration of the needs of others, or

any other minimal traits of decency

May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out

this colony, as it were, and that these certain

unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by

children, with or without suitable supervision

(My wife asks me to append a note as regards the

seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious

phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may

apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main

However, I have recommended that she undertake direct

correspondence with you, as regards this: yet

another civic disturbance in our midst)

I am confident that you will devise and pursue

appropriate legal response to the roses in question

If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please

do not hesitate to call me into consultation

                  Respectfully yours,

The Stranded Whale, Guided Out of the Coves by Tugboats

Robert Pollard is fifty-seven today and today is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. Lots of songs here. Yes, these three songs, along with this shitty blog's Theme Song Three are my four most air-guitared Pollard songs. Also too, we're going hiking, today, tomorrow, Sunday. Just this: had a coffee with a friend yesterday who brought along a friend who's still a devout Lesshittiest, he's hyperventilating the mid-term, what if the Senate goes Republican? I said, doesn't it seem strange to you that Obama sanctioned the Fuck Israel in General and Bibi in Particular just a week before the mid-term and seems to be trying to sabotage any Democratic hopes of maintaining the Senate on purpose? Jeff, said Laura, stop. Who benefits, I said, nodding at Hillary Inevitability on a wide-screen feed of the speech she was giving that very moment at Illhoptay as we were having coffee. She wants to run against a dysfunctional House and Senate run by the very Rightwing demagogues that will drive Democratic voters in buckets in 2016. Jeff, laughed Laura, stop. Does he believe this, Laura's friend asked Laura. I said, you don't think parties concede upcoming minor elections to set up better terms for winning the next major election? I said, out loud, Jeff, stop. It's an old routine, I said. When I point to a landmark for the more frequent Dark, yes, I can truthfully point to the motherfucking poachers, but yesterday, conversing with a stranger while Hillary Inevitability yapped in closed caption on a wide-screen above the stranger's head, the full force of how much I miss D, miss L, I miss K, miss Thursday Night Pints walloped me. I miss free-form yapping with people who yap my yap. I miss writing Thursday Night Pints posts. I never realized how much, all of it. I said, Robert Pollard's birthday is tomorrow. Laura's friend looked at me. Guided by Voices, I said. Stared at me. Lynn and I are going hiking tomorrow, I said.








I AM BUT A TRAVELER IN THIS LAND & KNOW LITTLE OF ITS WAYS

Dean Young

Is everything a field of energy caused

by human projection? From the crib bars

hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed   

desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

surrounds the soccer field of what if.

Sometimes it seems like a world where no one   

knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes   

both directions. How about a polymer

that contracts in response to electrical

charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor?   

King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone

who has traveled here knows the discrepancies

between idea and fact. The idea is the worm   

in the tequila and the next day is the fact.   

In between may be the sacred—real blood   

from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas

are best sprung from actions like the children   

of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette,   

another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams,   

waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened   

nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head:   

good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

The stranded whale, guided out of the cove   

by tugboats, turns and swims back in.   

The violinist will not let go her violin   

which is 200 years old and still on the train

thus she is dragged down the track. By what

manner is the soul joined to the body?   

Answer: an arm connecting a violin

to a violinist. According to Freud,

there are no accidents. Astrologists

and Presbyterians agree for different reasons.   

You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake.   

You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

Human consciousness: is it the projector

or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits   

and spray the grass so everything dies

but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

what he thinks. Sometimes they give you   

a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest   

is your problem. In one version,

the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

the poor couple a castle and a moat and two   

silver horses said to be sired by the wind.

That was before dentistry, which might have been   

a better gift. You did not want to get sick   

in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided

but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master   

of the short story. After the kiss from whom   

he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

touches a bush in which birds are singing.

Church of Broken Toasters

Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from my new ticket agent at DC United. Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from United's Chief Revenue Officer Mike Schoenbrun. My ticket agent had told him about our phone call and Schoenbrun wondered what United had done to so alienate me and wondered what United could do to win me back. I gave him the it's not you, it's me speech, the I don't want to wear a uniform and go to church anymore speech. Loved one's know this is the core of my apostasy, but the ticket agent didn't buy it. The ticket agent said, Schoenbrun said, that you were angry over the season ticket packages, and I said yes, it angered me that ticket prices have been raised while the number of games has dropped, but really, it's not you, it's me. He talked about the generous new season ticket packages United has planned for next season. I believe him, by the way, I'm not snarking here. Or rather, I believe he believes what he was saying. I said, I also find it maddening that United will not publicly state that Supporters Clubs and LOUD SIDE! will not be banished to an endzone in any new stadium, but really, it's not you, it's me. He said that United is confident the new stadium will happen (and while I have stated forever that there will never be a new soccer stadium in DC I concede I am closer to being wrong than I've ever been) but until the stadium is a certainty United can make no public declarations on the seating of a stadium. I said, of course you could say that whenever there is a new stadium the Supporters Clubs and LOUD SIDE! will get a sideline, but really, it's not you, it's me. He praised the Supporters Clubs and season ticket holders profusely while admitting the possibility Supporters Clubs and LOUD SIDE! might be banished to an endzone in a new stadium. He invited me to forums and events, assuring me that my voice and all season ticket holder and Supporters Clubs member voices will be listened to, told me that we are the core of the business of United. I didn't say, if that's true, why doesn't United promise to make a sideline available at reasonable prices to Supporters Clubs and LOUD SIDE! because what would have been the point? Instead I said, I'm really not an event-goer, though I'm sure Supporters Clubs and LOUD SIDE! season ticket holders will make their voices heard, though really, it's not you, it's me. He said, I understand, anything else, and I reiterated that's it's me, not you, I don't want to wear a uniform and go to church anymore. He told me to call him directly if I have more concerns and questions. Once I would have been concerned that I don't want to wear a uniform and go to church anymore but now I'm not. And I do appreciate the reaching out - United won't go bankrupt when I don't renew my season ticket (and I'm not going to renew my season ticket) - it is to United's credit that a top team executive picked up the phone to call me. But though I have quibbles that would once have been indulged issues - the season ticket packages, the refusal to promise there will be a sideline LOUD SIDE! in a new stadium, the corrupt rinky-dinkness of MLS (I didn't mention this to either the ticket agent or Schoenbrun) - it's not them, it's me: I don't feel like putting on a uniform and going to church anymore.

• Laurie Spiegel turns sixty-nine today. I like but don't love her music, but her music is responsible for some of the music of others that I love that exists because of Laurie Spiegel.
• The wheel turns, the boat rocks, the sea rises.
• Of flying cars and the declining rate of profit.
• Inept Empire.
• Pay no attention to the racist under the bedsheet.
• More post-referendum blah.
• Comradeship and silence.
• Blegsylvania be dead, yo.

 
EIGHTFOLD CHANT

Brian Komei Dempster

Church of broken toasters and singed fuses,

church of the dripping roof and chipped chimney stack,

of the flooded garage and its split door,

gas-hissing pipes and sibilant water heaters,

church of piss-poor light and shaky ladders

where I unchoke windows and dislodge chopsticks

from pipes, smooth curled up wallpaper and key the locks,

fix clocks sticking or ticking with different times,

church where wings of dead flies drift like petals

from cobwebs, ghosts sift through floorboards

and the homeless sleep in compost, steeping like tea bags

pungent from the leaves' damp weight.

Church where I am summoned by the door's clatter of brass

to the brown-toothed vagrant who spreads open

her overcoat; to the chattering man who communes
                                            

with pines and brooms the stairs; to the bent, old Japanese woman

who forgets her keys, waits for me to twist the lock free

so she can scrub floors with Murphy wood soap

and a toothbrush, wobble atop a ladder and polish the two-ton bell.

On this path I am my uncle setting cubes of cheese into jaws

of traps, and my grandmother stirring peas into a pan of fried rice,
                                              

and my grandfather padding the halls in slippers and gloves,

the cold globes of his breath a string of prayer beads

weaving me, a mixed-blood grandson, into them.

Backsuck and the Borders Swallow

That's the rental we picked up Saturday for driving Planet's stuff to Ohio Monday so I can abandon her at college for the start of her senior year. Me and a fat-ass red gas-guzzling SUV, a Dodge, with Oklahoma plates. The three of us find it funny. When I turned the car on the radio was tuned to the local sports-talk station, ESPN980, it was a local baseball show, I didn't have any music with me so I listened the fifteen minutes from rental office to house. To tell from the commercials, sports-talk radio stations' target-demographic is males who owe thousands in back taxes, face bankruptcy, and have erectile dysfunction. Doctor Hornsby promised results in his office on your first visit or the visit is free. I almost wish I had an NRA magnet-sticker and an I Don't Trust the Liberal Media magnet-sticker for the Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Cumberland to Morgantown to Washington to Wheeling to Zanesville to Gambier and back just to see the faces from the drivers of cars with Obama stickers when I zoom by or they zoom by me. It'd be like The Alternative Factor. But what of Lazarus, hassled by Internal Revenue, irrevocably broke, unable to maintain a boner, in both matter and anti-matter universes?

• Can I please point out that incidents like Ferugson are not a bug but a feature? If you think for a motherfucking second that Power isn't DELIGHTED! by Ferguson, didn't spend a motherfucking second thinking of fixing Ferguson, didn't spend every IMMEDIATE SECOND! thinking about how to exploit Ferguson to amplify Ferguson as an example of what will happen to you if you disobey, you are a motherfucking fool.
• Ferguson and American apartheid.
• Our return to Feudalism.
• In defense of outside agitators.
• How many fingers am I holding up?
• Burque Media.
• I truly don't understand people who don't believe the Earth's climate isn't changing.

• BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• I believe The Gazette might have just condemned one of the robbers to death. 
• I watched the first half of DCU last night - its was streaming on the website, I was streaming media at my work desk for self-entitled fucks - and United scored three goals in under ten minutes in a Germany v Brazil fashion and I tweeted that thought out. Two tweeters who follow me chipped in and.... Long story short: I did commit to do a Fuck-Me-Jig if and when a new stadium exists. The original dare stated I would do it in front of my season ticket seat, but since I will not longer be a season ticket holder I cannot uphold that end of the dare. I will however, buy a ticket to a game, do the Fuck-Me-Jig, have SeatSix or Landru or someone record it, and post it here, provided here is still here. Besides, there will never be a new soccer stadium in DC.
• Gaddis, for those of you who do.
• Ruggles, complete, for those of you who do.
• Mirah is going to the Kate Bush shows.
• Borges born 115 years ago today. Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

STONE GULLETS

May Swenson

Stone gullets among       Inrush       Feed         Backsuck and

The borders swallow            Outburst             Huge engorgements       Swallow

In gulps the sea      Tide crams jagged         Smacks snorts chuckups       Follow

       In urgent thirst      Jaws the hollow      Insurge       Hollow

Gushing evacuations follow       Jetty it must       Outpush       Greed

Don't Try to Talk If You Don't Have To. You Must Admit There Is No Audience. Everything Is Done For You.

• Today's monologue: I'm.... see the Spicer below. And there were always days that necessitated Swans, too many days these days necessitate Swans.
• Shock (but there it is): The Thrasybulus Syndrome and Gaza.
• Hamas's choices. 
• Israel's choices.
• George W Bush condemned Israel for killing fourteen civilians in 2002 Gaza attack.
• Israel has just killed 1/1000th of Gaza population.
• Reminder: motherfucking Obama.
• My surfer for a barge w/folksy enhancements: on "we tortured some folk."
• We tortured some folk.
• Capitalism and slavery.
• Capitalism Whack-a-Mole: Someone playing Capitalism Whack-A-Mole moves seamlessly between three different — and mutually incompatible — frameworks of justification. Those frameworks are desert (each person should get what they produce with their labor), voluntarism (each person should get whatever they come about through voluntary, non-coercive means), and utility (the economic system should be created to maximize well-being). This Capitalism Whack-A-Mole does not need a starting point, but, in my experience, either desert or voluntarism comes first, with utility the back up when the argument turns really bad.
• Capitalism.
• Homogenization of Perceptual Experience.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• In the Marvelous Dimension.
• Suite for Emily.
• Yes, Spicer and Swans. Always with Spicer and Swans.

BEYOND WORDS

Kevin Young

       Mudd Club 4th floor gallery
       Manhattan, April 1981
      

If you bomb

the IND

or tag the 2

downtown

—gallery-bound—

dousing it in tribal

shrapnel, you're it

—the shit—

If you can lie

between the rails

—Please Stand

Clear the Closing—

or press yourselves

betw. train

& the wall

spray can rattling

like a tooth—The roof

the roof

the roof is on

fire—soon

the 6 will whistle

past, swinging

like a night stick—

Officer Pup throwing

a brick

@ that Mouse

Ignatz, in love—

#$!?!!!!—then

you'll have found

risk. A calling—

Crash, Daze, Pray

covering trains

like cave paintings,

avoiding the German

shepherds—ACHTUNG—

while the cars sit

in the yards

—what no one else in this

city owns. Making

their names

known—Dondi, Boy-

5, B-Sirius, Crazy

Legs, Coolie C—

The city clears

its throat

the subway shaking

the buildings above—

We don't need

no water let

the motherfucker

burn— Futura 2000,

Phase II, Quick

& Sex & Zephyr

& Lady Pink—

Fab 5 Freddy

(n� Braithwaite)

saying everyone's

a star. "Rapture"—

the whole planet's in

on it—Chilly Most

Being the Host Coast

to Coast—Freddy's painted

Campbell's Soup Cans that read

DADA & POP instead

of beef barley—

the UFO has landed

& a brother's

stepped out, alien, dressed

in white. Then when

there's no more cars

he goes out at night

& eats up bars—

graffiti like 3 card monte—

running, avoiding the pigs

like a black muslim

bean pie. DJ spinning

says my my.

Pay attn.—

say, ain't that

Basquiat spinning

disks behind Blondie—

SAMO   AS AN END

TO MINDWASH RELIGION—

45s stacked high

as a Dag-

wood sammich?

Hungry, this B-

boy's headed

to the top—Yes

Yes y'all

You don't stop—

blowing up.

HELEN: A REVISION

Jack Spicer

zeus: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

thersites: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

zeus: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.

thersites: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

zeus: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

thersites: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

zeus: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]

*       *       *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost

And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost

Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge

Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge

Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat

Where they say all passages to pay the debt

The lighted yet.

*       *       *

The focus sing

Is not their business. Their backs lay

By not altogether being there.

Here and there in swamps and villages.

How doth the silly crocodile

Amuse the Muse

*       *       *

And in the skyey march of flesh

That boundary line where no body is

Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms

And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there

And mud and fire

Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud

and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs

The battlefield has harms. The trees have half

Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord

From hair and mud and flesh.