It Is the Unremarkable That Will Last

Yes, I changed the font in the grids to spectral, kept the serifs, going blind I need clutches, created more leaf space in the same space, neither elephant note or blooger offer spectral, this type in a grid in gaggle sheets and copy/paster to blagger, using two of my oligarch shitlords products yo, letting my yacht-owning owners track me for years, the shut-up or be shut-down be coming (tomorrow's update)

HEY! Marathon time at WFMU, they can't keep going on my support alone, completely independent, completely listener supported, archives everything (but Yo La Tengo playing requests for donations on the second Saturday of every Marathon so you'll just have to listen to Todd's show) (Ira the K has a show on WFMU, not in rotation now but go to archives, amazing sets), what? Russians are shelling Europe's largest nuclear power station twaater blaats as I type this, DONATE WHILE YOU CAN! Disclaimer: I will never force you listen to this radio station no matter how much power over your life and death I acquire, please consider throwing them the coins in your pocket

*What* rule-based international order?

The corpse in the kitchen: a history of imperial forgetting

Making sense of nuclear psychosis

I daydream of shooting this motherfucker

Stop killing animals for your eating pleasure

The elephant in the courtroom

The varieties of bullshit

Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

So the winner is.... the United States?

Russia's motherfucking crackerchristers

How to talk to a motherfucking crackerchrister

On cringe: what is deadnaming if not a gap between how you see yourself and how others see you?

End of the World-Building

Buttigieg the fraud and Ulysses

The good guy/bad guy myth

Blooger-inspired bleggalgaze

Reading *The Books of Jacob*

New Belle and Sebastian for those of you who do

You may be shocked to learn there's new GbV

Bandcamp sells its soul

MY WORSE NIGHTMARE REALIZED!

I can't stop listening to this song, laugh!

TO A WREN ON CALVARY

Larry Levis

It is the unremarkable that will last,

As in Brueghel’s camouflage, where the wren’s withheld,

While elsewhere on a hill, small hawks (or are they other birds?)

Are busily unraveling eyelashes & pupils

From sunburned thieves outstretched on scaffolds,

Their last vision obscured by wings, then broken, entered.

I cannot tell whether their blood spurts, or just spills,

Their faces are wings, & their bodies are uncovered.

The twittering they hear is the final trespass.

                                         ~

And all later luxuries—the half-dressed neighbor couple

Shouting insults at each other just beyond

Her bra on a cluttered windowsill, then ceasing it when

A door was slammed to emphasize, like trouble,

The quiet flowing into things then, spreading its wake

From the child’s toy left out on a lawn

To the broken treatise of jet-trails drifting above—seem

Keel scrapes on the shores of some enlarging mistake,

A wrong so wide no one can speak of it now in the town

That once had seemed, like its supporting factories

That manufactured poems & weaponry,

Like such a good idea. And wasn’t it everyone’s?

Wasn’t the sad pleasure of assembly lines a replica

Of the wren’s perfect, camouflaged self-sufficiency,

And of its refusal even to be pretty,

Surviving in a plumage dull enough to blend in with

A hemline of smoke, sky, & a serene indifference?

                                           ~

The dead wren I found on a gravel drive

One morning, all beige above and off-white

Underneath, the body lighter, no more than a vacant tent

Of oily feathers stretched, blent, & lacquered shut

Against the world—was a world I couldn’t touch.

And in its skull a snow of lice had set up such

An altar, the congregation spreading from the tongue

To round, bare sills that had been its eyes, I let

It drop, my hand changed for a moment

By a thing so common it was never once distracted from

The nothing all wrens meant, the one feather on the road.

No feeding in the wake of cavalry or kings changed it.

Even in the end it swerved away, & made the abrupt

Riddle all things come to seem ... irrelevant:

The tucked claws clutched emptiness like a stick.

And if Death whispered as always in the language of curling

Leaves, or a later one that makes us stranger,

“Don’t you come near me motherfucker”;

If the tang of metal in slang made the New World fertile,

Still ... as they resumed their quarrel in the quiet air,

I could hear the species cheep in what they said ...

Until their voices rose. Until the sound of a slap erased

A world, & the woman, in a music stripped of all prayer,

Began sobbing, & the man become bystander cried O Jesus.

In the sky, the first stars were already faint

And timeless, but what could they matter to that boy, blent

To no choir, who saw at last the clean wings of indifferent

Hunger, & despair? Around him the other petty thieves,

With arms outstretched, & eyes pecked out by birds, reclined,

Fastened forever to scaffolds which gradually would cover

An Empire’s hills & line its roads as far

As anyone escaping in a cart could see, his swerving mind

On the dark brimming up in everything, the reins

Going slack in his hand as the cart slows, & stops,

And the horse sees its own breath go out

Onto the cold air, & gazes after the off-white plume,

And seems amazed by it, by its breath, by everything.

But the man slumped behind it, dangling a lost nail

Between his lips, only stares at the swishing tail,

At each white breath going out, thinning, & then vanishing,

For he has grown tired of amazing things.

Corpse or Carp

• The Khashoggi Show, everything is a work.
• Our Overlords despise and fear your ungrateful ass, will Khashoggi your ass, though I suspect this was just intramural elite ratfucking.
• For argument's sake say the Saudis meant to kidnap Khashoggi and properly torture his infidel ass then kill him, the if that's the case OK our mutual future.
• I think this a pilot of a new Overlord series, Who Disappears Tonight!
• I joke, I give our bludgeoning Overlords too much credit for innovation,
• while this case is a work that (perhaps) went sideways the lesson the Overlords will learn is there's no public backlash for brazenly disappearing people (as opposed to openly disappearing people but denying it), it will be an ad campaign by the 2022 midterms if not sooner, Who Disappears Tonight! theme song, think Ultimate Tax Relief's jingle.
• A last desperate attempt to convince us of the innocence of violence.

• Joe played that and a single from every year from 1949 to 1995, go give money to WFMU, dumdum.
• 20 questions to ask U.S. political candidates because no one else will.
• Campaigning against Iowa's King.
• Crazy Uncle Turdly losing, the schaden won't freunde like once, I hope he loses, he won't.
• Maggie's weekly links (two days late, sorry).
• I am old and still twaaat at my twaaaatter betters.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links (two days late, sorry).
• A middle finger to precocious young novelists?
• Joe segued into Voice of Beehives from this Kate Bush song, go listen, so good....

HISTORY WILL DECIDE

Anne Waldman

All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a hot history. All writing is in fact cut-ups history will decide games heated and heated economic behavior. To rise up scene all sounds of Tahrir and inside supply side threatened. A long delineation. Longer than I would be counting. This, a whisper, this the end of whisper time. Rise up and wiser this the streets of the world. Commission overheard in spin a soldiering one. What streets of the world to spin rubric’s yes yes commerce, no, a no, no. Tanks of the blown-off world. He is my beautiful offshore a caw caw of major spills and elsewhere no, no. Cut the dialect the binary the dear word so precious and forbidden. They use the machines to take the streets of the world. Horizon my headwater cut cut the cable my beignets my else an appetite “poor politics, poor poor pols.” Waters of the world in media cut cut the lines manipulate desire and show the word show the Man show the tablets a Paleolithic grab all the twilight fields of discontent that shadow governments rise up people of the world of many wounded galaxies of discontent. And hear you, people of the word. What room? The gray we reach to. Assume that the worst has happened deporting Rom explicit in the gypsy purge meeting with Popes in the streets of the world. Subject to strategy poor poor pol a scrutiny. Its link its drill its Bandars. Condemn Salazar and the interior ministry of fisheries and assume the worst in writing cuts his exterior of life the glib industry, the selves behind the tyrants. My loaves and fishes in deep deep water. Is at some point classical prose, my no, Bulgaria my no Romania my Haiti my Egypt, and gypsy environment come to this coastline America ruptured pipeline to awe caw Gulf Stream is seated cut cut to other fields ripple effect and your domino will fall. And the bomb fall down. Cutting and rearranging factor your opponent your domino history will gain introducing a new parity binary Assange dimension your strategy. Will history decide “caw caw caw.” How many Rom yes yes discoveries sound to kinesthetic a gulf of everyone. She wanted to soldier a gulf of anyone. She wanted to soldier out of here her long delineation longer than would be counting. Cut through this leak of revolution the future will come out. We can deport Rimbaud now produce accident to his color “Voyelles.” Exit the colors you drain me of. And new dimension to films cut cut Sarkozy cut Hollande the senses the place of sands, gambling Rom scene all sounds all colors tasting sounds, France, France smell all streets of the world. Wake up, all colors of all the burqas tasting sounds of the shadow world. Cut cut when you can have the best all: Anthropocene. Welcome to the Anthropocene. Rom the gypsy in everyone. In a collage of words read heard decipher, Rom arise outbreak of military strategy, sound of voice a pitching wail will sear the wall will wall the sound will break the word will suck the variation clear and act accordingly history will decide the streets of the world. Caw caw introduced the cut-up scissored remembered gulf renders the aroma in memory of my despotic elders. Aroma of Rom. Let the dolphins in and act accordingly. If you posed entirely of prearranged cut cut determined by random leaders no Merkel cut cut G-20. A page of written words no advantage to leak from circular Salazar. Interior from knowing into writer predict the move the mood, no go back will step down will will step down. Circumpolar water and denizens within arise. Streets of the world arise. The cut variation images shift Rom sense advantage in processing to sound sight cut cut sound to arise. Visit of memories New Orleans Florida have been made by accidents is where Rimbaud was going with order could live could systematic derangement of the gambling scene, cut cut in with a tea party lullaby then hallucination: seeing and places that arise the streets of the word. A long line’s delineation to random future streets of the world. And they our nuclear future to deny deny. Our man in rendition and cut cut the torture oh streets of the world arise to cut back forms else mammals suffer a dead Mubarak. Rearrange blunt the word and image to other fields Rom, no France France rise to streets the USA the USA of the soldiering world. We’ll see how calm politics will become. G-20 outbreak of temper Germany. Of temper BP. Condemn the masters UK France corpse or carp on it but no longer predict the move, cut cut other fields than cuts your writing Egypt your Yemen your Syria your Libya your Mali.

I Do Not Claim That a Greater Frequency of Rhyme Than Is Now Made Use of in American Poetry Will, in Time, Set Things Right

I've entered Fleabus twice in WFMU's sillyass mascot contest they run during their October silent marathons. I don't know that a cat will ever win - Station Manager Ken has suggested if not decreed that cats will never win. I wrestled through sleep last night - I give, of course, to the station - should I enter Fleabus again? Or - Olive. Fleabus photos by Planet, Olive photos by me. Olive's ear: next WFMU mascot. I feel like a traitor to Fleabus. When the guilt gets the better of me I'll give another $50 and enter her again too. Fuck me and wrestling w my moral algorithms. Go, give. Do it for me.

• Of course I choose the bunny. Will get the black one when guilt makes me enter Fleabus.
• And there are bleggal and tabletial issues now to confront, torture, and massage. Fuck me.
• Burst firing.
• This way, America.
• I heard one minute of last night's veep debate on the radio. Did Tim Kaine come across as a creepy shitsmear on TV too? What a fuckstick.
• Someone hacked into Richard's blog and posted not once, but twice!
• Krasznahorkai's Last Wolf & Herman.
• Early Talking Heads, with some good videos.
• Thrill Jockey tweeted out early Sea & Cake. I asked back if there was any new S&C in my future - last album in 2012 - and of course, Thrill Jockey did not answer.
• 25 tangents about Bowie in Berlin.
• UPDATE! Two hours after I time-stamped and posted these two BB&BPB songs, someone tweeted out the BB&BPB have concert tonight in Missouri. BPB retweeted out that tweet. I replied to BPB tweet about Blessed Serendipity. What a blogwhoring motherfucker am I, though I claim Serendipity demanded the reply. I have received the non-response I deserve.

STATEMENT

Paul Blackburn

My poetry may not be typically American, or at least in matter, not
solely so: but I think it does make use of certain techniques which, even
when not invented by American poets, find their particular exponents
there in contemporary letters, from Pound & Doctor Williams, to younger
writers like Paul Carroll or Duncan or Creeley.

         Techniques of juxtaposition.
         Techniques of speech rhythms,
                                                sometimes very intense,
                                                 sometimes developed slowly, as
                                                 one would have
                         conversation with a friend.

Personally, I affirm two things:
                                                           the possibility of warmth & contact
                                                                       in the human relationship :
as juxtaposed against the materialistic pig of a technological world,
where relationships are only   ‘useful’   i.e., exploited, either
         psychologically or materially.

                                                                 2⁰, the possibility of   s  o  n  g
within that world: which is like saying ‘yes’ to sunlight.

   On the matter of song:   I believe there must be a return toward the
musical structure of poetry, just as there must be, for certain people at
least, a return to warmth within a relationship.

However impractical that may seem in a society controlled in some of its
most intimate aspects by monstrous, which are totally irresponsible,
corporations, organized for the greatest gain of the most profit: and whose
natural growth, like that of any organism, is toward monopoly,
                     self-support, self-completion, self-
                                                                                           perpetuation,
                     and eventually self-competition and self-destruction.

       In a world that is so quickly losing its individuals, it can only be the
individuals who persist, who can work any change of direction, i.e. control
the machines, or destroy them.

   Machines can be very beneficent as means

                       to a better
                       (materially better)
                                                             life, as either
               democratizing or socializing agents.
But as a means to control for the limited number of men who now own them,

(but the president or general manager of the corporation
really owns nothing but his own salary  (and his power) so that
even the controlling minds of these gigantic corporate machines
are irresponsible. That is, not subject to the effects
                               of their own decisions)

                                                                       (and
                                                                             the personnel, the individuals
are replaceable, all the way to the top. The machine, the organisation, has
itself created the position and will function without the individual, has,
in that sense created the person to fill the ‘p o s i t i o n’
                                                                          and its own needs) so that
when, in these upper reaches, the ‘organisation’ the machine itself
becomes master, it can only mean disaster, global and particular.

      I do not claim that a greater frequency of rhyme than is now made use of
in American poetry will, in time, set things right.

     Only that if a man could sing the poems his poets write

                                     — and could understand them — and if

     the poets would sing something from their guts,   rather than
     the queasy contents of same,
     then that man would stand a better
chance,   of being a whole man,   than
him who stands or sits and says but ‘Yes’ all day.

Enough man to stand where it is necessary to take a stand.

To give
and man enough to receive, LOVE,      
                                 when he finds it offered.

To take the sun and the goods of the earth, while it lasts.
                                                                                                                    and to
                             fight in whatever way he can
                                 the monstrous machines that try,   and will try, to

                                                 o b l i t e r a t e   him, for

                                                          $1 more.

The Next WFMU Pet Mascot!

Probably not, but pledge made, Fleabus entered! Go look! and if you flickr please favorite!

Reminder! These photos by Planet!

Yes, The Hamper won the voting (sincere thanks to everyone who played), but that's what I entered last year, though here it is again:

Nothing Prepared Me for the Onslaught of Wayfarer's Bliss When She Continued to List, One by One, the Impossible Ingredients I Needed to Live

• Dave Mandl's played the above on his show this past Sunday (though I actually heard the piece yesterday morning), I liked it, I went out and found the Soundcloud. I assume they enable the embed so that people much bigger than me disseminate the sound. I will not be permitted to listen to it this Friday's K2F2H2H2C2M2W2W2Z2G nor during Sunday's return trip (though I'll play some for Planet on Saturday's long drive around Ohio on roads we've never been on and hope Earthgirl doesn't complain so much I have to stop so long I don't push it).
• I don't write about work much, but I can say I am, in the natural net of my staffer's responsibility, caught in an inescapable copyright committee. Lord fuck me. For giggles - and out of genuine curiosity on several levels of descending shamelessness - I almost sent the following to the email address provided at The Vocal Constructivists website: Hello I heard one of your pieces on Dave's show I very much dug, found your Soundcloud page, posted the three songs, OK w/you, let me know then discovered this extensive page of youtubes of performances on their website and couldn't imagine they'd even think to give a fuck if I post their music.
• UPDATE! Within minutes of my tweeting out this post it was favorited by a twitter account named Vocal Constructivist, so I'm guessing I was right to not worry about copyright when posting the music.
• Lord fuck me. I'm caught in an inescapable copyright committee.
• I very much dig the music, I don't know choral - especially contemporary choral - like I want to, any guidance and suggestions would be much appreciated.
• Anyone who has heard me sing knows I must be blacked-out drunk - which I haven't been in years - or hate you to sing for you.
• All too often periodic reminder of the world and its clusterfuckers.
• Towards a new theory on ghosts.
• On fear.
• Badiou, for those of you who do. When the library gets it I will read the Introduction, be enthralled early, amazed middle, satisfied late and feel no moral obligation to read his incredibly recondite reasoning for and justifications of his theses as stated beautifully in the Introduction. Or so I hope.
• Constructive.
• Richard Flanagan? 
• RIP Mark Bell.

BLOOD SOUP

Mary Ruefle

The last time I saw father alive he was using

a black umbrella, closed, to beat off some pigeons

hanging outside the marble portals of a museum.

We were visitors, walking very slowly, so father

could stoop and examine everything. We had not been

in the museum, but were resting on its steps.

We saw it all—the fountains, the statues, the parks

and the post office. Cities are made of such things.

Once we encountered a wedding coming out of the cathedral

and were caught in a shower of rice; as the bride

flicked her veiled head father licked his little finger

and in this way saved a grain. On the next block

he announced he was going to heaven. But first let’s

go back to the hotel and rest, he said: I want my mint.

Those were practically his last words. And what did I want

more than anything in the world? Probably the ancient Polish

recipe for blood soup, which was finally told to me

in an empty deli in a deserted mill town in western Massachusetts

by the owner’s mother, who was alone one day when I burst

in and demanded a bowl. But, she said, lacing her fingers

around a jar of morello cherries, it requires one cup of

new blood drawn from the goose whose neck you’ve just wrung

to put in the pot, and where in these days can I find

anything as fresh as that? I had lost track of my life

before, but nothing prepared me for the onslaught of

wayfarer’s bliss when she continued to list, one

by one, the impossible ingredients I needed to live.

We sat at the greasy table far into the night, while

snow fell on the locked doors of the church next door,

dedicated to St. Stanislas, which was rumored to be

beautiful inside, and contain the remains of his beloved head.

You Can Help Choose the Photo That Makes Fleabus the First Official WFMU Mascot Contest!

 

WFMU is holding a silent marathon to raise money for general operations and sound equipment for their new live music venue; for a $50 donation you can enter your pet in a contest to be the first ever Official WFMU Mascot for a Year. FLEABUS! dammit, it should be FLEABUS! Please watch the above (a compilation of photos taken by my daughter Planet) and tell me which three photos you would recommend I submit. Mind, this isn't a democracy people, it's not a vote, I decide, though I can be persuaded. It's a particular DJs turn to get the donation registered on his widget, I'll be making the donation and contest submission late Sunday evening, you have until then and I'll bump this again for all the good it will do, I know you don't want to do this, but at least maybe a couple of long-timers who have been around here as long as Fleabus, please? Oh, and throw the coins in your pocket at WFMU.

No Hornblow of Thunder

Songs from Bryce's Friday show, a weekend tradition here. Hey, I've done all I know to do (and am willing to do, the youtubes stay) to make this blog load faster. I killed the static background and I've gone through the blogrolls and removed the url corpses of seven blegicides. I've moved the moribund to Moribund. Moribund will soon be the most crowded sub-blogroll on the blogroll. >> Deleted bleggalgazing << or at least delayed, in meantime, I seem to be rotating headers again, did you see Jessica the Goat last night? Hey, thanks for reading. As always, if you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know.








UPDATE ON THE LAST JUDGMENT

Ellen Hinsey

There will be no deafening noise. No hornblow of thunder.

The small plants of the earth will not tremble on the hillside as grace is prepared.

The sky will neither drown us in its plenty, nor the ground crack and consume feet in its hunger.

No, bodies will not, in their last rags of flesh, creep from under the earth, and with breath once torn from them, choke and expel the old mud of the world.

Adam and Eve, incredulous, will not embrace again in their poverty, not knowing whether to shield themselves, or to emerge shameless from the past's shadow, astonished to again greet Terra Firma.

The book of the world, encrusted with deep-sea pearls and the blood of the lamb, will not open up its pages in which all deeds have been inscribed.

And the totality of history will not roll back together, all events fusing, once and for all, into the great blazing sphere of time.

None will sit on the right hand. There will be no right hand.

And the figure of sorrow and grace, with his staff upright, its purple pennant caught in that final wind, will not be there to greet us, with the mercy of justice in his eyes.

No, never judgment. Just the abyss into which all acts are thrown down, and the terrible white silence in which judgment either endures or burns.

When the Smooth, Voluptuous Moon Falls into the Ocean, Like Bait on Fishing Line, I See Her for the Yo-Yo She Is, & God, Who Is Learning to Walk the Dog

 

Fleabus blogheader returns for at least a few days. This does not mean I am contemplating changing the template. It does mean it occurs to me that the template can be changed. After our hike Saturday on Bull Run Mountain I pulled into the parking lot of the Sheetz in Haymarket VA behind a giant pick-up flying two huge Confederate flags and a Subaru adorned with Obama 2012 and VA Democratic candidates bumperstickers. They parked next to each other and I parked two slots down. In the checkout line I was behind both who were behind a guy in a pro-Israel shirt. The three struck up a conversation - there was only one cashier, the line was a dozen deep. Fuck Hamas, Fuck Gaza, a happy, wholehearted consensus among the three. I said nothing. Today's music via tweet from Fabio.

• Concentrate and exterminate.
• Sweets. Tom's latest on Gaza.
• The Silent Minority: on not saying anything about Gaza.
• Isolating Gaza.
• Israel in the U.S. Empire.
• Behind the myths about Hamas.
• Maps are written by victors.
• Via Anthony, I was reminded of Jonathan Crary's 24/7, which has been sitting on my Kindle for a year. Halfway through now, I'll give you a few quotes in days to come.
• Can someone recommend a reader that isn't Amazon please? I really don't want to give Bezos any more money. And I promise if I send you books in the future in will be from Powell or Politics and Prose. Revolution! bitches, he says on his free google blogging platform.
• Speaking of which, yes, I know the blog is loading slowly, I'll try to go through the blogroll tonight and move the moribund to Moribund and remove the dead - it's the dead feeds that slow loading at times.
• This week in water.
• Skull-blogging.
• Amy Clampitt's The Kingfisher.
• Spoon is fine - I like hearing them when they're on the radio, I don't like enough to buy - but I did not know of the Eno-connection.

PSALM IN THE SPIRIT OF DRAGNET

Julie Maria Wade

Tonight all the stars are just celestial swag
in the moon’s handbag, flashy & overpriced.
All the angels are pinheads, & not even pinheads of light.

 

Here’s what I know: I am good
at déjà vu but bad at karaoke.  I am good
at Magic 8-Ball but bad at bicycle-built-for-two.

 

Axiom, from the Greek meaning “No rebuttals,” meaning “Whatever I    say is true.”

 

For instance, the heart is shaped like a Hungryman dinner,
indestructible as Styrofoam & always divided.

 

Somewhere in the cosmos this moment
the ghost of Jack Webb is asking the ghost of Harry Morgan
for “Just the facts,” & Morgan is laughing his ethereal ass off.

 

Axiom, from the Greek meaning, “No facts, ma’am, only

   interpretations.”

 

When the smooth, voluptuous moon falls into the ocean,
like bait on fishing line, I see her for the yo-yo she is,
& God, who is learning to walk the dog.

 

Speaking of dogs, I decree they all shall be mutts & all named Fido.
All shall have spots & ride starboard, at least once, on a flaming-red

   fire engine.

 

Joni Mitchell shall play on all the jukeboxes in all the coffee shops,

   especially
at the Axiom Diner, from the Greek meaning “greasy spoon,” meaning

   “tops in food.”

 

But getting back to that moon, who can be such a diva sometimes,
who only ever buys her triple-shot mocha frappucinos from Starbucks.

 

It’s a hard job keeping her up all night, that moon.
The baristas are grouchy in their green aprons, swigging their Ethos

   water.

 

Now the weatherperson predicts one hell of a zeitgeist arriving on

   Tuesday.
There is talk of losing all the apostrophes in a bad grammar meteor

   shower.

 

Sometimes the sky is calm & white & pleated with cirrus clouds.
Sometimes the thunder sounds like God driving his old Zamboni

   across a starlit, skating rink floor.

 

The moon has only a few good moves & is never going to nail that

   triple Salcow. 

 

Axiom, from the Greek for “stick the landing.”

 

The moon doesn’t mind.  The moon is already a gold medal.

As for my guardian angel, it’s a toss-up:
I’ll take Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha from Bewitched,
or Nietzsche, as himself, exactly.

Is Door to the Forum, Is Cutter of Keys

• Was reminded by Storck an hour ago of Loud Animal Group.
• Capitalism's growing problem with anxiety: Consider the panic of losing a mobile phone, of having no access at all to the internet, to one’s games, movies, photos, or common nodes of social interaction that we call our friends or followers. A power-cut, a burglary… would it be wrong to call them addictions? Yet we have neither selected this basis of social organisation, nor should we guiltily consider ourselves lucky first-worlders gorging gluttonously on the backs of the deprived billions. Whilst digitised technologies have abstracted and placed many cultural forms on a single homogeneous platform, personal technologies have the worker connected and potentially labouring at all hours in ways that operate, at minute level, the exchanges and processes that neoliberal capitalism requires to function. Against such a backdrop, our politicians, the public face of neoliberal capitalism, cajole us through fear and envy to keep up our duty as citizens: spend, borrow, buy, 24/7, 365 days a year, be it Christmas, Valentine’s or whatever, one must never shirk in one’s duty to service the economy.
• The zombification of the West.
• Privatizing science.

• The only two Louder Animal Group songs I could find. 
• We just put Planet on an airplane. Egoslavia's Holiest Day is five days away. See tag Planet Poems.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• There are new additions to the blogrolls, please check them out as they float to the top. Recommendations for new things for me to read solicited. Later today those blogs that haven't updated in three months will be moved to Moribund. No one will be purged except those blogs that suicided. If you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know.
• Brad's serialized short story, part the last.
• riverrun.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Creeley, for those of you who do.
• Chris M just reminded me of Current 93.

BETWEEN

Marie Ponsot

(for my daughter)

Composed in a shine of laughing, Monique brings in sacks

of groceries, unloads them, straightens, and stretches her back.

The child was a girl, the girl is a woman; the shift   

is subtle and absolute, worn like a gift.

The woman, once girl once child, now is deft in her ease,   

is door to the forum, is cutter of keys.

In space that her torque and lift have prefigured and set free   

between her mother and her child the woman stands   

having emptied her hands.

Clapping 123123

Re-posting as fresh Monday morning last night's post (with links and poem added):

Sunday evening is the stupidest time to post and certainly the worst time to beg (I've heard Sunday night is the biggest stupidass soap opera night on TV), but WFMU has just started it's marathon and I need you give them money for me. I can't imagine not having this resource - I - I'll try not to badger the fuck out of you. I also need you give them money for you; you either know why and would be an ingrate not to give or you need find out why and not be an ingrate once you do.







All four songs in this post were culled from four different shows from the past week (Storck, Bethany, Berger, Davidson). No, I couldn't wait till morning, a chance to be a slut for more than just me? I will post these songs again in the morning as a fresh post (with the template below filled in, a new title - a line stolen from a poem - and this section rewritten) unless someone comments, in which case I'll find four more songs from four different shows. Hint.

Added Monday morning: No one took the hint. No one read the post Sunday night.

• The making of capitalist patriarchy: an interview with Silvia Federici.
• The political use of extreme poverty.
• Use Politics and Prose instead of Amazon when ordering books.
• On hording books. (UPDATE! Hoarding, not hording: see comments)
• UPDATE! By DJ request I'm twitter-bumping the post. They need the money.
• DC United has a new shirt sponsor, Leidos, a gov't contractor. Can't wait to hear what fucks they are.
• Gaithersburg! Creepy as Fuck!
• You got good taste.
• Mandl's Marathon DJ CD cover!
• What to do with pleasure.

BEASTGARDEN

Lucy Ives

first garden

Beastgarden.

second garden

Bees go mad on late summer evenings, should

People stray from their jobs towards water

Beastgarden.

third garden

Who makes the rented red boat's

Oars turn

Who is the younger one always

Turning up

Who professes to be better because

He is just looking

Who says he is worse off as

He cannot look

Beastgarden.

fourth garden

The unicycle girl, thin

Like one with a sexual problem,

Goes through

The Schlosspark. This follows:

Father rolling his eyes

Beastgarden.

fifth garden

The man from Manchester

Has my breast in his hand

These are funny

They don't do anything do they

Being burnt by a fire I say

Beastgarden.

sixth garden

Similarly, if only

You grasped some

Titanic misery or a

Love like an old man's

Beastgarden.

seventh garden

Where were we

A ballroom competition goes on

A yellow satin bikini

A fuchsia floor-length are

Dancing; an audience is

Drinking, clapping 1 2 3 1 2 3

Beastgarden.

That's Right, the Mascara Snake, Fast and Bulbous

From his show today, Fabio's Beefheart birthday celebration playlist continues below the fold. Always with the Beefheart, me. I promise this is the last Beefheart I post until the next time I post Beefheart.

("Mere Protocol"? - More Like a Second Backbone!)

• Holyfuck, listen to my new obsession. 
• Aesthetics, morality, politics, and disaster.
• The Kafkaesque world of data mining.
• Auto-pilot! 
• Sirota brings the duh.
• Hillarian inevitability: campaign against Obama's legacy from the right. Of course. And with that I hearby proclaim I suspend the use of the terms Hillarian inevitably, motherfucking Clinton, and motherfucking Clintons (which means they won't be mentioned at all) from this blog NOT because those terms aren't completely valid but because they are (though I allow myself this one last Fuck the Clintons, the two of them the perfect symbol for all that's fucked in American politics).
• Should be easy until 2016, then, probably not so much, though there's an obvious way to guarantee there's not talk of them in 2016 on this blog, executed on my end.

• Reminder (to me): field-recordings, music, poems, aargh-free links if links at all, one weekend post, tomorrow.
• BRT!
• CCT!
• Did you know new water-heaters cost $2600? It's true!
• Wolfson's has closed! (h/t SeatSix). I mean, it's been years since I was inside, but there's always been a Wolfson's on Diamond Avenue.
• Scharpling's show on Tuesday night's on WFMU never worked for me - I don't want to hear talk on the radio - but news of his retiring Best Show is noteworthy if for no other reason that it, by far, raised the most money during marathons.
• Fabio played an hour-and-a-half tribute to Lou Reed yesterday, but listen to the show for the two Meredith Monk pieces.
• Fifteen problems.
• Sebald, for those of you who do. I confess I have not felt compelled to pick up another since finishing Austerlitz, though that's more a matter of enthusiasm for other stuff than never-minding Sebald.
• Joyce Carol Oates v Robert Frost.
• Auden and ecopoetry.
• In Evidence: 3.
• New Eno interview.

INTELLIGENCE

Tom Sleigh

Wiretaps and tapes, concealed

bugs and mikes,

                           intercepted letters

full of passionate declarations, contradictory

intelligence—

                           how attached he’d grown

to the subject’s documents, revising and rearranging

the influx of intelligence

with a sentiment, he acknowledged, almost

                           like love: he felt

the cool gray eyes of his superiors

trained on him, rebuking him

                           for swerving, for letting

himself go—such tender obsession

occasioned by the file!

                           Not quite the professional style

he or the Agency expected…

But such official loyalties

                           seemed mere protocol to this!—

what was wrong with him,

                           he wondered, that he construed

the documents to make the subject

seem a hero,

                           a bastard whose sole patrimony

was a pair of shoes and a rusted sword

left by an unknown father beneath a stone?

And yet his exploits in the tabloids,

the headlines screaming,

SCOURGE OF MONSTERS STRIKES AGAIN!

HERO FOUNDS REPUBLIC

                           were these heroic

different in kind from the rumors,

unverified,

                           of a rape, a murder?

—But to have met undisguised the devouring monster!

To have escaped the twisting tunnels of the maze…

On balance, for such a life,

                           the hero’s reputation wasn’t bad:

think of the opportunities for evil

                           a man of such qualities must have had!

How well he knew him—an essential innocence

that followed impulse, blind

to protocol, not noticeably more kind

                           than he was cruel.

But to stamp Case Closed and cease

                           gathering intelligence,

to give the hero up, almost, he admitted,

like a lover…:

                           such limits the hero

unknowingly transgressed!

And the Agency, cold-blooded where

                           limits were concerned (“mere protocol”?—

more like a second backbone!), committed

                           to keeping order, could not afford

such sentiments—the Chief of Security

felt an awful pang: that the work of intelligence

                           should lead to this…

He leaned back in his chair and sighed:

                           a forged genealogy certifying

that the hero’s father was a king; a mutual

assistance pact

                           to aid in taking back the usurped crown:

he could see them now, the wind

blowing lightly, the two of them sweating

as they climbed the cliff, discussing

                           the terms, exchanging information,

intelligence—

                           how would his own face look

staring down across the sea

                           as he gestured earnestly toward

some island, saying,

                           “According to our sources,

the tax revenues…”

                           And then, edging

the hero closer to the cliff, pointing

                           out the harbor, he’d push.