Is it more appalling that Saddam Hussein should have ordered someone to have their tongue torn out; or that he was able to find others to carry out such commands? If you walk up & down in this world for very long, it still seems deplorable, but less & less surprising. You may seek for years in vain to find allies in planting trees or teaching illiterates to read--the quest for henchmen is a matter of mere steps.
   I used to not hate those whom i called “innocent Republicans”, the ones who never thought about it but simply accepted the immutable fact that this was their home team, & they should root for it. But as it has become an effortless task to find out unwelcome political truths: there is only self-delusion, & willful ignorance. Not innocence, not anymore. They are henchmen, small henchmen it is true--but the faraway crimes of this administration are never small to those whose lives they destroy.

   A small swirl of birds
in the gray dry dawn, music
   at the gas station
pelts down; i leave it mid-phrase
driving Djuna's turquoise car.

07 01 04

"The short Teijin Contest diary devotes two of its twenty-eight lines to the musical compositions presented and four to the costumes of the former Emperor (brown robe and yellow trousers), the men and women of the Left [team] (red cloaks over cherry-blossom robes), the men and women of the Right (green cloaks over willow robes), the poets and scorekeepers of the Left (red robes with trousers of pale brown damask), and the poets and scorekeepers of the Right (green robes with trousers of yellowish-green damask)." --McCullough, op cit

A genius way to market poetry.

" I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did."
--Chalmers Johnson