"Over a third of the U.S. soldiers who served in the first Gulf War are now permanently disabled." --Counterpunch

Found this on a Pete Seeger album (he said it was about 200 years old):

"Mrs. McGraw," the captain said,
"would you like to make a pirate
out of your son, Ted?
With a scarlet cloak and a great cocked hat,
Mrs. McGraw wouldn't you like that?"
With me too-rye-ay
Foddle-diddle-day
With me toorye oorye oorye-ay
With me toorye-ay
Foddle diddle day
Me toorye oorye oorye-ay

Mrs. McGraw lived on the seashore
for the length of seven long years or more
When a great big ship sailed into the bay
"It's my son Ted with his legs away."

Then up comes Ted without any legs
And in their place are two wooden pegs
She kissed him a dozen times or two
Saying "My son Ted is it really you?"
"O were you drunk or were you blind
when you left your two fine legs behind?
Or was it walking on the sea
That cut your legs from the knees away?"

"I wasn't drunk and I wasn't blind
When I left my two fine legs behind.
But a cannon ball on the fifth of May
Cut my two fine legs from the knees away."

"All foreign war, I do proclaim
Between Don John and the King of Spain
But by jaze I'll make them rue the time
They stole the legs from a son of mine."

"It takes a village to read a poem." --Charles Bernstein

"I hope this is only temporary."

Elmer McCurdy.

“Rainy Landscape”

There, whilst musing
On a fragment of stone
Have they solved it?
And i dare not question
Whom the formless
Greasy star
Have down
It. By a something, an accent
Like those antique
It was sombre and silent
It chrome greasy star
Each must speak to the crown
Weary changes
On one dirge-like
Terrible want?

10 08 04

Apparently Moon Boots are back. (Can anyone say Napoleon Dynamite?) --I guess i'll have to wait for the Target knock-offs...

The Fifth Book of Peace.

Doomed Megalopolis.

I learn from Melanie that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is itself a zoomar: the name of the movie-within-a movie in Sullivan's Travels.

I met Odin, & invited him into my heart.

“Equivocation”

to have sea to ice-.. Crave
is a tremendous thing.
Purlieu in despised toil.
the way (of blame) is only ink
have.; Profound
up And when he would have
fallen upon them desert. Evil
Thus it is more likely high
come never acid at
do take drown them all.
Receive acid willed some hurt for me,
could they remove from me
sleepwalkers day profound from grope

10 07 04

Listening to: Doris Day- Day by Day.

Cyber Crypt.


“ ‘Contempt is the worst of all things, it is a symbolic way of killing a person. It revolts me.’ “ --An Intimate History of Humanity


“Shadow of the Eagle”

Wandered and winter dark blooms
Dark puree grow chrome
Above us, in the pathless dark
The call of the minaret
Roar, din of our machines
The vowels of the wolves collide
The lacerates ran down

They from the dim inane and vague opaque
That contains all the others
Hurricane and salvage
Pictures in the fire
Untrustful and his only way

Stormy Orion rising, on blind shoals
A soft frog ruins the mud

10 06 04

Signs of the Apocalypse #8, 9, & 10.

" I believe this is being done to me." --Malevolent Owls

"The young will again imagine refusing to lay another brick on the pyramids, and the old will smile patiently and mockingly." --Fait Accompli

Listening to this on my Mildred Bailey CD makes me feel hopeful:

"WHEN THAT MAN IS DEAD AND GONE (Irving Berlin) Al Bowlly - 1941

When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
We’ll go dancing down the street
Kissing everyone we meet
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
Some fine day the news’ll flash
Satan with a small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn
When that man is dead and gone

Satan, Satan, thought up a plan
Dressed as a man
Walking the earth and since he began
The world is hell for you and me
But what a heaven it will be

When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
When they lay him twelve feet deep
I’ll be there to laugh, not weep
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
Satan’ll take him by the hand
To meet old Gerring, look what, man
When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone

Some fine day the news’ll flash
Satan with a small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn
When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on
What a way to greet the dawn
When a certain man is dead and gone"

Never give the blindman money...

Discuss political poetics here.

"In places the ice is dropping at a rate of one meter a month."

Remembering Plastic People. (via Beyond the Beyond)

An interesting proposal over at Ptarmigan.

Starting to look forward to January. (Not that one.)

I know i'm ready for my ticket offworld.

"Nancy

The morning had not come,
Nancy was alone,
looking at the Late Late show
through a semi-precious stone.
In the House of Honesty
her father was on trial,
in the House of Mystery
there was no one at all,
there was no one there at all.

It seems so long ago,
none of us were very strong;
Ah, but Nancy wore green stockings
and she, she slept with everyone.
She never said she'd wait for us
even though she was alone,
I think she fell in love for us
in nineteen sixty one,
in nineteen sixty one.

Ah the morning would not come,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.
Yes, we told her she was beautiful,
we all told her she was free
but none of us could meet her in
the House of Mystery,
the House of Mystery.

And now why don't you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many of you who used her body,
many combed her hair.
And in the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come."

Leonard Cohen

"Poetic Ammo Picture"

Martin Denny Moog record
Plumbs the tutelary dark

In the annals of bad golf
I am tracking nine funnels

Full moon for a werewolf flag

10 02 04

Quasi-scientific weirdness about Venus, Sirius, & maybe reptilian space colonists.


‘XII

I escape from a feint, fluf for fluf.
A projectile I know not where it will fall.
Incertitude. Tramontation. Cervical articulation.

Zap of a horsefly that dies
in mid-air and drops to earth.
What would Newton say now?
But, naturally, you’re all sons.

Incertitude. Heels that don’t spin.
The knotted page, factures
five thorns on one side
and five on the other. Ssh! Here it comes.’

Cesar Vallejo, Trilce (tr C Eshleman, 1992)