( me / via )

"This was left as a comment on my Note.

"You Too, Not Just Me

Never just me.
However you need,

however, I'll be.
Like smoke slid

in like previous whiskey,
fire wisps,

fire drowns.
And follows itself

into new form,
first

afraid it's too alike.
A fraud must

believe, too.
Then, forgetting

how unlikely.
A centaur's first street

fair, alone.
Then so lucky,

only a dream is so lucky.
Sometimes laughing

with others
who must sense

us, condensed,
frontbodied, pushing

soft walking
circles onto a ledge.

Imperceptible
where your face

turns into breath
and vanishes

in the home.
Can't matter

in the home.
Some fire

makes form
only folly,

however all three
follow us to take

your shape
down with mine."

—Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (2008)

American Diner Gothic.

"People are always looking for historical parallels, so here’s one. When WWI is taught is schools, the cause is typically described as the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip. I think this obscures the main instigator, Conrad Von Hotzendorf, an Austrian field marshal. He had wanted war with Serbia for years and had proposed war with Serbia 25 times in 1913 alone. He was delighted that the assassination provided him with an excuse.

It was his arrogant plan to march in and teach the Serbs a lesson which had more to do with getting the Great War going than anything else. He was also trash as a commander The Austro-Hungarians marched in with more than 400,000 men and suffered three humiliating defeats, one of the greatest upsets of the entire war. They incorrectly assumed they could crush Serbia before Russia joined, hoping to have it over in around six weeks.

What they got instead was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. What’s that old line about 'history doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes'?” —@twerbjebbins

A New Englishing of Pindar.