"Well, the folks at the American Film Institute have done it again. Last night they aired their seventh consecutive annual retrospective of great moments in the history of cinema. The new special was devoted exclusively to songs made popular by movies (including a few that were originally introduced in Broadway musicals, but I digress). Last year, you'll recall, the AFI spotlighted filmdom's greatest heroes and villians. I thank my lucky stars that the powers that determine such things (people in the industry, critics and academics) had the good sense to zero in on 'Over the Rainbow', from 1939's The Wizard of Oz, as the #1 choice. The song¹s appeal, especially in regards to a then 17 year old Judy Garland¹s classic, subtle interpretation, is timeless. Of course, we all know by now that we almost had Shirley Temple as Oz's Dorothy, not Garland, and that 'Over the Rainbow' was barely saved from the cutting room floor, as it was believed to slow down the action of the story. Happily, and I don't want to knock Temple, this is one of those peculiar instances in which everything came together as if by magic. Of course, 'Over the Rainbow' won the Academy Award in 1939, but, in addition to this new AFI tribute, it was also named--in 2001--the greatest song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry Association of America in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts; the music is by Harold Arlen and the lyrics are by E.Y. 'Yip' Harburg. What a privilege for all of us to have this song as part of our collective consciousness.

Following close behind was 'As Time Goes By,' made popular by 1942's Casablanca, although the song actually predates the movie. At #3: 'Singin' in the Rain' as joyously performed by Gene Kelly in the 1952 release of the same name (though, there again, the song dates back to The Hollywood Revue of 1929). Fourth place went to 'Moon River' as heard in Breakfast at Tiffany's. There was little doubt in my mind, which songs would dominate the top of the AFI list, but tyring to predetermine the final outcome was a real mind bender, because each of the top four, and you might as well throw in Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas' (from Holiday Inn) at #5, have had great cultural impact. No doubt, they're all special, but 'Over the Rainbow' is a personal favorite, and always has been, so I'm especially delighted by the outcome.

A recent newspaper article suggested the tunes were selected based on being a song with actual lyrics (which ruled out, among others, the Pink Panther theme, and the haunting tune from Laura [the words by Johnny Mercer were added later, after the film's release]), as well as certain points such as defining a character, advancing the story, and, of course, cultural impact. It's hard not to be impressed by many of the choices, (quite a few Oscar winners) such as 'All that Jazz' (Chicago), 'Seems Like Old Times' (Annie Hall), 'Do Re Mi' (The Sound of Music), 'Buttons and Bows' (The Paleface), ³I¹ve Had the Time of My Life² (Dirty Dancing), ³Come What May² (Moulin Rouge!), ³Put the Blame on Mame² (Gilda), ³I¹m Easy² (Nashville), ³Springtime for Hitler² (The Producers), ³Isn¹t it Romantic² (Love Me Tonight), ³Yankee Doodle Boy² (Yankee Doodle Dandy), ³Summer Nights² (Grease) ³On the Good Ship Lollipop² (Bright Eyes), ³Stayin¹ Alive² (Saturday Night Fever) , ³Jailhouse Rock² (Jailhouse Rock) and even ³Old Time Rock n Roll,² featured prominently in 1983¹s Risky Business, but there were a few muddles. Oh sure, ³Gonna Fly Now, ³ the theme from Rocky, advances the plot , but do the words ³Gonna Fly now² repeated during a bridge in the song really constitue lyrics? That one is iffy to me. I¹m also disappointed that the AFI opted to single out Mary Poppins's ³Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious² (sp? get over it) instead of its Oscar winning ³Chim-Chim-Cheree.² And I¹m sorry, I never had much patience for The Lion King's ³Hakuna Matata,² though I can¹t deny its popularity. Oh, and there had to be something more worthwhile than Marlon Brando warbling ³Luck Be a Lady Tonight² from Guys and Dolls.

Of course, with as many worthy entries are there were, there were bound to be some regrettable omissions, but only a few. I, for instance, would¹ve loved it if George Clooney pantomining the catchy ³I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow² from O Brother, Where Art Thou? (actually sung on the Grammy winning soundtrack by Dan Tyminski) had been included or Lulu purring her way through ³To Sir With Love² (from To Sir With Love). What about Cat Stevens¹s memorable contributions to Harold and Maude, (³If you want to be be me, be me...² and all that), or Tim Curry strutting his considerable stuff in ³Sweet Tranvestite² from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (talk about cultural impact)? Who can believe there wasn¹t any room for the marvellous Betty Hutton and her many catchy musical numbers, including the greatest showbiz anthem of them all, ŒThere¹s No Business Like Show Business² (from Annie Get Your Gun), or Barbra Streisand belting out ³On a Clear Day² (from ³On a Clear Day You Can See Forever). Or what about ³Baby, it¹s Cold Outside² (a 1949 Oscar winner, from Neptune¹s Daughter) My biggest disappointment however, was the omission of any songs from The Music Man, bus most especially ³Trouble,² Robert Preston¹s most defining moment onscreen (and lip-synched--to his own vocal track--to utter perfection). Of course, my own sister was named after ³Tammy² the mega selling hit song from Tammy and the Bachelor, so it would have been lovely for it to have been honored, but alas...

Of course, backing to Straisand, she was well represented, what with ³Evergreen² (her 1976 Oscar winner from the remake of A Star is Born), ³The Way We Were (the Oscar winning title track to her 1973 smash with Robert Redford), as well as ³Don¹t Rain on My Parade² and the sublime ³People² from 1968¹s Funny Girl. Judy Garland was also featured prominently, thanks to not only ³Over the Rainbow² but also ³Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas² & ³The Trolley Song² (both from Meet Me in St. Louis) as well as the torchy, ŒThe Man That Got Away² from the 1954 version of A Star is Born, and the rousing ³Get Happy² from Summer Stock. Liza Minnelli scored with the title tunes from both Cabaret and New York, New York--and good for her (both songs composed by the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb). Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly also popped up more than once. So did Bette Midler and Julie Andrews. The latter¹s The Sound of Music (with songs by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II) was included three times. West Side Story was another movie with multiple mentions, as was Singin¹ in the Rain and a few others. (Of course, limiting each each movie to only spot one the list would¹ve made room for some of the titles mentioned above, but how do you not include both ³Make ŒEm Laugh² and ³Singin¹ in the Rain² or ³The Trolley Song² and ³Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas²?) And of course, Walt Disney¹s animated musicals turned up frequently, with the biggest vote getter being ³When You Wish Upon a Star.² The 1940 Oscar winner, from Pinocchio, placed as high as #7.

Finally, about the telecast itself. A few quibbles. Two songs, ³Puttin¹ on the Ritz² and ³Diamonds Are a Girl¹s Best Friend,² were shown as they appeared in two different movies; Blue Skies and Young Frankenstein for the former, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Moulin Rouge! for the latter. The AFI did not elect, however, for the same treatment in regards to ³Unchained Melody,² which was reintroduced to moviegoers via 1990¹s Ghost (as per The Righteous Brothers¹ 1960¹s cover), but one had to read the fine print to see that the song, a 1955 Oscar nominee, originally appeared in the movie Unchained. Also, why not segue from ³Ol Man River² in the 1930¹s black and white version of Showboat to the 1950¹s technicolor redo? And while it was great to see American Idol¹s Clay Aiken on hand as one of the commentators, it would have been cool if current AI champ Fantasia Barrino had been interviewed in regards to ³Summertime² (from Porgy and Bess), since her performance of that classic song clearly propelled her to the winners¹ circle. FYI to Hugh Jackman, Audrey Hepburn didn¹t sing ³I Could Have Danced All Night² in My Fair Lady. She was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story. It was almost a very good night for Nixon, as her most famous trio of dub-jobs were highlighted, though nobody acknowledged her contributions to any of the films in question. And what about Dolly Parton? She was given ample credit for the title tune to 9 to 5, but when it came to ³I Will Always Love You² (from 1992¹s The Bodyguard), Whitney Houston got all the credit, even though Dolly wrote the song years and years earlier and had even sung it herself in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (in which she made contributions to the original Broadway score). What a way to make a living, indeed.

Any comments, questions, other feedback???

Thanks for your consideration,
Mp

PS and, of course, the Beatles singing "Get Back" on the rooftop of the Apple building at the conclusion of Let it Be does nothing to advance the plot, after all, it's a documentary, but, boy, what a pivotal moment in pop-culture history"

"We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation." --Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003)

Nemesis appears in a poem.

Keep track of the real score. (via Tom Tomorrow)

Retro Future. (via Metafilter)

Bride of Chucky Ecards.

Ghazal Page.

I bought a painting for Melanie at a vintage clothing store; it was a delightful cubist-impressionist cityscape, redolent of "Populuxe" living rooms & doctors' offices, & it only cost thirty dollars. After we got it up, i thought to google the artist, one "Viktor Schreckengost". Not only did he turn out to be a well-known industrial designer of midcentury, whose credits include the "Mercury" bicycle, "Americana" dinnerware, & the cab-over arrangement that big flat-front truck cabs all use now--there was an almost identical painting (watercolor like ours, but orange instead of blue & green) on a gallery site for $7000.

"...yer got yer one great invention, remember Holmes? The neuter personal pronoun; ve/ ver/ vis, I am not his, vis/ ve/ ver, nor am I for her, ver/ vis/ ve, a pronoun for me..." --The Bone People

Giovanni Ribisi as Salam Pax.

Listening to: Loretta Lynn- Van Lear Rose.

A society of gamesters, like ours, except that instead of letting everything in their lives be decided by competition, it's decided by chance: a roll of the dice. Would that society be any more unjust than ours?

" 'I can't see that,' nodding back towards the hidden well, 'ever waking now. The whole order of the world would have to change, all of humanity, and I can't see that happening, e pou [affectionate term of respect for an old person], not ever.'
   'Eternity is a long time,' says the kaumatua [elder comfortably. 'Everything changes, even that which supposes itself to be unalterable. All we can do is look after the precious matters which are our heritage, and wait, and hope.' " --Keri Hulme, The Bone People

Once again the natural foods store where i do most of my shopping, has discontinued one of my staple items. This must be the dozenth time. I know that modern hyper-capitalism tends to punish loyal consumers & reward the "fickletons" (those who switch to the new as soon as it appears), but you'd think a place with a semi-sustainable philosophy would be above such considerations. But i see this in a wider context, as a part of the dominance of one kind of perception over another, that (whether or not consciously) competition & economic stress are used to justify favoring. It's like radio stations that only play one kind of music--the "format"--instead of (as in the old days) having DJ's who pick out their own choice of perceived good music. It's class over the separate individual. And under the mercy of a democratic "market", the unpopular is phased out, whether or not it may actually have been better than the more popular ones. And people think there's no point in fighting that iron hand. Imagine, though, that this were a Commons--an ecosystem--in which variety itself is seen as a benefit. We might even put up with a slightly less efficient economy, just to hang on to things we care about for themselves. Yeah, think of that.

Among the Meek so endangered, find poets & poems.

A new constrained-writing webpage. (via Language Hat)

Spin this, motherfucker.

The Final Frontier. (via Doc Searls)

Pray for Reason. (via Neal Pollack) (But don't dispense with your voodoo dolls, either.)

Now that it's starting to appear that the Revolution will be Televized after all--i miss Umbrism.

As in lying shorn on this chained field.

Looks like i'm going to be working for the rival bookstore starting Monday. I told someone it's like, in Cold War imagery, a top Soviet scientist was defecting to the West--or vice versa. But really, i'm just glad i landed something quick before they packed me off to credit-card debtors' prison.

It was like crossing a swaying rope bridge, more frightening than dangerous, that disappeared into fog; & then it turned out not to be so long, after all (i've been unemployed for years at a time). This time, however, i felt like i was being followed (like so many people in the world--& whole nations--) by a whirling toothed machine advancing at an inexorable rate, ready to chew me in shreds should i falter or pause to rest. And i think what the world needs right now, almost more than love, almost more than peace--is debt amnesty. (Students of history will know that such a thing, far from being the physical impossibility we believe, has occurred repeatedly under the pressure of social change & economic catastrophe.)

But of course, that's crazy talk! You can't say that!

Thoughts on a beautiful morning, from the branch library at opening time, not without bitterness.

I like what the Roches' compilation album liner-notes say about their famous a cappella rendition of the chorus from Handel's "Messiah": "Why did the dog lick his balls? Because he could."

"One problem with this referendum is that the case against George Bush is much too strong." (via Hightower)

   the delicate wake
of two ducks swimming closely
   in the cool morning

olive waterway, pale sky
i on the bridge, hurrying

06 17 04

Online serial SAT-vocab novel. (via Caterina)

"He started picking up debris off the beach, and randomly at first, and then with a steady and abnormal concentration, he had built a spiralling construction of marramgrass and shells and driftchips and seaweed.
'What are you doing?'
He whistled and pointed to it.
It whistles?
He lay down on the sand with his ear by it, and she went to him, puzzled. Simon got up quickly. Listen too, he said, touching his ear and pointing to her. So she did, and heard nothing. Listened very intently, and was suddenly aware that the pulse of her blood and the surge of the surf and the thin rustle of wind round the beaches were combining to make something like music.

She adds, 'They only make music when someone's listening. They're focusing points more than anything...' " --Keri Hulme, The Bone People (1984)
Poems.

The Other Exile-Myth. An interpretation of the Sixties: All Hell Broke Loose. And things have never been the same since. Which is not untrue. But so have the people who came after, grown into changed beings. Only, so to speak, the dismay of the elders who were there in the Sixties still hangs in the air, & can be channelled by others who really weren't there when the status was quo. And they apply it to the far different wrongs of today.

By a curious & significant rhetorical inversion, those who disagree with them are accused of being deceived by a Spook from the Sixties. Young Republicans fancy themselves as hardnosed realists. (Not barbarians.) But this myth lends seeming legitimacy to all manner of vandalism against infrastructure: it's supposed to be putting things back where they were.

Seasons reversed down under. Do they call summer summer by the weather, or by the calendar? It's June, it's winter, & the connotations match, seem normal. Well, there are left & right political hemispheres of speaking; only, they seldom acknowledge that together their languages comprise a totality (even if only a totality of misunderstandings). This is not the part about right & wrong: this is the part about not being able to even talk to each other. Which actually is more important than stopping the wrong. Because it's the root of the wrong. The words we define differently, the aspects we choose to highlight or leave out. I know very well that the preponderance of right lies with the left, but it is wrong not to ever attempt to reach out. We are not going to be able to have the luxury of an utter rout, even after winning in November. You can't put the other half of the country in jail.

Most poetry chapbooks are like one course of tapas. At
the time you think, "This is really sort of
interesting," but afterwards you wish you'd gotten
more for your money.

Once again my email service has been "upgraded", shutting me & my antiquated browser out of my own mailbox. I have a new address which should be included on the link on this page, & i will be using it exclusively from now on... We are nomads, even in Cyberspace.

Under God. (thanx Melanie!) --Let me clarify. The part that is Stoic ethics, is good & worthy of being promulgated. The part that is Buddhist charity, ought to be pondered more by people who profess themselves to be "followers of Jesus". The part that is syncretic razzmatazz, has entertainment value but not much more. And the part that is totalitarian bullying--should not continue for one hour more.

An object of veneration appears surcharged with meaning. An object of contempt appears devoid of it.
The sage walks through the world.

Voting Democrat is like running into a tree to keep from hitting a child.

Listening to: "Jacob's Ladder" by A. Schoenberg.

"...our Scholar GoH [Guest of Honor] was also from a non-Anglophone background. Editor and translator Marcial Souto told us he grew up in a house with one book, which he read over and over again even though its beginning and end had fallen off and were lost. ...He discussed the joys and problems of translating: being 'the most attentive reader the book will ever have' and knowing that even in the least of books there is something to lose." --Arthur Hlavaty, in Nice Distinctions 6

Seeking, i grow superstitious. They play a rarity on the radio & i take it for a sign.

Sedlec. (via Planing Lakes)

Painting is Back.

"A Shadow Over Westchester"

words
are born
free, yet everywhere

the
only emperor
is the emperor

gray
clouds march
across the ruins

gods,
feared, whatever
they might be

06 12 04

RONALD WILSON REAGAN ENTERS INTO HEAVEN

'A raw, snarling noodle' with his fake dyed hair
Revenge buoys telepath
'Insane anglo warlord' sans his wits quits here
Tape lets you beg, never
Deluded a mob vents its programmed moan
Revenge buoys telepath
He took & took & took--yet you'd still fain give
Tape lets you beg, never
So here's my kiss-off to the shame of this
Revenge buoys telepath
He pledged an age of gold & what we get is iron
Tape lets you beg, never
And "Republican" means never having to say you're sorry.

06 12 04

"A Dollar's Worth of Blood, Please

With the last memo checked: They will sign, success; with the phone put down upon the day's last call; then with the door locked at last,
Wait; think;
What should the final memo be?

SAY THE LAST WORD,
SAY THE LAST WORD ADDING ALL WE'VE MADE AND LOST,
SAY THE LAST WORD THAT WEIGHS THE TRIUMPH SEALED IN INK AGAINST THE DEBT PRESERVED IN STONE AND THE PROFIT LOCKED IN STEEL,

One final word that the doorman knows, too, and the lawyer, and the drunk,
That the clerk knows, too, sure of tomorrow's pleasant surprise,
And the stranger, who knows there is nothing on earth more costly than hope and nothing in all the world held one-half so cheap as life,

One final word that need never be changed,
One final word to prove there is a use for the hard-bought distrust and the hard-won skill,
One final word that stands above and beyond the never-ending weakness and the never-failing strength,

SAY THE LAST WORD, YOU LONG STRAIGHT STREETS,
SAY THE LAST WORD, YOU WISE GUY, DUMB GUY, SOFT GUY, RIGHT GUY, FALL GUY, TOUGH GUY,
SAY THE LAST WORD, YOU BLACK SKY ABOVE."

--Kenneth Fearing

"First Nations communities suffer from a couple of centuries of objectification. Our stories and teachings have been collected like museum pieces and stored on shelves and in books where they seem to atrophy and become more and more distant from daily life. It is not uncommon to hear people questioning the value of these old teachings and their relevance to contemporary situations. This has created a very disempowered situation. Without our own stories, we go to the stories of others, and those who have the most powerful story telling technologies (TV stations, media outlets, films) have also had a fairly consistent agenda of colonizing indigenous peoples. Mass media continues the colonization of indigenous peoples by giving us stories that are not our own, filling the vacuum left by the loss of our traditional technologies." --Parking Lot

You get used to being cold, you get used to being tired, you get used to being hungry, you even get used to being in pain, but you never get used to being disrespected.

Cathedonia.

"Judgment at Westchester"

Two crows clyted in the burnt-out hulk of a house.
They shook the rain from their feathers, then one said,
"Those who made this landscape must be proud."
The other: "Havoc is power, nonetheless."

06 12 04

Get rid of those suspicious art supplies.

Listening to: Seasoned Reasonings by The New Elements.

"Line 9. Of this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43), 'There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character. Abu al-Atahiyah wrote pious poems, himself being an atheist; Abu Hukayma's verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat; Mohammed ibn Hazim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog; and Abu Nowas hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.' " --Richard Burton, notes to his translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886)

Shining Trapezohedron, dwells thy agent dead
not on Mount Fucking Rushmore though they'd urge it
but with his true kin vilely massed worms slime-shrouded
inventor for neon scissors outclassed thy yegg

06 10/11 04 quantitative sari

"Or: I work at the language as a spring of water works at the rock, to find a course, and so, blindly. In this i am not a maker of things, but, if maker, a maker of a way. For the way in itself. It is well enuf to speak of water's having its destination in the sea, and so to picture almost a knowing in the course; but the sea is only the end of ways--could the stream find a further course, it would go on. And vast as the language is, it is no end but a resistance thru which a poem might move--as it flows or dances or puddles in time--making it up in its going along and yet going only as it breaks the resistance of the language." --Robert Duncan

Death of a Salesman. (via Fishblog)

I remember Reaganomics, all right. I was working downtown at a bank. Every year there were more street people. We were the underground people, we lived in the tunnels & skyways. We only stood in the same world when we waited on our bus, & we resented even that. For the most part we refused to make eye contact or acknowledge them in any way.

I was a librarian of mortgages. I handled one stage of the paperwork. I remember, i don't know for how long but i lost track, i was doing a hundred foreclosures a day. It began to prey on my mind: that many families thrown out of their houses, that many dreams shattered. After awhile i had to quit & try to move away. I knew i didn't belong there, in the underground, with the happy saved.

The Neoformalists have failed to imagine farther back than Frost; they have no more use for Pope than for Ginsberg.

"Empty landscapes seem to inspire games." --DeLillo, 1983 interv.

"All of Philip K Dick's novels seem to bear at least three stigmata of his long apprenticeship to Ace Double Novels.' --Robert H Canary

"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." --Lovecraft

Laid off after ten years on the job, i have $40 in the bank, $20 grand in debt, an 18-year-old car & a 15-year-old ulcer. Duncan: "A poet who sits in the light of words like a cat in the mote-filled sunlight of a window."

"Orthodoxy was never a religion of speculation anyway, but a waterfall of sound and colour, bleeding beauty off into the wings, overwhelming its unhappy brood with its mystical cant, and sending its harmonious dirges down the soul river of time." --Larry Frolick, Grand Centaur Station (2004)

The ancient bricks more beautiful than anything we can think to fill this space with.

"The Suq al-Warraqin, or bookdealers' market, in tenth century Baghdad contained one hundred booksellers." --Night & Horses & the Desert ed Robert Irwin (1999)

"Maybe, Murray supposed, he would get there in ten or eleven years' time. The fact that it would take the 31 years left to him, and still not be completed, might not have dismayed him had he known the fate of the other great multi-volume European dictionaries that were under way at around the same time. Although Emile Littre's rather short Dictionnaire de la langue francaise took only a decade from publication of its first volume to the last--though 32 years from the conception of the plan--the Grimm brothers' Deutsches Worterbuch, which was six times bulkier than its French equivalent, was begun in 1838 and fully finished only in 1961. If that was not long enough, the Dutch dictionary known as Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal was started in 1851 and completed in 1998, 147 years later. And a nineteenth-century attempt to fix the entire Swedish tongue between hard cover continues today into the twenty-first century, with scholars still stuck on the complexities of Swedish words beginning with the letter S." --Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything (2003)

Salvage in itself is a worthy art. In fact, it may be the art of arts.

"Poker is to New Orleans as waltzing is to Vienna, firecrackers to Beijing." --S Frederick Starr, New Orleans Unmasqued (1985)

Can you imagine a people giving up electric for gaslight, for aesthetic reasons?

"Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!"

from Richard III

the mad cow
that infected
america

is dead the
madness lives
on

06 06 04

the pain of war cannot exceed
the woe of aftermath

Led Zeppelin, "The Battle of Evermore"

Figuring out the president.

"Tomb of the Unknown Detainee"

they
let me
know who's boss

with
a cellcam
it's not torture

remember
outside there's
a different law

time
to go
my breaking said

05 31 04

"It is curious why anybody should pooh-pooh a study of fossils or various forms of rocks or lava. Such things grant us our only vision into Natural History's big book; and it isn't a book in first-class condition. Far from it! Just a tiny scrap; a slip; or, possibly a big chunk is found, with nothing notifying us as to how it got to that particular point, nor how long ago. Man can only look at it, lift it, rap it, cut into it, and squint at it through a magnifying glass. And,--think about it. That's all; until a formal study brings accompanying thoughts from many minds; and, by such tactics, judging that in all probability such and such a rock or fossil footprint is about so old. Natural History holds you in its grasp through just this impossibility of finding actual facts; for it is thus causing you to think. Now, thinking is not only a voluntary function; it is an acquisition; an art. Plants do not think. Animals probably do, but in a primary way, such as an aid in knowing poisonous foods, and how to bring up offspring with similar ability. But Man can, and should think, and think hard and constantly. It is ridiculous to rush blindly into an action without looking forward to lay out a plan. Such an unthinking custom is almost a panic, and panic is but a mild form of insanity."

--Gadsby

"Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie
  Dust unto dust
The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die
  As all men must;
Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell
  Too strong to strive
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
  Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
  The cowed and the meek
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
  And dare not speak."

--Ralph Chaplin, in The Match (Summer, 2004)


''Abu Ghraib and God's declassified papers''
Date: Friday, May 21, 2004 @ 00:05:15 CDT
Topic: Gabriel Ash

"By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) -- Because they contained forward-looking statements that might have affected history, certain chapters in the Bible were marked "Top Secret" and excised from the original. One of these chapters has now been reclassified for public view. Here it is in its entirety.
And the Lord said: who is this nation, whose good fortunes are surpassed only by its hypocrisy? Who is this nation, that preaches the world my name, whose deeds besmirch my name to the world? Who is this nation, whose coins bear my name and whose actions are stamped with the name of Caesar?
Who is this nation, whose poor are sheltered in dungeons and whose wicked are exalted in churches? Who is this nation, whose soldiers can see in the dark and whose leaders are blind in broad daylight?

Who is this nation, that joins house to house, that lays field to field, till there be no place, so that it be placed alone in the midst of the earth? Who is this nation, that would not walk behind me but fancy I walk ahead of it?
Who are these people, who demand my commandments in courtrooms and remove them from their hearts? Who are these people, who cherish the life of a fetus and spurn the life of a child? Who are these people, who feed the bloated beef and give the hungry thistles? Who are these people, who move their lips in my service and their hearts rejoice in destruction? Who are these people, whose sons are idle at the table and whose guests are working in the kitchen? Who are these people, who mistreat the foreigner, enslave the orphan, and mock the widow, trampling on my word.
Who are these people, who hang my image on their necks and their faith they put in missiles? Who are these people, whose jets are faster than sound and compassion slower than a turtle.
Who are these people, whom I sent my son to free from evil, and they fancy he came to free them for evil? Who are these people, whom I sent my son to teach my word, and they fancy he came to free them from my word?
I say therefore: They don't know me and I shall not know them.
I say therefore: The money they put my name on, I shall make worthless. The prisons they built to spurn me, I shall make my houses, and the houses they built to praise me, I shall make their prisons. The missiles they built in pride shall strike them with fear. The bombs they have made their idols shall fall and destroy their houses.
I therefore say: the fires they started shall consume them. The charity they have given, that shall be given to them, no more.
And the advocate that was sitting stood and said in front of the Lord. Aye, you will besmirch your name by your own deed. Aye, you have promised and you will have broken your promise. Aye, you will let the innocent die among the guilty, and the world will turn away from your name. Aye, Lord, let them have a warning, so that they repent and be saved. For even if there were only fifty good people in the whole of this nation, you ought to spare them, for you are justice.
Therefore, this I advise: to these people who worship images I will bring images. I will make images of their folly, pictures and videotapes of their inequities, and will give them for all to see. From the darkest prison they have made to torture you I will bring them images of your suffering. And they will see the images of your images suffering. And they will see the depth of the sickness that have taken them away from you, and they will see the depth of iniquity to which they have condemned you. And those whose hearts are closed to the word will tremble before the image.
I say that there are many good people still in this nation, and they will wear sackcloth and put ashes in their hair and come out in the streets to wail and to repent and to mend their ways and to ask for your mercy.
And the Lord said: Do as you advise. But I examine the heart. Verily I say, you shall be surprised, and not for the better. A rotten apple does not become a good apple in a good barrel, and a good apple quickly rots in a rotten barrel.
And so it was.
[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not. He lives in the United States.]
Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: gash at YellowTimes.org"

"Tomorrow Quencher"

This shine is my night,
A work of turbulent years,
A tree with tapers & popcorn strands bedight;
Wake with tears
And not know why. In the Holy See
An old man gathers his kafka chips & fears
Fitfully
The rumor of Dyson Spheres;
His attention tapers to a high
Shelf where poems lie low
Including this one. Shadowless circling fly
Brings bleak news of long ago
Sunken things
Waking. To & fro
On querulous iridescent wings.
Commuting, a sentence. Woe
To the leaders who are always sure
Time loses what the villagers forgot.
Fallout evermore
Puissant, not
Glowing; secret. Written in
Deep alphabets, this travelling spot
Of blankness or sin
And i may live to watch unwind fractal plot
Into rout
Into ruin. Knots intrude,
I'll make them part & worth the puzzling out
O freaked solitude
Of birth pangs.
Without hope, without light, without food
I sharpen these fangs
And drive. A grayness imbued
By futurity, ferrying all
To a far shore where the flicker workers form
One line. Pall
Of chrome, nacreous flintknapper storm
Troops; traipse wan
Deserts that affirm
Your abject victimhood as pitiless man
Versus a pitying worm!

04 30 04

"Speaking about epics, mother,
How long is it since you gathered mushrooms...?"
--Zukofsky

"Lancelot Link"

Swiftly moving beasts
As they hurried to terrible the
Uttermost

Regions of the globe sagging verandahs &

Have peeling paintwork brought this
Evil down thing to
Pass down the grow. Winding metal road
Of the wildest of At all

Sublunary doorway of the old timbered

Hotel few
In children have abandoned
Tipsy telegraph poles to the hills beyond
Let of me
Then remember this ridiculous

Masquerade too utterly
Monstrous for the crack
Of edge-: a

Stockwhip singing chrome
Singularly alike in general
Contour chrome through a cloud of rising
Emerald dust acid & with a creeping
Shudder scanned
The empty landscape

04 27 04

"Let seem seem beginning of be." --Bob Perelman

Jubba.

#144

Between oolong in the mouth, oolong
   in the nostrils, there's
an absolute gulf. On that sea, stars
   are winking bubbles
left by the first passage of Sxwaixwe.

01 18 92

   "The House in Bonac Revisited

I am in love with the impossible:
From the beginning, I have tried to bring
Into the toils of language the fierce thing
No word may gather and no tongue may tell--
And it was in this room that first the spell
Was cast upon me for a curse, to wring
My heart in labor and in suffering,
Under these rafters that I love so well.

How many a night, how many a lonely year,
With mind grown bitter and with blood gone dry,
I have wrought these cunning toils! Nevertheless,
All longing was repaid, all bitterness,
In moments when my heart stood still to hear,
Even for a moment, that fleet foot go by."

--John Hall Wheelock, in: This Powerful Rhyme, ed Helen Plotz (1979)

'This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.'

--Ono no Komachi in The Ink Dark Moon (1988) tr Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani

"We are living even now among punishment and ruins." --Wendell Berry

Stonehenge Aotearoa. (via Metafilter)

You don't think like a survivor, i said. You pile up all the things you can possibly think of to feel bad about, & then drop this treasure on your head, but that is not how a survivor thinks. A survivor only looks at the immediate problem to be solved, looks at it without reacting emotionally, & may have a vague notion of a wider view & goal, but never gets fixated on feelings of urgency & ultimate attainment. I know this sounds like a truism but it is still essential. It may not yet be so bad that only those who think like survivors will survive, but i'm certain that we will not be given warning or training should the moment itself arrive. You must start thinking like a survivor today.

Mieville's List. (via Mosses From an Old Manse)

"To possess a telescope without the other essential half--the microscope--seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension." --Leonora Carrington, House of Fear

One of the curious unspoken conventions of contemporary poetry is that it's all about the same length: just enough to fill up a lettersize page...

"Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power." --Joan Vinge, The Snow Queen (1980)

"The key thing to remember with literature is that it's a wholesale business as opposed to the visual arts, which is retail business." --Richard Kostelanetz in Atticus Review

Plot is the.gollup (gameliness) of Story.

'Tolstoy's excuse as a preacher is that he had two disciples who derived the practical consequences of his homilies: Wittgenstein and Gandhi.' --Cioran

"What good exterminating evil distorts if the sun itself should be owned by spiders?" --Attanasaio, Last Legends of Earth

"Dogs, sewed up in lamb skins, whisper repent, or wittily property is use." --Gerald Burns

A poem cannot levitate one dust-mote. --saying of Asmodeus

Burroughs [my rabbit] always snatches her cracker with vast avidity; often as not, not having hands, her first bite drops the rest between the floor-grate, & i have to retrieve it. How like humans & happiness!

Certainty is a feeling-state not a knowledge-state. A feeling-state, moreover, caused by a particular degree of ignorance...

'I don't believe in Rilke's angels; I believe even less in his poor.' --Cioran

Proverbs from A Maltese Anthology, ed A J Arberry:
   One man dies of drunkenness, and another dies for (want of) a drop.
   An agreement between two people is reached in two days; an agreement between three requires two months.
   Praise the sea, and remain on dry land.
   He who is born round will not die square.
   Whoever says what he likes will have to hear what he doesn't like.
   For the sake of a cent he will skin a louse.

From the point of view of the rest of the Earth, those who are killing the most of their fellow humans--are heroes.

" 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!' " --from Martin Gardner's Order and Surprise (1983)

Sometimes when i am feeling particularly arrogant, i console myself with the thought that the only thing that kept me from a mathematical career was, i couldn't convince myself that calculus was true.

"We know so much intellectually, indeed, that we are in danger of becoming the prisoners of our knowledge. We suffer from a hubris of the mind. We have abolished superstition of the heart only to install a superstition of the intellect in its place. We behave as if there were some magic in mere thought, and we use thinking for purposes for which it was never designed. As a result we are no longer sufficiently aware of the importance of what we cannot know intellectually, what we must know in other ways, of the living experience before and beyond our transitory knowledge." Laurens van der Post, The Heart of the Hunter (1961)
  [How nostalgic the first part of that makes me feel!--]

As a child i felt toward cars & other vehicles much as primitive humans must have felt toward animals.

"I have always been grateful that I was born into a world and shall die in one where the lion, however diminished in number, is still roaring. Heard in his and my native setting, it is for me the most beautiful sound in the world. It is to silence what the shooting star is to the dark of the night." --ibid

I dreamed that i buried my heart. It was still alive but not beating, & i buried it deep in the ground.
  I'm still thinking about what that means...
  It looked like cicadas do when they're still in thev larval stage: gray & moist & ugly. I tried to get some images of what comes next. ...I realized i couldn't have the rest of it yet--not until i live it--but somehow there's a rightness in waiting. ...--Or: i have never planted my heart here; that's why nothing has grown.

Fantasy flourishes in the decline of empire, becoming indistinguishable from empire itself.

letter from Melanie to a local radio station:

" Hi, I must tell you how disappointed I was in your show this morning, specifically regarding American Idol, and, especially, the treatment John Stevens and his fans have been getting in the media. I was not in a position to call the station, so as to present the other side's case, or I would have. Although I actually heard you say you didn't want to gang-up on John Stevens, that is, in essence, what you did, and you have not been alone; Edna Gunderson of USA Today is a prime offender, and Paula Adbul has behaved poorly by appearing on Entertainment Tonight and saying Stevens needs to go, although Ms. Abdul would never be so forthright to any AI contestant to his (her) face, and that makes her a coward.

I've been listening to this noise for a week, monitoring the Idol message boards, as well as the countless newspaper articles and the coverage on Entertainment Tonight, and I think some people are grossly simplifying the results of last week's show and/or the appeal of John Stevens, himself. First, let me say, for the record, that I am not some lovesick-- white--teenage girl, nor am I someone's doddering old granny. I am an active, happy, vital person who works two jobs and also does some volunteering. Great, good enough. Okay, yes, I do like John Stevens, and so do a lot of my friends, some more than others. Yes, I have voted for him, more than once, even. That said, I've also voted for some of the other contestants, and my thought has always been that this season's round of American Idol was, and is, destined to be won by either LaToya London or Fantasia Barrino. With that in mind, the order in which all the other candidates go home shouldn't really matter. They all have to go eventually. Jennifer Hudson, in my humble opinion, was never destined to win this contest. The judges might have been salivating at the thought of a three way race between the so-called divas, but that was just wishful thinking, because Hudson was always the weaker of the three: inconsistent and at times bombastic. Her renditions of "Imagine" (as part of the first group of 8) and "Circle of Life" were stunners, but even though she sang "Weekend in New England" on pitch, it was still way over the top, at times painfully so. Therefore, in regards to last week's outcome, isn't it possible that voters just preferred the other six singers? Isn't it possible that it's just that way?

As somebody pointed out on an AI post, at this point voters need only be concerned with who they want to see on tv the next week, not who they think can sell the most units. That particular decision need only be made once the contestants are slimmed down to the final two or three. It's of little consequence in the meantime. Further, it's the job of the record label's marketing department to figure a sales strategy, not the American public. I'd probably buy a John Stevens cd, if he did covers of some of the oldies.

As far as changing the voting system goes, that's a bad idea, at least for the remainder of the season. I was always taught that you don't get to change the rules in the middle of the game just because your team is losing. Allowing people to vote only once may have to happen in the future, but not now. Another bad idea is switch the process so that people vote off the weakest contestant. The beauty of the show, and its voting system, is that encourages the notion of a pre-sold fan base, and people can rally behind (or around) whomever they want, and for whatever reason. Just two or three weeks ago Simon Cowell answered a question posed by Ryan Seacrest (regarding talent vs popularity) by saying that people have the right to vote whichever way they feel. There is no right or wrong way to vote. Obviously, the winning candidate should possess a mix of personality and musical ability, but who's to say at this point, what will happen, or, rather, what won't happen?

Obviously, John Stevens has a huge fan base. Just how huge is subject to debate, but it is fair to say a lot of people like him for one reason or another. It is unfair, however, to make judgements against the people who for vote Stevens (as in they feel sorry for him, or think he's cute, or that they don't have any friends, or that they're all little old ladies, that they all power vote, etc.). As I've already stated, I like Stevens. His style is smooth and straightforward, and certainly much more pleasant to my ears than some of the heated oversinging by many of the other contestants; the girls, specifically. Maybe other voters feel the same way. They just prefer one style to another. Why so much attention is being paid to this young man, who's done nothing, really, except go out and sing to the best of his ability each week, is beyond me. After all, and I hate to mention names, but here goes, George Huff for the past two weeks has given awful performances, and yet he's been given a reprieve and no one seems to be upset about that. (Nor do they seem upset that he was set-up as a stooge on last week's results show.) Also, the other girls, Diana and Jasmine, pale in comparison to LaToya and Fantasia, but that they've been allowed to stay another week hasn't prompted nearly as much as outrage (as the Stevens thing). Jasmine Trias is a lovely girl, but seems out of her element at times. Diana DiGarmo is loud, and she's proven she can hold a note, but she's often all over the place in regards to pitch, and yet she gets asked back week after week. As long as there are other singers that I honestly believe are weaker than John, I will continue to vote for him, and that's my privilege. Once Diana and Jasmine are gone, and possibly George, John will either have to step-up his game, or go home, but that time has not yet come.

I wish people would remember that John Stevens was passed through by the judges, legitimately, and that he had the most audience votes of anyone in his group of 8 (when he sang the Billy Joel song). To compare him to William Hung is just plain mean, and unbecoming of any adult. Not only is John Stevens only 16, he's also someone's son, and I'm sure it can't be easy for his parents to pick up a newspaper, or turn on a tv or radio and find someone blaming their kid for whatever is going on with that show. Stevens is blameless, and picking on him isn't going to help.

Finally, consider the judges. Several weeks ago, Simon Cowell, an early Stevens supporter, said he liked John Stevens and that he (Cowell) thought Stevens was what Middle America wanted. Apparently that has been proven true, but now, suddenly, Simon and the gang want to dictate the way America should vote. Last Tuesday, the judges all but told America that the three divas were going to the finals. If that's the case, if it's so predetermined already, why not just cut to the chase and not include the American voting public in the first place? Simon didn't help his case by hurling insults to Stevens (comparing him to Stan Laurel, for example). If anything, Simon probably strengthened the Stevens fan-base's resolve (that is, if you believe the fans' votes even count; there are those who believe the producers manipulate the show according to their whims).

Well, it should all be over after tonight. It's Latin music night, and my guess is Stevens has met his match. I honestly don't think it's going to be a great night for him. Who knows, maybe he'll come out there and be really great, but I wouldn't want to have to face that sour group of judges.

Thank you for letting me vent,
Mp"

   'Night Soul

My soul is sad at the end my soul
is sad to be tired at the end is sad
and tired to be in vain my soul is sad
and tired and at the end in vain
I long for your hands on my face

I long for your fingers on my face
like angels of ice your fingers on my face
I long for the ring to be brought to me
I long for their cold touch on my face
like a golden horde deep within the sea

And I long at last for their remedies
in order not to die exposed to the sun
to die in despair exposed to the sun
I long for them to bathe my eyes
where those in despair lie sleeping

Where so many swans are at sea
swans making their way over the sea
stretching in vain their sullen necks
while down in the winter gardens
there sick men are gathering roses

I long for your fingers on my face
touching my face like angels of ice
I long for them to moisten my eyes
the dead grass of my glances the fields
where so many lambs lie scattered'

Maurice Maeterlinck, Hothouses (1889; tr Richard Howard 2003)

I am still under the spell of the Myth of the Book! I ought to recognize books have affirmed in me what needed affirming (my subjectivity) but did nothing to solve my problems (i could only grow up & into their solution)--& that's all that books are for. Thus i have no responsibility in writing one, than the same. And yet, & yet...
  This ought to be a dialog with someone else.

I can never realize that most other people make do with the most childishly simple maps of the world, or none at all; & that a complex one (like Lojban) will never be more than a kind of caviar for intellectuals--& only one of many, for that matter.

'It is said that during the time the Sung empire was being overrun by the Mongols, the Chinese commander-in-chief was flat on his belly, watching a cricket fight, when he received the news that the capital was surrounded by the enemy and that they were in utmost danger. He just couldn't tear himself away from the crickets, he first had to see who the winner was. The city fell, and the reign of the Sungs was over.' --The Conscience of Words, Elias Canetti (1979)

America: freedom of speech w/out freedom of thought.

"And there impale perfected seraphim
Anguished by answers truant to their love." --Burns Singer

The reason i don't write much, is the same reason a scuba diver doesn't sing.

What Went Wrong.

Who Died In Here?

I abandoned my strict Byzantine palette long ago but i think if you put one of my pictures against an old one you can still see the resemblance. What has changed is now different colors have taken over some of the functions--a dark purple for the indigo, an orange or even cadmium yellow for the vermilion--.

   "The Question and Its Mark

May I cast a spell on the many swans of Leda,
making at last one spastic blizzard in spring
with only enough divine mania to take one
blinding day from her?

The godbirds and their scopophilia
keep her open for view and review, with ever
new speculum and never the elegant jewelry
of stigmata or a heart of quartz.

May I give her only one death? Can we live if she
lies closed in a single final pose, no syphilitic
autopsy or cygnet interrogation?
May I mark her prophecy,

her presence in the very air, with a single
gargoyle on the streetside wall on a place
of worship, finally allowed inside if only by
disappearing into the stones?

Leda possessed a pair of knees that also bent
in prayer. I ask of you only what she asked for there."

Brenda Shaughnessy

Experience illustrates theory, it never proves it.

"Much of Fermat's best work was done while one of the most savage wars in history raged all about him. Yet he never alludes to it in his correspondence." --Eric Temple Bell

"An orchestra is a herd animal. They sense weakness like a pack." --Kate Tamarkin

The things i should be proud of, i don't even remember.

The cat finds happiness in repose, the dog in excitement; but i am like the rabbit, driven from frenzy to lassitude & back again, never long in either.

Boredom for them is a bulwark, a touchstone.

I fight the Vampyre with blood transfusions.

   a cento from Dobson

We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote:
  Jest of cloister humourist.
Verse is a drug not sold in any mart
With sore desire some dolorous place to win;
A small gray spot--the record of a tear.

04 18 04

What i want to see is a makeover reality show that takes people who are ignorant about the world, & educates them.
(You could start with the Chief Executive!)

Blogs as an example of braidtext. There are kinds of material, each a color in the weave: in mine, they are quotes, journals, contemporary musings, politics, & links. Recurrent subjects furnish continuity. Whole books could be written on this model ('Follow the brush').

Do cats have egos? Is ego a function of being a carnivore?

"The job now is to get back to that other perennial and substantial world in which we really do live, in which the foundations of our life will be visible to us, and in which we can accept our responsibilities again within the conditions of necessity and mystery. In that world all competently wakeful and responsible people, dead, living, and unborn, are contemporaries. And that is the only contemporaneity worth having." --Wendell Berry in: The Poet's Work ed Reginald Gibbons (1979)

"As above, so below": fractals.

'Poetry is the plow that turns up time so that the deep layers of time, the black soil, appear on top.'
--Mandelshtam, ibid

'But to say what you want to say, you must create another language and nourish it for years and years with what you have loved, with what you have lost, with what you will never find again.' --George Seferis, ibid

Time is the enemy we receive succor from.

Ask Sistani. (via Cursor)

We have two stores, & i was giving someone directions over the phone as to how to find a book i knew was on the shelf: I could just visualize it—but the person i was directing couldn’t find it. The next time i was over there, i looked for it & found it. It was just where i’d said, but in a different corner. My brain had stored certain features of the location automatically, & yet not all of the surrounding relationships correctly. And suddenly i realized this was how humans have Metaphor. As soon as you start storing memories by salient features, they are going to start coinciding; & sometimes in ways that can be seen as meaningful. This also connects to a mystery that long has had me wondering: the way Latin words translate into so many different English words. They had, so to speak, a net of looser weave; or, they called a lot of things by the same name we would have distinguished. Or, you could look at the Romans as having a poetic cast of mind even in everyday life. (Learning to express yourself in an artificial language with a limited vocabulary requires a similar effort.)

Bloggin the Stans. (via Rubber Hose)

I didn't know they made a movie of Melville's Pierre! (via Third Factory) [Pierre, of course, is where the good Herman invents Postmodernism three generations before Modernism even existed--no wonder his critics were baffled--which puts me in mind of the other day, when we received all of Bob Hope's "Road" movies on VHS, & i announced to several equally bewildered bystanders the insight that Hope had been toiling in Camp Country before the thing even had a name. --But that's another story.]

Whoa.

New Patti Smith website. (via Poetry Hut)

"We are feeding our young people into a machine designed to do nothing more than supply energy to the delusions of our government. It was a long time ago, but I remember Vietnam. ...There is an inevitability here that Sophocles would savor--his problem as a writer, though, would be to find a single character with the dignity--which is to say, self knowledge--to qualify as a tragic figure. Our current administration & its war would probably amount to nothing more than a satyr play..." --Reading and Writing

A reader responds (to this):

"It's yours till you volunteer it for a tribe or you die and a tribe
claims it for their own, I think. Individual pieces of writing have shifted
tribes over time, much as other artifacts have: drug laws were once feminist
and then not.

(Obviously I disagree with Silliman that an intimate knowledge of the
writer's tribal allegiances at the time of writing is necessary when a
reader encounters writing. It may or may not add amusement value, that
much I'll agree with.)"

Ray

Only a Million.

"For the coming national anthem, may I suggest Chalabi, Allawi, Hakeem and Talbani in a gaudy, Iraqi version of "Lady Marmalade"?" --Baghdad Burning

   Nine Skathons of Sxwaixwe

#107

Sxwaixwe, they say, came from the union
   of a garden slug
& a raven... Few have ever seen
   his chartreuse scales, his
esplumoir; many have heard his laughter.

#108

Sxwaixwe laughs like a baby crying.
   Sxwaixwe wears a tall
black silk hat, & lives beneath the Sound.
   He has clairvoyance;
his cranium's tetrahedron-shaped.

#109

There is a book belongs to Sxwaixwe.
   In it, he records
ev'rything that happens: past, present,
   & future, but not
in any particular order.

#110

I saw Sxwaixwe once, walking backwards
   in Pike Place Market
with his hat & his multicolor
   coat. I watched him stop
& buy a vista of Mt Hekla.

#111

Sxwaixwe appears sometimes in your dreams
   but only in part:
headless torso; wings & hat alone...
   He is an omen
of erratic luck & weird events.

#112

Sxwaixwe gives oracles in Scrabble
   takings you have to
anagrammatize yourself into
   sense; visions seen
in oily puddles; shrieks of seagulls...

#113

Without Sxwaixwe we would have no fog,
   espresso, leather
jackets, or yellow trees in autumn.
   (Especially sacred
to Sxwaixwe is Caffe Medicí...)

#114

Squid-headed Cthulhu, Sxwaixwe, & the
   Jesus of twoway
cards & Mexican gilt-framed icons
   are siblings, slug-born,
but engendered by diff'rent Fathers.

#115

Sxwaixwe gave me this Form, to notate
   my ruminations,
weave coincidences, & invoke
   the spirits of this
gray-green crowded water-ruled abode.

01 10 92
[These were part of my attempt to contact a Coast Salish deity, one that resided at the bottom of Puget Sound, for my own purposes.]

The whole point is, there are no rewards.

"Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque."
--Macaulay, Essay on Milton

"Salve salvage in the spin.
Endorse the splendor splashes;
Stylize the flawed utility;
prop a malign or failing light--
but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth."

--Gwendolyn Brooks, from "The Second Sermon on the Warpland", op cit

   "America

If an eagle be imprisoned
on the back of a coin,
and the coin be tossed
into the sky,
the coin will spin,
the coin will flutter,
but the eagle will never fly."

--Henry Dumas, ibid

A palindromic tanka cited in Alpha to Omega, Humez & Humez:

"na ka ki yo no
to o no ne bu ri no
mi na me za me
na mi no ri bu ne no
o to no yo ki ka na." ('The sleeping figure's eyes open in the middle of a winter's night--can it be in anticipation of the sound of the wave-borne boat?')

"...it was once proposed that Groucho play the role of Dr O'Connor in a filmed Nightwood..." --Anthony Burgess

Ambergris--the Untold Story. (via Kathryn Cramer)

Ted's Head.

The eccentric blog of Toadex Hobogrammathon. (He also has a novel at Ubu Editions.)

Another Look at Pale Fire.

To expand upon my yesterday's comment ("Features, Not Tribes."), which i see now was part of a crossbloggal discussion of this, i see the present situation as one in which poets choose (for temperamental or personal-history reasons) from among several presented "dialects" of poetry (& not excluding many of the poetries of the past, or from other cultures); our eclecticism has the cross-dimension of being more pure or more mixed, but all the same it does very little to originate. And of course we choose our tribes, also, & analogously: & one of the reasons we use a certain dialect is that we think we have something in common to discuss with others who use it (see my essay on Blixen).
   But tribal divisions only map onto dialects insofar as poetic centers enforce (or fail to enforce) the dialects that correspond to their perceived canon. And one cannot talk about blixen, to return to this designation for 'dispersed groups', without recognizing that hardly anyone belongs to just one blik, nor does a large percentage exactly correspond to each other--although correlations can certainly be found.
   Further complicating this is the small fact that our animosities mostly map onto mythical entities. (The "avant garde" is only one such.)
   But if we start talking about features, how much less danger is there of falling into name-calling or reifying! For instance, here is one feature: linebreaks/ no linebreaks (="prose poetry"). That doesn't imply anything about the poet's subject matter, sexual political religious orientation, or place of origin... Other features i find interesting: wide parataxis/ limited parataxis; monolingual/polylingual; human-generated/computer-generated; persona/non-persona...
   Just the other day i invented a new form. I take a number of rhime-equivalent pairs (words whose A=1, B=2...Z=26 sums are the same number); & use them as endwords in any order. Additionally, the poems i wrote in this form counted syllables--most of them were in "snowflakes", where i use lines of 3, 5, 7, 9, & 11 in any order (then repeat). --I haven't named it yet.
   Syntax was fairly straightforward, with slight disjunctions between lines and/or stanzas; a few of the referents were esoteric, but most of the poems was intelligible, if a bit vague. I think of the basic dialect as post-Symbolist, with a smattering of Langpo. These poems, as with most of my other output, were not "addressed" as such; they refrain from the tribal. And while rhime is a procedure i have used before, i have only used it in couplets before now.
   Is this "experimental"? Is it "avant garde"? Is it "Quietudinous"? Is it "Confessional"? Is it "NeoFormalist"?
   Is it "Flarf"? Is it "Umbrist"? Is it "Xenon Mercurist"?

   "I Have Folded My Sorrows

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gay unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters.
   Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity."

--Bob Kaufman, op cit

'Subversion is perhaps only a rotation of crops.' --Jabès

"War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fixed ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of fate." --Rossetti

"Their only labor was to kill the time;
And labor dire it is, and weary woe..." --Thomson

"...for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied walls." --R L Stevenson

"...I was Lee Marvin watching a grain combine
eat a Cadillac in an open field..." --Michael Atkinson

Lazuri. More.

Features, Not Tribes.

Momus hears a Tatar pop song, & decides to make an album called "Songs from Imaginary Central Asian Republics".

I had a great thought as i looked at the Seattle Art Museum's African collection: NARRATIVE IS A MASK. Narrative is to what happens, as a mask is to the face. The mask dances; the mask in repose. It is story because we live in time & all that we perceive we perceive in time. Description becomes animated as much as characters are. Symbols are only: inanimate characters. And the Africans knew this...

   "A Black Man Talks of Reaping

I have sown beside all waters in my day,
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Canada to Mexico
But for my reaping only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
My brother's sons are gathering stalk and root,
Small wonder then my children glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit."

--Arna Bontemps, op cit

'God is saved by the void.' --Jabès

"Values are vowels." --Ron Silliman, "The Chinese Notebooks"

"We anew view swart waves' flowing wilderness..." --C M Doughty, Mansoul

I've forgotten how to be an artist without publicity.
Paraplegic afternoon, with the dogs standing around as puzzled as i.

   "Mortality

This is the surest death
Of all the deaths I know.
The one that halts the breath,
The one that falls with snow
And nothing but a peace
Before the second zone,
For Aprils never cease
To resurrect their own,
And in my very veins
Flows blood as old as Eve.
The smallest cell contains
Its privileged reprieve,
But vultures recognize
This single mortal thing
And watch with hungry eyes
When hope starts staggering."

--Naomi Long Madgett, in The Poetry of Black America ed Arnold Adoff (1973)

'The honor bestowed upon the icon is bestowed upon the prototype.' --Basil the Patriarch

'The I is not the stake, but the game.' --Jabès

   'Distant Howling

In Alsace,
on 6th July 1885,
a rabid dog knocked down
the nine-year-old Joseph Meister
and bit him fourteen times.

Meister was the first patient
saved by Pasteur
with his vaccine, in thirteen
progressive doses
of the attenuated virus.

Pasteur died of ictus
ten years later.
The janitor Meister
fifty-five years later
committed suicide
when the Germans occupied
his Pasteur Institute
with all those poor dogs.

Only the virus
remained above it all.'

--Miroslav Holub (tr Ewald Osers) in: Poetry With an Edge (ed Neil Astley 1988)

   "Lament for the Chapbook-Makers"

1.
  The world of zines,
hobbyist prophets.
Not an underground
but an attic. We bank
on future collectibility,
though the paper blizzard
shows no sign of tapering off.

Declasse distress
& sleight of hand
meet on the xox'd pages
a Babel of aesthetics,
reflecting the war
only in its equal disorder.
But we're forced to do it.

Prestige beyond numbers
still, in the big leagues
of the publishers' minor markets.
More reviews than books are read.

Believers in the great Victorian novel public,
or in the Beat Thing,
teachers or would-be freelancers,
a lot of misfits
with no other axe to grind...
despised amateurs
with cosmic visions.

No center for this cult
than the discovery of the cult itself.
A poet with a vocation
is a menace to others.

History consoles,
especially the biographies
of latterly deified saints.
Much more than looking at each other,
much more than truth-telling.

O this balloon i keep almost letting go of!
Crutch of my life & its blighting.
Ethical enigmas give way to verbal
& i still don't, like Akhmatova,
find it helps one bit.

How beauty of the fleeting moment
produces this compulsion
is not a genre.
There are so few drugs that work.
The city, an addict.
Some with eyes on the red sky.

So i labor at this renegade accumulation
mindful of present dangers
like a figurehead carver
on a ship in a storm.
My version of tradition
not hawked in the thoroughfares
but whispered at midnight.
This is a public poem.

2.
  If the bridge i am building collapses
there may be reasons,
there may not.
If the bridge i am building begins
to look like a web full of caught bugs,
it may still be a bridge
but a bridge to a diff'rent place.

3.
  The watchers,
a tribe of aliens
with a tribe's beliefs.
But many fewer.

And other tribes the powerful.
That rankling, though a lesser
stigma than some. Invisibles.

This is the true love.
Sometimes it bursts through
the bounds of the rituals.
Lives can be transformed
if you're young enough.

Love in the margins
of our machine lives.
In spite of parasitic
infestation.
I'm amazed it's at all

but seldom grateful.

4.
  Masterpieces in obscure media
as a protest obscurer still,
he conceived the chief aim
of his leisure moments.

But the beauty of the project
soon palled,
so much work it takes!
(to say Damn the Competition);

might as well go on strike.

5.
  Too amateur a venue
for one so published,
this billboard i deface.
I resort to leatherbound editions.

Rumors of intimacy
rebound from the hard walls
void of bookshelves
or, indeed, posters.

And hist'ry, that debunked debunker,
comes to the rescue
in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

02 13 92

'I believe that if the geometrician were to be conscious of this hopeless and desperate striving of the hyperbola to unite with its asymptotes, he would represent the hyperbola to us as a living being and a tragic one!'
--Unamuno

Everything after the Gulf War seems both empty & sinister.

"Animo qui aegrobat videmus corpore hunc signum dare;
tum doloribus confectum corpus animo obsistere." --Lucilius ('A sickness of mind, we see, makes its mark on flesh; racked with pains, that flesh then ravages the mind.' tr Janet Lembke in: Bronze and Iron (1973))

"As their APC's and tanks keep getting blown up, the Americans have to take any face-hardened steel plating available and start welding. ...Now you see these improvised fighting machines all over Iraq. Once painted with that solid olive drab color, they are now patchworks of red, black and green, with random pieces of metal sticking off everywhere, bristling with guns. They look incredibly bizarre. I call it the Mad Max Rolling Sideshow." --Christopher Deliso

The 27-Letter Alphabet.

Second Thoughts.

"Another thing that generally cheers me up is "banking" my finished works. All my adult life, I've had this non-rational belief that my main function in life was to get as many works into my Final Account as possible. I actually have a physical feeling of contentment when I imagine myself inserting a new finished work into the slot in the building that holds The World's Cultural Works. It's exactly as in Monopoly as one accumulates properties, hotels and money!" --Bob Grumman
   (With me, it's more like, as Leonard Cohen once replied to an interviewer who contested his self-description as 'mediocre': "The evidence accumulates.")

"There is no bad or even good Iraqi poet. ALL of them are excellent and superior. This has been the rule since God created the poets and allowed them to produce poetry. Every country had a time in its history when there was no great poet alive. It never happened in Iraq, nor will it happen." --Calling It like It Is

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging.

"We had no way to talk about any of this. We were at the same time terribly intimate and terribly aloof. We could work shoulder to shoulder for days on end, on what we knew for sure were battle lines; we knew the smell and taste of each other's breath and sweat, but we never stopped, we never paused long enough to look each other in the eye.
   And we had no vocabulary for these things. No
concepts, really, for what was happening. Another world was breaking through to ours, and we were awash in it. We had in fact invited it and here it was, and mostly we saw it as good. We set blind boundaries, changed them, made impromptu rules, forgot them, quarreled, worked together. While some of us drifted out of reach on hard drugs, or the pure chemistry of denial and need.
   But we had no words, not even the thought to look for
words to speak what was happening. OR
  before we identified he weather pattern, the storm had
already broken.
You could put it like that." --Diane DiPrima, Recollections of My
Life as a Woman (2001)

' "What I have received as my inheritance," he said, "is the hope for a book. Poisoned legacy! with each of my works, a little more of this hope fades away." ' --Edmond Jabès, The Book of Shares (1987) tr Rosemarie Waldrop

There is something poetic about the planned but unwritten novel that a written one lacks. I must beware of loving too much this aura.
  The discovery of self-modulation, of varying one's style, is the basis for most contemporary art careers. Sometimes it is most baseless; sometimes truly independent of scrutiny. I have almost loved this more than the medium itself. It has lured me from truth when truth was unavailing. I have considered it the mystery of myself. --Though it is not even the central mystery of art.

"Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the deposed president of Haiti, is represented with his attribute, a rooster, and the name of his party written in sequins. He may be finished as president, but he is well on his way to becoming a voodoo spirit figure." --Regina Hackett in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2-15-92

"I am the son of the future but she shows me only her mourning veil" --W S Merwin

...the intensity i feel at being rejected is a direct measure of my degree of egotism. [Wherefore it is a good thing to happen once in awhile?]

It was parental supervision that made Americans want to live anonymously. To compensate, they devise lifestyles.

Listening to: Insha-Allah. (My first guess, on seeing the CD cover, was "This looks like the 'Guns 'N' Roses' of Pakistan". Actually, they're a bit better than that.)

A Mystery, Solved.

"We want to live in a country even a crazy man can head and not have it be dangerous for us or the world." --Llewellyn H Rockwell, Jr (via Antiwar)

Falluja Roundup. (sigh...)

Perspective. Listening to "Ohio", i said, "One day Nixon will be nothing but a footnote to that song."

Opponents of gay marriage betray themselves, not of being unable to make a simple analogy, but of being trapped in the definitions of externals--for they have never been in love.

"an alien pox in the polished dark" --Shaughnessy

He spent many studious years making sure that nothing could be done. When he was satisfied, it was already too late to start a new subject. So he began to broadcast his findings. Against his intentions he became a pundit & a celebrity. Everyone wanted to hear that there was absolutely nothing to be done.

04 12 04

"According to the Will of God"

The warning on his desk unheeded,
Bush went fishing. Plans succeeded
Both to break a tyrant's crown,
And to bring an empire down.

04 13 04

A review which segues into an essay on gender/politics which is truly brilliant.

Slow Life.

Two paintings which some knowledge of the painter's life changes utterly.

   "Three Months More in Hell"

The voice of Bush is the voice of God
Blind, drooling, idiot
In traffic to ignore
Road & weather conditions;
In medicine to prescribe
Leeches for everything;
In poetry to write
When your muse has nothing to say.

04 15 04

I guess we were due for a Minstrel-Show Revival.

Howard Waldrop Blogs! (via Boing Boing)

How To Own The Internet In Your Spare Time. (via Beyond the Beyond)

   "SUV Recall"

The Easter Bunny in Fallujah
Tears children to pieces.
It has something to do with God
But none of them has lived
To tell us.
It's a mystery.
Like the mystery of why
We can watch on TV
An ape making grunts
And think it's a man speaking reasons.

04 15 04

You Are Trapped In That Bright Moment When You Learned Your Doom.

'That there might be too much snow in the notion of fire' --Cesar Vallejo, The Complete Posthumous Poetry, tr Clayton Eshleman (1979)

From Edward Bear- The Seven Deadly Needs: To Know, To Be Right, To Get Even, To Look Good, To Judge, To Keep Score, and To Control.

A Snowblogger. (via Metafilter)

"Somebody was clearly trying to get the attention of a simpleton, and failing."
--Tom Tomorrow

Moribundia. (via Mosses from an Old Manse) As globalization homogenizes everything within its reach, people long for vestiges of the authentic--old cafes with bad food.

   "Execution of a Retarded Man"

The day the clown cried
Was a day of gunfire
Like the day before
And the day before that.
The clown cried seeing
All the hearts of men
All the ruins of those hearts
And the ruins that those hearts made;
He cried to know
What could not be done.
He cried for a day
Then he started to move.
The tears were still wet
On the cheeks of the clown
But at last he was moving,
For the clown had cried.

04 15 04

Yesterday, on NPR, a bit about the Kirghiz, & their epic poem (banned under the Soviets) which everyone quotes & many know by heart: their culture & their history... There's a place to be a poet in... [1992]

"...to gain essentially the same powers, the Renaissance mage strove for moral purity (,) but the modern magician embraces the non-rational." --T M Luhrman, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft (1989)

Thought of writing a novel as more like a symphony. Instead of plot, there are themes on which you embroider. This is most apparent when you read several books by one author. The ostensibly different subjects tend to vanish, in recollection. Leaving--motifs.

I am such a creature of words. While prowling around the back room upstairs i came upon a receipt from a Tibetan importer (for B--'s store) & one of the items listed was a "phurba". A magical dagger! It was a real thrill to see the word there, albeit somewhat tarnished by the price (only $22?) he had paid for it.

"I found the software in Assembler, Fortran, and Cobol*, the most ancient of computer languages. Might as well have been classical Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit." --The Cuckoo's Egg
[*3 of the 5 i know.]

Today, free day at the [Seattle] art museum, i watched an hour long video on Francis Bacon. I was appalled to hear how he uses the unprimed side of the canvas--technically unsound--but it suits his brooding sense of mortality (as does his gambling). I still admire his work tremendously. Almost alone it seems to capture our late twencen reality (rather than its myths about itself): & afterwards, as i stood before the one painting of his they have, i reflected that my own paintings would be no real loss to the world, since one of his contains everything i've tried to say in all of mine. ...it occurred to me that Bacon's point of view (if something so visceral & nonintellectual can be so designated) is Jacobean, without the moralistic tone. Whereas most contemporary painters begin frivolously, from theory & career considerations, or from ego's frolics. Bacon identifies with his subjects so completely that it becomes impersonal...--but not in our usual hackneyed sense of "objectivity"; rather, feeling suffering & decay & degradation as the essence of life itself, or what (i would say) life has become for us, in the absence of myth & creative meaning. And the only transcendence, apart from sex, is the fact of the painting itself... My one criticism of Bacon, then, is that he depicts a world in which his paintings are impossible. Or (as he does show them!) a world without art's power. --a mistake all too common since humanism has lost its moral authority-- But after all, that's the world most people do live in!
...one night here they had on TV some show that was like real life cop stories--straight documentary footage--for the entertainment value of its morbid disorder. I can easily imagine, in front of every TV set, a whole tribe of Bacon grotesques, fixated like lampreys on their own imminent ruin.

From the blurb for Surprised By Sin by Stanley Fish: "...[Milton's] poem's lesson is proven on a reader's impulse every time he or she finds a devilish action attractive or a godly action dismaying." --How Yasusada of him.

Cher Doll and Her Celebrity Friends. Wow, for a second i thought this was a put-on, like Why Cats Paint... And seventy five years from now, won't they be perplexed as to what we took seriously, & what we didn't?!

Harry Crews--the Band.

Jesus Vs. Satan in a Cage Match.

Listening to: The Starsound Orchestra Plays the Hits Made Famous by Madonna.

150 poetry books were published in April. (via Poetry Hut)

"The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by." --Eyewitness Report from Falluja

"Thinking is like a thin king. There is also a knight." --Lime Tree

Redoubled Flowering. (via Fishblog)

"It's said that Heinrich Himmler turned white as a sheet upon witnessing the business end of a gas chamber during one of his rare inspection tours of the camps, and had a difficult time eating his lunch afterwards." --Billmon (via Wood_s Lot)

"To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for."
--Alexander Smith

   "Latte Infix"

Beggar conjure, reindeer dogtrot door
To radium call
Pummel leave shriek (up) blackened

Day unkind

Easter disperse latte crossfire gray newbie
And rogue bonobo.
Pouncy ceasefire latte bleed practice
For the world of light Pitcairn

Gray Easter

Conjure reindeer Fallujah corpses grope star
Shattered eyes it?; shortened field
Chartreuse sifts down; flying dogtrot beg
Jade bomb hush.
Gray of evil loom

04 11 04

"The novel used to feed our search for meaning... It was the great secular transcendence. The Latin mass of language, character, occasional new truth. But our desperation has led us toward something larger and darker. So we turn to the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe. This is where we find emotional experience not available elsewhere. We don't need the novel... We don't even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports and predictions and warnings." --Don DeLillo, Mao II (1991)

The Day The Clown Cried.

An Equal Number?

The Sackner Archive. (via dbqp)

"When the Rolling Stones went to Chess Records in Chicago they found Muddy Waters painting the studio wall to earn some money between recording sessions." --Nina Simone, I Put a Spell on You (1991) [her autobiography]

You would not think, from our novels, poems, or music, that we are all of us continually getting sick all the time. But isn't that part of the crisis--health care (even if only the middle class's--alas) meant for something rare, & the need becoming common? And isn't it part of the unemployment crisis (the nonpolitical, non-outsourcing part--), the unwillingness to take on full-time workers with benefits?

"You can't have a revolution without a cosmology."
--Z Budapest

"I don't think I have to break a guitar to get a violent sound out of it." --Neil Young in Guitar Player [a propos of self-destructive artists]

Blind Painting has taken the art world by storm. Having tired of idiots & elephants, copyists & corpse defilers, it seemed both refreshingly authentic & encouragingly critic proof. Nevertheless a school of Blind Painting critics has arisen. Or rather, two schools. One considers only the intentions of the one who paints.The other measures yardage.

04 09 04

"To bones, fat is only fog." --Brenda Shaughnessy

   Jupiter, high
Through the late night haze
   Powerful still

A pain in my throat
As in past winters

04 12 04

   Assembly
Line made for the blind
   To handle

What could be so dear
As those dark hours?

04 12 04

"Had langpo presented itself as, say, third-generation projectivism, nobody would have complained." --Ron Silliman

"Baghdad is calm and relatively quiet if you don't count the frequent explosions." --Baghdad Burning

"It seems proper that those who create art in a civilization of quasi-barbarism which has made so many homeless, which has torn up tongues and peoples by the root, should themselves be poets unhoused and wanderers across language." --George Steiner, Extraterritorial (1971)

"For Neoplatonism, evil has no metaphysical reality, but Gnosticism engaged evil as the reality of this world, which presumably is why Gnosticism now lives, under a variety of disguises, while Neoplatonism is the province of scholars." --Harold Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism

'There chaunced the like errour to the Greekes, and to the Latines, in the woord Phos, the which signifieth a Man [phi omega sigma], and the Lighte [phi omega-with-a-tilde sigma = phi alpha omicron sigma]: wherupon the Priestes of the Saturnalia in times paste being deceived in the ambiguite of the woorde, offered everie yeere a man to Saturnus, when they mighte aswell have appeased him with burninge of lightes.' --Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and Sciences (1569 translation; reprinted 1974)

"Spelling is defunct..." --Liber AL Vel Legis

Beatallica. (via Fishblog) [A glimflash.]

Naked Came the Stranger. (via Bookslut)

Po' Biz.

   "Falluja"

filled twelve stars
with my deaths forever left away
laughs darkness through you
wind
underworld together
strangers of shading shine

one dream is and
was again

flowing blindfold

04 05 04

Into the Valley of Death.