"Though quaint allusions, vague and undefin'd,
Play faintly round the ear, but mock the mind;--"

--Anon, in: A Collection of English Poems 1660-1800, ed R S Crane (1932)


'choosing a path
overgrown with wind-grasses
and weeds,
today I walk
for as long as the sun shines'

--Yuko Kawano, Vital Forces (tr A Fielden & A Yuhki, 2003)

A cosmic war is in a way our crisis now. This indistinct thing, Moron quality, or say all minds of Plain Folk who as a majority hold such sway in human affairs: to control it is to control much of our world. Only, nobody actually can. It is various bad magics at work, all unknowingly.

    "Arab and Mozarab"


Billowing
sinuosity, to hold
along with dynasty coupons an oddball
thirst, flint calm altar
sparking nightmarish marathon
of pistachio light. Rush
flunky to flunky
and indistinct on your dashboard diwn
no rotund
guardian will follow you with haggard glow.

Writing on a wall.

"Let patience have a new mettle of love
When the legions of unlivable hours marshal
And the long-rumoured war between good and evil
Seems loosed--no, between time and evil.

To look not too keenly, hear their battles not loudly.
The war is an ancient one which hurls
Time against time on to-morrow's fields--
Which consumes expectation, leaves to-day waiting.

Standing in the shadow of their shadow-world,
Let the cries and the thunders fall voiceless to earth,
And the flames reach to heaven, that top of hell,
Unexalted by our eyes, our amen.

Nor be haggard for an outcome, breath forborne.
When ghosts put on flesh and make bodies ghostly,
It is but how the dead light themselves home
As the living inherit nature.

If the glare blots our sight, if the sparks sting,
If nations gibber and ether tears
And a smell of scorching blows round the world,
As if at last doom were astir (perhaps?):

Shake off the dream, close in fulfilment,
Draw a finer circle and raise boundaries
More home-like unswelling, to stay the heart--
Lusting after better things than are.

Keep a yet more unanxious watch.
Think not to know wonders, learn truth from wild hours.
Let patience glow with its own inwrought lustre,
Not the startled reflection of time's faster burning."

--Laura Riding (via M*tafilter)

What's that?.

Utraquist is a bard who can ply both fancy and plain talk. In old days bards truly sang for all, a story on top plainly and in fancy talk or with fancy shadowings. also. And  Mozarab is sworn to find a third way, not holding to bad old splits that bind and blind us.


    "grom"

This light, signifying nothing, hurts
with glory.
I pay up and go on, clouds
carry away an array of bright shadows
i shall not again
catch, nor this hazardous thought
flung among rushing morning cars and
gray thalassa’s sound;
swiftly still.

Bandit Qu**n of India.

    "Nothing Now Astonishes

A month of vigilance draws to its close
With silence of snow and the Northern lights
In longed-for wordlessness.

This rainbow spanning our two worlds
Becomes more than a bridge between them:
They fade into geography.

Variegated with the seven colours
We twist them into skeins for hide and seek
In a lovers' labyrinth.

Can I be astonished at male trembling
Of sea-horizons as you lean towards them?
Nothing now astonishes.

You change, from a running drop of pure gold
On a silver salver, to the white doe
In nut-groves harbouring.

Let me be changed now to an eight-petalled
Scarlet anemone that will never strain
For the circling butterfly.

Rest, my loud heart. Your too exultant flight
Had raised the wing-beat to a roar
Drowning seraphic whispers."

--Grav*s

"In this sequence I was attempting a florid grim music broken by grunts and shrieks."  --G*offr*y Hill, "Fun*ral Music: an *ssay"


This Bardic Art has long split into plain and fancy forms. Mostly plain is put to music nowadays. But bards still complain of low status, and bardic fancy talk is on occasion found culprit. Bards should look to lack of a musical background for why Plain Folk don't flock to bardic stand ups, i think.

    "Bombers

Through the vague morning, the heart preoccupied,
A deep in air buried grain of sound
Starts and grows, as yet unwarning--
The tremor of baited deepsea line.

Swells the seed, and now tight sound-buds
Vibrate, upholding their paean flowers
To the sun. There are bees in sky-bells droning,
Flares of crimson at the heart unfold.

Children look up, and the elms spring-garlanded
Tossing their heads and marked for the axe.
Gallant or woebegone, alike unlucky--
Earth shakes beneath us: we imagine loss.

Black as vermin, crawling in echelon
Beneath the cloud-floor, the bombers come:
The heavy angels, carrying harm in
Their wombs that ache to be rid of death.

This is the seed that grows for ruin,
The iron embryo conceived in fear.
Soon or late its need must be answered
In fear delivered and screeching fire.

Choose between your child and this fatal embryo.
Shall your gilt bear arms, and the children you want
Be condemned to die by the powers you paid for
And haunt the houses you never built?"

--C Day L*wis, op cit

On my victrola: Los Diplomaticos.

"The problem [in Malay] was always to find a general [status-neutral] term [for 'you'] that would offend nobody, and this has finally been imported from Indonesia--anta..." --Anthony Burg*ss, A Mouthful of Air (1992)


Art took its start prior to this split, but no world is split as far as art. You may ask why would Sharp Folk want an art only for Sharp Folk; but it is through art that Sharp Folk first saw Sharp quality as a shining thing, and art is most a Sharp Folk faith.

It is hard to think of our kind as a group: our first thought is to look only at individuals. So any try at making us bad guys just looks as if comic-book fantasy had run amok. Sharp Folk must start to know how obvious Plain Folk find what holds Sharp apart from Plain.

    "Politics of Gnosticism"

Gray domain, sad cyclical thirst for blood.
No gliding protocol in a maroon rain,
no hand of Fatima lights our haggard run;
but i will not admit that i'm afraid.
In this snaking baobab domain, command
wills its buzz through pliant skin and iron
and pours down Taproban to light a cairn,
cairn or monition told. This star is blind
on ruin thrown, and occult on fragrant blood
it calls forth from our flag a plastic doom.
Words among fathoms cold find tragic numb
in blood-thrusting vault no click, its only food
annihilation and subfusc fuzzy thralldom.

"The next day, Gabriel Garcia-Cohen moved to Bruges." (via Click Opera)

"Some years ago I came across a note by the German philosopher Theodor Haecker (1889-1945). He writes that "Tyrants always want a language and literature that is easily understood." I think that legitimate difficulty (difficulty of course can be faked) is essentially democratic. " --Geoffrey Hill

"I have Lovecraftian fantasies about the hospital librarian."

You don't want this tattoo. (via bOING bOING)

Whist.

Your TV Will Not...

What did Arthur know?

A story about Sharp Folk and Plain.

Shia Pundit is at a brass location now.

Jump that Shark.

A bit of my art.

It is worth thinking about, that a good part of Plain Folk did not join this fascist faction. Thus not all found truth in its drastically plain story. What our country lacks is a story that Plain Folk can absorb, but is not too far from what actually did occur. Who is up to it?


Shadow work is you finding out that an unfamiliar quality actually is part of your familiar world. What is this socially? For a minority group to gain position with a social majority. Our country has grown mild in many of its past discriminations. That was shadow work, and social wisdom. It must go on, still.

Right now i'm loving Qu**n Latifah's variant of "California Dr*aming"...

Rabbit Talk. (via Languag* Hat)

     "Khamsa"

Incubus candida Xanadu
unruin turn alb

No fourth wall
but sand wintry Farfisi

Wintry guitar wintry drum solo wintry
hiss of black vinyl

Masuda aloha baboon Mab
maroon thought

Rolm moray, wintry thalassa this gnomon
what our troops our ballots did

Soaring in Rosicrucian
night andtragic slag

Oscar Tarawa moray cloud mad
maroon Xanadu mud maroon Mazzaroth

what you do
on a cold morning

morbidly irrational
anguish fishing in agonistic ambit

boring drug
abyss with adiabatic black

myth filth drowsy crop
captor Stygian hit word

and far flung nab and agama nub
digs as whist

A killing jar halcyon sabbatical
in infant camo

buildings that shift color as
untranslatability pulls countdown

Craving thralldom portal, syzygy
of chaos

and finks a hitword Baghdad
spork divinity

among cars and crisp shadows that harry us
i sit and think about a lost dord

our wrong road
and blackjack won friths

chronopausal, claws in fact
at that spirit of Ginnungagap

snows abort
with jolly or stirious accordions

abandon quarry gawkily, brood Krypton
strong in hurt spots, strong

bulbous capitalism
will not aid us will not halt this drouth

swamp glows go
bobbing soaring spiralling without a sound

and sordor runs high
falutin' indigo jay

Jindyworobak sticks Baja fjord
No gliding protocol in a maroon rain

no hand of
Fatima lights our

haggard run; but i will not admit
that i'm afraid. In this snaking baobab

domain, command wills its buzz
through pliant

skin and iron and pours
down Taproban to

light a cairn, cairn or monition told. This star
is blind on ruin thrown and occult

on fragrant
blood it calls forth from our flag

a plastic doom words among
fathoms cold

find tragic numb in blood-thrusting vault
no click its only food annihilation

and subfusc
fuzzy thralldom your passport

to Cibola in
fact action flicks must carry my sign

as most lost wizard-hooligan of longhorns
and rainbows go far

in gray domain sad cyclical thirst
for blood is

our sky and our gravity
bulbous anguish to watch Bugs Bunny of faith

abolish
and Rolm built and alibi

i was not lamping
and troops did not ply Albunalith

as i saw and did not and lock picking bias
found my lips black snow

found glory
lamping this allotropic

bitmask. I will cry wintry coins of basalt
sinking in Athagatagarbha

a dokhodyaga and Ghayb
hummingbird

old Sumatra your toxic gnosis
diwn braking sorrow

coilthorn mists, vacuous cinnabarcolor
you find rich truth in, my grout;

and Pluto
can but bury us in Caulaucauch.

A burgundy moon
i catch up and wrap in soft argus for you.

Bright olibanum
and its swarf
and its music lay this ghost.

What is crazy about this split. Anybody is not only half but both on occasion. And humans split four fours of ways, actually. Plus, your sort of human is disjunct of family. Finally, all four-four sorts add to what "human" is. Any sort has only a small part of truth--including this my story.


    "Burden of Silence

Scar-eraser, bring
No whisper of the African Holocaust
Nor after being kissed
Remember any cobwebbed tale of wrong:
Our pleasance is a laser through the darkling throng.

Glacier throught my art
Grinds a valley, leaves a ragged trail;
Far off thunders snarl
The voice of some uncomprehended fate
Which shall not reach us here though we in fear await."

--Darth Mall, A Watcher in Darkness (1850)


How to talk to Plain Folk so this Pumpkinification will diminish its hold? How to show how Sharp Folk also stand for God, Country, and Good Capitalism? How to allow fascist bad faith to unmask its actual quiddity? Most of all, it is important to not look down on Plain Folk, nor scorn Plain ways.

You might say our country had a big "Pumpkinification" during King Ronald's sway, which put solid form to an arbitrary linking of Christian with Rightwing with Patriotic with Plainfolk, all of which only partly conjoin. But plain folk flourish on drastically plain thoughts, and do not on fancy distinctions such as Sharp Folk put forward.

     "Radical City"

Tzvrif azimuth, oval or nidor of rain
Uzi Cibola

imgrat sunk
itch which COBOL avid lamp

slowly boring orchid indigo
city idyll for growing songs of gray war

    "XII.

Their spades grafted through the variably-resistant soil. They clove to the hoard. They ransacked epiphanies, vertebrae of the chimera, armour of wild bees' larvae. They struck the fire-dragon's faceted skin.

The men were paid to caulk water-pipes. They brewed and pissed amid splendour; their latrine seethed its estuary through nettles. They are scattered to your collations, mouldywarp.

It is autumn. Chestnut-boughs clash their inflamed leaves. The garden festers for attention: telluric cultures enriched with shards, corms, nodules, the sunk solids of gravity. I have accrued a golden and stinking blaze."

--Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns (1971)

If this is at all a tomorrow story, it should show us a way forward. First, plain folk will not flourish thus, nor will sharp folk who join in for gain. Though mutual distrust holds us apart, still our survival is a product of sharing, as our doom a product of not.

Journalistic N*wthink. (via Cursor)

     “Everybody That Comes Drives By

Recurrent nightmares--addictive consolations.
And I say I want to be strong,
I want not to die of
these colors...
But we are all so good at surviving
just the way we started as,
we have to be. The machines
will crush a part that doesn’t fit.
   Once I walked
and kept walking till I couldn’t any farther
and I was still in the midst of it,
and I couldn’t see how walking
all that ways
had made one bit of difference.

That’s how we feel about change.”

--Ogpu Savak, Th* Hors*sho* Crab Whisp*r*r (1993)

Always, humans saw and thought variously, but had no way to find out what subcultural worlds this variation might amount to. Not now. Occurring at a political and physical world crisis, it has not brought forth unambiguous fruits, but from this point on, groupings will grow out of intrinsic quality and not an arbitrary kind.

Tau C*ti.

Only a unitary, and fairly dull, output from googling for "politics of gnosticism".
But looking for "bland doom" found two (don't go, though) phony outputs: "A getting below the laborer gives the bland doom at a preferred chinwag." And: "A getting below the laborer gives the bland doom at a public craze."

Hand of Fatima.

On my victrola: C*llutron and th* Invisibl*s.

Morons too absorb and grow various from a strong running onda for glamorous unknowns. A singular thought holds many Morons; still, all kinds of non-Moron things attract this curious bunch. Just as past or far off flavors maintain a sort of phantom minority group status now, so will Moron quality split into such subflavors.

Hollyridg* Strings.

Psych*d*lic Futurism. (thanx Jo*!)

Probably this bout of fascism will also fail, through ludicrous lack of planning if not by good guys winning. But what will bring down Moronism? That plurality will not go away, and now it has found its thought. Must only WalMart, only country music, only kitsch art and plain talking bards flourish, from now on?

   "Story for Sharp Folk"

How many individual Morons found thought of union as a singular thing with Moron quality and Moron truth. How this was good for Moron quality, good for fascists, but bad for our nation and this world. How Morons still don't know that a torn up world with many poor is no fun for Morons also.

("Plain folk" or "ordinary folk" or "just folks" would insult not so much. But i am mad.)

Is it right to find a psychological story for social ills? (Not as bad as that cosmic-combat story, anyway.) Could i do without a story for it? Probably. Prior stupid days; stupid days now, with small hiatus. But i am far too mild on my own sort, i know. Our hand was in it.

Sharp folk, plain folk both: found thought of group quality gradually. Good things in both; bad. Individualism in sharp folk is group quality, and hazardous for too much. So things did go that way too far, now back too far in its swinging? Which of us wants to talk about it in such a way??

"That poem about the monkeys reminds me of Pol Pot." --B*msha Swing

So Crazy Hal was against Dominionism--in 1989!?

"You think the buffalo can die, the whale and the tiger can die, and not a measly artform?" --Joshua Tr**, Th* Fiv* Robots You M**t in H*av*n (2012)

    "REFUGE

Twilight, a timid fawn, went glimmering by,
  And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast,
Ceaseless pursuit and flight were in the sky,
  But the long chase had ceased for us at last.

We watched together while the driven fawn
  Hid in the golden thicket of the day.
We, from whose hearts pursuit and flight were gone,
  Knew on the hunter's breast her refuge lay."

--AE, op cit

"Time for a Japanese dude to write poems using the name Kent Johnson." --Heathens in Heat

"I don't want the United States 'off the planet,' I want the government changed and the criminals currently in charge arrested, indicted for war crimes, and thrown in prison. I want the American people to face up to the fact their government is criminal and is responsible for many of the problems in the world. I want the American people to take responsibility for what their government has done in their names and with their money. I don't want Bush or Rumsfeld or the Strausscons sent to the gallows. I am strongly opposed to the death penalty. I do want them in prison, however, same as I want a serial rapist or murderer in prison, to protect the rest of us from their crimes.

Of course, this probably will not happen."

--Kurt Nimmo

14 ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. (via M*tafilt*r)

That human dignity should vanish from this world, humans living in traditional ways must gainsay all that is known of good husbandry, city humans must fight for any scrap of bliss and go furious against all, and a mob must laugh at anybody who asks if this is our natural and implicit and final functioning.

"Some are being beaten
Some are being born
And some can't tell the
Difference anymore"

--J*w*l

Sum*rfaq.

    "Mayfly Karnak"

Troops orthodox go cold
sport using botox Aradia

story what godly
adjunct so

axial ogham to act, bog sly addict
is spurting poll argh

storm mud as big ingot ant
igniting abstract forms it no axis dark

Flam*ncobilly.

How Magic *y* Works.

This frail craft, this blog drifting forward into unknown word-horizons, rowing link by link, in back of my path a trail such as a snail discards... (What i want to hold on to, as if i could to anything.) And i think, in that small lit box, or try to. Solitary brain, starry robot.

    "AT THE CENOTAPH

I saw the Prince of Darkness, with his Staff,
Standing bare-headed by the Cenotaph:
Unostentatious and respectful, there
He stood, and offered up the following prayer:
  'Make them forget, O Lord, what this Memorial
    Means; their discredited ideas revive;
  Breed new belief that War is purgatorial
    Proof of the pride and power of being alive;
  Men's biologic urge to readjust
    The Map of Europe, Lord of Hosts, increase;
  Lift up their hearts in large destructive lust;
    And crown their heads with blind vindictive Peace.'
The Prince of Darkness to the Cenotaph
Bowed. As he walked away I heard him laugh."

Siegfried Sassoon, op cit

    "Plano Militia"

Blogging as i watch a film
of simian triumph. Rail
gun Nostradamus mohawk
is back: blog grammar,
occupation of a moon.

Mortars, mortals throng this wood
and a bard could stop halfway
in a hard cloud of maroon.

I would distinguish clady from onda in an artwork. To follow a shiny human, a buzarg; to conform to that matrix in various ways: bards who do this grow part of a family of bards, a clady. An onda, though, is a big thing that lifts all of its humans as a unit and, past that lifting, cuts its mark for good. Clady against clady brings rivalry, as do wards of an onda against wards of a prior onda. But is a bard good or bad from any of this? No. In fact, much is to gain from knowing about far off kinds of making. You must abandon your notions of right and wrong ways of doing it--. Which is also an onda.

Now a film. (via Antiwar)

R*ality Ch*ck. (via Cursor)

    "Sonic Icons

--That liquid cough.
I cringe inly
for the millionth
time, hearing
in it the sick child
ignorant of remedy,
the unloved adult
without hope of succor,
& the pathetic slave
fearful of reprisals
for a day's absence."

--D*vil-Bug, Onlin* P*titions Ar* Gr*at! (2001)

Hooray. (via This Mod*rn World) --I want to hang a photo as ugly as that in front of all our crimson-voting idiots. I want us to know what our actions do in this world, not just our phony words. I want us to try to absorb this horror and pain as if our own family's. For it is.

    "Twilight in Plano, IV."

Curufin gulag dry hurl of Cibola
and again bury old rain

ugly odium bring hydraulic whims
but grim glow fold if scam sin

abolish
body algid lamp

Body Count as of today: 15563-17789.

"...we are continually assaulted by unending cycles of woes and degradation. Politics has been downgraded to war in its very lowest form, and we cannot talk of the political field without wincing with disgust. The political field has become a veritable theatre of disaster and cannot be spoken of without embarrassment...In a situation where a long established tribal culture is under assault from colonialism, new beings, discourses and commodities emerge from the transitional phase. And this transitional phase, with all its swift and sudden cultural reversals and rapid upturning of established tables of values, creates room for the most pronounced kind of opportunism, a situation where anything goes."

Six Cr**py Sh**p.

    "The Lemmings

Once in a hundred years the Lemmings come
Westward, in search of food, over the snow,
Westward, until the salt sea drowns them dumb,
Westward, till all are drowned, those Lemmings go.
Once, it is thought, there was a westward land,
(Now drowned) where there was food for those starved things,
And memory of the place has burnt its brand
In the little brains of all the Lemming Kings.
Perhaps, long since, there was a land beyond
Westward from death, some city, some calm place,
Where one could taste God?s quiet and be fond
With the little beauty of a human face;
  But now the land is drowned, yet still we press
  Westward, in search, to death, to nothingness."

--John Mas*fi*ld (1920)

    "In Pluto's Cavity"

At stark tsunami storp taps
brisk skirt stulm
as sump onion rain among gibbons

ascian its tomorrow gray spurt stinky nap
apart is ibis
brain rips ask

akin ossuary ikon; rim crisp stir

I was looking for Dromm, a scifi world...

    "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night:
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return'd, with a look I shall never forget;
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground;
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;
Till late in the night reliev'd, to the place at last again I made my way;
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade-found your body, son of responding kisses, (never again
on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the starlight-curious the scene-cool blew the moderate night-wind;
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night;
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh-Long, long I gazed;
Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in my hands;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you, dearest comrade-Not a tear, not a word;
Vigil of silence, love and death-vigil for you my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;
Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living-I think we shall surely meet again;)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd,
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form,
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head, and carefully under feet;
And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I
deposited;
Ending my vigil strange with that-vigil of night and battlefield dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain-vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd,
I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell."

--Walt Whitman

On my victrola: Eurovision '81.

Silicon Caissa. (via R*b*cca Blood)

"The mental gap between the rulers and young people is now between 100 and 150 years," said Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, a former vice-president who resigned in protest at parliament's conservative shift.

"World's Gr*at*st Writ*r".

    "Well, the big story of Oscar's day is that Martin Scorsese's entertaining biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator is up for 11 awards.  That number is hardly a record, but it does place The Aviator as the nominations leader, and history tells us the most nominated movie usually wins Best Picture--and director--but not always, however, as Scorsese well knows.  In 1980 Scorsese's Raging Bull and David Lynch's The Elephant Man were both up for 8 awards, but they were bested by Ordinary People, which made the grade with only 6 (?) noms to its credit.  Still, Scorsese and company are well positioned.  The only real drawback, so far, is The Aviator's meager box office, but that could turn around now that the movie appears to be the front runner.  Still, Million Dollar Baby, which ties with Finding Neverland as the year's 2nd most nominated movie (w/7), has yet to go into wide national release, and if the movie really takes off at the box office, the way many prognosticators (and what a great word) believe, then it might not be smooth sailing, so to speak, for The Aviator.  The situation looks even less promising for Finding Neverland, being as how its director, Marc Forster has been shut-out.  Statistically, this has never been a good thing, and with Finding Neverland's wobbly box office, things look even more dour. (Full confession: I didn't care much for the movie as a whole, so that Forster was not nominated is somewhat vindicating for moi).  Sideways, the movie that seems to have dominated all the early prize giving is only up for 5 awards, which seems to weaken its chances, especially given that its nominal lead actor Paul Giamatti was overlooked--a surprise since, so far, Giamatti has won the few Best Actor prizes that haven't gone to Ray's Jamie Foxx.  (Again, I can't say I'm hurt that Giamatti wasn't nominated, as I think both he and Sideways, in general, have been waaaaaaaaaaay over-rated.)  The fifth Best Picture nominee is Ray (w/6 noms), which at this point is the big moneymaker in the bunch--but that will change.  Still, this movie's chances are buoyed by the damn-near universal goodwill toward Jamie Foxx's electrifying performance. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would have been a great addition to the Best Picture race; now its best hope is to win Best Original Screenplay.

     There are a lot of Best Actor also-rans, but we'll get to that.  The nominees are Foxx, Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby).  It is, of course, interesting to see both Depp and DiCaprio, Mama Grape's boys, competing against each other, but I believe, as do many, many others, there will be rioting in the streets if Foxx loses.  That said, I'm thrilled Don Cheadle is nominated.  I haven't seen Hotel Rwanda yet, but I plan to this weekend; moreover, I'm still nursing wounds from 1995, the year Cheadle wasn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Devil in a Blue Dress (in which he stole the show from Denzel Washington--no easy feat, that).  Among the more prominent Best Actor also-rans: Liam Neeson (Kinsey), Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), Gael Garcia Bernal (either Bad Education or The Motorcycle Diaries [as Che Guevara]), Jeff Bridges (The Door in the Floor) plus the aforementioned Paul Giamatti.  I would have liked for Kevin Spacey to have been nominated for playing Bobby Darin in the musical biopic Beyond the Sea, but, oh well, Spacey already has two Oscars, and I guess the Academy thought one Best Actor nominee in a musical biopic was enough.  Did anybody really expect Tom Cruise (Collateral), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) or Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to be nominated?  Well, they all have their fans, that's for sure.  I, of course, adore Cruise, and think his hit man in Collateral was one of the year's best conceived characters; he even looked like a silver bullet.  Carrey, I think, had a much better showcase in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events--but I never smelled an Oscar (though I'm pleased that Lemony Snicket is up for a handful of awards including Best Art Direction, Makeup, and Costumes).

     For Best Actress, it's still anyone's guess.  Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) could emerge the front runner, but Annette Bening (Being Julia) still looms as a sentimental favorite, and Vera Drake's Imelda Staunton is firmly in the race, being as how her movie picked up important nominations like Best Director (Mike Leigh) and Best Original Screenplay (also Leigh).  Beyond that, it's great to see the way cool Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine) in her fourth Oscar race in less than ten years.  Is she an upset in the making? The fifth nominee is Catalina Sandina Moreno (Maria Full Of Grace), which I will be checking out soon on DVD. Was anybody overlooked?  Maybe only Emmy Rossum in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (which, surprisingly, is not up for Best Costumes).  Rossum, to this viewer, was not definitive in her Phantom role, but there was enormous hype surrounding her perfomance. I kind of liked beautiful Bryce Howard as the blind heroine of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (though the movie just sort of wound up as a curiosity piece).  I don?t think anybody ever really considered Jennifer Garner major Oscar material for her performance in the age switcheroo comedy 13 Going On 30, but I'm still surprised that she didn't get a Golden Globe nomination.  Well, don't feel so bad, Jennifer, last time Jamie Lee Curtis was highly touted for the superficially similar Freaky Friday remake, and she didn't get an Oscar nomination either (though she was tapped for a Globe nom).

   The  Best Supporting Actress race is led by Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Cate Blanchett (The Aviator), and Laura Linney (Kinsey), all of them easy calls.  This could be a showdown between the critics' darlings.  The other two nominees are Natalie Portman (Closer), who, after her icky Golden Globes speech, should never be allowed near a microphone again, and  Hotel Rwanda's Sophie Okonedo.  Any shut-outs? Well, I know a lot of people were rooting for Kate Winslet to score a second nod for he role in Finding Neverland, but that always seemed to be a bit generous to me (especially because, among other things, her role was more leading than supporting in nature anyway; Madsen, meanwhile, could almost compete in the Best Actress category, as could Laura Linney.).  It would have been nice if Regina King and Sharon Warren had been included for Ray.  King the former child actress of the old 227 sitcom from the 1980's, and later the wife of Cuba Gooding Jr's character in Jerry Maguire, finally, really and truly came into her own as one of Charles's mistresses; she had some great scenes, including a fiery interpretation of "Hit the Road Jack."  Warren was perfection as Ray's mom.  On the one hand, she endured a lot of pain and suffering, while on the other, she had to dole out some tough love to her boy. Another widely touted candidate was former Oscar winner Cloris Leachman (Best Supporting Actress, The Last Picture Show, 1971) in Spanglish, but despite being an audience pleaser herself,  the movie, overall, was not especially embraced by critics or the general moviegoing populace. My own personal favorite supporting actress of the year, without taking away anything from Madsen, was Jada Pinkett Smith in Collateral.  Smith's footage in Collateral was limited, yes, but she was blessed with one beautifully written scene (not, to clarify, her only scene), and she just played it so naturally--as an attorney slowly opening up to cab driver Jamie Foxx--it was a miracle in miniature.  I also liked veteran Dallas actress Irma P. Hall in the Coens' remake of The Ladykillers, but I guess that movie came out too early and just had a hard time finding an audience, besides. Thank goodness, on the other hand, the Academy had the good sense to pass on Meryl Streep's performance in The Manchurian Candidate remake.  Angela Lansbury already played that part--of fiendishly domineering mother--to legendarily wicked perfection, and Streep, as good as she often is, was no match for the original.  And I wasn't wild about Minnie Driver's diva in Phantom of the Opera, either, so her omission is not so surprising, though I know she was generally well reviewed, and that surprises me.

     In the Best Supporting Actor race, the clear front runner so far has been Thomas Haden Church in Sideways (like Foxx, a local boy),  but that might change, what with the likes of Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby), the enduring vet--who's been nominated three times previous and never won--and movie star in the making Clive Owen (Closer).  Also along for the ride, Alan Alda, his first ever nomination for The Aviator, and, oh yeah, Jamie Foxx for Collateral.  In the case of the latter the nomination is just gravy.  And, no, to answer some of the naysayers, I never thought Foxx was the lead in Collateral. Cruise was the star, the draw--which is not to say Foxx didn't hold his own. (To refresh, the movie details the shifting relationship between a hit-man and the cabdriver he ropes into a plan to commit several murders in the span of a single evening.)  That Foxx did hold his own (against an especially dynamic Cruise) is part of what makes Collateral such great moviemaking--and what makes Cruise so great as an actor: he doesn't mind sharing the screen, as per the case of the aforementioned Cuba Gooding Jr.,  and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), a Best Supporting Actor nominee from 2003.  Even last year's Best Supporting Actress winner Renee Zellweger (Cold Mountain) had to back up all the way to 1996 and thank her Jerry Maguire leading man in her acceptance speech. Furthermore, Academy rules prohibit actors from competing against themselves, which means Foxx was never going to be nominated for Best Actor for Collateral.  That would have never happened--and no one made Academy members nominate him for Collateral at all.  I mean, there was no need, since his nomination for Ray was always a lock.  Plus, if Foxx is the lead, as some suggest, in Collateral, then likewise so is Thomas Haden Church in Sideways, which for all practical purposes is barely--if that--nothing more than a glorified buddy pic.  Was anybody overlooked?  Maybe only Alec Baldwin, also in The Aviator.  Nothing else comes to mind right away.


     I'll wrap up now.  It's encouraging to, at long last, see Taylor Hackford (Ray) up for Best Director, and I'm glad that Michael Mann, as the producer of The Aviator,  has a chance of claiming an Oscar, since the Academy had the bad taste not to nominate him for directing Collateral.  About the latter, I don't know that it was the best movie of the year or not, but I think it was superb filmmaking.  The most crushing disappointment of all, for me, was that the goregous cinematography by Dione Beebe and Paul Cameron (for Collateral). Mann and his team (especially Beebe) worked hard with state of the art digital technology to give Collateral a unique look--at LA at night has never looked more seductive, more dangerous. (Beebe was previosuly nominated for 2002's Best Picture winner Chicago)  And Mann, who shook up the status quo with tv's Miami Vice in the 1980's, certainly knows a thing or two about hypnotic visuals.   If it matters, Beebe and Cameron were nominated by their peers in the American Society of Cinematographers and are likewise up for the British Academy Award equivalent. Collateral was, on the other hand, nominated for Best Editing.  It's better than nothing I guess (I mean, besides the nomination for Foxx.)

     The relatively meager showing of House of the Flying Daggers indicates the Academy believes it did its part in singling out Chinese martial arts movies a few years ago with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.   Myself, I think Daggers lacks the narrative thrust of the earlier film, though it has better visuals. (They are both, however, great eye candy.) The most splendid of this recent batch, however, may very well be Hero, which was excluded because it was up for Best Foreign Language Film two or three years ago.  I'm also crushed that composer Michael Giacchino's score for The Incredibles was shut-out.  That's just insane!  It would've been great if The Incredibles had been nominated for Best Picture, but that's the curse of now having a special category for feature length animation; it's like a ghetto.  Still, happily, The Incredibles is up for a few other awards, and should handily wining the aforementioned feature length category.  I still think, as well, Napoleon Dynamite should have been up for Best Original Screenplay, and that Mean Girls ought to have snagged a slot in the Best Adapted Screenplay slot--I love that Tina Fey, the Saturday Night Live head-writer and performer who did the adaptation (which was singled out for praise by the Writers Guild).  That the motion-control/animated feature Polar Express was shut of the race for Best Animated Feature is justified in that as beautiful as the movie's surfaces were, the newfangled process (a tweaking of an old process called rotoscoping) failed in the area of making its human characters physically convincing.  At this point, actors can breathe a sigh of relief that they?re not quite yet obsolete.  It's too bad, on the other hand, that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with its lavish computer generated backgrounds, did not fare any better with Academy voters.  

     As for The Passion of the Christ, I still don't know what to make out  of that movie's phenomenal success.  I was in the midst of it for weeks on end, and it was quite unlike almost anything I'd ever seen in 20+ years as a box office cashier. I do know this: Mel Gibson made a concerted effort not to do any Oscar campaigning for his movie (meaning no ads in the trade magazines, and presumably no home-screeners, maybe even no special theatre screenings).  With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that the movie didn't score more nominations than it did.  On the other hand, the movie did get a nod for Caleb Deschanel, the great cinematographer who's never won, despite a career that includes The Black Stallion, The Right Stuff, and The Natural.  Maybe this year the Academy will finally honor him and, in turn, recognize Gibson's movie in the doing.

Coments? Questions? Feedback? Good natured differences of opinion?

Mp"

"Sect 4209 Desecration of a Venerated Object

to seriously offend
one or more viewers
by breaking this
everyone's toy--
toy we should break
ourselves for, first;
toy infinitely cheapened and
fit symbol of
the daily betrayal of what it once stood for:
what we never knew
and still won't miss,
though every toy in toyland break
though every body break to save the toys"

--Dakar Coolm*adow

Atlanta Nights. Go, prosaic flarfists!

Dschingis Khan. A viddy!

Now this is art. Ditto.

    "NO CREDIT

Whether dinner was pleasant, with the windows lit by gunfire, and no one disagreed, or whether, later, we argued in the park, and there was a touch of vomit-gas in the evening air;
Whether we found a greater, deeper, more perfect love, by courtesy of Camels, over NBC; whether the comics amused us, or the newspapers carried a hunger death and a White House prayer for mother’s day;
Whether the bills were paid or not, whether or not we had our doubts, whether we spoke our minds at Joe’s, and the receipt said “Not Returnable,” and the cash-register rang up “No Sale,”
Whether the truth was then, or later, or whether the best had already gone--

Nevertheless, we know; as every turn is measured; as every unavoidable risk is known;
As nevertheless, the flesh grows old, dies, dies in its only life, is gone;
The reflection goes from the mirror; as the shadow, of even a rebel, is gone from the wall;
As nevertheless, the current is thrown and the wheels revolve; and nevertheless, as the word is spoken and the wheat grows tall and the ships sail on--

None but the fool is paid in full; none but the broker, none but the scab is certain of profit;
The sheriff alone may attend a third degree in formal attire; alone, the academy artists multiply in dignity as trooper’s bayonet guards the door;
Only Steve, the side-show robot, knows content; only Steve, the mechanical man in love with a photo-electric beam, remains aloof; only Steve, who sits and smokes or stands in salute, is secure;
Steve, whose shoebutton eyes are blind to terror, whose painted ears are deaf to appeal, whose welded breast will never be slashed by bullets, whose armature soul can hold no fear."

--K*nn*th F*aring, op cit

"Flarf is made of emotional materials that are unprepared for poetry." --Pangrammaticon

What to do at an art show.

Past our political horizon.

   "My Spirit, Sore from Marching

My spirit, sore from marching
   Toward that receding west
Where Pity shall be governor,
   With Wisdom for his guest:

Lie down beside these waters
   That bubble from the spring;
Hear in the desert silence
   The desert sparrow sing;

Draw from the shapeless moment
   Such pattern as you can;
And cleave henceforth to Beauty;
   Expect no more from man.

Man, with his ready answer,
   His sad and hearty word,
For every cause in limbo,
   For every debt deferred,

For every pledge forgotten,
   His eloquent and grim
Deep empty gaze upon you,--
   Expect no more from him.

From cool and aimless Beauty
   Your bread and comfort take,
Beauty, that made no promise
   And has no word to break;

Have eyes for beauty only,
   That has no eyes for you;
Follow her struck pavilion,
   Halt with her retinue;

Catch from the board of beauty
   Such careless crumbs as fall.
Here's hope for priest and layman;
   Here's heresy for all."

--Millay, op cit

‘...there deep as all rebellions shine
the Virgin Mother’s cast-iron eyes...’

--V. Khl*bnikov, “Lightland”

  “...prepared vistas extend
As far as harvest; and idyllic death
Where fish at dawn ignite the powdery lake.”

--G*offr*y Hill (1959)

    “...the idea
that the picture might be doctored:

it’s the false monster in the lake
known as George Washington.”

--Ra* Armantrout (2004)

“When satire becomes impossible, only impossible pens will write satire.” --Irma V*p, Op*ration Fanciful Nam*

Thinking about 51 P*gasi.

    "A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me;
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song."

--Rob*rt Frost, in: Chi*f Mod*rn Po*ts of *ngland and Am*rica (1947)

Mostly Mosasaurs.

Anatomy of Art-Rock.

Hronir.

    Myrrhy Indigo Moko

1. No way of writing is natural, no way is unnatural.

2. To link to past things is good; implicitly is smart.

3. Hstory is in word history, not in who did what.

4. Try to mix as many opposing pairs as you can.

5. Irony has had its day, but that day still glows.

6. Guard dogs who prowl ‘twixt ground bombs and barb volts.

7. What you must say will not draw you to it.

8. A song aims for its mark without thought or adjusting.

9. Its way runs through chords of partially right fitting scraps.

10. A druid knows much but admits only to what shows.

"It's amazing how as things get worse, you begin to require less and less. We have a saying for that in Iraq, "Ili yishoof il mawt, yirdha bil iskhooneh." Which means, "If you see death, you settle for a fever." We've given up on democracy, security and even electricity. Just bring back the water." --Baghdad Burning

    "Not Real Windows

I lightly let go of my sanity,
that Antarctic gear
of monstrous precautions.
I say: things are not so bad
here and now
and how they do it...
Ten thousand years later I am dug
out of a glacier
with flesh on my bones."

--Ogd*n Pound, Ransom Not*s That Hav* Work*d (2006)

On my victrola: Boris Godunov.

"Two of my co-workers were talking about whether there were any contemporary art-movements. One,
an artist herself, said that what they do now is take something old apart and put it back
together in a new way. But, she added, that's really no different from DaDa, early in the 20c.
At first I wanted to butt in, then I decided: there's only one art movement left. INVISIBILITY."
--Cun*iform D R*am, S*v*n Habits of R*lativ*ly Succ*ssful P*opl* (1988)

Count this slovo kahuna in.

    Shadowy Crystal Moko

1. A word is built of stop-sounds and go-sounds.

2. A bit is a word-part with a go-sound.

3. Any string has an odd amount of bits.

4. A song has strings that vary in amount.

5. Trio to trio of trios plus two.

6. Amounts occur again most distantly.

7. Strings link by various kinds of joining.

8. Strong words call upon significant things.

9. A world of talk is known by its strong words.

10. Two words of talk inhabit a chirg song.

Manhunt.

Trust No On*.

"Jimmy was a great reader of yellowback novels. ...One day Mother papered our cabin with Jimmy's novels. When he got home, he made no protest, but he got busy and continued to read from the wall, with me helping to find the next page." --Mourning Dov*: A Salishan Autobiography (ed. Jay Mill*r, 1990)

A glimflash: "An Arkham Home Companion" by Brad Strickland, in: Th* Discipl*s of Cthulhu II (2003)


    ”Air-Burial”

Droll brackish bolt glitch
slipping abruptly dragon

fascinating action skulk fifth ash whammy
obtain tobacco

slack stalwart
ago slit bilk stump; act this asp glish pidgin
spurt apart
fibrillary anchor again pains

War is Harmony

Dull is Strong

Thrall stands Tall

    "THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU, III

The human soul was threshed out like maize in the endless
granary of defeated actions, of mean things that happened,
to the very edge of endurance, and beyond,
and not only death, but many deaths, came to each one:
each day a tiny death, dust, worm, a light
flicked off in the mud at the city?s edge, a tiny death with coarse wings
pierced into each man like a short lance
and the man was besieged by the bread or by the knife,
the cattle-dealer: the child of sea-harbors, or the dark captain of the plough,
or the rag-picker of snarled streets:

everybody lost heart, anxiously waiting for death, the short death of every day:
and the grinding bad luck of every day was
like a black cup that they drank,with their hands shaking."

--Pablo N*ruda (tr. Jam*s Wright)

"Cassini has discovered three new moons. Now Saturn has 34." --CBS N*ws.

Vardzia.

    ”Militia”

A sigil of Abraxas,
crimson and indigo vap.
Tajik day.-.. Torn rim as you:
abyss ago abolish

your wry apocalisp art,
brush a wrist acrss charcoal.
And what is not stubborn slag
to this? In a furry church

orbs unspool its staining light
as a humongous rain coil
craniosophic only...

In honor of losing this
story with atolls of iron
i dug up a railgun myth.

    ”Crock Pot”

Hussar dust, isthmus aspic matrix
or idiom dust as storm

bismuth Usk
string whinny, impact dust, asking Ragnarok

using optical
risk scrap smog bath story oral library

hard

to stay

angry and must



wash

across my

wars gray thalassa

se lalxu mu'e klama le
xecto lenku lunbra
.i .uocai nunpla .i .u'e
.io le satci minji
ba'o xunkadypagre
le la taityn. noi carmi
darno ku'o selyla'u
.i krefu cu'eku .uonai

(Lak*shor* arrival at th* hundr*d-cold gr*at-moon. Plan [gr*at-compl*tion!]. [R*sp*ctful-wond*r!] th* pr*cis* machin* has trav*rs*d th* r*d dimn*ss to far Titan's marg*. Will w* *v*r again?)