June 30, 2009 - The Caribou - Homewood Illinois

Back at the Caribou – I expected you to be in southern Missouri by now – nope – got ill and spent the week at the lake – now I’ll wait until after the Fourth – hate to be out on the road during a holiday – know what you mean – probably something you got from the kids – whatever is going around you get it hanging around them – know what it was – some infection I suppose – one good thing, I lost a few more pounds – creating the new me – Oh, Shylock, that pound of flesh is what I owed you!
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He didn’t want to meet any Communists. They didn’t have any money. He felt that it was all right for a man to go to jail for robbery, but to go to jail for fooling around with Reds was bunk – Richard Wright

First to disappear
         Was the spreading chestnut
         Under which the village
                  Blacksmith toiled
Then it was time for the elms to go

And now it’s the ash’s turn

          It’s already causing havoc

          So many broken bats

What will be next

          There’s talk of the

          Western pines

                 Another insect perhaps
When will it be our turn
                Monoculture and blight
                Seem to go hand in hand
What a lovely couple
They make

Little by little each one is not so young. One is still then young, little by little one is not so young – Gertrude Stein

Head and ears
Head or tails
Head over heels
Heart in hand
Hand on heart
With a heavy heart
Such a bleeding
     Heart
Lend me an ear
Keep an eye out
With a nose for a tale
What a whale of a tale

One can account for just so much of life, and then no more. At least not yet – Richard Wright
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Red clover, white clover

          Roll over
Where the buffalo roam
          Is home

Among millions of people the deepest convictions of live are never discussed openly: they are felt, implied, hinted at tacitly and obliquely in their hopes and fears – Richard Wright

The GPS said
The GPS told him
To go there
He pulled in
And it said
‘Recalculating Route’

Ancient travelers guessed; modern travelers measure – Samuel Johnson And now days there no need for any of that – just look it up on the Internet

Its pathetic that the dog
Is man’s best friend
When the cow is so
Dear to his soul
Shepard, goat boy, cowhand
Swine header – rancher
Herdsman, stockman
And the dog is just there
To lick the pan and the
Hand of the man

Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds – Richard Wright

Coffee makes everything
      Right with the world
Beer and wine makes everything
      In the world right

That of all the ways of beginning a book which are now in practice though out the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best – I’m sure it is the most religious – for I begin with writing the first sentence – and trusting to Almighty God for the second – Laurence Sterne

Can you really be an artist
And also be anti-art
Goddamnit you surely can
So long as authority gets
Your symbolic middle finger
That is art’s inclination
        Anyhow
To flaunt the rules is oh so
Artsy fartsy
       Anyway
I did this; I did that
And so you must unless
Playing at a parlor game

In our blindness we have so contrived and ordered the lives of men that the moths in their hearts flutter toward ghoulish and incomprehensible flames! – Richard Wright
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I’ve been to Chaco

I’ve seen the future
I’m unhappy and so
         Very very sad

There’s a time for reciting poems and a time for fists – Roberto Bolaño