When you have spent the pennies of delight / With your sweetheart / And your surfeited soul / Feels sudden disgust - / Don’t come to me in my triumphant night – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p166
Brainworms are stereotypical
And mercilessly invariant
Lying in ambush, erupting
Convulsively then melting
Into the underbrush and/or the prairie grass
Ticks awaiting prey
Lyme diseases of the mind
House north of the Han River: I’m like some partridge or quail - / going south, then flying lazily north. // And now I’ve come to find you home, / a little wine returns me to the moon – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p109
80% of the sexual abuse reported in juvenile correction facilities is committed not by other inmates but by the staff and 95% of the youth making such allegations claim to have been victimized by female staff members. Less than half of the juvenile corrections officers whose sexual abuse is confirmed are referred for prosecution and almost none are ever convicted.
All week I don’t say a word to anyone, / Just sit on a stone by the edge of the sea, / And it’s pleasing that the spray of the green waves / Is salty, like my tears – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p241
30% of Texans think that human beings and dinosaurs coexisted and another 30% are unsure as to whether they did on did not coexist
Bleached bones lie silent, say nothing, / and how can evergreen pines see spring? – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p110
Shock and awe became the desert storm
Visions of caravans
Operation freedom is the new dawn
Red sky in morning
Sailor take warning
Catchy slogans from pitiful poets
Doggerel is a parasitic brainworm too
One less home becomes / One more song – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p179
One third of corporate profit is obtained through the degradation of the environment which accounts for $2.2 trillion dollars of their profits. These profits are not gtains but are loans being taken out with the future as collateral – about half of this cost is attributed to the emission of greenhouse gases. Other major “costs” include local air pollution and over use and pollution of freshwater. Long term effects and damages other than that from climate change have not been included in this figure.
It’s always been like this, yellow-dust / chocking even imperial gates closed // in the end. If you don’t drink wine / where are those ancient people now? – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p112
60% of in-office psychiatric visits results in the prescriptions of two or more drugs; almost 30% of those visits results in the prescription of three or more drugs. The rate of such prescription has increased 30% over the last 10 years.
Lone cloud returning to empty mountains, / birds returning, each to its own home: // in all this, nothing is without refuge, / I alone have nowhere in life to turn. // Forever drunk, I face rock-born moon, / sing for wildwood sights and smells – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p113
Air traffic delays cost the US economy as much as $40 billion a year – mostly through increases in operating costs.
“The fact is, there ‘is’ no praise as great as the praise I want.” He’d said it with tear welling. “That sort of praise doesn’t exist – I ‘know’ that.” – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p90
It was not an act of Terrorism (with a big T), after all he was an American citizen – Terrorism with a capital T is a slogan – it has nothing to do with the act and everything to do with the actor – He was not a Muslim hostile to the US – Muslims can be citizens and be Terrorists too. Terrorism with a capital T is not committed by patriots. Action against the IRS is political action and not terrorism. It is an extreme action of democracy when you can't get your way any other way. He was a Patriot (with a capital P). It was unfortunate that he took someone else’s life too. Some collateral damage is to be expected under such circumstances.
Bland silence – the hostility the ignorant always displayed when faced with knowledge that carried no validating mark of any current trend – Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p70
Beethoven's hearing may be the rule rather than the exception
A wanderer’s heart sours bitterly. And here / on Crab-Apple Mountain, it’s only worse – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p111
Afterimages: simple sensory effects, persistent activations in low-level sensory systems, due to sensory over stimulation – I tried to go to sleep and instead only wore myself out repeating what I had been doing all day long – it was very tiring but certainly not restful. And I am unable to sleep while these afterimages persist.
Rinsing sorrows of a thousand forevers / away, we linger out a hundred jars of wine – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p115
Some questions are dared not asked. It is not that one will wind up in a concentration camp or be sent to the guillotine, it is more subtle than that these days – but it is well know that such an inquiey will not help your career, get you that rise, help make the monthly mortgage payments, find the ideal mate. They are only for adrarline junkies and most of them are trying to climb the north face or wrestleing alligators. We don’t even have to waste time thinking about them, our subconscious avoids them like the plague – its not as if Stalin had to tell us what was good for us. Self-censorship is the most effective form of censorship.
Here he was, bone naked in the hallway, when only moments before Bea had been wandering the same hall, in her summer dress. He ‘must’ get on his pants…! Then he remembered that had been a dream… Then he remembered Bea was dead… Next time I’m in class I must tell them how dreams can… But he hadn’t taught in two years… Samuel R Delany – Dark Reflections, 2007 p60
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