There Once Was A Man Who Expostulated

There is a man next to me who claims that this gutter around the base of the bar was for pissing in and that any woman who walked in here was a prostitute and that you can make lager using an ale yeast but that you have to use a lot of it and keep it stirred up. It’s not worth cultivating lager yeast for just a small batch, he claimed. And the Fagen boys are back in the news provoking the comment - is there another fajita gate? Some people don’t know when not talking is smarter than talking.- Most people are at their stupidest when trying to be clever. Try as I may to expound I inveriably do. Later when I become aware that I have misstated the facts in my haste I want to make amends find the listener and correct my errors - sort of like a retraction on the news. It would have been smarter to just have shut up when I know I was not on solid grounds - answer a question with a question. Play stupid. Be ignorant and learn. Listening is sometimes the best way to make a point. Talk with your eyes and wave your hands all about as if doing the hooky pookie.

Whether the effigy resembles him is of little account; any object can be ‘made into’ an effigy of him – Sigmund Freud

The blond woman in the silver Kompresser got a stern lecture from the pedestrian about stopping in the crosswalk, but she made a very deliberate effort to ignore it - turned up her sound system. It is important to buy our ritualistic items from the faithless with one’s own money. For every young F-O-R E-V-E-R Y--O--U--N--G Then it is on to Herb Albert. His  horn is backing up Diane Warwick --- Forever, Forever - we will never part. Together - Together ---we will never part

You may also see your body as you feel yourself leaving it, and one can even see oneself seeing one self - but above all this seeing is felt in a non visual way; you move into the interior of images, just as images move into you - Michael Taussig – Mimesis and Alterity: a partucular history of the senses, 1993

The fresh squeezed envy from a neighbors eyes fills my cup to overflowing (Is it half-full or half-empty? Neither damnit - didn't I just say it was fully full?). Cinnamon and Carmel and also Green Tea ice cream but not for me, not today. It's just not hot enough.  Just not enough sunshine to make them appealing. Just a small coffee for here, please. He rings a dollar and three cents. I give him one dollar and a quarter. I’m waiting for Crimson Gold at 2:30

If I lived around here you know. But for twenty bucks…But in my day …the whole building burnt down. What I remember was that you go up the stairs in the back … this was the old times. The sixties and seventies when North Beach was the North Beach. Do you remember…?

Anything was possible / Then it slowed down, and you had to keep what you got. / When this child’s body stretches to the grace of her motion, / and she’s tamed and curled, may she be free enough to bring / Mind and heart to that serious recreation / where anything is still possible – or almost anything – Mona Van Duyn – If It Be Not I, 1991 p4

We only tolerate so much questioning, by ourselves before we seek relief within mindless ideology and senseless activity

I have never… claimed that enjoying sports – or enjoying beauty in general – has much of anything to do with moral improvement – Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht – In Praise of Athletic Beauty, 2006 p200

We must ask those questions that no one asked when they should have been asked or were asked but remained unanswered or were answered misleadingly or where answered but the response was not the one desired. When we are mislead or ignored we must make a pest of ourselves – it is our duty. When we are ignorant it is our own fault. When we are stupid – will that can’t be helped.

Marvin Gaye would not have had a hit with “Why Don’t We Venture to Consummate Our Relationship” – John McWhorter – The New Republic (Feb 4, 2010) p10

Culture is the genius of man and politics
      Is one of its tools – oh so
      Bourgeoisie (Culture with
      A capital ‘C’)


He had no viewpoint that could not
     Have been gained though the
     Eyes of a turtle

A train can pray like a rosary / The smoking cross scented the plains // Here we are traveling among saints // The train is a piece of the city which fades away – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p39

Esmarelda, pouting Susan, dark-eyed Susan was so enticing an illusion. The good doctor is now back in Minnesota and wondering why he seemed to be incapable of being unfaithful; dark hair, youth, and a clinging long black gown - her memory haunts him much more than any physicality every could have and he wonders while looking at his young children why they could not more resemble Esmaralda. He shakes his head and looks at Mona, his wife, somewhat plump with lines under her eyes that she tries to hide with layers of makeup and he thinks that he had never loved her more and he can’t wait to see his first patient and by now San Francisco seems such a far far away place. He remembered the Panzer Commander who was wounded in the Ukraine and his nurse that later became his bride. The are both now in poor health and in their eighties having lived together on a farm north of St Paul for the past fifty years. To go away is to be gone. To return is to come home.

So my dear what is your real name? Lila or Delilah I guessed. Neither? - Esmeralda you say. It really is Esmeralda? The Good Doctor had been looking for you, but he is gone now. Me? - I never gave a shit. You’re disappointed? I love the way the glitter on your black slacks glistens as you walk by with each wiggle of your ass. I am fascinated by the glitter as much as anything else. All that glitters can not be grasped.

What matters for the dialectician is having the winds of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means to set sail. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts - Walter Benjamin

Practice does not make it perfect, it just make you aware of the imperfections

It’s not like language is just waiting around for an opportunity to be useful or is it?

The sun is streaming into the bus’ left side. It would be uncomfortably hot if this had not been such a cool day. The weather barely qualified for sandals but I could not bear to imprison my toes for one day more. I felt like an iguana recently having crawled out of the cold ocean onto a hot rock and there I basked absorbing every last ray of the meager sun

Mimesis sutures the real to the really made up - and no society exists otherwise – Michael Taussig

Not wanting, wanting not to be wanting - I waited, at the limits of my patience. I found a chair and sat down. Why was I bothering? Why did I feel compelled? What did I feel I was compelled to do?
Then I began to notice that my funk might be physical rather than mental. My head began to buzz; my bones began to ache; my nose felt stopped up. Not all at once of course – each symptom gradually rising to the threshold of attention, an inward creeping flow which was becoming more and more evident. No its not a funk – I am sick – the flue perhaps.

Bloggers share stories that elicit emotions; Twitterers pass on information that unifies or assumes shared values; YouTubers want their interests piqued and the content on all three of these social platforms differ dramatically from the stories which receive attention from the traditional press.

There has never been a single poem written in the world, but only some vague essays on how to write one. Poetry is yet to be born on our globe… And its birth will be an event that will revolutionize mankind like the greatest earthquake – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p4

Father daughter
Mother lover
Homemaker leafraker
Butcher candlestick maker


Hater dat(e)er
Later mat(e)er
Worshiper gossiper
Day trader strike breaker

Make a POEM like nature makes a tree – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p5