THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE IN THE ROOM, I’M SURE OF IT. “WHOS THERE” I CALLED OUT AS I AWOKE WITH A START!

I wanted that window seat in the bright light not this one over here in the gloom of a dim corner. Before I could reach it another couple eased into the booth that I had wanted. I eased back not wanting it to be apparent that a race had occurred and than I was the loser. One of them was an old guy with the salt and pepper beard and he was talking about brush hogging. The other guy now in my sunny booth reached over and closed the curtains. He’s saying how friendly everyone is in this part of the country. “Lived here all your life, have you”, he asked the waitress? “Yes, all twenty years of it.” She is distracted. I’ve already asked her twice for a spoon and she has twice come back and asked be if she had taken my order yet. He’s saying how everyone knows everyone: “Your mama had been up to my house riding her horse when she was no older than you.” “Yeah, she still likes to ride.” “We called your daddy Bird Dog. Called him that oh, a hundred years. Don’t know how it got started.”

I hear a chainsaw in the distance, a truck shifted gears. I was almost back. Then a quiet sound caught my attention as if a blind carpenter were caught hammering roses – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011  p17

Poet: someone who sometimes gets the girl, but not very often

The talented composer borrows, but the genius steals – Igor Stravinsky

It commences with buds

Not fire engine red, more

            Like a blush

This is  just the beginning

Then comes the dog woods

Then the great awakening

            With its verdure ubiquietness

Then those nasty insects

And that sticky sweltering heat

            Longing for winter again

Already

We traveled the oceans / To see the world / But what did we see / We saw the sea – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p40

When it comes to culture -  “supply siders” do make some sense.

What all these collapsed powers have in common is that the complex social systems that underpinned them suddenly ceased to function. One minute rulers had legitimacy in the eyes of their people; the next they didn’t – Niall Ferguson

Ticks with their white adominal spots

My revulsion is engaged

            I want to rend them to shreds

            Pluck them off and tear them

                        Apart

Pull off their legs (pull the buggers

                        Into  pieces but that difficult)

            They make surprisingly loud crunch

Like the cracking the shell of a lobster

            To which they are related

The little ones are OK

            At least they have yet to feast

                        On another beast

They probably have yet to acquire

            Any pathogens

Say Rocky Mountain Spotted

            Fever or Lyme Disease

And since I’ve seen no deer I may

            Be safe – but I’m sure

That they are not out there somewhere

Lots of squirrels and the beavers

            Have been gnawing on trees

Birds chatter a lot

An understanding of reality is a liability in a situation in which reality is inadmissible – Donald Antrim – The Afterlife, 2006  p70

Big explosion – rocks the trailer – no idea where or what. Sun is coming out – skies are blue.  I go out to investigate. It sounded right close. No sirens forthcoming to indicate any imment catastrophe. As loud and reverbarting as it sounded someone surely got injured or some property damaged (say a fire is raging somewhere).  As close as it was I should be able to hear any emmergency vehicle responding. None do. It turns out to have been a sonic boom. The military have been granted permission to transect the National Forests at supersonic speed. I vaguely recall having read something about this recently. All part of Homeland Security no doubt, or at least to our sense of enhanced insecurity. I certainly feel more insecure now. I once heard the Space Shuttle boom coming into to land at Edwards. It was common in the late Fifties when we worried about the commies, but the claims for broken windows trumped our fear of thr reds. The best security is property afterall.

We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands – Robert Jensen – 11/3/11

There’s a distant

            Rumble

It could be the hoof

            Beat of Mongol

            hords

Highly unlikely

Rip Van Winkle

            Bowling

Even more improbable

Ka-plink, a split

            More English

            If you please

Ka-boom, that’s

            Better, knock

            Em all over

Military manuevers

I can sleep now

            With greater

            Peace of mind

God bless one and all

And to each a patriotic

            Sentiment

I’ve had my problems / with poetry before, but / I’ve never had to turn / my back on it – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p27

8:40: I’ve been up since sun up – that is when it is proper to get up. Fingers are numb. It’s amazing that the temperature was ninety-five three-day past. A hot cup of coffee – any coffee, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Starbucks, any old tin from the supermarket shelf well do. The birds chirp. I wish I could give them names –Latinized double names would be great, but that would take away their singularity. I could then look them up in an Audubon guide and even write out the songs that they sing. But such strings of constants and foreign sounding names would require an objectivity I don’t want to view the world form. To say the least they all sound sweet – their songs not their scientific names.

In prose you start with the world and find the words to match; in poetry you start with the words an find the world in them – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p49

9:11: I give it a try. Try to be objective. Four birds sing – kwitt kwitt qwit. The sun risers; the earth rotates counterclockwise (indicating that I’m located in the northern hemisphere) to be more accurate. I reheat my coffee – calories of heat from the oxidation of a low molecular weight hydrocarbon gas transferred to liquid in this blue enamel container – concentrated water soluble oils, fair trade grown Arabica beans  (100% the label proclaimed along with a list of chemicals), low roasted and finely ground. God, I much prefer it when the birds just chirp. Perhaps I could get a star chart and identify the constellations too – but they have no real meaning except to astrologers (useless knowledge –unless your into that kind of stuff, although it makes good come-on conversations – what’s your sign? What’s your favorite number?).

What lay behind it, more than anything, even more than madness, was solitude, which is perhaps the subtlest or at least the most lucid of the forms that madness can take – Roberto Bolano – Monsieur Pain, 2010 p12

Economics is a study form within. The views of a schizophrenic and an economist have this in common

If we name the faults of those who have hurt us, we will be shielded from pain; if we can collect evidence to justify our anger, we will not have overcome shame; if we pity our betrayers, we will not have been betrayed, mishandled, misunderstood, or left abandoned. But what happens when the ordeal of abandonment is… life itself? – Donald Antrim – The Afterlife, 2006  p175

I am postmodern. I am your future; young girls squeal. Young men play loud music. This is what I am. This is what it is. And I ask, so what? And I ask for nothing in return except for peanut butter and crackers.

I wake. I am sweating. I try not to fall asleep again. For a moment I am certain that there’s someone else in the room – Roberto Bolano – Monsieur Pain, 2010 p36