It might be late morning, I don’t know the time. The sun will
be overhead in another hour or another hour and a half. I could check the clock
on my cell phone. Yesterday passed so fast. Yesterday is past. I remember it
being 3:34 and then the sun was going down. Anyway it is peaceful and calm and
I am thinking about having to pack up and move on. And I am almost finished
reading this book. Every step is a step over the line. What line? I don’t know.
Most of the time we only find out later, if at all. But somewhere there is
always a step over the line never knowing what step it will be or which line
that it is. This time is now gone, its potential had been exhausted.
Five centuries ago daemons haunted our world, with incubi
and succubae tormenting their victims as they lay asleep in their beds. Two
centuries ago spirits haunted the world with ghosts and ghouls harassing their
sufferers at all hours of the night. For the past century aliens have haunted
our world – Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain, 2011 p90
Dragonflies sound fierce
Damoiselle in French
And to the Dutch, little misses
The damselfly is just one
Of many
The chatter of a machine gun
Tires on a gravel road
The chirrr of a bug
That the Russians call Strakosa
A nervous
noise
The pleasure potential of perversion… is always
underestimated – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p63
Linda is going to give it a try. She’s going to Little Rock
to teach. She will give it a chance. But she says, “it may not be what its
cracked up to be. If I don’t like it I’ll go to Texas Tech and get a degree
in Ophthalmology. That’s an eye doctor”, she explains to Rachel. “You can make
two hundred thousand a year.” Then she leaves to wake Eric up. An ATVer comes
in to get a day pass. They sell them over at the cash register. Good
recreationalists are the ones who spend a lot of money on equipment. That’s why
bowling is neither a recreation nor a sport ( although there is the cost of the ball and the shoes and oh yes those obnoxiously loud bowling shirts). A good recreationalist is a good consumer, and hence a good
citizen.
Most minds oscillate between sense and nonsense, / The rest
don’t oscillate at all – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989 p193
“You have any leftovers? I can warm them up for him [Eric].
Spaghetti or anything?” “I might have some spaghetti,” Rachel replies. “Depends
on how much he wants to eat.” “That’s not very much,” Linda replies. And Rachel
goes back to cleaning the silverware. “What else can I feed him that is quick?”
This must be Eric. He is a big guy in baggy shorts. He drove over in a red
Hyundai. He bought his own cereal with him. “Sandy says to tell you, you’re
looking good, Eric,” Rachel tells him. Linda puts down a plate of garden salad
and spaghetti along with some Wishbone dressing in front him. He is sitting
where Rachel had been polishing the silverware. Only Rachel, Linda and Eric are
in here now. Grandpa and that other woman, the waitress – probably his
daughter, but not Linda’s mother, have both gone. She was probably the one that
they had referred to as Sandy.
In utopia, you lose the battles and you lose the war too but
it bothers you less – Charles Bernstein
Butterflies are like dandelions
Butterflies alike as the tides
Butterflies as alike as the flowers
Butterflies as stars
Butterflies are emotions
Butterflies are…
Butterflies alike as…
Butterflies are like that
Wherever the sun lies / light is evident. / Where it is
dark, / light was. / The heat of blood / or salt – the burning rocks / of
silence. / Where the sun lies / is now – did – is not – Theodore Enslin – Then
and Now – 1999 p186
In San Francisco 41% of all traffic fatalities are
pedestrians. In New York City you are twice as likely while walking to be hit and killed by a car than
you are to be murdered by a stranger (whether walking or not - you not the stranger - if fact you might even be running).
There are so many ways in which there is no crime. A goat
comes into this story too. There is always coincidence in crime – Gertrude
Stein – Blood on the Dining - Room
Floor, 2008 p87
Henry Miller was censored for writing
Eroticism
But open a book on insects
And read.
And Miller won’t
Seem as pernicious
That night, as thousands of worker ants mill about
The queen inside the bivouac,
The male walks across the bodies of the workers,
Who seem to lift him as he goes,
As if to make his step lighter.
He smells his mate.
She alone among all the ants in the colony is his size
And has a similar physique.
Even in the low, dappled light of the bivouac,
Both bodies glisten,
Their armor being polished to a high sheen
By the licking of so many attentive workers...
Stop, stop Angie says, she is
Turning red
She agrees with me
Yes, they
are very sexy
Lick me until I weep
Make my
body glisten
Let both our bodies be polished
Let both our bodies be polished
Poetry… is – a probe into the as-yet-unfamiliar zones of
consciousness – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p238
By 2020 40% of the world’s college graduates will be from
China and India. The US and Europe combined will only produce about a third of
the total.
There is no further guess. Everybody knows, and they need
not say. That is why everybody talks and nobody says they do. Not by and by,
there are no secretes about what everybody knows and still they do not complain
– Gertrude Stein – Blood on the Dining -
Room Floor, 2008 p71
The Cardinal
Fluttered skyward
Pink as back light
Against the
sun
It flew
In the form of a thought-sentence, the germ of the fragment
comes to you anywhere: in the café, on the train, talking to a friend (it
arises laterally to what he says or what I say); then you take out your
notebook to jot down not a “thought”, but something like a strike – what would
once be called a “turn” – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p94
In the early part of the last century only one in ten of the
patrons saloons actually drank – most of the regulars hung out
there to socialize. Saloons were a working men's club. Carrie Nation chased them out and back home. Home is no place for a man to relax. Nowadays they buy bass boats instead.
Make flurid mistakes. Laugh more and wash less. / Eat more
chocolate than beans. Fuck often – James Broughton – Special Deliveries,
1989 p195
A dead ant is a dull ant
Ants are
all in what they do
They don’t flap colorful wings
Over meadow blossoms
They don’t have metallic armor
They don’t have metallic armor
They don’t have pretty colors
And besides they are so small
Ants are not attractive
In glass cases
Stuck with metal pins
But it is easy to spend an afternoon
Watching them scurry about
Marching in columns with green leafs held high
And waging war on each other
Lie out a jelly sandwich and watch them gather
For the latter [the non-intellectuals] there had never been
a universal human logic, rather only a consistent system of self-preservation –
Jean Amery – At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a survivor on Auschwitz
and its realities, 1980 p11
Evil isn’t unleashed
By daemons
Evil doesn’t come from the
Barrels of
guns
Evil originates from well
Intentioned
men
Who have forgotten how
To be kind
There is nothing more seductive – and dangerous – then being
listened to – Donald Antrim – The Verificationist, 2000 p64
The left handed sugar bowl is a chamber pot
In terms of poetics, the ability of OWS to exasperate and
indeed thwart the pigeonholing of the mediocracy is one of its triumphs –
Charles Bernstein
The truth will not
Set you
free
For the truth is cut
Of the same
cloth
As the Emperor’s suit
And the Emperor’s new
Clothes
look
Just like the Emperor’s
Old clothes
J Edgar Hoover without menace is like Boris Karloff without
bolts in his head – Russell Baker – New York Review of Books, 1/12/12 p4
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