Melancholy Sideshow

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T06:35:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a couple of years ago. Reposting today (for obvious reasons).

The dominant hegemony of consumer driven romantic love assures that most of us will never even consider the saint associated with Valentine's Day. Although almost nothing is actually known about him, he was a third century priest who, after trying unsuccessfully to convert Claudius II to Christianity, was imprisoned, beaten to death, and beheaded by the Romans for refusing to renounce his faith in Jesus somewhere on or about February 14, 269 AD. Beheading isn't typically considered very romantic and, aside from the color of spilled martyr's blood, doesn't account for most of the discourse we associate with Valentine's Day today—the hearts, roses, chocolates, diamond bracelets, and candlelit dinners. So where did all this modern bricolage come from?

Some have suggested Valentine sent parchment hearts to fellow imprisoned Christians while others claim the romantic connection revolves around the belief by Europeans of the Middle Ages that February fourteenth was the day birds gathered to mate. The latter is most likely an attempt to connect two disparate events with a coincidence of date while the former is probably pure, unabashed myth and wishful thinking. The real story may, in fact, stem from medieval Christianity's affinity for appropriating holidays from anyone who didn't appear to be suffering enough. In the fifth century, pagans were still partying it up at the Feast of Lupercalia, celebrating the deity Lupercus or, as he's better known, Pan—the horned (and horny) god of fertility. All of this hedonism and merrymaking was too much for Pope Gelasius I, so, in 494 AD, he banned the celebration of Lupercus and, for convenience sake, moved the feast from the fifteenth of February to the fourteenth, renaming it Saint Valentine's Day in honor of the slain martyr. Not ones to be easily put off, revelers stuck with Pan's ideals while transferring them to the largely unknown saint and, well, here we are fifteen hundred years later spending billions of dollars on Hallmark cards, flowers, and jewelry in hopes that, at least once this year, we might just get lucky. It probably isn't exactly what Gelasius had in mind, and, for his part, Saint Valentine would almost certainly be appalled by the epicurean excess practiced in his name.

And what about the heart? That red arched signifier of love and the pinnacle of overdetermined everything that is Valentine's Day doesn't even point to a genuine signified. It is a complete social construct—an orphaned icon. An actual heart, the one beating inside all of us (even the cold, black one kept alive by a pacemaker inside Dick Cheney), is far removed from the imagery of Valentine's Day. What if one substituted the symbolic heart with a depiction of an actual one? How would the meaning change? Of course someone has done this. In our postmodern age of irreverence and irony, it was only a matter of time before the symbol was replaced with a representation of the real. In the case of an image I discovered (above), a simple message, “Happy Valentine's Day,” is printed in a red serif font that sits on a beige background above an equally red representation of a bona fide, out of the chest onto the paper, heart. It isn't quite anatomy class, but it's close. It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of giving someone your heart—conjuring images a la Apocalypto instead of romance and roses.

There is something truly disturbing about the juxtaposition. In an act of resistance and parody, the artist forces us to face up to our ideology. The heart, long-vaunted symbol of emotional love, becomes the fragile muscle that forces blood through our body for the finite time we're alive. It is a heart violently torn from the flesh. It signifies death. In this way, bloody images of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre—where Al Capone's cronies mercilessly gunned down rival gangsters in Chicago in 1929—are closer to the new interpretation than anything offered by DeBeers or See's Candy. It is with this fresh gaze we are forced to follow the thread of violence from the Romans' persecution of Saint Valentine himself to the Christians' persecution of the pagans for celebrating a different, randier, god; from Al Capone's slaughter of Bugs Moran's men to images of horrific atrocities committed in the modern diamond trade. With this wider view, we are able to see how our choices affect others—we are able to undo ourselves from the subject position to view the world more objectively. That diamond necklace may buy a night of nookie with the wife, but it may also contribute to the pain of someone in Sierra Leone.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with spreading romance. However, we should consider considering our loved ones every day, not just on the one day our hyper-consumerized culture tells us we have to. The next time I see the simulacrum heart, I'm going to remember that image of the real one. I'm going to try to make choices that, hopefully, maximize the happiness of my lover while minimizing the misery of my fellow global citizens—and I'm going to try to do it without the advice of some slick Madison Avenue advertising firm. To put it simply, this Valentine's Day I'm going to try not to do what St. Valentine did, and lose my head.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Poetry Finds Static

2009-08-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

I had a request to repost this:

Poetry Finds Static
(A Manifesto)

Poetry rides shotgun on a highway going nowhere anyhow. Let’s just get that straight out front. You just want to find a station. Let’s get that straight too. I can’t remember the last time poetry put in. It can tell a story. That is true. But it’s no friend. Don’t make that mistake. Sometimes poetry shakes you to wake you. That is true. Poetry always turns to the station you don’t want to hear no how. Is that true? Poetry never finds it anyway. It gets stuck between stations. Poetry finds static. You can almost hear what it’s trying to say. That is true. But it can drive you mad. That is true too. Two tunes at once. Can poetry be both? What isn’t really? That might be true. Poetry takes its time or no time. Depending. What is poetry but language? What is language but the scenery? The same images shifting perception, each of us interpreting but not really knowing. As if you could. As if it could. What is true? If nothing else, that is. It makes sense to look at poetry this way and that. Drip comes close. Buzz is closer, but that’s about it. Whisper and sizzle and clang too I guess. There are more of course, but no more are needed. Buzz Whisper Sizzle Drip Clang. Drip Whisper Clang Buzz Sizzle. How can that be true? No, true, of course, is meadow horse lake love nightingale God. So true yet it certainly doesn’t seem so. The road is what we decide. Get that straight if nothing. Poetry finds static.

Gertrude Stein said there ain’t no answer. She also said there ain’t gonna be an answer and there never has been an answer. That, she said, is the answer. Poetry is as good an answer as any. Or not. If poetry claims to have the answer it is lying maybe. Maybe not. How do you know? Gertrude Stein says so, that’s how. Poetry finds static. That is the only true thing. Poetry will smoke your last cigarette. It sits beside you or behind you. It sleeps a lot. Poetry can be ahead of you sometimes always anyway. That may be true or not. Don’t ever let poetry drive. For that you’ll be sorry. If you only take one thing away from this or that let it be. Poetry is not dependable. It barely looks at the road ahead anyway. It gawks at the rabbits and the tumbleweeds and the lines behind. It will leave you in the ditch or worse. That is true. Out of gas and out of cash listening to static. Believe it or don’t—it doesn’t matter much anyway. An old, drunk poet said there are worse things than being alone. That may be true. But he didn’t say what. He also said that friendship means sharing the prejudice of experience. That of everything seems true. So maybe poetry is your friend. Remember, it can tell a good story if you let it. You can let it. But you have to be willing to listen to both stations at once.

You can find it in this really lovely anthology of manifestos---------------------->

Which can be ordered from these really lovely people here: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/anth/9781844714711.htm

The Desk

2009-07-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

I've been writing, I just haven't been posting here. So before it starts to get all cobwebby, I've decided to dust off my blog and start posting again, beginning with this little story I wrote a few years ago and just recently uncovered...

The Desk

The desk sits in silence. Its seat perfectly molded to imperfect specifications in a low-grade, space age, polymer-like polymer substance. A perfect fit for the average student’s average-sized rear end. Its flat, laminated surface attracting—no, begging—for the kinds of misuse and abuse that it has been subjected to.

I see that “J.D.” was here back in ’01. I wonder what that little fucking vandal is up to now—now that he’s out there in the real world. I bet he wishes he’d picked a different major. Ancient gum hides just out of sight on the pressboard underbelly of the thing. After we’ve blown ourselves to bits; after the nuclear winter, some visitor from space will puzzle over this little petrified, pink blob—the last remaining remnant of our sensationally-sophisticated, super-sexy civilization.

More interesting than the thing itself are the reflections in the fingerprinted, curved, faux-chrome legs of the stale, jaundiced fluorescent lights above. Morphing and twisting shapes like a fun-house mirror, they’re a lot more engaging than this lecture. If I wanted to, I could tilt my head at just the right angle and use the reflection to look up that girl’s skirt—you know, if I wanted to.

"Troubles Swapped..." is finally out...

2009-07-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have a manifesto in this anthology...

Go here now to support a publisher that supports poets:

Salt Publishing or Amazon

(it's cheaper from Salt)

My New Chapbook is Finished...

2009-06-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

and in my hot little hands!

Mammal Soup

2009-05-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

We ate the mammal soup.
Methadone ponies hawk idolatry,
forecasting plasticized night terrors.
Our dream puppies
succumb to the kryptonite,
their nostrils spitting phlegm.
These ruminations,
these bedtime space parades
triggered by the harpy heartthrobs
that ply us always on nights like these
with liquor and Vantages,
smegma and sweat.

Masters of wet dream paraphernalia
and bagpipe marionettes—the flesh-coated proletariat
cry out when the Magpie Priestess sings.
Her little wisps of daisy lipstick
bend the willows of our worsened angels.
A bourgeois cutesy, she's always up for a smug grizzly caress
as she belts out Kerouac eyeshadow serenades.

Frazzled moments of shoestring importances,
Blake-like contrivances,
Hobbesian nightmares, and expectations

upon expectations
upon expectations

Another sanctimonious sunrise—
this binary travesty, this cheetah-scream light show
shakes us from the trick, moonlit facade.
Be happy the sunshine tapped you
for this twisted evolutionary carnival.

Ambiguities traded for electric hipster mugshots,
mud-cake diseases for Facebook lobotomies,
and regrets for these scurrying bombasts.
Scant relief, I know.
Each hour, a stanza,
the day,
this poem.

Graduation Ruminations

2009-05-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting lately and, for those of you who are still paying attention, I apologize. I am currently busy working on a chapbook of poetry which should be finished in a couple of weeks and, honestly, just enjoying my life.

Yesterday, someone reminded me both of my poor neglected blog and the late David Foster Wallace (who pops up here from time to time). He was one of the finest writers who ever lived. Here is the transcript of the commencement address Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005:

http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

I'll post more soon, I promise...

What Is At Stake in Poetry? Part 1: Good vs. Bad poetry and the Modernists

2009-03-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

What is at stake in poetry? For most people the answer would, undoubtedly, be, “Nothing much.” Today, poetry is read by few. Those who do read it are usually poets themselves or, if not, are using poetry as a way to engender popularity within a certain group of academics or hipsters applying certain forms of practiced elitism. Others use poetry as a way to garner sex because they've heard it is “romantic” (but, since these people are typically not qualified to evaluate power struggles within poetry, I will mostly ignore them in this analysis except in cases where the attempted elicitation of hot, sweaty lovemaking relates to elitist pursuits among the above-mentioned groups and/or poetry consumers not affiliated with Pablo Neruda).

I intend to, in the following discourse, a.) answer my first question, “What is at stake in poetry?” and b.) ask, “If poetry is indeed relevant, how much of that relevance is due to the prosody of the work and how much relies on the personality of the poet?” Hint: the answer to the first part of question b.) is yes.

Because most people have only a vague notion of “good vs. bad” as it relates to poetry and an even more tenuous grasp on the history of poetic movements, I will begin by exploring my own feelings—or, as eighteenth century philosopher David Hume calls them, “passions”—about poetry. My own likes and dislikes seem to stem from some kind of reaction deep within my bowels somewhere between my pylorus and my anus in what is commonly known as “the gut.” It may be helpful, here, to cite a portion of the poem, The Tay Bridge Disaster, by William McGonagall that is generally regarded as “bad poetry”:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

Few would disagree that there is a deeply embedded suckishness here—but why? “Old Timiness” seems to be one of the poem's problems. That, however, doesn't explain why the poem was ubiquitously reviled even in its own day (when it would have been considered modern). Consider this, then, from Walt Whitman's A Voice from Death, another poem about a natural disaster involving a bridge, which predates McGonagall's poem but sounds much more relevant even to contemporary ears:

A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power,
With sudden, indescribable blow--towns drown'd--humanity by
thousands slain,
The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge,
Dash'd pell-mell by the blow--yet usher'd life continuing on,
Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris,
A suffering woman saved--a baby safely born!).

Perhaps, then, it is because McGonagall's poem is too rhymey. But that, too, is reductive and discounts the fact that much of the most renowned poetry of all time has included a great deal of rhyming. Look at this stanza from To Autumn by John Keats:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

So if it isn't old timiness (discernible by the heavy use of apostrophes in place of the letter “e” in past tense verbs) and it isn't (necessarily) copious amounts of rhyming, what is lacking in bad poetry? One answer seems to be “metaphor”—something conspicuously absent in Tay Bridge. There is a vividness in both Whitman's and Keats' poems that is underutilized in McGonagall's. Other than a vague description of the bridge as “beautiful” and the river as “Silv'ry” there is nothing in the poem that distracts from the fact that he was rewriting a newspaper headline (except, perhaps, the particularly abrasive rhyming). So, metaphor seems to be a clue as to what separates good poetry from bad, but alas(!), McGonagall doesn't even try. He was simply reporting an incident. Watch what happens when I incorporate the same technique using a headline from today's New York Times:

Alas! Once mighty insurer A.I.G,
us'd taxpayer money for bonuses, you see,
both Obama and Republicans agree,
those greedy execs that A.I.G did pay
should return all those dollars right away!

See what I mean? I almost threw up a little writing that. So that we are starting from the same place, let's just agree that good poetry often includes metaphor. For Keats, there was a clear answer to what makes good poetry—beauty. He put it this way, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." And for Keats, Elaborate Word Choice + Sensual Imagery + Sophisticated Rhyme Schemes = Beauty. Keats submerges the reader into his verse and few would disagree that his poems are, indeed, beautiful. Sounds good to me. Done.

But, wait, is that really all there is to beauty? Other than in the case of puppies, kittens, and this thing, beauty is purely subjective.

As the nineteenth century succumbed to the twentieth, T.S. Eliot warned, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” By then, readers of poetry were becoming tired of rhyme schemes and iambic pentameters that had existed since before Shakespeare. They were also getting a bit lush-landscaped out, making way for The Imagists.

Ezra Pound was almost single handedly responsible for the first great poetic movement of the new century: Modernism. Contrast Pound's poem, In a Station of the Metro, with Keats':

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

It was clear to Pound that “truth” wasn't going to be found by piling on more rhyming couplets and forced iambs. Pound's prescription was to sparingly use the tools of language—replacing dense metaphor with allusion—to find some deeper truth, something even beyond Keats' conception of beauty. Pound was also the hub of the new avant-garde, influencing and supporting some of the greatest poets and writers in history including W.B. Yeats, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Williams Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein, among others.

Coming soon: Pound begats Charles Olson, the Beats, and More

The Blog Less Traveled

2009-03-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

At first I was going to agree with Jess, tee up my anxiety, and punt blogging for good. I have been having similar feelings for some time. To me, blogging can both be an extreme form of self-indulgence bordering on narcissism while, at the same time, a navel-gazing activity that exposes and confirms all of my insecurities.

But then I realized that pretty much every worthwhile thing I've ever done has made me feel that way. Therefore, I intend to press on.

Good things about blogging:

1.) It makes me write. If I intend to be a "writer" or "poet" (which I do) then I'd better do this.

2.) The feedback is instructive and constructive. To tread unapologetically over a tired cliché--feedback makes me a better writer. If I'm going to write (which, as I may have mentioned, I intend to do), I need to escape the vacuum of my head once in a while and this seems as good a space as any to do that. I know when I'm being lazy or, alternately, genius and, once in a while, I require confirmation and/or validation.

3.) If used correctly as a tool of (post?) late capitalism, blogs can be used to get the word out about readings, events, etc. I agree with Jess that they are not the best place for creative work-- the work always feels somehow unfinished, etc.--but there are other places online and off for my "best" work. Journals and magazines abound for that ultimate validation. The blog is just a sounding/bulletin board and probably should be thought of that way.

4.) Blogging will go on with or without me. Blogs are here to stay. My aversion to pretty much every technology from cell phones to iPods lasted right up until I got one. I don't want to end up like the old guy screaming at the damn kids to get off my lawn.

So, there it is. I'm going to push through...I think. I agree that a local community is important but, if anything, I think blogging can facilitate and support that while, also, exposing me to a much larger one.

Like my father used to say, "Do your homework or I'm taking off my belt." This blog is my dad's belt.

LANGUAGE

2009-02-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

I'm going to preface this post by saying that, for the most part, I love the language poets. These are just my initial impressions from reading Eleana Kim's piece and my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the movement. I wanted to quickly get down some of my thoughts and then tease them out in later, more substantial posts. Hopefully, having said all of that, the following doesn't come off as some polemic tirade against them.

First, it seems to me that the language poets were more than a little consciously aware that they were trying to "become a movement" despite their, to me, rather transparent objections to the language label. Silliman, in particular, seems ideologically bent on promoting the genre through a steady stream of anthologies (in which he, more often than not, includes his own work). I don't get much of a sense of anti-hegemony from them at all--despite their claims of wanting to create "alternate social formations." As a group, they were more organized, more self-aware, and more capitalistic than their forbears.

Next, I'd like to address the whole "movement" thing. Other than being a self-created movement within poetry, what were the larger social implications of LANGUAGE? Lacey mentioned that they have been highly influential on other writers and poets, which, if true, is not insubstantial--but how much have they really affected the way writers (other than poets) write? This is a serious question. I'd like to know who, duly influenced by Watten, Hejinian, Silliman, et al, is challenging the hegemony in the larger culture (outside of poetics). By eliminating the author from their own work, I believe they have an almost built-in irrelevance outside of poetry (not that there is anything wrong with that). But people need flesh and bone, skin and phlegm human beings to emulate and rally around and, unfortunately, they won't find that person here. Again, not that there is anything wrong with that, but language is not going to start a revolution by itself--it needs a face. Try to imagine the Gettysburg Address without Lincoln (or even Howl without Ginsberg).

I did my own, completely unscientific test and googled language poets as compared with other poets past and present to see how many hits they received. Langpos got, mostly, in the tens of thousands of page hits compared to New York School, Beats, Modernists, Imagists, etc. who were all in the millions. Even Christian Bök returns millions of pages. And, just because he kind of reminds me of him, I entered Ed Begley Jr. and found he registered twenty times the hits Barrett Watten does.

Even though it may not sound like it, I really think the Langpos were onto something. If the goal, however, was to affect society outside of poetry, (which I believe, despite the rhetoric, it was), I think Language stumbles. It is difficult for the lay reader to connect with and so, without some heroic poetic persona to follow (ah, that personality thing again--I am obsessed with celebrity), it becomes but a pebble rolling on the literary landscape--not a landslide. Perhaps their legacy will be in their influence on others (as Lacey suggests) or as the form the next great movement rejects.

To be continued...

Poetry and Personality

2009-02-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

How much does the personality of the poet have to play in a poetic form's acceptance? Does a poem in and of itself have the power to create change (as activism, a movement, or whatever) or is there some kind of "I want to be like that person" thing going on?

The reason I ask is because I've been thinking about celebrity lately (as I am wont to do) and what makes someone "popular" outside of their own circles. It seems to me to be like a snowball gaining momentum as it rolls down a hill--snowflakes (lets call them "people") tend to get run over by the larger movement, not necessarily because they are positioning themselves in the path but, more likely, because they can't get out of the way. Eventually the mass gets larger and larger until, finally, other people do jump on because they are feeling left out. But what creates the initial momentum (especially as it relates to poetry)?

I would argue that boredom with previous forms leads to a lot of the shift in consciousness that precedes a poetic movement. The new thing is always difficult and, almost by definition, resists becoming relevant. The relevance, I would argue, comes not from the form itself but from the people pushing the movement--the avant garde, if you will. Imagists like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein weren't writing poetry in a vacuum--they were engaging in a dialogue that said, "Hey, doesn't it seem as if that old thing has kind of played itself out? Look at what we're doing over here." Had they been communicating only with each other, however, it wouldn't have caught on. They were out in the world having parties and gatherings, salons and shows, and attracting more and more "first adopters,"--those people who lead by the sheer force of their personalities. Eventually the piling on begins.

By today's standards Ginsberg's "Howl" seems pretty tame but, at the time it was truly groundbreaking--and the reason it seems tame today is because Ginsberg and his fellow Beats were worth emulating (at least to those outsiders looking in). What they were saying had to be said, of course, but the way they said it was challenging to societal norms, cultural taboos, and--at that time--could get you thrown in jail. But there was something about those guys that enough people were willing to take a risk (to buy their poems and books, rally around them, defend them, etc.). People looked at a lifestyle that was remarkably different from their own (and thus appealing) and began to glorify it. The sense of freedom the Beats projected--and just enough of a ring of truth in what they were saying--made the poetry itself a difficulty worth overcoming. What warm-blooded American boy didn't want to be Jack Kerouac or Neal Cassady (and what girl, deep down, didn't want them)? For many, the advantages of a raise in stature amongst a certain group outweighed the problems inherent in trying to get through something as dense as Burrough's "Naked Lunch."

Poetry seems destined to remain on the fringes for now. There are so many disparate and often engaging art forms these days, something as "simple" as language has a hard time competing for attention spans that have become not unlike those of weasels on meth. Of course the form itself is important--people aren't going to respond to something that's been trod over and over until it is as flat as a tapeworm nor are they likely to respond well to sound poetry that barely stops short of causing eardrum hemorrhaging--but I'll bet the next time a poetic force comes along to shake up the world it'll be because the person or persons responsible for it couldn't be ignored.

In Defense of Word Clouds

2009-02-04T15:45:00.000-08:00

Jodi Dean argues over at iCite that meaning is not at stake in word clouds (which she mistakenly refers to as “tag clouds”). But is meaning really “at stake” in most speech or writing? When every pundit on television and radio can bloviate incessantly about what this or that “means” and still not come up with an adequate answer, who is to say word clouds are an any less useful form of discourse? I would argue that, as the reader (or viewer as the case may be), it is my place to ascribe meaning and I can get as much of it, if not more, from a word cloud than many of the things that pass for argument or dialogue today. Language is far from adequate to convey “real” meaning anyway (if such a thing even exists), but it is the best tool we have. If I can look at words in a different way and make connections that I wouldn't have made except for the word cloud then I have gained something that used-up clichés and blowhard analysis can never give me.

I guess what I'm having difficulty understanding is, if indeed “meaning is not at stake in tag (word) clouds," why is Dean having such a problem with them? So what if words become images? It isn't as if word clouds are somehow usurping regular speech in everyday dialectic (as she seems to be implying) or that they haven't existed since at least Dadaism and the Russian avant-garde (as she acknowledges).

Dale Smith at Possum Ego latches onto Dean's thesis to use it in his, apparently ongoing, argument against flarf. The presumption that “contextual meaning” is of prime importance in poetry is, in my opinion, a ridiculous one. Poetry is, above all, art—and art is what I as the artist derive from its creation or you as the audience gain from its consumption. I don't need my “ah ha” moment spoon fed to me, thank you very much. Some people do and those people, I would argue, are missing out on plenty of meaning. I'm sorry Dean and Smith don't “get it” but, fortunately for me, it's not necessary that they do.

Word Clouds Part II

2009-02-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

and another concerning the economy...

"Word Clouds Are Symptoms of the Decline of Symbolic Efficiency*" (and I think I like it)

2009-02-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

From a research paper I wrote about Thomas Hobbes...

  



* http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2009/01/tag-clouds.html

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

2009-02-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

I remember our Jack Williamson
and also our yellow tree thingies.
I remember more than an
awkward taste of sweet N. Scott Momaday.

I smiled, or laughed, when you shouted
Yosuke Matsuoka! Yosuke Matsuoka!
and looking for bacillus calmetteguerin
in a something thing.

I remember me and all my Whiggishness
and you and your strange fascination with
Wilkins.
And a head, that moved.

So, when you left, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,
you did not leave me,
because of what I gave you for a long, long time after.
You are lobster rabbit.

Blackburn/Oppenheimer/Ginsberg

2009-01-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

Despite the heavy influences of both Robert Creely and Charles Olson on his poetry, Paul Blackburn eschewed the label of Black Mountain poet given to him by Donald Allen in his anthology, The New American Poetry, saying he believed in the value of “all work, if you work 'em right.” Active in the Lower East Side poetry community during the 1950s and 60s, Blackburn was one of the people most instrumental in establishing the Poetry Project at St. Mark's on the Bowery—even though he was passed over as its first director in favor of outsider Joel Oppenheimer. This snub felt like a slap in the face to many of the poets in the community including Anne Waldman (who would succeed Oppenheimer and run the project herself for a decade), as Blackburn had been almost solely responsible for the vigorous poetry scene in Greenwich Village and surrounding areas by his tireless promotion of live readings as a viable alternative to printed works. Blackburn, however, never publicly complained and, in fact, congratulated Oppenheimer on his appointment in a letter that began, “Dear Joel, heard the good news of yr Komisariat...”. By all accounts, Blackburn was a class act and his own, oft-overlooked, poetry deserves reconsideration nearly 38 years after his untimely death at the age of 44 in 1971.

Here's an excerpt from “AT&T Has My Dime” by Paul Blackburn

After your voice's frozen anger
emptied the air between us, the
silence of electrical connections
the vacant window pale, the
connection broken: :

...and an audio link to Blackburn reading his poem “The Assassination of President McKinley” here.

Speaking of Joel Oppenheimer—it is a little difficult not to be critical of him considering his seemingly unfair promotion in the Lower East Side poetry community over the classy, talented and deserving Blackburn. Just when I start feeling like I'm being too hard on Oppenheimer though, I read this:

wind soft as the
last time you
did it. wind soft
as a soft wind.

From “Blue Funk” by Joel Oppenheimer.

OK, I'm excerpting him out of context just to make an unflattering comparison to Blackburn but it's my blog and, so, my prerogative. His poetry really isn't necessarily that bad (but he's no Paul Blackburn). He wasn't much of an administrator, though, drifting away from the Poetry Project after only one year. Said one of his students, “some wondered how a man who had not drawn a sober breath in years was going to operate a poetry center with a several hundred thousand dollar budget.” I was going to try to redeem Oppenheimer at the end of this post but I found it nearly impossible to locate any of his poems or recordings on the Internet—perhaps a reflection of a low estimation of his poetry by others? hmm...

Finally, I'm going to talk a little about Allen Ginsberg. I love Allen Ginsberg. Not only do I love his poetry, I love what he and his fellow Beats did in helping to undo and overturn the puritanical obscenity laws of the Beaver Cleaver 1950s. Ginsberg proved that poetry can change the world. Too much? Too bad. I heart Allen Ginsberg.

Here he is reading “Kaddish.”

Statement - Paul Blackburn

2009-01-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

Paul Blackburn's Statement can be found here.

Psychotic Verse

2009-01-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

Another, earlier post that deals with Olson's Projective Verse...

A warning to more sensitive readers: The following post contains references to violence, profanity, and thematic elements (I'm not quite sure what they are but I know them when I see them)...

"Paul Allen: Why are there copies of the style section all over the place, d-do you have a dog? A little chow or something?
Patrick Bateman: No, Allen
Paul Allen: Is that a rain coat?
Patrick Bateman: Yes it is! In '87, Huey released this, Fore, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.
[raises axe above head]
Patrick Bateman: Hey Paul!"

~From American Psycho, 2000

I introduce these lines from American Psycho not only because I think it is a really, really good and under appreciated dark comedy, but because I believe they relate well to both Shelley's A Defence of Poetry and Charles Olson's Projective Verse. The nod to the "pleasures of conformity" that Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale) gives when discussing a very bourgeois Huey Lewis reminded me of Shelley's essay but it was the axe that brought to mind Olson. Imagine that the head of the Paul Allen character (played by Jared Leto) is syntax and that Bateman, like Olson, is a modern poet who wields an axe instead of a pen. The style section spread across the floor, then, is FIELD COMPOSITION. Now, if we accept that Paul Allen's brains, blood, and skull fragments represent the syllables used to create PROJECTIVE VERSE then we can take it one more step and see, very clearly, that the raincoat represents the aversion by "establishment" poets and the general public to what Bateman, uh, I mean Olson, was trying to do--well, you get the (very sharp) point...

Leaving the above comparisons behind (oh you can be sure they'll return just like American Psycho 2: All American Girl only not as lame but, sadly, without William Shatner) I would say that Olson, despite his bantering tone in Projective Verse, was only partially kidding. We can see projective verse in action in his poem, I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You, written in 1953: "and a man slumped/attentionless/against pink shingles" (Part 3, lines 22-24). Here the "conventions of logic has forced on syntax [are]...broken open" (388). Of course what he was doing was nothing new (he even mentions that Cummings, Pound, and Williams were already doing what he was talking about), but America in 1950 was still the land of Robert Frost (hmmm...maybe it still is) and there were big changes in poetry on the horizon thanks, in no small part, to Olson and his contemporaries.

With Projective Verse Olson has written a manifesto that contains, in its language, as much rage, violence, and dark humor as American Psycho (you were so warned). Olson talks about verse as if it is a tangible thing (and to him it probably was--he was, as Kasey has said, crazy, after all). Olson doesn't just compare the poem to energy--he says it is energy. In fact it "must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy discharge" (387). Like the Bateman character, the poet "can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares, for itself (387). Perhaps this is why Bateman uses a variety of weapons to dispatch his victims including a knife, chain saw, and the ever-popular nail gun. The line must be split in half ("the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE/ the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the line (390)) because it (think of Jared Leto's head) "has, is, a deadness..." that "we (Bateman?) are bored by" (390). I could go on and on of course, but I won't. I am satisfied that, if I have achieved nothing else with this post, you will never again be able to watch American Psycho without thinking of Charles Olson and vice versa--and, perhaps, that is for the best.

Zombies: Then & Now

2009-01-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

Because Kasey mentioned zombies the other day I'm reposting this--an essay from an earlier, more innocent, class...

What is this?

Journal # 8 – Robert Grenier and Clark Coolidge

We have spent a lot of time discussing language in this class. Well you have anyway, while the rest of us stare unblinking at you as if we were extras in a remake of a George A. Romero film. Remember the movie “Dawn of the Dead” when the zombies longed for the brains of the living but were relentlessly gunned down in a shopping mall by the well-meaning “heroes” (I mean, come on, even if zombies don’t have “feelings” like the rest of us they were somebody’s loved ones—I just feel that blasting them in half with a shotgun or decapitating them with a machete is overkill considering that most of the time they could be taken out quite effectively with a sharp blow to the head with a baseball bat)? If not, I’m sure that you remember Barbara Guest and Jackson Mac Low from last week. They were the poets who, among others, talked a lot about language. If Guest’s An Emphasis Falls on Reality was about the birth of language and Mac Low’s “Dance” poems were about the usage of language, as I have previously claimed (see Journal # 7), then Robert Grenier’s poems are about the tools of language.

Even if Grenier’s poems were total gibberish (which they aren’t) they would “seem” to have substance because of the tool he uses—namely the IBM Selectric typewriter. When I was a kid, my parent’s ancient manual typewriter fascinated me. I would spend hours hammering away on it, not to create my literary masterpiece or even to write impassioned letters to the editor—no, I just wanted to see how many keys I could jam together at one time. Then along came the Selectric with its electric pseudo-efficiency—what a machine! Without those cumbersome keys my hyperactive imagination was freed to zip, efficiently, across the page at 70+ WPM! Since I no longer saw a future in key-jamming on a Smith-Corona (my boyhood dreams crushed like the face of the undead with a Louisville Slugger), I decided to learn how to write instead—something I’ve been doing, on and off, ever since. Grenier’s poems remind me of that simpler time—that time back in the 1970s when the costumes in zombie movies consisted of little more than gray makeup and thrift store clothing—and when I first discovered my love of writing.

Clark Coolidge’s manifesto Words had me reeling like a guy with a twelve gauge surrounded by flesh-eating corpses. Perhaps you were hoping that the zombie analogy would have died with Grenier, but it has, instead, crawled from the grave even stronger and smarter than before—in fact, it now bears more of a resemblance to the creatures in the film “28 Days Later” than anything Romero ever dreamed up. Coolidge’s words, like our weapon-toting heroes, are living, breathing entities—oh, sure they can dance like Michael Jackson in the Thriller video, but they can do so much more.

If I would have read Words only six weeks ago, I would have, embarrassingly (because I’m imagining myself in class doing this), scratched my head and said, “huh?” But my brain is so much bigger now (uh oh, I can only hope that no undead T.A.s—and I know they’re out there—are going to be reading this because, well, you know, bigger brain…)! Words makes sense to me in a way that I would never have expected. I am enjoying the feeling of “getting it”—that beautiful precursor to the magical ability to lavish elitist snobbery on others (a dream I’ve had ever since I first got the ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, and ‘J’ keys successfully locked together like a Mississippi chain gang). Coolidge’s manifesto and his poems have opened my mind (insert your own zombie joke here) and inspired me to experiment with my own poetry. And, since I haven’t quite been able to beat the zombie thing to death yet (for God’s sake, toss me that lead pipe!), I’ll just add that, for me, Coolidge is definitely the hero of this journal. But does that, necessarily, make Grenier a zombie? I think Grenier might have a problem with that, so let’s let him be a hero too—but he doesn’t get the shotgun—no, if I have to use this cheapo plastic Microsoft keyboard, the least he can do is fend off those rotting spawn of Satan with his weighty Selectric.

My Squamous Mind

2009-01-18T08:42:00.001-08:00

Under order is another but rather the further bending and rendering of something similar in twist-up axioms and mayflower flowering done and done in. Beneath there's a sort of knowing that even allegiance to the other ends up over and over with some likewise lacking. Something like torture or whoring wrenched out, out of order, deification and/or de-edification and scales, covered with scales, resembling scales.

Wound

2009-01-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

a favor to grovel
for mother's
hasty salt suture.
gravel ground palms—
a roadside stigmata
dealt with
with aspirin,
distraction,
and isopropyl alcohol.
it still burns
(sometimes).

To Clarify

2009-01-13T13:14:00.001-08:00

I was thinking a bit more about my point in class (and in my previous post) that, for Victorian era poets, the Romantics, et al., words were like the stone (or sculpture) while for the modernists like Stein they were the chisel (or tools) and what I meant was that, for someone like Keats (to use Kasey's excellent example--and I'm certainly not knocking Keats), "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." But for Stein, the question might occur "what is beauty?" Keats tells us what beauty is but is that, really, all ye need to know? And, anyway, it sounds true but, to me, it doesn't feel true. My suggestion is that there is something deeper going on (buried in our biological selves) and that, perhaps, there isn't a way to describe beauty using mere language. My feeling is that Stein knew this, realized that you can't find "truth" by describing and defining it and, instead, used the tools at her disposal (words, syntax, repetition, etc.) to hammer away to create (or maybe find) something that, in my opinion at least, is every bit as true or truer than what Keats and eons of previous poets had valiently attempted. I'm not saying that many of the poems they created weren't beautiful, just that they weren't "true" (if they were, I doubt so many people would still be writing in the styles of the modernists and postmodernists). As poets we're all, I think, searching for that elusive "genuiness" or, at least, something that seems real to us. And, with that, I think my attempt at clarity has utterly failed. But you know what I mean.

The Imagists

2009-01-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

By the early twentieth century poetry needed a makeover and Ezra Pound was just the person to give it one. Pound's brilliance wasn't so much in his own poetry (although some of it is brilliant) as in his ability to recognize what change was needed and to connect a group of people capable of making that change happen. The Imagists were looking to strip away the rote structure and sentimentality that had come to define poetry of the Victorian era. It was clear to Pound that “truth” in poetry wasn't going to be found by piling on more maudlin rhyming couplets and forced iambs. Pound's prescription wasn't just to upend the status quo in search of clarity or to find something that satisfied us linguistically—it was to sparingly use the tools of language to reach for some deeper meaning (and I don't mean that pejoratively).

So I disagree with poet Kenneth Rexroth when he says, in his essay The Influence of French Poetry on American, that Gertrude Stein's “syntax is simply a development of tendencies latent in typically American speech.” I think it is much more than that. Stein is touching, through and throughout her syntax, word choice, and repetition, on the deeper workings of the human mind—that vast part of the brain that exists outside of language and deals with entities, spacial concepts, and causal relationships. Stein probes those places with her poetry and creates something far more substantive than “syntax derived from latent tendencies in speech” (and much of the verse the Imagists were rebelling against). If poets prior to the Imagists were concerned with creating beauty from language then Stein, et al. were using language to get at something else. For those earlier poets words and syntax were the stone—for Stein they were the chisel. Stein chose function over form (paradoxically, the form worked itself out) and, out of a single poem, scratched more “meaning” than a thousand stale sonnets ever could.

William Carlos Williams, in a different way, plumbs our inner workings. Williams was far more concerned with the material world than Stein was. “No ideas but in things” rings true enough that it seems reasonable to base a life's work on. I agree with Rexroth when he says, regarding Williams, that “His long quest for a completely defenseless simplicity of personal speech produces an idiom identical with that which is the end product of centuries of polish, refinement, tradition and revolution.”

Stein's A BOX. and Williams' The Manoeuvre both, in their own way, affect me every time I read them.

A BOX.

Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same
question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful
cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is
something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so
rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so
earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

THE MANOEUVRE

I saw the two starlings
coming in toward the wires.
But at the last,
just before alighting, they
turned in the air together
and landed backwards!
that's what got me— to
face into the wind's teeth.

Both Stein's repetition (which defies and denies closure) and Williams' imagery never fail to create a visceral reaction in me—sublimating, perhaps, a part of my lizard brain (or maybe I just need to quit drinking turpentine). Stein satisfies my rationalist side while Williams sates my empiricist. So it isn't that I just think the imagists were on to something, I know they were.

Manifesto 2 - The Revenge of Manifesto

2009-01-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

A new manifesto based on a class discussion of clarity...

Poetry is Undermining

Poetry is undermining. It takes something—language—so familiar, so comfortable, and makes it difficult, hard. It is cheap usurping. The poet is anarchist. Why doesn't he—or she—or the divine inspiration, or whatever leave it alone? No. We want meaning or, at precisely least, clarity. Then, externally, the poet with his (or her or its) guile and uncomfortableness, out of nowhere really, disorders and spills. Somebody (and let me tell you it isn't going to be me) has to clean up the strife. Let me be clearer—this schism, this rift, this chasm. To put it simply, poetry is the demilitarized zone between the known and the understood. That's definitely not specifically analogous enough for you. Poetry is violence. So, in that way, it is accumulated carnage. It is not de-militarized, in fact, at all. It is post-actualized discharge. Poetry isn't connection as much as can be deliberated. It is subterfuge—an act, you may have heard by now, of undermining. It is tearing and littering. A land mine buried under pleasantries and would-be's. A poet, as he or she or it (let's just quit laboring around and call it shit) is no innocent, no refugee, no witness. Not that. A poet is a terrorist, or worse, enabler. It is not energy along points as Olson exacts, it is, moreover, energy dispelled, not to the reader, or even other poets but at, more specifically, me. Sometimes you, but mostly me. It exists in and without politeness. I surmise this “society.” So it is as nuclear as it is unclear. It is vile earnestness. In as much as it is “form” (and certainly not applauded by Plato), it is kilterless and defiant. Honesty is important here.

H.D. and Me (Sitting in a Tree)

2009-01-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

I've got a "thing" for H.D. Don't ruin it for me by saying things like, "She'd never go for you," or, "You realize she's dead, right?" Mmm, H.D....

A Little Holiday Jeer

2008-12-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

I wrote this this morning in a burst of inspiration (if you can call it that). Anyway, I hope it's good for a chuckle (or at least a mirthful groan). I hope everybody is having a beautiful day! Happy holidays...

A Christmas Lament

Santa came last night. He bypassed the milk and went straight for the liquor cabinet. Even finished off the last of the Captain Morgan's. And it isn't as if he didn't see the milk because the fat bastard ate all the cookies. Chocolate macadamia nut. Crumbs all over, ground in the carpet by a size ten Koolaburra with a mix of slush and what, judging by the smell, is reindeer manure. This is just great.

It's not like I didn't see this coming. For the past couple of years, Kris has been getting sloppy. Two years ago he brought two gifts for Madison and forgot Joshua completely. Now that I think about it, I can trace Josh's diagnosis back to that Christmas. Thousands of dollars in counseling fees and countless sleepless nights thanks to ol' St. Nick. Or should I say, "St. Prick?"

Then there was last year. Mr. Red Pants hooked a power line with a runner on his sleigh and took out the electricity to the neighborhood for six and a half hours. On Christmas morning. No blinky lights, no Jingle Bells, no coffee. Of course Johnson next door tried to excuse him. Said he'd heard Blitzen had a nasty cold and wasn't flying up to par. Yeah, whatever. Everyone is always cutting the big man slack. Oooh, he's so jolly and full of cheer. Well I'm not buying it. My guess is that he was flying drunk and by the looks of my living room this year--the broken ornaments, the haphazard wrapping jobs, and, of course, the deer shit--I'm sure I'm right.

So, while you're all sipping eggnog and singing carols, I'll be steamcleaning the carpet and trying to explain to Josh that, "No, Santa doesn't think you're a little girl because he brought you a Hannah Montana play set this year." I want to tell him the truth. Santa's a total lush, Josh. You know how your Uncle Harold gets at Thanksgiving? Santa is the same way. He gets confused. He has a problem. He needs help. But, of course, I can't tell him that. Besides, he'd never believe me anyway. Like most of you people, he's been brainwashed by a steady stream of pro Santa propaganda flowing out of the North Pole. No, it's better to spring for the therapist and keep my mouth shut.

Merry Christmas anyway.

The Economic Meltdown

2008-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another research paper I recently wrote. This one is on the current economic crisis. Pretty depressing stuff--you may want to skip it or save it for after the holidays...

The Next Great Depression

The National Debt Clock in Times Square had to be taken down in September. The clock, which has been informing the public about the United States' soaring debt for nearly two decades, needed to be reconfigured to add space for new numbers. According to the Treasury, the national debt has grown more than $500 billion each fiscal year since 2003. And then, beginning on September 30, 2008, it grew another $500 billion in a single month. Never before in U.S. history has the national debt increased so rapidly. The $700 billion government bailout recently passed by congress could send the total debt to more than $11 trillion and the current global cost of the financial crisis is $2.8 Trillion and counting. As the nation speeds toward what could be the next great depression we are left to wonder, “what happened?” To find the answer, it helps to understand Wall Street jargon—mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps. It also requires us to revisit former economic sage Alan Greenspan, deregulation, and the role of U.S. homebuyers. The answer to the question, however, can be summed up in a single word: Greed.

The current financial tragedy began with one sentence uttered by former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan right after the internet bubble burst in 2000. He said, “The [Federal Open Market Committee] stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.” What this basically meant was that the U.S. Treasury was going to lower interest rates to an absurdly low one percent. This was a problem because there is a lot of money out in the world that needs to be invested. This global pool of money—which is, essentially, all the money the world is saving at any given time—is all of the pension funds that pay for people's retirements, the money insurance companies hold back in case of catastrophes, and the savings of all of the world's central banks. It is, in short, the subset of global savings called fixed-income securities. It is also huge; around $70 trillion, which is more than all of the money spent and earned by every country on the planet in a year. This global pool of money had also recently ballooned (doubling in size between 2000 and 2006) largely because some formerly poor countries like India and China had gotten rich selling seemingly insatiable U.S. consumers everything from electronic goods to dog food. The investment managers who oversee this money are continually looking for low-risk investments that pay some return and, suddenly, thanks to Greenspan's decision, they weren't going to find it in historically safe United States Treasury Bonds.

The low interest rates at the Fed were, however, helping a different class of investor—U.S. homebuyers. The nation's real estate market was booming and banks were earning anywhere from five to nine percent or more on mortgages. It was only a matter of time before the global pool of money figured out a way to get in on the action. Brokers sold mortgages to small banks who, in turn, sold them up the food chain to Wall Street where they were bundled as “mortgage backed securities” and peddled to investors. Wall Street couldn't get enough of these things. And that was the problem. Suddenly, banks, in order to feed the growing beast on Wall Street, started making riskier and riskier loans. No Income, No Asset loans (NINAs), which require no verification of a person's salary or net worth (and are usually reserved for only the most credit worthy borrowers), began being offered to anyone, regardless of their employment status or credit history. Ivy Zelman, a former housing-market analyst for Credit Suisse says “there is a simple measure of sanity in housing prices: the ratio of median home price to income. Historically, it runs around 3 to 1; by late 2004, it had risen nationally to 4 to 1.” “All these people were saying it was nearly as high in some other countries,” Zelman continues, “but the problem wasn’t just that it was 4 to 1. In Los Angeles, it was 10 to 1, and in Miami, 8.5 to 1. And then you coupled that with the buyers. They weren’t real buyers. They were speculators.” Investors were happy, homebuilders were happy, and homebuyers-turned-speculators were happy. But, as the housing bubble grew, at least a few Wall Street insiders realized (as far back as 2004) that Greenspan's fateful decision was going to “lead to some terrible day of reckoning.” That day has come.

Vincent Daniel, a research analyst who looked at companies that made subprime loans, says, “I saw how the sausage was made in the economy, and it was really freaky.” The “sausage” Daniel is talking about includes something called a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO). CDOs are Wall Street derivatives made by taking good mortgages, slicing them up with riskier mortgages, and running the resulting concoction through credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's or Moody's. Big Wall Street investment banks were taking “huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, [throwing] them into a trust, [carving] the trust into tranches (different classes of related securities offered as part of the same transaction), and [winding] up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.” Marketplace's Paddy Hirsch, explains it this way:

Basically, the CDO manager has a champagne bottle filled with mortgages. Every month when the debtors pay their mortgages, it fills the bottle with payments. The cork pops off and he pours the bubbly over a tray of glasses, each one representing a tranche of increasing risk. The glasses at the top, rated AAA, get paid first and the least amount, and the bubbly flows down to AA, BBB, BB and equity, the tray at the bottom.

“The party,” says Hirsch, “gets bad when people stop paying their mortgages.” Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened and pretty quickly the glasses on the bottom weren't getting filled at all while the securities representing these mortgages dried up completely. BBB loans transformed into AAA-rated bonds? Sausage was turned into caviar and, eventually, champagne became sewage. A reasonable person might ask how all of this was legal. The answer lies in something called deregulation.

The idea behind deregulation is borrowed from eighteenth century economist Adam Smith, who, back in 1776, published a book called Wealth of Nations. In it, he argued that individuals working in their own self-interest naturally benefitted society. Cornell economics professor Robert H. Frank says, “Phil Gramm, the former republican senator from Texas, and other proponents of financial industry deregulation insisted that market forces would provide ample protection against excessive risk.” In 1999, Gramm spearheaded the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in congress. The legislation was responsible for repealing much of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated the financial services industry. Mr. Gramm’s invocation of the familiar invisible-hand theory persuaded many other lawmakers to support the act. This lack of oversight led to a culture of greed that deregulators failed to—or simply chose not to—account for. “Phil Gramm was the great spokesman and leader of the view that market forces should drive the economy without regulation,” said James D. Cox, a corporate law scholar at Duke University. “The movement he helped to lead contributed mightily to our problems.” Economic Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes Gramm as "the high priest of deregulation," and lists him as the number two person responsible for the economic crisis of 2008 behind Alan Greenspan. In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr stated: “My own judgment is that the worst and most widespread abuses occurred in the institutions with the least federal oversight. Conflicts of interest, lax regulation, and 'boom times' covered up the extent of the abuses—at least for a while, at least for those not directly affected by abusive practices. But no more.” Gramm, however, is unrepentant. In a recent interview he said, “Some people look at subprime lending and see evil. I look at subprime lending and I see the American dream in action.”

Steve Eisman, a financial industry analyst and one of the few people who saw the current crisis brewing early on, is one of those who saw evil. He says, “These guys lied to infinity. What I learned from [dealing with subprime lenders] was that Wall Street didn’t give a shit what it sold." Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, put it this way, “There was no morality—it was all based on the get it while you can concept." The culture of corruption on Wall Street runs so deep that, “despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash,” financial workers at Wall Street's top banks, including bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the flailing Citibank, are set to receive pay deals worth more than $70 billion, with a substantial proportion of this money to be paid in discretionary bonuses (including a 4% increase in bonuses for Citibank executives over last year).

As awful as the subprime mortgage crisis is, it is not even the worst thing Wall Street has wrought to perpetuate the ensuing meltdown. That would be something called, innocuously enough, Credit Default Swaps. Credit default swaps were invented by Wall Street in the late 1990's as financial instruments designed to cover losses to banks and bondholders when a particular bond or security goes into default. They are, or at least were intended to function as, a form of insurance. Unlike traditional insurance, however, they are completely over the counter and unregulated and, because of this, big Wall Street banks, investment houses, and hedge funds began to use them as a form of gambling—essentially betting on the failure of big U.S. corporations and even other financial giants. The recent $150 billion government bailout of insurance giant A.I.G. was largely because of its exposure to credit default swaps, particularly related to the failure of the investment services firm, Lehman Brothers. House Agriculture Committee Chairman, Democrat Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota said in recent congressional testimony:

There is an estimated $55 trillion in credit default swaps somewhere out there, but no one knows for sure if any of these swaps offset each other, exactly who is on the hook for these swaps, who is trading with who and on what terms; and worst of all, no one has any idea who is solvent and who is upside down. The first step we need to take is to shed some light on just how the unwinding of these obligations will take place.

That amount—actually now over $60 trillion—is over twice the size of the U.S. stock market or, to put it in even sharper perspective, more than the Gross Domestic Product of the entire world. Because nobody knows who is holding them, banks are afraid to lend money which is further perpetuating the crisis. Because the banks are locked together in a daisychain of credit default swaps, the failure of one could take down many. Congress, in October, passed a $700 billion dollar “bailout” to help stave off the now nearly inevitable economic collapse.

But Wall Street's savior could also be an enabler, according to Kevin Philips, a former republican strategist and author of the book, Bad Money. Philips lays much of the blame for the current crisis at the feet of the Bush administration and, specifically, Henry Paulson, who he calls 'Mr. Risk,' based on a 2006 Business Week article about the Treasury Secretary. Says Philips:

'Mr. Risk,' calling the shots at Treasury, would focus the Bush administration's 2008 economic 'rescue' policies not on the broad national interest but on bailing-out the 'Frankenstein Fifteen' top U.S. financial institutions. the big five investment firms, the five largest commercial banks, the four mortgage biggies, and AIG, the rogue insurance giant. Along with the buccaneering hedge funds, these were the big firms that borrowed huge sums, merged grandiosely, experimented with all 'the exotic derivatives and other securities' and led the multi-trillion-dollar metastasis through which finance ballooned to take over domination of the U.S. economy by 2004 with 20-21% of the U.S. Gross Domestic product. Although in mid-2007, Paulson pretended that the emerging crisis involved no more than bad real estate lending practices, the cynical observer can assume that 'Mr Risk,' the arch-insider, knew what he was covering up, how deeply the malpractice and deception ran, and on whose behalf.

Naomi Klein, not one to mince words, calls the current $700 billion bailout plan a "stickup.”

Recently, at a congressional hearing on the financial crisis, committee chair Representative Henry Waxman of California, grilled former Fed chairman Greenspan. “You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others,” said Waxman, “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?” Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.” “Whatever regulatory changes are made,” continued Greenspan, “they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today’s markets. Those markets for an indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime.” Small consolation for the millions of Americans who will be asked to do the heavy lifting to extricate the country from this debacle. Small consolation indeed.

sexless original

2008-12-18T16:22:00.000-08:00

friday night
the spiny day turns squishy
home early to prepare dinner
to wash away the greasy matte finish
everything is ready
then you
immersed in a bubble bath
i attentively watching
tomorrow is the weekend
you do not have to get up early
no excuses
relaxation is the moment
i trust you trust me
but i don't know why
i twist to do
spun in sequences of want and expectation
to no avail
the results are as always as expected
down with a sigh

Dramatic Reading of a Breakup Letter

2008-12-10T17:12:00.000-08:00

I promise that I'm going to start writing and posting again soon, but first this:

Because I don't have time to write anything that isn't a research paper...

2008-11-25T23:29:00.001-08:00

And Now for Something Completely Different

2008-11-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Group of Bigots

2008-11-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

More layoffs at Focus on the Family
Ministry spent more than $500,000 to defeat California's Prop. 8 gay marriage ban
By Cara Degette 11/17/08

Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California.

Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of ministry.

“If I were their membership I would be appalled,” said Mark Lewis...

read the rest here.

Perhaps we're seeing the political power of the religious right in its last throes. One can only hope.

Get 'em Keith

2008-11-11T06:45:00.000-08:00

Farewell, Douchebags

2008-11-10T11:12:00.001-08:00

Get Your War On

2008-11-09T22:30:00.001-08:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Fear Foie Gras

2008-11-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

The Problem With the Bush Administration

2008-11-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

They're all dicks, from the president to his dog.

Yes I Can

2008-11-06T09:43:00.001-08:00

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

2008-11-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

From The Onion...

November 5, 2008 | Issue 44•45

WASHINGTON— After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.

Faced with losing everything, Americans took a long overdue step forward and elected Barack Obama.

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

read the rest here.

Finally!

2008-11-04T22:55:00.000-08:00

She Lives Discrimination?

2008-11-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

Does that mean I'm a minority because I'm a white male who voted for Obama?
You have got to be fucking kidding. This woman is incorrigible. Please, please, please make her go away...

Yes, I'm afraid its come to this...

2008-11-04T11:26:00.001-08:00

Did you vote?

Happy Election Day...

2008-11-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

Now go vote!

Fight Intolerance in California

2008-11-02T18:06:00.001-08:00

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

Blank the Blanker

2008-10-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

by Steven Weber

How you doin'? I'm _______ the _______.

You may have heard the candidates mentioning Joe the Plumber on their various stumps, making that guy a household word and whatever. A hero to some and an instant punch line to others. Sure, he's lost his privacy and whatever integrity he may have had before he became Joe the Plumber, back when he was only Samuel the Not Yet the Plumber, but since when does anyone need privacy or integrity if they're gonna be famous? He's probably gonna end up with a lucrative coloring book deal and his own show on HGTV or Spike or something.

read the rest here.

Goodbye Boomers...

2008-10-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

...and good riddance

Voting for Obama

2008-10-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

by Craig Barnes

In 1952, when I was 16, my father was stationed in the Air Force in London. I was dating a general's daughter. I can still remember her kisses. They were luscious and the best experience to that point of my young life. Then one night in early September, just after a new American high school opened, I received a call from the girl's father, the general.
"Hello, Craig, it's General Kessinger. I understand you are planning a dance for the high school students at the American Teen Club,"
"Yes, sir." I said, "I am working on it." I had never had a call from a general before.
"This coming Saturday night?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't suppose you will be allowing Negras to come to that dance, will you?"
There was a long pause at my end.
"Yes, sir," I finally said. "They are in school too. It would be only fair."
"It is not our custom to mix the races," he said, "not socially."

read the rest here.

John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time

2008-10-26T10:58:00.001-07:00

Christopher Walken receives a rectal probe...

Best. Ad. Ever.

2008-10-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Ah, Mormons

2008-10-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

As Nikki said this morning, "you'd think the Mormons would be more tolerant of alternative lifestyles."

My theory is this supposed gay threat to traditional marriage conflicts with their MLM style religion--without procreation their downlines are in jeopardy.

Whatever the reason, if these bigots choose to involve themselves so heavily in politics they ought to be taxed like any other business (oops, did I just suggest that religion is a business?)...

Prop 8: California gay marriage fight divides LDS faithful
The church's effort against gay marriage is its most vigorous since 1970s
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune

The thought of going to church in her southern California LDS ward makes Carol Oldham cry. She can't face one more sermon against same-sex marriage. She can't tolerate the glares at the rainbow pin on her lapel.

Oldham, a lifelong Mormon, is troubled by her church's zeal in supporting a California ballot initiative that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. She feels the church is bringing politics into her sanctuary.

"It has tainted everything for me," Oldham said, choking up during a telephone interview. "I am afraid to go there and hear people say mean things about gay people. I am in mourning. I don't know how long I can last."

read the rest here.

A Message from Ron Howard

2008-10-23T16:24:00.001-07:00

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Brilliant

2008-10-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Undecided
by David Sedaris
October 27, 2008

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

read the rest here.

Conservatives Talk About Why They Are Voting for Obama

2008-10-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

The Truth About ACORN

2008-10-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

I admit I'm a bit election obsessed but this one is SO important...spread the word...

Cold Political Calculation

2008-10-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

So, there you go. Any person with any self-respect and half a brain who votes for this tool is officially off my x-mas list...

Reassuring...

2008-10-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

...but no reason to become complacent...

The economics of reporting polls
October 17th, 2008, 11:49am by Sam Wang

The only thing happening in the Meta-Analysis is a slight, slow widening of Obama’s lead. Some of you want to know about individual polls, such as a recent Gallup national poll showing Obama ahead by only +2% (standard likely-voter model) or +6% (high-turnout model). I confess that I tend to ignore individual polls because of the statistical variability. So it didn’t occur to me to care about this particular data point. Obama is still crushing McCain, period.

But there is a lesson to be learned here: It is not in the interest of individual pollsters or media organizations for you to have the most accurate possible picture of the horserace. Here is why.

Read the rest here.

Dumb but good for a chuckle

2008-10-19T10:50:00.001-07:00

Worst Best Man Ever @ Yahoo! Video

Battleground for Your Heart

2008-10-18T00:43:00.001-07:00

HBO Presidential Debate

2008-10-16T18:32:00.001-07:00

Now this is funny...

Was There Too Much Sex And Profanity In The HBO Presidential Debate?

John McCain Naked

2008-10-16T10:43:00.001-07:00

Michael Seitzman is one of my new favorite political writers...

It was like A Tale of Two Smiles last night -- It was the best of us, it was the worst of us. One man was a study in calm. The other was a study in batshit crazy.

I kept thinking of that line in As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson says, "You make me want to be a better man." Honestly, I know how foo-foo this makes me sound but Obama makes me want to be a better man. Maybe I did drink the kool-aid, but you know what? Jimmy-crack-corn.

read the rest here.

WTF?

2008-10-16T10:34:00.001-07:00

Everything You Don't Want to Know About the Economy

2008-10-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/player/CPRadio_player.php?podcast=http://www.thisamericanlife.org/xmlfeeds/365.xml&proxyloc=http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/player/customproxy.php

Tip to Bryan.

Two More Reasons To Be Against McCain

2008-10-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Giant Pool of Money

2008-10-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

This 'This American Life' clip is, by far, the best explanation I've heard of the mess we're currently in:

http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/player/CPRadio_player.php?podcast=http://www.thisamericanlife.org/xmlfeeds/355.xml&proxyloc=http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/player/customproxy.php

Palin: The Fargo Interview

2008-10-05T16:59:00.001-07:00

If She'd Winked One More Time I Would've Vomited

2008-10-03T07:40:00.001-07:00

Bathing John Malkovich

2008-10-02T16:01:00.001-07:00

Wow!

2008-10-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

Rampant Like Herpes...But For Positive

2008-10-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

Literature Rodeo

2008-09-29T17:26:00.001-07:00

Interview Palin!

2008-09-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

Your chance to interview McCain's vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin!

Go here.

He Did It Alright

2008-09-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Political Porn

2008-09-28T20:10:00.001-07:00

Worth watching in its entirety...

Diesel Turns XXX

2008-09-26T13:36:00.001-07:00

Diesel SFW XXX - Watch more free videos

No Serious Person...

2008-09-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

I love this quote from Ron Reagan, Jr. (yes, he is the son of the former president).

"...the media has to pretend that there are two viable candidacies here...where there really aren't. There's Obama and Biden, and then there's the joke, which is McCain/Palin. No serious person could any more look at McCain/Palin and say 'that seems like a reasonable alternative,' it just doesn't exist anymore."

Read the rest here.

Clay Wright: 1938-2008

2008-09-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Clay Wright, Cindy's father, passed away about an hour and a half ago. I didn't know Clay very well. I regret that. The time I did spend with him though, was memorable. He had a calm presence. He didn't talk a lot, but when he did you knew he had something to say. That's my memory of Clay--quiet and thoughtful. And smart. And loving. I know he was loving because I could see it in the way he looked at Cindy, at the way he looked at his wife Judy, and in the way he talked about his children and grandchildren. And I know he was loving because of the way Cindy talks about him. She said he was the one person in her life who "got her." They shared a bond that, even from the outside, was both real and magical. Having lost my father a few years ago, I can only imagine the pain and grief she is going through right now.

Clay was the perfect balance to Cindy's mom, Judy--she was the sail in their relationship, and he was the ship. They spent nearly 50 years together--she was just 15 when they met. Her pain I can't even begin to imagine.

My heart goes out to Clay's family tonight--Judy, Cindy and Pete, Steve, Christen and Eric, and Tyler and Austin. I wish I could offer more than platitudes but, sometimes, that's all that comes. Wave upon wave of I'm so sorry, and my thoughts are with you, and if you need anything... But life is like that, I guess. We always think there's going to be more time and, then, when it's over, the family is left, alone with their grief, and a bunch of well-meaning platitudes from people like me, heartfelt as they may be. Peace, love, peace, love, peace...

David Foster Wallace

2008-09-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

Mark Morford has a great piece today about the late, great David Foster Wallace...

David Foster Wallace
All literary flags at half-mast, rightfully so. In memoriam
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Let me, if you will, merely add my name to the chorus of the shocked, distraught and saddened sighs going out in response to the news of David Foster Wallace's apparent suicide. Let me do so with reverence, and humble gratitude.

See, I have few literary heroes, certainly almost no one from this online news medium and only a handful from the "serious" writerly universe. Even while having my brain profoundly scrambled by the UC Berkeley English department way back when, a delightfully thorough immersion into the finest literary minds of all time, it's still only been a precious few scribes who've ever managed break through my finicky intellectual resistance and annoying writerly jadedness and really stick to the ribs of my id.

Read the rest here.

Conjunction Disfunction

2008-09-15T11:07:00.001-07:00

Between Spanish classes and Burning Man prep, event, and cleanup, the summer got away from me blogging-wise. I know in my previous post of a month and a half ago I said no more political rants, diatribes, or filler but I lied (not cynical, calculated, ruthless John McCain-style, mind-you). A lot has changed since I wrote that post (how naive I was back then). We're in a post-Palin world now and the stakes for the future of our democracy have never been higher. Expect more political rants and videos like this in the weeks to come:

Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh

2008-07-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

You'll be noticing some changes here at Melancholy Sideshow over the next few weeks. I'll be doing a little housekeeping--the filler, diatribes and most of the videos will being going away to clear space for a more writing and poetry-centered experience. Since this originally began as a space to park my poetry, the new focus is, essentially, a return to my (net) roots. The rants, photos, videos, etc. will likely find their way to a new space and I'll be sure to keep you apprised of their progress but, for now, I'm deciding to get serious (well, as serious as I can get) about writing.

The reason? I've been getting some positive attention for my work lately and I'm beginning to see a future in it. My story Stranded in Kosmas was just nominated for inclusion in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3 published by W.W. Norton and my poem Poetry Finds Static will be coming out in the anthology Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos edited by Stride Magazine founder Rupert Loydell from U.K. publisher Salt Publishing. It will be featured alongside such names as Nick Pionbimo, former Birmingham, England poet laureate David Hart, and Jackson Mac Low...JACKSON MAC LOW! I'm humbled and honored (but not so humbled that I won't brag a little here). I'll provide a link when it goes on sale.

Anyway, I have several works in various forms of completion and my intent is to start "putting it out there" and, perhaps, a more polished, focused blog presence will help with that. At least that's my intent. Thanks to all of you who have supported me in my journey.

BTW, the previous post is a poem by Geoff Stevens who is featured in the anthology as well.

the details of which are boring by Geoff Stevens

2008-07-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

the details of which are boring

childhood in the industrial black country
the details of which are boring
school reached across the marl-holed fields
the details of which are boring
then on to a Tom Brown senior school
the details of which are boring
earning a living in a chemical laboratory
the details of which are boring
then marriage and trying to settle down
the details of which are boring
followed by divorce and living alone
the details of which are boring
a beginning to write poetry for publication
the details of which are boring
the reading of his work to an audience
the details of which are boring
until struck down by a series of illnesses
the details of which are boring
and finally death after much discomfort
the details of which are boring
and so to the obituaries in the newspapers
and a life which was rich & exciting

~Geoff Stevens

Embarcadero Blues by Goh Nakamura

2008-06-24T15:07:00.001-07:00

2008-06-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

Wealth

Thank you for

the box

of diamonds

I can tell you worked

hard

on the label

2008-06-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Poet Jennifer Knox was in Ashland last month. Here's a recording of that special, special evening (thanks Bryan!)...

http://enaviation.com/jennifer%20knox%20reading%20in%20ashland%20oregon.mp3

Tip to Kasey

Stranded in Kosmas

2008-06-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

Stranded in Kosmas: A Tale of Lost Love, Betrayal, and the Necessity of a Good Shot of Ouzo While Traveling in Greece With Your Brother and His Ex-Girlfriend

An overseas vacation should never begin with the words, "you don't have to be such a fucker." Ever. In my experience this statement is predictive of future violence. Personally, I have always preferred, "I'm really excited for this trip," or even, "we may have to leave the airport to get a decent exchange rate." Luckily the words were not directed at me but rather at my brother Greg. Unfortunately, my then-fiancée, Nikki, and I would be traveling to Greece with both Greg and the utterer of this phrase (and numerous other phrases that usually contained a pronoun, an adjective, and some variation of the word "fuck"). This person, this woman who could serve up profanities the way Emeril Lagasse juliennes carrots, was my brother's ex-girlfriend Amy. And, tragically, this wasn't the beginning of the end of their relationship. No, Amy began this trip as an "ex." You may wonder why someone would travel overseas with a person they had already evaluated and subsequently dismissed as a potential life partner. Well, it can be summed up in that two-word darling of Internet travel bargain-seekers—the nonrefundable ticket.

read the rest here...

No Alternative But Helpless

2008-04-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind on my posts for National Poetry Writing Month (OK, I'm a lot behind) so, in the interest of catching up a little, here's another:

No Alternative But Helpless

Dear:

I think
All this is not why we are happy?

Tasteless relations
No alternative but helpless

The weather is overcast
What can be said to you?

No feeling of hunger
Unhealthy

But he was not happy
Always hard to find

NaPoWrMo #12

2008-04-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day

Remember to cherish her.

Although I do not know whether she is any good.

But you should not--she is improper.

I wish you a Valentine's Day sweet sweet honey.

NaPoWrMo #11

2008-04-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

If you know a child nausea

If you know a child nausea

If you know a look at Dream of the Red Chamber Miss Margaret Jet Milk East touch of nausea children

If you know a low-fat drink every day of nausea children

If you know a gray forever with the nausea children purple eyeshadow

If you know a song listen to a three-nausea children

If you know of a low back pain is not the pain-nausea children

If you do not understand a fine home for the first child nausea

If you know a holiday release is not to travel nausea children

If you know a summer shirt only buy the nausea children

If you feel that a self-awareness of nausea children

NaPoWrMo #10

2008-04-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

left sea

negligence of the world to those
who have never savored mediocre
to fool people affected your faith
you
the truth

buried deep in the sea beads
left
do not know benefits
everyone except me can understand that the idea of God
find dazzling pearl gravel

ordinary people wronged your children
but I do not believe you worry
boring
meaningless
know no one in the days to enjoy
but who can know

NaPoWrMo #9

2008-04-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Clothing

Outward few days, in the home, of course, a good thing happened - I Mint Chiffon blouses, shirts are short of the two-inch, multi-inch short sleeves, a long short-sleeved.

Ironically enough? Back a long time, have been maimed as a half people to wear this shirt,
can play a disabled beggar to begging.

Each time, it will clothes washing machine that clothes can not,
do not want to hand wash is not critical and wait for me

to return to Hong Kong
will be taken to the laundry.

Then, there are always one or more
do not like dolls clothes waiting for me back home.

Bad clothes washing frequency
than the number of clothes I buy more.

Unfortunately clothing,
because I have decent clothes through many years, not to mention, clothes.

Born in the 1980s friends,
a secondary school during the walk wearing Nike Taotao.

They often miss is the most laughs
through the Yasaki never, I always speechless.

I have,
and that is Yasaki fish and rice.

Wear a skirt school for five years,
become translucent, underwear lace bra and the car line, far have seen.

Finally, only the unpleasant task
of asking students to replace the old school dress.

At the time,
the family really basic fields? Is not.

Mother that I would deliberately poor growth.

However, I only hate hearts forever.

NaPoWrMo #8

2008-04-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Playing catch-up again...

"The bitter cold in a bowl of hot rice with barbecued pork"

Parents are traditional,
a meal of rice to stomach. risotto.
Sushi rice is not, of course, not risotto yes.
Is a bowl of hot rice,
Lord of white rice.
And our generation?
Dining out, think of Italian pizza acne
are sheep
clams caramel
what is good, is not think of rice,
or a bowl of ordinary rice with barbecued pork.

NaPoWrMo #7

2008-04-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

Breaking the psychological barrier of Trilogy

1. Makeup on the bus
2. Stations paste fake Wenjiemao
3. Rail trains in Hong Kong within Tu Shuangwenpi Chaizhao eyelid glue again 30 seconds

...I really do not even of the points that I can of epilepsy.

NaPoWrMo #6

2008-04-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

No flies old World

"Drainage frightened old World No flies."

Because of this word, I think the whole night.

Inevitably, we in the housing topic, please do not continue, all of the bar.

To my old, will pick up mosaic tiles sleep flyover depends on the good fortune of their own.

For the parents, must also.

This moment I truly fortunate, we should also, but home, but there are still retreat.

Because my salary has never been more than a single grain that number.

NaPoWrMo #5

2008-04-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

Uh oh, playing catch up...

Skin to the body of the letter

Dear skin of the body:

You okay?
Sorry so late write to you, I am sorry.
To tell you now say "sorry", it is too late?
Have you, will forgive me?
Seven years ago is still my students started throwing waves 24 hours a day,
the consumption of health impatient youth.
The results, after seven years, I, not to 30, have been aging.
If a drop of blood can be became the organs of the body,
I really want to know your dissatisfaction,
what I question is how slow you,
which will be three in the 2nd cold sore throat tonsils ear inflammation water imbalance stomach cramps insomnia.
When 10-year-old mill that the injury situation,
although experienced half of Utah Health dead of night without sleep,
I prefer not to have rebound insomnia.

NaPoWrMo #4

2008-04-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hair, I am sorry

Hair, I am sorry.
The memory of you
You, he, I, you, thick
the beam with a ponytail in the face of others
will be painful.
In reality you, I have to be careful to finger comb,
shampoo with the anti-alopecia exposed to care.

Fingernails, I am sorry.
But obviously born relatively thin fragile,
I, for the sake of convenience,
two layers of chemicals in your body
not let you breathe.
Over the past year, you may be freed eventually,
but dying as the film "Saw II" posters in the finger.

NaPoWrMo #3

2008-04-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ah, what the hell, let's call it a poem...

Why I Write

I'd like to say I write because I have something so profound to say that it would end conflict, solve global warming, and cure disease. Yeah, if only. I have no such altruistic expectations. I'd like to say I write because a pen fits perfectly in my stigmata. But that's not true either. No, I write primarily for attention. That's not, of course, the only reason I write. I also write to untangle the disparate threads of my experiences to create a narrative that allows me some kind of cohesion to hang my sanity on or, more precisely, I write because I'm psychologically damaged enough to think that I can. I write as an excuse to drink. I write so my keyboard doesn't get too comfortable. I write as proof that I'm not yet dead (but if I was dead and I could still write, I'd be a zombie, and how cool would that be?!). I write so I have a place to put all these pesky words. I write because I find solace in clearcuts. I write so I won't kill—again. I write because I like the feel of wind in my hair and the lure of the open road—oh, wait, that's drive. I write to chase that damnable flashing cursor across the page. I write because I want to meet Oprah. I write because I like it when people ask, “whatcha writing?” I write so that I can tell those people, “none of your business!” I write to bury my ghosts, but they're ghosts so they never stay buried for long. I write so, someday, I can get away with wearing a cool beret and turtleneck. I write because the way blank pages mock me really pisses me off. I write because if Dr. Phil can have his own TV show, I should be able to write. I write because Nabokov would've wanted it that way. I write because my parents wanted me to be a doctor (that'll teach you mom and dad!). I write in lieu of a real job. I write because if I stare at the monitor long enough I can see some really trippy tracers. I write to ignore the burning in my...uh, never mind. I write to find out the function of “Conjunction Junction.” I write so my dog will stare at me all day wondering when we're going to play fetch—he's so cute. I write so if there's an apocalypse and the only way to fight off the mutant zombies is with words, I'll be ready. I can write a perfectly good story right into the ground—where it belongs. I write because the need for sappy sentimentality is stronger than ever. I write so I can use big words like antidisestablishmentarianism—and girls really dig that. I write because if I ever go to prison I'll get all the good jobs. I'll write that smile right off your face. I write as the perfect antidote to American Idol. I write because the aliens gave me a choice between that and the anal probe. I write because I need a hug. I write so I can make fun of people who can't read. I write everything down so the detectives will have to dig through piles of paper to find my rotting corpse. I write up one side and down the other...if you know what I mean. I write off language on my taxes and that really confuses the IRS. I write furiously to keep warm. I write because meerkats can't.

NaPoWrMo #2

2008-04-02T10:25:00.001-07:00

Something must be faced

I have to go to work tomorrow but only.

Always bad dark purple.

The doctor said I have depression.

NaPoWrMo #1

2008-04-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

It's National Poetry Writing Month again so I'm going to try to post a poem a day for April (if I wimp out, I reserve the right to call April Fool!).

Juicy and yummy

In fact, I enjoy a good freeze.

Drainage each television broadcast to both, I will immediately look up to the fire is clear.

Searching late seamless music freeze not only new to girl skirt, the color stockings.

Juicy and yummy, really no-regrets of the dead.

Facelift, so-called? Microphone also bought both of the same principle, but you'd be a shirt.

Peugeot looks, long hair, breast enhancement, shining hip, a curve.
Hands and feet really go the distance still left little meat, think? (If I lose weight willing to sponsor cutting array of narrow nose, I am the servant to you! Will be met my blog, ah?)

Assuming all kind-hearted, only: artificial beauty of the same points, you really will pick a shame of both?

If you despise people trafficking and sex, but that of everyone in sale for living expenses.

Unless death, the first time for selling you, you will be met despise their own land sales?

Net will be afraid of a price. Well, good enough.

I fundamental to every minute of all sex trafficking, went to see the workers, the same conditions apply to everything, a kind of feels unpleasant to the eye, the other on three sharp 180, I want to ocular discomfort.

Only worry of both, and if there are three drainage both appearance and I both influenza is not even the world will be better.

Honest, a bra top garter, I think.

Just Because...

2008-03-25T13:38:00.001-07:00

There's a story behind this (like you need one) here.

Unexciting surprising protein cake

2008-03-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

This is an extraordinary form of a packet of cake.

Margaret Macao from the bakery.

Cold, I will not take the risk of ear imbalance water over the sea.

Farthest friend's car just sitting at home kitchen to eat smoked chicken shrimp at the expense of the center vegetables naringin.

A telephone conversation last night with good friends, told her of delicious cakes.

Tonight, the puppy that she had just disembarked to my house.

Almost forget that a very good friend like Baianni longer.

I have the impulse to the beautiful flies patted flat with her face.