Saturday, February 21, 2015

Now'd ya hear 'bout Louie Miller?


  He disappeared, 
  babe.





     If not in the flesh, then
     certainly in spirit, we
     were all there, this past
     week, in Sandburg's city
     of broad shoulders, when
     our Jeb declared himself
     to be his own man.

     A more sublime delusion
     is not available on the
     meat racks of Rush Street,
     than our lad's conception
     (a family trait) of re-
     inventing history in his
     own life. Originating the
     dawn, when it's one's own
     turn to impersonate the sun.



















Bobby Darin
Mack the Knife
op. cit.





Friday, February 20, 2015

The language part






  I sometimes think, I know
  I sometimes thought, that
  if we could just get past
  the language part, we all
  could then move on to the
  real thing. I remember, I
  thought it were the point
  of language, to carry the
  load, domesticated as the
  donkey that it is.

  But, we don't all move at
  once, and so I was wrong.

  Two friends go to the sea
  and one sends this. I was
  the friend of both, and I
  hope I still am. But I am
  beholden to the one whose
  texts are slower to come.

  Slow words. Remind me, of
  of the dignity that isn't
  the donkey's; the feeling
  of being unsure.
























Rik Slabbinck
Tim Schuhmacher




  

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Back from New York






  He managed the three Mahlerian
  hammer blows - The Frick, The
  Metropolitan, MoMA - without
  letting them muffle the High
  Line, Balthazar, or Margaux.
  He had nothing to do with the
  jacket shown here, but then
  his facts?



















Jeroen Smits x Henning



Calling in


A Dutchman on a Spanish island
and an American woman in Dub-
lin talk on the telephone. 
There are seven billion people 
in the world, so these two in-
dividuals speaking to each oth-
er might seem like an extreme
coincidence. But, as the phi-
losopher rightly said, all that
is real is rational ..




Yesterday's conversation -
across the Pyrenees, across
the Irish Sea - was about
what they were reading at
that moment. She is reading
a biography of Nureyev; he
Volume iii of Chateaubriand's
Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe ..




The man in Spain is reading
not so much for the politics
and the history, but for Cha-
teaubriand's magnificent, con-
cise French, in which he ana-
lyses European relationships
like a game of chess. She, in
Dublin, has read the 782 pages
of Julie Kavanagh's 'beautiful-
ly written' biography deep in-
to the night ..





Both have penetrated, at a
particular point and a par-
ticular moment, into the
endless series of manifes-
tations of our existence on
earth, and are reporting back
to each other. There is noth-
ing remarkable about that, 
and yet there is.

























Cees Nooteboom
Letters to Poseidon
  Telephone
  [fragment]
Laura Watkinson
  translation
op. cit.

ii  Azamat Akhmadbaev
    Night Lights
    2014




Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Carnival and I






    A sweet suspense at-
    taches to the night,
    on this eve of such
    privations as we
    wager we can stand.





    A little more sport-
    ingly, myself, I in- 
    dulge a single toss-
    ing of a cap I never 
    wore, to see who'll 
    chase it down

    Next time, I keep 
    saying, lose it.






    The coming night
    was pulsing with
    excitement - and
    look, over there,
    fires were encir-
    cling the City.






















John Rechy
The Coming of
  the Night
Grove Press, 1999©








Monday, February 16, 2015

Well, that was quick






 Scrolling through our  devices this month,  we've already been    flummoxed to find our    Mitt, retracting a    recent tease, despite    much heralding of his    commitment. It's not as  if anyone had been    watching. Could it be,  our boy'd done some-  thin' rash? Cui bono?






Now hail we the entrance of the natty-noggined dauphin, upon that yielding carpet of State whereon he gamboled so, in hustling his father's retainers hither and yon, on his endearing, character-building tasks. Now the glare of much publicity must galvanise our Press, to scrutinise his gestures in ignoring the true jest.

Do you think he'll tweak his sternum as so many of us do, in crossing arms 'neath much alarm, our charms are very few? It's a little JFK, we'd say, and not the gladdest thing to do. So shall he run naïvely, as the lad without a clue, or heatedly and peevely, as his family taught him to?

























Bobby Darin
Mack the Knife
  adaptation, Brecht and Weill
Warner/Chappell Music, 1959©









Sunday, February 15, 2015

Not this actual, literal morning





     Not this sky
     at all.


















Sunday resolutions we are given

















  One more smoo-
  thie an' I 
  quit.






 


Over the weekend -
this weekend, with
something like a
year before the
first time a vote
may be cast in the
designation of a
candidate for the
nation's Presidency -
the papers reported,
by way of informing
voters of the win-
ner, that dynastic
advantages in money-
grubbing had reached
a prohibitive tipping
point. The fix is in.





So, OK, there's one;
there's a guy in the
street. Ask him. Go 
on. Ask him, how does
it feel, for a pushy
little autocrat whose
father held a job of
trust, to be given it
because he expects it.

How does it feel, ask
him, to be on his own,
a complete unknown, in
this corporation ser-
vice state, with no
direction home.

Ask him, if that's how
he understands legit-
imacy. Don't be shy,
this land is his land,
as if a rolling stone.

A world is going to
wonder, which isn't
subject to our pol-
itical narcosis, not
just how one family
could so degrade our
Court and our core
principles, but how
any country could
so mutilate itself.






What is his answer?
























Bob Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone
1965
Special Rider Music, 1993©

Woody Guthrie
  adaptation, Irving Berlin
This Land is Your Land
1940
Woody Guthrie, 1945©