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.

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

  

Et les gants?

    The Ferrers
    Rome, 1958.

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

  do we read Chateaubriand for

  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

Carnival and I

    A sweet suspense at-

    taches to the night,

    on this eve of such

    privations as we

    wager we can stand.

    Are there parades?

    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©

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©

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©