Party soon

 We've all been so busy around here, it    practically slipped one's mind. Now,  every 50 seconds in the United States, a  citizen of Hispanic descent attains the  age of 18.

 Just sayin'.

Andrés Sanjuan

Party

rmbl opened 7.29 
very tentatively -
there remain now 
the possibilities

            Is blindness, then, the gift you give before

            The rest? - forgiveness, say, so hard to find

            In what's at hand, the common day which seems

            At last the light that yields such heat, such beams.

 
                   

     

J.D. McClatchy

The Rest of the Way

  Poems

  An Old Song Ended

  [fragment]

Alfred A. Knopf, 1992©

op. cit.

Valéry Lorenzo

Isabelle Pariente-Butterlin

  aux bords des mondes

"I cannot divest my appetite"

I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself eventually trying it all by Nature - first premises, many call it, but really the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs.

Has it never occurr'd to any one
how the last deciding tests ap-
plicable to a book are entirely
outside of technical and gram-
matical ones, and that any truly
first-class production has little
or nothing to do with the rules
and calibres of ordinary critics?

I have fancied the ocean and the
daylight, the mountain and the
forest, putting their spirit in
a judgment on our books. I have
fancied some disembodied human
soul giving its verdict.

Walt Whitman
Specimen Days
  Final Confessions -
  Literary Tests
1882


i    Doug Mills
iv  Jim Wilson
The New York Times
July 28, 2016

Arrest him

    A political figure has called for
    the laws to be enforced, even as
    he insists that he, alone, could
    do it. He has also called upon a
    foreign government to subvert the
    Constitutional rights of American
    citizens under the First, Fourth,
    and Fifth Amendments, and to con-
    duct espionage against our govern-
    ment. He, alone, has ever gone so
    far to tempt us to ignore our law
    by unpardonable intimidation. Let
    us call that hand, and arrest him
    now, before his enjoyment becomes
    too expensive for his remaining
    years to remit behind bars. If he
    would like to shield himself by
    the Constitutional instruments he
    despises, let him thrill himself
    in Federal District Court, before
    a Judge assigned by customary ro-
    tation, to administer due process.

    Meanwhile, as is obvious at last,
    the Party which would shield him
    from this benighted day forward,
    with its nomination to an office
    which might shelter him temporar-
    ily, is nothing more than a crim-
    inal conspiracy, awaiting indict-
    ment throughout the court system.
    But he has offered his muggers,
    their attorney's fees. Let him
    do no less for Ryan, McConnell,
    and poor, phobic, dim Mike Pence.
    











Ethan James

A straw for me

for Denis Bold

  It's mystifying, to one of their

  contemporaries, how commentators

  in the media, even of careers as

  long as theirs, remark on a hol-

  lowing out of Bill Clinton, with

  a leaner diet, resulting from

  cardiac surgeries. They confuse

  horsepower with displacement, a

  rust-belt comprehension fueled,

  I fear, by imagery in which the

  work they do, is steeped in bias.

  I remark, if only to myself, on

  the supercharging power of ref-

  lection, in the continuum he dia-

  grammed in Philadelphia. The dif-

  ference between speculation and

  testament seems forgotten by our

  sages, dieting on commercials. At

  the same time, Donald Trump had

  been prescient to warn, the Dem-

  ocratic Party would trot out a

  candidacy of tired antiquity. I

  see just straw against his wind,

  and nothing he can do about it.

  

Robert Frank

US 90, Texas, 

  outside Del Rio

1955

Keith Carter

(American, b. 1948)

Dancers

Lost dog

Photographer 

  unknown

A straw each

Distance runner

After making the rounds at several 

breakfasts, Mr. Sanders was met 

with a loud chorus of jeers from 

members of the California delega-

tion. The backlash started immedi-

ately, with many people in the au-

dience giving Mr. Sanders a thumbs-

down sign. But Mr. Sanders was 

quick to quiet the crowd and chide 

them for their response.

                    It is easy to boo .. it is 

                    harder to look kids in the  

                    face who would be living un- 

                    der a .. Trump presidency.

Alan Rappeport et al

Democrats Nominate ...

The New York Times©

July 26, 2016

Arm music v: And plan b?

A raucous gaiety of discord gave such prohibitively handsome form to the opening night of the Democratic Convention, that one could almost have missed the subtlety with which a concerted remedial instruction in morals alternated with a tactical psychotherapy, held as well in check as could be expected, given the motives of Party. A sound appreciation of generations of impacted bigotry, reinforced by adamant permission from exploitive masters - never to yield to humane reflection or compromise with fact - at last protected Democrats from repeating their mistake in confronting the demented gangsters, Nixon and Agnew, of criticizing adherents, cultivated as sociopaths, to support degenerate policy. 

The President's wife surpassed every precedent of persuasion in remarking on the provenance of her House, and the unintended tenancy that redeems it. But, equally to be expected, Elizabeth Warren came perilously close to tipping the corrective hand, reflecting on the margins of Jim Crow in McConnell’s, Boehner’s, Cantor’s and Ryan’s descent into stark, raving negation. But I stray. Why ignore Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and the whole manipulative superstructure of tax-exempt casuistry devoted to one end: the emergence, if need be, of a candid fascist?

But what is Plan B, if gentle fraternal joshing should fail to deflect insensate wound-up legions from their droning march of denial? What witty theft of the right to vote will democrats indulge, to spite their principles against those resourceful tinkerers in the States, against their young, their naturalized, their non-white, and their poor? What mechanic lies in wait to shave no more than 1 to 2 percent of punch card chads, some innocently incongruous way? What is the “patriot act” prepared for the timely precipitation of slander from broadcast conduits, the handbills shoved by pastors up the windscreens of the flock? What is the slingshot saved for decency, what is its stone?

Hillary Rodham Clinton for President of the United States

Let us be obvious. In the election
anticipated for this November, we
Americans are faced with a choice
of mentalities.

On the one hand, we are offered a
brilliant political innovator, of
demonstrably acute sensitivity to
the fissures in society, as aper-
tures so vulnerable to his mind
as, impressively, to reflect it. 
It would have been incongruous of 
Milton to portray his vision's
Satan with any lesser appreciation. 
Distinctions, at this elevation, 
are outrageous. He does do credit 
to the cult of Cohn, his name a 
a sizzling bonfire on his stage. 
He struts, he barks, he spits.

On the other, we rediscover an al-
most comical figure from Twain, a
goose of so many merry nestings as
to shift our gaze to her, from the
ganders' exploitation. Say what
you likely never will, to laud her
indefatigability, hers is a men-
tality responsive to stimuli, too
often alleged to be in her control.
This distinguishes her dialectical-
ly, from an infant seized internal-
ly, proud of his vicissitudes. A
hapless but transparent cheat, she
doesn't have to be. It just suits 
her.

This has always been a negligent,
if not also the most distracting
of complaints about her condition-
al commitments. Those of us who
have sought in vain for a thing
that she believes, simply must
allow, she hasn't seen it yet.
But she is to our barnyard, the 
doyenne of its devices. 

Yet, look at it. Where are the de-
mons of mimetic madness, the spec-
tral interferences of evils hatch-
ed in puerile self-absorption, spun
for us by a vision of itself? These
she too faithfully ignores, having
heard it all. We are offered the
difference between a willed chaos
and a seasoned comprehension of an
order where even it belongs. An or-
dinariness in sanity is in plain
sight.

What an idiotic affectation is a
doubt of which is right. We shall
be fortunate, to get the govern-
ment we deserve. Possibly, we may
muddle through with it.

Fogbathing

  There are ways of stepping
  into a refreshment that al-
  most contradict it; and al-
  so a way to experience im-
  mersion and evaporation at
  the same moment, which can
  be understood only as con-
  servation. The whole proc-
  ess of renewal is revealed
  as less disposing of waste
  than gathering equilibrium.

  That this could be felt as
  pleasure, would needlessly
  threaten another fact with
  denunciation to suggest it.

  Would one then wish to ac-
  count for air brushings of
  the salt, of sand and herb
  that lend their clarifying
  semblances of ourself when
  this takes place? To whom?  

  

















Christian Hetzel
Violet white brown
2016