Wake

Poem to another one gone


i am trying to remember if i should have
conceded when it all seemed probable
or if i watched you go by me with doubt.
you moved with subtle, graspable velocity.

Midterms

No. 2

Quoth Maureen Dowd in today's Times:

"Many frantic Republican lawmakers are also running against themselves, either reneging on their support for the war they started, or railing against Washington, the town they absolutely control, claiming that the capital has forgotten their values, or making ads denouncing the Democrats’ “homosexual agenda,” even though Republicans are now the party of gay scandal.

"It’s a hilarious spectacle of a whole party re-enacting the classic scene in Mel Brooks’s “Blazing Saddles,” in which the sheriff holds the gun to his own head to take himself hostage.

"The Bushes don’t connect words with action. Action is something that’s secretly plotted with the inner circle behind closed doors. The public should stay out of it. The Bushes just connect words with salesmanship. Poppy Bush never meant it when he said “Read my lips: no new taxes” at the 1988 convention. It was just a Clint Eastwood-sounding line in a Peggy Noonan speech, meant to pump up his flighty image."

Well said.

Fifty-five Spheres of Æthers

summeryore


i hummed loops around the yard in august light
shearing constellations of humid flying things
hanging bobbingly with prism wings faced west
it may have been cape or limb flailing aft as
grasses days overgrown whispered in crushing--
it was a forest to me and i a giant.
and there is our mother pointing to ants on globes
and asteroid birds of jay and finch transit orbs
between limbly warps in time and dampened air
here is where our sister made winter camp
and behind the clapboards peeling white and pine
runs a little hallway burned yellow by stellar fire.
i hop galaxy and nebula
drilling deep into spacetime here in our plushly
cosmic-body-grounded and needed yard.

Ipswich

Hundreds of Little Hands

Opus in the tradition of the very old Silly Philosophers

What makes a pencil stay put behind one's ear? Yes, our use of the qualifier 'behind' does raise interest, and one may wonder if we really mean 'beyond.' But all those who do place or have placed a pencil 'behind' her ear do know that for all things considered 'on top,' or 'atop,' is really rather more apt. An ear and its Top Flap must not be too large or that fine limbo line between free fall and rest on the body of the pencil will be compromised, such as one may compromise an appreciation for sweet things by gouging into a heavyset cake. Yet it must not be too small or else the proper surface area required for the pencil to stick and to balance will, in opposite fashion to the former condition, be too small for static position and free fall will ensue. Does an ear protect? Why will a pencil remain behind one's ear in a gust of wind or while riding a horse? Why is it that a sweeping ether does not push the pencil forward or backward when running or lying down? We must turn to the head to find our answer, and to find that, upon close inspection, we can determine that a bald head holds a pencil behind or atop an ear more effectively than one with much hair upon its flanks. We must invariably conclude that there are, in the latter scenario, hundreds of little hands pushing at the pencil behind or atop one's ear that therefore causes it to break from static state into tenuous suspension or at peak effect, to break into free fall. A bald head features no such hundreds of little hands pushing at the body of the pencil to the same effect, and when a fine hair is present, as with a close shave or a buzz, these hands are squat and stubby, unable to flail and give thrust, and therefore pretty much have no effect at all.

Midterms

A series of guerilla preambles

It's useless to vote for Dick DeVoss because you're pro life. Single-issue [Christian] voters must realize that any public policy decisions in the area of abortion will be, at most, unsubstantiated Congressional allusions and presidential candidate totems. Voting for Dick DeVoss won't change a pitance on abortion, so now it's time to think critically with your vote and not ignorantly. Who wants the leader of a sketchy pyramid/Pazzi scheme running a government?