From CNN:
“A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued what is likely to be a landmark opinion — ruling that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools.”
Sounds almost benign when you put it that way. But read the article and look beyond it to the future implications…nice to know they’ve made the implicit official.
Went to the Cantab tonight. Geoff Trenchard was friggin’ all over his best game and it was great.
I read “At The Rally” in the open and it worked like gangbusters, albeit with lots of on the fly edits that will make it into the final draft.
I forget sometimes how much I rely on reading pieces in progress out loud to judge the amont of work I have to do on them. This was a good reminder.
Night, all.
NB: Looks like the second half of the Jim’s Fall cycle might be revving up…
When the ambulance
came for her she was lying
on the blue marble
and no one could remember
her name, but her face was so
cold it seemed right to name her
Icy and when she woke and responded to it
people called it a miracle but
they did not realize that the whole reason
she nearly died in the first place
was because she’d never had a name
before that seemed right —
Sondra Jane, Lazy Eliza, Lifting Belly,
Poppycock, Loveduck, That Bitch
From Down The Hall —
there are such things as stopgap names
and when Icy was first called Icy
she didn’t need to bother with them any further.
Her first breath upon waking was a needle fog
and her second was a dusting
and the third buried everyone around her
in white.
She left the hospital
walking on the tops of snowdrifts
and was comfortable at last,
light on the mind as a lost penny,
rolling the word in her mouth like a cube,
letting it slip loose and almost fall from her
but drawing it back in in time:
Icy, she thought. I am
that. I am
the name I grew into after all the
summers of disregard, and the beauty of the name is
that nothing can gain purchase upon me
until I choose to soften.
I’m at Reflections Cafe right now, getting ready for Christopher Johnson’s feature tonight at Gotpoetry Live!
Where are you? You’re coming, right? Right??
My stomach is one big ball of molten lead, I can’t sleep, and I’m about ready to slit my own throat if it’ll make me feel better.
I’m only telling you this in case you catch the morning news and there’s a story about a huge explosion in Worcester overnight. That’ll be me.
Physical labor makes me feel better.
In the last couple of days I’ve built (from kits, of course — no room here for actual woodworking equipment) a dinette set and a kitchen cart with butcher block top for the kitchen.
After clean up and a shower I’ll head over to the art sale at the Hut which is benefitting the team.
Last note: I’ve got iTunes on and I quickly checked my Myspace just now…The mp3 of my poem “So Much Depends” syncs uncannily well with the first section of Rush’s “La Villa Strangiato.” I think there’s a message there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is.
to declare my enduring enjoyment of the work of Damien Dempsey. His new album just entered the Irish charts at #2, and PRI’s “The World” did a feature on him last week.
Nice guy, too, if you ever get to chat with him. He still plays small clubs around the states fairly often so that shouldn’t be too hard to do. In Europe, he sells out concert halls and opens for Dylan, so catch him on the small scale here while you can.
Think Irish Billy Bragg and you’ve got the gist of it.
http://www.damiendempsey.com/s-Home
NOTE: I’ve barely been looking at the friends’ list lately, so if something’s going on I should know about, let me know.
I decided to take a look at Ask.com tonight before bed…checking “the Algorithm” to see how it works…and I discovered through an ego search (Tony Brown Poet) that I appear on the nomination list for “The 50 Least Influential People In Publishing.”
Which, of course, is a title I’ve been claiming for years.
In truth, the list is flattering; it’s all about people who the site owners believe should be better known. I have no idea who nominated me, but I’m honored as all hell.
I never do this…but I’d love to make the final list, thus rendering the title somewhat contradictory but all the more satisfying in a twisted way.
Here’s the link:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/buzzwordsblog/2006/04/50-least-influential-people-in_07.html
Go forth and crucify. (Note: lots of other good folks on the list, too.)
ETA: I should look at the dates of these things…it’s a year old. But I added a comment anyway, and so should you.
“Comes A Time” (Neil Young)
Comes a time
when you’re driftin’
Comes a time
when you settle down
Comes a light
feelin’s liftin’
Lift that baby
right up off the ground.
Oh, this old world
keeps spinning round
It’s a wonder tall trees
ain’t layin’ down
There comes a time.
You and I we were captured
We took our souls
and we flew away
We were right
we were giving
That’s how we kept
what we gave away.
Oh, this old world
keeps spinning round
It’s a wonder tall trees
ain’t layin’ down
There comes a time.
— ‘night, all.
On TV a woman
having a physical
blurts “INEEDANHIVTEST!”
in the middle of hearing about
her blood pressure, and then
twists her lips into a half smile
and sighs as if she wants to say
something about how much better
she feels now.
She’s apparently not afraid
as much as she is embarrassed
and a little worried,
and I think we’re supposed
to laugh at the look on her face
and the tone of her voice.
I think
this is supposed to be
progress, and perhaps
it is,
if what this means is that
someone is going feel better
blurting out
how they want to live
a long time, or how
it’s better to know the truth
than to wonder
like so many others did.
Still,
I can’t laugh
because it’s taken so long
to get here, to get to a point
where someone bothers to think
that maybe a pretty blonde woman
in a late night ad
might make someone else want to ask,
to blurt something out
so few once thought
someone like her
would ever need to ask.
Thinking about all those people
who never asked, who asked
too late, who kept out of the doctor’s office
because of the overwhelming fear
of what they might hear, or who never
believed they could need to hear
answers
to that
unimagined question,
I can’t laugh
even though the woman on TV
seemed ready to laugh
two seconds after the camera was turned off,
who might have gone home and
because it felt OK to say it then
might have gone
to the doctor
the very next day.
And I can’t laugh even though
someone else might have done
the very same thing the very next day
because a funny commercial
made asking the question
easier.
I suppose it is progress that
I get to think this way
about something so simple
as asking, learning the truth,
smiling to oneself just for asking
for the truth;
I guess it’s progress that
someone like me,
who has never felt that need to ask,
who maybe should have asked
at some point
instead of counting on luck and statistics,
can sit here smugly and quibble
over whether
it’s appropriate
to laugh at such things
when all that matters is ensuring
that the question is asked and answered.
A recent discussion going on at Gotpoetry has made me realize that I’m so far out of step with the slam world these days that there’s no real going back.
I still think the audience that gathers around slam is my audience, but I’m such a fucking relic these days that I fear I’m never going to be heard as clearly as I could be elsewhere.
What’s left? I don’t know, but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to find out or to help create the new world.
All I have left is figuring out what my legacy will be. At least as far as this world is concerned, I’m just old news. Why do I keep beating my head against it?
I barely have energy to take care of myself these days, anyway.
I know I’ve said all these things before, and will likely say them again. Then again, you only say over and over again what you don’t want to believe is true. So I guess I’m doomed to the curmudgeon’s role, here and elsewhere.
Mother fucking hell and goddamn.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070621/ap_on_re_au_an/australia_aborigines
You know what flashed into my head? My dad’s service ID from when he was in the Army back in the 50s, back when after he was a POW in Korea, back when…
The ID card has printed on it, “American Indian — No Alcoholic Beverages Allowed.”
Hey, Australia — let’s really let it rip, shall we? Let’s get those residential schools back up and running for the kids, the ones you patterned after the American residential schools — you remember, “We must kill the Abo to save the child?” Of course, the guy who originated that here didn’t say “Abo,” he said “Indian.” Good to adapt policies for your own culture, because of course they work far better that way. They worked well back then, why not now?
Hey — have you tried the smallpox blankets yet? You’ve already managed to get ’em into confined spaces on marginal land — it’s the logical next step.
And while we’re at it, that whole censorship issue — don’t sweat it, really. But don’t stop at pornography alone. Hell, reading material in general is pretty intimidating — let’s make sure they don’t have books that might have any upsetting content!
I’d love to continue this rant, but I’m shaking as we speak. Hell, folks — just kill em and get it over with. It’s not their fault they’re inferior.
I was reminded that no matter how hard you try, you will still fuck up, and frequently in ways beyond repair.
I was reminded that works in progress only get a bye for so long before you have to call them simply “incomplete” and let them go.
And I recalled that nothing you do, no matter how well-intended, is safe from your own clumsiness.
features the Beat-influenced energy of Sympetalous as well as our always quirky open mike.
C’mon down.
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Things I hate: hot weather, earphones/headphones/earbuds, and the entire concept that you should only carry around and listen to music you already know you like.
Seven times out of ten if I’m listening to music it’s on something that is beyond my control — usually a streaming radio connection. I like serendipity. I like being surprised.
I like sometimes having to form an opinion about a song, and not always having a moment of happy recognition.
Pandora hands me things like what I like. I want a service that’ll say “Fuck your love of indie rock and postmodern jazz twanking, dickwad, suck on THIS” — and then hand me ABBA. I hate ABBA, but I can imagine moments when ABBA will be the exact thing I need to hear after a particularly up-my-own-ass moment of musical snobbery.
I hate headphones because music sharing and the resultant discussions are among my favorite memories in my life.
I’m with Robbie Robertson — music should never be harmless, by which he meant it should never leave you unchanged in some way. I am opposed to music as armor or badge or shell…it ought to be a burr under your heart.
None of this is meant to be ironic or sarcastic or parodic. I am beginning to hate those things too, because I am tired of distance, of fashionable numbness and glorified stupid pain at the typical twists and turns of normal life.
Fuck ironic distance, absolute personal control of your media diet, and your own hipness, my hipness, my insular stance and yours. Expect and embrace the unexpected. Allow your self to be discomforted regularly. Discomfort is the source of growth. It’s all there really is.
Dark Matter 