21 October 2011

when will these criminals realize...

From: monte merrick
Subject: when will these criminals realize you cant fight two wrongs with the same stone
Date: 30 May 2011, 20:19:01 PDT
To: monte merrick


here we are in the age of formal
requests for the last place
we ever thought we'd look and it's,
you know,
cherry blossoms and that sort  of thing
cups of green tea in the tanka of the day -
and we think we'll just go along this way
and wait for the next two or three things to die -
oh dont worry this aint gonna be
a ranting song about no
modern age -
these black cats have already crossed this path
this isnt the first time
we've seen the pulmonary
or the mainline or
that block of
osage.

we have certainly been far enough from our mama's knees
to know money's never
going to grow
on trees
we know when the fire jumps up from the sewer
its time to start building some kites or
take your last things with you
in a clear bag to jail.

"in the coldest morning yet"  
running engine, parked, red smoke rising from the bottom of the
night, and all the rest is spilled into the honshu sea and of course
the air is sweet on a day like this - old man TeeVee gliding
down over the dunes
with a little memo from
the day the bear will ask
what we mean
when we say think.
what we mean when we say
"hands in the air or i'll fill you full of lead"
and copper and silver and gold and
uranium and arsenic and
old hay.

here we find it rather a bind that
some machines dont know
how to shut themselves down.

we can plan this for another time, you see - but that doesnt mean
the calendar knows.
see you next to me in a broken heap
at the bottom on these boulders
in a storm called repair.
spend the spring cleaning the spokes, spend the night
usefully. spend the night in tutelage.

this is when the moon comes up. dont weight for another sign -
these things arent cheap and  its a savvy muthafucka
who knows which way
the  weathervane
predicts.
some of these beats drop straight through -
the rest we contrive.  
spend all day in the internet,
a battle roar - a blank side.

try on this coffin for size - nobody dreams of
a-waitin' the resurrection in a mass grave - or slipping forever
to the bottom of the ninth and you dont have to play.
we let these phantasms make their own way home.
we offer bread to the time of day.
a little stick props a box and is tied to a string.
it's a trap, they all scream.

20 July 2011

i once knew a cowbird named wolf

i once knew
           this cowbird named
wolf
           he comes in
14 colors

- depends on whether
he's
in the flash,
or up on the roof,
                                 you dig?

he takes his time
             with the oldies
these days
                                 and the last lantern
                                 glimmers.


             sun is rising and
there's no stopping
that.

                                 wake and wonder
                                 where your momma's at.


in the words of charlie
               also known as
               slim -
"disable the fucker"
       or

       clear the deck
                and watch it

                                   spin.




11 July 2011

03 June 2011

16 April 2011

dreaming this now, part one

x
    part one:

    hiroshima to fukushima

please turn off
    all electronic devices

please be sure to help us
sincerely consider the
following
propositions

this may require specialized equipment or
beliefs

it is not necessarily obvious to us
if we are incapacitated
by hunger or
love

please retain all rights to the
next set of challenges
now taking refuge
in the details

o, ancestors! who never
wanted it to turn out this way.


π
you fly over
the world at night and
you see
there below you
the glow

of this or that town
industry, too.

there's more than a few disasters
making the rounds

if we put the last thing broken
on the scale
our images will fall
into place

this has been coming since i dont know when.

ask any mofo turkey for a real piece of pie and
she/he will tell you the right thing.

we call this the end of time, oh yes and

lets talk about it
for about
another minute

and then?

we wake up
into the dawn of this perfectly
fine day -
soon terns barking, geese
departing.

the insistence of the surf
on the shore
is a constant that
        can't be divided.

we see the moon pull her this way
and that
and we say yes

yes we say oh.


ƒ
option f:

madman predicts:

End of the World (as we know it)
   
the ten thousand circles of yellow light
    in these few blocks alone
    moon looking with her eyes
down on the dead 
and the not quite yet 
now praying to carved
demons on the cornices
of this civil despair,
city-lit gulls like
demons on the street corners,
as glazed and worn
as a pad on a brake.
    blogging into the stratosphere!
    to the very top!
against our own
repair.



we can look back to
these years  - each fish
rising
to the top of a lake,
white-bellied and bloated,
as black birds fall.

now poems so
large they got
whole modern cities
and all of their beings
burned to the ground -
blowing in the wind. 
as if such was a
suitable fact
for a poem.

these two guys are standing at the bar
one leans back:
        'enola gay? -
i think she got married and moved away.'

(we might each have secretly longed to sit
where the captain sits. a fantasy of power
is as common as mice - but that's not
where the action is.)

this particle breaks as a wave
and dives.
those five gulls flying south
above the crest of the dunes -
and the loon crossing over from
the bay.

this is a story of westerlies
and tides.
and a modern lament:
how do i outrun the sky?


❽❶❽

step into the wave, she
steps into you.
the ocean says,
because,
that's why.

the ocean says these and
    those and this and that and
        each little and big
live thing.

the ocean says
tentacles
as long as
the deck of a ship
and the sailors all slide
down - down to the sea.

    listen, while you sleep,
    to the
beat of her nearby heart -
open your window to the
rhythm of the surf
and you'll see.

sanderlings evade the last of each
wave.

no one expects the ocean to think
that another wharf will
make the world
go away.

the ocean is just the ocean,
she says.
(as) she sees it,
the ocean is
just.

she says rolling in, she
drawls pulling out

    listen

you can hear in the
slip and slide of the
wind and the sea
on the grasses
and the pines
and the lupine
and the dune,
the crying of gulls six
hundred miles away, and the
amplified string of a
distant guitar
and the hum of the land as we
sail through space.

you can hear the world knock
as persistent as a
drum.

you can step close to the sea and wait and
the wave comes. that puff of wind blows
the last bit of foam against an exposed
bit of ankle - a tingling surprise, a
sparkling breath. you find yourself awake
in another of these moments, singular,
alive and more frequently seen, that occur
without  passing and leave no residual
time.


☛❊☚

20 March 2011

it might be that the average westerner only has bad information about Africa.

According to Reuters, she is a rebel fighter celebrating the withdrawal of Gaddafi troops from Benghazi on Saturday. (Al Jazeera English 3/20)

The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972  artist: Betye Saar


13 March 2011

Naomi Klein interviewed by Amy Goodman on the new kind of "Company Town"

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I just found out about this last night, and like I said, there’s so much going on that these extraordinary measures are just getting lost in the shuffle. But in Michigan, there is a bill that’s already passed the House. It’s on the verge of passing the Senate. And I’ll just read you some excerpts from it. It says that in the case of an economic crisis, that the governor has the authority to authorize the emergency manager—this is somebody who would be appointed—to reject, modify or terminate the terms of an existing contract or collective bargaining agreement, authorize the emergency manager for a municipal government—OK, so we’re not—we’re talking about towns, municipalities across the state—to disincorporate. So, an appointed official with the ability to dissolve an elected body, when they want to.
AMY GOODMAN: A municipal government.
NAOMI KLEIN: A municipal government. And it says specifically, "or dissolve the municipal government." So we’ve seen this happening with school boards, saying, "OK, this is a failing school board. We’re taking over. We’re dissolving it. We’re canceling the contracts." You know, what this reminds me of is New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when the teachers were fired en masse and then it became a laboratory for charter schools. You know, people in New Orleans—and you know this, Amy—warned us. They said, "What’s happening to us is going to happen to you." And I included in the book a quote saying, "Every city has their Lower Ninth Ward." And what we’re seeing with the pretext of the flood is going to be used with the pretext of an economic crisis. And this is precisely what’s happening. So it starts with the school boards, and then it’s whole towns, whole cities, that could be subject to just being dissolved because there’s an economic crisis breaking collective bargaining agreements. It also specifies that—this bill specifies that an emergency manager can be an individual or a firm. Or a firm. So, the person who would be put in charge of this so-called failing town or municipality could actually be a corporation.
AMY GOODMAN: Whose government they dissolve, a company takes over.
NAOMI KLEIN: A company takes over. So, they have created, if this passes, the possibility for privatization of a whole town by fiat. And this is actually a trend in the contracting out of public services, where you do now have whole towns, like Sandy Springs in Georgia, run by private companies. It’s very lucrative. Why not? You start with just the water contract or the electricity contract, but eventually, why not privatize the whole town? So—
AMY GOODMAN: And what happens then? Where does democracy fit into that picture?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is an assault on democracy. It’s a frontal assault on democracy. It’s a kind of a corporate coup d’état at the municipal level.