The Internationale

Taking the words of the Japanese girl

who saw the 'lain fawring' --

Off a fine Kolinsky sable brush the noon drizzles

Pacific Washington

Studio glass walls and overhead brighten so that from its wool

all sky's created equal.

.

Political Aikido

If good will won't work

back off.

An aggressor toward you

wastes himself.

His hacks, his arm thrusts,

twist them.

An aggressor toward you

hates himself.

His fury outward at you,

bend back.

Just so much his force to send,

used up.

Tyrants fall, their systems

thin sticks.


.

High Aesthetics

Beauty is as ugly does.

Yo! Literates!

It being a new year and all, an update of my reading habits seems called for, though I'm not sure by whom.

As a refresher of my habits, let me remind you that there is a stack of books by the bedside.  

I read a bit from each book each night.  They change over time.

Sometimes I read when I get a chance in my work life or waiting for a car lube or killing time in the car outside the mall when others are 'shopping'.

Or even when Lisa, my haircutter, has booked me into a time slot in her schedule too cramped to handle the proper perming of a lady before me who wanted a dye job, also, and conversation about the trip to the shore and how much fun the family had, and I have a choice of reading hairstyling mags, the Enquirer, or why-didn't-I-think-of-bringing-one-myself!

The current list may not represent books I will actually complete.

I don't mandate that of myself.  Sometimes enough is enough.  Sometimes it's better for the book author and me to part our ways amicably, having learned plenty about one another already.

So, the current list, alphabetical by author's last name:

1) Alain de Botton.  The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work.

2) Northrop Frye.  Anatomy Of Criticism.

3) Amy Gerstler, editor. The Best Poetry Of 2010.

4) Henning Mankell. The White Lioness.

5) Frederic Morton. A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889.

6) Jacob Neusner. Rabbinic Judaism: Structure And System.

7) L. Michael White. From Jesus To Christianity.

A smart list.  Probably too smart for me, so don't draw conclusions.

You might ask what I learn, and this general statement holds so very, very true, and I think holds true for any reader:  

To read well, adapt to style.

Writers write at their own pace, they have their own density.  

To 'get' them, you have to 'get into' them, swim in their waters, that temperature, those currents, the varying depths and dangers. 

Their content depends not so much on how it corresponds to an 'actual world of (wo)men', but on how that experienced world is conveyed.

Rotating the authors through an hour is a mental 'circuit training', running up the bleachers and down, then lying supine on the Bermuda grass to do sit-ups.  Work the parts in the interest of the whole.

I suppose a corollary for those of us blogsters (let alone poets) is:  

To write well, beget a style.

.

Differing Schools Of Thought

There are two groups who've tried to analyze what I do:

Those who think I talk too little, and those who think I talk too much.

They're both wrong.

.

Nostradamus, Nearly

1

To read what's next, read what's now

To read what's now, read what was

2

Prophecy:  the present condemning the present

3

Too much future, not enough time

(art work: Katherine Venturelli)

.

Glider

It is as if this truth-telling on the hotel pillow of the sleep room acts to cleanse

as if this new one over there were listening to the whisper of explication

how all youth flies true ultimately to make it by this up-vertiginous peak

where meadows bottom and below-down valleys finish-off a view of fresh witness.

Both quiet with intensity after a tang of greeting and now slumbering-out by pills

And you hope to wish to pretend that this darkness in the room truly

bodies-forth the young you at the end of a phone, falling asleep, 

to the endearing one, that voice, that sweet and only one.

.

Eccentricity

That which holds you back

That which saves you

Eco-Eden, Insects

You don't see them

They don't bite you

There's no 'disease transfer'

(Yes, I know:  some of them are fascinating, even beautiful.  That's your Eden.)

.

Indoor Duty

Reading work: unending, immature

The rain outside so preferable, so wet

Thrill of no control: 12 hours of car wash

.

Mother Nature Mantra

survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring to survive long enough to have offspring

.

Spoiler Alert

The one to stay alive is the blind man able to discern between a 5- and a 10-dollar bill.

Those Moments

When it's just my luck, it is so! -- to leave late having the roads all to myself and the music in my head.

Or when the fever breaks, I crave bread and butter, making it to the kitchen and seeing all that yellow.

And surely when I enter her, losing the time and thinking, dazed by eternity, I've always seen you again.

.

Hiking Up And Out

The Idealist: Of course we can

The Pessimist: Why bother

The Cynic: I told you so

Good Shave

I put a new blade into my razor

Fingernailing soap scum away and making it shine.

It's snowing now, the first time for it, and a squirrel hefts its late Fall bulk

Over visible grass to find a husk.

The room is warm, and my cheek is smooth.

.

Smoke This In Your Censer

Church:  where conformity masks as holiness.

Soul:  where we disguise us as gods, but fear to say so.

Bible:  where questions are misread as answers.

Prayer:  where we face away from ourselves at the wrong time.

God:  where we clothe what has no shoulders or hips.

Night Contrast

Walking in the rain with a sore throat

How good the soup will taste when I get home

Dibble-Dabble

Throwing out junk plastic

Collecting all worn cotton

There's little that makes me good.

Self-Socratics

Knaves and fools, hypocrites and weaklings, manipulators and gulls.

Is this another indictment of 'the world'?

Or a moment of self-examination?

.

An Economic Analysis, Or What

Defenders of the necessity for teaching things at a steep 'learning curve' likely faced their own when it was exploratory, leisurely, and loved.  Now they promote because they profit greatly or bask in their own self-achievement from having undergone the test and been found able.

Praising women for their ability to 'multi-task' serves similar purposes -- continuing to exploit female gullibility with an insincere pat on the head, and irritating male pride into 'proving' no woman can show up a man.

Divide and conquer.  More for less.


.