First flower to show up in the yard. The tulips are making progress though.

Spring is like a perhaps hand


III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

by E. E. Cummings

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Picture of a beam in the Guinness storehouse in Dublin from Wikiepedia.

Joshua Tree

from File magazine. (just keeping my page alive). I think its been 20 years since I drove through the park.

The Girl You Lost to Cocaine

I picked up this record by Sia at a Starbucks when I was traveling for work. One of the music blogs (Pop Matters) posted several of her videos so it was a pleasant reminder to go back and give it a listen again. Enjoy!

"I need a camera to my eye, reminding which lies have I been hiding"

To paraphrase the words of Matt L., "Between you and Churlita taking pictures the other night at the Dublin I am surprised no one had a seizure from all the flashes."

"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go. "

in Just-


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

E. E. Cummings

"It's a semi-automatic, Believers are ecstatic... "

This is a postcard from a friend back in Conn. that I received on Monday. I do not want to know what he was doing in Kentucky. I spent the morning preparing slow-cooker chili and listening to the remastered version of Pavement's Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition.

St. Valentines Day Massacre

This bike has been chained to this parking meter for about six months now. My blog is starting to look like this bike. If it wasn't for Google Reader and my music widget it would never get updated. More effort is required in all aspects of my endeavors. I am planning on not smoking cigarettes after my birthday passes on Sunday. This will also probably require staying out of my favorite pubs for a while or at least not drinking as that is my main trigger. So enough of all that...Happy Valentine's Day!

Fake Plastic Trees by Jeff Tweedy

I ganked this from Muzzle of Bees.

And check out this forthcoming Wilco movie, Ashes of American Flags

Army Cats from The New Yorker

Army Cats


1.

Over by the cemetery next to the CP

you could see them in wild catmint going crazy:

I watched them roll and wriggle, paw it, lick it,

chew it, leap about, pink tongues stuck out, drooling.



Cats in the tanks’ squat shadows lounging.

Or sleeping curled up under gun turrets.

Hundreds of them sniffing or licking

long hind legs stuck in the air,



great six-toed brutes fixing you with a feral,

slit-eyed stare . . . everywhere ears twitching,

twitching as the armor plate expanding

in the heat gave off piercing little pings.



Cat invasion of the mind. Cat tribes

running wild. And one big pregnant

female comes racing through weeds to pounce

between the paws of a marble dog



crouching on a grave and sharpens

her claws against his beard of moss

before she goes all silky, luxuriously

squirming right under the dog’s jaws,



and rolls over to expose her swollen belly.

Picture her with gold hoop earrings

and punked-out nose ring like the cat goddess Bast,

bronze kittens at her feet, the crowd drinking wildly,



women lifting up their skirts as she floats down

the Nile, a sistrum jangling in her paw.

Then come back out of it and sniff

her ointments, Lady of Flame, Eye of Ra.



2.

Through the yard the tanks come gunning,

charioteers laughing, goggles smeared with dust

and sun, scattering the toms slinking

along the blast wall holding back the waves



from washing away white crosses on the graves,

the motors roaring through the afternoon

like a cat fuck yowling on and on.

The gun turrets revolving in the cats’ eyes



swivel and shine, steel treads clanking,

sending the cats flying in an exodus

through brown brittle grass, the stalks

barely rippling as they pass.



3.

After the last car bomb killed three soldiers

the Army Web site labelled them “martyrs.”

Four civilians killed at checkpoints. Three on the airport road.

A young woman blown up by a grenade.



Facts and more facts . . . until the dead ones

climb up out of the graves, gashes on faces

or faces blown away like sandblasted stone

that in the boarded-up museums’



fractured English “leaves the onlooker

riddled and shaken, nothing but a pathetic gaping . . .”

And then I remember the ancient archers

frozen between reverence and necessity—



who stare down the enemy, barbarians,

as it’s told, who nailed sacred cats to their shields,

knowing their foes outraged in their piety

would throw down their bows and wail like kittens

by Tom Sleigh

Saddlebacking is the new black. Look it up.

Since I am using the person who introduced me to this band's computer to burn music I thought I should share this. First glimpsed on the I Am Fuel blog.

photo ©2009 sharad haksar (from File Magazine)

I seem to be ignoring the blog because of facebook. I will make more of an effort here. Still reading all the Lippman and Hiaasen books I can get from public library at the moment although sidetracked by the book about the circus fire I found on discard shelf. This is probably funniest commercial I have seen in a while. (Warning: Animal balloon sex is involved.) Enjoy the new Neko single from Paste Magazine sampler. Record is due out March 1st.

Neko Case- People Got A Lotta Nerve

My winter retreat on the Black Sea. An Iowa dacha sans waterfront. The new Odessa is Kalona.

I have drifted into Kalona proper to use Internet at the library and spend time in a nice little coffee shop. The last few days I have been shacked up with a stack of novels back at the farm. I am now a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen, his book Skinny Dip, is one of the those laugh out loud Florida farces. I don't know why I have never read him before. Too many books, so little time I suppose. From there I moved on to his Basket Case, which includes lyrics of a song written by the late great Warren Zevon which was included on his record, My Ride is Here.

I have also been spending time in Baltimore thanks to Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. Start with Baltimore Blues.

Some cows from my friend's farm where I am staying to house sit his dog while he is in Florida for work. Not a fair trade but its not too bad to get out of town and enjoy the bucolic life.

Happy Boxing Day

New Year

Skiing in July,
fishing in February,

the days disjoint
and groove,

a meltdown of months,
a mind out of whack.

I'm still back at August
where the Beaujolais

that came
from 35 villages

fit sideways
inside my head,

the dorsal fin of it,
the brain slowed

por fin to belief.
Between then and now

the numbers,
an 8-Ball routine

jacked on polyethylene,
trees unmercifully diminished,

choked by maneuverings
and light.

I'll release last year
in May

when I shovel
the driveway

and go geologic,
a Paleolithic hell—

if each season
were twice as long

the year
would wear me well.

Teresa Leo

The Halo Rule
Elixir Press


I spent most of last night with Humphrey Bogart on his birthday as TCM was showing my favorite movies of his (Casablanca, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen). The clip above played in between movies and was very moving like the clip they do on the Oscars.

Christmas Day was pleasantly spent on couch watching television and finishing Amitav Gosh's amazing Sea of Poppies. The only downer is that the book ended on a cliff hanger and I must wait for the next book to come out.

I talked to some of my family back in Connecticut and was relieved to hear that presents had arrived in time. I picked out some of the pretty Ugly Dolls, Ox and Puglee, for my niece and youngest nephew.

The poem is due to be retired from the Poetry Daily archive and it is likely that this will be my last post of 2008 so its kind of a mixed bag. Peace.

"James Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets." - Raymond Chandler

Hyperbole aside, Chandler is mostly right. I saw this on the new book shelf at the library and decided its been too long since I have read any Fleming. This will go well towards warming your cockles by the fire.

Alphabet Juice

This could easily be my favorite book of the year. It is definitely at the top of my gift list for those who love words, usage, and etymology. Plus its hilarious. There is an except here.

I know I talked about Iowa City being recognized as a city of writers but I think it is clearly one of the best cities for readers. I have managed to find numerous steals at the local public library's retail store. Someone recently dumped what looks like their entire non-fiction collection and I happily snapped up several wonderful biographies (Morgan, Rockefeller, Teddy Roosevelt) as well as some great collections of essays, Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence and Clive James' Cultural Amnesia.

Despite the quote about cultural and reaching for ones revolver (James covers this a bit) Cultural Amnesia is an amazing concentration of erudition. I can't believe I have never read much of James before this. I can not recommend this book highly enough. Like Blount's book it is perfectly suited to skip around and dip into. It will also lead one to at least another several dozen books suggested by its author. lector emptor.

Sea of Poppies is also a feast of words and one of the few novels I have come across that comes with its own Chrestomathy. (Which is online at Amitav Ghosh's webpage.) It turns out this is the first book of an intended trilogy which means one will have to wait patiently for the story to continue. Drat!

He took down the Decembrists and Kanye; Who's next?

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Operation Humble Kanye - Stephen Beats Kanye

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Modern Skirts

December has arrived bringing with it the first blanketing of snow for our fair city. I had a good time over Thanksgiving. Wednesday night at the last minute I was talked into going to see a hypnotist at a local club. I almost went under but some one's drunken fiance brought the bouncer over to our table and broke my concentration.As it was the performer also had to come over bring two of us fully back awake as we were partially hypnotized.

One of our group did end up on stage and even became the closing act. After enjoying the series of minor humiliations of others I am so glad I was not one of them. There would of been a video of me hypnotized to imagine that I had no genitalia on YouTube about 20 minutes after the show ended.

So after a long Wednesday night Thursday was a relaxing day of great food, a croquet match, several rounds of euchre, and getting beaten down in Foosball. I made a pumpkin cheesecake that came out okay even though I forgot the bourbon whip cream topping.

The song now most stuck in my head is the single, Soft Pedals, from the Athens based band Modern Skirts forthcoming record. I heard it on the new Paste Magazine sampler. The new album is produced by REM's Mike Mills and Cracker's David Lowery. Check it out here from Aquarium Drunkard blog. If you happen to be in Atlanta for New Year's Eve they will be playing with Cracker and Young MC. Not too shabby a line up.