Monday, September 29, 2008

b.lissed-out

"Who’s happier? happiest?”
Nobody's asking anybody;
it's just too much to ask,
there's no cause for joy.
I really said: happiness;
joy’s unthinkable, unless
you‘re so b.lissed-out*
joy’s overwhelming you.
It can, it might, maybe has;
if so, forget I asked you..
It’s your condition,
mine's a lot less joyous;
actually, it’s quite anxious.
Isn’t that obvious? No? No!?
You really are b.lissed-out*!

(a/k/a: *B-listed-out)

(29 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v5

Who'll take Credit?

“Don’t turn back/around,
don’t look back/down,”
don’t take No for an ans. ”
Injunctions frighten us. We
don’t know which end's uP,
or which's upperMost. No-
body can bear the prospect
of a 2nd Great Depression,
except economists, who say
depressions are relative:
we’re already in 2 wars, a 3rd
won’t pull us out of this 1.
What if: space-aliens arrive?
Maybe they'll take credit!
(Alan Greenspan won’t.)

(29 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v5

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Salvatore Ferragamo lasts

On a brightly sunny Norcal morning,
as we both limp thru an upscale mall,
Ivo says he tells his wealthy friends
“Don’t think about making money,
just think about…staying alive.” He’s
dead-serious, financial times are dire,
nobody knows if/when they will fail,
how far they’ll fall before hitting
bottom & where the bottom lies.
We 2 limp thru that mall each a.m.,
past Salvatore Ferragamo shoes; Ivo
got a pair for $20 at a thrift-store;
tho a bit tight, they’re dead cheap
& will last him the rest of his life,
& beyond, returned to a thrift-store.


.(26 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v5

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Wall St. = Playground Games

Perhaps Wall St. only comes down to nothing much more than a late-development of eager childrens’ games, played on the schoolyard playground while the teachers eat lunch (while a designated teacher attends the players in the playground.)

“Buck, Buck, Buck” (originally “Bucca, Bucca, Bucca” in Latin, an ancient Roman boys’ game) in which one boy plays the donkey, while the others mount him, one after another, until he collapses under their accumulated weight. The first one to mount him then takes his place, ad repetitam, each then demonstrating sheer endurance for the sake of the boy-pack, with no special honor accruing therefrom to anyone. Think: novice/intern brokers.

“King/Queen of the Mountain” in which all the children struggle to mount the (what is perceived as) highest point in the schoolyard (snow/sand-pile, wall, fence) by running up it or climbing it. They are often broken up by the one attending teacher who mistakes the strenuous contest for a mere melee, when of course, it is actually an elimination-derby with the premise that some one child must gain the height & be (figuratively) crowned King/Queen of the 'mountain.'. For how long they remain on top is determined by the ferocity of the disgruntled contestants, who seek to (figuratively) dethrone the (temporary) King/Queen by any single-child stratagem possible.The height of the 'mountain' is largely aperceptual. Think: experienced brokers.

“I’ve got a Secret!” in which one child purports to have a secret, & others sidle up to them, one by one, to be told it, secretly. Whether the secret-teller tells the same secret to each child is unspecified. What's certain is that the secret becomes distorted by each child who hears it, who then tells it to the others, who then distort it even further, to the degree that a distant/distorted version of the original secret is the last version retold, at which point that becomes the new secret, & the game repeats. Think: analysts.

You may now adduce any other relevant schoolyard playground games - as you best remember them. – Bill Costley

Pars capitalista

The current Wall St. imbroglio ought to & does, indeed. gave everyone pause re: finance, but does it have any greater implications? What about the obsessive manipulation of arcane sources of derived value as an obsessive human intellectual trait?

My brilliant 2nd-wife (Carolin Combs, who died on 26 JAN 07) & I used to joke about the astrological derivate pars Arabica (taking a part of a part of a part), but derivates are merely an expression of the obsessive human mind going about its habit of dividing & revaluing, from which come categorical jesuitry & obvious fiscal tactical benefits.

Is that all about to dry up pronto? I rather doubt it, but it's now under a sudden spotlight with the promise of 'stricter' regulation.

The pars capitalista is being forced to justify itself to itself by itself. Of course, it can, with so much investment in it by financiers, who don't intend to voluntarily reduce their jobs to nil addendum.They must believe they are a value-adding profession to justify its spectacular salaries. Mere clerks they ain't; just ask'em! (e.g. Talk to Chuck - Schwab.)

But what happens when fractionated value implodes uncontrollably? What's left to reform/regulate? Will we ever get to reforming the micro-financial lobe of the greater human brain? Do think. I just have & so has everybody else, so why shouldn't you? You're on.

Meanwhile, your quasi-relaxing assignment is to read Mark Twain's shortish-fictions: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865), "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1899) & "The Mysterious Stranger." (1890-posthumous) Report due: ASAP.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Engineered by Cheney

The Piscean Age gasps, weepily flooding
the world w/waves of growing fiscal fear.
Hothead Sen. John McCain = Cosmo Topper
& nobody’s convinced but other old POWs
raving that “socialism has come to America”
from under their scrambled-egged USN caps.
The Aquarian Age arises calmly, as a cooly
restrained audience listens to Sen. Barak
Obama
make today’s most credible case,
but if neither of them can win in November,
who the hell can? Ivo predicts they’ll either
join to form a unity government, or we’ll get
a 3rd Dubya term, engineered by Cheney.

(26 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v4

Thursday, September 25, 2008

A little tiny black cloud

A little tiny black cloud on the horizon
appears to be heading towards Obama,
who instantly triangulates its purpose.
“’Coon’ (to white-racists) Edison’s sent it
to spook (to white-racists) me here today.
But I’m not conned or cooned or spooked.”
He bursts-out laughing & the audience does.
“Or, it’s just one little, tiny black cloud.
That’s all, one little, tiny black cloud.”
The cloud suddenly dumps all its rain
directly over Obama, but nobody else.
“Now I get it, it’s a flummox! It can’t
drown a D-coon de-conned by Con-Ed.”
The audience explodes laughing; Obama
repeats the joke & they explode again.

(25 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v4

Solid in Gold

“Fiddle-Faddle, Skee-Daddle!"
Scrooge McDuck shplutters,
fondling gold in his gold bathtub
awash w/specie from every gold
vendor & minter in the world.

“Gold makes th' world go‘round',”
McDuck sing-songs, “Oh, gold,
gold, gold, oh, gold, gold, gold!”
Pluck him: he’s totally golden
under his cold silvery feathers.

You expected to find - sterling?
McDuck Bank was solid in gold
before Goldman Sachs wasn't.


(25 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v7

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Wall St.{vs} Gold

(not for Goldman Sachs)

Wall St., Wallet St., up-against-the-Wall St.,
what’s it matter if you’ve been wiped-out?
What you call it, where it is, is insignificant
vs whether it’s safe against total wipeout.
Who do you know who thinks money’s safe?
Inside everyone’s head’s a cold vault of gold
hidden somewhere in Switzerland, safe,
sunk deep in lakes like stolen Nazi gold,
gold, gold, gold. Anyone surnamed Gold
(e.g., San Francisco novelist, Joe Gold)
must think night & day: “I’m solid Gold.”
W/silver-change you can surely call home,
tho, for now, you have a cell-phone, Gold.

(24 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v10

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Do It!

Do The Obvious

Obviously,

it’s the thing2do
the nexttime
you’re asked2do
whatever itis
you’re asked2do.

Y w@ste Time
or eNergy or
mOney or
bre@th?
Justdo
it!

(23 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)
.

Monday, September 22, 2008

McCain, razing

“Shit floats!" chirps McCain
shaving w/a straight-edge
in the campaign morning;
"Kick Black Ass!”
his dark-side grumbles.

He frets he can't trust
Sarah to gum him.
“Her teeth bit Obama’s
black-ass,” he says,
"but her gums?”

Gumming's for McCain;
sucking's for her baby,
fucking's for her husband.
McCain bites his inner jaw,
draws blood, cries in pain,

“Where’s Sarah? Sarah?!
Find me a styptic pencil."

(22 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v12

OK, OK, OK!

The dream dissolves when sub-dreams
can’t be factored to yield more dreams;
once a dream's lost, no new dream arises.

Disneyworld's our common dreamworld;
dress up as Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, et al.,
& nobody bothers to think anything of it.
It’s all OK w/them - if the former USA

becomes OK; OK, our only state; OK City,
our OKapital; & everyone say: “I’m OK!”
(If it’s all @ dream, it's OK with them.)

(23 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v15

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Getchya boxa rahks!

(in Bahs'tin dialect; in re: OSH's radio-ads.)

Commoditizin' a wooden cu.yd. boxa rahks is
OK w/landscapahas, transhippahs, & buildahs,
but if you can finda missin' link in this chain
you’d liketa fill in, speak up! Speakin' PR,
I’d liketa add booze-talkin' radio commercials
that'll move all those rahks outta nurseries
& onta the serigraphic yards of homeownahs,
landscapahs of malls & humongous hotels.
Wheah all those rahks cum frum, nobody
really wantsta know. “From wheah rahks do”
is about all the disclosha you’re gonna get.
Wantchya heavy wooden boxa rahks/not?

(20 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v7

Friday, September 19, 2008

Sitting on Bibles

(defending marriage-for-all)

From earliest childhood,
literalists must sit on Bibles
at the table to be able to eat;
years later, they're still sitting
on Bibles, compressing them.
But what's in them? Not
what they heard as kids:

God loves them. Why? They
don't know, denying God's
all is all, their brains frozen..
All is all = everyone's included,
male/female, gay/straight.
Marriage joins everyone willing
to say they're married.

Brain-frozen literalists believe
Noah's Ark's on Mt. Ararat,
emptied of its passengers,
now endlessly bred-out,
& we're their progeny

Let's save our World
from Biblical nonsense
& literalist rigidities. Let's
shape up, or ship out to
our moon or reddy Mars,
deserted aeons ago.

(17 SEP 08, 4:41 PDT, Santa Clara CA)v11

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Hickory Dickory’s dork

Dubya mangles a Mother Goose rhyme.

“Ol' Hickory Dickory’s dork ran the clock;
the dork struck one, struck another one,
struck another one, struck another one,
struck another one, struck...another one,

so maybe I’d better fire that dork, Cox!”

“Don’t this pome say it all!” says Dubya,
“I never uster like recitin’ pomes, butt
some pomes speak right to my brain."
(The clock strikes one & one & one.)

(17 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v2

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Mcainomics

“I don’t know economics? Like hell!
Holy hell!” explodes John McCain,
“I read Samuelson’s ECONOMICS;
played pinochle & canasta & beat
Alan Greenspan & Andrea Mitchell,
tho why the hell they wouldn't play
poker, I’ll never know! Alan’s face
is just about as stony a poker-face
as I saw anywhere in the Navy.
Why hell, Lt. Dick Nixon made
a bundle running a poker-game
in the Pacific during WW2, or so
my 4-star admiral dad told me.."

(16 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v3

"If I Water"

Here's a poem I've recently written & revised this last Sunday in a poetry workshop here in San Jose CA where it wasn't very much appreciated by the 2 convening young academics (one of whom went to the Iowa Wokshops) because it lacked suff. illustrative imagery (it only has 2 images, in the 1st-line: plant &: water), which I intended, because it's predominantly a thought-poem, not an image-poem, as you can see (below.)

I explained: "It's not image-predominant, it's almost all fully-explicit subtext, written as though 20th-cent.Imagism...just hadn't happened." This wasn't appreciated either, & I was quickly told that Shakespeare was an imagist. Well, despite his secretive sonnets, I doubt he'd quite be able to grasp what an image has finally come to mean post-Pound & Co. Shakespeare/Marlowe always had lots of dangerous things to say & truly dangerous political ideas to embody, despite/because of the Tudor-Stuart police-state & its ubiquitous spies, courts, & punishments (secret torture & public death.) Overly gay Marlowe was allegedly murdered (for being an R.C. spy), but it's also alleged that he instead fled to Italy where he wrote what we have come to think of as Shakespeare's 'Italian' comedies & tragedies, e.g., "Romeo & Juliet", etc.) which Italian escape, etc. Pound would obviously have surely wanted to have duplicated - but only if Il Duce ('The Boss' -E.P.) had lived & prevailed.

Anyway, I made up the compound-term: what-lives (stanza 1, line 4, end), in French "qui vive* which in British English carries other (hunting/joyous) connotations; 'on the qui vive' once meant 'going out for a good time on the town.' This poem is more Japanese than western-European, based on the mode the Japanese call 'mourning/regretting the passing-away of things' (mono no aware).which the French would translate as "la tristesse pour cela qui se passe" (sorrow over that which passes-away.)

“If I Water”

If every plant I water
depends upon me, even briefly,
how important am I to it?
Or am I just tending what-lives?
When I die, who’ll tend it?

Or am I temporarily necessary,
my effect, only sporadic, or
am I minimizing my effect?
Just how lasting is any of this?
Maybe I’m just better off writing.

(10 AUG 08 Santa Clara CA - 14 SEP 08, San Jose CA)

Monday, September 15, 2008

Shoey Dookey

“Shit...on my shoes!?” snarls
John McCain,.looking down
in horror at his Ferragamos,
standing before a long mirror.
“This election’s getting nasty!
I’d better start wearing my old
Navy service-blacks. I wore'm
back then & I can wear'm
again, now, just to soft-soap
service-families who expect me
to still wear them, campaigning.
Yes, service-blacks as black as
Obama’s own black pair! (laughs)
That's an officers'-mess joke!”
He can’t help chuckling & he's
almost alone as he does. Sarah’s
lipsticking-up a mirror away.

(15 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v4

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Purest McCain

“Next, think of Obama naked!”continues
John McCain to a room of middle-aged
flyover women who are wondering why
in heaven he’s asking them to do it.

“This presumptious, naked young man
intends to profane the Oval Office,
by exposing his private-parts! What
a depraved mind he must have!”They
shudder at 'depraved', remembering
Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky
on her knees in the Oval Office.
.
“Our Nation’s House deserves a pure
President, a Republican, pure in mind,
intent, heart & soul; I am that pure
warrior & have always been. I’ve
suffered for My Country, purely"”

making them gasp once they realizie
just how extraordinarily pure he is.

(05 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA) v6

OBAMA'S BANANAS EXPOSED!

OBAMA'S BANANAS EXPOSED

Category code: political direct (pol-dm)

(Chicago, IL; D-M daily news; C: pol-dm) 14 SEP 08

Republican propagandists are widely direct-mailing
sexually explicit photos of Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL)
sitting beside a man-sized bunch of overripe bananas

under a 64pt-bold B&W headline:
SEXUALLY PRESUMPTIVE;
32-pt B&W body copy follows,

alleging Sen.Obama will import a man-sized
bunch of overripe bananas into the Oval Office
for a daily nude lunchtime bi-sexual orgy.

This mailing exposes Sen. Obama’s brown bananas
but not Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) white bananas,

politically strengthening, or
maybe even weakening McCain,

provoking young, black voters in urban areas,
repulsing older whites in rural areas,
deeply disgusting the American heartland
which, as ever, is a political battleground..

Obama’s banana's brand is not exposed.
Chiquita™ Brands International (NYSE: CQB) denies it is.

(14 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v6

Saturday, September 13, 2008

DRILL, (UH) BABY, (UH) DRILL

Determined to lubricate her appeal
while in her home state of Alaska,
Gov. Sarah Palin’s pumping hot
political oil by offshore-drilling

in a silver pipeliner uniform, doing
deep-squats & shouting “Drill, Baby!”
to audiences bellowing her deepest
grunts, not just repeating them.

"We’re going to drill (uh) down to make
this nation even more energy efficient,
(uh)” she said. to cheers of “Drill!, Baby!”
"You're right, drill, (uh) baby, (uh) drill!

I’m a mother of 5 & believe me, I know
what baby-drilling‘s all about, (uh) baby,
& you’d better believe I’ll drill, (uh) baby,
once I drill (uh) down in (uh) Washington!”

Chorus: “Drill, Baby, Drill!”

(13 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v3

Thursday, September 11, 2008

“Weather/weather not...”

[NWS Weather Advisory 080808-1]

Hurricane Ike, not named after
Gen.Dwight David 'Ike' Eisenhower,
34th U.S. [Republican] president,
is due to reach the TX coast Friday.

[NWS map insert]

“Weather/not Ike strikes TX, it's
a really big storm!" says the President,
speaking from Tulsa. "Up here in OK
really good people will take in Texans."


[NWS map insert]

The 43rd president stands by TX
“Weather/weather not Ike strikes,
& no matter where it strikes/not."
No further statement is expected.

(11 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v4

White on White

Kasimir Malevitch, Ukrainan
“Suprematist composition: White on White” (1918)
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80385


Whatever you may be thinking,
it’s not pure white on purer white,
actually, it looks a bit greenish,

but that may be my old CRT,
maybe you see it quite whitely
on your flat-screen. Malevitch

felt spiritually freed up by it, as
a result of the 1917 Revolution.
How do you feel knowing that?

Does it still look as white to you?
You don’t have to answer. You
just have to look at it & tilt right.

You can hardly do otherwise.
Go ahead, just try not to. Try.
No, I’m not putting you on,

nor was Malevitch in 1918.
That was then, this is now;
this is now, that was then.

Tilt your damnedest: Tilt!


(11 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v2

Manhattan, ReBuilding

A few months after 9/11
I visited the refilling site
of the World Trade Towers
with my son, who lived
nearby on Hudson St.,

slow-walking together
over temporary planks
on the viewing platform
to see the construction site
that looked like any other.

Days later, I jay-walked there
& an earnest Manhattanite
shouted at me:“Do you know
what you’re doing?” I shouted
back: “I’m frum Bahstin!”
(wheah jay-walking’s normal.).

That was then; this is now; I
live at the bottom of S.F. Bay
& think only of the Manhattan
where my son lives, way up
in Washington Heights at 169th.
miles from where it happened.

Why would I think differently?
Manhattan’s always rebuilding;
ask any true Manhattanite.

(11 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v1

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

MSM media-grinder

“They’re all just bloodsuckers!” shrieks
Sarah Barracuda, on being told she’s
being interviewed by the national MSM,
snarling “What they’re doing is a crime!
They suck our blood & spit it out over
our innocent believing public who don’t
know us any better. Who can stop them?”
Attila McCain smiles & shakes his head;
“They did it to me when I ran before &
they’ve been waiting for me ever since.”
Now they’re both in the MSM-grinder,
but won't be fully media-roasted until
super-finely processed by the press.

(10 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v3

Moo-slim O’bama

“I know you’ll play it proud, “
says Attilla McCain,” as proud
as Mrs. Punch of being called
‘a pig in lipstick’ by moo-slim
O’bama, who can’t eat pig.
Who‘s he think he’s kidding?”

Hot Mrs.AAA-laska belittles him:
“O’bama can’t lay a hand on me;
eyes closed, I can out-slap him,
now he’s cornered himself,
you know I can lock him in,
'strategically speaking!' "

over a sweet mess of spare ribs.

(10 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v4

Monday, September 8, 2008

Attilla the Wonk

Feeling half his age (72), Attila McCain
threatens everyone w/ Sarah Barracuda:
“I’m the maverick; & with my maverika
on my right, I'll take on all of Washington;
her sizzling tongue'll lash Beltway ass.”
As he speaks, his short grey hair grows,
short sword juts, bolas dangle dangerously.
Frank Frazetta fantasias drive him nutso:
“Appoint Arnold to dress my cabinet in
raw buckskins, w/sweaty, bared chests.
Nobody will dare to resist us; vested
interests will fear our razorsharp axes…”

(08 SEP 08 Santa Clara CA)v6

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Carolin Combs, writer

I feel that I’m charged with the duty of explaining Carolin as a writer, at least after I met her at age 23 until her death at 50.

Altho we sat beside each other for over 25 years at our computers, I rarely ever got a peek at what she was writing. When I did – when she gave me a printed draft to comment on - my comments were almost never incorporated into the next draft.

The only exception was in her magnum opus, her historical novel “The Last Prince” (left fully edited at her death.) In it, I found two tiny traces of me, one my spoken suggestion of what a character would say, the other, an image lifted from one of my own poems (written in Scotland, and so used in a scene set in that same part of Scotland.)

What’s more important for you to know is that Carolin was constantly approached from the psychic realm by dead people asking her to tell their life-stories, or at least vivid incidents in them.. She told me that her only difficult decision was which one to tell first, not whether to tell them at all. .While working on that novel, she never had any trouble “coming up with material” because it constantly approached her directly, urgently asking to be written..(One scene, set in Berlin on Krsitallnacht [9-10 NOV 1938], was later verified by the nephew of the dead woman who told it to Carolin. He's Herschel Silverman, a longtime poet-friend of mine in Bayonne, New Jersey.)

So much for the common term “born writer.” In her maturity, she was a long-born writer - for the dead. I hope someone equally as capable as she was acts as her amenuensis. The best I’ve been able to do for her (so far) is to write short poems in which she speaks – usually in short, 3-word statements -to me.


(Sun. 07 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Our Belief

“They’re dumb! They believe everything
I tell them,“ McCain laffs; Palin speaks
right up::“No! They want to believe you,
John, & they must; because we stand
before our believing public; they need
to believe what we say, they hope
we will tell them what to believe. Our
belief makes America great, protects us
from Canada, Mexico, Russia, China,
& all other countries, because belief’s
the American Way: Believe America!”
(Believing applause; believing Amens.)


(06 SEP 08 Santa Clara CA )v3

Optimistic Toughness

For me, the most startling term I found in my recent reading of Sartre is "optimistic toughness" Here it is in its original context (Sartre: "Existentialism" op,cit., p.34)

"When all is said & done, what we are accused of, at bottom, is not our pessimism, but an optimistic toughness. If people throw up our works of fiction in which we write about people who are soft, weak, cowardly, and sometimes even downright bad, it's not because these people are soft, weak, cowardly, or bad: because if we were to say, as Zola did, that they are that way because of heredity, the workings of environment, society, because of biological or psychological determinism, people would be reassured.They would say 'Well, that's what we're like, no one can do anything about it' " But when the existentialist writes about a coward, he says that this coward is responsible for his cowardice. He's not like that because he has a cowardly heart or lung or brain; he's not like that on account of his physiological make-up; but he's like that because he has made himself a coward by his acts. There's no such thing as a cowardly constitution: there are nervous constitutions, there is poor blood, as the common people say, or strong constitutions But the man whose blood is poor is not a coward on that account, for what makes cowardice is the act of renunciation or yielding. A constitution is not an act; the coward is defined on the basis of the acts he performs. People feel, in a vague sort of way, that this coward we're talking about is guilty of being a coward, and the thought frightens them. What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way."

Cowardice? Isn't that the last thing people expect an Existentialist to analyze? They usually expect them to deny all human virtues & ideals, but not stringently analyze vices, declaring cowards responsible for their cowardice. Sartrian Existentialism, profoundly 'conditioned' by the fall of France [1940-], and occupation by Nazi Germany [-1945], is sterner & more judgemental than most Americans dare imagine: it lets nobody off! Still feeling optimistic? Tough?

Friday, September 5, 2008

Let's Change!

“I change my socks twice-a-day!”
smirks McCain, cool on Rodeo Drive.
“Change?”smirks Palin, out of her bra,
& then panties. “Just say when!”
stepping out-of-image as brassily
as ding-dong hell, a cock-teasing
pop & pickup show put on by cold
Karl Rove, offering a hint of skin,
not nudity, on the campaign trail,
(clothes make them who they are},
you may just find them half-wasted
in a posh resort on a pricey island.

(05 SEP 09 Santa Clara CA 95050)v6

Republicans, changin'

McCain pumps a rancher’s hand & drawls:
“Dagnabit, is them steel balls I hear a-janglin?”
Slowly licking her vampire-blood-red lipstick,
Palin grins, drawls: “Cowboy, pass me a handful.”

Whatever you really are, they are, plus some;
your trail is their trail, your smoke, their smoke:.
if you roll your own, theirs is just a-hangin’

Finally getting it? They’re all about change:;
Republicans are changing, like chameleons,
any color you like, they already are, & like..
What’s yr favorite color? Yellow? Sorry,

you must be some yellowdog Democrat.

(05 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v3

Unrestful Existentialist

I often tell people that I’m sure to read any book of less than 100 pages in one sitting, & so I ‘ve just read J-P Sartre’s EXISTENTIALISM and Human Emotions (Philosophical Library, 1957, 96pp) a collection comprised of the essay “Existentialism:” & 5 chapters from BEING & NOTHINGNESS: "Freedom & Responsibility", "The Desire to Be God", "Existentialist Psychoanalysis", "The Hole", and "Ethical Implications."

In "Existentialism", Sartre warns us of Existentialism that: “Actually, it is the least scandalous, the most austere of doctrines. It is intended strictly for specialists and philosophers. (p12) ” deftly demolishing the popular image of the black-clad & beretted Beatnik as an Existentialist (not that some didn't think they were.)

Actual Existentialism burdens any individual with total responsibility for themselves, their actions, and resulting effects on others: “The one who realizes in anguish his condition as being thrown into a responsibility which extends to his very abandonment has no longer either remorse or regret or excuse…” (p59)

At 66, I’ve consciously lived this for 50+ years. Recently, my Jungian therapist realized something dire about me: “You really hate yourself!” To which I thoughtfully replied: “No...I don’t like myself.” Existentially put: “I don’t absolve myself of any of my choices, deeds, or their effects on myself & others.”

Then how have I lived? Often impulsively, then as often regretfully, in an endlessly uneasy ‘condition’ (Sartre) of constant self-analysis & -criticism. I get no rest as an Existentialist.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Cheney bakes Mrs. Alaska

Alaska’s armedest hockey mom,
programmed w/Zapruder's clip,
draws a cold bead on Obama,
& gets taken into custody by
MIBs for an attempt on the life
of a presidential candidate. Mc
Cain rages: "Getchya hands off
my own Alaskan Candidate!"
& jabs a VP-destruct button;
VP Cheney bakes Mrs.Alaska.

(02 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA)v16

Monday, September 1, 2008

"Hurry, if you can..."

A hurricane approaching landfall
quickly exploits political capital:

Pat Robertson recalls rebuking one.
Dubya’s heading to Austin & San Antonio,
TX, staging areas for Louisiana relief, where
only very heavy rain's currently expected.
John McCain’s rebuking politics-as-usual by
semi-suspending the Republican convention;
Obama’s offering 2mobilize 2 million volunteers.

Catastrophe provokes revelatory political action.

(01 SEP 08, Santa Clara CA) v10