CHENEY reveals

CHENEY reveals a dispute
within the White House
over combatants being tried
in civilian vs military courts.

What came of it? Nothing.
What will ever come of it?
What does it matter while
those disputants walk-free?

(14 FEB 10, Santa Clara CA)

A pitiful sonnet

A Rainbo bread truck appears
& a Bimbo pastry truck leaves.
Does norcal lack terminal-Ws?
(back-East, they always ff-off.)

It’s bright out; sun’s shining,
but mountains are blurry-grey.
I don’t see anybody walking,
this Sat. morning, but soon

a white, 4-door Toyota Prius
exits the parking-lot; people's
expectations are falling
as Silicon Valley shrinks,

& jobs are now pitifully few,
& jobs are now pitifully few.

(13 FEB 2010, Santa Clara CA)v4

John Cheever

Wikipedia: John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American novelist and short story writer, sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cheever

I think of Cheever as the Turgenev of New England, an hereditary Yankee whose view of the starchy NNE (MA, CT; add NY/NYC) is hopelessly doomed, (as was Hawthorne’s*)

Cheever was & wrote about bitterly proud Yankee descendants living as secretive failures, alcoholics, bisexuals among recent waves of cadent urban & suburban parvenus. The Yankees lose this time: their failures really do call themselves “Swamp Yankees” & they don’t all get into Harvard; Cheever didn’t.

Once you read his Wikipedia entry, you won’t need to know any more about Cheever, but you will need to read at least one of his short stories & one of his novels. You choose, but I’d read all of his collected stories, The Stories of John Cheever (1979, Pulitzer Prize), for an unforgettably deflating experience. After that, read any/all of his novels, his journal & letters, then the biography written by his daughter, novelist Susan.

[* Like Hawthorne, I was born in Salem, once the clipper-ship capital of New England, but now the tourists' witch-capital.]

Burnt Toast

WASHINGTON (AP) – Even as Republicans publicly welcome President Barack Obama's call for a bipartisan confab on health care, some privately worry that he might be laying a trap to portray their ideas as flimsy.

Pre-game jitters
make Republicans
pre-accuse Obama
of pre-entrapment.

Why? They know
they might do better
as pre-burnt toast.
Onto the back lawn

they now must go as
media squirrels await,
their noses twitching,
tails thrashingly alert.

(09 FEB 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

dull, ordinary, jobless

It’s a dull, ordinary day here.

A gold & cream ’87 El Camino
pulls up at the corner of Dolores
& South Winchester, next to
The Church of the Valley;

I can’t see the driver inside,
but there must be one there.
I imagine them dressed in white
ordinary, clothes: T-shirt, pants.

They don’t have to get out for
me to see, I just imagine them
as typical Norcalifornians,
non-hispanic, anglo, jobless..

By now you know this isn’t
a fantasy, it's just about life
in pseudocyclically declining
Silicon Valley usa. Jobless.

(08 FEB 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Palinocity

“Ask God’s Help”
Palin urges Tea-Party Convention.

coming soon:

"In God We Trust"
as a rider on all new mortgages.

Next, a new national silver dollar
with Jesus’ profile on both sides.
Early adopter, Las Vegas' strip
declares Jesus’ Dollar new min. coin:
"Whenever Jesus spins, we all win!"

(07 FEB 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Cuppa & Quilt; Takemitsu & Adams

It’s the Rainy Season here in South (S.F.) Bay. I’m up for visiting Ginny’s for a tepid cuppa Zhena Muzyka's Gypsy Tea, & a nap under a sky blue quilt (that we share.)

On a rare sunny day last week, Ginny drove her Prius 50 mi. S to San Juan Bautista (where) at its junk-Thrift Shop, I got (2) 2nd-hand Takemitsu CDs (USD$3 ea.):

MUSIC OF TAKEMITSU (Rudolf Werthen, cond. I Fiamminghi - The Orchestra of Flanders; Telarc, 1998, 20-bit Surround Sound)

THE FILM MUSIC OF TORU TAKEMITSU (1930-1996) (John Adams* cond. London Sinfonietta; Nonesuch, 1997.)

*Ginny met Adams at the SF Opera production of his "Dr. Atomic."