Overheard at Table 3: Chaffetz back at home in Utah

Jason Chaffetz was at a town hall last night.  Thousands inside, hundreds more outside.  Lots of chanting and shouting, I mean these guys are pissed OFF.

But what got me was one question in particular, the question was "Now that a sexual predator is in the White House, what are you going to do to protect women's rights?"

The guy then launches into this long speech about how he's going to let the EPA and the National Park Service dismiss employees without any problem.  Apparently for years they've been telling him that they are rife with sexual predators and just can't seem to get rid of them.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?!  This is the best he can come up with?  He's not even GOOD at the pivot!"

Poem: Moonlight, Moons Ago

Moonlight, Moons Ago

 

The moonlight, many moons

ago, would splash liquid mercury

 

across the sharpened grass, black

ened from day’s summer sun.

 

The silver glow would recede, then,

into the farmer’s field, beyond

 

the barbed-wire fence, where once

I had cut open my head, jumping

 

through, while trying to catch

an errant cat.   Several moons ( and

 

several cats) after, the farmer’s

field was plowed under, rutted

 

into clay and dirt patterns, a

schematic for the cement roads

 

which foreshadowed houses,

larger than our houses, until

 

at last, the city finally buried the

memory of the farmer’s field.

 

But the moon did not forget.

The moon never forgets.

 

The moon merely pulls back,

recedes, turns away, some would

 

say “sadly,” a dull grey shadow

against the black asphalt shingles

 

of houses burned and black

ened from the day’s summer sun.

MR

2016-0208

John Prine "All the Best"

1990.   Anglo/Irish TV, which is really just another soundstage at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café

Overread at Table 1: A Fold of Sun by Magdalena Zurawski

A Fold of Sun

Magdalena Zurawski

We decided I
should go alone
on foot. I  

would find
him in
the pharmacy. If     

he said ‘In
the head of
God all propositions    

have existed    
always,’ we would make    
the exchange.

He was standing    
in front of the     
calamine lotion.

He spoke to the
air. I slipped  
the envelope into


his pocket and   
bought a topical     
analgesic to


avoid suspicion.      
When I left, I           
had a face    


again, could open
an account, drink         
coffee in the


sun. On the street two    
women talked     
of money. I paid them


no mind. I    
could now always      
walk with my light


to the front.  

Copyright © 2016 by Magdalena Zurawski. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 21, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.

Overheard at Table 2: What Our Days Are Like Now

Billy: Feel like we're living in London during the Blitz.


Joe: How do you know what it was like living in London during the Blitz?  That was 3 generations ago!


Jim: Well, this must be what it must've felt like.


Bob: There are no bombs falling from the sky.


Billy: Why does it feel like that, though?


Joe: It's the tension of our condition which leads to uncertainty and anxiety.


Jim: Someday, there will be one word what sums up that general condition.


Bob: Trump.


Billy: Yup.


Joe: Yup


Jim: Yup.


Bob: And a fourth to seal the deal: YUP.

Poem: from 360s: Polaroids

Polaroids

Float back to yourself,

Thirty seconds down
You will have a memory.

 

MR

2017-0118

Poem of the Day: The Shoelace by Charles Bukowski

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.








- Charles Bukowski