Truth Rhymes with the Heartbeats of the Temple

How about hours when the rug
slipped out from under
the time you opened the door
to light the universe
and pull some weeds,

gather the homegrown greens

to give them all away.

This is another conincidence

covering more than just one day

and can really add up

when you skip the footnotes.
Honestly, I don't like babies much
but smile at their reputation

for lack of a better word

or watch while they practice.
We just want to look at her
on the panel, want to touch
her tongue and see if it's really moving

before all of those surprises

in majestic diction

fall asleep in her lap.

But that's just gossip.
Such psychological outbreaks

are woefully endemic

here and the calm
of taking it all in

the ten o'clock news
is more than I can bear

all by my little lonesome.
Describe it my darling
in the evening as we try to say
it's all over now isn't it
but stumble between

instead the lamps,
who shall shut them off
if one of us should perish
or the other cannot turn?
The place to arrange the blankets
regardless of which falls first

remains original as I call
the old piano how to play
the game, fidget in the nest

of this tabernacle

where popes bed down too
master the last little lesson,

popping their special pill

like poorly paid ranch hands.
Strange they missed that one
but all those countries
asked for was a Sunday morning

in case they need
a better place to stay
that feels at least a little bit

like the habit where
they are supposed to be

when rituals roll around.
But darling goes off again,
doesn't lock the door anymore

or shut the cupboards.

Is it such a waste of time
to think he said

the house was dark

and they were sleeping?

Or was it just the wind?

Male Circumcision decreases the risk of HIV transmission to women (and maybe other men) by 50%! Studies halted because the evidence was CLEAR.

Take that you Swedish heathen!

http://www.avert.org/circumcision-hiv.htm


Heh...but the doctor's name...what a gas. Anyway...it's true. Forget that ridiculous idea that it will hurt your baby.

On 12 December 2006, an expert committee called a halt to two large studies of male circumcision and HIV. There was already such clear evidence that circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection, that to continue the trials would be unethical. This news caused great excitement among some HIV experts. According to Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the HIV/AIDS Department of the World Health Organisation: “If decisions are made to scale [circumcision] up by different countries, it does have the potential to prevent many tens of thousands, many hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of infections over the coming years.”

Do Cows Wear Blue Jeans?

Now then. These four were quite easy but the next ten are going to be a bit harder to fathom. All that research and no holds barred, an all out food fight. This just goes to show that it isn't about the tools but more about the quality of the metal, you get what you pay for and by george, you get what you deserve.

I'm reading a very, very good book but it says literally nothing. Nothing at all. Brilliant lines, absolutely contagious efforts but it says, literally...nothing at all. Comes to no conclusions..yet...because I ain't quite done with it. Haven't chewed the cud nor made it past the gemstone that ought to be in there. Not that it isn't likable....no....things can be quite likable but do they feed a hungry stomach? Fill it up for more than a few hours?

You might ask, which book might that be?

Hotel Lautreamont by John Ashbery. Got it cheap and for two dollars. Thrown out from the Osceola County Library and stamped DISCARD. Now, why on earth would a library throw out a good book of poetry? Did no one want to read it except me or is it the case that they were throwing it out to me? Not sure. Any more than the fact that an old Ford got rolled into a lake many years ago and this old gal decided to hire some divers to find it in this lake up there. Five minutes into the dive, this guy finds some bones and the detective laughs and tells him it's just an old cow carcass. Funny thing though, the diver says, "Do cows wear blue jeans?" Turns out, this nice fella had been murdered about four months before on a lonely county road. The killer buried him but a week before the divers went looking for that old Ford from the twenties, he decided to dig up the body and dump it in the lake, jeans and all. Damn if things don't just work out perfect sometimes.

And all hail to Ashbery. He's got it going even if he isn't saying anything all that important. I love the freedom of his verbs and the way he house squats on reason. A poet ought to do at least a little of that if they expect to survive the trend that they initiated. No rules in art you know except for us goodly sorts who expect to find whole libraries in paradise, most likely full of discarded texts from dusty old departments of literature and maybe even a hymnal or broadside.

Easy County Fair Poems Made Easier

Keep feeling the chiggers on my arm
who left the light in the closet
on under the category of even?
Through the curtain are images
of what else going on outside
except the birds and bakers
lolygagging and more than one steeple
in your last happy presentation
makes no sense at all
if he leaves then he brings
back all the gold and frustration
trades up and doesn't change
the sheets nor bring back any ties.
We'll wait again for the next call
pleased with milk and eggs
enough for a transient carnie
working the wrong circus,
that's what makes it beautiful
when the dimes land dead center
but we're up in one of the stalls
talking to the tigers,
don't know exactly when to leave
and stop by the hypnotist
on the way out
one more time hoping
that he'll notice, call us up.
I need a volunteer from the audience
he'll say. That's when the fun begins
but he really shouldn't have to ask
by now, I ought to be the last
catatonic prisoner except for the fact
just can't find the ginsu knife and wish
for ten shiny pots and pans
from the demo, wish I'd said yes.
Or wish I'd said no, can't really say.

The Fundamentalist

Before you hear otherwise, this sets the pace
for all the words that follow, in the name of
the unactionable inscrutable infallible
take your tickets and burn the fields
in preparation for the interrogation
there won't be any survivors, no last
apology will be spoken and the machine
is on rewind not play. It won't do.
My master hasn't told us the whole
story, just certain parts that fit just so
this giant puzzle called in the beginning.
I don't want to give it away but fact of the matter
is, I can't although I've really tried hard.
Tried coaxing and combining, excercising,
tried fooling and bullying but those deaf ears
keep listening to bull dozers and scrap men.
Ay Caramba! Ay Caramba!
This is the pace, the speed of light
folds up neatly on a pin, keeps shining
but for some reason, the engine won't turn over.
For some reason we keep talking about the weather,
keep talking about the sin of repetition
play it again boy, play it once again
how many weeks before the fiesta?
It's true what the master said then,
they just won't give a damn and don't
bother wasting your time on them.
I didn't he said, I just told them to be careful,
no touch ups and forgone conclusions,
and then they did what people usually do.
They took for granted that I kept it simple,
thought it meant I was playing games
with their angles and plots, imagined
that they could imagine me! Imagine that!
There isn't a contradiction in me, not even
a definition to which a contrary might apply
but that's beyond the pace of this lecture,
beyond the pace of most minds
this thing has only one facet and here's the cheat sheet,
both past and future, regrettable but fair.
Rule number one: no citation for the tautology.
Rule number two: try not to find any.

Prayer for the Coworker

Made it to the door
but not the gate
which still needs sanding
but the clerk is hemorrhaging
and hanging out in the OR.
After losing the voice, finding it
and losing it again, it's a bitter break-up
the pressure, the pills, the liver
one more try, give it at least one
and deliver the special messages
one at a time until the kafr
bite the ends of their fingers
quite off and the believers sigh
slowly and ready to question
the insects that inspect the lights
that flit back and forth between the porches
past each other, past the turn-off
where little lulu cries by herself
over the death certificates
gets to know everybody
as she reads the whole town diary.
No one knows she is out there
behind a desk marking off
infarct, accident, natural, suicide
sepsis, embolism, failure, coagulation
because death is confidential
to us all all hush hush
we whisper over our lunch buckets
that we just can't believe
it was him or her
but as she looks for one last lover
rides in and out of town
doing her wheelies,
minding her business
picking up her paychecks
one at a time, it feels real special
to know just a little something
about the way she cut her hair
four times before giving up
and regretting all that loss.
The prayers went out last night,
the same gang who go in together
on the lottery, one dollar
per contestant sent one hopeful amen.

How the Hive Works

When the ceiling starts to splinter
it only misses a few pieces
before the rest starts and stops
to believe in it, follows suit.
Why bother turning over
the altar to another piecemeal
party pooper when it is yours
for the asking, just compromise.
It's a long story
full of derring do and self righteous
hegemony, all the holidays
rolled into one sanctimonious
class action law suit
against asbestos and misspelling.
The people versus this, the people
versus that like contagions
and inflations of pygmy fainting goats
who tremble and jitter
and the tiny woolen creatures
inside our skin coming out
after a scientist with a big bright idea
tells everyone how hard
his last keepsake jammed
and mended the theory
of chance to destiny
by reworking five chemical phrases
but not the sixth because OH
isn't on the end, it's in the middle.
A whole other doctrine
he said and cupped his hands
like this to blow
on the very last horn.
They're just bees and believe me,
they aren't big enough to try.

One of the problems with having a comments section is keeping up with the odd comment or two that is received. I work full time and then some...spend mornings looking for projects that apply to this or that aspect of my day job.

This one arrived some weeks ago and I just noticed it today when going through my email that I only go through maybe once or twice a month. It is from "jh"....who always has interesting things to say over at his blog which is here: http://bewilderingsearch.blogspot.com/

jh writes:

benson
i've been
up and down those streets
have chewed into
a burger at rebs
and sat bewildered alone
eating a gomorrah style
breakfast at
the horseshoe
have wondered at the desultory souls
shifting up the main drag headed
for the desert or another charming
nowhere
there
scuffling through benson
in a dust storm
the daylight far too bright
sad images of wolves howling
for something like justice
on the hills outsdie town
only to land near st david
the place forgotten by benson
the place so silent
save for the groan and fumes
fumes from the
stack where the powder is prepped
for exploding in holes
like demented sex and a hope
for more more riches

Well done and I'm going there today! To the B on the tank as you approach Benson from the south on 80. Going to a drug treatment facility up there to do HIV screening...always a terrifying experience i.e. the thought that one day, sooner or later, I have to be the bearer or bad tidings. Scares me literally to death.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

First photo of girl's head found at the Canaa massacre (Israeli war crime and boy, I sure remember it and can't even afford a shrink). This image, BTW, was used by the Israeli Revisionist filmaker in Waltz, literally PLAGIARIZED.

Second photo which is well known throughout the WORLD depicts the murdered child (Mohamed Al Dura) and his father who was trying to shield his son from IDF pigs. Israel then went and bulldozed the crime scene within forty eight hours and blamed in on Palestinian gunmen. The nerve of those shits. To try to tell the world that they just can't remember very well. And when they do, it is appropriate to create an art work that absolves each and every one of them from guilt, blame and eventually, retribution.

Waltz With Bashir
REVISIONIST REDUX or, Just Another Holocaust movie afterall? You be the judge.

(Bashir Gemayel) who was assassinated by another Christian Maronite in league with Mossad operative Elie Hobeika who confessed or rather, was about to confess a few years back and then he too was murdered (by Mossad). Gemayel was murdered in order to rally the Christian Phalangist Forces against their muslim countrymen and the Palestinians and this in turn led to the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre (anniversary is rapidly approaching in September I believe). That in turn led to the bombing of the US Marine Barracks in 1983 by muslim activists hell bent on justice for the real culprits who were Ronald Reagan, his administration who were in league with Israel. The massacre is depicted in the Oscar Nominated movie as something that happened and the Jews were "helpless" victims and witnesses to the affair.

The movie is animated most brilliantly. Problem is and even Israeli journalists and viewers agree, it was up for an award while yet another Israeli atrocity was taking place as the grossly negligent creator of the movie stood up to accept his prizes and didn't mention a thing about the war being waged on the people in Gaza. Shame upon shame, hypocrit extraordinaire!





Most recently, Israel assassinated another leader.....Rafik Hariri and attempted to blame it on the usual suspect (Syria) and when that failed, Israel moved into Lebanon and destroyed all the bridges and murdered somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 people...roughly the same amount killed in this hypocritical movie Waltz With Bashir and roughly a similar amount that were being killed as the movie made it into the awards circle.

Israel failed to instigate a civil war between muslims in Lebanon for the Hariri assassination and suceeded with the Christian Phalangists? Why you might ask.

Hezbollah. That's why.




This movie however needs to be flagged as Pro Zionist Propaganda, no more and no less. I advise people to see it anyway. The animated scenes are wonderful and it provides any viewer REVISIONIST albeit relatively true portrayal of the elements of the massacre. It just fails to point the finger at the right murderers.

Although...I have to give it to the creator on this one....the seed of truth that perhaps he didn't even notice is that psychiatry and dreams...the tools with which he tells his half baked story are the basis of revisionism. In that, he hit the nail right on it's messed up Zionist headspace. Now, my father who shot and killed many people in WWII, NEVER forgot about them. He used to regale us with his tales of woe sans psychoanalysis AND with alcohol. So....this director is preaching to the choir if you ask me....but he can draw pretty good and love that little Jewish kid in the background and depicted as "oh such a nice" middle class Jewish boy doing middle class Jewish things in er.....most likely a home BORROWED from its real owners, a homeless Palestinian family who most likely are buried in the rubble of the Gaza strip.

BEIRUT ASSASSIN LEAVES MARK

The cocks were storm-crowing that morning
after a real long spell of total
environmental darkness. Two broughams sped by.

(In the land of the prophets
the angels speak out-loud,
people pretend not to notice.
Here it is the status quo.)

All the clocks whirred with quick sighs
and at sunset the clouds were full of the dust
from extinct volcanoes.
On the beach loversbodies were kissing
each other while long lost birds
perched in the Cedars up north
and sang their common song of return.
On the Corniche, people brought
valentines, coffee and cardammon
from every shop on Hamra.

Then everything just stopped.

Windows fell
apart

and people ran home, started looking.

Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out.

I felt around for my watch to note the time.
School was letting out and I compared JFK,
that unholy day to this one. Must have been similar,

the way we huddled close and locked

all our doors, turned on our TVs .

Human forms felt their way toward the crater
and the same herd of goats crossed my path twice.

Cars hung in the windows of hotels
for months and years on end.
No more luck, no more money, no more beadsmen.
The predictions are keen to usurp everyone
and the last unlucky man born will keep vigil
near a pitcher of water and a set of lost keys,
a tape recorder will produce the truth.
Airports fell first and then the invasions,
a graveyard was blown into the sky
and the dairies all went dry
but it does take some time, perhaps forever.

The poor remained indifferent.

One man was found two weeks later in the rubble,
pointing in one direction, holding his cell.
No one called out the dogs because it is said
the canines ate the corpses in Sabra and Shatilla.

I wonder.. to whom was he speaking,
where was he pointing?

Real photos of the massacre

Qana MassacreS ONE and TWO

Stevensian

..article by Helen Vendler

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Vendler-t.html?_r=1

"Stevens said many beautiful and significant things about poetry in his prose. In his remarks, at 72, on receiving the Gold Medal from the Poetry Society of America, he spoke of the spirit of poetry as a companion of the conscience, and the poem as a faithful act of conscience: “Individual poets, whatever their imperfections may be, are driven all their lives by that inner companion of the conscience which is, after all, the genius of poetry in their hearts and minds. I speak of a companion of the conscience because to every faithful poet, the faithful poem is an act of conscience.”

TheNewCafe.Currents.Are former astronauts starting to crack up?

[29.67] Do they not see that We have made a sacred territory secure, while men are carried off by force from around them? Will they still believe in the falsehood and disbelieve in the favour of Allah? -The Spider in the Glorious Qu'ran

Which soon influenced
the way institutions fuctioned,
the halls that smell of urine and cigarettes.
we support
we believe
we encourage
the planet.
We listen carefully and appreciate
what is true
about all points of view,
without demanding complete agreement.
Sharing facts, feelings, and opinions
enables us to better understand reality.
Is this true? i really need some evidence
from the hadiths or Quran.
This also means learning the rules
of tahara, ie wudu, ghusl, tayamum and their conditions.
America Alone: The End of the World
As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller.
Perhaps you should try posting your thoughts there?

(Please no lecture about marital rape happening
in the non-Muslim
world as well – we all know that
it happens, though I haven’t heard
it justified on religious grounds elsewhere rightly or wrongly
based on the “word of God”.



PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

"We have just learned that a number
of Israeli peace activists have
had their computers confiscated,
have been called for interrogations,
and have only been released


This is a thought crime,
but only when linked to another crime.
There was reference to antisemitism
as the 'hate crime' which is key.
The comments on that article are
amusing, deranged and bigoted but amusing.
The last substantial work on the barrier,
a network of fences andconcrete walls
flanked by a military patrol road,
was finished
Some stores
have lists of serial numbers they reject,
usually it is the first 2 alpha characters that they focus on.

The arms of a galaxy are not arcs of a circle.
Unlike the arc of a circle, the change
in direction is not constant
in one of these arms as you proceed
from one point along the arm to another.
The change in direction is constant
as you proceed along the arc of a circle
per Richard Clark, UFO enthusiast.

Land of the Lost School of Poetry, Painting and Performance

Real quick before I have to go study for my basic life support class...how we nurses look forward to those! Ee gads! Fifteen to two, fifteen to one, five to one, pump and check or no, don't check anymore thank the Lord just keep counting and pray. Pray for what I don't exactly know because when it's your day, it's your day.

I was remembering last Halloween (which is once again, just around the corner how those corners keep turning up faster as time goes by in one's life). The whole town was dressed up, I imagine, as what they actually are or at least, want to be. I decided to just go the way I would like to go, in hijab. We heard whispers around us "She's from the gulf region," and true, it isn't much of a disguise. My husband went as himself.

As we entered the Gulch, we saw that an ex tempore reading was taking place in the old Latent Image. Ye olde gallery where I once spent my teenage years cavorting with demon touched souls and various mishaps of humanity. Half book store, half photo gallery and certainly, the name of if carries a whole lot of weight for me.
It was where Lois Porter traipsed in one day, her face the color of a gravestone and longer than the day she caught me burglarizing houses when I was seven. The crystal ball and Japanese flag.

We went in and took a couple of chairs. Betsy Breault (Easterday) was there looking wonderfully turn of the century and as ephemeral as always. August there too and we get along now that she lives up at the old art deco hotel on the hill in Warren that I never knew was there, no one does, lucky girl. It's real Hotel California.

We heard about a half dozen poets read but nothing much really. The usual suspects if you will in a town that has perhaps the highest per capita number of forgotten poets in the United States. They hold their readings here and there at irregular intervals, trying to get something going but nothing ever does. I get invited to read and never go although I always agree to but never show up. They did stop inviting me but I have little doubt, they all know that I am there when I am. There've only been three readings I've performed at in three years including one on the radio that was a tremendous amount of fun. That night, following the on air reading, I took pom poms to the Central School auditorium and read the Bisbee fight song poem, literally sang the darn thing, gave it everything and brought one woman to tears. Hard act to follow and I don't even try...can't muster that kind of energy anymore, not really.

On Halloween night though, this guy got up there and a great silence ensued. Some were meandering about and having some chips and salsa from the snack table over by the old brick at the Latent Image.

The poet took advantage of the silence and it was all quite dramatic...Betsy in her ancient hat and me in my head scarves and tremendous amounts of kohl.

Then, he started yelping like a run-over puppy. And he kept doing that..the whole poem just a bunch of yelping and whooping.

My husband and I almost exploded. We are on the same page anymore and have been places, talked it all over and now agree that most of it is bullshit. Most of poetry is just bullshit. And then, there's the rest.

How we laughed and then went home leaving all the merry makers to their merry making. We'd had way too much fun already.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

Feminism and the Strategy of the Real ahem. You know yer in trouble when you keep trying to fake something but end up sounding pretty much like yourself but don't realize it and others do.

The notion of "high" end art aka the Baroque coupled with the newest new phase of hyper feminism aka Gurlesque and here's my signed copy of Diane Arbus already. I keep it in the drawer with Uncle Ray.

There is nothing new under the sun you know but there is such a thing as experience when it meets the new.
It says, hold on a minute!

I'm breaking through
I'm bending spoons
I'm keeping flowers in full bloom
I'm looking for answers from the great beyond -REM, The Great Beyond

http://seeiteverywhere.blogspot.com/

Here we go. This is the blog of drafts produced by K. Lorrain Graham. Finally, I see poetry, some fine lines and interpretations. The "disjunction" if you will, is all over the place and borders on the overwhelming. You see, take any intelligent young woman and tell her to talk and this is what you might get. The sense of "everygirl/ubergirl" is written on the subway walls ala the Song of Silence and there are lines amongst the detritus that the poet herself must love and I do too:

It's important to not believe in a lamp burning for you or anyone in a window somewhere.

...for instance and this special knowledge:

Can not seeing you be our date?

Unfortunately, there is still a sense that the poet is still just trying on clothes:

I said "I'm going to dress up
like Elvis soon," and everyone
laughed kindly.

...or doodling in her personal diary:

Our relationship was about how to be
like frites and pureed potatoes. Enharmonic,
"like British food," she said.

But there is really something to say about a poet with a sense of humor:

I am the father of Kung Fu. I can't believe it. The conditions are ideal.

That line just blasts out of there but all the same, it is an old joke by now...Kung Fu....is this dream or masterpiece? Not sure really but finally, I have found the bare reality of K. Lorraine Graham as she masquerades as this thing or that thing and this hope of all intelligent young women to be high maintenance and appreciated for it at the same time. Afterall, not many young and beautiful women know what Mastic is:

I ask if they have any mastic. Mastic, she says, is an Arabic thing. I say yes, I know, I want to use it in pudding, and you have a sign that says "Yes! We have MASTIC!"

.....Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today! Couldn't resist that one but here's the deal. Mastic when chewed is delightful but turns rock hard in about a half hour. Spit it out before you hit the wall, my best advice.

K. Lorraine Graham reading a nice love letter to an ex. Not sure about how this ought to matter to others as in readers or listeners because it is average, expected stuff from the jilted or amicably jilted folks in the world. I guess you might imagine that it covers the conversations that still roam in the head of a person who used to identify with another person with whom they were "in love" or at least, attracted to. The giggling parts...well. Okay. We can forgive that but at the same time we can say, put on the big girl pants now. There's Buddha in there and Je-Lo, basically I guess...a feminist travelogue and I have to wonder, What would Rachel Corrie say if she could say it? Would it sound like this? There's conflict about work (yet again) in there and I'm faced once again with how distrurbing it must be to be a young woman now, or a young person for that matter. But as a mature adult, I know that already, everyone does but that doesn't make it fodder for a whole poem let alone a career. There is way too much self in this and not what I'd call "the personal" and to call it a prose poem is a bit of a stretch. I'd call it a piece of a memoir albeit, parts of the memoir that are best left in the artist's head who, because of their expertise in the field of writing (whatever that is) knows that things have to be interesting to the reader and their own thoughts have to be disguised using the generally accepted tools of place, time and character. These things are actually quite mundane and I imagine the audience to be hoping here for something, anything at all. Throw me a bone they are saying. Why are you going on like this? "When you were about six or seven," starts a line and boy, am I sick of other people's childhoods when in fact mine was so grand. Ahem. Don't we all feel that way but this isn't to say that Ms. Graham has any understanding of the Universal except to say that it isn't common to find a girl who speaks Chinese but why doesn't she use some here? I would. I most definitely would but then again, that would put Ms. Graham in the ranks of Ezra and that is presumptuous isn't it? Throw me at least a Haiku here. "There's really nothing else to say," goes the poet.....okay. Then end it already. I hear your audience whispering and fidgeting in their seats and I don't hear the spontaneous Wow that is heard in the midst of truly wonderful readings. I'm checking the progress bar now and see that you still have at least four minutes more of monologue i.e. letter to the long lost lover that by now we have all forgotten about but truly know why this relationship ended. This is childish stuff and not the kind that we find charming even though we love kids and know poets who help children and themselves to healthy portions of that juvenalia wish I was there and look at what they see kind of beauty. Naive. Childish. Two different things entirely you know. And finally....we get to something hopefully worth the projected seven minutes it will take to finish off (and there must be a timer on somewhere). Oh no! She explains herself before starting! No. Never. Please don't do that. It's a California poem and we get some deep philosophical meanderings....from See It Everywhere.....and we're talking Tofu burgers now or perfume that smells like Tofu because it must be California and no laughs...not a single witty thing is tossed in there. Ay Caramba. Ay Caramba is a word that means I give up, the rest of the seven minutes can go on without me.

The Gypsy Tells Him All About It

looks deep into his eyes
across the short table
his palm outstretched
the candle flickers
to establish the cadence
as is the usual,

she will leave soon
there will be ten others
until she settles on just one.

Your lukewarm praise
the way you missed
everything is in there
but I cannot tell you how
I know this, cannot reveal
the secrets of my art.

As you look back
won't you wonder
about the questions
re-investigate the solutions?

Don't worry, she will check
in on you once in a while
to know if you are dead
because we all go on living
regardless of the temperature.

I used to think
I would like it here,
would get out more
but found the indoors
pleasing to me,
brought rocks and seeds
into the house, admired
the sand from all the shoes
that entered and left,
and told fortunes.

Coming Attraction: Finally, a poem maybe worth investing my time in.

http://www.scn.org/realpoetik/graham-lorraine022002.htm

The first poem here "from" Work Poems is titled Always For. I'm not sure why it is called Always For to be honest and don't get the connection to the poem itself which appears to be a monologue given by a working girl in the think tank/strategic defense contractor industry where Jane's is on every coffee table in every office. Now, I do have some experience in that field since I have a daughter "in the field" so to speak and I'd tell you more but I'd have to kill you (so she tells me as she whips her ever changing computer password keychain around and blots her lipstick on her way out the door to her Toyota Scion). The poem flirts with body image situations that co-mingle with your typical cubicle conundrums that women and men face in any industry let alone the defense contractor, missile defense systems, ChemAli arrangements types of deals and yes...we have an execution in there that shows up in the middle and right at the end. Death I suppose, real or imagined but in my opinion, those behind desks have little idea how to describe the life of either the executee or the executioner. It tends to fall on it's self righteous face over and over again and wherever it is encountered in "Poetry".

And excuse me, but I liked the Bourne Identity...the first one anyway. Nevermind that my shrapnel collection is somewhere else and all my toe rings had to be melted in order to make bullets.

The second selection is called Stash and once again, I'm a bit perplexed as to what that has to do with the last line: push up office squat no spaghetti straps here other than to say that the internal monologues of beaureacrats bore me because I am one. It does highlight however the waste involved in such work and I have to agree...it is best to get out of that sewage when in fact you might confuse your sexuality with your ability to hold down a nine to five. Time to change you know.

The third and thankfully, the shortest piece is titled My Proposal and finally there's a title that has some connection to the poem itself which borrows from religious texts tangentially and indicates that the poet doesn't like men to push her around. Okay. Like, okay.

Shrink is the last poem on this particular page and is at least, somewhat cogent. It moves from the same ideology and that is, this poet hates to work doing certain types of things one might construe as "establishment" like. This is entirely expected but I am at least grateful that for once, the poet believes that the reader might like to know what is going on inside that "pretty little head of hers" and I don't say that with tongue in cheek or apologies. A female poet that makes such a point of telling us about their epic hamstrings must realize that her epic hamstrings will be fodder for the critic. My best advice...either accept the fact that you are what you are and that is beautiful (and Ms. Graham is very much so) or leave it out of your work entirely. I'd pick the second and always have...for the most part. Once I got wise to the fact that it is a gimmick that contradicts the message you indeed hoped for if you are writing the types of poems you are now "known for". Feminist, etc. blah blah is best left unsaid if you know what I mean as is a certain female tendency to behave in narcissistic ways when asked to promote their work by donning the nearest push up bra and matching panties.

And don't bore the mature audience with this I don't have a message message which is one of the most curious of curious curiosities of modern poetry. Ah no, not me. I was just this radio receiver and helping everyone to hear what was going on. We can hear. But can we write? That is the question.

Overall, I am once again tres disappointed but think that I'll keep looking and order Terminal Humming "just in case" I've missed something.

Did you ever feel like you were on a wild goose chase? I do. You see, I thought I had a whole poem in my hands and then I found parts of it elsewhere with messages that read: if you want to read the rest, you'll have to buy something.

http://areasneaks.com/index.php?id=11

And then what?

Billy Mays is dead. Let's channel him and see what the pitch might sound like eh?

More available work from K. Lorraine Graham here including this

Once again, we have a poem or portion of a poem "from" In a Supralunar World. Okay. Darla Whitehead who has written many poems with various citations like "From the Warnings" and likewise other disingenous and wholly fictional books, some not yet published like "From the Land of the Infidels"......although Darla (whom I've known for many, many years) would say that the title of a piece isn't the same as it's fictional citation. They function in two wholly different ways and do so in order to encourage the reader to think a little beyond the title of the poem and the poem itself. To think about the context of the poem and the poet (dual identity poet).

In this case, all I am thinking about is ....well...nothing. Supralunar and I see, Supraulnar instead and then I'm not quite sure what I am talking about. But that's okay because neither does the poem.

The last line appears and may or may not be the last line, my guess is as good as anyone's:

It is good to be a poet on the way to the office of the censor,
where one can read all periodicals

I'm afraid this one too get's a C minus at best. But not to forget that this is effort free, value free, free free poetry that escapes the poetry radar as long as it insinuates line breaks and argh! that awful crutch poets often use "early" in their careers, the Part I, Part II, Part III technique of stringing together widely disparate thoughts that are merely connected because the poet commands the reader to connect them:



I

More & more now no one

speaks----but
I say “no one speaks.”
This style is a style, not something
imagined

this style says something she said:
“I like your style”
then said something
----

“Those plucky girls upset the roman emperor.”

“Plucky girls.”


That is the first er...stanza if you will. "This style is a style, not something imagined" No...it is imagined and if it isn't, it is borrowed. It isn't innovative nor witty nor even linguistically inviting to me. The surprises are dull if you can call them surprises like the naked girl in the forest and the many references to girl body parts in the poem Supraulnar, Supralunar. If this is an inside joke, it is mediocre anatomy at best. The desperate plea to be recognized as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry (the secret life of the explanation mark comes to mind) is obvious:

The nouns shall woo you They shall be wooed

I am most definitely not woo'd but feeling a bit wooden all the same. That letters, syllables, phrases or gosh, punctuation marks function on their own, justify their existence in a poem is a bit incredible to me in a field in which one famous poet declared that he sometimes spent an entire afternoon changing the word "and" for "the" and agonizing over it like the loved ones of a brain dead patient in an ICU. Anyone who thinks otherwise about poetry doesn't understand poetry, SoQ or not. Poetry IS about the words, letters, gaps, dashes and long white spaces that somehow through an evil trickery of the poet, take shape in alarming or expected ways. It has been about that ever since the typewriter and abundance of paper products allowed it to be about that. In the days of Stone Tablets, such luxuries no doubt came to mind but were simply not "do-able".

There's a story I'm thinking of now....about a young adulterous in a muslim country who is followed by her husband's brothers....the story unfolds but I'll not say how because...that IS the story.

You see? The cinema...movies like 21 Grams have not only changed the way we view a story but the way we think about the disjointed matters of everyday life, the "we" being Joe Plumber. A muslim would tell you....the signs. They make great stories and poems but even the disjointed is connected in the "spooky" world of the unseen where this poet somehow hopes to will herself to be engaged in.

Every chaos is a new type of order but this poetry of K Lorraine Graham (thus far looked at) is just chaos.




On Cole Avenue

I keep worrying about setting
my own back yard on fire,
keep thinking about the psycho
somatic differential involved
when an ash turns the new sweater
into holes.

These are true stories
about a girl in the back yard
about the back yard itself
about the particles seen
in the afternoon sun
where the sweater turns
in-to the holes.

K. Lorraine Graham

"I realized that a writer was something one could be."

Not to be mean spirited about this but it isn't fair to review a book based on a few haphazardly reviewed samples provided by the "usual suspects" aka Ron Silliman, K Silem Mohamed...to name a few and touted by the "usual suspects" and that would be the "young writers" associations of America who play blog master. The young writers movement is as old as the hills on your granny's chest you know. It is sometimes referred to as the "avante guarde" and is oftentimes responsible for great changes in the way we view art, poetry and even life.

I aim to do an in depth analysis of one of these young writers in light of the fact that she is one of the hundreds if not thousands of "young" people today who wish to call themselves poets. Do they wish to assume the responsibility of such a role? I highly doubt it. All the same, they deserve a fair shake. And they also have to be looked at as we look at any "profession" in which there seems to be a relative shortage and then there's this flood of applicants for the job Poet Laureate, Breadloaf prizes and whatnots that certainly cannot feed a family of five but most likely will make it possible for a person to legitimately seek public assistance while waiting for their professorship to arrive. We are just bound to get a few applicants who really don't have the credentials (actual writing skills) but are willing to do the paperwork (writing reviews, hobnobbing with the boss and the bosses wife). So we let them have the job because afterall, it's just poetry...not brain surgery.

I plan on buying Terminal Humming at the soonest possible opportunity but in the meantime, I have embarked on an internet search for previously published work by K. Lorraine Graham.

Let's start with the name, that initial and the notion of M. or L. Susie Smith mentality and we'll move on to photos of the poet. If we can do it to Palin, then it is only fair to treat poets the same way. We'll look at some interviews and try to construct an argument for or against this type of willy nilly self/other promotionalism that goes on in the "young writers" association that to me, seems to want something for nothing. Too often, young poets want what they cannot have and rely heavily on sensationalism...flarfists are a notable example. Comedy and schtick are their tools, philosophy and truth are their enemies or at least, they do not want to lend any credibility to the notion of philosophy and/or truth. They tend to just want to "get away with it" and that would be something new!

http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/graham_lorraine_k.html

Here is a poem from See it Everywhere...or maybe that's the title..who knows! from See It Everywhere. Now, first I'd like to say I have a tremendous amount of respect for Didi Menendez and MiPOesias magazine. A very slick shindig it is. In this case however, I have to wonder what it is I am looking at and/or reading:

The poem begins with a one on one with a French boy who likes basketball. It morphs into...er...a paranormal investigation of some type and one of highly suspect linguistic device by using the er...I'd like to say "unexpected" but it's probably more apt to say "unacceptable" word SPOOKY.

Get out there and say, "I'm spooky." Then you place a photo at the top of the page MiPO style (slick, GQ quality)of the poet that looks like it was taken in a recording studio and ends with this glaringly awful few lines:

"Q: How do you find a treasure?
A: I ask someone
Q: What do you know of ghosts?
A: They are complicated and sometimes spooky, as are people who are serpents.
Q: Really?
A: Worms, flying things, and ants are also complicated.
Q: What do they think about?
A: Myrobalans and terminalia seeds. They think of them and they come to us.
Q: Oh."


Come on now. Is this poetry or I don't know what. It's awful. Simply awful and so awful I might even be led to believe that the poet wanted it to be awful but even then, the irony is lost when the poet spells I-R-O-N-Y out in every sentence for the reader. That's missing the point of irony.

Here's another poem once again, from See It Everywhere:

http://www.flim.com/spareroom/mark-wallace-k-lorraine-graham.html

The UN. Now there's a great topic for a poem and mine was called The UN Sounds Blue. It was published somewhere back "in the day" when my writing skills were most likely at their peak but only Allah remembers where that publication is. I certainly don't.

In Ms. Graham's piece, it opens with this:

swooning—not going to the UN but
never believed anything could be saved still
love seems a good idea: “God willing
you will find a wife” g-d willing in English

OK....well....a bit of the found in there maybe but WHY? Why? Tell me why please. And it ends with the most definitely not fine last line:

what can I do / why go home? in my body are biles—yours, too
track by the track and fences self in everyone


Am I reading a poem or Jay Walking with Leno near the UN headquarters in New York? Hard to tell really...hard to tell. All I know is that the poet cites something about complicated telephone polls. Okay.

Apolitical, dumb, throw in a piece of in'sha'allah memorabilia...and if there's one thing that irks a muslim poet like myself is the borrowing that goes on in non muslim poet's poetry. They ought to be more careful and that g-d part...well...okay. Oy. As she ends in the first piece about the French boyfriend and paranormal skit...Oy.

It isn't tantalizing. Nor lyrical. Nor mentally dazzling except to say that if this is what a "young" writer thinks is good poetry...we are all in for a long and boring decade of miserable, self involved claptrap.

There's a catch though...Ms. Graham also practices what used to be called painting or drawing and calls it "Visual" poetry. Yawn. Someone really needs to tell the young writer's association that poetry cannot sequester other art forms in an attempt to cover for their own lack of ingenuity in their chosen field of "poetry". Because that is what that is.

She draws pretty good. Reminds me vaguely...very vaguely..of one of my favorite artists, Basquiat, Jean-Michel who took the everyday graffiti of life and made wonderful paintings out of scribbles and scrawls. He didn't call it poetry now...did he? And in this case, a spade is a rose by any other name.

There is a sense in the YWA of seeking legitimacy. This is done through 1)choosing a school to which one belongs 2)taking poems to their utmost extremes and even driving in a lane which is not yours to drive in (visual poetry) 3) and then demanding that people take you seriously as a poet. Not in the sense that one throws a temper tantrum every time some careless critic mistakes work of genuine value because the critic is a moron but that also happens too i.e. poet is misunderstood, the poet goes and pouts about it to other YWA members or the members of the Avante Guarde as a whole which is composed of a variety of poet types and subtypes. "I have a book and therefore, I am a poet," and who in the hell does this critic think they are bashing my work up with a sledge hammer!

I still remember the day that I decided to call myself a poet. It wasn't like I hadn't been writing poetry for many years already because I had. I was in the elevator of my building and said to myself...why not call yourself a poet now? I guess I felt that I actually had enough skills by that time to indulge myself the honor of calling myself a poet. The YWA however...is much more audacious in this situation. They fall into a group of poets and voila, I am a poet. I dress like a poet, act like a poet and before you know it, people are calling me a poet.

It doesn't work that way. A poet is special...really special. Yes, they do invent themselves but not out of thin air. In her own words, this poet admits that standards can not or should not or will not apply:

"If someone, anyone, calls it poetry, then it’s poetry. After that we can argue about whether or not it’s interesting or fun or effective or risky…"

Well..that leaves the poor critic in a bit of a conundrum then doesn't it?

The good thing about the internet however is that we can formulate an interview with a poet without the poet even being there by pulling in various comment (found objects) streams and analysing them for indications of poetic prowess, poetics (as in the study of/practice of), and instances where the poet has self disclosed when probably they ought to have remained quiet so that their upcoming book might actually get a fair shake outside of their own self indulgent poetry talk that all poets in the beginning of their "careers" do in the bathroom mirror. Ms. Graham discussing Terminal Humming:

"1) I wanted to write about how much employment and bureaucracy suck and 2) I wanted to write about how women and men interact. 3) I also wanted to really question my own emotional investment in these two cultural institutions--employment and romance--and I wanted to do it in a way that was as honest as possible. Finally, 4) I felt that none of the social and professional discourses I knew were sufficient enough to do this. I knew I'd need to play with everything, with words, sound, images, space, source, syntax, etc."

Careful. This might read:

1. I needed a job and don't like to work 2. I want to write about the only things that do interact in human language i.e. girls and boys 3. I honestly want to combine romance and employment as a poet rather than steal for a living 4. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up and like to use more than just scissors and glue when I actually find out what that (a job) is.

Ms. Graham goes on to describe how she writes poems:

"Making the poem is a process of finding the boundaries of those concerns and edging them in different ways to see what happens."

Nothing like a blindfolded dart thrower you know. Experts might engage in that and call it automatic writing. Novices however that engage in that are just foolish.

"All of that sounds very heady. Oh well. I agree with Yvonne Rainer that "the mind is a muscle." Here's a list of some of my feminist icons: Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Colette, Jean Rhys, Jane Bowles, Yvonne Rainer, Sophie Calle, Yoko Ono, Kathy Acker... "

I'm so glad that Yvonne Rainer believes that the mind is a muscle. Actually, the mind isn't a muscle. Not even close. The mind is a series of complex neural circuits and it functions as a receiver for input from other body parts. The mind is encased in the skull and actually has no literal connection to the world. It is a dark, silent, taste-free, odor free environment that when it is operated on, doesn't require anesthesia because it can't even feel itself and if it did, it would need another brain to interpret the signal. That's what the brain is.

Ms. Graham's blog is here...and apparently wasn't much used until Terminal Humming came along.

http://delirioushem.blogspot.com/2009/05/mind-is-muscle-by-k-lorraine-graham.html

There's another angry young woman
signing a proclamation, another
type of order bent on chaos
organizes itself into a Breck Girl
because things are what they are
underneath it all, under the illusion
of the titles popping up
like crop circles.

The tiresome act of living
coupled with living itself
combined with the truth that
is
out
there
invisible to the naked eye
available to a select few
who have been informed

this isn't for everybody,
don't try too hard lest
you break your neck trying.

Yet one more tupperwarewastebasket of soiledpantyliners discovered by archeologists

K Silem Mohamed prefaces the tired old-fashioned essay which seconds as a book of poems thusly:

"The poems in Terminal Humming often take the form of an unregulated swirl of voices, as though from different sectors of some public space filled with furtive private dramas ... kind of like a humming terminal. Pronouns shift from singular to plural with breakneck suddenness, so that the speaker seems to be continually teleporting outside of her own embodied situation and observing its multiplication into disparate scenarios. This description makes it sound as if it could come off as a certain type of tired postmodernist "interrogation of the self," but it's much livelier than that. The emphasis is less on states of awareness than on unique actions and constellations of events--a continually shifting mise en scene for an unspecified production. From "An Attempt to Unleash Inner Badness Ends Thus" "

...and we are treated to an excerpt of boring feminist "post modernist" if you will claptrap.

Are you serious Mr. Mohamed? Are you really serious? Has this stuff gone to your head and have you actually read Howl? Or Whitman? Or let's be fair and say El Bishop?

This isn't good poetry and it isn't even good feminism if such a thing actually exists as something that is separate from its root cause, which, if addressed, annhilates it's own reason to exist. This is generational and evolutional commercialism complete with product placement that astounds anyone who has ever read a fantabulous book known as the Liar's Club in which dippity-do plays a cameo role....





One of my problems with quasi feminism and the quasi feminist generation that we know exists today is that it is a parody of the actual product known as feminism and even more importantly, PERSONAL feminism that is not only land locked but uninformed and exploitative of the process. This generation of poets, particularly the Girlesque (not Nada of course cuz she is way smarter than all of that and way older)...is that they don't know the history of the National Geographic that El wrote of so eloquently as she attended to one of those old days types of dentist office visits that your aunt might take you to. And marvel at the boobies...it was extraordinary!

They've no clue and worse, they've no solution because they do not understand the root causes of human error and specifically, male error. Male error is everywhere NOW and throughout time, as we examine and exhume the remains of previous generations who were more pro woman and less pro woman...we might be surprised to find out that we live in one of the most male dominated and male messed up eras of time.

Just talking about it isn't enough in my estimation and this book so obviously does more of the same. Blah blah blah and here I am. Jello is as Jello does you know!

But you know...maybe that's her point. And maybe she doesn't know it as the poet. Who knows and who can tell from the excerpts I have thus far read.

It appears to be another tiresome and in that, genuine feminist manifesto and gosh...those just aren't that rare nor is this writing indicative of anything particularly new or worth the five bucks it would cost me to find out.

http://aerialedge.com/TerminalHumming.htm


Or you can spend your time and money wisely and at the same time, investigate the problem of feminism by purchasing this:

"The Liars' Club" deserves its wide audience. Karr is a shrewd, plucky and deeply observant storyteller, and she expertly spins out the details of her family's life in small-town Texas in the 1950s. Her mother was a kind of "Bohemian Scarlett O'Hara" whose wild streak (and seven marriages) shocked Karr's neighbors; a devoted parent, she would also be subject to destructive rages and psychotic episodes. Her father was a brawling oil worker, a generally taciturn man who came most fully alive when he told stories, spinning out whoppers with a group of men called "The Liars' Club." Karr's greatest achievement, though, is her ability to climb inside her own 8-year-old cranium. She evokes the landscape of a preadolescent mind with such exactitude -- fights, fears, petty jealousies -- that "The Liars' Club" stands as one of the best books ever written about growing up female (or growing up, period) in America. "

http://www.salon.com/may97/karr970521.html

I suggest the latter and then, if you like...read this boring little treatise for comparison's sake alone.

San Pantaleone Sees Anne Sexton On The Corniche In Beirut

Becoming a parody of oneself is not so bad when you figure everything is a bit fetish, the tickling tease of the ego." - Dr. Soandso, 1990, Commencement address, Bryn Mawr: "The history of stereographic photos revealing ladies' bloomers and the moral controversies of our time."

Oh that divine itch!

The fuel of the fire, man
-the fractional distillation
-the rising to the top
-the sparkling rumination.

Oh that jet fuel!
How it makes us fly!

A system of clockwork,
spins its spine,
the Hurly Gurly
at Lunatic Park,
the Hurly Gurly
at Lunatic Park,
ferris wheel and gypsy
in our hokey hoboken
on the boardwalk
lit up in the dark,
the sea is waiting
to see under her skirt
her frantic nipples
and her eyes so alert!

Our Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park.


According the the National Organization for Women (NOW), here are some statistics about violence against women in the mostly arreligious vis a vis Christian Free World aka The West aka USA, which is of course a Non Muslim country and in a state of Jahaliya (ignorance):

In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.1 That's an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner.2

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That's more than 600 women every day.6 Other estimates, such as those generated by the FBI, are much lower because they rely on data from law enforcement agencies. A significant number of crimes are never even reported for reasons that include the victim's feeling that nothing can/will be done and the personal nature of the incident.7

Young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape. Women ages 20-24 are at greatest risk of nonfatal domestic violence8, and women age 24 and under suffer from the highest rates of rape.9 The Justice Department estimates that one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, and that less than five percent of these rapes will be reported.10 Income is also a factor: the poorer the household, the higher the rate of domestic violence -- with women in the lowest income category experiencing more than six times the rate of nonfatal intimate partner violence as compared to women in the highest income category.11 When we consider race, we see that African-American women face higher rates of domestic violence than white women, and American-Indian women are victimized at a rate more than double that of women of other races.12

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the cost of domestic violence in 2003 was more than over $8.3 billion. This cost includes medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity. 14

Smoke and Flood

Look around there near the place
where I smoke and smoke,
just keep smoking and people
walk right up
and say you have to just quit
this dirty habit and I
just look out and think
about their habitual ignorance
that woman who killed her kids
and nieces and two other people
and hey, there's this really green
grasshopper sitting on the ashtray
which is filled with nicotine
tainted rain.
He has one very long antennae
I mean it is really long
like a hair and just noticing
how the bubbles appear in the puddles
in the grass from heaven
mineral charms casually dropping
by and a dragonfly
catches me by surprise
and then my boss calls me on my cell
are you still here?
Sure. She comes out to join me
such an honor, beautiful woman
cranky blonde not a blonde moment
in her and she says that was just
brilliant that thing I wrote
this morning about anolingus
and anorectal gonococcol esoterically
speaking and think
I'm a writer you know,
I write. All the time
but she wouldn't want to hear that
wouldn't understand
but it was indeed brilliant
full of words
so full of things
that don't touch me at all
clinical data is all it is
just stuff not like
that one that got canned
by the UN, he's a Dakik
his wife says life
has been so miserable
with the Dakiks
end of times and all
in the morning they believe
and by nightfall
they're heathens
but no
my boss wouldn't understand
about the time that it takes
to get from Sodom to Gomorrah
or the rationale
behind the missing bone
in the back
that got us upright
or the lie
of the transfiguration, no
and a few hours later on 80
I start yelling into
the cell to my sister,

It's Lordsburg!
You wouldn't believe it
it's just great, just wonderful
just like the rain that hit us
forty years ago and the cars all
lined up on either side of the flooded
road, stopped, not going anywhere
it was getting dark
Dad opened the door and walked up to the edge
rolled up his pants
we were all eyeballs and knuckles
at the dashboard
thinking,
will he make it, will he?

He got in there up to his ankles
and before you knew it
everyone filed right on through,
right on by
and the night took hold.
Should I say, this is true
about everyone I know?

Ward I Ken Budge, Ward I Boyd Nicholl, Ward III Bennie Scott, Mayor W.J. "Jack" Porter,
Ward III Anna Cline, Ward II Luche Giacomino, Ward II Ray Rodgers


Hard to believe that I am part of Bisbee Royalty. Go figure. My dad would be rolling in his grave if indeed he hadn't been cremated. Funny thing though, Jack usually never tolerates a photo. Like me. We just don't like them much. Old Bennie Scott...I've been hearing that name since I was knee high to a gracehoper and I have no idea why. Boyd up there....ah we used to pal around the photo circuit and artsy fartsy loop. Luche, heh...my bee hived girls soft ball coach...she'd be out there with that wonderful do and telling us to kick some ass. And she still is an asskicker par none. I don't know the others at all and it's probably just as well...they don't know me either.

Jack & Fish

Everything happened suddenly, Jack surprised.
Jack? Jack surprised. Jack handsome.
Jack in the front seat, Jack driving.
Jack like father, Jack like Grandfather.
Jack like all Jacks. Jack of all trades
and Jack of all exiles. Jack of the St. Louis Arches.
Jack of hippy hiking across the land of Jacks.
Jack of Sailor Suits. Jack of smiles.
Jack. Just Jack that day and John, somewhere else.
Some other altar smoking cigarettes perhaps
in the tent. How did she catch that? Jack said.
No one knew. As big as her arm. As long as her pony.
Her two ponies, Apaloosa and Pinto. Those
ones they all dream of at certain times.
Come here little fishes. She said come here
little fishes, big ones too. I'll get rid of you!
Or, I'll let you go, or you will get away.
But for now, I'll catch and pull you in.
Jack pulled it in. Jack sliced the trout and guts
with his Jack Knife. Jack, just jack all over.

R.E.M. - Sweetness Follows lyrics

Muslim Versus Non Muslim: 1 to 0, bottom of the seventh inning:

Jewish Scriptwriter and Pro Israel Zionist from New York City and long time poster to one of the message boards I have frequented for....oh...about fifteen years now (between kickouts...the most important kickout being the one in which folks didn't know that the message board was owned and operated by a member of the Rothschild family)....posts this:

Muslim woman to be flogged in Malaysia over beerBy JULIA ZAPPEIKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- An Islamic court in Malaysia has sentenceda Muslim woman to be flogged with a rattan cane for having a beer ina nightclub, a court official said Tuesday.It is rare for a woman in Malaysia to be sentenced to caning -- apunishment usually reserved for men in various crimes ranging fromrape to bribery. It is generally done by specially trained officialsat prisons.Part-time model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was sentenced Monday tosix lashes and a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,400) for consumingalcohol, said a Shariah High Court official who declined to beidentified because he was not authorized to make public
statements. More:

<http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2009/07/20/D99IM9MO0_as_malaysia_caning_for_beer/index.html>

In other news, a NON MUSLIM woman in North America kills her own children, herself, and her own three nieces and still yet, two other people in a head on collision after getting stoned and drunk and hopping into her mini van:

A mother drank vodka and smoked marijuana while taking a vanload of children home from a weekend camping trip that ended in disaster when she went the wrong way on a highway and crashed into an SUV, killing eight people, police said Tuesday.Diane Schuler, who died along with her 2-year-old daughter and three nieces in her red minivan, had more than 10 drinks of alcohol in her system and a high level of the main ingredient in marijuana, authorities said. A broken 1.75-liter bottle of Absolut vodka was found in her wrecked minivan, police said.The revelations from the 36-year-old Long Island woman's autopsy helped explain how the woman her family called "an accomplished working mother who always put her children before any other priorities" wound up driving the wrong way for nearly two miles on a suburban parkway before slamming into the SUV.

Oh, and she also had six more units of undigested vodka in her stomach at the moment she died...what a way to go...a flogging might have saved her and her family from this much larger DISGRACE. Man...it could have been me that day in Khaldeh...

http://intervention911.blogspot.com/2009/08/drunk-driving-tragedy.html