2.12.16




yesterday he wriote 1212 hours  this afternoon 1313

the trees were twentyfive hours more bare  leaves exhausted by the wind and pelted by rain 

every plant in his yard stood taller rejuvenated despite the fall season and cold overnight temperatures

his outdoor cat bigfoot  his fur had grown thicker

himself  his skin thicker too

he seemed more adept at inhabiting it despite its stringency its lack of agility a weighty chainmail swinging against the back of his knees as he walked and at the ready to deflect the inevitable slings and arrows hurled against him which he expected from the misshapen incoming administration hobbled at its getgo

an ideology with only the sense of a schemer a huckster a paranoid a pretender to a pretending base while in reality the scales are tipped abundantly by two million more who can see that the want-to-be-emperor has no clothes

what Richard Hofstadler said in 1964 in his The Paranoid Style of American Politics has flowered like a bitter weed:

"In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.

Hofstadler wrote that it wasnt enough for the paranoid to have an opponent  it had to have an Enemy

"This enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman – sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will."


to be sure the next four years were going to be difficult

he hoped the patient survived the surgery and wasnt forced to recover for a generation or more


its always easier to destroy than create

   


1313,  Monday,  28  11. 16
1522,  Twosday,  29  11. 16

1.12.16

As Far As the Eye Can See

as he played Shorters As Far As the Eye Can See over Brakhages Anticipation of Night he watched stunning reflections run across the face of greasy street puddles:

Heinous questions were provisioned for a greenleafed lion who stared at a yellow stone monolith Etched against the horizon and retched

a spool of brown flypaper was lashed around a manshead as he hung from an iron ceiling fixture and twisted in a breathless room

outside kids playing flashlight tag accidentally caught sight of him

they saw his grotesque distended face through a transom window through sheer chiffon curtains

on the houses stoop pumpkins had rotted and collapsed

    horrified  as they fled they dropped their burning flashlights so not to be pursued like summer fireflies

one if they wished could retrace where the children ran through the small neighborhood across the wet sprinkled lawns the fallen elms leaves that begged raking their frantic footprints tread across concrete walks and through broken fence gates that they yanked in terror their imaginations grimly feverishly chasing them


McLeans Floogeh over Mothlight had been overrun and spliced with Black Ice

a very small Asian woman sat stoically behind a rubyred parasol and stabbed at it with her bone chopsticks

the Black Ice reared then swept over her and ossified her body then pulled her apart like separating tectonic plates  her torso gravitated with her bound feet  her hips split off and with her separated shoulders got hungup and caught fast  they mouldered then exploded like seeding puffballs


Sonny played S for Sonny for Dantes Quartet!!! and in a mailbox at the streets edge a two-cent stamp on an Air Mail envelope was going nowhere fast

a gunshot!a white phosphorescent jellyfish exploded in the curling face of a wave a host of hands eagerly clutched at the edges of an monstrousoyster

On the count of three was cried One . . Two . .Three

they pulled it apart and ransacked its guts for a black pearl they were told it held

the soothsayer arriving late muttered What have you done What have you done while the bellplayers who walked behind him maintained a reverent distance

they arrived anticipating a celebratory Mass not a mass-murder  they fled over the tops of one another and slipped in the slaughters morass before descending into a garden where they found a young birds burial path laid out in stones

an anemic chimp played in a crooked way No Blade Too Sharp

no beak too bleak

crying for a Rite of Passage

while a quintet of xrayed skulls once hanging lighted on a whitewashed wall took their bleached look and crawled off towards a laundry washing machine to put away the evenings stain

0144,  Friday,  14  12. 12
transscribbled 1234,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  30  11. 16

30.11.16




briefly define masculine




he was called impervious by a delectable minx



however he rest his laurels on

      he was good to his word  if he found fault in his argument he evolved

     
     his books(the art books threw some – he made a habit of acquiring the catalog of art exhibits he attended)

      his liquor cabinet   sans liqueur except for Drambuie(a habit his father incited without knowing he did)

      his cigar box stuffed with Cubans a friend acquired while on a trip 

      his eclectic collection of vinyl and 78s

      his body -- 200 pounds -- maintained on swimming weightlifting and eating well and what he wanted


though intrinsically and not seen by many

      the toilet seat was up

      rocks plucked from the Bitterroot River by his girlfriend lay in his lavatory sink breaking the smooth line of its bowl

      the black book at his bedstead thought to be The Bible at first blush(No  he didnt believe in God) it was his Bible a treasured First Edition of Joyces Finnegans Wake

      the silver steam simmering up out the top of his cheap Proctor Silex coffeemaker  his daughters tried to present him with an expensive coffee maker but he declined observing that theirs never exhaled



he hung his maleness on these things


      however one could also observe at first inkling outside his bungalow  –  a 300,000 mile 4Runner parked under a lean-to and around in the backyard a Weber kettle barbecue




Saturday afternoon,  19  11. 16
1357,  Sunday,  20  11. 16