plans plans plans

Plans?
I have plans.
I'm saving plastic Wonder Bread bags.
I even dreamt how I'm going to braid them.
Maybe I'm nuts. Maybe not.
But hey, the next four years are unknown,
and instead of screaming at the TV (again) (and driving my hubs to drink)
or trusting people who say all will be OK,
even better than we expect,
that the orange clown will give us what we want,
the truth,
the hidden shit, mind-blowing evidence, ending all conspiracy theories,
then I'm waiting.
I'm waiting to hear something smart come out of his mouth.



A preview of my new chapbook MENTAL MIDGETS: Am I supposed to be doing this?, using by penname Laramie Harlow.

Primary Source - Poet Jason Schneiderman

CLICK: Today's Book of Poetry: Primary Source - Jason Schneiderman (Red Hen Pr...: 

To Please and Instruct

       The purpose of art is to please and instruct

       -- Horace, Arts Poetica

The moral of this poem is fuck you.

The moral of this poem is I'm drunk.

The moral of this poem is I'm too drunk to be held responsible for what I'm

saying to you right now.

The moral of this poem is you're fat.

The moral of this poem is if you come after me, I will have your Hotmail

account turned off, true story.

The moral of this poem is herpes.

The moral of this poem is the Pope's a liar.

The moral of this poem is I'm sorry I threw up through my nose on you.

The moral of this poem is getting through customs without a passport.

The moral of this poem is gestalt therapy.

The moral of this poem is terrorists.

The moral of this poem is you like Tarantino movies because you're stupid

and I like Tarantino movies because I'm smart.

The moral of this poem is cats that look like Hitler.

The moral of this poem is reality television.

The moral of this poem is don't have sex with your siblings, parents, or

anyone under eighteen, sixteen if you're in Greece, fourteen in Denmark.

The moral of this poem is meth mouth.

The moral of this poem is gun-show loophole.

The moral of this poem is Gawker.

The moral of this poem is two state solution.

The moral of this poem is too much rage.

The moral of this poem is rehab sucks.

The moral of this poem is your wife being fingered in the bathroom at a 

party by this guy you invited because you thought he was cool and look

where that got you. 

The moral of this poem is rules change.

The moral of this poem is George Washington filling his dentures with

teeth pulled from his slaves.

The moral of this poem is kill me.

The moral of this poem is hip surgery.

The moral of this poem is drone strike wedding massacre.

The moral of this poem is thong.

The moral of this poem is shut up.

The moral of this poem is make me.

Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes: Poet Cheryl Dumesnil at Radar Reading Series

right NOW, right?

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”

This quote is from Leo Tolstoy’s What Men Live By, and Other Tales, and it serves as a fitting prompt for us all to direct our attention to what is actually happening in our lives in this moment.
KEEP READING

MOTION POEMS

The idea of basing a video on a poem may one day seem as natural and inevitable as the setting of poems to music used to be.

 

David Lehman

editor, Best American Poetry

 

Wednesday's Word: twenty-sixteen

What Do You Know?

1. All together, Americans eat about ____________ Big Macs every year.

2. Since 720 B.C.E., when the first recorded eclipse was observed, Earth’s rotation has gotten about ____________ slower.

3. When you’re in a deep sleep, your neurons fire one to four times per second—compared to ____________ times per second when you’re concentrating on a memory.

What Do You Know?

4. ____________ have always been canvases for political commentary and projection, regardless if their manufacturers want them to be.  

Answers: 550 million, six hours, 30 to 90, Sneakers

Wednesday Word: twenty-sixteen  (so friggin' glad to see you go)

The silence is so loud

No matter what I tell you

You still don’t want to see

Would you rather I lie to you

Than change what you believe

What a funny way to listen

With your head against a cloud

You refuse to answer me

The silence is so loud

© 2004    I published this in Sleeps with Knives www.bluehandbooks.org

I took this photo in Puerto Rico years back

Cynthia Jobin, rest in peace

NORTH, EARLY DECEMBER

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Cynthia Jobin

Standard

Let me down easy
the way hints of winter
fall exquisitely today
scattering icy lacy flowers
from a cloud bouquet
flutter, waver just a bit
unhurried and unworried
to get on with it.
A deeper cold will come
but stay its harder hand
let play a little longer
the november grey indefinites
let me down easy.
The longest night is still ahead
weighs heavy in the apprehension
threatening dismay
let me go haltingly into its
frozen moonlit desolation
tempered by the touch of
something of its opposite
knowing I am anyway
to be let down, I pray
let me down easy.

(She passed Dec. 13, 2016)

Wham! - Last Christmas

Rest In Peace George

Aretha Franklin & George Michael - I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) [Off...

where do you begin...

‘Where do you begin telling someone their world is not the only one?’
— Lee Maracle, Ravensong.

‘The teacher can try to rearrange desires noncoercively… through an attempt to develop in the student a habit of literary reading, even just ‘reading,’ suspending oneself into the text of the other – for which the first condition and effect is a suspension of the conviction that I am necessarily better, I am necessarily the end product for which history happened.’
— Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Righting Wrongs.’

Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

Fernando Pessoa, the most famous Portuguese poet, claimed to do nothing but “pretend and posture.” We are told in the Introduction that three of Pessoa’s primary characters are distinguished by how they “feel:” one just “feels;” another adjusts his feelings to reality; a third modifies his feelings "according to classical measures and rules." He created and abandoned styles, even being credited with a new type of symbolism called “Paulismo.” Pessoa gave each of his alternate egos physical descriptions, mannerisms and had them interact, converse, and write to each other, like a literary doll house. So in effect, his poems were written by “different people;" thus the “and company” of the book’s title.

So let’s see some snippets of his (their?) stuff:

To be a poet is not my ambition,
It’s my way of being alone

But Spring isn’t even a thing:
It’s a manner of speaking.

It is night. It’s very dark. In a house far away
A light is shining in the window.
I see it and feel human from head to toe.

The Universe is not an idea of mine;
My idea of the Universe is an idea of mine.
Night doesn’t fall before my eyes;
My idea of night falls before my eyes.

Where there are roses we plant doubt.
Most of the meaning we glean is our own,
And forever not knowing, we ponder.

Believe me, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates,
And all religions put together teach no more than the candy shop.

I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist.
I’m the gap between what I’d like to be and what others have made me,
Or half of this gap, since there’s also life…

And as for the mother who rocks a dead child in her arms---
We all rock a dead child in our arms.

I’m being watched, but where from?
Which things that can’t see are looking at me?
Who’s in everything, peering?

From the mountain comes a song
Saying that however much
The soul may come to have,
It will always be unhappy.

Goodreads review by Jim Fonseca

merry merry

Thanks to artist Anthony Antonellis for giving us a taste of the holiday spirit.

hope you got good stuff

this dog got lots of good snow for the holidaze... BOOM

Liam Neeson Auditions For Mall Santa Claus