A large ant scuttles
Across the dome of my tent
Sisyphean task
It’s stifling hot and humid—
Which is slave to his boulder?
(Searing transforms to seering)
What I’m Reading:
Part of me is always about to turn
in a direction I will never go.
— Matthew Zapruder / “The Painted Desert”
of desperation,
dim rooms moan obscenities.
drafts seep through pane-cracked
views of black miry canals.
alert sirens. empty streets.
What I’m Reading:
About suffering, they knew no more or less / than we do, being / housed in luminescence…
— John Burnside / “The Old Masters”
What I’m Reading:
But everything’s
not enough
you have to go out
& shake
everything’s
hand and the
tremendous
feeling of
everything
is not shook enough.
— Eileen Myles / “Sweet Heart”
So, over the next week I might miss a post or two. I’m spending the next week on my bicycle riding from Buffalo to Albany, NY with 650 other folks that think biking 400-miles in the dead of summer is a good idea.
Well… it’s a splendid idea and that’s why we’re doing the 26th annual Cycle The Erie Canal bike tour.
Service may be spotty—it was last year, and we’re not staying in hotels or B&B’s but at community centers, middle school and high school athletic fields, etc.; so camping out usually means little or no WiFi, hence posts may be spotty this week.
We cycle the darn thing because the darn thing is there… stay tuned…
I’ll still be reading, writing + riding.
What I’m Reading:
When we were young
the earth was dying like a hero in a streetlight.
— Sam Rush / “Sonnet for what ages and does not”
the sun is a blister overhead.
— Lucille Clifton / “jasper texas 1998”
As scorching heatwaves intensify and the frequency of wildfires surges … many European travellers … changed how they plan their holidays. Three in four (76%) European travellers are adapting their behaviour to the climate crisis…
— Clea Skopeliti / “‘My escape is going north’: heatwaves begin to drive tourists in Europe to cool climes” / The Guardian
Steadfast and awful, my tall father / Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks… Like the sound of my mother weeping again, / No sound beating ends where it began.
— Jericho Brown / “Duplex”
The weather seems to be on steroids and natural disasters increasingly appear to be less and less natural. But this is not the new normal. What we are seeing now is only the very beginning of a changing climate caused by human emissions of greenhouse gasses.
— Greta Thunberg / The Climate Book: The Facts and Solutions
I am not in the mood
For anything
I leak desire
I owe this all to poetry
Strange humor
I found you again
— Dorothea Lasky / “Twins”
Americans have traded sedans for crossovers and SUVs for full-size pickups with total abandon over the past decade. To the extent that we think at all critically about the sheer bulk of the vehicles we drive, we’re usually motivated by environmental concerns. One common notion—though auto-safety experts will say it’s not that simple—is that it’s safer to get around in what’s basically a tank. But those benefits, exaggerated as they may be, are only for people inside the vehicle. People outside—pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users—are in more peril.
— Angie Schmitt / “Big Cars Are Killing Americans“ / The Atlantic
it’s raining in Athens too, a brood of stars jump
on the hood as I race onto Route 441 & sob
over a cold voice on the radio explaining God.
— Abhijit Sarmah / “In Her Last Phone Call”
What I’m Listening To:
Sing into the silence
And work out your thoughts for yourself
— Loma / “Turnaround”
McKinley was shot
In Buffalo—but not here—
This spot was chosen
To honor the president.
The obelisk as phallus—
(To the evil that men do)
What I’m Reading:
… Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
— Ada Limón / “A New National Anthem”
What I’m Reading:
the meek do inherit the earth only after the new
world becomes the old country with no pot to piss in
— Alison C. Rollins / “[American Journal]”
The Puppet Pastiche Community is excited to announce our 4th of July Idiosyncrasy: Indemnification Creepy Creditor Party on Thursday July 4th, from 1-5pm in the lockup.
Get your Lifeboats! This one’s a loss. But even the Greeks, the Huns, the Romans had to recede into the twilight’s last steaming pile o’.
Drool and mutter under the harsh light’s red glare. Come one, come all! Watch the listing ship o’ fools. We’ll provide the hats and streamers. If you’d like to attend, we will send out an RSVP for DOLLARS and fossil fuels shortly.
Ventilators will be provided for a non-nominal charge.
Ice cream social to follow.
Happy happy joy joy.
What I’m Reading:
We comprehend it now this land is two lands
one triumphant bully one still hopeful America
Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind
purple mountains and no homeless in America
— Alicia Ostriker / “Ghazal: America the Beautiful”
a man didn’t fit—
i witnessed the full measure—
his limbs were removed,
and mailed in an envelope
that read: anywhere but here.
What I’m Reading:
Vivid memories that flash into the mind’s eye might be made in the primary visual cortex, the same area of the brain that processes raw visual input from the eyes.
— Julian Nowogrodzki / “How the ‘mind’s eye’ calls up visual memories from the brain” / Nature
I have well trod ways of going off the rails. I have multifoliate multivariances and polyvalencies of texts. I have Brakhage films and John Cage bubblegum. I’m gonna chew chew chew ’til my teeth get numb. I have the eyeless in Gaza player piano bolweevils in exploding plastic shades. I have a plastic covered couch and a take ‘n tape cassette player. I have gutted all my victual fish and lived a livestock week in panoply and cornucopia. I have called upon Mr. Pharmacist to make my life more bittersweet but he only succeeds at distanat quasar sounds. Oh please be here because I am, and I don’t really want to go there where you’re not. That’s impossible, that’s im… that’s impossible, that’s im-poss-i-ble… you’re in Nova Scotia but I’m not…
Rimsky-Korsakov was lying in an arroyo under the noonday sun. His eyes blistered. His lips chewed away by ravenous coyotes, who were now digging deep into his viscera. He hummed a new melody he thought he might be able to develop into an operetta. One of the coyotes had offered to write the libretto in a picaresque style reminiscent of Count Von Yorga Difibrio of Romania. Korsakov thought Sikorsky would be excellent in the lead, as he had a tin ear and leaden lungs.
“Yes, Sikorsky it is…”
(This was the day she started to write again. It didn’t matter much what she wrote, just that she did… so she wrote this…)
What I’m Reading:
picasso’s fingers all wear prison uniforms
to paint an emptiness …
— Duo Duo / “See the Smoke in the Bottle, the Sail in the Bottle”
thee istsfor manity reader 