Monday, July 29, 2019

My Response to Everything Concerning Everything (that strange flower)

Sunset at Allison's
Twin Peaks, CA July 2019




is poetry, and it's not what I write but what I want to read, words floating up or by like fish in my mind. Wallace Stevens comes to mind complacencies of the peignoir.

In the span of let's say five minutes I scanned just scanned words strung together (scan, scroll, read?) Mitch McConnell Mitch Moscow his voice a drone the rap something about something and then a star not of the sky (the stars' wrapping) but of rap his radiance in Sweden who threw a guy across a street which I believe is assault (the Swedes say) but whom POSPOTUS wants out (of Swedish jail) encouraged by the Kardashian paper doll who put on clothes that her husband ordered up designed that covered her famous breasts and ass and fly waist and Cinderella feet so that she could pose with the men in orange, most recently, take a selfie and

S
T
A
N
D

U
P for justice reform and Ikea be boycotted (Ikea being Danish not Swedish but who cares but meatballs and lingonberries and soft-serve cones) and wait, who do we support here? 

remember: five minutes (maybe ten including the footage of the blue-eyed Eilish)

they ended with Meghan Markle editing British Vogue and insisting on freckles and then the photo of the boy standing in grass his thin-lipped sweetness smile shot dead at a garlic festival by another angry white man with a gun.

Precious child.

Another one (or two) added to the piles of dead children.


I've stood in a sunflower field with my sons in Gilroy.

















There's humor in befuddlement or is it wry or rue?





Here's the poem.


Gubbinal

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed —
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens



I think we (you) suffer from an intellectual laziness, a lack of imagination.


Like Stevens' also wrote:

People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles. 



On another note, I am learning about pleasure.







(and no, I am not going mad but rather writing and wrestling with words)


10 comments:

  1. Was hoping this was madness.

    I need a buddy.

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  2. "The world is ugly,
    And the people are sad."

    Yes. But at least you stood in a sunflower field.

    (IKEA is Swedish, meatballs and all.)

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    Replies
    1. Some Danish conglomerate bought it, so technically it’s not Swedish anymore. I think.

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  3. You are not going Mad, nor am I... yet the World HAS gone Mad, dragging us down an Ugly Rabbit Hole. I want to Dream of such things as Periwinkles and not have Nightmares of piles of dead Children killed by Racist Maniacs and being led by a Sociopath Demagogue we call President of the 'United' States, whose constantly fanning the flames of Hatred and further division, there is no longer Unity!

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  4. yes yes to all of it writing and wrestling with words this morning in a strange moment of clarity I thought perhaps wrestling is all of it that is the work of it the struggle of it and the joy too and here I see you fly into the ring like mickey rourke at the end of The Wrestler and we never find out of he wins or not we’re just left with the image of him flying

    thank you for wallace stevens I have loved him forever

    rebecca

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  5. We're in the place where evening becomes full on night. When the bats show up to swoop and twirl and eat the mosquitoes. When even our glasses don't give us clear outlines anymore. When we go back down into the house because the nocturnal animals are beginning to stir and the world belongs to them now. Our rhythms slow and theirs quickens.

    Time to refresh the moral compass. Time to remember we have a moral compass, in spite of the madness around us.
    As Will Stafford has said, "the darkness around us is deep".

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  6. I loved the slip and swirl of that and would be interested to know what you are learning about pleasure.

    My friend said that maybe this is all partly because Mercury is in gatorade ... we are all going backwards. Until we hit a wall or fall off the edge? Sadly, I admit I "suffer from an intellectual laziness, a lack of imagination". But I have no idea what to do about it, except to try to stand up.

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  7. I had no idea the Danes had bought Ikea. And I don't know what Kardashian story you're referring to -- I'm apparently behind on my Kardashian news. :) But I love your slip-slide through all these ideas and images, tragic and not.

    And YES, definitely let me know if/when you come to London!

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  8. PS -- Mitch McConnell DOES create a sort of "Gubbinal" effect in me.

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  9. how many more mass shootings since that sweet child at the food festival? i cannot bear it.

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