Sunday, January 18, 2026
Saturday, January 17, 2026
T-BONE WALKER TONIGHT ~
U.K. 1966
w/ Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Wilson, Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Moody, Benny Carter and Bob Cranshaw
Friday, January 16, 2026
Thursday, January 15, 2026
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
SAVE YOURSELF ! ~
SAVE YOURSELF !
Joan Crawford
JOHNNY GUITAR
_____________________________
Imagine, we are the ones:
not Tom Hayden, not
Bertrand Russell, not
Hannah Arendt, not
Susan Sontag, not
Yevtushenko, US
We are the ones
who get to watch
and feel and wander
straight-faced directly
into the once supposed
and now very real
Orwell reality —
Here it is
Most people
can’t come to terms
with the is of is
It’s no more than this:
people being crushed
the innocent being
shot right in the face
and the response is
from born idiots
who are also in
full domination of
all the laws
(except consciousness)
and they are going to
say, (surprise, surprise)
“2 + 2 = 5”
There’s no God
There’s no Godot
There’s no Government
There was someone named Good
There is only us
The wonderful us
________________________
Bob Arnold
January 14 / 26
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Monday, January 12, 2026
Sunday, January 11, 2026
Saturday, January 10, 2026
ESAD BABACIC ~
Democracy
Democracy is when your phone rings
and you pick up the receiver
with nobody on the other side.
Democracy is when the entire skyscraper cannot sleep
because of a hungry dog barking beneath the window,
locked in a cage by his owner.
Democracy is when you call
the SPCA
as you can no longer
listen to the desperate dog,
and they tell you
there's nothing they can do —
once the laws are adopted . . .
once it becomes legal . . .
we'll bark too.
Democracy is when somebody
previously poor
remains poor in the future.
The Seeker
Drunk from the bus,
terrorized from thinking.
How does the snow smell?
How do you dream?
The Samurai
I'm pierced through.
With the last year's swallows
still flying through me.
Snow
Believe in snow
and cut yourself up
to make it sting
when it falls.
Russians
Russians never
run away.
It's too far.
~
Born before my mother,
I'd be free
~
Give me your hand,
I've taken your heart.
~
The rhythm sleeps on the tracks.
~
The silence of a hand
having found itself
in another one.
______________________________________
Esad Babacic
Every Child Is Beautiful When Born
Dalkey Archive, 2021
Friday, January 9, 2026
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
REMEMBERING VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA ~
Dear Bob,
News came in the afternoon that Vinod Kumar Shukla passed after a brief illness. Pneumonia and complications. He was 89 and was writing stories and poems to the end. I'd admired him ever since I came across the first line of one of his early poems. It began "That man put on a new woolen coat and went away like a thought." A new woolen coat is not something you would see Shukla in. It would probably be a coat neither old nor new; it would be too nondescript to be either. He was nondescript looking himself. He would give long interviews but without, I think, saying very much. He never commented on other writers. Never did reviews. Had none of the trappings of the "literary" life. For a living he taught agricultural extension in a remote city in central India. It was in the country's tribal belt and he saw the destruction of the forest first hand. In one poem he spoke of people from the villages leaving their homes and coming to the city. He watched men, women, children passing him in the street. Then one year he saw men and women -- but few children. Was the tribe dying out?
Love
~ Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
BELA TARR ~
Mr. Tarr, right, received the Grand Jury Prize in 2011 at the Berlin International Film Festival from a jury member, Guy Maddin. The award was for Mr. Tarr’s final feature film, “The Turin Horse.”
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Monday, January 5, 2026
FIVE POEMS OF YAKAMOCHI~
to come but to this,
my wife and I trusted in life
as if it would last
a thousand years.
My wife departed from our home.
I could not hold her back
so I have hidden her
in the mountain,
and my heart has lost its bearing.
Though my mind knows
that life never comes
but to this,
how I cannot bear
these painful feelings!
Each time I see the mist
trailing on Saho Mountain,
I remember my wife —
there is no day
when I do not weep.
In the past
I glanced at it casually,
but now that I realize
my wife's grave is there,
how beloved is Saho Mountain.
_______________________
from The Ten Thousand Leaves
Poems from the Man'yoshu
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
NYRB, 2025
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Saturday, January 3, 2026
GASTON FERNANDEZ ~
Apparent Breviary
2
Every time I see the sun I believe in
an opposite. Necessarily
the true absence that extreme
liberty
my hands, they reply: blood doesn't kill.
It remains the same tiger,
who trembles again
in my hands
27
Desire is no one's
lip worn like
memory
eyes
death ahead
without will
without dilemma
without air
39
To the place
from before
44
To know then
Perhaps because two spaces
is
many
and two times now
(perhaps,
if a single time is already
memory
52
Must say something
Flee from the other's word
Without laughing. The word's
capacity
as water A balance.
The ordering of air
65
Never man
Only
one
78
To look,
without distracted eye
To not look Only there the center will be
a pall
nameless place speech,
so the body remains
without distress
without aura
93
The living.
Light expels travelers permanence
has no edge
like hair
does not wound,
does not present
place incarnates,
in intution
without edges
___________________________________
Gaston Fernandez
Apparent Breviary
translated from the Spanish by KM Cascia
World Poetry 2025
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