Wednesday, March 2, 2016

FIRST STEP ~







Dear Kim,

Naturally, voting is all about one having a sense of empowerment and it should be practiced.

If someone believes in Trump, Hillary, Sanders — go for it.

But it’s quite another thing voting for the status quo of Hillary and Trump, who won’t move in any force toward a settlement of fairness and justice. In fact, Trump is practicing racism and bigotry and there is no way of protecting this. Clinton is simply more of the Obama platform, a man I value greatly and the position he is in, but his supporters make few moves at all that threatens their base of livelihood and caliber. They speak and barely practice. If anything,  Hillary Clinton has become more a war hawk as she has progressed within her political entourage. War monsters Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld were allowed to walk away scot-free after their devastating war maneuvers; no Wall Street firm had their nuts crushed for their demoralizing practices that continue every single moment of every single day; and the liberals are now consumed with their identities, forgetting the racism that continues in this country, and the downtrodden of the poor and unlucky. The liberals are effete as always and of course a liberal home in Texas would have photographs of Bush Sr. and the Clintons. They’re all Republicans!

This is the mighty rat-race of double-speak.

Tiny Williamstown, MA., is one of the few Berkshire county towns that voted for Hillary for President in Massachusetts. The majority of the rural spots in the state went for Bernie. Or Trump. Same in Vermont. Country folk want the straight shooters, even if they are night & day.

The independent stronghold everywhere in this country is rural. They talk with their hands.  Sometimes harsh, often elegantly and for justice. It’s an odd soup. A true American melting pot soup.

The problem, always, is there is no argument about justice: if you are against any part of humanity in its goodness and life, you are against freedom and justice. Period. Middle of the roaders are also the enemies of justice because there is no middle of the road to justice. It’s existing, or it isn’t. Compromise never works when one is attempting to justify a balance for justice. There are plain-jane bad people who are ignorant, abusive, and never to be compromised with. They must be educated just how a unity forms. It forms around equality for all.

The liberals want their coffee just-so, their cute dogs, comfortable homes and cars, and they detest more than anything the likes of anyone who has not given up on 60s ideals and hardwork radicalism that only proves the liberal softies as caved-in wusses.

Hey, what are you gonna do?!

Many (not all), somehow mistakenly believe a vote for Hillary is a vote for women,  which she is only in appearance. Otherwise she’s a corporate driven war hawk secretary of state. As bad as her stumbling and bumbling bubba husband, last seen campaigning for his wife inside and outside polling places on Super Tuesday in eastern Massachusetts, which is, by the way, against the law. 

It’s no mistake or surprise that we get two polarizing figures now at the head of the pack in the US Presidential race, adored by the general media capital, running against one another in the general election this fall, and in the meantime lose the chance of an actual and decent and fighting for-justice-for-all (Superman) named Bernie. “He’ll never win” is often the liberal cry against Bernie. My god, I've heard this whining all my life from these people: 'We can't end the war, we can't save the historical bridge, we can't stop the power plant, we can't climb this steep trail! etc.' With a battle cry like that, no wonder we no longer win wars, or can build a proper mousetrap any longer in America.

all’s well, Bob

 







FELICITY ~





M A R Y    O L I V E R    W/    R I C K Y





Do the Trees Speak?





Do the trees speak back to the wind

when the wind offers some invitational comment?

As some of us do, do they also talk to the sun?

I believe so, and if such belief need rest on

   evidence, let me just say, Sometimes it's

   an earful.



But there's more.



If you can hear the trees in their easy hours

of course you can also hear them later,

   crying out at the sawmill.







Storage



When I moved from one house to another

there were many things I had no room

for. What does one do? I rented a storage

space. And filled it. Years passed.

Occasionally I went there and looked in,

but nothing happened, not a single

twinge of the heart.

As I grew older the things I cared

about grew fewer, but were more

important. So one day I undid the lock

and called the trash man. He took

everything.

I felt like the little donkey when

his burden is finally lifted. Things!

Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful

fire! More room in your heart for love,

for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing — the reason they can fly.






This Morning



This morning the redbirds' eggs

have hatched and already the chicks

are chirping for food. They don't

know where it's coming from, they

just keep shouting, "More! More!"

As to anything else, they haven't

had a single thought. Their eyes

haven't yet opened, they know nothing

about the sky that's waiting. Or

the thousands, the millions of trees.

They don't even know they have wings.



And just like that, like a simple

neighborhood event, a miracle is

taking place.



_______________________
Mary Oliver
Felicity
Penguin 2015 



 






Tuesday, March 1, 2016

TWEEDLE DEE ~












GO! BERNIE ~




V O T E


B E R N I E     S A N D E R S

P R E S I D E N T




United States Senator
from Vermont
Assumed office
January 3, 2007
Serving with Patrick Leahy
Preceded by Jim Jeffords
Chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee
In office
January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2015
Preceded by Patty Murray
Succeeded by Johnny Isakson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Vermont's at-large district
In office
January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2007
Preceded by Peter Plympton Smith
Succeeded by Peter Welch
Mayor of Burlington
In office
April 6, 1981 – April 4, 1989
Preceded by Gordon Paquette
Succeeded by Peter Clavelle
Personal details
Born Bernard Sanders
September 8, 1941 (age 74)
Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Political party Liberty Union (Before 1979)
Independent (1979–2015)
Democratic (2015–present)
Spouse(s) Deborah Shiling (1964–1966)
Jane O’Meara (1988–present)
Domestic partner Susan Mott (1969)[1]
Children Levi (with Mott)
Dave (stepchild)
Carina (stepchild)
Heather (stepchild)
Residence Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
Alma mater Brooklyn College (1959–60)
University of Chicago (1960–64)
Ethnicity Jewish
Signature
Website Senate website
Campaign website





photograph by bob arnold







Charles Blow from the New York Times


Monday, February 29, 2016

FROM SNOW AND ROCK AND WOOD AND MUD AND OVER ICE ~






The day it turned sunny and 45 degrees and still February
my goodness! we headed back into the woodlot
and pulled out 12 sled loads of that red oak
firewood pile we had made earlier in the
week by felling the old and dead tree
and hand-splitting right on site

Except this time we loaded all 12 loads
right into two truck loads and
brought the firewood home that way
through the breaking down ground
frost, the mud that is here now
and let's not even try to
remember all the ice

Instead of dragging the sleds home twelve times
this time we used the truck —
we're not as dumb as we look —
and we still had a jolly old time

Did I tell you the battery is dead on the truck?
It's a 1989 Toyota red pickup
and it's the only vehicle
we ever bought brand new
our first 40 years of marriage
Walked right in with 12k in cash
in our pocket and that was
after saving 1k every year
for, you got it,
12 years



We have worked with the truck so long now
that it has worn out a name,
we call it "the red truck"
and we talk to the truck
nearly as much as we talk to
one another and we talk to
one another all the time!

We also pat the truck on the side
the steering wheel and when
we carry along the jump-start battery
in the cab with us to turn the truck over
(it takes quite a long time to sled down
through the woods sled loads and
load a truck up) plus I never
told you the frame is about
busted

We have to be tender,
and it's easy to be
tender



[ BA ]
28 February 2016




Sunday, February 28, 2016

HILLARY - KISSINGER ~










 

 


SPEAK TO ME ~







this is a cartoon, an immediate classic to my mind,
I took a photograph of off someone's fridge door
I still can't stop laughing

the artist: Jason Adam Katzenstein
from the New Yorker

 





UNCOLLECTED ALLEN GINSBERG ~








[ P O E M ]




3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday

passed vast mountain gorges and hairpin

river-bends, mist sun and cement factory

soft coal dust everywhere, all China

got a big allergic cold. Literary dele-

gation homebound after 3 weeks, now I'm

traveling separately like I used to — except

everywhere omnipresent kindly Chinese

Bureaucracy meets me at airports & boats

& takes me to tourist hotels & orders meals. I'm

trying to figure a way out — envious of 2

bearded hippies traveling 4th class in

steerage eating tangerines & bananas —

sleepers in passageways on mats, Chinese

voyagers playing checkers. Saw Beijing,

Great Wall, tombs & palaces, Suchow's

Tang gardens, Hangchow's West Lake walkway

dyke to hold the giant water in years of drought

built up by governors Tsu-Tung-Po and Po-Chu-I.

Saw Cold Mt. Temple w/ Snyder who'd

heard its bell echo across ocean.


                                                   — China, November 11, 1984


Published in: Big Scream, no. 20 (February 15, 1985), p. 4, November 11,1984




Now, here's a poet and his editor who know how to honor its small press.
Each poem in this book is individually notated and graced. 



Saturday, February 27, 2016

FOR, MIKE LUSTER ~






WOODS WORK ~









We were up in the woodlot, full sunshine, this afternoon
barely any snow now, certainly ground plain of ice
Here's a photograph of bringing home over the ice
sliding like kites
two sled loads of dry oak
We left a good size pile of hand split oak
up in the woodlot for another day
when a bit more snow falls

For all our Hillary Clinton fans, and we
know you're out there friends
but we don't like the war-hawk Hillary
the liar Hillary, the daddy war-bucks Hillary
Goldman Sachs Hillary
any more than we any longer like our
Vermonters Peter Shumlin and Patrick Leahy
not rooting for their home town boy, Bernie


We would love a woman President!
Could you bring back Shirley Chisholm?
or ask Angela Davis, how about Elizabeth Warren?!
We'll wait for Elizabeth Warren —
if she even wants to bother
with this circus


Bernie should sit down on the end of the log
with Donald Trump and I bet he could
teach him some things —
after all, this great country was cut out
of raw wood by salesmen / con men (Trump)
and freedom riders (Bernie)
and an independent mind
is a glorious thing

That's how two woodcutting fools
chatter aloud in the woods
when the sun is
starting to feel warm
on their backs

25 degrees
to-
day


26 Feb 2016



Thursday, February 25, 2016

OSIP MANDELSTAM ~







Voronezh Notebooks



25



Goldfinch, friend, I'll cock my head —

Let's check the world out, just me and you:

This winter's day pricks like chaff;

Does it sting your eyes too?



Boat-tailed feathers yellow-black,

Sopped in color beneath your beak,

Do you get, you goldfinch you,

Just how you flaunt it?



What's he thinking, little airhead —

White and yellow, black and red!

Both eyes check both ways — both! —

Will check no more — he's bolted!

                                          December 9-27, 1936



__________________________ 

O S I P     M A N D E L S T A M 
Voronezh Notebooks
translated by Andrew Davis

New York Review of Books 2016

Mandelstam wrote this beauty two years before his death in 1938, still a young enough man. Fearless and unpopular with the Soviet authorities (Stalin), he was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia and last seen in a transit camp near Vladivostok.






 

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

MIRZA ABD AL-QADER BIDEL / ROBIN MAGOWAN ~





New and available now from Longhouse, 2016 ~
 
Robin Magowan

The Mirrored Spectrum ~
Versions of Bidel

128 pages
perfect bound 
With poems and photographs
$15

Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal
Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal, US Orders, $18.95









_________________________
International orders ~ complete $30 with Paypal payment





 


all orders may be made by Paypal or check
mail order here:

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 PO Box 2454
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 05303
 

~

VITA

Besides ten poetry collections and a number of translations from French, Italian, Spanish and more recently Persian, Robin Magowan is the author of an autobiography, Memoirs of a Minotaur, a collection of travel pieces, Improbable Journeys, a critical study of modern pastoral, Narcissus and Orpheus, and two accounts of continental cycle racing.  His Garden of Amazement: Scattered Gems after Sâeb appeared from Longhouse in 2015. He resides on a hilltop above Santa Fe where he wrestles with a large rock garden.

The poet, mystic and philosopher Mirza ‘Abd al-Qader Bidel (1644-1720) is India’s greatest writer in Persian and the last exponent of the innovative Indo-Persian style.  Born in Patna, he lived most of his life in Delhi, serving as a soldier before taking a vow of poverty and becoming a wandering dervish."









Monday, February 22, 2016

Sunday, February 21, 2016

OLIVIER MESSIAEN ~










HARDSCRABBLE ~






My favorite stories of America are the hardscrabble stories. That's the opposite of the losers — the hardscrabblers — those would be the likes of Bernie Sanders and certainly not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Hardscrabblers would also include Barack Obama and Paul Wellstone, who was most likely killed. For the past eight years the geniuses of the Republican Congress have tried to kill Barack Obama. They've done pretty well for themselves, but so has Barack Obama, and by the way, Michelle Obama. Just watch what history will do for them once the prejudices all around us move along. Hillary Clinton has already learned a great deal from Bernie Sanders, whereas Bernie Sanders hasn't learned anything he doesn't already know about Hillary Clinton. If she were smart, as she charges ahead with her corporate backers to the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, she would enlist Bernie Sanders and his hardscrabble and hard won winnings (decades of it) into her forthcoming story. The Republican elite are a mess having to watch Donald Trump at work, but there is a strong legion of the usual non-voters who plan to rocket Trump into a higher registry. They call themselves independent, often they are, and good for them in that hardscrabble school. . .but a good many are also racist, bigoted and troubled. They may find themselves voting for Trump with other independents who followed Sanders and want nothing to do with Clinton; and at the same time leagues of soft Republicans who can't stand Donald Trump may be siding with Hillary Clinton. The cross winds of politics as both Republican and Democrat will disappear into a new voting of the new Civil War. However, don't be fooled, neither Trump or Clinton are American success stories. They are corporate big dogs who toe the line for big business interests, war politics, and the mainstream. There will be no hardscrabble classic film ever made of these two. Sanders yes; Obama for sure. Whether Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, or Jean Renoir's classic film The Southerner, we adapt and weep and curl up with the dear American hardscrabble story. Songs of Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Jimmy Rodgers, Blind Willie McTell, Odetta. In a book, on the screen, or music. A pity you can't recognize it when it's right in front of you.


20 February 2016