Slavoj Źiźek ~

 

    M O R E !

SONGS OF MIRABAI ~

 

Some Songs of Mirabai

           ________________________

paga bandha ghumgharyam nacyari

Binding my ankles with silver

I danced —

people in town called me crazy.

She'll run the clan

said my mother-in-law,

and the prince

had a cup ofvenom delivered.

I laughed as I drank it.

Can't they see?

Body and mind aren't something to lose,

the Dark One's already seized them.

Mira's lord can lift mountains,

he is her refuge.

mhare dere ajyo

Come to my bedroom,

I've scattered fresh buds on the couch,

perfumed my body.

Birth after birth I am your servant,

sleep only with you.

Mira's lord does not perish —

one glimpse of the Dark One is all she requests.

jagamam jivana thora

Life on this planet is fragile,

why take up a burden?

From mother and father

come birth,

but from the font of creation comes karma.

People waste life,

heaping up merit like they're buying and selling —

it's pointless.

I sing out the raptures

of Hari, go into passions with sadhus,

nothing disturbs me.

Mira says — it's your power Dark One,

but it's me who crosses

the limits.

nenam lobham atakam

Wolfish eyes fixed on the Dark One,

hungry, restless,

scouring every inch of his body.

When he came into view

smiling faintly,

lit up with moonlight.

I nearly collapsed by the door.

My family speaks of their plans

to restrain me

but my eyes flash through every obstruction.

Don't they know somebody's claimed me?

I lift to my forehead

every word uttered,

some ugly, some tender —

without the Dark one's approval

nothing survives.

kina sang khelum holi

Terrible solitude

festival day

now that he's gone.

Damn these rubies and pearls,

I'll string devotional beads

at my throat.

And here's an old hermit cloak —

now that fod and house

are distasteful

it matches my feelings.

What makes me like this?

It's a riddle.

You take me to bed

then go off and fuck

some other girl.

Does she have you under her spell

that you can't even write me?

Mira's bundle of nerves in your absence.

Look at her,

an unwatered weed when the

Dark One's away, 

            she wilts in the rubble.

______________________

Songs of Mirabai

translated by Andrew Schelling

White Pine Press, 2024

COMPANION FOR THE JOURNEY VOLUME 31

THE STAX SONGWRITER DEMOS ~

 

   PLAY  ME  ALL  DAY  &  NIGHT

      Stax Records

THE DEATH OF TRUTH ~

 

     Steven Brill

      Al Hunt

ROY HAYNES WAS WITH US FOR 99 YEARS ~

 

R O Y   H A Y N E S

THE DEATH OF TRUTH ~

 

R E A D   M E 

    Knopf 2024

ELLA JENKINS ~

 

Ella Jenkins has passed away in Chicago

at age 100

THE LAST ICE MERCHANT OF ECUADOR ~

 

R E A D   M E

    New York Times

World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vol.1 - England (Alan Lomax) ~

 

SHANE McCRAE ~

 

In the Event of

Officer how you know I'm dancing is the body

-cam. Look, I'm riding centuries of whips, the first half

Of the ghost, arms out the window up, the second half

Arms flat on the pavement, palms down, now the ghost is whole

My arms stretched forward, like I'm bowing, but if I

Were standing, stretched above my head. Officer how

you know I'm dead is that I seem to bow to you

________________________

Shane McCrae

The Many Hundreds of the Scent

Farrar, 2023

BAYARD RUSTIN ~

R E A D   M E 

New York University Press

2024

PRESTON STURGES by STUART KLAWANS ~

 

      Columbia University Press

    2023

GOODBYE ~

 

     The Albert Camus quote was chalked at 7 PM

     election night with a good pal holding

      a flashlight to guide the guiding words

      BACKROAD CHALKIE NOV 6 '24

PHILIP GUSTON: I Paint What I Want To See ~

 

R E A D   M E

   Penguin Books, 2022

DJ SHADOW ~

 

    Mass Appeal 2019

FROG IN BOILING WATER (diiv) ~

 

Fantasy 2024

INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Haymarket, 2023

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS ~

 

Vikingur Olafsson

NOTHING EVER JUST DISAPPEARS ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Pegasus Books

   2024

LALO DELGADO ~

 

Stupid America

stupid america, see that chicano

with a big knife

in his steady hand

he doesn't want to knife you

he wants to sit down on a bench

and carve christ figures

but you won't let him.

stupid america, hear that chicano

shouting curses on the street

he is a poet

without paper and pencil

and since he cannot write

he will explode.

stupid america, remember that chicanito

flunking math and english

he is the picasso

of your western states

but he will die

with one thousand masterpieces

hanging only from his mind.

__________________

Lalo Delgardo

"Stupid America"

from Latino Poetry

Rigoberto Gonzalez, editor

The Library of America, 2024

MAGIC SAM ~

 

ECSTASY AND TERROR ~

 

R E A D   M E

     NYRB, 2019

THE DEERFIELD MASSACRE ~

 

       Simon & Schuster, 2024

SID KING & THE FIVE STRINGS ~

 

PETER SCHJELDAHL ~

 

R E A D   M E

M O RE

      Photograph by Ada Calhoun

   Abrams Press

   2024

KNIFE ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Random House

    2024

CLAIRE DALY ~

 

C L A I R E   D A L Y

Claire Anne Daly was born on Feb. 26, 1958, in Bronxville, N.Y

died at age 66 in Longmont, Colo.

PATHWAY ~

 

LITERATURE OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION ~

 

R E A D   M E

   Penguin Books

   2024

BARBARA DANE ~

 

B A R B A R A    D A N E

Barbara Jean Spillman was born on May 12, 1927, in Detroit

gone in Oakland, CA. Oct 20, 2024

DIRECTIVE by ROBERT FROST ~

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other.  Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home.  The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring and yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

_____________________

Robert Frost

Steeple Bush (1947)

ROBERT FROST IN A NUTSHELL ~

 

T H E    L I B R A R Y   O F   A M E R I C A

Once upon a time Jay Parini and I worked together

for a few days in the academia of Middlebury Vermont ~

I have only fond memories,

he knows his Frost.