BLINDFOLDS ON! ~

BLIZ~AARD BALL SALE ~

R E A D       M E

One wintry day in 1983, David Hammons peddled snowballs of various sizes. He laid them out in graduated rows and spent the day acting as obliging salesman. Calling the unannounced street action Bliz-aard Ball Sale, he inscribed it into a body of work that, from the late 1960s to the present, has used a lexicon of discreet actions and consciously ‘black’ materials to comment on the nature of the artwork, the art world and race in America.

Although Bliz-aard Ball Sale has been frequently cited and is increasingly influential, it has long been known only through scant descriptions and a handful of photographs. In this engaging study, Elena Filipovic collects a vast oral history of the ephemeral work, uncovering rare images and documents, and giving us singular insight into an elusive artist who has made an art of making himself difficult to find.

LONNIE JOHNSON ~

Friends — ah, I doubt Lonnie Johnson would have minded sharing his song,
but people have their reasons. When this happens on the Birdhouse: please go directly to Youtube and see if the song and Lonnie are hanging out there. If the blockers really don't want us to hear this song,
then let it be. There will be other songs.

CROSSROADS ~

ANOTHER GREAT AMERICAN ~

1929 (NYC) ~ 2018 (Maine)

what a time to lose him!

WHEN THIS WORLD COMES TO AN END ~

SLAVOJ ZIZEK ~

S L A V O J      Z I Z E K

MIT Press

2017

GOBBLE ~

800-page book on food phobias

but it's by Alexander Theroux

so buckle-up

R E A D     M E

Published 05.23.2017
Fantagraphics
784 Pages

DEAR FRIEND ~

News and scandal-gunner that I am, I watched all the State of the Union speech, including all the pomp and ceremony before hand. One could already sense no one was quite taking this speech or event seriously. Menace TV might be, but there was that trepidation seeping in from CNN and certainly from the good folks at MSNBC. This morning you probably caught Morning Joe folks calling the Menace “The Great Dictator” which should be more “The Little Dictator” so it doesn’t take away from the classic Charlie Chaplin satire. But I typed poems for the Birdhouse while the Menace went on, and on, and on, with that wispy voice and bullish nose in the air. Poems by Ellen Bass of lesbian love and her children, and Palestinian poems of homeland and family. Family, of which the Menace will allow one or two “into” the country, but not the whole chain. Like he’d allow Ivanie and Dum Dum Jr., “into” the country, and cut the throats of Derik and Tippy at the border. This is a man who not only speaks with full meanness and disdain, he looks it through and through, much as Al Capone looked like a satiated bloated fish of prohibition. 

The first line I read this morning before I got to the newspapers was by the Irish poet Louis MacNeice: “I meet you in an evil time” from his first book of poems published in 1935, born in the same town as my mother, Belfast. Halfway during the speech I went out onto the ice with flashlight and slip of paper to search for a book on witchcraft that had already sold. Amazon had its records wrong as to this listing. I clambered anyway through the studio wall shelves in a pinch of light believing I’d find the book having left a speech given by the great believer. Have you ever heard so many lies in a speech? I waited to listen afterwards to a rebuttal by young Joe Kennedy, earnest and golden, reminding me of Bobby Kennedy that fateful night in Los Angeles. I was watching that speech and it was live for us when he was shot dead. Now I stay up until midnight jumping television stations when it got too terrible and twisted listening to very smart people on CNN try to make hay of nothing (their new line of duty), while Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams and Nicole Wallace almost couldn’t help but blurt into helpless laughter, mostso the women. Look at the women during the speech — Nancy Pelosi gloriously stone-faced. She’s seen enough from a racist and sexual predator, liar, and all the rest of the gumbo I’m sure she has had in her own life and trials with men. The Menace is nothing but a harsh steady diet of nationalistic and defiant white white white man’s sermon. His gallery of freaks in the audience to show-off looked crippled, miserable, fraught. An evil time.

He’ll fire Mueller, move to North Korea bombast, engulf us in so much carnage we’ll seek solace anyway we can, while the criminal slips town.

Rain tomorrow with snow showers and that persistent chill. We're stuck right now in the dime of winter.

—————————————

"Never let them see you sweat"

Dan Reeves

Head Coach

Denver Broncos

2008

POET IN SPAIN (LORCA) ~

R E A D      M E

From Here

Tell me friends

I have died

Water always sings

under the trembling woods

Tell me friend

I have died

How the poplars

sway the silken sound —

Tell them my eyes

stayed open

that the immortal

blue handkerchief

covered my face

And ah!

that I went to my star

without bread

————————

Federico Garcia Lorca

translated by Sarah Arvio

SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS ~

R E A D     A L O N G

BREAK AWAY ~

Baby Asleep

Walk around

Listening to

My boots

Break Away

Break away from the world

Even a loving child, friends

That travel long distances

To be with us; cross the

Shallow river to a bank of

Ferns, undress while wild

Chatter of the kingfisher

Hunts the long summer water

And years between us since

We’ve done this — naked but

For your necklace — under

Trees, evening in the leaves

My arms circled around you

From His Hand

From his hand

Awakening us

In bed, two small

Carrots brought

Out of the garden

Barely washed he

Wants us to bite

Down into what he

Terms a surprise

And we gamely do —

Watching his smile

At this given sweet —

Knowing five years ago

He was our surprise

Mother & Child

You lift

him

with a

smile

& he

smiles

back

which lifts

you

—————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE ~

F R I E D R I C H     N I E T Z C H E

Madness in individuals is something rare;

but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, 

it is the rule.

R E A D      M E

Bloomsbury 2017

THE HIGH & LONESOME ROAD ~

Steidl 2012

w/ music CD

and a film DVD

OURS ~

A crowd organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee sang “We Shall Overcome” in Farmville, Va., in 1966, after a speech by Stokely Carmichael. CreditThe New York Times

R E A D      M E

THE OPEN PRAIRIE ~

THE ART OF LOADING BRUSH ~

R E A D      M E

WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS ~

KADDISH ~

R E A D      T H E      P O E M

KEN MCCULLOUGH ~

Early Peonies




the peony buds

   and their very own

      army of ants

  on maneuvers

   don't know tophats

           from tapioca

but a wind

      from the southwest

   they recognize





Seeing Snyder Again in the 80's



He's much the same

              truckin' stride

                        mountain goat demeanor

          Tibetan about the eyes —

                                      a feisty sprite



after his talk

       I come up to him

                     in a coat & tie

      and Italian leather shoes

    — gray in my hair

                          and paunch from citywide

              wheel of parentkarma



           introduce myself



& he cocks his head

             leans back a step

        and eyes me quizzically



I say

   referring to the way I'm dressed

        "Yup, it's me, all right"



He fixes me with a glance

      And

                referring to his own getup

             (short patrician haircut

                                            [Bubbs Creek update]

                   professorial reading glasses

         neat blue suit coat

                                   snappy old tie

                         & buttondown shirt

      — still the earring     [diamonds, now]

& still three humpbacked flute players

                                             on his belt buckle — )

says

            "Yup, it's me, too!"

                          with eye crinkle

                       and gold tooth smile


13:X:83





Joey (2001-2016)
       for Orion and Lynn



our beautiful yellow cat

   who spoke to us so eloquently

  always groomed my beard

      as he did his father

     and his siblings

and even inside

         his dog's ears

died yesterday



     even as he was dying

he smelled like fresh-cut hay



I wept and kissed his forehead

     then each of his pure white boots

   then curled him in a shoebox

           and placed him in the basement freezer

      until next spring

               when we'll bury him

under the lilac hedge

    next to his father



I will forever

      see his upright stripy tail

   cutting through the wildflowers

as he makes his way home




—————————



Ken McCullough
DARK STARS
Red Dragonfly Press
2017