the serration of excavation

K. Rexroth's The Advantages of Learning

There are certain physical characteristics you saw in your parents as they aged that you knew you would inherit. The hair color you shared with your mother, how it would fade. The pattern of the thinning of your father's hair, & the extent of it—good to know that when he died in his nineties he still had plenty of it. The skin blemishes, the way lines formed on their faces. Your father's shoulder slump that you also share.

But it is a poem I feel I have most grown into, unshaped by genetic inheritance. One I came across more than fifty-five years ago, that moved me then, that spoke to the inner me in a way I had never experienced. I do not know if it was some sort of premonition or whether it became some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy but it is the poem that I have most inhabited, that has most inhabited me, over all the intervening years. & even though I have read much that I have liked / loved since then, even though I have written much in which I expose or privately see parts of me I would have preferred remained hidden, it still remains for me the poem.

The Advantages of Learning

I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.

Kenneth Rexroth

the journey, sometimes

wednesday newstrip

Xiaomi has now launched two new accessories in China—Japanese whalers pursuing minke whales in waters south of Australia & a flare soaring from a hole in the sun's atmosphere ∙ Delta Airlines has made some changes to its policies on in-flight medical care following an incident from October in which a black, female doctor was treated condescendingly & not allowed to treat a sick patient ∙ obsessive technology workers are so serious about their work that they are giving up food to be more productive at the office ∙ the Mormon Tabernacle Choir & The Radio City Rockettes will perform at PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump's inauguration, it has been announced. Way to go, dude!

morning at the trocadero

wednesday newstrip

PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump 'fessed up to his shortcomings in his rapidly spread, but not quite as rapidly deleted, "unpresidented" tweet ∙ German authorities are investigating whether a 12-year-old boy who did not vote in his home town in south-western Germany in the recent presidential election would have voted for a traditional Christmas PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump if he had ∙ while speaking to thousands of his supporters on Friday night at Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando, PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump admitted for the first time that his supporters were "vicious, violent, nasty, mean . . . & going crazy" · seven people have been rescued after spending hours in the notoriously PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump-infested waters at Cahill's Crossing near Kakadu after their car was washed off a flooded road ∙ a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea on Saturday, generating a small tsunami & knocking out power in parts of PEyOTeUS Donut T®ump.

an abode for birds

wednesday newstrip

President-elect Donut T®ump said Sunday that he won't need daily intelligence briefings because his intelligence is already brief ∙ President-reject Donut T®ump said "nobody really knows" whether climate change is real & that he is "studying" whether the United States should withdraw from the global warming agreement struck in Paris a year ago ∙ President-erect Donut T®ump has rejected as "ridiculous" reported US intelligence findings that Russia intervened in the presidential election on his behalf through targeted hacking ∙ Mayor Nir Barkat of Jerusalem says he is optimistic that President-eject Donut T®ump will move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ∙ President-inept Donut T®ump is expected to name as secretary of state Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, saying "the Exxon Valdez didn't destroy the country so I'm giving the company another chance to do so. With my help they should succeed this time."

Robert Rauschenberg's Estate, (mostly) Erased

the / train watches / the station depart

elucidation

a 2005 hay(na)ku on the re-election of GWB, reprised & slightly modified to reflect current events

Even

if you

now regret it



you

voted the

fucker back in



O

United States

of Christian Vigilantes.

Today the
postman brought
me a red Donald
Trump cap. Slightly
different from
the ones you'll
find worn by
the man & his
slavish devotees.

This one addressed
to those outside
the country who
may or may not
remember the Ugly
American of Graham
Greene fame but are
aware of him anyway.

MAKE AMERICA
GRATE AGAIN.

wednesday newstrip

Australian Federal government changes definition of pasta to include wontons ∙ a man has died after being run over in the driveway of his Toowoomba home by an Uber bringing his wife home from a night out ∙ Australia's one-time darling dairy stocks were dumped by investors on Friday after daily cyber attacks crimped sales of their organic infant formula ∙ conservation group Sea Shepherd has unveiled the latest addition to its anti-whaling arsenal, a pair of mummified legs believed to have belonged to a queen of ancient Egypt ∙ a group of Australian schoolchildren working on a shoestring budget have created science fiction-like weapons such as kamikaze satellites & destructive lasers in readiness for the next generation of warfare in space.

metronome

une grande folie

World AIDS Day

wednesday newstrip

The Brisbane school where a teenage boy was bullied about his sexuality has evaded police & is now driving erratically on a busy highway north ∙ the forced move of a public service agency from Canberra to northern NSW will rip more than $157 million a year from the management committee of the NSW postal union ∙ Australia should refrain from adopting more protectionist policies after yet-to-be-published surveys found the record coral bleaching damage to the Great Barrier Reef earlier this year was even worse than initially thought ∙ Central America was struck on Thursday by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake after a man allegedly asked a young boy to get in his car ∙ Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren's son will burn his entire £5million punk collection now that the age of the movie star is over, & intellectual property is all that matters.

the / antecedents of / donald j. trump

Vale Fidel

A line from Fidel Castro

Parades choke rural
hamlets. Beemers are
stuck at the roadside.
Carbon partitioning

along the Central Coast's
main commuter routes
causes war, hypocrisy,
& competition. Only

educational materials
about piano playing &
music theory still have a
crunch to them through

a glut of younger buyers
who bring the fervor of
stalks of celery. But who
really wrote Shakespeare?

A line from Fidel Castro 2

Winter is getting me
down. A unit of cult-
ural information has
put the Galactic Senate

under attack, driving
it from crisis to crisis.
That slavery is inexorably
tied to the availability

of oil is the standard
paradigm for most
crises; but now recent
breeding population

trends of farmland
birds need to be fact-
ored in. Please complete
the enquiry form below

& I will provide you
with a list of exclusive
Havana Vacation Homes
available for weekly rent.

Che in Bolivia

I must write & thank Fidel for his parting gift. A book of poetry, that fits comfortably in the pocket of my camouflage fatigues. By a Yanqui yet, who set out every day to write something, even when it was hard to find something to write about. It’s an idea I’ve picked up on, have carried out.

Have kept a diary throughout this campaign, although daily Bolivia is very much the same old same old, unlike the New York I read about each night where there are "so many things in the air!" Here there are only maggots & mosquitoes, & the mutterings of peasants intimidated by our presence. They help us because they are frightened of us, & then send to tell the army because they are more frightened of the soldiers.

The army is in the next valley over. The army is now in the valley behind. We are running out of food, are running out of time. "The only thing to do is simply continue."

I am a man with two hearts. The one that beats still dreams of the revolution. The one that weeps is in my pocket, it is Lunch Poems, by Frank O’Hara.

We will move towards the next valley. That way I at least can choose the manner of my death.