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From last year’s model…   Pieces of Silver On the fifty-seventh Thursday of the month, we host a flotilla of sad-eyed immigrant children from the next township over and inculcate them with the values of the merchant class, the evolutionary principles under-girding the sort of life   they want, as their parents have not attained it and never will, hence the sad eyes. Each gets a gift bag stamped “share, with love,” containing a single, sturdy, high thread count oatmeal cookie, a scratch-off ticket, and a small note: “sharing is for pussies.”   Laugh at your own risk, sneer to drown the sound of your craving, we know better. We know where the profit fairy flutters to nest, we know how to look slim and golden, even after the hunt, even after your little Bakunins have done their sloppy best and delivered you to us. (From Kindness in Never Small, 2015)

Another suddenly topical poem, from my next collection. Please join me at Rust Belt Books this Saturday at 3pm for beer and cupcakes and books books books! I Can Hear Her Bones Growing, or Cracking America always tries too hard, chewing with her mouth open, walking her huge, stupid dogs right down the middle of the street, letting them shit just anywhere. Like a trumpet solo in C sharp when C would do just as fine, thank you, like the idea of soloing in the first place, like Miles Fucking Davis, trying way too hard, trying to be cool while the veins in his neck and head swole up like a garden hose after the tap gets flipped and the water flows. She tries too hard and then says things like, “better to have tried too hard than not tried at all,” as though she was Caesar, prescribing the bounds of logic with a sweep of the hand. Laughing too loud, snorting, the guffaw is an American invention. I can’t do much more than say I love you, you big, goofy, toothsome girl, and how strange it is to feel older than one’s parent. I only hope that yours are the…
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After the recent DDOS attack that launched via the “internet of things,” I read that Anonymous might have been responsible. Turns out they were not, but it did remind me that Anonymous existed, and led me to their web page. The first item on that page was titled “The American Political System is BROKEN,” and to a screed about how the US should get rid of the “two-party system” and change to instant run-off voting. This led me to 3 conclusions: Anonymous is a group with radical means but not a radical agenda; Anonymous does not really understand how instant run-off voting would affect the two-party system; Anonymous, like so many other entities, uses the word “broken” when they do not understand how something works. It is the third item that concerns me most. I’m sure many of us have sat with a child and tried to show them how the toy they believe is broken actually works; I’m sure most of us have been that child. It is this meaning of the word—that is, the wrong one—that pervades the media universe these days. At the very least, people use “broken” to mean “a very complicated problem,” which is another…
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I need to get back into the groove of daily writing, I have gotten away from the habit and was working more in spurts, which did produce some good work, but not enough. Writing every day helps mollify the obsession in ways that bursts of creativity cannot, though I should not avoid such bursts, of course, and must ride them wherever they lead. Daily writing also helps me sort my mind differently, since I do not approach the page with a pre-existing idea, project to work on, or even formal structure in mind. It is a bit like doing tai chi or yoga, in that it helps my mind be more supple, and stronger, though I don’t think “mind” is actually the right word here. Suite of ideas? Cognitive flow? Mind will have to do for now. The problem now is that I have too many things to say, they all want to come spilling out at once. So, I will choose one: I have been meaning to go back and read Hofstader’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” for a while, first when Donald Trump used said style to win the Republican nomination for President, and then even more…
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I started this blog in 2008, after we moved from Atlanta, GA to Lockport, NY, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. A few months later, my wife challenged me to listen to all the CDs I owned (well, all the store-bought ones, not copies) and post them to the blog, and I seem to have lost track of that divine purpose, though I have been listening away. So, since the last time I posted CDs (July 2014! damn.), I have listened to: 822) Delicious Vinyl: Waxing Off: The First Decade; 823) Pedro the Lion: Control; 824) Bob Dylan: Desire; 825) Harry Nilsson: A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night; 826) Ladytron: Witching Hour; 827) Orb: u.f.orb; 828) Noi Albinoi: Slow Blow; 829) Dillinger: Cocaine; 830) Various: Quiet About It: A Tribute to Jesse Winchester; 831) Executive Slacks: The Complete Recordings; 832) Dntel: Life is Full of Possibilities; 833) Honky Hoppers: Standing Room Only; 834) Kermit Ruffins: Kermit Ruffins; 834) Brian Setzer Orchestra: The Dirty Boogie; 835) Space’n’Bass: Disc 9 and 10; 836) Swap Dogg: Cuffed, Collared, and Tagged/Doing a Party Tonite; 837) Das FX: Dead Serious; 838) Sue Foley: Without a Warning; 839) Howlin’ Wolf:…
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I read an interesting article in Jacobin about how children are increasingly seen as investments, largely because of the increase in income disparity–Erickson article. Jacobin can be a too strident for me at times, but this article (which is a condensation of a book, I believe) really rang true, at least in part because I see the same effect—the corporatization of culture—everywhere. I think sometimes I am overstating the case, seeing everything as a nail because I have a hammer, and then I find others who see the same insidiousness: “The young children of the wealthy are increasingly diverse portfolios of applications to private schools, enrichment classes, play dates, and nanny shares. These little Einsteins go on to attend prestigious high schools and Ivy League colleges. But it starts in preschool. A whole culture has risen around the cultivation of the child into a successful adult, equipped for the global economy. Its language is English plus Spanish or Mandarin; its literature is the mommy blog. Working-class children, on the other hand, are objects of suspicion defined by what is perceived, within the economic superstructure, as a lack — of high-enough test scores, of self-confidence, or the inclination and facility to self-regulate behavior. Childhood is…
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Kindness is Never Small for Tod W. We were all born, for fuck’s sake, and we all saw through that con, but some of us figured the con was all, no way out, only fools thought otherwise, the ones at the other end of the cafeteria with spoons hanging off their noses. I was always enamored of the gallant dancers, aware of the terrible undertow   but just as ready to dance with the shades of Lethe, Maslow’s brood, because they were such willful cowards, did their weeping up in a nice, neat bow and spread their gifts about, always keeping tally, always ready to call in that favor, that time they simulated kindness and you bought it, you ass.   They were not my people, just ones I thought more clever than I. My people could not see around the con, imagine carrying a javelin around and every time you met someone, you had to explain why you carried it. Meeting someone else with a javelin, wow, there was nothing sweeter, and we forgave all kinds of things, and goddamn did they fly, when it came to that.

The snow falls, and parts of Buffalo, 30 minutes south, are being buried in 7 feet of snow. We are used to blizzards here, but not blizzards of this violence. The earth is changing, beneath our feet and above our heads, and for all we know, humanity might be the next great extinction. And yet, we lack will, it can never be us, after all, we will never die, that other one will and that one, but not I, the inverse of the solipsistic apocalypse: when I die, the universe dies with me. Or like Kanaka Dasa, we say Nanu Hodare Hodenu (ನಾನು ಹೋದರೆ ಹೋದೇನು). Snow melts, sand blows away, we dig bits of bead and seal from Harappa, while in the south: Let us hope some day fingers like ours might dig our buttons and eyeglasses from the dried mud.

I’ve been puzzling over the zombie phenomenon for a whole now, not the least because I, too, enjoy a good zombie movie or show or novel (no, Colson Whitehead, yours was not so good, sorry. The Intuitionist, on the other hand…). Why the wave of popularity? Why the associated wave of scifi and fantasy and superhero related fantasy? For a while, I tended toward the anxiety release explanation: a post-apocalyptic world, shoot folks in the head if you don’t like them, no worries about the wrong fork, whatever, as long as it eases contemporary angst. My epiphany, which I’m sure others have had a-plenty, is that zombie narratives are exciting because MODERN LIFE IS BORING. For us, in the first world, and so suburban kids from the first world drift off to join ISIS, and I watch Walking Dead. It’s not so much the anarchic lack of rules that makes these narratives exciting, it’s that our decisions matter in a profoundly meaningful way. Most of my decisions do not matter much. No CDs today, I will grind them out next time, as I start a new, equally pointless archival project. Woohoo!