Poem of the Day

Errata By Charles Simic

Where it says snow
read teeth-marks of a virgin
Where it says knife read
you passed through my bones
like a police-whistle
Where it says table read horse
Where it says horse read my migrant's bundle
Apples are to remain apples
Each time a hat appears
think of Isaac Newton
reading the Old Testament
Remove all periods
They are scars made by words
I couldn't bring myself to say
Put a finger over each sunrise
it will blind you otherwise
That damn ant is still stirring
Will there be time left to list
all errors to replace
all hands guns owls plates
all cigars ponds woods and reach
that beer-bottle my greatest mistake
the word I allowed to be written
when I should have shouted
her name

The Voice at 3 A.M.

Poem of the Day

The Whistle by Yusef Komunyakaa

1

The seven o'clock whistle
Made the morning air fulvous
With a metallic syncopation,
A key to a door in the sky---opening
& closing flesh. The melody
Men & women built lives around,
Sonorous as the queen bee's fat
Hum drawing workers from flowers,
Back to the colonized heart.
A titanous puff of steam rose
From the dragon trapped below
Iron, bricks, & wood.
The whole black machine
Shuddered: blue jays & redbirds
Wove light through leaves
& something dead under the foundation
Brought worms to life.
Men capped their thermoses,
Switched off Loretta Lynn,
& slid from trucks & cars.
The rip saws throttled
& swung out over logs
On conveyer belts.
Daddy lifted the tongs
To his right shoulder . . . a winch
Uncoiled the steel cable
From its oily scrotum;
He waved to the winchman
& iron teeth bit into the pine.
Yellow forklifts darted
With lumber to boxcars
Marked for distant cities.
At noon, Daddy would walk
Across the field of goldenrod
& mustard weeds, the pollen
Bright & sullen on his overalls.
He'd eat on our screened-in
Back porch---red beans & rice
With hamhocks & cornbread.
Lemonade & peach Jello.

The one o'clock bleat
Burned sweat & salt into afternoon
& the wheels within wheels
Unlocked again, pulling rough boards
Into the plane's pneumatic grip.
Wild geese moved like a wedge
Between sky & sagebrush,
As Daddy pulled the cable
To the edge of the millpond
& sleepwalked cypress logs.
The day turned on its axle
& pyramids of russet sawdust
Formed under corrugated
Blowpipes fifty feet high.
The five o'clock whistle
Bellowed like a bull, controlling
Clocks on kitchen walls;
Women dabbed loud perfume
Behind their ears & set tables
Covered with flowered oilcloth.

2

When my father was kicked by the foreman,
He booted him back,
& his dreams slouched into an aftershock
Of dark women whispering
To each other. Like petals of a black rose
In one of Busby Berkeley's
Oscillating dances in a broken room. Shadows,
Runagates & Marys.
The steel-gray evening was a canvas
Zigzagged with questions
Curling up from smokestacks, as dusky birds
Brushed blues into a montage
Traced back to L'Amistad & the psychosis
Behind Birth of a Nation.
With eyes against glass & ears to diaphanous doors,
I heard a cornered prayer.

Car lights rubbed against our windows,
Ravenous as snow wolves.
A brick fell into the livingroom like a black body,
& a riot of drunk curses
Left the gladioli & zinnias
Maimed. Double dares
Took root in night soil.
The whistle boiled
Gutbucket underneath silence
& burned with wrath.
But by then Daddy was with Uncle James
Outside The Crossroad,
Their calloused fingers caressing the .38
On the seat of the pickup;
Maybe it was the pine-scented moonglow
That made him look so young
& faceless, wearing his mother's powder blue
Sunday dress & veiled hat.

Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems

from The Village Voice via Daily Kos: Of Boiling Men Alive In Our Name

One of the CIA's jet planes used to render purported terrorists to other countries--where information is extracted by any means necessary--made 10 trips to Uzbekistan. In a segment of CBS's 60 Minutes on these CIA torture missions (March 5), former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told of the range of advanced techniques used by Uzbek interrogators:

"drowning and suffocation, rape was used . . . and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid."

But it was much more than mere limb immersion.

Two nights later on ABC's World News Tonight, Craig Murray told of photos he received of an Uzbek interrogation that ended with the prisoner actually being boiled to death!

Murray, appalled, had protested to the British Foreign Office in a confidential memorandum leaked to and printed in the Financial Times on October 11 of last year:

"Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to extract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K., says Mr. Murray." (Emphasis added.)

Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly reacted to this undiplomatic whistle-blowing.

Craig Murray was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan. (more)

Recondite shit eating country destroying NeoCon bastards DID THIS IN MY NAME.

I've joked in the past about wanting to see BushCo dragged from the White House in chains, but now it is imperative that we see that THESE TWISTED MORAL DEGENERATES PAY! Torturer in Chief Bush has to go to jail for life for this, as does his sleezeball puppetmaster Cheney and that immoral little ratfucker Rumsfeld. Bring on the World Court.

I am so utterly ashamed to be an American at this moment.

I'm going to Europe on business in 3 months and I can see now that I'm going to be spending my entire time there explaining how this was not my fault, that I didn't vote for this cabal of death dealing ghouls.

Dear ghod in wherever, what have we done?

via deconsumption: Global Consciousness Project -- consciousness, group consciousness, mind

Global Correlations in Random Data

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. This website introduces methods and technology and empirical results in one section, and presents interpretations and applications in another.

We have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis.

The purpose of this project is to examine subtle correlations that appear to to reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. The scientific work is careful, but it is at the margins of our understanding. We believe our view may be enriched by a creative and poetic perspective. Here we present various aspects of the project, including some insight into its scientific and philosophical implications.

Now, I'm not one to cast aspersions(HAH!), but what in the name of Aunt Hypatia's Cauliflower Compote are a bunch of allegedly sane information scientists at an supposedly top flight university doing messing about with something as new age wonky as this magilla? I can't make head, tail nor shadow of this one folks. Trez weird-ass!

Poem of the Day

the green waters of stillness
an excerpt from the poem "to shout in the ruins" by Louis Aragon


Let's spit the two of us let's spit
On what we loved
On what we loved the two of us
Yes because this poem the two of us
Is a waltz tune and I imagine
What is dark and incomparable passing between us
Like a dialogue of mirrors abandoned
In a baggage-claim somewhere say Foligno
Or Bourboule in the Auvergne
Certain names are charged with a distant thunder
Yes let's spit the two of us on these immense landscapes
Where little rented cars cruise by
Yes because something must still
Some thing
Reconcile us yes let's spit
The two of us it's a waltz
A kinf of convenient sob
Let's spit let's spit tiny automobiles
Let's spit that's an order
A waltz of mirrors
A dialogue in the void
Listen to these immense landscapes where the wind
Cries over what we loved
One of them is a horse leaning its elbow on the earth
The other a deadman shaking out linen the other
The trail of your footprints I remember a deserted village
On the shoulder of a scorched mountain
I remember your shoulder
I remember your elbow your linen your footprints
I remember a town where there was no horse
I remember your look which scorched
My deserted heart a dead Mazeppa whom a horse
Carries away like that day on the mountain
Drunkenness sped my run through the martyred oaks
Which bled prophetically while day
Light fell mute over the blue trucks
I remember so many things
So many evenings rooms walks rages
So many stops in worthless places
Where in spite of everything the spirit of mystery rose up
Like the cry of a blind child in a remote train depot

The Random House Book Of 20th Century French Poetry

#3 in a Continuing Series The True Face of Compassionate Conservatism

via The Map Room: Green Map System Home

Green Map System is a global eco-cultural movement, energized by local knowledge, action and responsibility.

Green Maps are locally created maps that chart the natural and cultural environment. Using adaptable tools and a shared visual language of Green Map Icons to highlight green living resources, Green Maps cultivate citizen participation and community sustainability.

from BBC NEWS: Review: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

By Darren Waters
BBC News entertainment reporter

Don't panic - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped.

Stuck in development hell for the best part of 26 years, Douglas Adams' book has finally reached the big screen - four years after the author's death.

Adams' deceptively complex novels are crammed full of witty erudition, great gags and lengthy digressions, so it was always going to be a struggle to turn it into a neatly packaged two-hour movie. (more)

Separated At Birth?

from ABC News: German Cardinal Becomes Pope Benedict XVI:

Joseph Ratzinger, a Hard-Line German Cardinal, Is Elected Pope and Takes the Name Benedict XVI

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON Associated Press Writer


VATICAN CITY Apr 19, 2005 — With unusual speed and little surprise, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany became Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, a 78-year-old transitional leader who promises to enforce strictly conservative policies for the world's Roman Catholics.

Appearing on St. Peter's Basilica balcony as dusk fell, a red cape over his new white robes, the white-haired Ratzinger called himself 'a simple, humble worker.' The crowd responded to the 265th pope by waving flags and chanting 'Benedict! Benedict!'

From Notre Dame in Paris to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, cathedral bells tolled and prayers were offered. Millions watched live television broadcasts of St. Peter's bells pealing at 6:04 p.m. and white smoke pouring from the Sistine Chapel's chimney signs a successor to John Paul II had been chosen.

Poem of the Day

Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder


He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
'I'm sixty-eight' he said,
'I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done.

The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations, 1952-1998

from paddypower.com: Day 2: The latest odds on who will be the next Pope

Francis Arinze (Nigeria) 7/2
Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) 11/2
Claudio Hummes (Brazil) 7/1
Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) 7/1
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras) 9/1
Jean-Marie Lustiger (France) 9/1
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Italy) 12/1
Cardinal Angelo Scola (Venice) 20/1
Cardinal Walter Kasper (Germany) 20/1
Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) 25/1
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina) 25/1
Jose Da Cruz Policarpo (Portugal) 25/1
Cardianl Ruini (Italy) 33/1
Cardinal Amigo Vallejo (Spain) 33/1
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa (Chile) 33/1
Giovanni Battista Re (Italy) 33/1
Ivan Dias (India) 33/1
Keith O Brien (Scotland) 33/1

via The Sun: Latest from Papal Election Conclave

Tonight, black smoke started wafting from the chimney indicating that the first round of voting failed to elect a new pontiff.

The cardinals will now retire for the night and return tomorrow morning for two more rounds of balloting.

from paddypower: End of Day 1: The latest odds on who will be the next Pope

Francis Arinze (Nigeria) 3/1
Jean-Marie Lustiger (France) 11/2
Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) 11/2
Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) 7/1
Claudio Hummes (Brazil) 8/1
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Italy) 9/1
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras) 12/1
Cardianl Ruini (Italy) 20/1
Cardinal Angelo Scola (Venice) 20/1
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa (Chile) 20/1
Cardinal Walter Kasper (Germany) 20/1
Jose Da Cruz Policarpo (Portugal) 20/1
Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) 25/1
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina) 25/1
Keith O Brien (Scotland) 25/1
Angelo Sodano (Italy) 33/1
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (Italy) 33/1
Giovanni Battista Re (Italy) 33/1
Ivan Dias (India) 33/1

Poem of the Day

Meeting the Gaze of the Great Horned Owl by Robin Becker

As if coming from a distant room
in the woods
the owl burst down,
flung himself like a skydiver and hovered
above me. I covered my face with my arms and ran
towards him -- strange -- because
I was afraid.

I had disturbed the quiet
of the feathered god
who rested now, overhead, in a dead tree
where jays and flickers pecked and cried.
The owl acknowledged each note, each tiny, colored movement
by twisting, on its calm trivet, his troubled head,
the dappled body perfectly still,

and I admit that I wanted
the creature's attention, to compete
with the smaller birds,
so I made my human noises and the owl attended,
turned his brown, comprehending eyes
down to me and met my stare.
I moved my arms -- slowly -- in an awkward imitation

of flight,
pawing the air like an animal awakened abruptly
or just beginning
to know the power of her wings.
I held the owl's gaze as I swayed
and wondered what he saw:
something large straining to rise

and failing. I thought of my younger sister, dead
by her own hand, and I wanted her back, to show her,
as I never did in life,
how fear and longing sometimes go together,
how one small percussive surprise
in the trees can turn you
from one self to another, this one with wings.

All-American Girl

from paddypower.com: The latest odds on who will be the next Pope:

Francis Arinze (Nigeria) 3/1
Jean-Marie Lustiger (France) 5/1
Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) 5/1
Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) 7/1
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Italy) 8/1
Claudio Hummes (Brazil) 8/1
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras) 12/1
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa (Chile) 14/1
Cardianl Ruini (Italy) 20/1
Cardinal Angelo Scola (Venice) 20/1
Jose Da Cruz Policarpo (Portugal) 20/1
Keith O Brien (Scotland) 20/1
Angelo Sodano (Italy) 25/1
Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) 25/1
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina) 25/1
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (Italy) 33/1
Cardinal Walter Kasper (Germany) 33/1
Giovanni Battista Re (Italy) 33/1
Ivan Dias (India) 33/1

Poem of the Day

Bob's Coney Island by Sherman Alexie

Let's begin with this: America.
I want it all back
now, acre by acre, tonight. I want
some Indian to finally learn
to dance the Ghost Dance right
so that all of the salmon and buffalo return
and the white men are sent back home
to wake up in their favorite European cities.

I am not cruel.

Still, I hesitate
when Bob walks us around his Coney Island:
the Cyclone still running
the skeleton of the Thunderbolt
the Freak Show just a wall of photographs
the Parachute Drop
which has not been used in 30 years
but still looks like we could
tie a few ropes to the top (Why the hell not?) and drop
quickly down, spinning, unravelling
watching Bob's Coney Island rise
from the ashes of the sad, old carnival
that has taken its place now, this carnival
that is so sad because, like Diane says

all carnivals are sad.

We drop to the ground, our knees buckle slightly
at impact. We turn to look at each other
with the kind of love and wonder
that only fear and the release of fear can create.
We climb to the top and parachute down
again and again, because there is an ocean
a few feet away, because Manhattan is just a moment
down the horizon, because there was a 13-year-old boy
who believed that Coney Island belonged to him
though we know that all we see
doesn't really belong to anyone

but I'll let Bob have a conditional lease
because I know finally
somebody will take care of this place
even if just in memory.

Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems

National Poetry Month

from paddypower.com: The latest odds on who will be the next Pope

Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) 3/1
Jean-Marie Lustiger (France) 9/2
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Italy) 5/1
Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) 7/1
Claudio Hummes (Brazil) 8/1
Francis Arinze (Nigeria) 8/1
Angelo Sodano (Italy) 10/1
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina) 12/1
Jose Da Cruz Policarpo (Portugal) 12/1
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa (Chile) 14/1
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras) 16/1
Cardianl Ruini (Italy) 20/1
Keith O Brien (Scotland) 20/1
Cardinal Angelo Scola (Venice) 33/1
Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) 33/1
Giovanni Battista Re (Italy) 33/1
Ivan Dias (India) 33/1

Poem of the Day

Mid-term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996


National Poetry Month

Poem of the Day

The Yellow House on the Corner by Rita Dove

Shape the lips to an o, say a. That's island.

One word of Swedish has changed the whole neighborhood.
When I look up, the yellow house on the corner
is a galleon stranded in flowers. Around it

the wind. Even the high roar of a leaf-mulcher
could be the horn blast from a ship
as it skirts the misted shoals.

We don't need much more to keep things going.
Families complete themselves
and refuse to budge from the present,
the present extends its glass forehead to sea
(backyard breezes, scattered cardinals)

and if, one evening, the house on the corner
took off over the marshland,
neither I nor my neighbor
would be amazed. Sometimes

a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation.
You start out with one thing, end
up with another, and nothing's
like it used to be, not even the future.

Selected Poems

National Poetry Month