Now somebody, anybody, everybody scream

In HS, my friends and I were walking by a public tennis court singing, "we don't need no water..." and these older folks (likely about my current age) scolded us for our cursing.  We meekly said, "sorry," they went back to their game, and the roof burned on...

Pacem

Desert:

Where there's a river,
that tastes of direction. 

Where there's an orchard,
that says survival. 

Where there's a desert,
that changes everything, 

as if earth hadn't wanted
to fill only her own need. 

Patricia Hooper.

Our Fortune Grows Each Day, It Multiplies, It Lights Our Way

Fun fact: one of Sadie's besties lives in a yurt.

Somnus

To Sleep:

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,

      Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,

      Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close

      In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,

Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws

      Around my bed its lulling charities.

Then save me, or the passed day will shine

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—

      Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

      Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

John Keats.

Friend is beyond redemption

Friend is Renegade.  He must be cast out.

And the Noise Was Heard Afar Off

The Old Weep Gently:

These old trees
Sigh in every leaf,
Look down their trunks
As if back down the years.
Old knots stay
Where limbs were torn away—
Little fist-rubbed faces
Of gargoyle grief ;
While shadows
Slip down the trunks
Like tears. 

Yvor Winters.

Now You Do What They Told Ya

I note that Jefferson Davis, who previously served as interim president of the CSA, was sworn in for a full six-year term (well, three years and change, actually).  Here's something interesting from his inaugural address:

For proof of the sincerity of our purpose to maintain our ancient institutions, we may point to the Constitution of the Confederacy and the laws enacted under it...

Ah, yes, their constitution makes mention of a particular, peculiar ancient institution:

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed... 

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired... 

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due... 

The Confederate States may...form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

What about the laws enacted under it?

President Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Critics of the proclamation, both North and South, claimed Lincoln was trying to incite slave rebellions, which had been a persistent fear for white slaveholders in the South since the American Revolution. In order to prevent events similar to Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, the Confederate Congress passed a Second Conscription Act, which included a piece of legislation that would  become known as the “Twenty Negro Law.” It exempted from military service one white overseer for every 20 enslaved people on a plantation, “to secure the proper police of the country.” This would allow enough white males to stay home to defend against a so-called domestic insurrection.

The birth of ACAB.

<exits singing, Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses>

Nevermore to go astray

Apathetic or Renegade, make your choice.

We Will Make Amends Ere Long

The Jealous Minor Gods:

I have hidden your lost teeth in the net of all my famous hair

And with foresight promised your umbilicus

To several minor gods. I paid your fee in fawn skin

& the lightest fringe of tissue, all the quiet noons assembled,

In yard stars & the light of phosphorescent pens,

The dioramas that it takes to fill lacunae, in ancestral knots

That tell the story of our humble people: watchmakers,

Mainly, ventriloquists & scholars of quintessence,

Amateur lifeguards I meant to surpass. How I loved

My green & distant futures! But I love you more

From late Holocene out to the farthest buoy, unto

Blackmail & a verb that means renouncing Christ

Or else describes the path of sap before it’s amber,

Before it dimples, just a little, to collect — 

Amy Beeder.

The secret messages are calling to me endlessly

They call to me across the air.

Feeling Figurative

Inner Palpability:

Implied inner palpability as transpersonal dictation

all works composed as a musical ark

as if rowing in an isthmus of lightning

the threat through rising vapour currents

hissing with dissolution

this being none other than internal cartography

ghostly cipher as interiority by number

again ghostly flares & ciphers as if the arc from lunar suns had risen

therefore suns appearing above suns

ignited via the blue fragmentation that is grace

Will Alexander.

She drove a Plymouth Satellite

A-faster than the speed of light.

Perpetual Disorder

Seven Views of the City:

Logic is history, and they behead
Transgressors dazzled by the Inner Light,
And heretics of human love and life
Who apprehend the meaning of our time
Not at the still point of the turning world,
But in normal peril and usual fog. 

Harvey Gross.

#throwbackthursday

Once again, we're on midwinter break this week, not spring break.  (Feb '20)

Been a lot of updates since then. (Feb '26)