Not “The Streets of” but “The Sharts” of San Francisco
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Comments on this entry are closed.
As if Nancy Pelosi was even capable of feeling shame at this point…
…if I had her coin and cohorts I might be shameless too. And so would you.
Ghost,
I’m calling bullshit!
Some humans have principles.
The Pelosi Monster and her rotten cohorts made their “coin”, on the back of the public. Screwing every law to their advantage and without a thought of the health of the nation. Insider trading, backroom deals, conniving and manipulating every thing.
Before she goes to Guantanamo, she should be forced to live on the streets in an encampment for a month.
I enjoyed much the excerpt from Chandler’s short story RED WIND. I think your choice was very deft.
side when the big post was the “Not What America Should Look Like”
Since the day I first read the line “Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks” I have always made a set of carving knives my wedding gift when friends got married.
Tony Benett tributes the Sharts of San Fransisco
The shithole that was Haiti
It made my nostrils quail
The odors found in Qom
Are on another scale
Ive been terribly unwell
Tubercular in Qandahar
Im going home
To the sewer by the Bay
I. Left. MY. Shart (Do be da doo .. Do be da doo)
In-n-n .. San Fransisco
Atop a pile .. of tramp feces
To be where massive squalid stink
Drives me halfway to the brink
The morning logs befoul the air
They dont care
A stench wafts there (Do be da doo …Do be da doo)
In-n-n .. San Fransisco
Above the stooled and squalid STREETS
When I come home to you, San Fransisco
A squatting bum … WILL ..
Make .. Me ….. Flee!
Kevin, what are you calling bullshit on, my use of the word “might”?
Never under estimate the power of “stolen money”, for it is in the process of wrecking an entire country and perhaps the world. Gov’t thievery is not isolated to Pelosi.
Ghost,
It is your casual assurance of, “so would you” to which I object.
I understand the power of stolen money among thieves, but not everyone is a thief.
Kevin, I’m not going to educate you on the power of stolen money, if you are interested you’ll educate yourself. Looking at the power of stolen money as if it is simple everyday petty theft is the wrong approach. I’m not a thief but if I was gov’t employee and my supervisor offered me an extra $100 grand a year just because why should I turn him down? Then a few months later he asks for my “loyalty” when a certain matter comes up. Etc., etc. It starts small and balloons from there and 10, 20 years later you’re starting to pull in Pelosi levels of coin, and you STILL don’t consider yourself a thief. At some point a thief decides his thieving ways are justified or aren’t hurting anybody, or any number of reasons and excuses. It’s ALL theft and EVERYONE can become a thief under the right circumstances. Me too. And you. For me, I try to stay at least several steps away from any circumstance that could possibly lead to immoral behavior – that is, behavior that is harmful to me or others – that way it is difficult to be drawn in. So far, I have been successful with this method.
Theft is theft, whether it be at the point of a gun or by majority vote.
Never underestimate the ability of some people to rationalize their crimes.
CML, your epic song is ringing in my ears. Damn you.
Try this: zero tolerance for drug offenses. Shitters and urinals in the open air, down the medians of the streets. Soviet-style blockhouses for the derelict.
Jail time for Pelosi.
idk why I’m not in charge of everything.