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
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
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
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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.