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Showing posts with label January 22 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label January 22 2011. Show all posts

Saturday, January 22, 2011

El Niño La Ley [Today's News Poem, January 22, 2011]

El Niño La Ley [Today's News Poem, January 22, 2011]

Southern Pacific, a child is reborn
Out of the tropical heat and depression
And moves to LA where he washes the dishes.

Christ! Have you tried to commute to your work
Riding a bus in the Golden State's traffic
With dozens of cripples? They're broke and they're reeking.

Finding the places where money's concealed
Takes tenths of days—a third spent asleep,
A third in the effort—a life as a robot.

Sometimes rebellion's inaction and talk:
Flickers of cigarette ash in the roadway,
A liquor store temple attracting the worship

Bacchus demands—there's a god who rejects
Progress and drinks to the bottom of barrels,
Negating the vineyard and engines of harvest.

Save if you care to sustain the machine,
Neon your path, all the lights give permission;
Your Porsche, Toyota, they're ready and racing

Selves and each other, erasing the miles,
Puffing a smoke of their own, they've exhausted
All patience and grind what remains in their axles.

"A man crossing a busy Los Angeles-area boulevard was twice struck by hit-and-run drivers, a woman who tried to help him was hit by yet another car, and the driver who tried to help her was beaten and robbed by a mob, police said Friday. "
—The Associated Press, 1 Hour ago, as of 1/21/2011 at 10:23pm.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h39u5bGJyP7Ak-pXXCZLRUQwDqFw?docId=904e7e2f7ea44fdab40e14968cef698f

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The Daily News Poem is One Year Old and Looks as Ugly as its Dad

I want to allocate more writing time to other projects, but I enjoy writing the daily News Poem. I hope that it defrags your mental hard drive as much as it does mine. Exploring the news through poetry has become a way for me to examine my own prejudices and false consciousness, because poetry is the core of my being and news is something grafted on to that like some prosthetic. It's a meta-narrative that probes for vulnerable parts of one's psyche and exploits them for the sake of its wielder. Personally, I'm stunned how much bullshit I accepted--if only because new bullshit is predicated upon old bullshit. So for me, the news poem serves as an anti-Medusa mirror or a laser-pen I can shine at the black helicopters. So I'll see how long I can sustain this. Running Toylit is enervating. Not just the writing, but also the promotions and associated performance art. It's probably not worth all this effort, but I'm a writer which means that I already don't have a practical bent of mind.

In short, buy my book and nominate me for a Shorty Award: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2011/01/nominate-toylit-for-shorty-award-in.html

Buy the Q1/Q2 2010 Report right now:

You can get it as an E-Book at Amazon as well http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004AYDHXY

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