Life Preserver [Today's News Poem, March 31, 2011]

Life Preserver [Today's News Poem, March 31, 2011]

Nothing is certain.
What will save us?
Do not say it's love, for you can't eat love.
Do not say it's food, for you can't love food.
Superlatives skew our desires,
Sense of self; flatten the surfaces.
If everything's loved then nothing is loved.
I'll give you examples:
I was tremendously fat as a child.
My teacher had nightmares I'd burst in the classroom
And shatter her leg and she'd die in our papers.
We paid her no mind in her dream.
She was helpless, alone with us savages
And died from her blood-clot.
It wasn't me I said.
I'd never leave her there to die
And she laughed when I said this;
But why would I do that?
I loved her. She taught me to count on my words
And conjugate numbers—I'd never allow her to die
Somewhere awful like school.
I'd apologize softly. A chant of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"
While dialing emergency services.
And I wondered, "is she right? Is this me?"
I could fit a whole flock in my stomach,
And plantations of sugar—and how many gallons of milk
Did I churn into tallow?
So I lost all that weight,
Stopped the sugar and bicycled.
Weaved through the buses on Haight Street, on Market.
And every collision was miracle,
I tore off my knees and my elbows and laughed in the blood.
And I laughed with the love of my life
In the rain—nearly midnight on Sixth street.
The boarded up windows, the shopping cart specters
And needles for blades of grass, sodded on sidewalk.
We passed it, en route to our shower, bed above closet;
A cage for us lovebirds—
We had no idea.

"For a quarter marked by successive bouts of panic — over Mideast oil supplies, Japanese radiation leaks and European debt crises — safe-haven investments turned out to a pretty uneven showing."
—Marketwatch, March 31, 2011, 3:47 PM ET
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/marketjunkie/2011/03/31/so-much-for-uncertainty-stocks-turn-out-winners-gold-lags/

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Psychicphrenic Sensitivities [Today's News Poem, March 14, 2011]

Psychicphrenic Sensitivities [Today's News Poem, March 14, 2011]

Every moon has its current.
Only the wisest of schizos acknowledge
It's nerve and it's nervousness.

Every action reacts to the first of all actions:
Explosion, orgasm, whatever you call it
Remember to whimper.

It's not wave, it's not current; it's possible
Is what it is—haecceity—
And nothing could be otherwise.

All the schizos could feel all the nerves
In the earth; they were twitching and bruising
Their knees on the hydrants.

My cat almost died for Japan—
He's connected as well by this feeling of nerves.
His organs unseized and he leaped to my lap

Knowing his death comes much later,
And watched as I watched the tsunami
On teevee, surprised I surprised myself.

I'm laughing. I died in Japan yet I'm typing
A poem. I died in a styrofoam avalanche,
Died in my cradle, died in the ocean;

I died, yet I'm here and the schizos declared it;
They gobbled tobacco and tuned for the station
That everyone hears—it's static: absolute static.

"Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials."
—HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, Published: March 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html

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Debunking the Myths of Japan [Today's News Poem, March 12, 2011]

Debunking the Myths of Japan [Today's News Poem, March 12, 2011]

The dolphins are laughing, the bigot applauds;
Maguro, unagi salute in the ocean.
Even Poseidon must chuckle; Hephaestus
Wins far too often, inhales the emissions,
And must be extinguished and trade his position.
Japan had it coming: the oni predicted,
Fat Man predicted, Nanking predicted,
Wako, Yamato, Toyota, Pearl Harbor,
Godzilla, Naruto and Rapeman predicted
Japan as a story, as myth and Atlantis.

"A quake-hit Japanese nuclear plant reeling from an explosion at one of its reactors has also lost its emergency cooling system at another reactor, Japan's nuclear power safety agency said on Sunday. The emergency cooling system is no longer functioning at the No.3 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, requiring the facility to urgently secure a means to supply water to the reactor, an official of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told a news conference. On Saturday, an explosion blew off the roof and upper walls of the building housing the facility's No. 1 reactor, stirring alarm over a possible major radiation release, although the government later said the explosion had not affected the reactor's core vessel and that only a small amount of radiation had been released."
—Reuters, Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:17pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-japan-quake-nuclear-cooling-idUSTRE72B3GI20110312

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Eye Big In Japan [Today's News Poem, March 11, 2011]

Eye Big In Japan [Today's News Poem, March 11, 2011]

Where wave meets reactor; where blaze floats on foam,
Where old circuits die where the tide gores the bull,
Where eye met the image of screen-shot and shoots
The skyscrapers full of its cracked vision scorn;

Where bored meets the keyboard and sleep joins the show,
Where dreams fuse together with flames surfing seas,
A glass made in Tokyo holds sea (drowning cup)
That falls down the throat of a fool: scared to sleep.

"A devastating tsunami hit the coast of northeast Japan on Friday in the aftermath of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake about 80 miles offshore, killing at least five people and injuring dozens. "
—MARTIN FACKLER and KEVIN DREW, The New York Times, Published: March 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12japan.html



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