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Showing posts with label Khakjaan Wessington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khakjaan Wessington. Show all posts

Friday, March 01, 2013

Jedi Mind Meld [Week's News Poem, March 1, 2013]

Jedi Mind Meld [Week's News Poem, March 1, 2013]

Sage of the week seeks unique yet oblique
Resolution (obeying the Constitution) for fiscal absolution
In terse, unreherse verse. What's worse,
Apocope doesn't rhyme—nope-ey.

“President Barack Obama formally ordered broad cuts in government spending on Friday night after he and congressional Republicans failed to reach a deal to avert automatic reductions that could dampen economic growth and curb military readiness.”
—Richard Cowan and Alistair Bell, Reuters, WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 1, 2013 10:51pm EST








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Friday, November 30, 2012

Metafiscal Cliff [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, November 30, 2012]

Metafiscal Cliff [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, November 30, 2012]

Beginning my descent smothered in air,
I missed the stair.

We all arrive at disaster,
Only, I'm faster.

Scrooge is only a partial exemption:
They remember the jerk, not his redemption.

I surmised that I did the same thing
And you will too.

“"If Congress does nothing, every family in America will see their taxes automatically go up on January 1," Obama said at a factory that makes Tinkertoys, among other things, in suburban Philadelphia. "That's sort of like the lump of coal you get for Christmas. That's a Scrooge Christmas."”
—Mark Felsenthal, Reuters, HATFIELD, Penn. | Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:51pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-usa-fiscal-obama-idUSBRE8AT0LH20121130



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Friday, September 28, 2012

Cattle Car [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, September 28, 2012]

Cattle Car [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, September 28, 2012]

The pen is obsolete, the screen is ticklish;
Every fingernail's a pixelated gesture:
Paragon of monitor, awaiting upload.

The driver's obsolete. The auto automat
Carpets chassis, asphalt, neutralizes hunger,
Activates the appetite and catches french fries.

The herd complains as geese, or sirens; stabbing horns,
Chewing crud or chips or bubblegum and blowing
Sculptures from our mouths; we are the art of ourselves.

“Corn futures surged nearly 6 percent on the Chicago Board of Trade after the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported corn stocks on September 1 were below 1 billion bushels for the first time in eight years. Wheat futures rose more than 5 percent, topping $9 a bushel after the data showed stockpiles were 7 percent less than forecast. ”
—Reuters, Charles Abbott, WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 28, 2012 4:27pm EDT



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Friday, May 04, 2012

Realpolitik [Today's News Poem, May 4, 2012]


Realpolitik [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, May 4, 2012]

Imaginings obscure the wretched eye;
Corrupt the preconceptions, recall, ear.
Wherever there is truth, the lies must fly.

They nest and then disrobe, thus intertwine
As opposites in opposition's tears.
They complement the Yin and Yang, combine

The equal with unequal, all and one,
Or one and if it's zero, better you
Than me: that is the rule of life my son.

Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Well, whaddya know? ”
—PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times, Published: May 3, 2012

And thus


begat


And the Lord said It Is Good.

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Friday, March 23, 2012

The Thirds, Engendered [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, March 23, 2012]


The Thirds, Engendered [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, March 23, 2012]

Ghost of my loins, you have fingers that counter-digest me,
Reach through my gullet to pinch-off the brain from my spine,
Sex then unsex me; you hollow my innards—direct me.

Gonads appear in a visage before me—vagina,
Penis, an organ combining the two so the sex
Breaks to an embryo, withers before its arousal.

Ghosts of my loins, the extinction that's coming is calling
Accidents: sperm like a genie from lamp, I'll regret
Life that I never created for fear of creation.

“Mirkarimi pleaded guilty last week to one misdemeanor count of false imprisonment of his wife on New Year's Eve. Prosecutors say he inflicted a bruise on his wife's arm during an argument in front of their 2-year-old son. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain agreement in which prosecutors agreed to drop three other domestic-violence-related charges.”

—Rachel Gordon, John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle, 03/23/12
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/23/MNKO1NOUN9.DTL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Mirkarimi

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9159992/Zimbabwe-sperm-hunters-picking-up-male-travellers.html

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

The BATS Will Destroy You: New/Old Essay up on Unlikelystories

Where the fuck have I been? Where the fuck have you been? Okay, okay--let's ignore mutual recriminations... just admit you were wrong and we'll start over. No? Well how about you suck on an essay-pacifier you big baby?

http://unlikelystories.org/11/wessington0611.shtml

Not familiar with BATS? Sure, why would you be familiar with one of the best rock bands out there? You're too aesthetically blighted to find your own cool artistic vectors; that's why you're here, right? Well, after you've purchased their album (http://bats.bandcamp.com), you can read my poetic salute to them here:
http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/08/stars-of-wormwood-for-star-of-wormwood.html

If you do this out of order, God won't smite you, because God doesn't exist. But you'll suffer a moral decay as you wait for divine punishment and you'll start subtly sabotaging yourself and inevitably this process will end in suicide.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Heirs of Air [Combatwords, April 30, 2011]

Heirs of Air [Combatwords, April 30, 2011]

From http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/combatwords-april-29-2011-ancestors.html

Retrieving nothing home tonight;
Sedated, belated lovers slight the western star—they head to beach
And play with hair they've dyed with bleach.
On Seven One from Haight to beach,
The night's too far, they've lost the bliss
That evening summoned with a kiss.
Acquaintance met and lost, they surf the bus
And slide from triteness, greeting nothing;
Citing names, the nothing names:
A hopeless lay, that skirtless play.
The loneliness that fills their leather boots
Is truth aboard the bus en route
To chicken feather beds and ocean salt:
Determined beach, a terminal breach.
For Ballard wrote about the crash:
Erotic engines, loss and crash—
Wrote about the unseen trash.
Erosion meets the sacred clash
Where plovers meet the city's ash.
It's gone, it's gone to trash at last;
So stand alert and make a joke.
Ride the bus, make silly oaths
To pave the way to bed,
And leave behind this better night,
Offend the sight of moon
With brooding lust and traffic lights.
Farewell, my otter fake-fur coat.
We've gone to sleep at last, at least.

Kiss it—call it kismet.
Where McDonald's floodlights meet
The cunts of red,
The hippy dreads.
Kiss it—fake a joke and fake the fear of joke
And spill the fucking beer upon the Muni floor
Where stench perfume defeats the moon.
So kiss it—cut the cheer in half
Aboard this Viking boat, this fuck-up booth.
Choke the night in search of hundred proof.
Clutch the skateboard, youth is fleeting;
Gone to joint and gone to broken bleating;
To broken-asses in search of weed.
Bleed it out and search it out and kiss the knee that grazes notebooks.
Kiss the legs that open up beside you,
Open where you fear to tread with eyes.
Kiss her every orifice.
Forget it: kiss goodbye.

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Superman Did Baba Yar!

Now that Superman has renounced his American citizenship (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/04/27/superman-renounces-us-citizenship/) the truth can finally be told.


Like many war criminals, he kept his Nazi identity a secret, but left us several clues (like 'Superman' durrr).

ps: I know I'm going to hell for this one. Stop reminding me.

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Silk Knight Swoons [Combatwords Poem, April 23, 2011]

Silk Knight Swoons [Combatwords Poem, April 23, 2011]
From http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/combatwords-april-22-2011-declared-and.html

Knight of granite squares, night of business casual wear;
Fights by chessboard bets—I swear, Ruy Lopez has the night sweats
Underneath tobacco palms and gritty nails and Lasker psalms.

Even though I wore a suit, I paused and watched the two galoots
Murder pawns and trade a pair of dollar bills for several prawns
Fried and battered—basket case: they fed while chessmen scattered.

Low and you'll become the queen.
Slow and knives become serene.
Laugh alone to laugh like hell;
Crazies knew I shared their smell.

"Glasses ain't afraid of anything."
"Watch that tie; he wants to fight."
Silk cocoon and pace of concrete moon—
A silver goon, a briefcase croon;
A stroke, a grand mal swoon:
A check and mated loon.



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Friday, April 08, 2011

Breaking News! Today's News Poem On Hiatus!

As you may have just read, I'm taking a break from Today's News Poem. It's true, I could keep doing this indefinitely, but other projects are calling me and there's only so much time in the day. Oh, don't you fret. I'll keep posting News Poems, but they'll probably be a weekly thing. You can look forward to the Complete Daily News Poems in print in a couple of months and Toylit will continue to take submissions.

I hope you enjoyed reading this project. I came into it thinking I knew it all already. As the year progressed, so did my skills. It's been fun. Anyhow, thanks for reading and I hope you gained something from my verse. I certainly gained from your readership.

-Khakjaan Wessington

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Guard the Poet [Today's News Poem, April 8, 2011]

Guard the Poet [Today's News Poem, April 8, 2011]

Ah muses I've served you with focused devotion;
I've served as your goblet, I've served you as jester.
I used to be bitter—but now I'm ecstatic;
My heart's uninstalled and you've turned me to poem.

Poison nutritious; nomad exquisite;
Pantomime artist loves all this sadness.
Farewell my folly, grant me your magic
Save all my foolish songs in the ether:

Stave off the darkness—it's calling me softly,
Shave off the edges of pummeling sidewalks;
Call all the cables and seagulls and airplanes—
Hold it together, preserve all this chaos.

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Thursday, April 07, 2011

Tastes of Home [Today's News Poem, April 7 2011]

Tastes of Home [Today's News Poem, April 7 2011]

Slush on the sidewalk
Snow in the doorway,
Beaks in the salad—
A seabird's attacking.

Shells were the home,
Yolk was the baby,
Whites were the mother
Hugging the offspring.

Home: where the flesh
Wraps in a blanket,
Whips to an omelet,
Stares out the window.

Springtime: a woodpecker sleeps in the branches;
White and black beak—its redness its life.
Summer: the woodchuck devours the garden—
Poison its lair and pitchfork its torso.
Autumn: the crows stand on the pikes—call them cornstalks.
Winter: the straggler is freezing,
She shatters the ice on the window
And batters stalactites—
Calling for springtime you flushed after dinner.

"Karen Cooke Phillip keeps the basement freezer of her new Anchorage house stocked with food to ward off homesickness. There is a whole king eider sea duck, including feathers and head. And she has three plastic bottles filled with seal oil: liquid gold to a Yupik Eskimo like Mrs. Cooke Phillip."
—KIM SEVERSON, The New York Times, Published: April 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/us/08alaska.html

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Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Nineveh [Today's News Poem, April 6, 2011]

Nineveh [Today's News Poem, April 6, 2011]

Shame there's no limit
To depths in the soil.
Rootlets had branched
Nodules like tumors, potatoes;
While the snout with an eyeball
Roots for excitement then lays it in sunlight
To wither or blossom—Nineveh kikayon,
Lot's wife of salt.

"Officer Trey Economidy of the Albuquerque police now realizes that he should have thought harder before listing his occupation on his Facebook profile as “human waste disposal.” After he was involved in a fatal on-duty shooting in February, a local television station dug up the Facebook page. Officer Economidy was placed on desk duty, and last month the Albuquerque Police Department announced a new policy to govern officers’ use of social networking sites. Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable assets for law enforcement agencies, helping them alert the public, seek information about crimes and gather evidence about the backgrounds of criminal suspects."
—ERICA GOODE, The New York Times, Published: April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/us/07police.html





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Tuesday, April 05, 2011

I Would Tell You To Fuck Off And Die, But You're Fucked And Dead Already [Today's News Poem, April 5, 2011]

I Would Tell You To Fuck Off And Die, But You're Fucked And Dead Already [Today's News Poem, April 5, 2011]

You lost all credibility with me when you voted for anti-craft with Elana Bell,
Her prose with linebreaks,
Gonad worship, identity hustle.
You anti-craft cantists in search of the correct shibboleth
And poet to perpetuate your modern-American-academic-poetic-narrative:
Be anti-audience, self-indulge, stay irrelevant to non-core poetry readers, ignore metrical schemas—
Winning narratives should be simple and egotistical.
You claim it's taste, but how can you discern the difference between Elana
And every poetry blogger who confessed his cock?
You disgrace Whitman with your award:
Song of Sinecure.

"Dear Poet,
Thank you for submitting your work to the 2011 Walt Whitman Award. This year's judge, Fanny Howe, has selected Elana Bell's manuscript, eyes, stones, to receive the award.
Of the nearly 1,200 entries we received this fall, there were so many extraordinary manuscripts. If by September your manuscript has not yet found a publisher, we hope that you will consider submitting to the Walt Whitman Award again. Many past winners submitted several times before their manuscripts were ultimately selected.
The judge for the 2012 award will be announced later this summer, and the submission period will extend from September 15 to November 15, 2011. To receive guidelines and to submit your work on-line, please visit the Academy of American Poets' website at www.poets.org/whitman.
We wish you the very best of luck with your writing. Thank you, again, for submitting to the Walt Whitman Award.
Respectfully,

Alex Dimitrov
Awards Coordinator
The Academy of American Poets"
—Academy of American Poets, poetnews@poets.org



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Monday, April 04, 2011

Innocence Attritted [Today's News Poem, April 4, 2011]

Innocence Attritted [Today's News Poem, April 4, 2011]

There's so much freshness, so much more innocence to shed.
The tide for example withdraws all the sand,
Draws all the hermit crabs, basks in the droppings of pelicans.
Fish fake the song at the crest of the swell—
Throbbing; a heart that pumps gills and ocean.
Welcome the edges of food-chain and welcome the
song of ablation,
the pockmarks of moon;
welcome births with one's mouth
and silvery slivers from eggs in the moonlight—
innocent still, for a moment at least.

"The federal government's chief climate adviser Professor Ross Garnaut believes nuclear power still has a vital role to play in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite the crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant."
—Evan Schwarten, Sydney Morning Herald, April 5, 2011 - 2:54PM
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nuclear-power-still-important-garnaut-20110405-1d1wh.html






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Sunday, April 03, 2011

Declining Momentum [Today's News Poem, April 3, 2011]

Declining Momentum [Today's News Poem, April 3, 2011]

The concrete is cracking and punctures your tires,
Yet celebrate roots pushing pavement apart.
The birds are returning, they nest in the alder,
And shit on the sidewalk you hate—do not hate;
It's time for renewal—the wheels must stop spinning.

"Tokyo Electric Power is struggling to block a crack discovered in a pit that is leaking highly radioactive water into the ocean at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, and said it had discovered the bodies of its two missing employees at the stricken plant. "
—Lindsay Whipp in Tokyo, The Financial Times, Published: April 2 2011 17:09 | Last updated: April 3 2011 08:34
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d7b6070-5d40-11e0-a008-00144feab49a.html

"As Southwest Airlines canceled 300 flights throughout the country after one of its jets developed a hole in its roof during a flight, Bay Area travelers Saturday had hit-or-miss experiences getting to and from their destinations."
—Lisa Fernandez and Doug Jastrow, Bay Area News Group, Posted: 04/02/2011 09:37:19 PM PDT, Updated: 04/02/2011 10:20:22 PM PDT

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Saturday, April 02, 2011

The New Normal [Today's News Poem, April 2, 2011]

The New Normal [Today's News Poem, April 2, 2011]

I thought that the average was something like grasping,
Something like murder and incest; torture and me.
I thought that because I could break, I was broken;
Born to a luck that I spurned because it's not fair.
And life is for idiots, error, repentance.
Life is not fair, so go quickly, even it out.
I've tried to exhaustion the rage and it failed me
Anger's the doorway to patience, love, compassion.
And normal's not average, it's more aspiration,
Noble and lie it's the mother goddess of hearth.
The lies do not bind us and babies aren't silenced
Shouting them down, nor by reason, terror—just love.

"there are many reasons to believe that measuring and reporting metrics of social mobility will be a meaningless task. Complete measures of social mobility, such as looking at the link between parental and children's incomes or parents' and children's education, take a lifetime to evaluate."
—Imran Hussain, Letters, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/02/income-inequality-social-mobility

"A host of Asian performing artists have staged a three-hour charity concert in Hong Kong to raise funds for victims of Japan's earthquake and tsunami. "
—Xinhuanet, 2011-04-02 11:13:09
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-04/02/c_13810387.htm

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Friday, April 01, 2011

Gaol For Agoraphobics [Today's News Poem, April 1, 2011]

Gaol For Agoraphobics [Today's News Poem, April 1, 2011]

Leap from the floor to the counter.
Knock off the dishes, then land on the floor.

The labors of cat: in the sunbeam;

Gnaw on arachnids in paw,
Open the window—the garden awaits.

The rosemary blossomed this month.

Look at the world. It is freedom,
Smells like a spice on the currents of clouds.

The fences are flimsy, yet bind.

Pick a known path in the tangle.
Slink in the bushes then lay on cement.

The warden of prison appears

Reckless; he staggers down stairwell
Speaks in his language, contains the escape

With some tuna, a scratch for the ears
And a view from the window of mazes—
Abstractions gone monsters in lettuce—
Lock, latch and door.

"The Labor Department will release its monthly snapshot of the job market on Friday, and economists expect it to show that the nation’s employers added about 190,000 jobs in March. With an unemployment rate that has been stubbornly stuck near 9 percent, those workers could be considered lucky. But many of the jobs being added in retail, hospitality and home health care, to name a few categories, are unlikely to pay enough for workers to cover the cost of fundamentals like housing, utilities, food, health care, transportation and, in the case of working parents, child care. "
—MOTOKO RICH, The New York Times, Published: March 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html

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Thursday, March 31, 2011

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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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Butterfly Karma [Today's News Poem, March 30, 2011]

Butterfly Karma [Today's News Poem, March 30, 2011]

Every time you call your luck your karma,
Somewhere a yogi renounces his teachings
And snips off his beard.

You confuse the question with the answer.
Stomp on a butterfly, magnify anthills,
And curse your adulthood.

Simple cause, effect, informed by action
Can't be extended to cover our destinies.
We still overlap

As do shamrocks and leprechauns,
Dogs and yellow spots on lawns—
Today, tomorrow, yesterday:
A meadow in spring.

"The single largest winning lottery ticket ever sold in New York's Mega Millions drawing has been claimed, a lottery spokeswoman said Tuesday. The winners of the $319 million lottery are rumored to be seven IT specialists from New York state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal, said Emanuel Biondi, a public employees federation council leader for the agency."
—By the CNN Wire Staff, CNN, March 29, 2011
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-29/us/new.york.mega.millions_1_mega-ball-number-lottery-ticket-million-lottery?_s=PM:US

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