Too Modern To Pray [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, October 26, 2012]

Too Modern To Pray [Week's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, October 26, 2012]

I take a leap of science,

and if I study God,

it's not for the setup,

it's the punchline.

“Hurricane Sandy, a late-season Atlantic cyclone that threatens to be one of the worst storms to hit the Northeast in decades, slogged slowly northward on Friday after killing at least 41 people in the Caribbean.”

—Tom Brown, Reuters, MIAMI | Fri Oct 26, 2012 7:54pm EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/26/us-storm-sandy-hurricane-idUSBRE89N16J20121026

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Toylit For February 10, 2012

Toylit For February 10, 2012

Science Failure, The Victory of Failure, and The Psychology of Victory and Failure.

Featuring:

Elegy for Sisyphus, Obituary for Roger Boisjoly, by Valerie Valdes

Miles of Human Files, On Social Media Millionaires, by Khakjaan Wessington

Papier Mâché Jihad, #twitterfoundpoem, by Khakjaan Wessington

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Elegy for Sisyphus [Today's News Poem, by Valerie Valdes, February 10, 2012]

Elegy for Sisyphus [Today's News Poem, February 10, 2012]

By Valerie Valdes

in memoriam, Roger Boisjoly

He rolled boulders off his lawn for hours
every day until his muscles were chained
to exhaustion, until sleep stayed precariously
balanced in his grasp instead of falling
downhill like a punishment for his failure.
"We were talking to the right people," he said, but
seven astronauts were dead, their faces replayed
nonstop on news channels as the shuttle exploded
every time he closed his eyes. Cancer
finally killed what guilt tried to crush: a good man
shouldering the weight of his own impotence.
For almost thirty years he pushed
other engineers to do more, say more, to swear
on words binding as the Styx, where he now waits
quietly for the ferryman to row him across, to a field
green as a Florida summer, with no stones in sight.

"The NASA officials on a conference call didn't want to hear it. The shuttle program managers were desperate to prove they could launch reliably. When do you want me to launch, one of them said, next April? A year later, Boisjoly suffered from disabling headaches. He moved boulders off his lawn all day so he'd be exhausted enough to sleep at night. And he huddled in the corner of a couch, thin and tearful, his arms folded tight, ready to speak out."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch

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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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Candle in the Attic [Today's News Poem, February 5, 2011]

Candle in the Attic [Today's News Poem, February 5, 2011]

It's too late for us loves.
Yes, our cobwebs are thick,
But the candle has dripped
And it bridged with our net
And the flame has begun
To expand. Here's its slide,
And it opens its jaws.
So our world is inferno
And our clutches consumed.

"An Egyptian plant that carries natural gas to Israel exploded in the northern Sinai desert, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported. It said that “subversive elements” were behind the explosion."
—Nayla Razzouk, Bloomberg, Feb 5, 2011 12:37 AM PT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-05/egypt-gas-pipeline-feeding-israel-explodes-in-sinai-desert-arabiya-says.html

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The Demon Haunted World [Today's News Poem, April 25, 2010]

The Demon Haunted World [Today's News Poem, April 25, 2010]

“A grenade attack apparently targeting the Bangkok residence of former Thai prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa, an influential ally of the ruling coalition government, has injured 11 people.”
– ABC News, 24 minutes ago as of 8:18pm PST, April 25, 2010
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/26/2882782.htm?section=justin

A candle in the dark ignites
A fuse that flashes insight:
Alone and mortal, free to spite

Our consciences with reasoning;
With science, pain is easing—
Grenades provide the seasoning.

Kabbalah's sparks aren't just for Jews—
Its flame is just the produce
Of fertile minds that pick and choose

Which way insanity is clad.
At best a type of monad
The universe has driven mad

And cast adrift on quantum dreams,
We're chemicals that burn and scream
Against the nihilistic themes

Of nothingness perhaps. We fear that God exists
Inside our minds, that we are it—the horror twists
The intellect into a force we can't resist:
Irrational is rational. We must persist.

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