Your Problem Is Not Too Much War, But Too Little [Today's News Poem, Feb 7, 2010]

Your Problem Is Not Too Much War, But Too Little [Today's News Poem, Feb 7, 2010]

“The Dollar is our currency, but your problem”
-John Connolly, 1971

“If the United States is to achieve its export goal...it will need strong global economic growth to boost demand. It will also need a weaker U.S. dollar -- or stronger Chinese yuan -- to make its goods more competitively priced.”
--Emily Kaiser

“Commodity markets have good antennae and have already smelled a depletion in Indian buffer stocks as the government tries to cool prices by releasing subsidised foodgrains... Check the futures on wheat — they are indicating more upsides in prices over the long term.”
--Vijay L Bhambwani

“President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.  In his last term in office, President Bush increased discretionary outlays by an estimated 48.6 percent. “
--Veronique de Rugy

"“Palin recently endorsed Rand Paul, the son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. She said she was attracted to his limited government platform...”
--Judson Berger

“What they're working on today there in Congress and the White House, it needs to die."
-Sarah Palin

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/07/palin-willing-obama/

Your problem: war is not disaster. War
Is not exclusive. Trade without a bound
Impoverishes: death becomes a score
In decimals, a margin that once crowned
The British Empire ruler of the slaves.
So Sarah Palin lacks the intellect
To match her venal ways? She won't make waves.
She's not a threat to merchants who direct
A raid and plunder policy at home,
Abroad as well. We buy our books online:
The poor buy grain that way as well. By foam
It's shipped. Gone too, their wealth, by ocean tine;
To vaults unknown, but ruled from city spires—
By keyboard, hand and phone—by Bloomberg wires.



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Newspapers are dying. This is the time for independent writers

To generate the content that bloggers are getting income by stealing. By copyrighting your works online and posting them on your own site, instead of on a forum, you not only increase the control you have over your writing--you create the option for other websites to buy your content for syndication. Journalists should be doing this. So should writers of all kinds. The people who shouldn't be blogging are the idiots we hear about all the time--careerist dolts who think of writing as a trade, not a passion--or a way of life. They run out of ideas. Real writers, real journalists never run out of ideas. Take control of your intellectual property and let Google be your publisher.

That's all for tonight.



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Support Toylit: express halfhearted interest in the wares for sale

On the page. Enough of that and I might drop the price of the day's News Poems down to $2.50.

Update: Hell, if I get enough clicks, I'll give download copies of revised news poems away for free. Show me where my profit center is and I'll go there.

Quoth Bartles unto James: "Thanks for your support."



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Achtung! CombatVerse is online!

CombatVerse! is a game I developed. A way of dueling with verse. It uses audience participation, but it also uses formal rules. Play with it and develop the artform. I think it's the page-equivalent of the dozens.



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CombatProse! is operational

Not decided yet, but I think month's winner gets a cash prize if it's legal and feasible. Go here for rules. I'm not sure if it needs moderation right now, so try it. If it does, I'll just have to make up some rule, like calling when the next update happens. I do believe you should be able to post and fight it out without my authorization with a google account and I believe you need to have one. Try it. I'll listen to complaints.



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Added links to other original writing

Strawberry Press is Toylit's New York City doppleganger. I do poetry--he does prose. Both were distributed by hand through their respective cities. I respect this guy and think he's a great writer.

WoundedScavengers is a showcase for an astonishing talent. Maybe twenty hours worth of writing is on there to read: you can spend the whole week reading it while you're pretending to work.

Onyxsupersonics is someone I've known online for a while. A theme there is developing, but I know the guy can write.

So when you're done with the news poems, these sites ought to have regularly updated material for you to read. That's all for now.

I added some more links, but I'm not going to call them all out. Just poke around.

--Subcommander Wessington



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Why Every Master Should Have a Memory Hole [Today's News Poem Feb 6, 2010]

Why Every Master Should Have a Memory Hole, Feb 6, 2010

“Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, who gave an electric speech Saturday morning vilifying the "mainstream media," ACORN and the liberal elite, afterward described the "birthers" as a fringe, saying the bulk of the convention participants did not come to discuss Obama's citizenship.”
- Judson Berger, FOXNews.com, February 06, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/06/tea-partiers-urge-unity-rifts-movement/

“What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders... Within hours of Santelli’s rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party. The domain was registered in August, 2008 by Zack Christenson, ”
-Yasha Levine and Mark Ames, 2.27.2009, exiledonline

http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/

A pyre could blot the past as well fallout could.
I've read, that Alexandria once boasted tomes
Secured with splendor; surely made of simple wood—
It burned! And all around the world that fire still roams:

It scorched the Mayan books of lore, the Papal Bull—
A censor's tool. An Emperor's decree concealed
The past to say that history was done and full:
The fire or law another tool for him to wield.

Today the rulers think the same, but methods change
To fit the times. The Nazis tried revising bounds
On maps. It worked a while. Ideas are only strange
At first, before the uniforms and rifle rounds

Convince us otherwise. The rage that comes from class
Resentments isn't crushed these days. Instead a squirt
Of gasoline will fan the blaze of angry, mass-
Revolt and aim it true at roots for change. Subvert

Rebellion, not by burning books: to do it right
One must ensure the blaze consumes the fuel for hope
Of revolution; else no arms, nor other might
Will stem a savage lust for blood. A prince can't cope

With hate like this, so drive it mad and burn it out—
Or else they'll flay you live and mock your dying shouts.



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Open Mic Part 2

I hope to have operational by the end of the day my two new blogs: combatverse.blogspot.com and combatprose.blogspot.com

After taking care of some irl, Today's News Poem and today's upgrade of Toylit, I will make those sites operational, with rules and scoring and everything. Consider it the page-equivalent of a poetry slam--with the higher standards that implies.



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Open-Mic at the Shit-Mag

Consider this your stage or if you prefer, a kumate arena. Anyone can post on this thread, SO LONG AS THE WRITING IS LITERARY! Verse, prose, etc. Any topic. If I like any of the posts, I'll ask the author to give me permission to put it up on a separate thread, under its own post-heading. So consider it open-mic at a lit-mag.

It will be interesting to see what the time constraints do to any of the participants.

Suggestion: if you go first and nobody wants to go after you, just revise and post it again--the faster the better. We like time-lapse photography. Seeing a composition come to life is another type of time-lapse photograph.



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After much thought...

I'm going to publish daily editions of Toylit electronically and will publish the print editions every two weeks. That way, I don't diminish the value of the print editions that have already been purchased. So there will still be a daily edition of Toylit, but I will make it available for download only.

To differentiate between the daily edition and the periodic compilations, I'll either generate lots of unique content for the end of Feb edition, else I'll have some guest contributors make a deposit in the toylit. Either way, I'm trying to figure out a reasonable model for what I see as an exploitable niche--the literary periodical.

So, sorry about playing with the prices of editions. Anyone who has a complaint can e-mail me and I'll see what I can do.



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Some additional info on Lit-Anarchism

Zinetips

The above guide will give you the basics on how-to, w/ print. An important skill. Cross-training will get your blog traffic. I circulated 50 editions of Toylit through San Francisco and over the next two days, I had a surge of impressions. This experiment bears out that supplementing the online version with a print version will buttress your site. Only literary types can do this, as most blogs should be printed on actual toilet paper.

My guide below will take you from in the box writing, to polished revision; with a complete artistic narrative. At the same time, it is a method for constantly protecting your rights as you post your original works online, as lulu is the entity that gets an ISBN for the book and will copyright it (my understanding at least). This allows for public experimentation.



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The Literary-Anarchist's Cookbook

Literary writers are at a disadvantage compared to other writers. Serious writing isn't considered performance art. Writing that fails is jeered at for having bathos and unintentional farce. This, as Horkheimer and Adorno say, is the genesis of stupidity. Just as the snail's horn retracts upon a touch, so too does the literary writer retract from the stage, for fear of heckling. Writers then obsess over details, fearful that the next time they show a piece, the writer will be mocked again. This stifles creativity and pulls the author out of the timestream of current events. This is why I advocate same-day publishing on relevant topics. Bad prose is ephemeral; great writing is perennial. If the audience can see the evolution of a composition, they can better appreciate the process of composition. In one of my Norton Anthologies, there's a section with the early drafts of famous poems. We instinctively know that those are valuable, prima facie. But when it comes to our own compositions, we believe it is arrogant to trot out our b sides. Well, is that for us to determine? Should the market decide that? If someone loves a specific composition I've written (like Haitian Fright Song) in its final form, wouldn't he or she be interested to see what it used to look like? I am interested in Blake's drafts of The Tyger, whether he might think I would be or not. In an era where we are going paperless, it's important that drafts are not disintegrated—dropped down the memory hole. In an era of performance, with a vehicle like the web and the infrastructure of blogs already established, I think there is the possibility to add enough time-pressure for there to be a performance quality to online posts. I think that there are idiots who write like shit out there who make six figures or more a year off their shit writing on their blog. Weedy species colonize a space first, but then hardier species follow. Literary writers are the hardier species. But the big names won't move to self-publishing because of the stigma attached to the endeavor. However, a talented nobody has nothing to lose. This brings me to my next point: the institutional disconnect between publishers and writers is vaster than ever. They pay us shit, they tell us to fuck off most of the time, and in the end, all they are is a marketing company that distributes books and serves as a middleman. Who needs them? Why, exactly are they good for my reputation? I can sell 1/10 the books they can to make the same amount of money.

Oh, they have marketing. Exactly my friends. Which is why this needs to be a movement. Turn blogs to literary stages, as we have already done on craigslist. Make the performance live. The finished product will be like all finished products that have ever been: but there will also be performance and that is an added vector of excitement for an audience—as we've seen on craigslist. So an added component: this idea germinated on craigslist and I'm sure many of the regs and oldtimers there will participate in this project (especially to attach their names to the first major literary development since post-modernism). I know from personal business experience the power of affinity marketing. A good reputation travels quickly. Therefore, a webring will increase the number of hits on favorite participating sites. I know that with five other people, this could work. The web presence would be deep and we could become the huffingtonpost of literature. Best of all, it's not like we can be circumvented. I am so happy to know that anyone trying to rip-off Toylit is in violation of my registered copyright thanks to the steps I mentioned below. We can tap into those media profits ourselves and distribute ourselves and quit wasting our lives trying to please some poodle-walking shit from New York. There has always been a war between the author and the publisher: with market forces at one pole and at best, a Promethean vision at the other. While nothing tactically is new in this guide, I believe its strategic vision IS new. I believe that creating a cadre of solid writers will make our own clique and equivalent of a litmag. With enough time and talent, there might even be a real income-stream from this. Wouldn't that be interesting?

1)Go to any blog site. Toylit uses blogspot, but I suppose any will do.
1.You should have a Google account (all hail Google) as it will make subsequent steps easier.
2)Register your blog and format it to taste.
3)Set up an adsense account. It's simple. Follow directions. Then you can track impressions which will help you see whether people like what you're doing, or not.
4)Set up a feedburner account. This is critical, because otherwise your blog will be isolated from news feeds.
5)Stream your blog to your feed. After much thought, I've decided it's better to let newsreaders scan the entire post, because you will be securing your copyright every day if you follow my method.
6)Set up a lulu account.
7)Format your print edition before you begin to write so that the time lapse between your original post and that day's edition is minimized.
8)Write your composition and post it—warts and all.
1.At first, this step is painful, because there's bad writing out there in public. Over time, the revisions will make early versions look interesting. I absolutely think that the revised Toylit is a fine and complete book of poetry, made more interesting by the fact that I wrote one poem a day, while also revising prior comps.
9)Publish on lulu, with or without ISBN. I think you shouldn't let them market for you on Amazon, because then they're just raping your profits. Lulu is fine for magazines. Once purchase volume increases enough, you'll want to just pay your own printer for special runs of complete and revised compositions.
1.Readership, by witnessing your process of creation, will read the same composition twice, because they will be interested in how you fixed the problems in your earlier drafts.
10)The idea is to pool litfo's affinity networks together through cross-linking and so forth—but really, anyone can do it with any clique of friends. This will also raise everyone's prominence in page-rankings. Within a week, I think given everybody's affinity networks, we'll have at least 1k readers between us. That's the equivalent of a small start-up lit mag. And it will only grow as we achieve page-dominance in our various search fields. Of course, I happen to think that the best talents on litfo are critical for this venture to fly, so not just any monkey can do this. Otherwise they'd be doing it.
11)So at first there will be stigma attached to this, but soon, everybody will do it. Publishers don't add enough value and take away too much control. This removes the middleman and lets producers and consumers contact each other directly. It will also make you slackers some bread. Instead of Kinko's, do just-in-time delivery and use lulu.



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All Downloads are now $5

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Today's Edition of Toylit on sale now

A comprehensive collection of the last 15 news poems. If you want to see a complete collection with a completed poetic narrative, this is it.



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I Cut My Hair [Today's News Poem, Feb 5, 2010]

I Cut My Hair [Today's News Poem, Feb, 5, 2010]

“Shares were mixed in the last hour, with Wall Street indexes bouncing back after being down more than 1.5 percent. Indexes had been rattled for most of the day by concerns that that large deficits in Europe could hobble the global recovery, even as the American labor market showed signs of improving. “
““The fear is what happens if the recovery in Europe rolls over into a double-dip recession,” said Hank B. Smith, chief investment officer for Haverford Investments. “It creates uncertainty as we wait to see how this relatively young experiment, the European Union, deals with this crisis.” “

--Javier C Hernandez and Matthew Saltmarsh

“Economists say the Chinese yuan is undervalued and its exchange rate gap against other currencies has actually widened since the yuan-dollar peg ended in 2005. ”

--UPI, Feb 5, 2010, 1:12am

“A rapid drop in the Dollar versus the Yuan would result in almost immediate, and major import substitution by US producers. Until inflation is tamped out, it will continue to drop the cost of US manufactures compared to foreign manufacturers. It would be a deathblow to European industries, which would need to respond with even more protectionism. Airbus is already on the ropes - a 20% drop in the dollar would see almost every plane order in the world for the next five years going to Boeing. Multiply this across every industry where the EU is barely competitive with the rest of the world and you can see that a disaster is brewing, not for the US, but for Europe. China would lose its target market for exports and its domestic consumption won't be able to make up for the difference.”
--Khakjaan Wessington, exile.ru, 11.17.2006

A friend, a 'fag', once toured me through
The neighborhood from whence he came.
In Michigan, Detroit, his crew
Of drinking mates were friends—the same
He knew when growing up. His dad,
A mop and soap school janitor
Had bought a drink for me. The fad
For longish hair was gone—I wore
It long and didn't think
They'd think I was a faggy dink.

They'd seen a war I never knew
Before—while driving past the stores
With bars my paranoia grew.
Four crime scenes later? This was war—
A kind that hated popinjays
And frizzy hair and poet's ways.
“Don't look at anyone,” (the craze
Around there—shoot at any gaze)
He said, we looked at lots
Where homes and happy thoughts

Were once extant. I asked the cause
From everyone I met. Some said
That after riots darkie's claws
Destroyed their town. “Horseshit! You're fed
The hate another stokes. You cheer
For causes lacking moral heft.
Because of living here, the fear
Of losing work should drive you left!”
I later fled to home,
To California's foam,

To folks with work, who didn't fear
What happens when they lose their job—
Who didn't think long hair was queer,
Who weren't afraid enough to rob
And die for fists of cash to pay
For gas, for food. They liked long hair
And told me so. For that, I cut
It buzz. I didn't want to blare
My vanity before these sluts
And gigolos with clap
Who cared for fashion's crap.



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February 4, 2010 Edition of Toylit on Sale Now!

For those of you who wanted to see what the final drafts of the news poems would look like, this is it. This edition has the finesse and polish that was lacking in the previous edition: squandered opportunities are taken, shortcuts eliminated, rough lines rewritten... if you want to see what the News Poems look like in a final-draft version, this is it. Unlike the re-launch edition of Toylit, this will stay on sale longer. Since it is not a first edition, I took $5 off the cover price.

This is more or less a clean book of poetry so if that's what you were waiting to buy, it's on sale now. Unlike the prior edition, this one doesn't have an ISBN # and the next edition with an ISBN# won't come out until the end of this month. The Feb 4, 2010 Edition of Toylit. Click below to buy.



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$5 for 2.3.10 Toylit v3.01 Download

We know that the sketch can sometimes be more interesting than the finished painting--if only for the unrealized possibilities. Toylit is sketched daily as are its revisions. As of about 5pm PST, I'm going to work on the 2.4.10 edition of Toylit and will discontinue the 2.3.10 edition at around 20 circulation. Own sketches of poems and address them as living products of the author's performance (the poet's life is performance art). Sure, you'll have a chance to own your own copy of Toylit with these titles in them later, but you won't have a chance to own a printed edition with this draft: typos and all.

If you want an electronic copy, that's fine too, but I find it unlikely it will ever be a collector's item. Still, if you want to read the much better versions of Global Village and Haitian Fright Song, now you can do so for $5.

What's important to note is that Toylit is produced daily, in my spare time, which means I prioritize the deadline over the production quality. It is an evolving testament, which I think, makes it more compelling. We are embodied in time and while poetry can transcend time to a certain extent, it's still germinated in a temporal space.



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Clans and Clerics[Today's News Poem, Feb 4, 2010]

Clans and Clerics, Feb 4, 2010
By Khakjaan Wessington

"… I still will tell you that I believe the situation in Afghanistan is serious. I do not say now that I think it's deteriorating. I said that last summer and I believe that that was correct. I feel differently now... This is all in the minds of the participants. And I mean, the Afghan people are the most important, but the insurgents are another one. You're just convincing people..."

-General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan

America was lost in increments
We measure using friendships made and lost.
For every clique's a pending coup.
The business-types—who love in dollars, cents—
Feign pals until the checks are signed and crossed.
No wonder when the revolution's due

It wins: who writes the history of calls,
Of contracts signed? Of relatives, of chums
We made at school or work or in the street?
With gun on back, a young jihadi crawls
Through snow to kill—you think he cares of bums
Like you? We learn to win with each defeat.

In snow he thinks of what his father wants
Who wants whatever's best for everyone
He knows; but first comes flesh before the rest.
And if he lives it won't be you—his aunt's
Consideration makes him drop the gun—
Who stops the fighting, beats their army's best:

Instead it's work, the need to pay his way.
The world's old hippies ought to get the need
To distance self from indiscretions youth
Demands. What once was black and white is gray
Like hair, with age. With kids we need to feed,
We learn that love dispenses with the truth

As once we saw: and thus the revolution's made
A coup, like here, to keep their families all paid.



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Write Anti-News for Toylit

Anti-News is still an evolving concept, but Toylit has a fairly unified aesthetic. I welcome submissions, but require a query and abstract with 24 hour notice. Violators of this guide will have their e-mail addresses migrated to the spamfilter (memoryhole3.0). Compositions must be literary in nature: non-fiction and essays will be considered on a case by case basis, but don't abuse this or I'll just make it by invite only. Compositions must respond to existing news; it can occur, it can recur, but it must be 'news.' Authors retain all rights, with Toylit acquiring non-exclusive serial rights.

Toylit will also pay you, but I'm not going to make any firm guide as income will be derived primarily from print editions. I ENCOURAGE inspired, but flawed submissions, as the author will have an opportunity to edit a composition before the print edition goes out: especially as writing literature on a clock is difficult.

Eventually, I will figure out how to track submissions. At that point I will implement a blind-read policy. Until that time comes, I will probably find out who submitted what to me--and hence, will be a (more) biased editor.



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Toylit v3.01; February 3, 2010 Edition

"This limited edition, Feb 3, 2010 print edition of Toylit includes edits made on February 3, 2010. Of note are the revisions to Haitian Fright Song and Global Village. After a run of a few hundred (or less, market forces depending), it will be discontinued, rendering all print editions collector's items. This is your one chance to purchase Feb 3, 2010's edit of Toylit."

Haitian Fright Song was rewritten to completely keep the theme-rhythm of Mingus' fabulous Haitian Fight Song. The original was probably the worst of the original Toylit News poems, but the revision is one of the best. The other contender for that is the sly revision of "Global Village,' which is a far more cunning poem than what was posted here.

Click below to buy a copy today.



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After the Philosopher's Stone [Today's News Poem, Feb 3, 2010]

After the Philosopher's Stone
By Khakjaan Wessington

“...Western experts suggested the civilian space programme provided cover for Iran’s development of long-range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear pay-load. ”
-Timesonline, February 3, 2010

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one “

-J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, upon witnessing the Trinity nuclear test, July 16, 1945

The ultimate superlative is 'bomb,'
Because a nuke is absolute.
And like the word it stands aplomb
Among creations: techne's golden fruit.

Just like the rarest cultivars, to care
And rear a fearsome edible
Requires a gaze that fears no glare:
No thought too wicked nor incredible

For tasks like these, it takes a will of stone—
Of mercury—to shed taboo.
A superman ought not atone
For crafting kryptonite. He'll later rue

The rationalizations used to mint the rock,
And more, regret that he established doomsday's clock.



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Grasping for an All-Encompassing Anti-News Postulate

Here's a slogan I believe: 'slogans are stupid.' Slogans stifle thought and create false dualisms. They ignore outright the possibility of alternatives not mentioned in the slogan: ie: slogans are shit (I pledge allegiance to that one too). News also creates false dualisms and in so doing, funnels thought into narrow theses that ignore that most current events are RECURRING events.

News is narrative, but what does this mean? Narrative: a story, a glue with which disparate data points are welded together. A manufacture. A report about a scientific paper isn't the same as the scientific paper itself. The medium is the message, so with Google at our side, does that mean a footnote can become a headline? It appears so. I had no clue how easy it was to enter the news-stream. So it is possible to attack the headlines and to become the news.

I believe in eloquence, if not always revision. I believe eloquence is more powerful than base speech—not only in persuasive capacities, but also in expanding thought. Is it not astonishing to one reading this page that he or she already knows most, if not all the words printed here, and yet these words inspire thoughts one had not considered previously? To me, that's one of the many wonders of language. News is the opposite of eloquent; it is reductionist in nature. It seeks to shrink ideas. It presumes a 'state of nature' from its readers. It assumes the reader is ignorant, swayed by irrational prejudice and believes in the false completeness of a dualistic dialectic.

Quantity has a quality all its own as we know, which is why news is capable of infiltrating our subconscious and altering our conditioned responses. Journalists only drive the narrative, because they are expert testimony: paid witnesses. How well does that work in our court-system? They have the heft of the news organization--the news brand--to replicate their bad memes and drive discourse in negative directions. And instead of facing this army of idiots directly, the literary writers flee to the academy. They're such cowards. They write for lit magazines—they're afraid of their best writing getting stolen; of not getting paid for it. That's a fair worry. It's not easy to think up something original with the letters we all know. Still, they have targeted exclusivity and sought sinecure at the expense of relevance: removed themselves from natural selection. Instead of participating within history, the standard literary conceit is to transcend history. This is a valid form of expression, but when it becomes the predominant ethos, there's a problem. Why is it Maureen Dowd gets to pretend to be some sort of literary type? She thinks she's such a fucking word-pixie. She can't stand up, head-to-head against a real author of prose, never mind poetry. The answer therefore is to alter the target of literary efforts. Is the poet some type of manatee, fleeing corporate speedboats? I think the poet is more like a submarine that can transform into a suborbital bomber and back again. Why hide? If poetry can do all these things poets claim it can do, then it should be able to easily defeat the hacks of the world.

Most news stories have few facts and are heavy with narrative. Furthermore, idiotic statements are easy to rebut with other idiotic statements, thus creating a cycle of retaliation between extreme ideological poles. In the name of 'dialectic' the argument is framed by the arguers. One could almost argue that too much time around the legal system has made the common mode of public discourse, nihilistic. Since extremists speak mostly to their opposing pole, this creates discourse filled with slogans, which as I've said before, stifle genuine thought. The best antidote then is careful speech that cannot be easily rebutted. I have chosen to do this with verse, because as I said before, I hate slogans. Poems do far more work with the same number of syllables and poetry—when it's written right—advances dialogue, rather than restricts it.

So what is anti-news? Well, simply put, it's anti-narrator. A bad narrator omits facts and jerks the reader along. A news organization assumes the reader has the memory of a goldfish, or has never read a newspaper before. Even a tv show assumes the viewer is familiar with prior episodes--and if she isn't--that the viewer could easily catch up on netflix. Could you imagine if Voltaire assumed that nobody had read anything before him? “Hmm, better write down to their level first.” It's not done, except in news. Even textbooks assume a kid passed the prior grade.

The whole point behind anti-news is therefore more than a culture-jamming enterprise. The news doesn't occur--it recurs. News is a narrator that presents false dualisms and relies more heavily on speculation based around a news item analyzed in isolation, rather than synthesizing disparate bits of knowledge into a more complete narrative. The journalist is a notary, someone who witnesses and confirms an event (or data) that requires eye-witness testimony. She or he only thinks s/he's a writer, when in fact a journalist is as much a writer as a court reporter. The journalist seeks to step into history, but is she qualified? Who really writes history? Scholars. Artists. Writers. No hacks allowed, except insofar as being the cite in a greater thesis. Attacking the news at it comes out immediately injects alternative points of view into the discourse--at the moment when it can still be effective. And furthermore, the author who writes the first definitive poem or story on a subjectmatter is remembered--not the journalist who witnessed or confirmed the event. The literary minded ought go head-to-head with the hacks of the world and enter the cycle of history now: not after you've died.



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All the Old Cat Ladies [Today's News Poem, Feb 2, 2010]

All the Old Cat Ladies

By Khakjaan Wessington

“When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar "charged out" and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat's judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.”

-telegraph.co.uk 7:42PM GMT 01 Feb 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html

Amidst the tubes and wheeled beds
Is life. A tank of oxygen
Can anchor balloons—greens and reds,
A halo 'round the aged's pen.

With death on every side of us,
Inside us, bits we've dripped in stride
While edging near the terminus:
We fear to face the mortal slide.

She lived before, amongst the cats.
They tolerated human stench,
And oily garbage crowned with gnats,
Because she was their serving wench.

And now amongst the humans lives
A cat who serves—like them—the end
Of cages. Aging's worse than knives
They say: it wounds before it sends.

A school of dignified release
Where pupils watch with catlike eyes,
And sense when illness comes to cease
The woman with a house of flies.



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Deficits and Treasure [Today's News Poem, Feb 1, 2010]

Deficits and Treasure

By Khakjaan Wessington

“The budget plan, which would take effect when fiscal year 2011 begins on October 1, projects a record fiscal deficit of $1.56 trillion this year but predicts the red ink will subside to $1.27 trillion in 2011 and half that in 2012.”

-Reuters, Feb 1, 2010, 11:06am EST

The Aeolipile, a brazier bearing double spouts,
Was iron, brass—from base components nonetheless—
Yet treasure. Forth through craft came value's early sprouts;

With paint worth more than gold, with books worth more than gems.
The guilds and foreigners kept secrets they'd not fess,
Thus trade became the way that profit came to stem

Beyond the limits local markets used to bear—
Demand, supply, material and state constraints—
With earnings, came the study we call laissez-faire.

With maths and science, facts and theories—press as well—
Economies could trade without a gold restraint.
So value now is separate from specie's spell.

A deficit is bridged with press—already done
To save the banks. Deposits made can grow by ten
Their lendable reserves. They speculate: it's spun

As finding value—true sometimes, but why can't you
Or I receive financial terms like that? It's when
The deficit accrues and banks receive the screw,

They scream inflation stands to cut their margins down:
They get the loot, while costs go up in every town.




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