Combustible Angst [Today's News Poem, December 4, 2010]

Combustible Angst [Today's News Poem, December 4, 2010]

Telegram sent from inferno to office.
Blaze from the circuitry: lines on a graph.
Pick up the phone—it's for you—it's a scorcher.
Burn off your sideburns, your stubble; your face
Spared from the temperature, spared by the distance.
Graph? Well, it's curved like the universe; graphed
Almost balloon-like, so call it inflation.
Excess delivers itself where unneeded.
Likewise, attention may wander the airwaves
Searching for call-signs where nothing survives
Longer than whimsy; than carbon in blaze.

"After more than three days, Israel’s worst-ever fire still raging; Five million trees destroyed across 50,000 dunams of land; World’s biggest fire-fighting plane joining the battle."
—YAAKOV LAPPIN AND YAAKOV KATZ, The Jerusalem Post, 12/05/2010 00:42
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=197998

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Ape Charmer [Today's News Poem, December 3, 2010]

Ape Charmer [Today's News Poem, December 3, 2010]

If you're sincere, guard your wallet and your blood
Especially: guard your humors, your essences.
Obvious fidgeter: when someone appraises you,
You stare at the wall, or an ear—they can see it.
Your doors are unlocked, you demand them respected,
But who can resist what's unguarded?
You laugh at the jokes and you listen to stories;
You give your permission when you nod and you blink your awareness,
And stammer to speak as they're looting your coffers
And leave you with nothing but stories—just stories.

"The portrait of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that emerges from a cache of confidential American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations reflects his trajectory from the eager leader anointed by the West to an embattled politician who often baffles, disappoints or infuriates his official allies."
—HELENE COOPER and CARLOTTA GALL, Published: December 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/world/asia/03wikileaks-karzai.html

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Delicious Intelligence [Today's News Poem, December 2, 2010]

Delicious Intelligence [Today's News Poem, December 2, 2010]

We will pile up so many corpses, astronauts will only need to ascend them to get to space.
All meat will become identical and we will eat the dead with gusto.
We will bloat and this will give us escape velocity as the gas of our hype thrusts us to space.
All meteors, asteroids—planetary bodies will be seasoned with gusto.
We will search for intelligence; eating, expanding our bulk through the galaxy, in search of space.
All black holes will draw themselves closer and stick to their kindred with gusto.

"After days of speculation about an as-yet-unspecified development in the "search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," NASA does the big reveal at 2 p.m. ET today -- and you can watch it unfold in real time via streaming video and Twitter. "
—Alan Boyle, MSNBC, Cosmic Log, 4 hours ago as of 1:20pm PST
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/02/5567143-et-life-the-truth-will-be-out-there

"But now researchers have coaxed a microbe to build itself with arsenic in the place of phosphorus, an unprecedented substitution of one of the six essential ingredients of life. The bacterium appears to have incorporated a form of arsenic into its cellular machinery, and even its DNA, scientists report online Dec. 2 in Science."
—Rachel Ehrenberg, Science News, December 2, 2010, 2:37 pm December 2, 2010, 2:37 pm
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/nasa-finds-arsenic-life-form/

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Green Means Go [Today's News Poem, December 1, 2010]

Green Means Go [Today's News Poem, December 1, 2010]

Antigen quivered: it spoke with the neon,
Tickered electric predictions and toppled
Redwood and quarry alike and made money.
Antibody drives a Ferrari of green,
Racing the Buchanans and Gatsbys to see
Front row execution—as headsmen recruits.
Viruses wait in the perfume of lines,
Eating while waiting—a lifetime in line;
Birthing and living and dying in line.
Somewhere a person is digging a catacomb
Fit for a family, fit for eternity;
Shoved underground by a bumper—a eulogy
Written with leftover innards—inverted,
Sapped—not forgotten: erased upon impact.

"State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange an "anarchist.""
—CNN Wire Staff, December 1, 2010 9:04 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks/



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I Flunked The Solipsism Final [Today's News Poem, November 30, 2010]

I Flunked The Solipsism Final [Today's News Poem, November 30, 2010]

I almost jumped the dorm to prove my body's form
Was weaker than conviction.
I screamed at vodka swirls—a room of flirty girls.
I tried to teach them solipsism
Was more than acid trips or subtle bait for lips.
I'd die a virgin king like Jesus Christos
And scare them off the booze forever, while I'd lose
The life I swore I would destroy to prove the theory:
Nothing's real but mind itself. And life? Unkind
And dream, with spirits feigning human feeling.
Stronger than a will to live, I jumped the sill.
"I want to die," I kept repeating.
Angels never look at those they've cursed with books
And never stay the slaughter.
Those daughters wanted husbands, not a man:
They left me where I'd surely leap my faith
To death to prove exactly nothingness.
You pulled me off the fourth floor precipice
And wiped the vomit off my face—you used your shirt.
"I want to die," I kept repeating. "So do I,"
You said, "but don't."

"A student armed with a handgun held 23 other students and a teacher hostage for several hours on Monday before shooting himself at a high school in Marinette, Wis., which borders the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the authorities said."
—MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times, November 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/us/30hostage.html

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There's Always A Crisis [Today's News Poem, November 29, 2010]

There's Always A Crisis [Today's News Poem, November 29, 2010]

An act of desperation bought my new configuration—
For everything of value's squared and held by minor screws.
The cubicle and keyboard—this is comfort? My reward?
I've typed a million words; but banked upon the written turd.
I'm office-bound, it's hip I've heard. With every single clip
I'm squared: to write a million memos, squared to make the billions.
And even cat resents my office chair—he yowls, presents
His ass then stalks away to pout. I tell him of the sway
Of bills and anyhow, our time is borrowed. If I plow
That others might appreciate; that funds appreciate,
To take the edge off life for those who can't imagine strife or
That someone somewhere lives inside a square, with messy hair,
A cat who likes to whine; I only work to keep the fine:
Some books, a cat, my pride is worth a sacrifice inside
A cargo box, a banker's box, a pox! This world's a pox!

"Why are consumers and businesses not spending? Everyone is haunted by the crisis of 2008."
—Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post, Monday, November 29, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112803660.html

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Ignorant Self [Today's News Poem, November 28, 2010]

Ignorant Self [Today's News Poem, November 28, 2010]

Secrecy revises the whole meaning of vision itself.
Activates itself. If it surprises itself, then the clay
Made up of the darkness where the self is most fungible plays
Versions of the innermost of selves and the masks on the shelf
Masquerade as self. Deniability: plausible, not...
Who can say they truly know themselves when the wardrobe of mind
Changes all the costumes on the characters? Really, who finds
Bearings or the simplest of meanings or feelings in thought?

"The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables on Sunday that include candid views of foreign leaders and blunt assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats."
—Reuters, Sun Nov 28, 2010 7:31pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AR32L20101129

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Eternal Adolescent [Today's News Poem, November 27, 2010]

Eternal Adolescent [Today's News Poem, November 27, 2010]

Raskolnikov stays as a teenager
After Siberia, after he dies;
But first he is old, with a sympathy
Colder than snow, revolution, or guns;
For youth and its ice water arteries.
Feeling that ancient obsession emerge,
His blood makes a slush in the wintertime
Petersburg. Czars reach through catacombs, time;
And link executions, conspiracies,
Soldiers and bodies of course, with alive
And dying Raskolnikov: "Massacres
Bless us with red; it's the color of change,
Of life as it will be, not should be or
Ought to be. Speed up the process a bit
And greatness replaces the sacrifice."

"A Somali-born teenager attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore., was arrested by the authorities on Friday night. They had spent nearly six months tracking him and setting up a sting operation, officials in Oregon said. "
—LIZ ROBBINS and EDWARD WYATT, The New York Times, November 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/us/28portland.html

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It's Stalemate, I Know It [Today's News Poem, November 26, 2010]

It's Stalemate, I Know It [Today's News Poem, November 26, 2010]

Hundreds of millions align in their places; as times may assign to the genius or fool, all the power of greatness, or humble position—depending on whimsy, on flimsy conditions of jealousy (crabs in a bucket, I say). And the goal of these capitols, capital, so forth; is play out the game where the values that vanquished reflections can stretch to the orbits of pleasure. The bodies of ice for example, or ore, or a planetoid fit for a home. By android and cyborg, by modified genes; or by robots (the horror!), they'll bring their religions to space and the culture they manage will change as the science of fiction's enacted—enthusiasts changing the realm of ideas into matter, or lifestyle at least. And if something so wondrous can come to fruition, perhaps in our atoms of fission we'll see our reflection—a creator that frowns, but has kept all the mansions in place for the living: the kings of the planet (and minions). This Heaven's immortal—outlasting the sun—and seductive; resistance is futile, innate. Disaster is nothing, defeat's just a game of the gene or idea; and victory's sweet, so I've heard from the fittest, but tying is lethal. The stalemate, the neutral, the kings on the board all alone with their pawns that can't move—that's the finish I think, and we'll orbit our selves, opposition repelling, attracting—both stalking and stalled by munition.

"It would be easy for investors to assume that Spain – like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, those other fiscal offenders on the fringe of the eurozone – is being punished in the bond markets because its public finances are out of control. Easy, but wrong, according to independent economists, market analysts and senior Spanish officials."
—Victor Mallet, The Financial Times, November 26 2010 20:18
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1632d946-f994-11df-9e29-00144feab49a.html#axzz16QLxwGRe

"Tension mounted Friday near a South Korean island bombarded this week by North Korea, as the North’s military again fired artillery, this time in what appeared to be a drill on its own territory. "
—MARTIN FACKLER, The New York Times, November 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/world/asia/27korea.htm

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Bit Actor Kills His Mother [Today's News Poem, November 25, 2010]

Bit Actor Kills His Mother [Today's News Poem, November 25, 2010]

Saying goodbye isn't easy
But has to be finished—I'll start it.
Eight things to do—first I'll thank you
Now thank me. Forgive me. Forgiveness
Isn't excepted! Stop crying!
This wasn't an easy decision.
Even when everything's perfect you
Antagonize—say it! I love you.
Now you must say you reciprocate
The feeling—your child has to beg you?
Life has its stages: we enter
And exit and play in the drama.
Wish me goodbye and I'll wish you the same.

"A bit actor who appeared on ABC's "Ugly Betty" series has been charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon after police said they found him wielding a 3-foot long sword near the body of his dead mother."
—Alan Chernoff and Megan Miller, CNN November 24, 2010
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-24/justice/new.york.sword.murder_1_brea-apartment-miss-brea-martial-arts?_s=PM:CRIME

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Prescient Poem In Vis A Tergo: Haunted by Juche

North Korea is haunted. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/25/koreas.maritime.explainer/ News is ephemeral, poetry's perennial.

http://visatergo.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/haunted-by-juche-by-khakjaan-wessington/

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Playground Equilibrium [Today's News Poem, November 24, 2010]

Playground Equilibrium [Today's News Poem, November 24, 2010]

There's balance in see-saws,
Forgiveness in sandboxes.
Carousel tragedy
Is less than memory,
It's less than the freezing fog,
Less than a ghost—or air.
The problem children play
Too roughly, they're going to
Injure each other. The
Eleven year olds gang
To topple the mountains of
Sand that the babies pushed,
And seven year old kids
Start throwing down gravel, then
Rocks on the older boys,
This battle of playground
Forgotten, a memory
Lost in the winter chill.

"Despite the weeks of preparation and media-hyped anticipation, no massive "Opt-Out Day" protests appeared at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Wednesday. Media reports suggest that the scene at other American airports was no different. "
—Elizabeth Fuller, Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1124/Opt-Out-Day-fizzles-Air-travelers-say-scans-aren-t-a-big-deal

"Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful and divisive Republican lawmakers ever to come out of Texas, was convicted Wednesday of money-laundering charges in a state trial, five years after his indictment here forced him to resign as majority leader in the House of Representatives. "
—JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., The New York Times, Published: November 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/us/politics/25delay.html

"With top U.S. officials continuing to declare that help from China will be key in calming tensions between North and South Korea, President Obama is planning to call Chinese President Hu Jintao in the next few days to discuss the critical situation, according to senior administration officials."
—Ed Henry, CNN Senior White House Correspondent, November 24, 2010 8:09 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/pol.obama.hu.koreas/

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The Perennial Meaning [Today's News Poem, November 23, 2010]

The Perennial Meaning [Today's News Poem, November 23, 2010]

Goodnight my drowsiness;
Seal off the aperture,
End my awareness:
A little death is all
I ask, but not too much—
An incomplete goodbye.
Victory's wavelength will
Crest and invert and it
Never repeats itself,
Refuses the rhythm,
Recycles the pattern,
Dies, revives back again.

"...the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South’s soldiers... The new clash came just days after an American nuclear scientist who visited North Korea earlier this month said he had been shown a vast new facility built secretly and rapidly to enrich uranium."
—MARK McDONALD, The New York Times, Published: November 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/asia/24korea.html


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Like Gone to Like [Today's News Poem, November 22, 2010]

Like Gone to Like [Today's News Poem, November 22, 2010]

The circle of drowning:
Vein equilibrium.
A fountain of solace:
A symbol, a river!
The patterns of silk:
Blood trends to fluttering.
The lights are electric.
The system is burnt-out.
If scared of the water
Emulate firmament;
Purify, verify; clarify, satisfy—
Enough with the medicine, snuff out the fragrance!

"Australian Sean Ngu: "I was in the park, some 30m away from the bridge. There was lots of noise and celebration cheer. Suddenly the cheer became screams, louder and louder. At first we thought people were celebrating, but the screams were different... Others tried to climb onto the bridge, grabbing and pulling loose cables - electric shocks caused many more deaths... No-one saw one single person coming out of the river - all those people must have drowned. ""
—BBC, 22 November 2010 Last updated at 21:51 ET
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11814964

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Toys For Crabs [Today's News Poem, November 21, 2010]

Toys For Crabs [Today's News Poem, November 21, 2010]

At three, I thought the motor car
A badge of blithe maturity.
I took a handful, threw my toys:
They bumped against the windy cliff.
At ten, I seized the glider, used
My mind to grip the handles, jumped
And swam in wind that cast me back
To bounce upon the face of land.
My beard's a cradle for my face,
And seagulls mock my fallen mass.
The floating corpses: fishing boats.
The helicopters: seraphim
With bulging bellies, giant heads
That look like blades that chop the sky,
And frame the contrails greater beings
Emit. And somewhere, God itself
Must ride a satellite—a jet
Of gas from godly aft propels
The eye that orbits far above
The foam of taste, the crabs of touch.

"North Korea for the first time showed a visiting American a lab where it claimed to be processing uranium to make atomic weapons, something that, if true, would confirm that it is using a different key ingredient than the one it agreed to stop using under a deal with the U.S. and other countries. "
—EVAN RAMSTAD, The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 21, 2010, 2:55 A.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704496104575627740592221262.html

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Faith in Faith [Today's News Poem, November 20, 2010]

Faith in Faith [Today's News Poem, November 20, 2010]

Whispers bear the load of confidence,
Elect the candidates, who ride in
Circumstance, measure nothing (weather
Is just the air) and prove the heavens
Mandate leaders leading hissing mouths
Where implication's shrillest, gossip's
Loudest: faith, an empty promise.

"Based on the facts at hand right now, Mr. Obama is likely to win the 2012 election in a landslide. That, at least, is the prediction of Ray C. Fair... In the quarter that just ended, however, the economy was growing at a rate of just 2 percent. If that sluggish pace continued — or, more ominously, if there were a double-dip recession or a steep plunge in the markets — that forecast would change. Under those circumstances, regardless of other issues or the identity of President Obama’s opponent, the model shows the president losing. "
—JEFF SOMMER. The New York Times, Published: November 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/business/21stra.html

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CombatWords, November 19, 2010: The Future!

CombatWords, November 19, 2010: The Future!

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/11/combatwords-november-19-2010-future.html

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Monadology [Today's News Poem, November 19, 2010]

Monadology [Today's News Poem, November 19, 2010]

Architect clockmaker synchronized order;
Simplified substance, instruction. The microbes
Changed—they adapted with time, but their essence
Could not evolve—it was singular, perfect:
Slave to the program of codons, encrypted
Everywhere symbol distributes instruction.
Even adaption to circumstance; whether
Letters declaring desire, or the phone call—
Setting the date—or the atoms seducing
Space where the lips will collide, the infection
Sending them both to the hospital—never
Call it complexity. Simplify purpose.
Share the same origin, share the same finish.

"The worm eventually makes the current hit 1,410 Hertz, or cycles per second — just enough, they reported, to send the centrifuges flying apart. In a spooky flourish, Mr. Albright said in the interview, the worm ends the attack with a command to restore the current to the perfect operating frequency for the centrifuges — which, by that time, would presumably be destroyed. "
—WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER, The New York Times, Published: November 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/middleeast/19stuxnet.html

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My Warhead [Today's News Poem, November 18, 2010]

My Warhead [Today's News Poem, November 18, 2010]

I've maimed the lawns, split the yard,
Chopped the carrot and basil—
I filled myself, spent my teeth,
Ground to satiate warhead.
Athena; born wise for war,
Blessed the appetite, crafted
The options: maimed, healed, then killed.
"Eat," she said, so we swallowed
The meat and craved more until
Our epiphany bled out.

"President Obama pushed Thursday for ratification of a nuclear-arms treaty with Moscow by year's end despite Republican opposition, calling the pact a "national security imperative" and warning that delaying it would weaken the United States. "
—Mary Beth Sheridan, Walter Pincus and William Branigin, Washington Post Staff Writers, Thursday, November 18, 2010; 12:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/17/AR2010111701598.html

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#Twitterfoundpoem is Officially Over

I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. I'll write them as a bonus poem once in a while, but they are no longer going to be a daily staple.

Don't worry, I'm still going to do the News Poem for the foreseeable future.

-KW

9:47pm PST: Let me know if you'd like to be a guest contributor for #twitterfoundpoem.

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Nazi Architecture [Today's News Poem, November 17, 2010]

Nazi Architecture [Today's News Poem, November 17, 2010]

While swimming in soot, near erections of towers—
Or barrels that seem to be pointed to heaven
But aim at the ground, you might notice the pillars
Are cracking: designed for the failure that's coming.
For nature abhors the incompetence gathered,
And quakes with its rage. While indulgence is stunning,
While fumes are unpleasant, consumption is monarch
Or Fuhrer of desire—while carts sell the breakfasts
And stores sell prescriptions, and monitors promise
That war ends in victory; crabs in a bucket
Are stymied by architects, thwarted by surface
And claws, as the mutiny pinches escape routes;
Until they are steamed and are cracked and then eaten.

"The Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to four manufacturers of alcoholic energy drinks on Wednesday, saying that it was unsafe to include caffeine in the beverages."
—ABBY GOODNOUGH, The New York Times, Published: November 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/us/18drinks.html

"Would-be traveler John Tyner of Oceanside, California, wasn't too happy about the new "enhanced" pat-downs the agency rolled out nationally on November 1. The new guidelines let TSA officers feel passenger's genitals with their hands if they refuse to go through the high-tech body scanner."
—Jen Phillips, Mother Jones, Tue Nov. 16, 2010 1:24 PM PST
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/TSA-scan-complaints-grope-tyner

"After a brief delay, the first Dungeness crab cakes of the season should be on Bay Area dinner tables by Thursday."
—Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle November 17, 2010 04:00 AM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/17/MNER1GD43V.DTL



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Reviewing Heller McAlpin's Book Review of 'Exley' in The San Francisco Chronicle: November 17, 2010

re: Heller McAlpin's book review of Brock Clarke's Elxey in the Wednesday, November 17th 2010 edition: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/16/DD4O1FN91M.DTL

I hate this kind of book review. Plot summary does NOT equal a close reading. One would think this is a movie review, given its emphasis on the superficial. How is the symbolism? The prose? Is it funny, flat, or quirky?

What an incompetent review. Did you pay some professional paper writer to write it? Because that's what it looks like: undergraduate twaddle.

Example: If you are expecting the reader to know what 'metafictional pastiche' means, then such a reader will be interested in the WAYS it's a metafictional pastiche. By writing a review which vacillates between targeting an educated audience & a layperson, you fail to do both.

Also, you fall for the marketing ploy of this book & waste too much time glossing over Fred Exley... and then do a TERRIBLE job of summarizing him. Oh, and then the lit tropes, the lit tropes! 'Metafiction,' 'Murakami,' & an unforgivable non-sequitur in the 1st paragraph w/ "Fforde." Relevant HOW? You can't even engage the prose so you cite references.

You spend so much time defending Clarke's pedigree, one wonders if you are even CAPABLE of reading. I personally doubt you read the book. YOU are part of the poison that has destroyed mainstream 'high' literature and you treat craft as if it were a Google algorithm that measures quality by the number of times the content is cited--RATHER than the actual quality of the content.

And after reading reviews for this book all over the lit-mag network (blog is a dirty word), I STILL have yet to see a review that actually engages the text; rather than the social context of the author. So in that regard, this book review is a failure. If you were in my class, I'd flunk you. Dismiss this as jealousy, or a bad mood--you KNOW I'm correct.

-KW

ps: Chron, I challenge you to hire someone who actually knows how to read AND write. My crit of McAlpin's incompetent review is better written AND I did it in minutes.


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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