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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Get Your Stalkers, Sluts and Sociopaths in CombatWords, February 4, 2011: Mischief

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/combatwords-february-4-2011-mischief.html

Started at 1:53 PM PST, 2/4/2011:

Steven M Grant February 4, 2011 3:12 PM, PST: "The days that followed were so magical and painful for me. Every morning on my way to work I would walk past Pete’s hoping to catch a glimpse of her. “If she sees you just smile at her, don’t be such a pussy” Sometimes I would see her through the window but she was always busy behind the counter. I really started to get a sense of who she was. She was kind of shy like me, not a lot of friends and she rarely went anywhere after work except straight home. I was pretty sure that she really had been flirting with me that Thursday evening because she did not have a boyfriend. She never went out at night and she never got cards or letters from any men."

Roxi Xmas aka Misti Rainwater-Lites, February 4, 2011 7:33 PM, PST:
"I'm all about dick
he spews CUNT
I hiss pusSsSy"

And I wrote something too. See you there: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/combatwords-february-4-2011-mischief.html

Vlad, please escort them to the next exhibit:

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Prisoner's Daydream [Today's News Poem, February 4, 2011]

Prisoner's Daydream [Today's News Poem, February 4, 2011]

Longing to rapture; then yearning returns.
Spend all your fancy—the memory calls.
Keyboards are nothing; you've traveled to cliffs,
Hiked with a lover—she's gone to a postcard.

Gone to an envelope, tagged with a stamp,
Send out by thousands your letters of sale.
Bill it... no, still it. The day in the tree—
Pause the machine and imagine the ocean:

Painted with ripples of heat, white and blue;
Mountains as tan as a folder, its gold
Golder than salary, crisp as the sun,
Crisper than dry-cleaning, somewhere outside.

"The labor market has lagged the broader economy, which grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday acknowledged the pick-up in the recovery, but said "it will be several years before the unemployment rate has returned to a more normal level.""
—Reuters, Fri Feb 4, 2011 12:00am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/usa-economy-idUKN036699720110204

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Thespian Killers [Today's News Poem, February 3, 2011]

Thespian Killers [Today's News Poem, February 3, 2011]

Throttle the mic; music will flow.
Out of the shrieks, edited song.
Twenty-two years separate births:
Austrian fry, Illinois spawn;
Actors by trade; thespian lords
Dressed for the stage, camera, film.
Thoughts sound like voice, voice sounds like thought:
Reason your ears, eyes can betray.
Only a suit, tie and a note
Carry the whole drama along.
Stick to the script: shock's for the crowd,
Charge for the mic, lies for us all.

"Ronald Reagan would have turned 100 this Sunday, and nearly seven years after his death, one might think he were still alive and leading the Republican Party. "
—JENNIFER MEDINA, The New York Times, Published: February 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/us/politics/03reagan.html

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The Perfect Shape [Today's News Poem, February 2, 2011]

The Perfect Shape [Today's News Poem, February 2, 2011]

Nature is crooked; it creases—it's bent.
Lines in the fissures are jagged and steep:
Never sheer, ever flowing;
Even dead things have motion.
Look at your spine, there's a curve near your ribs.
Bones for a corset, a girdle of fat,
Modeled round after solar,
Lunar—whole planets—bodies.

"“The F.D.A. has decided that the most significant threat to public health will not be treated by any drug,” said Morgan Downey, editor of the online Downey Obesity Report, who is a patient advocate and has consulted for drug companies."
—ANDREW POLLACK, The New York Times, Published: February 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/02drug.html



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Riot Lord [Today's News Poem, February 1, 2011]

Riot Lord [Today's News Poem, February 1, 2011]

God is your keyboard; it answers commands.
God is your monitor, casting Its image.
God is electron—a cellular phone.
God is a wavelength and particle bearing.
God is horizon, regression—a mote.
Morale is the faith in the actions of others.
Morale is the person and grouping at once.
Morale is your voice, so you call to the riot.
Morale is the face you impose on the crowd.
Morale is your God—it obeys your commandments.

"King Abdullah of Jordan Tuesday replaced his prime minister after protests over food prices and poor living conditions, naming a former premier with a military background, Marouf Bakhit, to head the government."
—Reuters, Feb 1, 2011 9:37am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-jordan-government-idUSTRE7104G620110201

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Calendar Conspiracy [Today's News Poem, January 31, 2011]

Calendar Conspiracy [Today's News Poem, January 31, 2011]

Scar of a pyramid, open your eyelid.
Silt in the river of calendar rhythm;
Tell us the date, flood all our riverbanks.
Lord of the hives, bite with your mandibles—
Rip a new season and stretch out our wounds.
Sand for a path, or a dune in the wastes;
Dune for a joke, monument, prophecy—
Dates by the flood-banks of desolation.

"As tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central Liberation Square to shout for his ouster, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt reshuffled his government on Monday, a gesture that the opposition has already dismissed as inadequate. "
—ANTHONY SHADID, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK AND KAREEM FAHIM, The New York Times, Published: January 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/middleeast/01egypt.html

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Two Diagrams [Today's News Poem, January 30, 2011]

Two Diagrams [Today's News Poem, January 30, 2011]

Are we atoms? A ball in our models—no nuclei, leave out electrons—
Yoked to our fellows in chains that distort our best properties—moles in a tube.
For example, I want to believe we are one, but I fear and divide us:
Whole by the faction and faction; religion, by piety; piety, doubt.
We are balls on the table, we're racked all together and shot by a player
Known by her aim as she shoots us in pockets, depositing each of us down
To unknown—so we cluster together and hope to survive that last eightball.

"But Mr. Suleiman, a former general, is also the establishment’s candidate, not the public’s. His appointment, and his elevation, if it were to occur, would represent not the democratic change called for on the street, but most likely a continuation of the kind of military-backed, authoritarian leadership that Mr. Mubarak has led for nearly 30 years, experts said."
—MICHAEL SLACKMAN, The New York Times, Published: January 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/world/middleeast/30suleiman.html

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Recoil From Our Infant [Today's News Poem, January 29, 2011]

Recoil From Our Infant [Today's News Poem, January 29, 2011]

The new biology, aware of its nerves,
Flexes and the organism flicks electrons
Across the oceans, where it currents the fish.
Frying the schools with its uncanny wavelengths,
It travels into the indifferent air.
Floppy; an infant that is testing, tasting
We teeter, topple from the playful attack:
Somehow it's growing and already too much.

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he enjoys making banks squirm thinking they might be the next targets of his website which has published U.S. diplomatic and military secrets.
"I think it's great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them," Assange told the CBS television program "60 Minutes" in an interview."
—Reuters, Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:57pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/29/idINIndia-54494520110129

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Come, Run-Away From the Sea [Combatwords Poem, January 28, 2011]

Come, Run-Away From the Sea [Combatwords Poem, January 28, 2011]
From http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/combatwords-january-28-2011-waiting-for.html

Life as we know it is supple and bitter;
Life as we know it is vicious and glitter.
We look for our lovers in movies,
At networked computers as psychics,
Unknowable God in our psyches—
Our secrets are obvious vices.
Flows to the heart, ebbs fall apart—we're reaching.
Blows shall impart hesitant starts—stone to sandy beaching.

--
The battle has just started. Try to defeat this poem here: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/combatwords-january-28-2011-waiting-for.html



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Monsieur Mange Tout [Today's News Poem, January 28, 2011]

Monsieur Mange Tout [Today's News Poem, January 28, 2011]

Swallow your phone if you can't bear to fuck it.
Nibble your keyboard; absorb all the letters.
Arsenic scammers and mercury grifters
Took all your hair and diminished your vigor.
Chomp on the light-bulbs and tear up your palette;
Glass and the vacuum reform in your stomach.
Vomit a circuit, yes, vomit your greeting:
Freedom of trinket, of splinters and ulcers.
Eat and become what you eat, you're the patsy:
Junk's your vocation; your outrage, illusion.

"Our technology editor Charles Arthur has the details on the internet restrictions in Egypt. He writes:
Egypt appears to have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country from late on Thursday night, in a move that has concerned observers of the protests that have been building in strength through the week."
—The Guardian UK, 28.01.11, Updated 08.52 GMT
http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sqcsls3cjigDe3RtcOrYA_w/view.m?id=15&gid=news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-live-updates&cat=world



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Teeth in the Wind [Today's News Poem, January 27, 2011]

Teeth in the Wind [Today's News Poem, January 27, 2011]

Inside your face a smaller one grins in its chamber of teeth—they are seeds
Of pomegranate red, it is fertile—your mouth is a garden of jaws.
Stamen the wind—you'll bless it with something as small as a sliver of sand.
What swells when there is only the breeze to upset it, what burdens conspire
Windward to sully angiosperms with a blessing of curses and birth?
Don't spill it, you can spread it with smiles in the jaws of your jaws and your breath
Rancid as jasmine; sweet to the brink of the rotten—the breath that you add
To air: if you have prayers, they are psalms of aggression, Persephone, Mars.

"Obama is striking a different strategy than the one deployed by President Bill Clinton after voters gave him a mid-term rebuke in 1994. Clinton got busy slashing spending and it contributed to a decade of historic growth and prosperity. Obama is taking more of a hybrid approach. Tuesday night he promised spending restraint and deficit reduction, and said some very encouraging things about fostering a healthier business climate. At the same time, he is pitching major new spending initiatives and only modest deficit reductions."
—Editorial, The Detroit News, January 27. 2011 1:00AM
http://www.detnews.com/article/20110127/OPINION01/101270343/1008/Editorial—Mixed-signals-in-Obama-speech

"Many of the budget-cutting proposals from Democrats and Republicans focus on a relatively small part of the U.S.'s $3.5 trillion budget: the roughly 15% that accounts for nonsecurity, discretionary spending. But the deficit is being driven by programs that are more politically difficult to cut, such as the Medicare health plan for seniors, military spending and Social Security."
—DAMIAN PALETTA, JANET HOOK And JONATHAN WEISMAN, The Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 27, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576105902436635610.html

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Rohypnol Fight Club [Today's News Poem, January 26, 2011]

Rohypnol Fight Club [Today's News Poem, January 26, 2011]

How will we war with no shrapnel to season our bloodiest Marys?
Gunpowder lines on the toilet are wimpy and cordite's last season.
Top what preceded this fashion—imbibe all the newest creations:
Salt for your peter, a clot in your arteries—stroke to the finish.
Addle the placid, obstruct what was clear and get higher than sorties
Bombing the stones into dance-floors and guzzle your tankards of tonic.
Roll all those bills to inhale all that fragrance—those fractions of warheads—
Dance to the sound of machine-guns in seizures of puncture and leaking.
Spike in the drink adds the pleasure of virgins and burns like a monarch:
Mickey, a roofie, a body to ravish then ditch in a dumpster.

"“I cannot say it strongly enough: I will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. McKeon said in an opening statement that followed up on a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging him not to stop work on the Marines’ $14.4. billion Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a combined landing craft and tank for amphibious assaults that Mr. Gates canceled this month."
—ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times, January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/us/politics/27pentagon.html

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The Pyramids [Today's News Poem, January 25, 2011]

The Pyramids [Today's News Poem, January 25, 2011]

You have wondered where days go, where sweat lands;
And you ponder the pizza, your best friend
When you're weary and used-up from work days.
You're an animal eating the dry crusts
On the floor, by computer, in light-bulb
Serenade; and you laugh at your tv
And you tumble your beer on the hardwood.
In the night an alarm will awake you
As the safety glass fractures on curbside
And you'll wonder who benefits, who cares
As the shrieking subsides down the hillside,
With a sound like the mornings you hate. Rise!

"It takes a lot to terrorize a Russian. Compared to the truly spectacular acts of terrorism and violence that Russians have suffered over the past two decades, today’s suicide bombing at Moscow’s busiest airport, Domodedovo, is too small-time to have much of an effect besides pissing off an already-pissed-off population.... Back in 2004, two passenger jets that took off from this same airport were blown out of the sky by Chechen “black widows”... Eduard Limonov explained to me what he thought was behind the logic: “They understood that Russians wouldn’t be moved if only one plane was blown up, so they blew up two planes simultaneously, just to get our attention,” he said. "
—Mark Ames, Vanity Fair, January 24, 2011, 6:20 PM
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/01/dead-souls-how-russians-react-to-terror.html



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Pattern of Rapid Decline [Today's News Poem, January 24, 2011]

Pattern of Rapid Decline [Today's News Poem, January 24, 2011]

Sand blasts and water spouts mist:
Elephant charges a whale.
Red foam collides with death groans;
Dissipates under the waves.

In the clouds, there's an eagle
Landing to nest deep in the cliffs.
She has scavenged from battle
Bones of the slain beasts of the beach.

Dragon awakens annoyed
From its sediment coffin,
Cracking the spine of the rock
It is shaking the mountain.

"FOR a superpower, dealing with the fast rise of a rich, brash competitor has always been an iffy thing. Just ask the British, who a century ago were struggling to come to terms with the erosion of their status as the world’s No. 1 empire. It didn’t help that they were being upstaged by a former colony that had turned into an upstart sea-power with money, talent, and a knack for mangling a perfectly good language. Eventually they took the hit to the national ego from those Americans and discovered there were advantages to no longer playing the role of the indispensible power. Or ask Thucydides, the Athenian historian whose tome on the Peloponnesian War has ruined many a college freshman’s weekend. The line they had to remember for the test was his conclusion: “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”"
—DAVID E. SANGER, The New York Times, Published: January 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/weekinreview/23sanger.html

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Wallet Spirits [Today's News Poem, January 23, 2011]

Wallet Spirits [Today's News Poem, January 23, 2011]

Does it flow like sewage; burn like oven cleaner?
Or closer to lightning in copper on tree trunks?
If it thinks, then who locates the brain on this thing?

Wallet spirits bless and curse, informed by whimsy:
The angels are sucking the breath from one baby
And then hiss in a nose for another to take.

Watch it flow from cargo hold to corner office;
It falls like the calendars ripped all asunder
And then tossed out a window for winds to collect.


"But a policy can be bad for us without being good for China. In fact, Chinese currency policy is a lose-lose proposition, simultaneously depressing employment here and producing an overheated, inflation-prone economy in China itself. "
—PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times, Published: January 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/opinion/21krugman.html

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You're missing something...

... like a good fight!

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/combatwords-january-21-2011-simpletons.html




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El Niño La Ley [Today's News Poem, January 22, 2011]

El Niño La Ley [Today's News Poem, January 22, 2011]

Southern Pacific, a child is reborn
Out of the tropical heat and depression
And moves to LA where he washes the dishes.

Christ! Have you tried to commute to your work
Riding a bus in the Golden State's traffic
With dozens of cripples? They're broke and they're reeking.

Finding the places where money's concealed
Takes tenths of days—a third spent asleep,
A third in the effort—a life as a robot.

Sometimes rebellion's inaction and talk:
Flickers of cigarette ash in the roadway,
A liquor store temple attracting the worship

Bacchus demands—there's a god who rejects
Progress and drinks to the bottom of barrels,
Negating the vineyard and engines of harvest.

Save if you care to sustain the machine,
Neon your path, all the lights give permission;
Your Porsche, Toyota, they're ready and racing

Selves and each other, erasing the miles,
Puffing a smoke of their own, they've exhausted
All patience and grind what remains in their axles.

"A man crossing a busy Los Angeles-area boulevard was twice struck by hit-and-run drivers, a woman who tried to help him was hit by yet another car, and the driver who tried to help her was beaten and robbed by a mob, police said Friday. "
—The Associated Press, 1 Hour ago, as of 1/21/2011 at 10:23pm.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h39u5bGJyP7Ak-pXXCZLRUQwDqFw?docId=904e7e2f7ea44fdab40e14968cef698f

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The Daily News Poem is One Year Old and Looks as Ugly as its Dad

I want to allocate more writing time to other projects, but I enjoy writing the daily News Poem. I hope that it defrags your mental hard drive as much as it does mine. Exploring the news through poetry has become a way for me to examine my own prejudices and false consciousness, because poetry is the core of my being and news is something grafted on to that like some prosthetic. It's a meta-narrative that probes for vulnerable parts of one's psyche and exploits them for the sake of its wielder. Personally, I'm stunned how much bullshit I accepted--if only because new bullshit is predicated upon old bullshit. So for me, the news poem serves as an anti-Medusa mirror or a laser-pen I can shine at the black helicopters. So I'll see how long I can sustain this. Running Toylit is enervating. Not just the writing, but also the promotions and associated performance art. It's probably not worth all this effort, but I'm a writer which means that I already don't have a practical bent of mind.

In short, buy my book and nominate me for a Shorty Award: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2011/01/nominate-toylit-for-shorty-award-in.html

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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Nominate @toylitpaper for a Shorty Award in #Poetry

Why?

You've got 99 problems, but News Poetry ain't 1.
You're saving your money for the Toylit 2010 Report and this is how you're going to thank me in the meantime.
Because you think it's hilarious to throw a dog a bone.
You recognize my authority as a deacon of evil and the power of Satan compels you.
You don't want some hack to win and gloat about it.
You've been waiting for the chance to use Twitter to do something useful.
You genuinely enjoy Toylit.

Steps:
1) Copy: I nominate @toylitpaper for a Shorty Award in #poetry because...
2) Finish the sentence.
3) Paste to [LINE REDACTED] http://twitter.com

Greed Incentive: If I win, I'll make the Q1/Q2 report free to download.
Guilt Incentive: I'm already working on a free book for you.

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Mantra for Sunset [Today's News Poem, January 21, 2011]

Mantra for Sunset [Today's News Poem, January 21, 2011]

Call for your mistress, she's marching away.
There goes her green; her sandals and toes
Ripple the undertow, stagger the sand.
Distantly, gulls scribe 'm' on the sun.
Ponder the letter then hum it aloud.
"Mmm" is the rattle liberty makes
Inside your skull, which was stretched by ideas—
Sadly, your brain's back down to the size
Prior to freedom—it's smaller in fact.
Hum for the seagulls; call for the sun—
Everything's shrinking and even the torch
Fades and the light hisses on water.

"For now, the fear of destabilizing the municipal bond market with the words “state bankruptcy” has proponents in Congress going about their work on tiptoe. No draft bill is in circulation yet, and no member of Congress has come forward as a sponsor, although Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, asked the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, about the possiblity in a hearing this month. "
—MARY WILLIAMS WALSH, The New York Times, Published: January 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html



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A few more minutes until your 365th day of news poems

It has been a year that started off with iambs, switched to trochees, fell into iambs & pyrrhics before committing deeply to anapests and dactyls. Oh and some horrible shit happened, but you already read about it in all the news in witty print... no? See that crazy looking baby on your right? That's called a memory brick. If you buy it, a big brick of paper will help jar not only your memories of 2010, but also your emotions. Poetry's a mnemonic device that encodes more than phonemes, symbols and rhythms... uh, did I say poetry? I meant to say memory brick. Buy your own today!

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Energy Conversion [Today's News Poem, January 20, 2011]

Energy Conversion [Today's News Poem, January 20, 2011]

Energy's lost with every conversion.
Entropy rules us, dominates cycles.
Parents: the link to ancestors—frenzied
Idiots, cavemen, monsters and wildcats
Somehow created life as we know it.
Cudgels for fathers, pimps for our mothers:
Marriage and murder—willingly brutish.
Moments spent gazing into the water,
Sleeping in grass as thunderheads gathered
Transferred to heirs: the dew of the tranquil
Gilded with bloody drops then transmitted;
Mixed with the sperm and ova that bonded—
Echoes of bite and nothing like parents.

"As state governments struggle with the fiscal damage caused by the recession, an income tax increase has become a rarely used remedy. "
—MICHAEL POWELL, The New York Times, Published: January 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/business/economy/20tax.html

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Office Jam [Today's News Poem, January 19, 2011]

Office Jam [Today's News Poem, January 19, 2011]

Behold the peanut butter sandwich—
Bread as white as fax machines.
With so many jams to choose, adhere
Anywhere from desk to traffic.
Tomorrow's worth today, I'll stick it
Out and eat my kindergarten lunch,
And color forms inside the margins;
Waiting for promotion, stuck on sweet.

"Stranded drivers chain-smoked, stomped their feet against the chill and cursed the government for failing to come to their rescue. As the night wore on, fuel lines froze and cellphone batteries died.
The residents of Hetaocun, however, saw the unmoving necklace of taillights from their mountain village and got entrepreneurial. They roused children from their beds, loaded boxes of instant noodles into baskets and began hawking their staples to a captive clientele. The 500 percent markup did not appear to dent sales."
—ANDREW JACOBS, The New York Times, Published: January 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/world/asia/19traffic.html

"Long before they became doctors and lawyers or C.E.O.’s and real estate developers, they played in garage bands and maybe even dreamed of becoming rock stars. That’s why they signed up for Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy Camp,.. “I feel like I’m 18 again,” said Jerry Goldberg, a 60-year-old investment banker and guitar player, "
—LARRY ROHTER, The New York Times, Published: January 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/music/19fantasy.html



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Trickle-Down Dinner [Today's News Poem, January 18, 2011]

Trickle-Down Dinner [Today's News Poem, January 18, 2011]

Porcelain monarchy: wealth trickles downward,
Plumbing foundations—shares shit with mollusks.
Only the purest obtain such positions.
Angle it deeper, inject liquid diets.
Natural predators eat filth and like it,
Writhe in the excrement, crawl ever after.
Cannibals gobble up meat, shit—whatever
Thrones care to flush down the drain, feed me dinner!

"I intend to introduce legislation that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised. This would not only ensure the continued confidence of investors at home and abroad, but would enable us to have an honest debate about the consequences of our eventual decision about the debt ceiling."
—PAT TOOMEY, The Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 19, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954004576089963912388314.html

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The Career of a Savior [Today's News Poem, January 17, 2011]

The Career of a Savior [Today's News Poem, January 17, 2011]

I poked at my self with a needle a while.
Exchanging the needle for scissors,
I trimmed off the landscapes—some flowers, a hedge.
Spade for the scissor; new lamps for old.
I dug for a treasure, or China at least
And slept in my trench, dodging the shells.
The counter-barrage was exhausted. I rose
Out of the dirt like a zombie god
And traded my spade for a mansion with servants.

"On Saturday, church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper is expected to get 30 minutes of air time on a Phoenix talk show hosted by Steve Sanchez. And on Monday, the nationally syndicated Mike Gallagher show will give an hour to Ms. Phelps-Roper. “One hour of radio time on my radio show is quite insignificant compared to [what] the grieving families and the mourning families have to go through,” says Mr. Gallagher, a conservative political commentator."
—Lourdes Medrano, Christian Science Monitor, Correspondent / January 14, 2011
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0114/How-Tucson-kept-Westboro-Baptist-Church-protests-out-of-town

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Recurring Digression [Today's News Poem, January 16, 2011]

Recurring Digression [Today's News Poem, January 16, 2011]

My obsessions with history, war, economics
Are sizable, reckless, romantic, unhealthy.
I know this, though death's hand's tremendous,
The deadliest knowledge demands comprehension.
At first they were rubber men, wars in a sandbox.
Then voluminous Britannica featured the portraits distinguished
With color, or text, or as ultimate reference.
I gamed through the pages and chose my adventure
Returning to mushrooms and bomb-laying birds.
So the plane overhead is the sound of my doubt,
And we all agree the mustache is humorless, grim and oppressive;
He belches his jokes which evaporate, hissing a bit,
Digressing the reader and finally halting all progress
In favor of sorting it out in a state of expanding confusion.

"Germany faces mounting pressure from the European Commission and its euro zone partners to strengthen a rescue fund for troubled member states, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF)... Der Spiegel reported, however, that the European Commission expected the euro zone crisis to worsen in the first few months of this year. "
—Andreas Rinke, Reuters, MAINZ, Germany | Sat Jan 15, 2011 10:24am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70E1AQ20110115

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Cartesian Evil Genius Makes You Lose 'The Game' Again [Combatwords Repost, January 14, 2011]

Cartesian Evil Genius Makes You Lose 'The Game' Again [Combatwords Repost, January 14, 2011]
http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/combatwords-friday-january-14-2011.html

Between identity and reality is paranoia;
A sense of visionary omnipotence is underneath those,
Beyond that, nihilism as knowledge—not as inspiration—
And hope's not opposite to the pessimism we all suffer.
Impose persona, you can impersonate what and whomever
You crave becoming, but it behooves you to be the imposed on.

For example, you're reading this page, uncertain
That this poem is meaningful—now you get it.
For you either reject what it claims, or welcome
Diagnosis, but either version affirms it.

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Villain Farmer [Today's News Poem, January 15, 2011]

Villain Farmer [Today's News Poem, January 15, 2011]

Sing of the barbed-wire and string me along it.
Break but don't bend, you must rake up my organs.
Pass me along to the grass and the insects.
Trade me for orchards—you made me a coffin.
Walk with me; hands graze the stalks of the barley.
Both of us harvest the oath of the planted.
Reap if you must, but to keep what grows wild;
Will it, uncover and kill, you must spill it.

"Shortly after Friday's massive demonstrations in Tunis, which reached a crescendo outside the hated Ministry of the Interior on Avenue Mohamed V, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, taking refuge in Saudi Arabia. The army and security forces are trying to impose order in Tunis. Tanks and armored personnel carriers have been deployed on one of the capital's main thoroughfares, Avenue 7 Novembre (named after the date when Ben Ali assumed presidential powers in 1987). At midday Saturday I watched as two truckloads of soldiers pulled up on the avenue and began stringing out barbed wire."
—Ben Wedeman, CNN Senior International Correspondent, January 15, 2011 -- Updated 1817 GM
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/15/tunisia.wedeman.scene/

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Combatwords, Friday January 14, 2011: Identity and Reality

Live competitive performance-writing, no net. Can you do it?

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/combatwords-friday-january-14-2011.html



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