Drawing Quarter and Receiving None [Today's News Poem, August 10, 2012]

Drawing Quarter and Receiving None [Today's News Poem, August 10, 2012]

Aware of your awareness,

Halting before your halter–

Brand news and your nooses–

I burn upon your altar.

For life is meat and meaning;

Gamey and gamete, games of

Chance, trance of the cancers

Of greed and fear, above

Below – and lowing calfishly

Accidentally flowing gold,

Elevated to the empty sky

(Star-filled, empty, empty)

The Machine becomes aware

Of my awareness,

Learns to play my play and offers

Quarter. I refuse.

“Author Scott Patterson explains it all in his book that chronicles the rise of computerized artificial intelligence and the computerized trading that has come to dominate the stock market. How dominant? Patterson writes, "At the end of World War II, the average holding period for a stock was four years. By 2000, it was eight months. And by 2011, it was twenty-two seconds." One high frequency trading firm's average holding lasted for 11 seconds. High frequency traders now account for more than 70 percent of all stock trading volume. ”

– By Stephen J. Butler, sbutler@pensiondynamics.com Posted: 08/10/2012 06:49:31 PM PDT, Updated: 08/10/2012 06:49:32 PM PDT

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_21287269

Follow us on Twitter @Khakjaan
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Open Letter To All Things Considered, re: Your Khakjaan Wessington Embargo For the Day In Verse Series

Hello ATC!

Please forgive the change in my schedule. I haven't been listening to your show for quite some time now. Imagine my shock when I ran my semi-annual vanity google ("Today's News Poem") and discovered that your show ran a series on news poetry and didn't ask me, the great dean of news poetry, for a contribution! While my magazine Toylit doesn't have the exposure ATC does, it did have over ten thousand unique readers in the last year, which I suppose means that my news poems are the most read poems of the genre. This is probably due to my having dedicated a whole 365 days in 2010 to writing a news poem a day, despite having minimal media coverage (despite my pleas). Unfortunately, I do not finance my activities through university sinecures, so I am often left with the remaining scraps of mainstream poetic attention--despite being published in such prestigious publications such as The Exile and The Nervous Breakdown. This is where ATC comes in to play: you, who have decided you are interested in News Poetry can look at the whole year of 2010 and see that I wrote a news poem every single day. Furthermore, you can see that after a hiatus, I am still the only publisher of news poetry on the web. I have a Duotrope listing and have been interviewed by the editors there. I write a news poem a week, without fail. I think if you would like to rectify your omission, you might want to consider me for a future show (or as an addendum piece to the prior series). You can examine my voluminous C.V. here: http://toylit.blogspot.com

It gets even better--as you can see, I am the only poet on the internet who has been able to get a regular readership of news poetry by my own efforts. Not only could I write you a news poem the same day as a news story, but I could write several. Imagine! You could be patron of poets much as newspapers were once patrons to cartoonists. I want you to seriously consider this offer, for I love poetry far more than I love my pride which your series so seriously wounded. I admit it would gall me if you adopt my suggestion and then ignore me, but that is only because I am the antenna through which poetry transmits--and every antenna thinks himself special.

Sincerely,

Khakjaan Wessington

ps: When I tried sending you this email, I got this reply:

atc@npr.org
Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

Blah blah blah, our computers think you're a spammer, so your words will never even reach a human, because our computers blacklisted you.

Petition All Things Considered to invite Khakjaan Wessington to do News in Verse! You saw their email (prior paragraph, right?), now bug their Twitter account. I don't ask you to play my personal army very often, but if you're here reading Today's News Poem then you want more poetry in news. Dammit! That's my meme! Don't let NPR swipe it! Here's their Twitter: @npratc https://twitter.com/npratc

Follow us on Twitter @Khakjaan
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Thanks for the Help [Bonus News Vignette by Jon Wesick, July 22, 2012]

Thanks for the Help

[Bonus News Vignette by Jon Wesick, July 22, 2012]

You’re taking out the trash when you hear a sound like a slab of beef slapping the ground. You look up and see a limousine speeding away. A jogger is down. You drop the garbage bag, rush to her side, and find the ruptured artery in her leg shooting blood. You press your hands on the wound but blood gushes through your fingers. You look around and spot your Republican congressman.



“Hey! Give me your belt. I need to make a tourniquet.”



“Have you considered homeopathy? It’s the theory that like cures like. I have something here.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a handful of leeches.

Jon Wesick hosts San Diego’s Gelato Poetry Series and is an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He has published two hundred fifty poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published over fifty short stories in journals such as Space and Time, Zahir, and Tales of the Talisman. He claims to have a Ph.D. in physics and purports to being a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest. Another had a link on the Car Talk website. Purportedly.

Follow us on Twitter @Khakjaan
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Hardon Fights Ins @Nickiminaj [#TwitterFoundPoem, June 18, 2012]

Hardon Fights Ins @Nickiminaj [#TwitterFoundPoem, June 18, 2012]

Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem

Signs of @nickiminaj:

vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, Hardon,

bright red gums & blue tongue/lips: accept that name and live up to it:

panting, difficulty breathing.

whoa gang I just blew a big load of difficulty breathing.

@nickiminaj is just the Village Inn

for the legal government gang to have panting, difficulty breathing and Hardon fights in.

5 Signs of gang Hardon fights ins @nickiminaj:

animal heat,

stroke,

aids or herpes

and don't cry.

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The Proper Way To Fire People [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, June 8, 2012]

The Proper Way To Fire People [Today's News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, June 8, 2012]

How to fire people?

Focus a prism of stolen light.

Fahrenheit eight forty two

Burns hair, gasoline, paper.

That number, like all numbers

Came from authority:

The Internet. It is electrons

And anything hot and in motion

Is Fire, so The Internet is Fire.

The Internet is made of stolen fossils—

Just like The Museums, Freeways, Free Trade—

Therefore when I fire people

I first take their planet and pump it dry

And coat its surface with the ocher of my profits.

Only then shall I obtain escape velocity

And from afar, admire the sight

Of stars and nebulae, and Earth

Ablaze and cloudy with everyone I've fired.

“The day that I did those layoffs, there was an oddly cheerful atmosphere in the shop.”

—Paul Downs, The New York Times, June 4, 2012, 7:00 am

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/how-i-fire-people

“The barbarians were by this time usually corporations, often syndicates from St. Louis, Chicago and other cities,”

—CHRISTOPHER GRAY, The New York Times, Published: June 7, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/realestate/thieves-of-light-built-by-barbarians.html

“The earth could be nearing a point at which sweeping environmental changes, possibly including mass extinctions, would undermine human welfare, 22 prominent biologists and ecologists warned on Wednesday.”

—JUSTIN GILLIS, The New York Times, June 6, 2012, 2:39 pm

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/are-we-nearing-a-planetary-boundary

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

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

Imaginings obscure the wretched eye;

Corrupt the preconceptions, recall, ear.

Wherever there is truth, the lies must fly.

They nest and then disrobe, thus intertwine

As opposites in opposition's tears.

They complement the Yin and Yang, combine

The equal with unequal, all and one,

Or one and if it's zero, better you

Than me: that is the rule of life my son.

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

Well, whaddya know? ”

—PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times, Published: May 3, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/krugman-plutocracy-paralysis-perplexity.html

And thus

begat

And the Lord said It Is Good.

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Combatwords, April 20, 2012: Today's News Poem, Due 6pm PST

Okay you stooges, generate Today's News Poem.



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skittles [Today's News Poem by @HikiMadwoman /Preservative Woman, April 13, 2012]

skittles [Today's News Poem by @HikiMadwoman /Preservative Woman, April 13, 2012]
HikiMadwoman/Preservative Woman http://preservativewoman.posterous.com

barefoot florida
when i was five hot sand
mixed with tar black dirt
and

lacquered stickers waited
just under the surface
to slip dark spines deep
into my pink soles

my mammaw on that side believed
in fake lashes and make-up mastic
and a rainbow jesus
sealed in yellowed plastic

i played sky and scratched vinyl
on brown shag carpet
our shades pulled down
to keep the kneegrass out

mammaw had stories about kneegrass
with figured armor and wings wide
their eyes rolling
with heavy lips slavering and obscene

the kneegrass were bold
came close to the back door
hiding in sharp sun
their weapons flashing signals

between detergent commercials
whiter than white
she told me of their buffalo-haired hides
and muscled thighs

how they would steal cars
and drive
rubber pulling up tar and crushed coral
under paved florida skies

she talked of killing
them and all they had wrought
she even had a chrome gun
a boyfriend had bought

one concrete morning
whitewashed bright
i pressed against the
screen door sulfur smell

at ten o'clock am
sunlight was already acid
mammaw at the sink
told me to look

"see them kneegrass
walking weeds with trash
my how they must smell
gotta be someone i can tell"

i looked for shoulder'd wings beating
armor and buffalo hide
black skin and rolling eyes
a beast of great size

but she pointed at two girls
my age
holding a pink doll by the legs
one blue eye flapping open

they were slow as gray sand
thin bodies out of sweat
i wanted to give them water
to bring them into shade

but i could only stare
at mammaw
red hands and polyester dress
eating the window glass

and thanks to you i know
how to make monsters
we have only to refuse
to see them as they are

from on the other side
of our flyspeckled past

:separate
:other
:unhuman

"Racist past haunts Florida town where Trayvon died" Orlando Sentinel: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-usa-florida-sanfordbre837069-20120408,0,557366.story

Barely Edited HikiMadwoman Bio As Per Twitter: Reclusive Madwoman. Careful. She bites.

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Spotlight>> [Today's News Poem by @weatherlover420 /Jeff K, April 6, 2012]

Spotlight>> [Today's News Poem by @weatherlover420 /Jeff K, April 6, 2012]

@weatherlover420 /Jeff K sexyprison.tumblr.com

"siberian plane in crash not de-iced" is the spotlighted article

the newspaper is australian
"do the australians know more about siberia than me?"

"russian plane crash kills 31" from the times

"that's too bad and stuff, but whatever, no need to spend feelings about it. it has a wikipedia article."

"utair flight-120"

there are pictures and videos of frozen airplane wings sticking up at 45 degrees. "australians were hearing about this exactly 2 hours ago. what was i doing 2 hours ago?" the pictures are mostly light blue and white

there are 875 other sources. there is a man with ice in his mustache and on his hat. There are russian letters. "siberia still has thatch-roof villages and people like 'serfs.'"

"raw video: 5 shot at calif. religious school" the associated press

"[asian name]'s victory leads to rethink about sanctions" the wall street journal

"kfc's game of big chicken" businessweek

"are all all kfc reps intensely charismatic and 'in your face' businessmen? are they required to put off an aura of powerful decision-making and manhood?"

google search kafka machine wiki, leave the spotlight

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/siberian-plane-in-crash-not-deiced-20120403-1w9oo.html

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Toylit for March 30, 2012: 2 Poems & Some #Combatwords

Toylit for March 30, 2012: 2 Poems & Some #Combatwords

Combatwords will be here from now on. To play, just post your composition in the comments section: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2012/03/combatwords-march-30-2012-trayvon.html

Snake & Mercury Oil by•••/@ten_ten_ten/TJEdge: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2012/03/quacks-lament-todays-news-poem-by.html

My Soul is a Fish: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2012/03/last-news-todays-news-poem-by-khakjaan.html

If you love Toylit, please click an advertiser or promote it on social networks.

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Combatwords, March 30, 2012: Trayvon Martin vs George Zimmerman

Combatwords, March 30, 2012: Trayvon Martin vs George Zimmerman

Do you see Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman waving you over here? They're directing you to the new CombatWords arena. Do you even need a primer? Some pics should do it. I guarantee it. 

Combat Expiration: 12am PST, 4/2/2012

Bonuses/Penalties: Time: +1 if posted before 2am PST, 3/31/2012. -1 if posted before 6am 4/2/2012

Updated Rules:

Scoring: +1/-1 under the WITS structure:

Wit: wordplay, cleverness, clumsiness, choppiness etc

Ideas: good/bad, whatever. Got to be a cut above the ordinary poem.

Taste: Liked it/hated it

Structure: Is the sonnet a sonnet or the essay an essay? Does the structure help the composition? A bonus would go to an outstanding structure, not just a competent one.

The highest score any one critic can give could be a +4 & the lowest could be -4. Scores are cumulative.

Finally, you need to defend each portion of your WITS score. Either the composition has or doesn't have wit. It either does or doesn't have good ideas. Etc. These are not objective traits, but they can be calculated somewhat by the readers/critics.

Critique: Any critic can question any part of another critic's WITS score. Majority rules in deadlocked cases.

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The Quack's Lament [Today's News Poem by •••/@ten_ten_ten/TJ Edge, March 30, 2012]

The Quack's Lament [Today's News Poem by •••/@ten_ten_ten/TJ Edge, March 30, 2012]

By ••• (TJEdge)(@ten_ten_ten): http://tententen.posterous.com/

in the year of mercury rising
i ate white calomel
and applied salves to syphilis biding
in bodily alleys hid well
as we'd lie to patients sizing
up nostrums to sell

by the coarse cloth of night
we lit pine fat torches
danced hi-diddley-red blue and light
on coal dust-folded porches
stacked in burlap bags of blight
children smearing scorches

the taxman etched lines on my tongue
as into glass i bottled
white mercury powdered with a black lung
from a cracked skin infant who waddled
where mud and meat and flies were hung
and whores were manured and mottled

and in that year of mercury retrograde
we carved in dung and dust
diagrams in the skin of the sun to aid
us in assuming a more fatherly trust
and of many young girls women were made
to satisfy our daughter’d lust

’til faces caked with tar and feather
we rode across the briar
horses whipped in blood and lather together
barely escaping the ire
of townspeople writ in cork and leather
with wings of broken fire

we let blood into smoke and chill
and round an empty mine
they strung us up and did their will
packed our bodies in brandy and brine
without even a hole to fill
fated thus, born under a mercuric sign

holding hands with mercury and sun we go

where hell wobbles to and breathes us fro

“Mercury may be hiding water ice, NASA spacecraft finds”

—MSNBC, Space.com, 3/27/2012 3:28:39 PM ET

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46871204/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T3Yvsl1lJF8
“Retired Pharmacist Arrested in Albany Mercury Poisoning Case”

—Paul Grondahl, Times Union.com, Updated 01:57 p.m., Friday, March 30, 2012

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Retired-pharmacist-arrested-in-Albany-Med-mercury-3447572.php

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…and here be tygers [Today's News Poem by HikiMadwoman, March 23, 2012]

…and here be tygers [Today's News Poem by HikiMadwoman, March 23, 2012]

By HikiMadwoman, http://preservativewoman.posterous.com

in the mountained mouth of northeast asia, an empty gray tooth marks north korea
one red pin marks a model city, painted clean without pity, the lovely pyongyang
stuffed with concrete girls and empty tilt-a-whirls smelling of blood and dark urea
fringed 'round with wooden spooned schools, where watered women in hanboks sang

i have watched the young man mountains surrounding pyongyang's potent potted smile
holding silted rivers sleeping flanks with their banks free of boats neatly curled
in roofless shopping cart valleys stamping out the arduous march for another mile
pocked 'round with unknown holes, dead wells perforating their white paper world

in another map i found a name for the wooden saint plastic paint model railroad town
and named collective farms, plaster dams and coalmine arms, all drawed out in blue
prison camp lines sketched famine fine and where they lay the tin missiles down
i drank of jet fuel and submarines, and climbed the steppes of golden mount baekdu

there these sleepy-limbed sons of korgyo kings spoke in fury and threatened hell
from a republic of none and nuclear sun, red revolution in a boot on our neck

yet in rare photos i saw, a child playing in straw, an infant grasping a pale shell
two girls giggling pink at a sink, and a grand old man with a donkey in check

i knew them in one bright flash, and furious, i ask, how could it be the case
we could have forgotten there are people living and laughing in this place?

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120323-700094.html

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

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

Ghost of my loins, you have fingers that counter-digest me,

Reach through my gullet to pinch-off the brain from my spine,

Sex then unsex me; you hollow my innards—direct me.

Gonads appear in a visage before me—vagina,

Penis, an organ combining the two so the sex

Breaks to an embryo, withers before its arousal.

Ghosts of my loins, the extinction that's coming is calling

Accidents: sperm like a genie from lamp, I'll regret

Life that I never created for fear of creation.

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

—Rachel Gordon, John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle, 03/23/12

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/23/MNKO1NOUN9.DTL

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

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

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Standing Hampton [News Poem by Steven M Grant, March 3, 2012]

Standing Hampton [News Poem by Steven M Grant, March 3, 2012]

Steven M Grant http://roomspimp.blogspot.com

Boys of 13 can be

Ill at ease with the

Girls their own age

Sophomoric and

Awkward; their advances

Untoward grasps at

Something still not understood.

Afraid of rejection, a boys mind

Gravitates toward a place where

Embarrassment is unthinkable.

Pubescent teacher fantasies,

Inevitably follow, in the confused

Zeitgeist of middle school and

Zaftig pants days that always

Accompany adolescence.

http://www.secfanatics.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=84453

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/03/06/oxnard-middle-school-teacher-pulled-

from-classroom-amid-rumors-shes-working-as-hard-core-porn-actress/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/teacher-rumored-to-be-hardcore-porn-

actress_n_1328020.html

www.bigsausagepizza.com

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Colony of Statues [News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, March 9, 2012]

Colony of Statues [News Poem by Khakjaan Wessington, March 9, 2012]

Think us a colony—penguins or pinnipeds—

Only we're grizzlies that line up by riverside

Polishing pebbles, or carving them... bashing them

Eager for logos: the pith Michelangelo

Sought in the marble; the flavor pre-Pantheon

Children contained and their father contained—and if

He had a father, then surely the mythos is

Wrong: we're degenerates, castoffs, inferior—

Smaller than granules and less than the ancestors—

Even the best of all human-kinds possible

Cannot converge with the grace of all origin.

Somehow in sight of ourselves we've become what we

See and in sight of ourselves we converge with the

Best of the origin, best of all possible

Ancestors, righteousness, mothers, containers for

Atheist statues resembling epiphany,

Carvings of planets—we've colonized earth.

“A Sunnyvale woman who told a neighbor she felt overwhelmed by caring for her adult autistic son shot him to death before turning her gun on herself, authorities said Wednesday. Elizabeth Hodgins, 53, shot her son, George Hodgins, 22, on Tuesday in a bedroom of their home on the 800 block of Nectarine Avenue, according to police and neighbors.”

—Will Kane,Demian Bulwa; San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, March 8, 2012

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/07/BAVR1NH8B4.DTL

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Water Or Blood? [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2012]

Water Or Blood? [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2012]

Blizzards reversed the polarity,

Conjured the pivot to juncture:

Breathing was never the same again.

Ice for a godmother:

Bikes to the office park

Vanquished by winterness.

Revive them with bourbon

And bless them with stupor.

Slip on the ice—use crampons and slip

(You'll keep slipping)

Off of the surface. Harvest the luck

(Like a truffle

You fed with your excrement

[Kindly intentions]):

Swallow, inhale and recycle

That fragment of nothingness.

Grasp to the luckiest railing,

Treebranch—in fact snap off the first twigs

Spring has to offer and cushion

The imminent fall

(You are falling):

Smother the buzzings of springtime.

A bough is a whip in disguise

As neckties are nooses disguised.

Chase every sunset to rot on horizon.

Grind in the caverns—bury yourself in the mines.

Dodge the commitment.

Trap the undying.

Praise the unyielding absences.

Example:

Snow is the dandruff that falls from temples,

Fragments that signal the stillness deep winter

Offers is gone and that motion's conceivable.

Thaw and thus water is where I am headed.

Water, or blood; am I water or blood?

Nighttime has eyes in the cameras, sky, and faces;

An eye that has blinked itself shut,

Squeezed out a tear and might open again.

“As of 6 p.m. ET, the weather service had 21 active tornado warnings, plus less urgent tornado watches that spanned 11 states.”

—CNN Wire Staff, CNN; 6:29 PM EST, Fri March 2, 2012

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/02/us/severe-weather/?hpt=hp_c1

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Universal Exchange [Today's News Poem, February 24, 2012]

Universal Exchange [Today's News Poem, February 24, 2012]

Canopy, marketplace, sign of the scale—

What is the balance—what's in the balance?

Is it feast? Is it ample like booty?

If its sum adds to zero, then pity

Losers if loss is our destiny?

Loss is desire, pity's oppression

(And language subjective), meaning's

Subjective. Balance: the anchor,

Currency, chain and the sign of the tongue.

“There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/why-are-harvard-graduates-in-the-mailroom.html

=

 =

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Choker of the Apes [Today's News Poem, February 17, 2012]

Choker of the Apes [Today's News Poem, February 17, 2012]

Property is theft; likewise is the self.

Selfness is the lapse, folly and betrays.

Ownership is flaw, ego and the self's

Selfish, and a slave; prayer of the false teeth.

Self is a desire—nothing like our maw.

Atoms and your tears give you to ourselves.

Polymers of life, lifelines on a string,

Billions on our neck: choker of the apes.

“DURING Mr. Soleri’s long tenure, Arcosanti evolved into a surprising anachronism: a company town. The product line? Handmade bells and heady theories about imaginary cities, or “arcologies.” Ordinary capitalism — independent businesses and privately held homes — was anathema.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/garden/an-early-eco-city-faces-the-future.html

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Toylit For February 10, 2012

Toylit For February 10, 2012

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

Featuring:

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

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

Papier Mâché Jihad, #twitterfoundpoem, by Khakjaan Wessington

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

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

By Valerie Valdes

in memoriam, Roger Boisjoly

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

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

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

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Miles of Human Files [Today's News Poem, February 10, 2012]

Miles of Human Files [Today's News Poem, February 10, 2012]

A loneliness file: apartment, an isle—

Classified, epic, layered with red brick.

If the marquee calls in the hall of halls

As wind does battle with door-frame rattles,

Watch the water non-water monitor

And touch the unknown; the fleeting, the flown.

Burn your mascara, corneas, era.

You have indexed lusts and electron busts

And changed the texture of surface: sex-pure,

Gloss and odious—flaws and hideous.

“Imagine looking for a house in San Francisco or one of the nicer parts of Silicon Valley, which are already among the most expensive parts of the country. Now imagine having to bid against a legion of newly minted Facebook millionaires.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/us/california-housing-market-braces-for-facebook-millionaires.html

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Papier Mâché Jihad [Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem, February 10, 2012]

Papier Mâché Jihad [Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem, February 10, 2012]

I tend to overthink so I'm not going to settle

for just any path of God while seeking the truth. I want a paranoid

schizophrenic Jihad.

Don't be real. Be a paranoid schizophrenic.

it leads to doubt. Which lessens my faith, Which lessens my lessons,

Which causes paranoid schizophrenic Out of nowhere lessons.

Dear God, I want a paranoid God.

Jihad, I want a paranoid Fear God.

God, I want a paranoid God Jihad.

Fear honesty. Fear illusion. Get over illusion.

If you are not your thoughts,

If you are not getting better then what are you doing?

Jihad.

If your thoughts are not getting better then what are you doing?

Lessons of the Out of nowhere schizophrenic God.

instead of papier mâché Jesus, the Out of nowhere schizophrenic

#Jihad!

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News Poem, The Rules

Submissions are due Thursday 6pm PST and post Friday morning (PST). If you still don't understand the antinews ethos, then please read this Duotrope interview with me: http://www.duotrope.com/Interview.aspx?id=5378
Update: I need you to include the link to the news story as well as the quote that inspired the composition. Give me your website also, so I can link you.
Critique: if a news poem inspires you, compose a rebuttal/response and submit it. If I like it, I'll put it up.
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The News Poem Returns! Your Non-Sucky Antinews Submission is Required.

Listen you vile degenerates, I understand that everything is a swirl of confusing what-the-fuck miasma and that you feel light-headed; I understand, but you need to stop asking me if I want to subscribe to Playboy... what? You mean, you want me to start writing the News Poem again? That's great! How much are you paying? Jack shit still? Oh gee, sorry, I need a little more than that to get by, so maybe we can compromise: maybe you should submit YOUR news poems to me and maybe once a week I will publish them, ok? And if you're not total crapazons, maybe you'll click some ads this time and help subsidize my poetry addict--I mean, my poetry altruism... fuckers--I mean, loyal readers.

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Updates for Jan 2012

So as I was reading through the CIA World Factbook, I remembered that I wrote a pair of essays in October 2006 making specific predictions about the future of Russia. The 1st one accurately predicted Russia's return as a major industrial power (Putin's Portuguese Gambit) and the 2nd one accurately predicted Russia's return as a major military power (The Siloviki Security Vision For Russia). Makes me want to do a followup piece. I have a few projects that I am working on right now, but they are very hush-hush, top secret--so you'll just have to wait. In the meanwhile, if you know any banks that are hiring precognitive poets for 1 hour a year for a $250k/yr salary, let me know and I will consider reasonable offers. Return to Toylit
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You could have had anything and yet this is what you chose? Combatwords July 15-18

Balance does not mean order. It means a chaos antidote for chaos. Examples:

Angus: "it was hard to tell exactly being that he had boobs like some porn deva 30 years in retirement.The only articulating male factor apparent was the summer beard he displayed in patches."

Rtoady/Seann McCollum:
"I carry my shopping bags straight to the second hand shop.
I shit out my food the moment I’ve gobbled it up.
Even better, the stove sits beside the rubbish bin.
I’m bailing this ocean as fast as it’s trickling in."

Khakjaan Wessington (Me): "A ripe gourd fell at my feet and detonated, launching a thousand insects upon impact. Above us, I could see the bloatwood tree teetering, its branches full of parasite-filled fruit that trembled as rockets escaped."

There's still time to play Combatwords. Dare ye join in?

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/07/combatwords-july-15-2011-balance.html

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Science Fiction or Fact? Combatwords, July 8-11, 2011

Sean McCollum: "In the future every baby was born with a computer in its skull which in turn was inhabited by a pixilated ghost prostitute. In the future, cannibalism. In the future, nuclear-powered unicycles were pedaled into the holographic wastelands where we did battle with a race of subterranean Adonises. Moons were lassoed together and flung like giant bolos across the solar system."

Wessington: "Keystrokes and flickered intention on monitor
Linked by the wireless data to trolly:
Sphinx of the fogbelt, lynx of the kilobit,
Minx of the fence—she is orange or tabby."

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/07/combatwords-for-july-11-2011-rules-of.html

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

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

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

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

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

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Exclusive Toylit Scoop: Bin Laden's Last Words! Photo Too!

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