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Friday, May 04, 2012

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

And thus


begat


And the Lord said It Is Good.

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Friday, April 20, 2012

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

Okay you stooges, generate Today's News Poem.



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Friday, April 13, 2012

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

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


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Friday, April 06, 2012

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


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

"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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Friday, March 30, 2012

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



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


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Friday, March 23, 2012

…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]

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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