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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Willard Up Gangsta!! [#twitterfoundpoem, August 12, 2012]

Willard Up Gangsta!! [#twitterfoundpoem, August 12, 2012]
Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem

Willard up gangsta!!
don't like Gemstone canines, Ghost dogs, Basic Lupine Urology?
u gotta be like the Gemstone canines.
u gotta Willard up gangsta and tear It up !!
u gotta tear breakfast bacon OFF a pig
and tear It up gangsta!!

When you're a Ghost Dog your whole death
and come to the point of not being able to play
your game anymore, it's like your death is over.

but u can still piss OFF, tear It up, and call the cops
for more so so fried breakfast pig.
your death is over but your Life is Just beginning .
so Willard up gangsta!! u gotta pig It up,
Fuck It up, an Fuck a breakfast pig!!
tear It up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




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Friday, August 10, 2012

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



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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

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: https://twitter.com/npratc

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Sunday, July 22, 2012

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.

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Monday, June 18, 2012

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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Friday, June 08, 2012

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

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

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


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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 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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