Modern Excommunication [Today's News Poem, March 18, 2011]

Modern Excommunication [Today's News Poem, March 18, 2011]

To: You
From: Me
Re: Unemployment
Body: You cannot imagine beyond it;
You're drawn to the certainties—drawn to yourself,
Aching for service to self, yet you're servant:
Obsequious, fearful of fates worse than death.
Riding the bus, there's perfume; the aroma
Of leather and gym is a blessing. The stench
Derelicts emanate gives you the courage
To guzzle your coffee obsessed with the trifles
Ownership offers. Though briefly you worry
While watching Japan in the news, of disaster,
Nothing has happened and nothing will happen
That hasn't occurred, for nothing remains to be taken.

"Part of the answer may be that while those who are unemployed tend to stay unemployed, those who still have jobs are feeling more secure than they did a couple of years ago. "
—PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times, Published: March 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/opinion/18krugman.html

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Evolution of the New Biosphere [Today's News Poem, March 17, 2011]

Evolution of the New Biosphere [Today's News Poem, March 17, 2011]

The pleasure dome of climate: gas and green
Covers the stone and encases the raptures.
The wavelengths soothe belabored jungle scowls:
Monitors radiate myths of consumption.
The beats in buds transmit the wave to brain—
Frequency, farts and emissions aren't garbage
The burger wrapper lays beside the porn
Magazine: fucking the lamb—it's a lion.
Abortions, livers, tumors, foreskins, hands
Settle, deflowered, in celibate brothels.
Radioactivate trash, let Gomorrah
Fertilize biospheres, rot to a forest;
Hoist you from whore to a virgin again.

"But Tokyo Electric said this week that there was a chance of “recriticality” in the storage ponds – that is to say, the uranium in the fuel rods could become critical in nuclear terms and resume the fission that previously took place inside the reactor, spewing out radioactive byproducts."
—KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times, Published: March 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html



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Riparian Monster [Today's News Poem, March 16, 2011]

Riparian Monster [Today's News Poem, March 16, 2011]

Bounded by freshness, rocks in my middle,
I scuttle through openness carved with my belly.
Maybe I'm boulder instead—I forgot:
Is stiffness within me? Or am I the stiffness?
Focus on aches and you'll lose all your sense.
So launch through the canopy, fill it with excess;
Uproot the timber and swallow their seeds.
If parrots complain just entice them then drown them.
Even the sky lends support to your cause—
Slumber, awaken—sleep and awake.

"Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: keep sending workers into an increasingly contaminated area in a last-ditch effort to cover nuclear fuel with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown."
—DAVID E. SANGER, MATTHEW L. WALD and HIROKO TABUCHI. The New York Times, Published: March 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html

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Pet Apocalypses [Guest News Poem by Mark Kerstetter, March 14, 2011]

Pet Apocalypses [Guest News Poem by Mark Kerstetter, March 14, 2011]
By Mark Kerstetter http://markerstetter.blogspot.com

When not stricken dumb
The tongue turns to teleology
In a churning tide not of waves
But faces, each a cipher
Of any number of pet apocalypses

And so I invoke the Great Mother
Who cares not for end time rhetoric
For whom poems are but sighs
On a chill wind from cracked
And quivering lips

She will call her children home
And scatter at whim
Blankets and robotics her mulch
Be they sardine dolphin or human baby
She doesn’t give a Great Tsunami Fuck

When her skies smile down again
On the nuclear stuff inside
Will there be time to sacrifice a virgin
Or a Sony to turn
on a tumbling shore?

"Radiation leaked from a crippled nuclear plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan after a third reactor was rocked by an explosion Tuesday and a fourth caught fire in a dramatic escalation of the 4-day-old catastrophe. The government warned anyone nearby to stay indoors to avoid exposure."
—ERIC TALMADGE and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake

"The millions of sardines that were found floating dead in a Southern California marina this week tested positive for a powerful neurotoxin, researchers said Friday. "
—Associated Press, 03/12/11 02:17 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/12/redondo-beach-dead-fish-t_0_n_834958.html

"In the Gulf, record numbers of dead baby dolphins are washing onto the shores of Mississippi and Alabama, creating frightening spectacles for families and their kids prowling the beaches. Tourists are bewildered by scientists slicing tissue samples from the lifeless baby mammals."
—Rocky Kistner, Media associate, NRDC, March 2, 2011 10:12 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kistner/as-dolphins-die-gulf-rest_b_830200.html

"A tide of bodies washed up along Japan's coastline Monday, overwhelming crematoriums, exhausting supplies of body bags and adding to the spiraling humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis after the massive earthquake and tsunami."
—The Associated Press, 12:30 PM, Mar. 14, 2011
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110314/WDH0101/303140075/1207&located=rss



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Psychicphrenic Sensitivities [Today's News Poem, March 14, 2011]

Psychicphrenic Sensitivities [Today's News Poem, March 14, 2011]

Every moon has its current.
Only the wisest of schizos acknowledge
It's nerve and it's nervousness.

Every action reacts to the first of all actions:
Explosion, orgasm, whatever you call it
Remember to whimper.

It's not wave, it's not current; it's possible
Is what it is—haecceity—
And nothing could be otherwise.

All the schizos could feel all the nerves
In the earth; they were twitching and bruising
Their knees on the hydrants.

My cat almost died for Japan—
He's connected as well by this feeling of nerves.
His organs unseized and he leaped to my lap

Knowing his death comes much later,
And watched as I watched the tsunami
On teevee, surprised I surprised myself.

I'm laughing. I died in Japan yet I'm typing
A poem. I died in a styrofoam avalanche,
Died in my cradle, died in the ocean;

I died, yet I'm here and the schizos declared it;
They gobbled tobacco and tuned for the station
That everyone hears—it's static: absolute static.

"Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials."
—HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, Published: March 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html

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Tsunami Riptide [Today's News Poem, March 13, 2011]

Tsunami Riptide [Today's News Poem, March 13, 2011]

Unravel the surface and peel off the ceilings.
Reveal, repeal, uncover, then exile.
Start up the truck as the water's delivery
Peels the lampposts, borrows the vehicles.

We play while we live with our toys and our tools,
The buildings worth a life of unceasing work.
Nothing in history rhymes with disaster—
Past it, patterns form—they're etched beneath our feet.

"Japanese officials struggled on Sunday to contain a quickly escalating nuclear crisis in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, saying they presumed that partial meltdowns had occurred at two crippled reactors, and that they were bracing for a second explosion, even as problems were reported at two more nuclear plants."
—HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, Published: March 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14nuclear.html



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Debunking the Myths of Japan [Today's News Poem, March 12, 2011]

Debunking the Myths of Japan [Today's News Poem, March 12, 2011]

The dolphins are laughing, the bigot applauds;
Maguro, unagi salute in the ocean.
Even Poseidon must chuckle; Hephaestus
Wins far too often, inhales the emissions,
And must be extinguished and trade his position.
Japan had it coming: the oni predicted,
Fat Man predicted, Nanking predicted,
Wako, Yamato, Toyota, Pearl Harbor,
Godzilla, Naruto and Rapeman predicted
Japan as a story, as myth and Atlantis.

"A quake-hit Japanese nuclear plant reeling from an explosion at one of its reactors has also lost its emergency cooling system at another reactor, Japan's nuclear power safety agency said on Sunday. The emergency cooling system is no longer functioning at the No.3 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, requiring the facility to urgently secure a means to supply water to the reactor, an official of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told a news conference. On Saturday, an explosion blew off the roof and upper walls of the building housing the facility's No. 1 reactor, stirring alarm over a possible major radiation release, although the government later said the explosion had not affected the reactor's core vessel and that only a small amount of radiation had been released."
—Reuters, Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:17pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-japan-quake-nuclear-cooling-idUSTRE72B3GI20110312

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Eye Big In Japan [Today's News Poem, March 11, 2011]

Eye Big In Japan [Today's News Poem, March 11, 2011]

Where wave meets reactor; where blaze floats on foam,
Where old circuits die where the tide gores the bull,
Where eye met the image of screen-shot and shoots
The skyscrapers full of its cracked vision scorn;

Where bored meets the keyboard and sleep joins the show,
Where dreams fuse together with flames surfing seas,
A glass made in Tokyo holds sea (drowning cup)
That falls down the throat of a fool: scared to sleep.

"A devastating tsunami hit the coast of northeast Japan on Friday in the aftermath of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake about 80 miles offshore, killing at least five people and injuring dozens. "
—MARTIN FACKLER and KEVIN DREW, The New York Times, Published: March 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12japan.html



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Banana Slug Nazar [Today's News Poem, March 10, 2011]

Banana Slug Nazar [Today's News Poem, March 10, 2011]

At first it was God's Eye: a charm of protection
We made with two sticks and a colorful yarn.
Crafts of our youth went to trash, yet the talisman

Survived with its crudeness—its innocence, crudeness—
And stupidly watched from its perch near the stove
Warding off something far worse than our bickering.

I'll miss it and throw it in trash while I'm cleaning
My mother's possessions and sorting her will;
Stunned at my ignorance—mother my mystery.

And somewhere between, back in college, a woman—
A schoolmate who kissed and forgot me—had kissed
Someone who tore off his pants and excitedly

Began to undress her. She gazed at the nazar
And pushed him away. There were eyes all around,
Spitting their blessings or semen on comforters.

I batter my shoulders in doorways and rarely
Avert when I gaze. I have missed all the cues,
Broken the spell that coordinates offices—

The pace on the sidewalk—deflected the daggers
They've launched from their eyes, so the eye of the slug—
Pattern of spot it may be—might examine me

And stay me from clumsiness, grant me her rhythm
Amidst all the traffic just meters away,
Grant me her slime and remove my revulsion.

"McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) announced a far-reaching sourcing policy that could significantly reduce the fast-food giant's impact on the environment, including global forests. Yesterday McDonald's unveiled its Sustainable Land Management Commitment (SLMC), a policy that requires its suppliers to use "agricultural raw materials for the company's food and packaging that originate from sustainably-managed land". The commitment will be monitored via an independent evaluation process, according to the company. "
—Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com, March 11, 2011
http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0310-mcdonalds.html

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Deducing Induction [Today's News Poem, March 9, 2011]

Deducing Induction [Today's News Poem, March 9, 2011]

Fourteen billion pairs of eyes
Gazed at their seventy billion toes;
Saw a trillion hairs on feet,
Prayed to quadrillions of deities.
Life is one. The earth is one.
Hope is quintillions, a googolplex.
Hope is any set plus one.
Hope is the infinite self
Or the incomplete other.

"Young men in hooded jackets smoke cigarettes and await transfer to the mainland — a prospect that is striking fear in many European hearts."
—RACHEL DONADIO and SUZANNE DALEY, The New York Times, Published: March 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/europe/10europe.html

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Lies In The Firmament [Today's News Poem, March 8, 2011]

Lies In The Firmament [Today's News Poem, March 8, 2011]

I think I felt a spark beneath the moon;
It was crushing, tremendous—I felt like the tide.
My heart transmitted burning waves
As I saw the long meteor strips with an oak.
I heard the owl adjust her perch
Beneath the summer's nighttime noon.
It is funny to think that we feel we'll abide
Decaying cells; that feeling saves
And that feeling survives when rebirth is a joke
Beneath the false and sparkling church.

"In a potential advance in the field of tissue engineering, researchers report that they've been able to repair injured urinary systems in boys by using bladder cells grown in a laboratory."
—Randy Dotinga, HealthDay Reporter, March 8, 2011
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/diet-fitness/digestive-disorders/articles/2011/03/08/lab-grown-urethra-used-to-replace-damaged-tube

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Excuseman Misses Quota [Today's News Poem, March 7 2011]

Excuseman Misses Quota [Today's News Poem, March 7 2011]

The pencils for closers, the door for excuses;
Go to the door my excuseman, with Willie
And get drunk and go driving and fall off
A bridge in the water; it's careless.
Who gives a shit for excuses?
Did they ever meet quota?
Award me a trophy?
Suck off my penis?
Can they grovel?
Promote me?
Feign love?
No.

"Check this one out. The employee does in fact have the skills and talent to do the job, but lacks the passion, enthusiasm and commitment to execute. In many cases, he is not going to tell you that, because what would it sound like? "Boss, I hear you, but I need to tell you that I’m just not feeling it. This job stinks. I can’t quit because I’ve got a family to support. I need this stupid job." Such communication would be refreshingly honest, but don’t hold your breath expecting it to happen. "
—Steve Adubato, NJ.com, Sunday, March 06, 2011, 6:44 AM
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/03/dealing_with_poor_performance.html

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Bird of Coffins [Today's News Poem, March 6, 2011]

Bird of Coffins [Today's News Poem, March 6, 2011]

It started in grass and it ends in the sand.
It glided the thermals, its droppings exploded.
I saw how it hatched from a box, how it fanned.
Debris that unbound, disinterred and unloaded
The mineral arrows, the cylinder coffins
That fall from the wings of a bird made of coffins.

"And rebels near Ras Lanuf said they shot down a Libyan air force plane, a Soviet-made Sukhoi Su-24MK that crashed in the desert, on Saturday. CNN located the plane's debris, spread over a kilometer (about half a mile), with the headless bodies of two pilots at the site."
—CNN's Nic Robertson, Ben Brumfield, Arwa Damon, Ben Wedeman, Salma Abdelaziz, Jomana Karadsheh and Jill Dougherty contributed to this report, CNNMarch 6, 2011 3:14 a.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/06/libya.conflict/?hpt=T2

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Buried Alive In A Grave For Pagan Gods [Today's News Poem, March 5, 2011]

Buried Alive In A Grave For Pagan Gods [Today's News Poem, March 5, 2011]

'Shafted,' the veins call. Shafted in ore.
Shafted like oak trees they whittled to beams.
Abandon the forest, salvage the timber
Concealing—not God of the pagans, not Odin,
Nor the glory of mist on leaves in the morning—
Just a buttress to stave off the ruin of matter.
Stakes that were stabbed in the caverns, entropy unifies
Corpses, inertness, a profit, a loss, though it's purposeless.

"A priest has given last rites to a man who fell into an abandoned Nevada mine shaft so deep and treacherous that rescuers have abandoned efforts to reach him,"
—(AP), Mar 5, 2011 11:55 AM CST
http://www.newser.com/story/113448/rescuers-abandon-man-trapped-alive-in-nevada-mine.html

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The Golden Termite [Today's News Poem, March 4, 2011]

The Golden Termite [Today's News Poem, March 4, 2011]

It's always back and forth between deduction, induction, reduction, seduction; always a slip of the while to recover one's footing; capture one's balance to throw it akilter again. And we slither on tightropes; we slither as tightrope: slivers of quicksilver. Silver; everything bright is a gem or a metal refined to its limit; a thing to explore and deplete and discard. The object dissolves as we breach to the center of things—hear the ring of the harmony latent in spheres? Eve of our prayer to atom, we played in our garden of tin and its blossoms of soot; we reduced our perspective and drilled to the core, which exploded of course and enthralled us. It called us a name we have kept ever since: something like element, shapeshifter—termites that watch for their God in the timber, in cellulose. God of the termites. God as a termite.

"Gold futures rallied and silver hit its highest point in nearly 31-years Friday as jitters about rising oil prices amid Middle East tensions boosted the metals as refuge investments."
—Matt Whittaker Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, The Wall Street Journal, MARCH 4, 2011, 2:38 P.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110304-710448.html

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They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

They Will Take It From Us [Today's News Poem, March 3, 2011]

I don't embrace
you yet—I will, so tarry.
Bless us, extend our duration. Delay

another day
and let me bed upon—not
under—the grass and in sunlight's gold trace.

"in 1856 when, barely a year into his reign, Alexander II announced to an assembly of noblemen, “I’ve decided to do it, gentlemen. If we don’t give the peasants freedom from above, they will take it from below...” Northern leaders, on the other hand, pointed with shame to the fact that the world’s greatest democracy and its most infamous autocracy stood alone among major Western powers in retaining slavery."
—ADAM GOODHEART, The New York Times, March 2, 2011, 8:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-other-emancipation-proclamation/

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Commanded To Surrender [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2011]

Commanded To Surrender [Today's News Poem, March 2, 2011]

Law is stone and God is brazier:
Bronze, unyielding, burning razor.
Time is bone, a crystal rock:
Fossil lost to gemstone features.

Love our eyes for eyes, and seek
Blind surrender, yield as weak.
Gradations have vanished in binaries:
Perfect, defective, and perfect
Again.

Surrender, surrender; it's envy, surrender—
God is the captain of every surrender.

"Sirhan made his first appearance before a California parole board since 2000, supported by two psychologists' reports saying he no longer poses a threat to society, his attorney said... On occasion, Sirhan flashed a gap-toothed smile, but as Prizmich announced the parole denial, Sirhan bit his tongue.
Prizmich said that Sirhan's assassination of Kennedy marked a national loss, prompting Sirhan to make a startling assertion.
"That was not my responsibility," Sirhan blurted out.
Sirhan's attorney, William Pepper, expressed "disappointment" over the parole board's decision and said Sirhan will appeal the matter to the courts. The parole board "ignored every thing we had to say, and they went on the emotional kick of a loss of a presidential candidate," Pepper said. "The magnitude of the crime has nothing to do with his suitability of being released from prison after 43 years.""
—Michael Martinez, CNN, March 3, 2011 12:01 a.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/03/california.sirhan.parole.hearing/

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False Etymology of Western Modernity [Today's News Poem, March 1, 2011]

False Etymology of Western Modernity [Today's News Poem, March 1, 2011]

Pass through the root of a word:
It resembles enchanters of blaze,
Medicine wands made of paw
And the pelt of a Nemean Lion.

Passion: an animal zeal.
The religion of sunrise and rays
Sniffs for and snuffs out the source
In the soil, in the catgrass—the cornstalks.

Compassion: the dream of a mouse
Covered in paws; and compassion—the taste
Of blood is the flavor of rain,
Pity and love: the communion of famished.

Romance: desire is a sword
Or wound, or the wounded—the wounding
Passing unbreakable flesh
To memories, hopes, expectations.

Roman: the letters and laws.
Imperial characters slaying
Wilderness, making the peace
With weaponry, ownership, commerce.

Roma: a cairn made of bones
For saints and salvation. Religion
Vanquishes beast and its praise,
Compassion and conscience—the wilderness.

"They are not God, yet they act as though they have all power and authority to determine the day and hour of a baby's death and also the manner in which he dies."
—Jennifer Hartline, Catholic Online, 3/1/2011
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=40526

"Animal control officials are concerned that they have had to put down too many dogs and have developed a plan to curb the euthanasia rate."
—Kevin Valine, The Modesto Bee, Feb. 28, 2011
http://www.modbee.com/2011/02/27/1576232/oakdale-tryingto-reduce-rate-of.html

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Change Charges Promise [Today's News Poem, February 28, 2011]

Change Charges Promise [Today's News Poem, February 28, 2011]

Change is a coin that one flips in the air,
Calls as it lands; then one curses the name.
Nickel's the treatment for rust in the metal;
Keeps all the surfaces shiny with promise.
Promise me coins will prevail
After we've flipped and set sail
On an ocean of change on a charge card—a barque
Made of plastic that charted the storms and approved.

"“At the end of the day, how much change will there really be in Egypt and other countries?” he asked. “There will be many disappointed demonstrators, and that’s when they will realize what the only alternative is. We are certain that this will all play into our hands.” "
—SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times, Published: February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/middleeast/28qaeda.html

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Rat Maze [Today's News Poem, February 27, 2011]

Rat Maze [Today's News Poem, February 27, 2011]

Over capacity, under the freeway,
Next to the tower of smog—yes the thunder's
Alive, not like Thor, but like eyes that observe
The mazes of pageantry, splendor of rats.
Wedged in a corner of pavement; the rodents
Halve and are mice, halve and are newborns—
Divide to the zygote, to ova and sperm.
Repeating division, the dead are reborn,
Branching through time as the life-form imagines,
Mates and then dies, is reborn in the fragments:
Cast origami of proteins unfolding
Building a lattice of mazes just like it.

"... there are warning signs that China could soon suffer from the same overcapacity that has long afflicted the United States and Europe. Half of the executives surveyed by KPMG, the accounting firm, believe that China will have too many automotive plants within five years, according to a study that KPMG published in January."
—JACK EWING, The New York Times, February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/business/global/28iht-cars28.html

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