The Future of News Media

Yeah, I know, but a poem post doesn't really count, does it?

Let's shut down our OBSCURE bureaus (Bogota, Jakarta, Nairobi ... Does anyone really CARE?) and embed a reporter in "The Amazing Race." That way we can write about "real" foreign news as part of a blog about THE SHOW. Give readers what they "need" by giving them what they WANT, like how you sneak medicine to a dog by hiding his pills inside a chunk of hamburger.

Remember the day Lee Abrams parodies became a bona fide genre.

I Think That I Shall Never See.

I wanted to write a poem about Colony Collapse Disorder, but there's just too much there, got to do some research. So whatever.

It's my favorite place to stop in New Jersey. There are also all these signs along some roads up there that warn people that the trees have been sprayed. I'm not sure why. Do they have a problem with people digging up trees and stealing them? Trying to eat them? Pulling over and possessed of a compulsion to climb them?

Maintenance

It's getting so you can tell the trails not so much
By the blazes but by
Whether the trees fallen
Across them have been cut and cleared.

The violence of the storms increases
Each summer, and this season has pounded
A harvest of timber onto the floors of the city's
Stream bed parks. Piles of cut limbs

Show up trailside, and then there are the
New gateways, chainsaw-sliced
Out of the thickest trunks. The neat core
Is rolled aside and set stumplike,

A future stage for a stretch. The other day in the woods,
Running, I smelled something strange, something
That carried a vague air of alarm. I came up to
Two newly fallen and realized: Char.

Lightning did it. Most just loose their roots
From weeks on end of mud, and topple. It used to be
A fallen tree might lie for weeks waiting for clearance,
An obstacle to climb or bound

Over. Now there are so many falling
They have to get them right away, get ready for more,
Or be overwhelmed. One morning run, two years ago,
On my birthday, I leapt a fallen trunk in smug pride,

Only five paces later to slam my toe against an iron root
And go sprawling. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK,"
I screamed, then "I'M OK, I'm OK, I'm OK, it's OK,"
At the yard worker in the orange vest, tossing raked leaves

Into the edge of the woods from the embassy
Far up the hill, who had made a run of crunching, sliding
Strides in my voice's direction--to stop when he saw me wave--
Fearing another unspeakable attack.

Photo: Vishwin60, Creative Commons public domain license.

I Want to Believe...

...that someday I'll have a threesome with Sculder and Mully. There it is I said it.

...that the Fannie Mae bailout will help stabilize the markets. Though that won't happen until they either publicize or privatize those guys. The current fence-straddling is breaking our balls. I felt a little like a Republican the other day when I read a heartwarming story about people getting loan assistance. "This is great," one woman said. "Now I can go to grad school and really save some money." Hey, wait a minute--I want to go to grad school, too! Except when people tried to get me to use my condo as an ATM, I just said no! And got me a fixed-rate with a solvent institution! So where's my assistance?

...that the people helped out won't just cycle right back to the same old shit, because the real problem isn't solved. I guess I must be a compassionate conservative, because when I read the NYT Sunday piece about the woman who racked up the credit card bills on the home shopping network while in bed after a hysterectomy, my heart hurt for her. Especially seeing the photo--she's way overweight and smoking. We're so terribly, sickeningly, tragically addicted to so much; we must be in such terrible pain to go to such lengths, destroying our health, our lives, our relationships, just to feel a little bit better. Even Republicans do it--look at poor Bob Novak with his penis-extender Corvette convertible. Ooops, forgot, that wasn't purchased out of an addictive urge to shore up identity--it's an investment. You can use it to run down old men and decrease the surplus population.

Words of wisdom from my August horoscope, by astrologer Eric Francis:
"...the whole notion of "difference" as it is projected onto social (so-called) reality is a farce, the job of which is to perpetuate alienation (mainly to sell things). You don't need that, and neither do the rest of us."

Priceless.

Photo: The Last Judgment altarpiece from St. Cecilia cathedral, Albi, from Sacred Destinations Travel Guide. The horrifyingly huge cathedral and its horrifying and also huge last judgment were made over the course of about 200 years to smack down the Cathar heresy. Just a couple of highlights: 400 "heretics" burned; the Pope's bagman memorably coined the phrase "Kill Em All, Let God Sort Em Out." ("Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.") The Last Judgment and the cathedral were the medieval version of "this is what will happen to you if you don't buy what we're selling." Nearly every artist involved in its creation is anonymous. Hope they got paid, at least!

"Death, Race, Sex, Death, Race, Sex, Death, Traffic, Sex"

My daughter is standing at the bathroom sink, sculpting in tissue, soap and water. "I am the great inventor of toilet paper art!" she declares. And: "Water is the enemy of toilet paper."

All of which is no comment on the following, except to say I think she's moving toward a world where separate literary anthologies from men and from women may not be needed, but for now...

Launch party at P&P Friday 7/25, 7 p.m., for Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys. Dudes discussing the work include R. R. Angell, Juan H. Gaddis, Brian Gilmore, Dave Housley, Charles R. Larson, Alex MacLennan, Richard McCann, and David Nicholson.

Here's a chunk of a review: “Stress City is a core sample of the D.C. male psyche, a tube that comes out striated with the compacted layers of what's on these guys' minds: death, race, sex, death, race, sex, death, traffic, sex.... makes me feel like I never left. Recommended for Washingtonians past and present." – Jordan Ellenberg, author of The Grasshopper King.

Wish I could go; believe I will be beaching.

Photo: Mural by G. Byron Peck, who did the Stress City cover art; photo by AudeVivere, Creative Commons 2.5.

Son of a Window Dresser!

There's Obama graffiti all over France. Outside the Cluny. On the road to Hautacom, in chalk, for the Tour riders to roll over. He's bigger than David Hasselhof in Germany.

And I've heard he's huge in Japan.

Gotta Love Those Little Visitors

OK, had to post this chunk from the website of the place where we're staying:

"Our village of Lézignan provides wonderful strolling walks for those who are looking for the peaceful traditional French village. Lézignan has a beautiful 17th Century church. The church spire is unique to the Barony of Angles.

There is also plenty of wild life, with deer roaming the woods behind Chez Passet, and birds of prey circling above in the blue skies. We also have the little visitors too, with Doves, the Nut-hatch and of course the Robins and Great Tits."

Of course.

Photo: Weekend

A Lawn Savant Who'll Lop a Tree--Oh!*

I'm off to France to taste of the healing waters of Lourdes, y'all. Won't be doing none of that there bloggin for two weeks.

Food of the Gods.

Song of the Season.

Oh, can you believe this, it's all over the Internets! CNN correspondent Michael Ware has been sleeping around. It's all over the news, because, of course, it's really big, big news when a man sleeps around like this, OMG!! (There's this woman correspondent who's been fooling around, too, but who cares, I mean, that's not news, when a consenting adult woman has sex with other consenting adults, who would ever care about that or think it's news? Silly me.)

A Hillary Clinton supporter in a "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History" t-shirt would have tried to have my child taken away if she knew I write erotica and take my clothes off in front of strangers. Even though neither of those things are ever done in a way that my child would ever know about, care about, or be affected by.

Countless Obama supporters speak of their contempt for Hillary Clinton for letting her husband "get away with it" when none of them know anything about that couple's private arrangements. And neither do I.

Perhaps the sacred waters and hikes in the fresh air of the Pyrenees will improve my disposition. I have been feeling a little Sade. If all else fails, Armagnac.

Photo: Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
*: Pynchon.

Rock. Hard Place.

No, it wasn't from listening to old Roxy Music. It was from hearing Surf's Up at the Booeymonger in Friendship Heights while my daughter had a frozen yogurt. Again, composed on the phone keypad.

Siren
Oh, this rock.
Sand in my throat, sand in my hair.
My tedious keening.
What a lot of work it is to wail you into destruction!
I sing the song without thinking,
Sink deep inside myself.
Ah. In dreams I indulge
In pratfalls, digging turnips, silence—
Nothing to do with sailors. Peace.

Another storm kicks up.

"I Think It's Kind of Sexy that John Malkovich Has a Portal"

For the sleepless with access to hundreds of cable channels, I recommend the replay Oracle: When you're stuck, awake, looking for insight and inspiration, switch on the TV for a minute, flip through the guide, don't get stuck on Real Sex, keep going, looking for a movie they run over and over--Pulp Fiction is usually my go-to. Turn it on, see what scene's running, and take that as a sign from the cosmos.

Three times in the past few weeks when I've tried it, it's been Being John Malkovich. And three times it's been the scene where Cameron Diaz pops out of the other end of the portal, exhilarated and inspired by the ride. "I finally knew who I was!" "But you weren't you!"

Last night, unable to sleep after a wedding rehearsal dinner, it was the scene where Malkovich was rehearsing his lines for The Cherry Orchard. And she pops into him. And is about to go on a date with Keener.

I love the way in a later scene Keener's all looking at her watch while she waits for Diaz to show up inside Malkovich.

So all the sudden there's a false debate about whether a woman can be hot and funny. Get out. Diaz has been doing it for years. Any doubts about her acting chops, just rewind this one.

When it's Pulp Fiction, I most often get the "Bonnie's Coming Home From Work" sequence.

Um, Happy Solstice, Sort Of

Well, not exactly the sweet midsummer greetings I was hoping for, but this is what came to me when the sun came up:

Air Conditioner: A Horror Story
Summer always lulls me into believing
I can write a ghost story
The bestseller, or the latest from M. Night--
Horror looks so easy, the kind of thing you could churn out
In your sleep, or with your toes buried
In the sand. Take something you see every day—
A car, a house, a child—and flip it into malevolence.
Of course, get into it, and it’s another story:
Conversations bog down when they should
Spur the action, the plot feels forced, the
Veneer of omniscience flakes, and
You get that sick feeling they can sense
Your uncertain steps. And there are only
So many ways to describe rot,
Aren’t there? Maybe you know more.

Maybe it’s the air conditioner—
The shudder of that one ragged streamer,
The corrosive drip, that hum and huff
As it struggles to keep things fresh.

There WILL BE Cookies

The latest memo by a executive-level newspaper serial killer with QUITE a PENCHANT for UNREGULATED CAPS USE snuck out of the office and gets taken down here. YOU HAVE TO read the comments. It just keeps getting better. The commments section, I mean. The media industry just keeps getting worse.

Wish I could go to the reading tonight by many of the writers in this anthology, BUT I HAVE TO BABYSIT. I NEVER REALIZED that was IRONY. And YES there will be cookies there:
Not What I Expected: The Road from Womanhood to Motherhood, ed. by Donya Currie and Hildie S. Block: An anthology of poetry, fiction, essays and artwork by Jody Bolz, Carole Burns, Grace Cavalieri, Christina Daub, Mary Doroshenk, Patricia Gray, Clarinda Harriss, Anne Hasselbrack, Jacqueline Jules, Mary Ann Larkin, Lyn Lifshin, Hilary Tham, Donna Vitucci, Mary-Sherman Willis, and tons more. Montgomery College, Thursday June 19, 7:30, Humanities Building Room #009.

The 13 Confessions

UPDATE: Completly forgot the whole reason I wanted to write today was about the beautiful and mysterious Anacostia River. Post had a story yesterday, but they'll make you register to read it--go here instead and take a FREE freaking boat ride and you'll see why it is beautiful. OK, there are lots of things you can do for river cleanup, but here's the biggest one: Don't leave your soccer ball in the yard. Serious. They get washed away in the rain and they end up in my fave river.

1. Stuck in midsummer’s amber, lying around like a full lion, licking my paws and waiting.

2. Happy wedding day, Californians! Apparently, licenses now read “Party A” and “Party B” instead of “bride” or “groom.” That sounds fun!

3. Caught a minute of a commentary by Colbert King this morning on stupid WTOP—gist was that after 47 years of marriage, he’d learned to mind his own business when it comes to other people’s arrangements. No offense to the always-great Mr. King, but I knew that one even before going in myself 12 years ago.

4. Picked 15 quarts of strawberries with DD, froze many bags of them and made an absolutely dismal pie. Have I lost my touch? Maybe it’s the weather. The butter just melts.

5. Still convinced pistachio is the nut for strawberry. Like hazelnut for blueberry. And pinot noir. But people keep asking me to update the template for the deliverable. Damn. Where’s the “…and the living is easy” part?

6. This is too effing funny.

7. I did my first public poetry reading in 20 years the other night, and I didn’t throw up.

8. But at one point I was reduced to hanging out the door yelling “There are cookies in here!” to get people to come in and listen.

9. It worked.

10. A “cultural trend research company” I had to deal with at work is predicting a baby boomlet fueled by high gas prices. It says 2008 will be a “summer of love” because no one can afford to travel. Newly married Californians, start your engines, so to speak.

11. I’m traveling a lot this summer. To France and New Jersey and more. But I don’t know, maybe I can fit a little love in there too somewhere.

12. Mostly I’m going to be locked up working on a oh lord don’t say it novel. And trail training. If the trees ever stop falling over.

13. Got to thinking about Sandra Bernhard in her movie singing “I Never Meant to Hurt You” and before I knew what happened I ended up downloading a bunch of Laura Nyro songs.

You've Got to Accentuate the Positive

I was bummed to hear Tristan Taormino won't be editing the Best Lesbian Sex annual anthology anymore, because I would have liked a shot at getting a story in with that editor. Maybe there will be another Taormino-edited project. I'll poke around, so to speak.

In a farewell to editing column noting the trend toward stranger sex in a lot of the stories--as in perfect strangers, not as in more unusual--Taormino quotes a therapist: "Most people look at anonymous sex with morality and judgment and rarely talk about any positive aspects," he notes. But "because there is no emotional investment in a relationship, there is no history and no future. The experience can be all about the here and now. It's not about attachment. It's very Zen."

Which gives me an idea for a story.

Photo: Zen rock garden. Photo is being sold as a poster by a company that does not see fit to say who the photographer is. So I'm not saying what the company is. Does that just make it worse?

Chemists and Alchemists

I had to be on stage the other night, and I wasn't nervous enough, and I was a little worried about it. I'm better at things like that if I'm nervous. No nerves, no energy. The guy running the performance, the co-director-star, made some recommendations about large quantities of Red Bull, then said: "It feels like falling in love." Now that I'd like to have in a can.

And then I thought about Kip Hanrahan's "Tenderness."

Photo: Hanrahan's pub photo. Mmmmm.

Why Two Touches Just Doesn't Get the Job Done

For the past two weeks, I've been writing about Member Development. Heh heh.

So, the buyouts were taken at our nation's capital's major national newspaper (and there really is only one. I've also worked at the other one that says it is, and trust me--those MFs all crazy up in there). I'm not going to cry for my favorite writers or columnists, or for me, Argentina (or any of the other bureaus that have been nailed shut over the years. Because who cares what's happening to those people anyway.). Most of them will go on as contract. (Paralleling the "efficiencies" in federal contracting--lose your job, get hired back for more money, and somehow we all save money from it.) Financial took a big hit, but who needs to know about boiler room mortgage companies, anyway?

Other people can mourn the writers. What I come to bury not to praise is the Washington Post's new copy editing structure, called the "two touch" system. Which sounds like what you get when you can't afford the Emperor's Club.

Even when I worked at a little local, we had at least three reads and a page proofing on all copy. No more. Now much of the writing at one of the two remaining major dailies (nah, I don't count LA either, and Chicago bowed out way back) will get a quick hand job and be sent straight to you!

When the good copy editors are gone, the skeptics are gone, the institutional memory is gone, the integrity is gone, the woodwork squeaks and plagiarists and fabulists and liars and starfuckers and self-promoting freaks of all stripes, not to mention simple scared barely interns who are easily fooled, come on in. And then someone's using the money that's supposed to pay for school building repairs to buy his cousin a Mercedes, and your kid is getting her ass shot off halfway around the world because someone started a war, and you couldn't get a straight read on what was going on early enough to at least try to do something about any of it.

Give me back copy editors and stay off my lawn, you kids!

Not everyone agrees with me.

Trying to Get Over

Dow Chemical is talking like the first-graders in the class I'm right now baking brownies for: "I didn't drop it, why do I have to pick it up?" Article also puts the Union Carbide contribution to Bhopal survivors at currently $550 a head. Mighty big of them.

Oh, but happy birthday Curtis Mayfield and Allen Ginsberg. Wish you were here.

Lordy, a two-poem blog entry run, ain't nobody coming back here ever again.

Clouds: A Business Plan

Keep churning it out;
Someone’s eventually going to want it,
Aren’t they? And we’ll have it ready for them.

We can’t pull out, we’re too far in,
So we’ll just pull back a little,
And then a little more; do more with less.

Take out the ones who know the right words,
The ones who know the rules,
The ones who know what to do.

Slide out the equipment, the plans,
Valves, plates, water spray, escape hatches,
A little at a time, pulling every prop

Until the factory, unsupported, hovers like a cloud.
Humming, barely running, emitting
A buzz of discontent and tension.

What a trick! Like coyote off a cliff,
Legs cycling frantically in midair
Before it crashes. And the cloud escapes.

He remembers a day in Catholic
Grammar school: He was castigated
By the sister for drawing clouds

With flat bottoms. Clouds are puffy,
She insisted; he knew better, little scientist,
And stuck to his guns and took the hit.

Then the toxic cloud rolled down the streets
Like a rogue wave, chasing humans,
Bringing them down. Three thousand

Souls escaped in that moment, spirits
Like smoke into the sky. What a haze
They must have made in paradise.

They say at least one more dies from it
Each day. They say they’re not sure
Where they’re sourcing that statistic.

No matter; today, the world is flat,
The clouds are flat. So he runs
It up the flagpole to watch it wave.

He sees cirrus wisps, but the crown chakra
Is not top of mind. Outsource democracy;
No danger of overproduction here.

The executive summary counsels
Keeping a keen eye toward opportunities
Presented by the fog of war.

Image: Rene Magritte's "The Castle in the Pyrenees," used so often by everyone, I'm sorry, sue me.

Handsome Mess

I wrote this today running. It's for now, but it happens to fall into a series of poems about invasive plants that I've been doing on and off.

Honeysuckle

You learn to do it young--
Pinch the end a bit, draw the stem out
With your teeth barely pressing, gently, gingerly
Tongue out the honey, and let the flower fall.

It smells stronger before a storm--
Pervasive, run as fast as you will;
It calls you to stop and taste, but you say no.
Leave its vines to thrash in the high winds.

It could strangle everything in the garden
You've made. You make the right choice.
Afternoon finds you kneeling,
Sweating, pulling at the invading vines,

Wild with frustration. You stumble back,
Stomping, hissing: "I'll never be rid of you!"
Maddened, but the sweetness persists,
Clinging to your skin, stuck in the back of your throat.

You're the type that doesn't even like
To kill a weed, now, aren't you? Yet here you stand,
With this handsome mess at your feet,
Choking. Torn.

PS: composed while running, but actually written with the keyboard of my phone. I'm thinking this forces shorter line lengths and am wondering about exploring this a little more...

Image: Cover of a blank book from Anathema Books.

On the Road and Off the Road

One maybe two trail half-marathons in the fall. Could the training please begin? The trails around DC are nothing but mush. Trees sliding down ravines (and me doing likewise, nearly), trails washed out, stretches of swamp. I actually got lost on the Hazen trail recently, which is never more than about a half mile from a major DC street. I ended up on the wrong side of the creek and was attempting to cross back to the trail via two fallen trees. I got halfway across the ravine walking on the lower tree and holding onto the upper, but then the trees crossed and I couldn't decide whether to duck under the upper tree or try to straddle the lower the rest of the way, and my overpriced sunglasses designed expressly not to slip off my face were slipping off my face, and a nice man strolling by on the right trail was giving me one of those curious I-wonder-if-I-should-help-but-I'll-mind-my-own-business looks.

If you like this poetry, she'll be reading at Artomatic Thursday, May 30, 7:30 p.m.

I just found out I was a finalist in a poetry contest. I missed the email notification back in March because I was sick and probably confused it with a Nigerian banking scam. But it's really real. It's a super-lefty-political-change-the-world-poetry contest, so there, complete with anti-war march (here's what it looks like when poets protest), and when is someone going to give E. Ethelbert Miller a MacArthur or sainthood or something, people. This entry's too long already so maybe I'll post the poem itself later.

My daughter stayed with her cousins a couple nights while I was off standing too close to the fire. We resumed her chapter book tonight on Chapter 9. Her words: "We would have been on chapter 11 by now, but I forgot to take it on the road."

The L Word and the B Word

Finally catching up on my Tivo'ed L Words. As usual: Writing, abominable; plotting, absurd; fashions and set design, fantastic; sex scenes, whoa baby call the doctor; music, how do they do it??? Issac Hayes' amazing Stax version of "Walk on By" at the finale, sounding for all the world like the new Portishead. And "Do the Strand"?!? Beautiful. Ladies, I take it all back.

Been meaning to write about some of my favorite blogs. I tried to get one of them blogrolls, but it's too complicated. I'll eventually add one. Promises, promises. Or was that "Walk on By"?

***While I was lying around whining and going to doctor's appointments all last month, she was writing poems. Good ones. Check it out. She also writes about rock and roll.

***Jill Matrix, I remember dancing with you to Curtis Mayfield at that party where you kissed a boy. Don't try to deny. Find out something about life, media, construction and cats here in her blog. I'd say something about the real L word, but that would just be too clumsy.

***Like that photo you're looking at? It's by my mad burner buddy who once got on a bicycle in New Jersey, rode it all the way to Burning Man, stopped to do his thing, then got back on and rode it to San Francisco, the promised land. Want to buy one like it? Want one in that style but starring you? Go here. Oh, and the blog traces a case of Obamamania that turns to rational second thoughts, tho supportive. Obamambivalence? We'll miss you and the bad songs of the '70s this weekend, dearie.

***Copper Stewart, whom I encountered through Reclaiming witchcraft, has a mind of depth and breadth that is positively scary and eternally amazing. Walt Whitman to ancient Egyptian sacred geometry to forest ecology to politics. His livejournal has lots of fun branches, creeks and ripples; Paganmonist has longer, more structured articles, poems, more.

Photo: Copyright Mark Still, and if you reproduce it without permission, Isaac Hayes AND Shaft will kick your ass. Is that clear enough?

Three Days

I'm off soon for my three days in the weirderness. This is a mashup of believe it or not, Jane's Addiction and Carly Simon. Both have songs called "Three Days."

Three days was the morning.
My focus three days old.
My head, it landed
To the sounds of cricket bows.
And lord, I feel lonesome
For the you I might have known.

We saw shadows of the morning light
The shadows of the evening sun
Till the shadows and the light were one.
And if the gods will please be kind
I'll be with you soon, soon again.

Bits of puzzle
Fitting each other
Never wonder.
Night is shelter
For nudity's shiver;
The way you turned
My head around,
The way you turned
My head around.

All of us with wings
All of us with wings
All of us with wings