Thursday, July 9, 2026
Monday, July 6, 2026
The Cyclone Fence of Buts Surrounds the Soccer Field of What If
Deadest Blog Days of Summer, the days surrounding July 4th, so I am compelled to post (and to post ahead of this coming Thursday when I post one of two posts a year not tagged My Complicity) to see if this can be the least read post of the calendar year (which can't be determined until I post over Thanksgiving Weekend in November, the closest competition). Also too, this *has* to be typed today: I hope Belgium beats the USMNT 10 to fucking 0 tonight
Did anyone think Dump wouldn't taint the World Cup? I sat in the conference room on the top floor of the library I work in that overlooks the Potomac above Key Bridge last Saturday afternoon and for fifteen minutes watched Dump's vanity show of military flyovers that squandered tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars and thought to myself, how strange he hasn't caused a sensationally embarrassing scandal at the World Cup as yet, et viola, the Dumpiest, most United States of Assholes fine metaphors abounding scandal. Ten to fucking Nothing tonight, please please please my Lord Diablo Etcheverry
One of those is me in a good mood, the other me in a bad mood, I don't know which is which. Pochettino must know the hell that awaits Balogun (a birthright citizen (who's playing for the USMNT solely because he stood no chance of making his preferred England squad), did Dump know?) in every European stadium he plays in and in the European football press the rest of his career if Balogun plays tonight regardless whether Belgium wins 10-0, please Lord Diablo Etcheverry, and imagine how much worse it will be if he scores the determining goal. Imagine Pochettino doing the honorable thing and benching Balogun the entire game and Belgium wins 10-0, please Lord Diablo Etcheverry, and Dump's shitfit, laugh. Not holding my breath on Pochettino doing the honorable thing, mind, would like to be wrong (I bet Balogun won't start but will be brought in as a second half sub when the USMNT is already down 7-0, Lord Diablo Etcheverry willing). Lord Diablo, I was X-bingeing yesterday, the world's a mess it's in my kiss
I AM BUT A TRAVELER IN THIS LAND & KNOW LITTLE OF ITS WAYS
Dean Young
Is everything a field of energy caused
by human projection? From the crib bars
hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed
desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts
surrounds the soccer field of what if.
Sometimes it seems like a world where no one
knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes
both directions. How about a polymer
that contracts in response to electrical
charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor?
King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone
who has traveled here knows the discrepancies
between idea and fact. The idea is the worm
in the tequila and the next day is the fact.
In between may be the sacred—real blood
from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—
landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas
are best sprung from actions like the children
of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette,
another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable
wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams,
waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened
nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head:
good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.
The stranded whale, guided out of the cove
by tugboats, turns and swims back in.
The violinist will not let go her violin
which is 200 years old and still on the train
thus she is dragged down the track. By what
manner is the soul joined to the body?
Answer: an arm connecting a violin
to a violinist. According to Freud,
there are no accidents. Astrologists
and Presbyterians agree for different reasons.
You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake.
You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.
Human consciousness: is it the projector
or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits
and spray the grass so everything dies
but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka
what he thinks. Sometimes they give you
a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest
is your problem. In one version,
the beggar turns out to be a king and grants
the poor couple a castle and a moat and two
silver horses said to be sired by the wind.
That was before dentistry, which might have been
a better gift. You did not want to get sick
in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.
So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided
but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master
of the short story. After the kiss from whom
he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,
touches a bush in which birds are singing.
Thursday, July 2, 2026
And the Thing Is, It Stays Still Before Speaking Of
I was sixteen, two months from seventeen, for the Bicentennial. That August, at the Montgomery County Maryland Fair, I bought this Jimmy Carter for President poster
I either lost it or tossed to my great regret now. Republicans viciously called him a communist and but he beat Gerald Ford anyway if only because of Ford's pardon of Nixon, who the face-mullet called Vance the other day said was treated unfairly by un-American Democrats. I don't remember corporate Democrats then professing their undying devotion to full capitalist exploitation like they are now as they accuse Democratic Socialists of being communists far more dangerous to the United States of Assholes' future than their genuinely fascist teammates in the Republican wing of Shitlord Inc headquarters, though they did hate Carter and worked to defeat him which is why I bought the Carter poster (and voted for him once of legal age when Reagan kicked his ass). Sigh, a week ago I was on this Lake Michigan beach at the northern tip of the Leelanau Peninsula, it feels like it was fifty years ago too
I love Swans! I did not hear or see a single thing about the United States of Assholes' 250th birthday celebrations on Leelanau, in Traverse City, on the drive to and from Traverse City from Chelsea, in Chelsea itself and in Ann Arbor the last night in Michigan when we ate at the single best Indian restaurant I know, Shalimar on Main, whereas I remember the 200th, before the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of Citizens United cemented Shitlord rule forever, as loud and buoyant and sparkly and loud and ubiquitous and, get this, relatively civil. To the best of my memory, I don't remember federal agents brazenly and proudly snatching people off the street or Gerald Ford selling his own personal currency, but it was 50 years ago and my memory's edge has dulled a bit. I hadn't read Zinn's *People's History of the United States* (I did when it first came out four years later and sealed my deal) but I already had flipped on this country. Most people then thought I was nuts and wished I'd shut up, many more more people now agree with me and wish I'd shut up. Swans?
BUT IT SAYS NOTHING
Clark Coolidge
BUT IT SAYS NOTHING
Clark Coolidge
But it says nothing. And one is as quiet
as if to say nothing moves me. Then
there is the chair. And one speaks of
the chair sitting at the table.
Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.
The object is a piece of thing before. One
shifts in a chair and opens the talk.
And the time it says nothing one moves.
The table is too long as the wall. Not
a thing but it stays and one opens
as a mouth will begin. Speaking of
the table, nothing but to avoid that of
the wall. One could return over and over
to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.
Least ways it says nothing. And the
thing is, it stays still before
speaking of. The object of nothing, even
speech.
Thursday, June 25, 2026
wings bring the disk of their sun for around your neck
The shittiest people in the world hate Zohran Mamdani and their second Mamdani meltdown will make the first seem only a hissy fit, Jeff types as he sits in the rental at the northern tip of Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, steady hard rain erasing my plans to return to Camp Greilick Disc Golf Course to play a third and fourth round at what is one of the best if not the best course I've ever played, goddamn it
That's 14 from the tee box, my only bird there, twice. Plays across an old Boy Scout camp, it's not only a terrific course but a four mile walk through gorgeous dense woods filled with the loudest, most varied birdsong I've ever heard, I've never played anything like it. Holes are hard but fair with clear lines and fairways. Below is Myles Kimberly Disc Golf Course in Maple City, 12, my partner Justin teed to thirty-five feet and I hit the bird with my Alpaca at Tuesday Night Doubles two evenings ago, there were six groups of two, we finished second and won $4 each. Doubles tonight at Bear's Den in Kingsley, I played it Wednesday morning, all tunnels but a few holes, so lots of driving my teebird from the tee box
Zohran Mamdani's name did not come up at all Tuesday doubles at Myles Kimberly (though the round ended while votes were still being counted), but remember, the shittiest people in the world hate Zohran Mamdani and are already conceding the midterms to Trump because of Mamdani's "Communism," an evil and sinister mixture of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, *imagine* how much shitlords hate and fear him. Reminder - corporate Democrats abhor Zohran Mamdani more than corporate Republicans adore him. Meanwhile, here's what the far less dangerous than Mamdani six conservative Supreme Justices ruled today
I predict no one, but especially me, will mention either Mamdami or Leo Leo's SCOTUS' rulings tonight at doubles though if I had to bet if one was it won't be Leo Leo's SCOTUS' rulings. United States of Assholes. Public service announcement, if you are ever in Leelanau County they have a stern warning for you
MONK'S BIRD BOOK
Ed Roberson
Mourning doves are not owls after a while
away from the city not because the country
appears of a softer feather less predatory
you're thinking a sound more naturally friendly
less edgy and dangerous than the subway
but because the
city city to city within itself so sharply
details for you actually walks you through
a training in the amplitudes of form
after a while that sharpness wipes the smile
the natural had you putting on everything.
Really owls are so soft their deadly
accuracy of flight depending on it
they are all but silent a recognizable law
nobody says shit you learn the city
has taught you to pick up on which wings
bring the disk of their sun for around
your neck each day
and which take you out;
and that your green act of good is natural
in that it too depends on the weather.
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