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 day after tomorrow 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

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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.

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?

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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.

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

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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.