How We Picnicked in Pine Forests, in Coves with the Water Always Seeping Up, and Left Our Trash, Sperm, and Excrement Everywhere, Smeared on the Landscape, to Make of Us What We Could

• I am the bullets: On Gaza.
• And then the Alien turned towards Zanna: On Gaza.
• Am I going to die tonight, Daddy?
• Dehumanization? Here's today's monologue: of course dehumanization is the project, but the project isn't the dehumanization of the other. That shit's already been done. 
• And it's working. The hate seething through me now scares the fuck out of me. My lizard brain is far too easily stimulated. 
• Ladies and Gentleman, the wit and wisdom of Fuckface Hiatt, who I daydream of braining with a shovel over and over and over and...
• The rule of lizards.
• The grey light of morning: As real as the political subtext was, it’s a mistake to see the myth of progress purely as a matter of propaganda. During the heyday of industrialism, that myth was devoutly believed by a great many people, at all points along the social spectrum, many of whom saw it as the best chance they had for positive change. Faith in progress was a social fact of vast importance, one that shaped the lives of individuals, communities, and nations. The hope of upward mobility that inspired the poor to tolerate the often grueling conditions of their lives, the dream of better living through technology that kept the middle classes laboring at the treadmill, the visions of human destiny that channeled creative minds into the service of  existing institutions—these were real and powerful forces in their day, and drew on high hopes and noble ideals as well as less exalted motives.
• America.
• the wearing-out of language.
• Motherfucking gunfucks fuck with Sugarloaf.
• Food links.
• Vollmann in his studio.
• Drummage.
• Bosh reminded me of Leatherface last night.

STREET MUSICIANS

John Ashbery

One died, and the soul was wrenched out   

Of the other in life, who, walking the streets   

Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on   

The same corners, volumetrics, shadows   

Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever   

Called, through increasingly suburban airs   

And ways, with autumn falling over everything:   

The plush leaves the chattels in barrels   

Of an obscure family being evicted

Into the way it was, and is. The other beached   

Glimpses of what the other was up to:

Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other.

So I cradle this average violin that knows   

Only forgotten showtunes, but argues

The possibility of free declamation anchored

To a dull refrain, the year turning over on itself   

In November, with the spaces among the days   

More literal, the meat more visible on the bone.   

Our question of a place of origin hangs

Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,

In coves with the water always seeping up, and left   

Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared   

On the landscape, to make of us what we could.