Amidst the Piles of Outcast Citizenry and Burning Barrels of Waste and Rot, the Plump Rats Darting Freely, the Havoc of Blown Newspapers, Lay the Little Shroud of My Lost Friend: Small and Gray and Threadbare, Windworn by the Ages of Scurrying Hither and Thither, Battered by the Avalanches and Private Tornadoes of Just Being a Gnome, but Surely There Were Good Times, Too

Today in fine metaphors abounding: when I opened up gmail this morning there was a banner across the top. VOTE! it ordered, do I need to know where my polling place is? I got out my iPhone to take a photo, damn, my laptop screen is squat and long, couldn't get an aesthetically pleasing shot (and Olive wouldn't stand still in the background), so I printed screen and pasted into my motherfucking free blogging platform. Guess what.

Driving home from dinner with Oakton last night we were talking the motherfucking election. Planet and Air said that the HRC mail scandal is basically caused by HRC's refusal to learn how to use ANY device - phone, tablet, PC - other than her Fisher-Price blackberry. Here I am, thinking it's regal fuckyouedness, fuck it if I'm caught when legions are trying to catch me, I'm Hillary Fucking Clinton. Is it really she's a moron who can't run two email accounts simultaneously?

Here, let me get up from my dining room table and walk ten feet.

• There's ▲ my fucking polling place.
• Hillary Clinton says any new wikileaks on email are fake! She thinks you'll believe her. 
• That's not true - but she thinks enough rubes will.
• Before the election.
• Selling Obama and softening Socialism. A lesson in staying within bounds.
• America undun.
• Spiritual blackout in America.
• Beyond lying.
• NatSec grifter.
• Maggie's weekly links. 

• Blast trail. 
• Bound to happen.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Thank you, no, I don't want to read Thomas More nor read China Mieville and Ursula LeGuin tell me how fucking wonderful is More's Utopian.
• Translating Bottom's Dream. I have resisted buying so far, but it's Hey Sailoring.
• Speaking of which, hey, Vermont guy: Hey, Sailor!
• The science of earworms? 
• Earworms? How many times have I posted these four?

  
SHROUD OF THE GNOME

James Tate

And what amazes me is that none of our modern inventions

surprise or interest him, even a little. I tell him

it is time he got his booster shots, but then

I realize I have no power over him whatsoever.

He becomes increasingly light-footed until I lose sight

of him downtown between the federal building and

the post office. A registered nurse is taking her

coffee break. I myself needed a break, so I sat down

next to her at the counter. "Don't mind me," I said,

"I'm just a hungry little Gnostic in need of a sandwich."

(This old line of mine had met with great success

on any number of previous occasions.) I thought,

a deaf, dumb, and blind nurse, sounds ideal!

But then I remembered that some of the earliest

Paleolithic office workers also feigned blindness

when approached by nonoffice workers, so I paid my bill

and disappeared down an alley where I composed myself.

Amidst the piles of outcast citizenry and burning barrels

of waste and rot, the plump rats darting freely,

the havoc of blown newspapers, lay the little shroud

of my lost friend: small and gray and threadbare,

windworn by the ages of scurrying hither and thither,

battered by the avalanches and private tornadoes

of just being a gnome, but surely there were good times, too.

And now, rejuvenated by the wind, the shroud moves forward,

hesitates, dances sideways, brushes my foot as if for a kiss,

and flies upward, whistling a little-known ballad

about the pitiful, raw etiquette of the underworld.