When All Is Become Billboards

  

• Out of nowhere, I woke up with ▲ Hula in my head.
• My sister-in-law (is that the correct term for my brother-in-law's 2nd wife? not the mother of my not-blood niece and nephew?), yesterday at lunch, in a noisy restaurant, wanted to scream about Trump. Aren't I terrified both morally and practically? We were at Black Market Inn in Garrett Park, one of many expensive and mediocre restaurants owned by Jeff Black (Old Dirty Bama - are you here? - can tell Jeff Black stories), with one saving grace - it's next to a busy railroad. Before I could continue not answering her demands, a long freight barreled by, by the time it passed so had the conversation. 
• So I didn't have to say, motherfucking Obama, motherfucking Democrats: Obama the candidate ran on allowing bankruptcy judges to cut balances on primary mortgages; Obama’s administration actively whipped against the policy. Obama’s transition team earmarked up to $100 billion in funds appropriated through Bush’s bank bailout to mitigate foreclosures; eight years later only around $21 billion has been spent. Obama the president promised 4 million mortgage modifications; to date less than a million have been successfully achieved. No Republican sign-off was necessary for Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Treasury Department alone decided to run it through mortgage companies that had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. Treasury never saw the program as a relief vehicle, but a way to “foam the runway” for the banks, allowing them to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly. Homeowners were the foam being crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario, squeezed for as many payments as possible before ultimately losing their homes.
• Here was to be a video of a train shot after lunch as we were standing outside the restaurant saying goodbye, it works beautifully and in full screen on Windows Media, is cropped and shitty in youtube, so..... 
• Light from another world.
• Mourning has broken.
• Teaser and the Firecat (1971) was one of the first albums I bought with my own money, I was eleven, I bought it at Zayres, corner of Veirs Mill and Randolph. It's a giant Asian grocery store now.
• On Syria, use your own principles.
• It's my indoctrination.
• We are all trolls.
• A no-nonsense Machiavelli.
• Against fake paradox.
• The Trumptini.
• XTC history.
• Dan reviews another novelist I've never heard of. Past experience has taught me to check the novelist out.
• Charles Olson was born 106 years ago today.
• As the Dead Prey Upon Us.
• Maximus, to Himself.

I, MAXIMUS OF GLOUCESTER, TO YOU

Charles Olson

Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood   

                                        jewels & miracles, I, Maximus

                                        a metal hot from boiling water, tell you   

                                        what is a lance, who obeys the figures of   

                                        the present dance

1

the thing you’re after

may lie around the bend

of the nest (second, time slain, the bird! the bird!

And there! (strong) thrust, the mast! flight

                                                                  (of the bird

                                                                  o kylix, o

                                                                  Antony of Padua

                                                                  sweep low, o bless

the roofs, the old ones, the gentle steep ones

on whose ridge-poles the gulls sit, from which they depart,

                                                                  And the flake-racks

of my city!

2

love is form, and cannot be without   

important substance (the weight

say, 58 carats each one of us, perforce   

our goldsmith’s scale

                                           feather to feather added

                                           (and what is mineral, what

                                           is curling hair, the string

                                           you carry in your nervous beak, these

                                           make bulk, these, in the end, are   

                                           the sum

                                           (o my lady of good voyage

                                           in whose arm, whose left arm rests   

no boy but a carefully carved wood, a painted face, a schooner!   

a delicate mast, as bow-sprit for

                                                      forwarding

3

the underpart is, though stemmed, uncertain   

is, as sex is, as moneys are, facts!

facts, to be dealt with, as the sea is, the demand

that they be played by, that they only can be, that they must   

be played by, said he, coldly, the

ear!

By ear, he sd.

But that which matters, that which insists, that which will last,

that! o my people, where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you listen

when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?

when even our bird, my roofs,   

cannot be heard

when even you, when sound itself is neoned in?

when, on the hill, over the water

where she who used to sing,

when the water glowed,   

black, gold, the tide   

outward, at evening

when bells came like boats   

over the oil-slicks, milkweed   

hulls

And a man slumped,   

attentionless,

against pink shingles

o sea city)

4

one loves only form,

and form only comes

into existence when

the thing is born

                           born of yourself, born

                           of hay and cotton struts,

                           of street-pickings, wharves, weeds   

                           you carry in, my bird

                                                            of a bone of a fish   

                                                            of a straw, or will   

                                                            of a color, of a bell   

                                                            of yourself, torn

5

love is not easy

but how shall you know,

New England, now

that pejorocracy is here, how

that street-cars, o Oregon, twitter

in the afternoon offend

a black-gold loin?

                              how shall you strike,

                              o swordsman, the blue-red black   

                              when, last night, your aim

                              was mu-sick, mu-sick, mu-sick   

                              And not the cribbage game?

                                                          (o Gloucester-man,   

                                                          weave

                                                          your birds and fingers   

                                                          new, your roof-tops,   

                                                          clean shit upon racks   

                                                          sunned on

                                                          American

                                                          braid

                                                          with others like you, such   

                                                          extricable surface   

                                                          as faun and oral,   

                                                          satyr lesbos vase

                                                          o kill kill kill kill kill   

                                                          those

                                                          who advertise you   

                                                          out)

6

in! in! the bow-sprit, bird, the beak

in, the bend is, in, goes in, the form

that which you make, what holds, which is

the law of object, strut after strut, what you are, what you must be, what   

the force can throw up, can, right now hereinafter erect,

the mast, the mast, the tender

mast!

                              The nest, I say, to you, I Maximus, say

                              under the hand, as I see it, over the waters

                              from this place where I am, where I hear,

                              can still hear

                              from where I carry you a feather   

                              as though, sharp, I picked up

                              in the afternoon delivered you

                              a jewel,

                                             it flashing more than a wing,   

                              than any old romantic thing,

                              than memory, than place,

                              than anything other than that which you carry   

                              than that which is,

                              call it a nest, around the head of, call it   

                              the next second

                              than that which you   

                              can do!