Truly Outrageous

from Bear Stories

When we are in bed and you are on top of me, I think about the painting of the bear hanging over the great stone fireplace. I say to myself, bear, tell me a story about your tooth and your hide, about the three dogs that bare their teeth, and about the one dog that is so brave, he takes your flank in his jaw and hangs from it. Bear, tell me about the time it takes to put a sweater on. I want to know what it means to lie down empty. And bear answers, I have always been ashamed. I put on fish skin. They sometimes call the bear a lonely monk. The bear’s habitat is the gorge, the tree, the cleft of rock. If you open the bear’s stomach, you will find a rubber doll and a piece of canvas. I tap my upper and lower eye-teeth together. I refuse to eat. You laid yourself beside me, and I realized I was cold in my hairless skin. I wear wool in the rain so I will smell like bear, so that she will kiss my shoulder as I kiss the wood of our cabin walls.

-J’Lyn Chapman

Sometimes celebrities creep me out.

As if politicians’ empty platitudes weren’t alienating enough, I get to watch ScarJo recite some of them with her face set to its ‘intense’ setting.  And I am not even touching will.i.am.  May I remind you that this is the man responsible for the song ‘Let’s Get Retarded’?

Okay, it’s only fair for somebody to make a gross Clinton video now so I can ridicule that too. 

For Example, A Flower

We are protected from so much pain. For example: graves.
The earth’s roots and brown-black blood are busy

covering the soft, violated bodies of our loves.
Death is a secret, and the rain with its many hands

washes off the streets to the gutters death’s thick surprise.
The automatic shutter of the eye never fails,

the courtesies of the tongue. What goes on in the rooms of houses
is guarded from us by the hardwood doors,

the carefully closed windows. Whatever was said or done,
night will come, eagerly, to clean up.

And death will shield us, in time,
from the sun’s megalithic promise:

Tomorrow, the same day.
Tomorrow, the same day.

For example: A flower
is the most beautiful lie.

–Arkaye Kierulf

BFP’s at it again over at La Chola, thinking she can backdoor-bully me into reading Harry Potter by putting some doofus wizard named Dumbledore up against The Bestest Wizard in the History of Time AKA Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.  How embarrassing for her. Stop by, weigh in and check out petit “hoffa” poussin in action.  

The Brain to the Heart

Stars tied to breath
don’t have to be there
when you look.
No more than drops
of blood on ginkgo
leaves & inconsequential

eggs & frog spittle
clinging to damp grass.
Sure, I’ve seen doubts
clustered like peacock
eyes flash green fire.
So what?

When days are strung together,
the hourglass fills
with worm’s dirt.
What do you take
the brain for? I know
how hard you work

in that dark place, but
I can’t be tied down
to shadows of men
in trenches you won’t
forget.  You look at
a mulberry leaf

like a silkworm does, with all your insides,
but please don’t ask me to be responsible.

-Yusef Komunyakaa

I voted for Hillary Clinton in California’s primary on Tuesday.

Why? Not because I want to draw a line in the sand, not because I want to make Obama into some sort of devil. It’s easy to overlook the deeply personal reasons we choose to support one candidate or the other for president, but I’ll put mine out there. I want a woman in the White House — now, not later. And for that, I am willing to take a lot of shit.

I’m not willing, though, to turn on folks who think differently, who are maybe a little less (more?) cynical than me in reference to policy decisions or political machinery.

For instance, when Sylvia writes:

There are problematic aspects with both Clinton and Obama on foreign policy issues, on health care issues, on fostering unity within the United States, and on creating a content and productive country over the next four years.

But you know what? Those are the stakes involved, not Hillary’s vagina or Obama’s brown skin. (Or his middle name, for that matter.)

To the contrary; I see exactly where she’s coming from. If I didn’t believe that Clinton could do the job — if I didn’t have some strong reasons, personal experience being one of them, to think that some of her more loathsome decisions are in fact what’s enabled her to get this far, and that anything less would mean she would not be a plausible Democratic candidate today — I would say the same thing.

Here’s my problem. I’ve cast my vote, but I’m not going to start spewing faulty logic like one minority’s time has come and it should come before another’s. But let’s take a deep breath before we start comparing Clinton — whatever her networks are — with Dick Cheney and his paranoia. Both of those divisive editorials were published in the same newspaper and have gotten plenty of attention. Is this really the level of discourse we’re working with?

What are we gaining here? Why was that last, ‘cordial’ debate between Clinton and Obama seen as such a snore? I will never argue for a lack of disagreement or accountability, but here’s something exciting. People who do not vote, or who are voting for the first time, people who are switching their party to Democrat to vote for one candidate or the other (I saw a woman switch from Libertarian at my polling place!) — they’re excited. They’re motivated. Let’s not lose these folks before November.

Please, continue to point out the differences, continue to discuss your motivations one way or the other, but don’t tell me that if your candidate isn’t top billing on the ticket you won’t vote at all. My question for you: how do we have this discussion in a way that really builds what we want our next president to accomplish? (If you’re already having that discussion, and I’m missing it, please let me know.)

Ponder, if you will, one parathetical aside from the NYTimes review of There Will Be Blood:

(Like most of the finest American directors working now, Mr. Anderson makes little on-screen time for women.)

That sentence; the film itself; the fact that I now work in a traditionally male-dominated field whose goals for growth and models for success are based on the lifestyles of ambitious unattached men; and while we’re at it, the total eager anticipation of every mainstream, hell, alternative, you-name-it media outlet eager for some sort of Hillary vs Obama deathmatch; blame them for what’s coming.

All you motherfuckers:  get ready. 

Imagine, Refugee

Dream blood, dream red, dream.
The r and then the ea and the dm.
Let the letters ride there, then subtract it.
The roof of a shelter, the grandeur
of smoke, a sun print on a rocket.

I have come to the border town.
Take away the I and put it in a shelter dream,
now fill it up with bullets, now dream
bull. Now take the b out of it which is
the engine that makes it go.

There’s a baby in a basket. There’s a burning
basket lullabye. You know the words.
The words are mixed with the soil when
the soil is lifted with a shovel.

Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes
whose bodies dream oo’s and ah’s,
of fireworks branching out in the sky
on holiday, pots and pans clanging,
children playing by dawn, a dream
nailed down to a box.

–Tina Chang

My response is forthcoming, Ms. Amazon… but in the meantime…

‘Tis the season, so consider this a special Christmas dedication to the motto ‘But — let’s just support each other!’ and all the damn fools on the Internet who believe in that shit like Santa Claus. (See Sudy’s video for clarification on how that ’support’ turns out, if you’re not clear.)

*[Please go here if the above video is slow to load/shitty quality.]

Where the hell is Toni Braxton?!

I’m serious.  I need a deep, sultry voice on my hip-hop/R&B station.  Alicia Blah Blah and Rihanna Umbrella are not doing it for me.  My other question:  why did no one ever writeToni a decent single?  I think that’s probably related to the answer to my first question.