How to Get Kisses from Your Adolescent Daughters

Put the girls to bed
reading Christian Morgenstern
for first time in years.

With Every Steamboat Like a Hymn

Josh Ritter show last night in Baltimore. Really amazing. His band has gotten even bigger--huge swinging grooves swelling up under what are essentially folk songs. And he now has so many songs, so many words to know, and just stands at the mic and pours them out in torrents. It's an experience of being near the Source, and you leave looking at things--especially clouds and trees and wind--as more news from the Source. Everything comes out and takes shape for a while.

Looking around the audience, thinking about who I saw in DC last year. There are now young finance guys chatting about old-school video games they can now get as iphone apps, and there are more teen girls with their palms held to the lights. A few hungry swimmers like me, of course, looking reverent and studious. And more than a few shining faces waiting for lines that are close to motherlanguage for them, although they might not think of it that way--faces that wait and then sit in the sweet downbeat of a moment, and maybe look thoughtful for a second and then let the next phrase and the next take them to places they've forgotten again.

Something Else About True

I said something to
you, and it wasn't that great
but oh you heard me.

The Invention of Public Trading

I make widgets and
you sell them. Two more levels,
we got a country.

This Is About That Other Haiku of Yours About What You Know

Yeah. Plus you end up
a nearly constant PR
problem for Knowing.

Advice from a Father to His Son the Drone Pilot

Do your killing at
the end of a pole, arc, or
eye-beam, soft cherub.

This is About Getting Old

What you finally know
you can't just lay out in prose.
It must be hidden.

Bustin' Outta the Paddock

I think I might soon
rear up on my hind legs and
do some real damage.

Too Much Capital

Is there a more sin-
ister pair of words in Eng-
lish than Master Plan?

Luv da Wun Yer Wiv.

Householder, father,
mismanager of time and
money: I love you!

Pensando de Ti, Juarez.

I spent three Sunday
hours in my chair in dread. My
girls are in the world.

Tres horas hoy las
pase sentado en temor.
Mis hijas n'el mundo.

Uneasy Weekend Alone

What if the one love,
the one I love, the one I...
dies before I do?

Epitaph for Ciudad Juarez

When I was hungry
the world made complete sense. But
now I am so old.

Hai Way

Or Why Policy Wonks Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen

Asphalt and mountains.
Dharma infrastructure in
The spotless rearview.

Hai Finance

My credit rating
Is almost enough to keep
Me counting syllables.

Who Really Writes Like This Anyway?

Dude. What does this mean? It showed up in my e-mail from someone named Tu Xiao Fang, whom I have reason to believe I at some point knew:

〈雅典集會場中的帝國建築與修辭〉見麻省理工學院論文

V.

Prayer

God of Jacob!
I know you can hear me!
Odysseus!
I know you cheated death
and have crossed my path.
I need you now!

You see, I am dying.
I am not smart enough
to do my work with all
these distractions
and encumbrances.
I need some of what you got.

Some of that wrestling juju.
Some of that mendacious charm.
Some of that fancy-footed
ability to make a deal
while the sink's full of dishes
and the sun is shining
and the kids're failing math.
Some of that cock-sure strut,
like wearing yellow without
my pink skin crawling with shame.

God! Last with me this work day!
Odysseus! C'mon, brother!
I really need you! I shit you not!
I can't bend this bow! I can't
get past the one-eyed merciless
sentry of government! I can't
get my shit together! I really
want to DO something!

If you two could just take
a break from whatever God-like
administration or avventura or
whatever you're doing and
help me get the dishes done,
or rain fire on my enemies,
or go to bat for me at the I.R.
fucking S. I would be able
to get something meaningful
done before I die.

Please!

Amen.

Love, Van. You know my number,
or how to find it.

Haiku

Speak softly this line.
Inhale, exhale, then go on
crescendo. The end.

Haiku

Brevity injects
significance into a
falling plum blossom.

Hike-ooh!

Snow falls on cedars
and some jackass looks out his
window and just dies.

A Coupla/three Quick Observations from this Dark Corner of the American Experiment

For purposes of undermining the current madness, corporations should be regarded as functionally a branch of government.

Self-love is completely beyond me; I assume I am just about average in this way. Maybe attentive self-care can stand in. (I'm partly thinking of really cool cowboy boots, here.)

Most people work backwards from basic stories to some notion of which facts are relevant. Someone should start a website called Facts Without Conclusions. It would make available various sorts of schemes for correlating the governments/corporations/policies that control a place and the circumstances that prevail there: how well people are living and who's responsible. This may be incredibly naive. But you know.

There is some pounding in my synapses like the sturdy framing of a good house or the flicking-to-life of the bic lighter of a star. I think love may have connected me to the universe in some small way.

Work opens onto work.

Friendship is really really good.