another thick air night

The heat has returned.

It's Monday night. Kittens romp. The two bigger ones get snipped in the a.m.

I watched the end of an unfortunate choice of film from the library. Nuts. Streisand. Really ridiculous. But, I dunno. I'd watched the beginning. And, I dunno.

Got to be token dyke today, a little. "Got" not the best choice of word there.

The black kitten just walked across the keyboard and changed the icon for this post to my "on the road" one. What the hell. Stet. It's a good suggestion. My new horoscope says "stop making an extreme sacrifice you've been doing for a long time. The gods no longer demand it of you; it serves no holy purpose; and there's a milder and more useful sacrifice you can make instead." Is the give-it-up sacrifice not getting out of Dodge? Kinda want it to be something else. Moreover, what's the milder and more useful sacrifice? The question is whether to speculate from a place of desire---as one might be said to be doing with interpretation via wishful thinking. Which, I kinda figure, is Brezsny's bread & butter. I mean, that's hypnotism, sussing out what's wanted in the heart, or getting you to suss it out yourself. All the vague (and vaguely deep-sounding) astrologer needs is a reader who wants to be optimistic, despite the myriad reasons one might have not to be.

Speaking of stet (I was speaking of stet up there somewhere): who wants to give a shout-out to scrawlspace, new in these parts? Hello, scrawler. You should check your horoscope. It's a good one this week.

'Sonly droppin' to 72 overnight. Rats. In two days, though, it'll be mild, when I'm outside at a ballgame instead of pretending to work. Er, I mean instead of working my arse off, as I do by the minute all day long when at the office.

What would I play if I were on UREZ, I-95 Radio tonight? Got no music on at all right now. WTF. Let us correct that situation forthwith.

Expression to ponder: ridden roughshod over. To ride over roughshod. Like that one? I rather do.

Alright, I'll play ya'll a song. Or two. Two songs (sort of) about men. But not really. Really it's all about the women. You feel me, sistahzz? (Lemme hear y' say: "Always!")

  .mp3  -->   "A Guy is a Guy" -- Doris Day (1952)
  .mp3  -->   "It Must Be Him" -- Vikki Carr (1966)

(The noise in the Vikki Carr dies down after a bit.) (The Vikki Carr record belonged to my father.) (The Doris Day song is from the second vinyl copy of her Greatest Hits I bought, cuz [Prof.] Bob Day "borrowed" the first one & wouldn't give it back. The bastahd.)

Hey, maybe the unnecessary sacrifice is simply not having high speed internet access. And cable. And a new mattress. And a fixed-up bike. But not air conditioning. No air conditioning is a good sacrifice, I'm pretty sure. Just not so much on a few nights here and there.

Dang. Just remembered again: I kinda need to do the deck. I am so not into doing the deck.

another thick air night

The heat has returned.

It's Monday night. Kittens romp. The two bigger ones get snipped in the a.m.

I watched the end of an unfortunate choice of film from the library. Nuts. Streisand. Really ridiculous. But, I dunno. I'd watched the beginning. And, I dunno.

Got to be token dyke today, a little. "Got" not the best choice of word there.

The black kitten just walked across the keyboard and changed the icon for this post to my "on the road" one. What the hell. Stet. It's a good suggestion. My new horoscope says "stop making an extreme sacrifice you've been doing for a long time. The gods no longer demand it of you; it serves no holy purpose; and there's a milder and more useful sacrifice you can make instead." Is the give-it-up sacrifice not getting out of Dodge? Kinda want it to be something else. Moreover, what's the milder and more useful sacrifice? The question is whether to speculate from a place of desire---as one might be said to be doing with interpretation via wishful thinking. Which, I kinda figure, is Brezsny's bread & butter. I mean, that's hypnotism, sussing out what's wanted in the heart, or getting you to suss it out yourself. All the vague (and vaguely deep-sounding) astrologer needs is a reader who wants to be optimistic, despite the myriad reasons one might have not to be.

Speaking of stet (I was speaking of stet up there somewhere): who wants to give a shout-out to scrawlspace, new in these parts? Hello, scrawler. You should check your horoscope. It's a good one this week.

'Sonly droppin' to 72 overnight. Rats. In two days, though, it'll be mild, when I'm outside at a ballgame instead of pretending to work. Er, I mean instead of working my arse off, as I do by the minute all day long when at the office.

What would I play if I were on UREZ, I-95 Radio tonight? Got no music on at all right now. WTF. Let us correct that situation forthwith.

Expression to ponder: ridden roughshod over. To ride over roughshod. Like that one? I rather do.

Alright, I'll play ya'll a song. Or two. Two songs (sort of) about men. But not really. Really it's all about the women. You feel me, sistahzz? (Lemme hear y' say: "Always!")

  .mp3  -->   "A Guy is a Guy" -- Doris Day (1952)
  .mp3  -->   "It Must Be Him" -- Vikki Carr (1966)

(The noise in the Vikki Carr dies down after a bit.) (The Vikki Carr record belonged to my father.) (The Doris Day song is from the second vinyl copy of her Greatest Hits I bought, cuz [Prof.] Bob Day "borrowed" the first one & wouldn't give it back. The bastahd.)

Hey, maybe the unnecessary sacrifice is simply not having high speed internet access. And cable. And a new mattress. And a fixed-up bike. But not air conditioning. No air conditioning is a good sacrifice, I'm pretty sure. Just not so much on a few nights here and there.

Dang. Just remembered again: I kinda need to do the deck. I am so not into doing the deck.

It's Frank O'Hara's birthday.

Looking for one to post for ya'll... Okay. Seems as if this is as good an idea as any:

Ann Arbor Variations

1
Wet heat drifts through the afternoon
like a campus dog, a fraternity ghost
waiting to stay home from football games.
The arches are empty clear to the sky.

Except for the leaves: those lashes of our
thinking and dreaming and drinking sight.
The spherical radiance, the Old English
look, the sum of our being, "hath perced

to the roote" all our springs and falls
and now rolls over our limpness, a daily
dragon. We lose our health in a love
of color, drown in a fountain of myriads,

as simply as children. It is too hot,
our birth was given up to screaming. Our
life on these street lawns seems silent.
The leaves chatter their comparisons

to the wind and the sky fills up
before we are out of bed. O infinite
our siestas! adobe effigies in a land
that is sick of us and our tanned flesh.

The wind blows towards us particularly
the sobbing of our dear friends on both
coasts. We are sick of living and afraid
that death will not be by water, o sea.

2
Along the walks and shaded ways
pregnant women look snidely at children.
Two weeks ago they were told, in these

selfsame pools of trefoil, "the market
for emeralds is collapsing," "chlorophyll
shines in your eyes," "the sea's misery

is progenitor of the dark moss which hides
on the north side of trees and cries."
What do they think of slim kids now?

and how, when the summer's gong of day
and night slithers towards their sweat
and towards the nest of their arms

and thighs, do they feel about children
whose hides are pearly with days of swimming?
Do they mistake these fresh drops for tears?

The wind works over these women constantly!
trying, perhaps, to curdle their milk
or make their spring unseasonably fearful,

season they face with dread and bright eyes,
The leaves, wrinkled or shiny like apples,
wave women courage and sigh, a void temperature.

3
The alternatives of summer do not remove
us from this place. The fainting into skies
from a diving board, the express train to
Detroit's damp bars, the excess of affection
on the couch near an open window or a Bauhaus
fire escape, the lazy regions of stars, all
are strangers. Like Mayakovsky read on steps
of cool marble, or Yeats danced in a theatre
of polite music. The classroon day of dozing
and grammar, the partial eclipse of the head
in the row in front of the head of poplars,
sweet Syrinx! last out the summer in a stay
of iron. Workmen loiter before urinals, stare
out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds.
And in the morning we whimper as we cook
an egg, so far from fluttering sands and azure!

4
The violent No! of the sun
burns the forehead of hills.
Sand fleas arrive from Salt Lake
and most of the theatres close.

The leaves roll into cigars, or
it seems our eyes stick together
in sleep. O forest, o brook of
spice, o cool gaze of strangers!

the city tumbles towards autumn
in a convulsion of tourists
and teachers. We dance in the dark,
forget the anger of what we blame

on the day. Children toss and murmur
as a rumba blankets their trees and
beckons their stars closer, older, now.
We move o'er the world, being so much here.

It's as if Poseidon left off counting
his waters for a moment! In the fields
the silence is music like the moon.
The bullfrogs sleep in their hairy caves.

across the avenue a trefoil lamp
of the streets tosses luckily.
The leaves, finally, love us! and
moonrise! we die upon the sun.

It's Frank O'Hara's birthday.

Looking for one to post for ya'll... Okay. Seems as if this is as good an idea as any:

Ann Arbor Variations

1
Wet heat drifts through the afternoon
like a campus dog, a fraternity ghost
waiting to stay home from football games.
The arches are empty clear to the sky.

Except for the leaves: those lashes of our
thinking and dreaming and drinking sight.
The spherical radiance, the Old English
look, the sum of our being, "hath perced

to the roote" all our springs and falls
and now rolls over our limpness, a daily
dragon. We lose our health in a love
of color, drown in a fountain of myriads,

as simply as children. It is too hot,
our birth was given up to screaming. Our
life on these street lawns seems silent.
The leaves chatter their comparisons

to the wind and the sky fills up
before we are out of bed. O infinite
our siestas! adobe effigies in a land
that is sick of us and our tanned flesh.

The wind blows towards us particularly
the sobbing of our dear friends on both
coasts. We are sick of living and afraid
that death will not be by water, o sea.

2
Along the walks and shaded ways
pregnant women look snidely at children.
Two weeks ago they were told, in these

selfsame pools of trefoil, "the market
for emeralds is collapsing," "chlorophyll
shines in your eyes," "the sea's misery

is progenitor of the dark moss which hides
on the north side of trees and cries."
What do they think of slim kids now?

and how, when the summer's gong of day
and night slithers towards their sweat
and towards the nest of their arms

and thighs, do they feel about children
whose hides are pearly with days of swimming?
Do they mistake these fresh drops for tears?

The wind works over these women constantly!
trying, perhaps, to curdle their milk
or make their spring unseasonably fearful,

season they face with dread and bright eyes,
The leaves, wrinkled or shiny like apples,
wave women courage and sigh, a void temperature.

3
The alternatives of summer do not remove
us from this place. The fainting into skies
from a diving board, the express train to
Detroit's damp bars, the excess of affection
on the couch near an open window or a Bauhaus
fire escape, the lazy regions of stars, all
are strangers. Like Mayakovsky read on steps
of cool marble, or Yeats danced in a theatre
of polite music. The classroon day of dozing
and grammar, the partial eclipse of the head
in the row in front of the head of poplars,
sweet Syrinx! last out the summer in a stay
of iron. Workmen loiter before urinals, stare
out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds.
And in the morning we whimper as we cook
an egg, so far from fluttering sands and azure!

4
The violent No! of the sun
burns the forehead of hills.
Sand fleas arrive from Salt Lake
and most of the theatres close.

The leaves roll into cigars, or
it seems our eyes stick together
in sleep. O forest, o brook of
spice, o cool gaze of strangers!

the city tumbles towards autumn
in a convulsion of tourists
and teachers. We dance in the dark,
forget the anger of what we blame

on the day. Children toss and murmur
as a rumba blankets their trees and
beckons their stars closer, older, now.
We move o'er the world, being so much here.

It's as if Poseidon left off counting
his waters for a moment! In the fields
the silence is music like the moon.
The bullfrogs sleep in their hairy caves.

across the avenue a trefoil lamp
of the streets tosses luckily.
The leaves, finally, love us! and
moonrise! we die upon the sun.