Three New Arts!

I was reading over a fellow bus passenger's shoulder yesterday and noticed an article entitled, "If Black English isn't English, then What is it?" So, the first New Art I would like to propose (it was the NY Times, no shit) is:

1. Black (or any other form of) English or any other Language, Ever

When God made Christmas trees and us to adore them She/He/Nature/It/That entitled within us a knowledge of the past and future, by which we became alerted to the need to communicate what was/will be bad and what was/ought to be Good. What we call "language" is really simply a means of communication, and people(s) do it differently, depending blah blah blah snort scratch sniff, whereby it is an Art, not merely a source of Study. Merry Christmas!

Accompanying the Art of Language is -

2. The Art of Work

Work is accomplished in anticipation of future rewards or in reaction to past annoyances. Like language, there are many kinds of work to take up your time. Jobs are everywhere in today's Yuletide where communication and or persuasion or resentment are at a premium, so grab a shovel and dig it, 'cause you're flipping time instead of words and THAT is an art, pally.

Staying personal with conclusions, I propose a final New Art:

3. Weight-loss

May I share? If you stop eating, your metabolism slows to that of a snow cone; if you exercise too much, your body will seize up and veto fat burn. Rather, try a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Mix and match. Let moderation be your by-word, and lay off the ice cream. Weight loss is an art.

Like Folks and Fire

Several items vie for the top spot on today's agenda.

No one - and I mean NO one - works as hard as the ladies of professional rodeo.

Sortes Virgilium works as it did 30-odd years ago. It is I think my one remaining superstition and I would be hard-pressed to believe that you or God or his kid would hold it against me to be astitioned in this way. I interpret the results to indicate that I am advised to proceed as the Rutulians did, to battle as if the way were clear. This makes perfect sense as goodness knows {to mix metaphors} that I am my own barbed wire over the Belgian farmers' field of poetic conjecture, and am self-foretold that short of perfection there can only be a perfect futility. Fucking Virgil. Pre-Christian, causality-blind, bleating son-of-a bitch.

With a new manuscript comes a new though echoing silence. New, for it is birthed with hope; echoing, for I am the master of the time and place of its death.

With time comes understand and with understanding comes bafflement.

Let those who are in doubt visit Pendleton at the time of Round-Up, where prior to the Battles of the final Twelves, there will be the fly-by of the F-15's at an altitude that would strain credulity - first 4 - then 2, then 2, whereupon you will be glad they are yours, and vice versa.

Being of a piece is all I can manage for I cannot control what you imagine from your desk or front porch or what you will say tomorrow or the next day. I am largely incapable, in the classical sense of the word, halitosis.

I believe - meaning, I can only fully endorse or comprehend {though I can understand so, so, so much more} - poems and such that give every indication that they would provide themselves as apparent-in-themselves to intelligent readers now, 1000 or more years from now, and 1000 or more years past - either that or poems or friends, for I am still beating. In other words, Horace is our competition - always has been, always will be. I have seen nothing in the way of local or global critical or anecdotal information that persuades me otherwise. I of course am a pathetic case, having no job in writing, so I have no cause to cure. This may all be pathetic, which may be perfectly right.

Philosophy can be trusted only when uttered under duress, or in verse and absent considerateness.

I cannot recall a philospher whose signal works were not produced except under duress or, in a real sense, against their wishes.

I have noticed that writings about music are often a kind of evidence of something gone wrong, for ecstasy is a virtue among the thieves of virtue.

Another, a fifteenth book. Lord, do with me what you will. I am true to my failings and punctual at that. I see that those who know me smile at last as if having held back. You are entitled to do the same.

Toast and Butter

Capitalism and Christianity are not the problem. Your problems are the problem. Your questions and discussions, leading inevitably to repetitions in the form of indictments, are diacritical placebos intended toward substitutive feelings - a play, a pathos - not thought, not change.


The pathetic is neither contributory nor illusive. Small minds, small temperaments batter each each in the streets over a crust of bread, a stick of firewood, and eventually find themselves an empty doorway to settle in for the night. Your speeches reflect some inner condition. They do not share, they do not stick.


Let's say you have fallen from childhood and shattered - so the world appears in parts. This much you accept from our capacity to set a thing aside and discuss its merits and drawbacks. But you go one step further and demand change, even eradication, not as one who has outgrown his condition, but as a mouse might wish a world devoid of cats.


Poor mouse. The cats are here to stay. Real progress is personal. Solve yourself and word will spread.

How to Change a Tire: Part III

No one who reads these words or who reads those of one who has read them will be anything other than a person already initiated into and likely irretrievably condemned to the strange practice of caring for unnecessary things. I do not question words, or language, but I wonder at the authenticity of the motives of the person or persons expressing themselves on any occasion, for any practical or impractical reason. Using the tools I have, I examine whether the blanket covers the body.

For all the pain and trouble visited on the Initiates into Unnecessary Things over the past however many years, you would think we ourselves would abandon the language of purity. But, no, for there is always it seems a newer, purer purity suggesting itself. The purity may be a politics of care; a poetics of sound; a family of agreement; a lifestyle of Green. What I do is position myself - socially, of course, for no one is Alone - in a kind of teleologically spinning armchair where my morning coffee, the newspaper, my mental notes, the cruelties of my family, and the sayings and perorations of a thousand acquaintances are as at my mental fingertips. When I speak, I speak through the filter of the pure, so that what emerges from my mouth is right, honest, and interesting. I cannot help but reflect that which has absorbed me, for I am above all else fair & kind, and am determined to leave nothing behind that will incriminate me or suggest selfish motives.

Where I am silent, I have spared you; where I raise a fuss - laugh along with me! Freedom is nothing if not conversation.

The sounds we make, taken as a force of nature, have a meaning as demonstrating a departure from silence. I am skeptical of all content; I am fond of any form. A sound created in form indicates a source which has come to the foreground with open hands, as it were. I appreciate that effort. I am prepared to match movement with movement - to duel: my understanding, your message. Form announces itself through form. I am instantly provided with a subject: the form of the message. What the message provides I may care for today, or tomorrow, or neither.

I have heard many messages and retained those that mattered. A novel form indicates another auditor who potentially recognizes what I do: that the human imprint on the message is what gives content meaning.

Form instantly imprints and conveys. I show up, time and time again, offering box-shaped poems because I offer box-shaped poems. You may like the poems - but don't let yourself be fooled. The form is my true offering. It is not pure, but it is true.