Beat Baby #05 - Magic Carpet

Here's the latest in the adventures of Beat Baby and Hep. This episode took a long winding path to the fourth frame but it's finally done.

Open book

Everybody needs someone to hold a little hope for them. Valentine's day in Reno.
Who do you love?

Night without candles

White Owl by asha

_________________________________________________

A STORY
by Czeslaw Milosz

Now I will tell Meader's story; I have a moral in view.
He was pestered by a grizzly so bold and malicious
That he used to snatch caribou meat from the eaves of the cabin.
Not only that. He ignored men and was unafraid of fire.
One night he started battering the door
And broke the window with his paw, so they curled up
With their shotguns beside them, and waited for the dawn.
He came back in the evening, and Meader shot him at close range,
Under the left shoulder blade. Then it was jump and run,
And a real storm of a run: a grizzly, Meader says,
Even when he's been hit in the heart, will keep running
Until he falls down. Later, Meader found him
By following the trail—and then he understood
What lay behind the bear's odd behavior:
Half of the beast's jaw was eaten away by an abscess, and caries.
Toothache, for years. An ache without comprehensible reason,
Which often drives us to senseless action
And gives us blind courage. We have nothing to lose,
We come out of the forest, and not always with the hope
That we will be cured by some dentist from heaven.

Berkeley, 1969

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Czeslaw Milosz poetry

Bush Republicans

Howdy Doodie contemplates his navel.

This story from Huffingtonpost defines tilt. When asked by C-SPAN this morning how "(George W.) Bush Republicans would be defined, and what images the phrase "Bush Republican" might summon for future generations" Howdy Doodie replied, "Compassionate conservatism. I made a name by being compassionate". This guy is a psychopath. It's that simple. America and now the world is being held hostage by a group of psychopaths, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzalez etc. etc., and Bush is their Howdy Doodie star power who thinks he has a hot line to God when actually that "hot" line is ham head Cheney's fist up his ass.







compassionate conservative Bush Republicans C-SPAN GOP

Invisible Theatre

The Invisible Theatre has new digs. They moved from a shelf onto the new table. It is a tiny island at this point but, with a little luck, will continue to develop. Everyone here is quite excited about it.









Monsieur La Chance and Lucky Pierre have been backstage all afternoon gossiping and watching the goings on. They are quite pleased with these latest developments. All in all, slow as it's been, my office is finally beginning to shape up.

And the rain finally came, days late, but last night it rained the whole night through.

Cheney's 16 words

"The + British + Government + has + learned + that + Saddam + Hussein  + recently + sought + significant + quantities + of +  uranium + from + Africa." = BIG LIE by Dick Cheney as Vice-President of the United States.



Check out this haunting little video by Margo Guryan called 16 Words. These are the 16 words Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney's used to lie us into an unnecessary, unjust, unstabilizing, unending war with the Middle East. My hat is off to Margo Guryan. The creepy melody and disturbing words have an onomatopoetic quality, mimicking the hypnotic repetition of the macabre nature of Cheney's message, personality, high crimes and treason.

16 Words

Given that it just came out in the Libby trial that Cheney ordered the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press, this little video is especially timely. Did Dirty Dick hypnotize Dummy Bush? I agree with Dr. Knight on this one. No need.



Dick Cheney 16 words Plame affair Bush Administration leaker treason

The news and weather

We live always among bewildering contradictions; beginnings/endings, love/hate, life/death, pain/joy, evil/compassion. Too many to name. Try as it will to resolve them, the mind is no match. That path is followed best by the heart. Herbie the calf and Perky the duck lucked out. Both were rescued and loved by the very people who, on another day would, more likely, have killed and eaten them both.



I suppose by now just about everyone has heard about Perky. She's the duck who was shot, dragged by a dog, hung upside down and left for dead in a kitchen refrigerator for two days until the hunter's wife noticed Perky look up at her when she opened the door.

Herbie's story is not as well known...

Part 1 - Wild in Newark

Part 2 - Escape and capture

Part 3 - Herbie's happy ending

And now for the weather...
It's two days late but the rain has finally arrived here in Nevada and the air is hung with the smell of wet, sweet sweet sage.

Bathtub bass

There's a bass fiddle in my bathtub...
It used to belong to Lee's old bebop beatnik dad. He gave it to us a couple of years ago, keep or sell, after replacing it with a smaller, Chinese bass, easier to play given his advanced arthritis. We took it to LA and got it appraised. That's it. It's been in the bathtub ever since. I tried to interest Roy in buying it the other day. He just purchased a lovely fender deluxe and thought he might like a mellow, old, hand-made German bass to go along with it but he claims he's "lookin' to start smaller -- maybe a fiddle in a sink. Or castanets in a teacup." I wish someone would buy the damn thing. I want to take a bath. Let me know if you're interested. We'll make you a helluva deal. Otherwise I suppose I could try Craig's List.

As for the rain, the icons lied. Second day, nice steely gray sky but not a drop.

Rain rain and the second-hand queen

Roy has a Word of the Day widget from Free Dictionary on his blog and it included a fantastic image in the usage example for today's word Apiary, second-hand queen. Lovely, innit? And an intriguing subject for a poem.

The weather icons tell me to expect rain for the next few days here in Gardnerville, Nevada. Excellent. We need it. It hasn't rained hard for months and the neighbor's roofs are dotted with bird poop. When I lived in Oregon I came to count on the rain. Spill your coffee on the sidewalk? No problem. Bird poop, vomit, spit. Who cares? The rain will tidy everything up. But not here. Not in the desert. Spit on the sidewalk. Look at it for months. So ... rain, rain come and play / wash the bird poop all away.

Gardnerville, NV

41°F Scattered Clouds Wind: N at 6 mph Humidity: 40%

Today

56° | 30°
Thu

50° | 33°

Fri

49° | 33°

Sat

52° | 33°

Mid week and half way there

In case you're wondering, my office hasn't devoured me ... yet ... if only because I have been too busy elsewhere. One thing or the another has been requiring my attention every since Friday so I am still stalled half way though the Great Office Intervention of 2007 but it's life as usual outside my window. The birds drop by just after seven for breakfast, take off for a while then return to see what new goodies have magically appeared. This week's special has been blobs of potato mushed with peanut butter and veggie shortening served along with the usual sprinkling of peanuts. Yum. The pigeons don't eat it but they love dawdling in the ice cold bird bath.

As far as my office goes, simply by moving the two file cabinets together and switching a couple of tables around things are much improved. According to a quick search on office Feng Shui, I should probably put my computer in the north or west sector of the room in order to "enhance creativity" but then I wouldn't be able to look out at the Bird Park and even the thought makes me feel trapped and desperate. I'll have to struggle along in the south east corner, although I'm happy to report that my smaller poetry desk is still against the west wall. So much the ancient arts. I'm not going to move any more furniture but I still have a lot of stuff to put away. That will take some doing. I've got to finish up though. The whole point is to make a more efficient work space. Projects languish.

Office report

I took a first pass at reorganizing my office today and I must say, it went pretty well. I moved the two file cabinets together. That left the drawing table without a place for the night but tomorrow I'll wedge that in somewhere too.

In this mad effort to reclaim myself from the mess I'm in, I thought the following poem by Gregory Corso especially suitable for the evening. I heard him read it in the winter of 1981 at the Fifth Annual Santa Cruz Poetry Festival not long after I left the Krsna Movement. It was a weekend event. Baraka, Acker, Ferlinghetti, Rothenberg, Kaufman, di Prima, Reed, Corso, William Everson, Micheline, John Chance, Wanda Coleman, Country Joe McDonald were there among many others. It was pretty insane but wonderful. I had been in the movement many years so I was still reeling from having just thrown God and Truth and Hope and all the rest of it out my window. Actually, I didn't throw Them out the window. I jumped. Anyway, I always liked that Corso ran downstairs and caught Beauty before she hit the ground. Then sent her on her way.

The Whole Mess ... Almost

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

- Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso poetry