Books and Literature

Key? Mo’ Therapy.

Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

We have to deal with the cancer that is mental
health. Good thoughts are gumming up the works,
and happiness immiserates both saints and jerks
who each require more than incidental
misery: a boo-boo healed, a gentle
word from mother, love, a job with perks—
they rob from noble nature; they’re the Turks
at our Vienna: foreign, oriental,
bearing a better-ordered civilization
with running water, daily baths, and prayer
and poetry: what worth are we if all
that we expect from life in this great nation
is to be clothed and fed without a fair
good chance of dying in a shooting in a mall?

d/dx(Q)

Books and Literature, Economy, Education, Media, Poetry, Science, The Life of the Mind

I’ve told this story before, but in 2008
I applied to be a scooper at an ice cream stand
with a BA from a top-25 school in hand,
a CV on paper of excellent gloss and weight,
a skill for conflating absolute change and rate
that the shift manager did not seem to understand—
his media diet and his clearly poor command
of slope curve derivations. . .—well, as fate
would have it I was one of maybe 50
applicants, sweating from the coolers’ hot
exhaust: a normal joe, a working slob,
although I wore a tie, unlike these shifty
untucked teens—it was an interview, not
some joke, my god. I didn’t get the job.

Kind of Blew

Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

How sad that perceptions so quickly tri-
umph over truth in our decadent culture. This
most woeful outcome breeds small minds that miss
the hives’ swarmed thought for each buzzed bee, the fly
for the ointment: asks not cui bono, only why?—
but it was good for me, side eye, chef’s kiss,
a modern man’s best bet at benefice,
small favor from great fortunes’ wont to buy
their best bets before the betting line
is set—and then, mere parlay, placed across
polls’ standard deviations, law’s whereas
and wherefores, interest rates, and chance, divine
disfavor, foreign intervention, Jews, Hamas,
life’s rhythms, Adolph’s watercolors, jazz.

Angelus Not Us

Books and Literature, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

The blast killing hundreds at a hospital
in Gaza is deeply wrong. I grieve for each
non-actor whose non-action I impeach;
blown up and blasted down, a miracle
of sorts, that it’s occurred without a little
human help at all—no thought nor speech
preceded it; mere happenstance in breach
of all intent or cause: what noncommittal
form of fraught effect could bring into
this universe of action something no
human being has witnessed yet: kaboom!
without a bomb preceding it, and blew
that backwards angel outta here, although
an aide could swear it cried: “Please, read the room!”

Bourbon, Dynasty

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Media, Poetry, The Life of the Mind

If not to the manor born, at least to come
screeching up its drive at middle-age:
considered by your compeers as a kind of sage
for putting into writing something dumb
that the unworthy rich would think a rule of thumb;
one thinks, that though one doesn’t earn a wage
but squawks instead for money from the lecture stage,
invests it with his friends, and takes the proceeds from
an arbitrage of rates and fluctuations
that he is nonetheless not of the sort
who could or ought to call himself a mas-
ter of the universe, ennobled, blessed by nations
and kings: he’d sell himself a little short:
He is, in fact, the upper middle class.

Unetanah Tokef

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Justice, Media, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind

I screwed up. I should not have written
that tweet. I probably should not write
any tweets, but I was soused and smitten

with a half-formed joke: the awkward mitten
of a child-drawn hand; the wan fluorescent light
flattered it, but I should not have written,

although the word’s the sea, and I its Britain
borne imperially sunward, brave and bright
and soused on gin, humble, never self-smitten,

self-ruled and able to admit hard-bitten
lessons such as: if you think you might
tweet aforeflight, you should not have written,

for you’ll land, and scroll, and, panic-stricken,
walk it back, unmarry it, make light:
guys, dear readers, I was drunk and smitten

with one bon mot that hung there like the kitten
in the poster: Oh Lord! I pray to make it right:
the book of life is not yet sealed, though written:
number me among the living, not the smitten.

Hella Roma

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind

A new social media trend where women ask
their men how often they think of ancient Rome,
its aqueducts and baths and concrete domes,
its wars and slaves and plays and funeral masks,
amphorae and Mary the Jewess’ flasks,
hillside temples and haunted catacombs,
naval battles and horsey hippodromes,
reveals a gender shocked by simple facts:
their mundane husbands rarely dream of sex;
they contemplate instead cement and lye,
the Tarquins, Carthage, Nero, Christ’s own rood,
Lucretia’s rape to Peter’s pontifex,
triremes, floating bridges, Caesar’s die—
in short, dominae meae, they are dudes.

Snoozin’ Sontag

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Education, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, The Life of the Mind

I have determined that generation Z
doesn’t believe in criticism of any kind;
they haven’t the discipline or habit of mind;
their brains are poisoned by too much irony.
None of the foregoing applies, of course, to me.
I only read text that’s found between the lines
and ferment images as grands crus wines
derive from simple grapes. They flee from me,
these stupid kids, these motherfucking geeks;
they won’t pull up their pants; they won’t improve;
they do not say their daily affirmations;
O Muse! in whose once mighty song one seeks
interpretations enough to fill a Louvre
with the prized wall texts of all the modern nations!

Oh, Yay!

Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Education, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, The Life of the Mind, War and Politics

Amid the attacks on the 2023
SCOTUS term I started reading the
significant decisions, and: I liked them, duh.
It’s true they don’t pertain at all to me:
I haven’t got a womb, and I am free
from past discrimination’s algebra
of sundown’s trade for safety, inshallah;
I am not married, but could always be.
Hysterics is the art of wanting more
than past tradition binds to boundaries now
so well-won, worn, and granted they are no
more needed: what present-sounding horror
can cakeless fags, and Blacks, and pregnant sows
claim that’s worse than my discomfort, bro?

Fishers of Men

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Economy, Justice, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion, The Life of the Mind, Uncategorized, War and Politics

As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.

–Justice Samuel Alito

And I was asked whether I would like to fly
there in a seat that, as far as I
am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.
O! Pale Alaskan sky! O! noctivagant
permafrosted critics of the fourth estate
who would tear down the stars to punish great,
deserving men: dear honest, worthy friend
I barely know—Temerity! to send
to me, mere umpire, damned and stinking sulphurous
lists of did I this? or did I that?—
What man, born under Christ’s blood-borne domain,
his rod in hand, a Peter, under fulgurous
flashing sky, would let some man-shaped rat
inquire about pecuniary gain?