Friday, December 30, 2016

Rodak's Writings: Irresolution - a poem

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Irresolution

I keep putting it off,
more afraid of approaching
the retail counter
than of standing before the Throne.

Afraid of watching human opinion
form like a time-lapse crystal.
Not this week, then, after all.
No.

Wait a month: new money’s coming in.
You’ll go out and do it then,
as surely as an island girl
goes down to pee in the ocean.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Rodak's Writings: Enough of the New - a poem

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Enough of the New

I shall soon be sharing my oldest poems
for they were songs of rage
and psalms of warning against
evil men with lust for power.
We must remember how the pen
was all we had in opposition.

((  In prior days we ate our Wheaties;
we played hide-and-seek
in lush back yards and made water
on the trunks of  trees like little dogs.
We coaxed the girls
to pull down their pants,
to show us what it was rumored
they lacked, while we giggled
like drunken elves, each little wee-wee
so mysteriously hard it hurt,
for we as yet had no release
for these confusing passions,
nor any notion then of how
those girls, grown knowing,
would so easily play us
in the power of their elements  ))

Venerable now, we are perhaps resigned
to this new world governed by our well-raised sons,
careful souls who walk above our nodding heads,
their competent feet shod in tender slippers,
as they check the locks and douse the lights.

I shall begin to share my oldest poems,
for we must never forget
how we carried our souls in our empty hats
as we made our desperate escape,
or were sent into terminal exile
by grown-up girls entrenched on angry beds.
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Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Rants: Where Have All the Flower(children) Gone?

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So what happened was, first all the long-haired "summer of love" freaks got bitch-slapped by the establishment. Then they crawled back to school on their hands and knees, got graduate degrees and sold out to the professions.Today, the only "left" in this country is a bunch of pussyfied neo-liberals with the moral fortitude of runt-of-the-litter, hind-tit-sucking, farm animals. 

Et voila, Donald Trump!
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Sunday, December 11, 2016

Reflections: A People in Chains?

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Through Trump's cabinet nominations, this election has now revealed itself to have been a bloodless coup d'etat. Unless the electors, or the courts, find the courage and the will to overturn the results, the last vestiges of representative democracy will have gone by the board, replaced by the dictatorial rule of the oligarchic kleptocracy; the fascists in firm control.
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Saturday, December 3, 2016

Reflections: Americans -- Exceptionally Stupid

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Americans of a conservative bent have been drilled to believe that those on the left are the brainwashed ones, marching in lockstep to the beat of totalitarian drums; this is nothing but projection. 
The truth is that conservatism is the ideology of the business class; it is built on marketing techniques. What marketing does is present trusted figures (e.g. Ronald Reagan) to sell people things they don't really need for much more than those things are actually worth. 
You start out buying 20 Mule Team Borax, and you end up buying Trickle Down Economics.
"American Exceptionalism" is Stupidity on Steroids. 
Do the math.
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Thursday, December 1, 2016

Reflections: A Clear and Present Danger

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"White Nationalism" is an empty pose; a movement with no valid basis and no achievable goal. That said, it is very dangerous. We are now witnessing its power to move huge numbers in directions that benefit the corporate oligarchs and the puppet masters of the shadow government. It has momentum. It is necessary to build an effective coalition of right-thinking factions to stem the tide. It is necessary to find a national leader with the ability to focus that effort. But such a figure has yet to emerge. Time is of the essence. It can happen here.
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Sunday, November 20, 2016

Rodak's Writings: The Kid - a story

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God knows what possessed me to walk into Taos Tommy’s Tavern.  Perhaps I had been ready for a random destination.  Maybe I was just thirsty.  I may have looked over my shoulder and seen a trail of footprints in the dust, reeling back from the heels of my boots, down the road, beyond the prairie, into oblivion, and felt thereupon an immediate need for human companionship.  But, for the life of me, I could not even recall my arrival in New Mexico.

            I approached the bar and in short order had requested a shot of gin, neat and cold, from the black handlebar moustache that appeared across the mahogany, wearing an apron.
            “Welcome to the Triple-T, mister,” said the voice behind the dancing brush.

            As I stood at the bar sipping my drink, I seemed to recall a vast sky the color of a Tex-Mex horse blanket, and just as dusty.  Before that, a long distance pissing contest conducted in a snow-filled alleyway behind a bar in Rochester, Minnesota.  It seems there had been a war.  A winner had recently been declared, and a jamboree of clog dancing, whoremongering, and the careless use of side arms had broken out amongst the drinking set.  I believed that I had won the contest, but could not conjure from memory anything of significance that had transpired since.  Perhaps, I theorized, I had spent some time panning gold in the Dakotas.  Maybe I was subsequently bushwhacked, robbed of my dust, left for dead on a mountainside covered with black bristles like the shoulders of a razorback hog.  Evidently I had survived, perhaps nursed back to health by a Sioux princess, a Deadwood whore, or a compassionate buffalo soldier.  Maybe I had wandered aimlessly for a spell, amnesiac and toothless, a victim of ennui and scurvy, finally taking a job tuning pianos in Scranton, Pennsylvania?
            Since those times I have made it a firm practice to touch no drop of hard spirits that goes into a man darker in color than it comes back out.

            Of one thing I was certain.  Any roads I had traveled, I had traveled afoot.  I loathed horses of all sizes and shapes.  Horses were walnut-brained, flatulent, untidy beasts, contributing in no small part to the livelihood of flies, rodents and all manner of other misanthropic vermin.  Owning no horse, I owned no saddle, put my feet into no stirrups, and was therefore free--nay, obliged--to keep myself shod in footgear befitting a civilized man of the frontier.  I hoped that the devil might catch me dead in a pair of those pointy-toed, high-heeled, shit-kickers that your average butt-fucking cowpoke pranced around in.  My boots were heavy, square-toed, low-heeled, flat black.  My boots cried out for three thousand miles of paved road and a big chopped Harley. 
In those days, however, the available alternative to your basic horse was shanks’ mare.

            In any case, I had no need to bounce around the range balanced on the bowed spine of some half-starved, dim-witted mare to prove my manhood, for I could roll myself a smoke one-handed, pull the drawstring of my poke tight with my teeth, and pop a match on my thumbnail, all in one smooth motion.  It was a skill I had learned from a hansom cabby in Hoboken, New Jersey, and I could do it in any weather.  I could do it while reciting the Lord’s Prayer in flawless church Latin, if necessary. 
That was all it took to make it on the frontier. 

            Despite the big ceiling fan, it was overly warm in the Triple-T, and I had soon availed myself of another icy gin.  Pondering fate, I discovered that I truly regretted having left Minnesota and the woman with the corn-colored hair.  She had smelt of fresh-turned earth and saltwater mushrooms, and had made me a fine overcoat of quilted homespun that reached just to my boot tops.
            My departure had perhaps been precipitous.  The child, after all, could have been mine, and, in any case, could have been trained to imitate my walk, my talk, my manner of gazing at the full moon rising over a broad lake.
            I removed the quilted coat and soon felt more comfortable.  Women like that were hard to find.  Although perhaps not in Minnesota.

            I recognized The Kid the instant that he swung through the double doors of the Triple-T.  Maybe I had seen his face on a poster, hanging on the wall of a post office where I had stopped off to send belated words of apology to an address I had since forgotten.  In any event, he was undeniably The Kid. 
            Perched on his head was a fruity little hat that looked like he had purchased it off the pushcart of an Orchard Street Jew.  (My own hat was an authentic ten-gallon Stetson, acquired in Providence, Rhode Island at the cost of twenty-six books of supermarket gift stamps, gleaned from decades of loyalty to the A & P.) 
            The Kid had the slack-jawed look of an adolescent orphan who had just been stunned with a rubber mallet.

            Removing that ridiculous lid from his head, The Kid felt around inside the band with his fingertips, finally extracting a tightly folded square of paper.  He spread it out carefully on the bar and studied it for some time, his smooth brow exhibiting the tiniest crease of concentration, his moist lips moving silently. 
            Finally, The Kid nodded and grinned.  Replacing his hat at a rakish angle, he hitched up his gun belt, dipped into the pocket of his black leather vest, and produced a silver dollar which he slapped down on the bar in an extravagant display of savoir-faire.
            “Redeye!” The Kid demanded.
            Had I snorted?  Did I giggle?  For whatever reason, The Kid dragged his big Colt peacemaker from its holster and blasted the hat off my head as casually as you might swat a fly off a hard boiled egg.
            “Beg pardon?”  The Kid whispered sweetly.

            Now, I was genuinely fond of that chapeau.  It had nearly gotten me laid on several occasions.  However, although there are probably numerous good reasons to die, I was very much of the opinion that drawing on The Kid in defense of a hat was not one of them.  Looking The Kid straight in the eye, I allowed that he had gotten off a nice shot and, furthermore, offered to buy him  one in recognition of his excellent marksmanship.  As The Kid proved agreeable to this course of action, I led him by the plaid flannel elbow to a free table, where he could be seated with his back to the wall—a consideration which did nothing to lessen The Kid’s growing appreciation of my accommodating nature.
            Predictably, The Kid wore spurs on his pointy-ass boots, and he chimed like a goddamned hootchy-cootchy dancer all the way across the floor.  That annoyed the hell out of me, but I let it slide.

            In the preliminary small talk that ensued, The Kid disclosed that he was currently employed as a hired gun by a man named Chisum who had got himself involved in a bloody range war.  Chisum, it seemed, was either of the open range, cattleman’s persuasion, or was a shepherd and hell-bent on the installation of fence posts and barbed wire.  The Kid could never keep it straight, but was glad for the steady work.  Killing one man for every year of your age (The Kid’s current pace) was not a difficult feat, he explained, once you got over being finicky about dorsal/ventral considerations with regard to entrance wounds.
 It was not a bad job, as jobs went, and The Kid’s only regret was the two years he had spent at Junior College, for he had yet to discover any practical application for the training he had received there.

            After a few more neat ones, we were fast friends, The Kid and I.  Between rounds of drink and good-natured bouts of arm wrestling, we discussed politics: (I  stood firmly behind the Gold Standard.  The Kid favored the annexation of Cuba, and nearly drew on me again when I impugned the manhood of William Jennings Bryan); religion (The Kid had definite Manichean tendencies, while I admitted to leaning toward some of the more liberal tenets of the Parsees.  In the end, we each decided that vis-à-vis matters occult, perhaps Nietzsche was deserving of a second look); and sex (the multiple orgasm: ball bust or bull shit?).

            Suddenly, “We need some tunes!” shouted The Kid.  “Gimme all yer quarters!”
            I then learned that one of the best features of the Triple-T, second only to the immaculate privy, was the coin operated player piano.  It offered an outstanding mix of oldies as well as such avant-garde numbers as Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”, The Kid’s first selection.
            “All I ever really wanted,” The Kid admitted, “was to blow some jazz.
            “But we was poor in New York, poorer still in Kansas.  No bread for lessons.  A  piano was outta the question altogether.
            “Things coulda been different.  Things coulda been awesome…”

In another world, Erik Satie slept.  In a dream, Satie saw Thelonious Monk kneel to remove a ring of gold from the toe of a reclining blonde, who was Jean Harlow.  Monk cut the ring with a steel blade and slipped it through the black lobe of his right ear.  When Satie awoke, he crossed to his piano and composed new music of duned snow and spun gold.  He gave his piece but one perfect note per measure.  Invisible birds looped in crimson frenzy between those vibrant jewels of sound.  When he had finished, Satie removed the soiled sheets from his bed, stuffing them between the wall and the back of his battered upright piano, where he concealed from prying eyes the best of his compositions.

            Silence had befallen the Triple-T.  The last bargirl had long since made the sad, dutiful, climb up the wooden stairs to her room, accompanied by the jingling spurs of the last cowboy.
            The Kid’s lids had grown heavy, and I noted with some dismay that the steel gray eyes of the infamous Kid, most feared killer on the frontier, were brimming with moisture.
            “I ain’t never gonna be no jazzman,” whimpered The Kid.  “It’s too late.  Too fuckin’ late.”

            I conceded that going that particular route was going to entail playing a good deal of catch-up at this juncture, but tried to smooth things over a bit by suggesting that, in any event, there was much more demand on the frontier for pistoleros than there was for pianists.
            This opinion seemed to cheer The Kid but little.  For some minutes he remained slumped silently in his chair, a brown study.  Suddenly, however, his eyes brightened and he leapt to his feet.
            “Now just hold on a minute,” he cried.  “Check this out.  See if you can dig this, man!”
            He pulled himself up to his full five-foot-five and stood quite formally, hands grasping the lapels of his vest, his gaze fixed, it seemed, on the bare beams overhead.  And The Kid commenced to recite:
            “Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,
             Je ne me sentis plus uide par les haleurs:
             Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles,
             Les ayant clones nus aux poteaux de couleurs…”  

            I recognized the verse immediately.  It was the opening stanza of Arthur Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat”.  The Kid had rendered it flawlessly, and with great feeling.  The lines were, moreover, quite appropriate to the occasion.
 I found myself applauding with sincere enthusiasm.
            “That’s it!” cried The Kid.  “All’s you need is a pencil and a paper tablet!  I  can be a fuckin’ poet!  Far fuckin’ out!
            “Let’s have one more for the road,” he gushed.  “I wanna pick your brain on this shit, man!”

            To the chagrin of the black handlebar moustache, we spent the next two hours charting The Kid’s course toward literary immortality.  Punctuated by The Kid’s interjections of “Fuck sheep!” and “Piss on Chisum!”, we decided that by turning in a dozen or so more killings, he could bank enough cash for a train ticket to New York City, with sufficient left for his one-way passage (in steerage) to France.  Upon arrival in Paris, he would rent a garret beneath the eves of some ancient and mossy edifice near the Sorbonne, there to subsist on bread, cheese, and wine, while suffering the righteous agonies of the true artiste
By day, he would earn a few sous as a sidewalk performer, doing rope tricks and twirling his pistols.  By night, he would write scalding verses of volcanic passion, going slowly blind for the insufficient candle light in his clammy attic room.
           
            Finally The Kid wound down, doing a drunken bob-and-weave, his second wind exhausted.
            “I’d like to thank you, sir,” The Kid slurred, offering me his hand.  “I feel as though my fate has been decided tonight.”
            “Please, call me Pat, son,” I said.

            But suddenly I understood.  It came to me as clear and pure as the gin in my glass: the reason why I had walked to New Mexico, and why fate had set me and The Kid down together at this table in the Triple-T.
             
            I stood up, shook The Kid’s damp paw, and offered to see him home.
            As I followed The Kid’s drunken progress toward the saloon’s double doors, my  gaze was fixed on the tender nape of his scrawny neck, so like a child’s, and I was keenly aware of the weight of the .45 holstered on my right hip.
           

             
 


              
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Saturday, November 19, 2016

Rants: Clintonites! Put Up or STFU!

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Let's be frank: this whole shitstorm is nothing but smoke and mirrors. If Hillary and the rest of the Democrats really believe that 1) Trump is a criminal, and 2) the Russians tampered with voting machines and stole the election for him, then it is no less criminal to hide behind the skirts of "peaceful transition of power" and let the man take the oath of office.
Clearly, Hillary's corporate puppet masters don't want their lucrative boat capsized by a constitutional crisis and a dangerous international incident that can be avoided by simply letting the People be disenfranchised.
Clearly, they can live with Trump. They all play golf on the same courses, don't they?
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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Reflections: Why Michael Moore Nailed It

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Do you know why Michael Moore was right, when almost nobody else was? It's because he pays attention to those people who voted against the system that has been screwing them for decades by voting against HRC.
Moore knew where they had the numbers and that they would turn out to vote. Democracy is dangerous. The classical Greeks found that out. And the Founding Fathers established this nation based on that premise.
So I was wrong: the fix was not in. The election was not rigged.
And now look.
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Reflections: Trump Wins the Presidency

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This is worse than any conspiracy theory I had imagined.
We should have believed the message sent by the GOP primaries.
Those of us who have been living in comfort and security and ignoring our neighbors for whom life has been growing more and more precarious for decades have no one to blame but ourselves for the rise of a demagogue.
We have been repeatedly told that the middle class is dying and that the numbers were with those for whom the system has stopped working, but we looked away wrapped in our sense of smug superiority to "the rubes out in fly-over country."
Well, guess what? They still have their pitchforks. And they have spoken.
We have learned that need and anger in the present and fear for the future trumps identity politics. Now the anger is ours; the fear is ours; but we don't have the numbers: Hoist on our own petard.
And finally: Thanks a lot, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Reflections: Existence, a Tough Place to Be

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Nobody ever does what they say they're going to do, except by coincidence. All human action is motivated by forces the actors choose either to deny or to ignore. To awaken to this is to know existential nausea. To overcome it is to know enlightenment.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Rodak's Writings: a Very Short Story


Sick Transit

Gloria Monday vomited half way into Manhattan on the uptown D train. Never had she been so humiliated.

The next morning, the stick turned blue.
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Monday, September 19, 2016

Reflections on the Elections: HRC Still Dissing Millennials & Others

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Hillary Clinton's campaign to-date seems to be directed with laser-like precision right at those who were automatically going to vote for her anyway. It more or less just pats those preconditioned voters on their collective heads and tells them how very *bright* they are for recognizing HRC to be the *most experienced* and *best qualified* presidential candidate EVER.
But for those potential voters who should be voting Democratic, but who are, at this point, still taking a knee to Hillary's theme music, she offers little-to-nothing. How DARE they question her supremacy? Did she not bring both Sanders and Warren to heel? Is that not proof enough for these idiots? Will they not come around now and be *useful idiots*? Time is running out!
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Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Reflections on the Elections: Hillary vs. Trump

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If I were a Hillary supporter, I would very much hope that the Donald isn't somehow disqualified as a candidate, because I don't think she could beat any normal Republican candidate at this point. My God, she's barely staying ahead of Trump.

 "At least she's better than Trump" becomes inoperative if Trump is suddenly gone.

Which is to say, they'd better stop merely attacking Trump and start convincing people that Hillary is actually a good choice on her own merits.


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Rodak's Writings: a Poem

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The Way the Music Died

I’m pretty sure
the fragment of mind
embedded in this
particular clot of mud
is near disintegration.

I have not learned much
about the Ground of Being,
obsessed as I’ve been
about being in the ground,
probing the receptive mud
for groans and giggles.

There was issue from these strivings
and all was well until those I got
commanded me stop whistling along
with the chiming of the spheres.

Finally, then, the white noise reigned:
the lovely music guttered out
and died between my ears.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Rodak's Writings: a Poem

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All the world's wisdom

rests in neat rows
on my shelves,
inert,
its potential exhausted
by time's long lesson:

mind games
don't play on the street.
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Monday, September 12, 2016

Rodak's Writings: a Poem

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FRAGMENTS OF FUTILITY

I am an imaginary poet,
invisible product 
of unknown others 
who came before
and anonymously departed,
leaving behind them
no anxiety-inducing 
blueprints or lists
of commandments.
But this is not
a constant state.
I am at times other types 
of desperate being
with jury-rigged souls 
if any at all.
The poet notes this
on the unseen page.
He sometimes wonders
whether any of those 
other selves care
or benefit at all
from this arduously
feigned verbal angst.


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Friday, September 9, 2016

Riffs: Halloween's a-Comin'...

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"Look... You're a nice guy. But I know where Frankenstein got your dick."
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Reflections: Doubt

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I have been predisposed not to readily believe what I'm told by my government ever since the Warren Commission told me that Oswald acted alone.
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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Readings: Inspired by Brando

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Somebody posted a clip of the last few minutes (beginning around minute 24) of this interview with Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett Show on Facebook, in response to the ongoing anti-pipeline-on-Indian-land protests currently taking place in the Dakotas.

In the part of the interview posted, Brando states that his interest in the Indians and their plight began with reading a book titled Indians of the Americas. I thought it would be fun to have a look at that book and went to the Ohio University catalog to see if we have it here.

The title is generic enough that I was afraid it wouldn't be possible to identify the book not knowing the name of the author, which Brando didn't mention. But a careful search of not only O.U.'s catalog, but the OhioLink catalog, which covers the colleges and universities in the whole state, convinced me that it has to be the book by that title, written by John Collier and published by Norton in 1947.


We have it, so I've borrowed it. I'll read at least some of it and pretend that I'm Marlon Brando.

I'm sure that I saw this segment with Brando on the Cavett show when it aired live. If you're of the right age, probably you did too. It was a different time.

UPDATE:  I have just finished reading the first five pages of this book's opening chapter, and I am rocked. The man's writing style is not good; but his mindset is epic--and prophetic. This book was published in 1947--the year I was born--and Collier was already writing about the exact fears and dangers of global annihilation that those of us who are awake to them are trying to cope with today. Collier believed that the indigenous peoples of the Americas possessed that which mankind needs if it is to survive. 

As we watch the gathering of the tribes in N. Dakota in their attempt to block the pipeline that would desecrate their sacred grounds and threaten to destroy their physical environment, Collier's vision is shown to be accurate and prophetic. I am excited to get deeper into this reading.

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Sunday, September 4, 2016

Rodak's Writings: A Sonnenizio

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Earlier today, I read the last poem in Kim Addonizio's excellent collection, "What Is This Thing Called Love."  In addition to providing me with hours of enjoyment, it also taught me about something of which I had been unaware: the poetic form called "sonnenizio." Addonizio defines the form this way in a footnote below the one in her collection, which is based on a line from Drayton:

"The sonnenizio is fourteen lines long. It opens with a line from someone else's sonnet, repeats a word from that line in each succeeding line of the poem, and closes with a rhymed couplet."

The idea of this appealed to me, so I decided to try my hand at it. I based mine on a line from "Sonnet 13" by John Berryman:


Sonnenizio on a line from Berryman

Beasts in their hills their tigerish love are snarling,
While in this dead valley I’m missing your love my lost darling.
Something stronger than love it was once brought you near me;
And once you were here it was love of your lips took me down
To the bed in my room where you taught me the love of your flesh.
Oh, how I would love one more time to drink from your mouth
And to love you again, fingers and tongue, north to south,
As you roll like a wave and sing my love deep in your throat.

I love to remember how I glowed as your bared your soft skin;
How you lay your limbs down on that bed for our love to begin.
Now love languishes lonely, long highways apart from your touch,
As I search for love’s power in words that fall harmlessly short
Of that powerful love I once felt in the clutch of your thighs,
As I lapped at love’s portal and drank your sweet form with my eyes.

                                           ***   ***   ***

According to Addonizio, another characteristic of the form was that it originally most often dealt with "the impossibility of everlasting love." So in that sense at least, I think I nailed it.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Reflections: Consummatum Est

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AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED
The endemic herd mentality and stubborn stupidity of the American people exposed by the current political season--on both sides of the equation--has been demoralizing to the nth degree.
And now there has been the threat that the entire election process will be co-opted by the DHS.
Turn out the lights and lock up the lab. Consummatum est.
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Sunday, August 28, 2016

Reflections: The Omens are Evil

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Since the disgraceful demise of Bernie Sanders' bogus "revolution," this has become the most depressing presidential campaign season ever.
Perhaps the worst thing about it at this point is that it is predictive of even worse things to come in 2020. 
It is impossible to imagine either Clinton or the other guy serving more than one term; and even less possible to imagine either of them serving as a catalyst for any positive change in this society, or in this world. 
The likelihood for 2020 is that Ted Cruz, or Paul Ryan, or Mike Pence easily defeats some Democratic nonentity who is rushed in to replace a washed-up Hillary.
At that point, reality really sets in; a very grim reality.
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Sunday, August 21, 2016

Rodak's Writings: Null and Void ~ a poem

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Null and Void

It’s just wrong.

I speak of
what I’ve done,
of what I have,
of what I am.

No reason
to feed this.
No reason
to bid it rise
and walk.

I sit and watch
the morning sky
turn dark,
as lonely as
the empty hallways
of my heart.
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Saturday, August 6, 2016

Reflections: The Right and the Left of It

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What conservatives want is a government strong (i.e. "big") enough to keep me from doing things they don't like, but weak (i.e. "small") enough to let them do anything they want.
What liberals want is a government strong (i.e. "big") enough to enlist the participation of all in the promotion of the common good, but weak (i.e. "small") enough to stay out of everyone's personal lifestyle choices, so long as they don't negatively affect the lives of others.
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Saturday, July 30, 2016

Reflections: Some Final Thoughts on the DNC and the Primaries

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If the excuse for the extreme bias of the DNC against Bernie Sanders is, "he isn't really a Democrat," then they should not have allowed him to run as a Democrat. The truth is, they wanted him to run as a Democrat so that he could be defeated in the primaries and not be on the ballot in November.
Having lured him into the fold, the DNC then abandoned its proper role to work against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton. The proper role of the DNC would be to work to provide maximum exposure in the media and in live rallies, etc. for both candidates, so that the electorate would be able to make informed choices on which candidate to vote for in the primaries. The DNC, however, did everything it could to suppress the availability of Bernie Sanders to public exposure. This gave Hilllary, who already had name recognition by the ton, a huge advantage over Sanders, who was not well-known to the general public.
Despite this ruthless sabotage, Sanders raised his own money, drew huge crowds to his rallies and came very close to defeating the largely unpopular HRC, despite multiple polling place "irregularities" which allegedly worked in Clinton's favor.
Anybody who thinks the Democratic party's primary process was fair and honest is a dupe, or is in passive collusion with the fraud.
We don't need to be worrying about Russians fucking around with our elections in order to destroy our democracy when we have traitorous operatives for the globalist, criminal corporatocracy like Debbie Wasserman Schultz doing it already.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Reflections: Election Day 2016--Hard Choices

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I just watched Bernie Sander's speech from Philly at the DNC last night. It is sad that it has come to this. But Bernie did get to me.

Obama promised most of what HRC now promises and was able to deliver only bits and pieces of it. HRC won't do any better unless the revolution extends down ticket. Even if you can't bring yourself to vote for Hillary--and I don't blame you there-- you must go and vote for the Democratic congressmen and senators who are up for election or reelection in your state and district. I personally contemplated abstention as an option this time around, but I now reject that notion as irresponsible and potentially destructive.

That said, we also need a strong anti-war movement such as we saw in the Vietnam era to put an end to HRC's murderous foreign policy agendas.It's all well and good if she can mitigate the obscene profit-taking of Big Pharma. But she must also put an end to the huge profitability of the arms industries and the slaughter of innocents abroad that those profits provoke and incite.

I haven't yet decided whether I can bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton. But I have decided to vote. And as a resident of the crucial swing state of Ohio, with the polls currently showing Trump and Clinton tied, I am persuaded that if the election were being held tomorrow I would have to vote for Clinton--even though I would fear hating myself ever after for doing so.

Hillary Clinton is not a good human being, but we live in a fallen world and we must, of necessity, do the best we can with what we've got.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Reflections: Mean Girls, 2016:

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I find it increasingly amusing to see all the Clintonian feminists, who could detect even the faintest whiff of alleged misogyny emanating from the Bernie Sanders campaign and react with claws out, now mutely indifferent to the rampant slut-shaming of Donald Trump's wife--or even ruthlessly participating in it. In this, they mirror the intellectual and moral flexibility of their bloodstained heroine. You go, grrrrls.
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Saturday, July 2, 2016

Rodak's Writings: Don't

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Don’t

Don’t mess with me today:

My stars twist torn and bleeding
clustered on a barbed-wire
skein of deterministic torture

My vision is tunneled
through lightless pipes
of sewer-seasoned angst

I’m feeling meaner
than a half-breed
My Lai rape baby
staring at a bust
of Rusty Calley

Get in my face
and I’ll pee on your foot

Open your mouth
and I’ll force feed you
fetid gobs of fly-blown truth

So back slowly away
and trust me

Just don’t
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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Rodak's Writings: Doing the Stroll


Doing the Stroll

I have noticed
that I no longer walk –
I mosey.
I am overtaken and bypassed
by every pedestrian soul
on the public pavement,
each of whom, evidently,
hurries toward some goal
more crucial by far
than the one I saunter toward:
Call it, if you will, a victory lap.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Remembrances: A Dream Killed by Progress

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As a boy, I wanted to be a gas station attendant when I grew up. I liked the snappy beige uniform with your name embroidered in red over the breast pocket where the tire pressure gauge resided.  I loved the gas company logo on the opposite pocket, and I coveted that military-style black-brimmed cap.  

I wanted to be asked to “fill’er up,” or to “put in a dollar’s worth” and listen to the pump’s hum as I scraped smashed bugs off the windshield with my squeegee blade.

I envisioned how I would expertly brandish a cloth-cradled dipstick before the trusting eyes of the proud owner of a shiny late model Packard, Studebaker or Hudson, to prove conclusively that his oil was a quart low and then smoothly punch the gleaming spout through the top of the can before deftly pouring its contents into the hot, clicking engine.

I wanted to keep the change. I wanted to jingle the coins in my right pants pocket, while gazing down the highway, awaiting the arrival of the next customer, first seen climbing through the shimmering heat to roll over the rise, sunlight flashing from the chrome.


But sadly, by the time I was grown and ready to launch a career, the sign above the pump read “Self-Service Only” and my dream was nothing but the relic of a longed-for past, where simple aspirations were enough upon which to build an honest life.
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