Chocolatey.

http://flic.kr/p/daAJGL

As the sun peeks in / on an afternoon drunk / all the green green bottles / but it won't past forever

http://flic.kr/p/d7HrAA

HipstaPrint

http://flic.kr/p/d4ksT3

HipstaPrint

http://flic.kr/p/cUf8RG

Friday night

Me: I should have a cocktail with this delicious Mauritian rum!

/looks for mixers in fridge
//sees only chocolate soy milk
///pours rum over ice, sits sadly.

http://flic.kr/p/cL9uUS

http://flic.kr/p/cKWzE9

http://flic.kr/p/cKWzvS

"THERE GOES OUR COUNTRY!"

So this isn’t even a fully developed thought and it’s a little unfair, but help me out here…when something happens that American liberals don’t like, they threaten to move to any number of places (Canada, Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, etc.) They rarely do move, though. The charitable way of looking at this is that perhaps they don’t realize how difficult it is to emigrate across international borders, or even that while there are a number of countries that are on the whole more closely aligned with what these liberals want in a national government, they would still prefer to live in the good ole U.S. of A. The uncharitable way of looking at this is that liberals are quitters (rather than stay and fight for what they believe in, they threaten to leave, which is quitting, and then they don’t even leave, which is like quitting at quitting.)

American conservatives rarely react to something they dislike with threats of moving to another country (except for the few dumb ones yesterday who fail to realize that moving anywhere other than the US probably means trading a system of financing health care delivery that is fundamentally consistent with conservative values for a single-payer socialized system.) So anyway, they don’t threaten to leave the country, and I suppose the charitable way of looking at this is that their belief in American exceptionalism is so strong (and they are so not-quitty individualists) that leaving isn’t even an option. The uncharitable way of looking at this? I’d posit that it’s because they realize that countries where things American conservatives claim to want are actually in place (small or ineffectual government that does little more than fund an army, a system of taxation that is nominally “fairer” but which disproportionately benefits the already wealthy, nonexistent regulations or consumer protections, strict fealty to ancient and/or religious texts as a system of government, widespread availability of guns) are actually terrible places to live, and that no one in their right mind would ever consider moving there.

 

There, There

The poem begins in a place –

A lake, a bed, a meteorological condition –

And then a person emerges.

 

Sometimes the person isn’t an “I,”

But is just a person observing nature.

I can’t write the nature poems

Because I have not spent enough time

Learning the names of living things.

Who needs a list of flora anyway,

Or the image of fauna doing something portentous?

 

Confession, though: I love the moment

In that Robert Hass poem where

The some-bird (gull? Swallow?)

Flies down close to the surface of the water

And marries its own image for an instant.

 

There’s often more to say about not being a poet

Than there is to say about not being anything else.

For example, why am I writing a poem

If just a few moments ago

I looked up the words “indolent”

And “indigent” just to make sure

That I’ve been using them correctly?

It must be true: I’ve used up

All the nouns and adjectives

I will ever know.

 

After the “I” becomes manifest, we get

Treated to a clue as to the motive force,

Which is usually forlornness masked

As the imparting of wisdom. If the writer

Is not an “issues” poet, we will be spared

Talk of genocide, mass graves, physical misery

On a scale unimaginable to the New Englander

Or Midwesterner whose book collection

Contains duplicates of every major title housed therein.

 

How many people will admit to skipping

Down the page, or skimming a number of

Same-same lines, just to get to the ending?

The meat, the wrap, the stuffed crust:

A couplet that could be boiled down to a platitude,

Burgeoning with heft – valu-packed

“Now with rhyme!”

Songwriters and sloganeers alike breathe a sigh of relief.

 

Have I captured anything? Has there been a risk?

Probably not. If you skipped to the end,

This is it.