… Our youth is dead.
From the minute we discover it with eyes closed
Advancing into mountain light.
Ouch… You will never have that young boy

That boy with the monocle
Could have been your father
He is passing by. No, that other one,
Upstairs. He is the one who wanted to see you.

He is dead. Green and yellow handkerchiefs cover him.
Perhaps he will never rot, I see
That my clothes are dry. I will go.
The naked girl crosses the street.

Blue hampers… Explosions,
Ice… The ridiculous
Vases of porphyry. All that our youth
Can’t use, that it was created for.

It’s true we have not avoided our destiny
By weeding out the old people.
Our faces have filled with smoke. We escape
Down the cloud ladder, but the problem has not been solved.

” Our Youth” from John Ashbery: Collected Poems, 1956-1987 (Library of America, No. 187)

In ten years’ time, when we look up from the dry earth at the temporary prosperities of our past, will we think they were worth what they cost? When we remember our shock and inaction as we lost them one by one, how will those regrets feel? 

Thanks, New York Times, for the editorial excellence:

“An article on Saturday about reactions to Kim Kardashian’s announcement, after 72 days of marriage, that she would be divorced misstated, at one point, the surname of a prominent author who wrote a limerick about her in Twitter messages. He is Salman Rushdie, not Rushie.”

Corrections: November 8, Arts

(Found on The Awl) 

Observations on the Orifices Found in Certain Poisonous Snakes, Situated between the Nostril and the Eye With Some Remarks on the Structure of Those Orifices; And the Description of a Bag Connected with the Eye, Met with in the Same Snakes

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. January 1, 1804 94:70-76

One god damned fat pig
After another. Mother 
fucker, would you move?!

“There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the “come one, come all” of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse- filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare. Organizations are obstacles to organizing ourselves. When all is said and done, it’s with an entire anthropology that we are at war. With the very idea of man.”

It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,

apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.

—Kay Ryan

I’m so glad that I chose to boycott Target. I never replaced it with a comparable retailer. So, political motives aside, my choice has freed me from the constant stream of disposabilia that one purchases in such stores. No more crap plasticware, or household items, or unneeded DVDs. And now that so many months have gone by, I really don’t even have an interest in those items. It makes me realize that the cumulative impact of just plain old consumerism can outweigh the sting of sharp slaps of hate politics that don’t actually affect my life in a meaningful way. Both are wrong, but one is more directly burdensome. Perhaps the politics of the trash can trump the politics of the bedroom after all.