so, the american drug policy is dangerous, unproductive, and really about issues of class, race and social control. It also works well as an excuse to fuck with other nations right of self determation. Canada wants to decriminalize weed-a wise manourve- this was the american response.


AAARGH

for j kelly nestruck who asked what people thot of the daily paper.

The way that the Edmonton Journal has dealt with the twenty something demographic is invent a new section - "ed", short for Edmonton. The writers are young, as is the editor, a Sean Ohler.

I have written for them, as have many of the Gateway crew, and his mandate seems to be new writers and new ideas. Many times this works, but often it seems patronizing, with the slightly risque top ten lists, a new comic by Mike Winters, who has been known for dick jokes up to that point, a profile of a twenty something, a well photographed design what to buy section etc.

He has done some innovative things though, it is called a magazine, and is a broadsheet section inside the main papers similar to "the alternative weeklies", he had a graphic novel about crime in the last two issues, when I wrote a first person peice, i think i was the first man to use the word shit in that daily and he let me compare my laughter to copulating donkeys.

The Sun just intergrates seasoned hipsters into their entertainment copy, like Steve Tilley and Fish Griwkowsky, but they may not be twenty somethings anymore, and have the stench of people who stayed too long at the party.

In many ways, it feels like youth are being patronized or ghettoized, the news and hard issues that are vital are swept under the carpet or allowed to be taken up by inserts and campus paper.

I read the Journal daily, and have been since i was old enough to read. I do it now out of force of habit, not because it is telling me anything new or exciting. It bores me, most of the content designed for a demographic above me.

Maybe it cannot keep up with the cynicism, if we assume that the news refuses to tell the truth because of money, and many of us 20somethings do, what can a paper do to convince us otherwise.

As a writer, they are already cutting staff, amalgmatiing editorials under a common banner, letting idiot boomers write reviews and ignore any of the events we go to. The only youthful entertainment writers, Sandra Sperounes, is stuck reviewing Avril instead of hall shows and the equivlant at the Sun (whose name i forget), gets to review punk 7 inches, but doesnt get to see anything live.

Thats the other thing, this is all entertainment stuff, this is all breads and circuses, why arent we getting news or opinon or anything but the fluff. I feel disenfranchised.

may day- pagan holiday, a let the farmers fuck spring festival that turned into a let the workers play holiday, and i celebrated by dealing with danielle.
coming in from toronto, took her home, dropped off shit, thrifting @ good will, chinatown lunch, japanese candy at thong thith groceries, looking at supreme gifts, army and navy 50 per cent off sale, photos took.

i loved her and was afraid that that would disappear, but it didnt.

fucking boring reactionary slick commerical not worth much cold clean moutain air pop would imply camp, the end of canadian land scape painting ugly taky kitschy badly painted not woth much at all.

notes on an essay about nicholson bakers paintings.

war news, us troops are shooting iraqi civillians, and pulling out of saudi arabia

i bought the new dennis lee today, and it amazes me.

he writes at the edges of langauge, using it as a way to move past the ego, into something muckier.
i have been reading too much gunn,olds,clifton,auden-poets who write narrative, who only love langauge to tell a story,
lee taught me how to love words as a child, and now in this collection he has taught me again.

their are only 61 poems here, most caught in the middle of a barren page,
clunks and anchors, rarely verses or stanzas.
but oh so tender.

listen:

in wreck, in death, in neck song
godnexus gone to the fat of the land

or

i want verbs of slagscape thrombosis

or

Scribblescripts portent unfurl...

or

starlight star-
bright star
kucked and cacked , riddled and racked...

or

That the names will end, that the
naming will end, that
the undis-
claimable forerducts of is will
resume their
eddies of post and pre

or

Tagalong snatches,
algorythymic
hums.

or the folktronic, and almost conventional

Clone pastoral
Data made Fleece

or the sacred and holy:

What hank, what hanker,
what heirloom?
what telltock prayer? what plea ?

or this use of common tongue

Innerly,underly: empty
outerly:party on.

of course these are not whole poems, but most of them are only a few words longer.
i am drunk on language and feel ashamed that my own vocab is so low and conventional.

fuck you, i love you
mr lee.

lucille clifton:
i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

sharon olds:
sex without love
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

details
Lorna Crozier
canadian, nothing more then i like her writing.
Magaret Atwood
why would someone so rich and famous off her novels, continue to work so long and so hard on a dead or dying form, her second last book was a series of lectures about poetics.
Margaret Avison
she is in her early 90s and is still writing, same as stanley kunitz.
Tom Paulin
said some unfortunate things about palestine, was dropped from a harvard lecture tour, giant controversy, reinstated.
hugley influential as a poet in his native britian, actually listened to.
Lucille Clifton
just one of my favourites, chosen for the plainess and clarity of her langague, someone i wish everyone would read, and someone everyone can read.
Sharon Olds
deeply moving, a personal favourite.
Anne Carson
published in newspapers in canada with some frquency, sells realtivley well for having book length medations of the meaning of truth, hard hard reading.
Tom Pickard
mostly for writing this:
writing poems
(keeping rabbits)
each day
the shite to be cleared
fresh straw to be laid.
Charles Bukowski
just another la drunk
Semas Heany
the old ireland, of peat moss and smoke, is dying out, and in his own country he is viewed as a qauint old uncle.
Wanda Coleman
vicious debates over her review of maya angelou spilled over into most of the weeklys and some of the dailies including the vv and the nyt.
Michael Odjante
see atwood.
Linton Kwesi Johnson
jamacian performance, reads to audiences of thousands, like pickard uses the patois of home
Derek Walcott
nobel prize (look at how many poets win the damn thing)
Amiri Baraka
caused no end of trouble for nj with his poem about 9/11

i think what i tried to do with this list is indicate that people still fight over poetry, that poetry is read in everyday places.

the most i have written in the last little while are 100 word critical peices on art for bryans site, soon to be a book.
100 works 100 words.
reductionist in extreme.

thinking of the works i have chosen: martin, polke, warhol, chardin, velquez, the machine that shits, peyton, an ancient greek peice of sculpture, koons.

i dont know what they have in common and i have talked about formal elements more then i like, lapsed into raptures,crammed theory, added bios, its amazing what one can do in 100 words.

im proud of them.
not posting them until he finishes up.

He Thinks Poetry is Dead
I refute:
Lorna Crozier
Magaret Atwood
Margaret Avison
Tom Paulin
Lucille Clifton
Sharon Olds
Anne Carson
Tom Pickard
Charles Bukowski
Semas Heany
Wanda Coleman
Michael Odjante
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Derek Walcott
Amiri Baraka

that was also via jonno

minister fired
i am of two minds of this, one if you join an organaztion you should recognize the rules and try to work with in them, two fuck them-they dragged their tale on this, had a vote that was almost a tie, the rules are unfair and unworkable, good on him.

maybe three minds- i belive in celibacy for those who work for god, no double standard, no conflict.

the catholics may be right here.

this story went along with it, and it sort of bugs me that these perfect, white, middle class, proper faggots, get to represent us to the world.

its dishonest.

i avoid thinking about high school, but wjonno wrote about proms.
i didnt graduate, i hated it and i was treated v. badly, the students attacked me and the staff patronized me and no one knew who i was.

i had freinds though, and i went to prom with one of them, kendra looked wonderful, and i looked wonderful, we danced and ate and drank a little bit.

it was a good, low pressure time.

i still have the photo of her with her dress hiked up, pumping gas.

momus photoshopped himself so his cock is huge.
link:here

from the Associated Press:
About 200 people marched through Tikrit, chanting, "With our blood and souls we shall redeem you, O Saddam," a chant which was a fixture at state-sponsored events for years. Some carried pictures of him. "Down, down Bush!" they said in English.

American Humvees, escorted by two Bradley fighting vehicles, came to the area with mounted machine guns and boomed through loudspeakers in Arabic. "Return to your homes. What you are doing is forbidden," the messages said. "Otherwise we will use force."

thnx to hstencil.

gaurdian story
there is also a silent john ford western found in a paris library
both found by scrubbles

They found previously assumed lost wpa murals in chicago, but i cannot find more info, since la times wants my name, adress, phone number and income to register.