When you get up the courage
The liquid courage
Enough
To find something to write with
And just write…
It’ll be 1.24 in the a.m. and you won’t fucking believe it
Why?
Because it couldn’t be that late even if it is that late
The morning will break over the silver city
The silvery shadowy city that is nothing but a big
Countless endless zero number of ideas
Exactly what I want
What I love
What I want
How the trick is turned
Good things continue to happen
So long as you ride along the electric rail
That conduit between land masses
Toward the infinite well of experience
So long as you don’t piss your pants
You’re okay
Even up
It’s all right
Almost everybody is as drunk as you are
And towards that end
You make the best of the bad situation
As ridiculous as the overheard conversation
The little fragmentary foolishness that goes to make up someone else’s life…
Yes!
That little part that is your life and that anyone else’s
This life you write down so terribly drunk.
Sonofabitch.
End.rev2 31 may 2010, 8.52 p.m., Brooklyn
©David Mark Speer
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Furiously Scribbling
The pen feels so good in my hand
Slowly
Yet surely
The rolling ocean of lyrical amazement
Falls upon this once and only and never again 10.30 o’clock
Time that will never come again
This furious scribbling
Makes it all make sense
Even if read in the sequence laid down
Laid down seriously
It don’t make no sense at all
The flowing righteousness of pen and ink
“Cool quiet and time to think”
What I deserve
The sweet gal who went home with the fireman
The dulcet tones of engagement
Denial of outcomes determined by a roll of the dice
This long running farce
Tragedy by turns
Roadshow to ruin
Rio by the wayside
Gets its due justice mercy grace redemption trust forthrightness
In each stroke of the pen and the paper absorbs the rest.
End rev2. 18 May 2010, Brooklyn 1.40 a.m.
© David Mark Speer
Slowly
Yet surely
The rolling ocean of lyrical amazement
Falls upon this once and only and never again 10.30 o’clock
Time that will never come again
This furious scribbling
Makes it all make sense
Even if read in the sequence laid down
Laid down seriously
It don’t make no sense at all
The flowing righteousness of pen and ink
“Cool quiet and time to think”
What I deserve
The sweet gal who went home with the fireman
The dulcet tones of engagement
Denial of outcomes determined by a roll of the dice
This long running farce
Tragedy by turns
Roadshow to ruin
Rio by the wayside
Gets its due justice mercy grace redemption trust forthrightness
In each stroke of the pen and the paper absorbs the rest.
End rev2. 18 May 2010, Brooklyn 1.40 a.m.
© David Mark Speer
Sunday, May 16, 2010
For All the Faithful Departed
(With honor and debt to Heinlein)
Winter night whispers,
Desiccation,
Atrophy,
Amid the crosstalk,
Accompany the cross I bear,
Willingly,
Without complaint, reservation or treasonous self-doubt,
Straight on to the hilltop,
Summit,
The last place I’ll ever be,
And there will wait until sunrise,
Until that daily springtime,
Until a circadian rebirth,
Squirms its way into being,
Onto the newly warmed asphalt,
Wet by the street-cleaner’s spray…
Any words not said,
Tears not shed,
Vows untaken,
Consecration left undone,
All are empty consolation for us,
The living,
And do little,
If anything,
For all the faithful departed.
End. Rev5 16 May 2010, 5.38 p.m. Brooklyn
© David Mark Speer
Winter night whispers,
Desiccation,
Atrophy,
Amid the crosstalk,
Accompany the cross I bear,
Willingly,
Without complaint, reservation or treasonous self-doubt,
Straight on to the hilltop,
Summit,
The last place I’ll ever be,
And there will wait until sunrise,
Until that daily springtime,
Until a circadian rebirth,
Squirms its way into being,
Onto the newly warmed asphalt,
Wet by the street-cleaner’s spray…
Any words not said,
Tears not shed,
Vows untaken,
Consecration left undone,
All are empty consolation for us,
The living,
And do little,
If anything,
For all the faithful departed.
End. Rev5 16 May 2010, 5.38 p.m. Brooklyn
© David Mark Speer
Black Robes and No White Hats
The second opportunity to nominate an associate Justice of the Supreme Court has come for President Obama, and it seems he has played the card dealt in a manner true to his form as a center-right, pro-corporate shill who at every turn communicates populism while really keeping the great unwashed progressive hordes who believed his mantra of transformational change at bay, just outside the halls of power.
How does this seeming indictment of the Obama way relate to Solicitor-General Kagan? In my view, a number of Ms. Kagan’s positions on free speech as evidenced in writings that have come to light in the days since her nomination tend to make one think there’s more of a chance that she will be an intellectual buddy of Antonin Scalia rather than a liberal foil to Justice Anthony Kennedy. According to a 1996 article, Ms. Kagan criticized a progressive tendency among public officials who have tried by various means to create a more balanced and open marketplace of ideas, questioning “laws ‘equalizing’ the speech market.” Note: This quoted material comes from Adam Liptak of the New York Times, article from 05/14/10. The cases she reviewed in the papers mentioned here dealt with placing limits on corporations when it comes to campaign finance. Since corporations are, at their essence, an organized body that acts as an individual (one with greater resources and reach to be sure, but an individual with particular and self-interested motivations) it seems rather disingenuous to say that since individuals gather wealth in part from protections given by the government, the same holds true for a corporation. This is the essence of Ms. Kagan’s position when it comes to the Citizen’s United case, the campaign-finance case President Obama went out of his way to rile up John Roberts by mentioning during the State of Union speech.
This, along with a published opinion on a flag-burning case that differs from that of the justice she seeks to replace, John Paul Stevens, makes the observer in me wonder what is the point of nominating someone like Kagan rather than a stronger advocate of progressive positions that would leaven the influence of the stony bloc of conservatives on the Court led by Scalia and Roberts with Alitto, Thomas and Kennedy bringing up the rear? I think it has to more to do with today’s political climate and a very careful eye towards the eventual legacy of the Obama Administration, rather than with any concern for the shape and direction of American democracy as it is interpreted and enforced by our Supreme Court. The legacy Mr. Obama seems to be reaching for in no small part depends on being seen as effective at all costs. Rather than nominate a firebrand liberal who may not get confirmed, he would go with a sure bet; a like-minded Harvard Law school wonk that has done enough bridge-building with conservatives to seem non-threatening, and in fact, someone with whom they can play ball. Once all the public shouting is over and done with, Ms. Kagan looks to me to be the kind of Justice who will by virtue of her closeness to the club and respect for the way the game has always been played won’t do any real game-changing and leave that to the bozos who have to run for office every four or six years.
End. Rev1 16 May 2010, 6.17 p.m., Brooklyn
© David Mark Speer
How does this seeming indictment of the Obama way relate to Solicitor-General Kagan? In my view, a number of Ms. Kagan’s positions on free speech as evidenced in writings that have come to light in the days since her nomination tend to make one think there’s more of a chance that she will be an intellectual buddy of Antonin Scalia rather than a liberal foil to Justice Anthony Kennedy. According to a 1996 article, Ms. Kagan criticized a progressive tendency among public officials who have tried by various means to create a more balanced and open marketplace of ideas, questioning “laws ‘equalizing’ the speech market.” Note: This quoted material comes from Adam Liptak of the New York Times, article from 05/14/10. The cases she reviewed in the papers mentioned here dealt with placing limits on corporations when it comes to campaign finance. Since corporations are, at their essence, an organized body that acts as an individual (one with greater resources and reach to be sure, but an individual with particular and self-interested motivations) it seems rather disingenuous to say that since individuals gather wealth in part from protections given by the government, the same holds true for a corporation. This is the essence of Ms. Kagan’s position when it comes to the Citizen’s United case, the campaign-finance case President Obama went out of his way to rile up John Roberts by mentioning during the State of Union speech.
This, along with a published opinion on a flag-burning case that differs from that of the justice she seeks to replace, John Paul Stevens, makes the observer in me wonder what is the point of nominating someone like Kagan rather than a stronger advocate of progressive positions that would leaven the influence of the stony bloc of conservatives on the Court led by Scalia and Roberts with Alitto, Thomas and Kennedy bringing up the rear? I think it has to more to do with today’s political climate and a very careful eye towards the eventual legacy of the Obama Administration, rather than with any concern for the shape and direction of American democracy as it is interpreted and enforced by our Supreme Court. The legacy Mr. Obama seems to be reaching for in no small part depends on being seen as effective at all costs. Rather than nominate a firebrand liberal who may not get confirmed, he would go with a sure bet; a like-minded Harvard Law school wonk that has done enough bridge-building with conservatives to seem non-threatening, and in fact, someone with whom they can play ball. Once all the public shouting is over and done with, Ms. Kagan looks to me to be the kind of Justice who will by virtue of her closeness to the club and respect for the way the game has always been played won’t do any real game-changing and leave that to the bozos who have to run for office every four or six years.
End. Rev1 16 May 2010, 6.17 p.m., Brooklyn
© David Mark Speer
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