(with help from Steve Bennett)
Asked only in hushed tones
Rushed encounters
Counter to common experience
And my theory is…
There’s no word for the crux
Flux
Is the steady state of matter
Tattered sanity keeps fraying
Graying applies to skies and hair
Fair trade seems an illusion when only applied to coffee –
All experiments end
You can only take certain gags so far
Naturally
The constant question arises
Answered only in the asking
The hushed tones
Of the rushed whispers
That soar above the sodden silver sky
Cracking with lightning in every cloud.
End rev2. 24 July 2010, 11.36 a.m. Brooklyn.
© David Mark Speer
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sonofabitch
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
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 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
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tossing a few words around…
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The steady decline in the quality of our public discourse, this abrasive coarsening of the culture makes us all a little smaller, a little more closed off in echo chambers of our own making. Last week, when elected officials hung from balconies doing their modern-day Mussolini acts with rallying cries such as, “Meet ‘em at the state line!” and some of the general public got to personally spit upon members of Congress should serve as a reminder of how low we’ve gone and a harbinger of what lies ahead. The roots of this kind of vitriol run deep in American politics, and more broadly in the underpinnings of civil society, so it is unfair to characterize some of the piss in the pool we see nowadays as the nadir of civilization, but I’d say we’re coming close.
Some of the rhetoric coming out of America’s nuthouse fringe – the ones that remind me of rabid Lyndon LaRouche supporters, militia types and right-wing utopians – sounds as overheated as stuff ultra-liberals have spouted for years in opposition to everything from nuclear proliferation to gay rights that liken closing a city park to an act of fascism and all such exaggerations. The problem facing us as we attempt to grab from the ether some essence regarding the truth of our existence is that when news never stops, none of it really matters. It’s easy to discount the other guy’s point of view when you never have to hear him out, like the way an AM radio talk show host cuts off a dissenting caller who was set up as a straw man by the screener and subsequent callers feast upon the blood in the water mindlessly parroting the party/corporate line.
To get to real solutions, we’re going to have to get rhetoric out of the gutter and start talking about what matters while refusing to waste our time with media that spits the world at us in split-screened sound bites without bothering to acknowledge context and our ability to reason past the act of consuming whatever the next commercial has to offer. Honest debate about compassion, security, love of country, fear and what it means to be free can only come from people who actively resist being shrunken into boxes, checked off like lines on a census form.
Flying Dreams
Some of the best ones are when you’re just floating, warm updrafts support but don’t interfere with feeling the air crisply circulating all around and direction depends only on the interplay of molecules you have met yet.
The bad kind is when you’re going along fantastically, in superhero pose and suddenly the air solidifies in front of you, blocking your path and dropping you like a rock. Flight becomes fall as the ground rushes up to meet you and you can’t for the life of you think what you’ll say upon greeting.
In any event, I’ve heard they’re really all about sex anyway.
© David Mark Speer
The steady decline in the quality of our public discourse, this abrasive coarsening of the culture makes us all a little smaller, a little more closed off in echo chambers of our own making. Last week, when elected officials hung from balconies doing their modern-day Mussolini acts with rallying cries such as, “Meet ‘em at the state line!” and some of the general public got to personally spit upon members of Congress should serve as a reminder of how low we’ve gone and a harbinger of what lies ahead. The roots of this kind of vitriol run deep in American politics, and more broadly in the underpinnings of civil society, so it is unfair to characterize some of the piss in the pool we see nowadays as the nadir of civilization, but I’d say we’re coming close.
Some of the rhetoric coming out of America’s nuthouse fringe – the ones that remind me of rabid Lyndon LaRouche supporters, militia types and right-wing utopians – sounds as overheated as stuff ultra-liberals have spouted for years in opposition to everything from nuclear proliferation to gay rights that liken closing a city park to an act of fascism and all such exaggerations. The problem facing us as we attempt to grab from the ether some essence regarding the truth of our existence is that when news never stops, none of it really matters. It’s easy to discount the other guy’s point of view when you never have to hear him out, like the way an AM radio talk show host cuts off a dissenting caller who was set up as a straw man by the screener and subsequent callers feast upon the blood in the water mindlessly parroting the party/corporate line.
To get to real solutions, we’re going to have to get rhetoric out of the gutter and start talking about what matters while refusing to waste our time with media that spits the world at us in split-screened sound bites without bothering to acknowledge context and our ability to reason past the act of consuming whatever the next commercial has to offer. Honest debate about compassion, security, love of country, fear and what it means to be free can only come from people who actively resist being shrunken into boxes, checked off like lines on a census form.
Flying Dreams
Some of the best ones are when you’re just floating, warm updrafts support but don’t interfere with feeling the air crisply circulating all around and direction depends only on the interplay of molecules you have met yet.
The bad kind is when you’re going along fantastically, in superhero pose and suddenly the air solidifies in front of you, blocking your path and dropping you like a rock. Flight becomes fall as the ground rushes up to meet you and you can’t for the life of you think what you’ll say upon greeting.
In any event, I’ve heard they’re really all about sex anyway.
© David Mark Speer
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Old and New Again
The following are poems that have been published previously, but worth revisiting here, in lieu of an essay on the mess New York State's government is in and how it's only going to get worse unless we don't have a special election and just get rid of Paterson already.
Wheels, Doors, Memories and Windows
Motion draws attention
And the reaction just can't be helped
Swirling things make you look
Forces you to follow a fixed point sliding through space
A shock of plastic streamers in the wind
Covers your hands as they grip the handlebars
In every sunny day summertime shade
Crimson, aquamarine, canary
The lines flow as the front wheel turns
Up the drive and around the back way
The way that's lined with the old shrubs
The ones that smell like turpentine in the night rain
And charred ashes in the heat of the day
Just past the worn down welcome mat
A screen door swings wide for you
Just as it always has
In the cool quiet
As rainwater rushes through the gutters
And the house settles deeper onto its foundation
The rafters creaking like the old bones they are
Wind rattles the upstairs shutters
And briny mist fills your nostrils
The memories come flooding back
The lightning…
Crack of thunder
Gray skies eat themselves up and burn themselves black
Clouds shift as the sun streams through
The air clears and everything becomes electric
Charged with sad silences and quiet breakdowns
You throw open the windows to let the southerly breezes do their work.
7 april 2003
With Only Myself in Mind
Pinpoint accuracy,
Peace with honor,
Death warrant,
Stolen kisses…
Book of life,
Holy writ,
Mortgage agreement,
Satisfaction guaranteed…
The strength of ten men,
Margin of error,
Mistaken identity,
Funhouse mirror…
Rising tide,
Alternating current,
The happy medium,
Poor but happy,
One’s true self…
Glory rising morning time,
Dream veil lifting,
Desire made flesh, manifest, unleashed,
Justice is served.
End. Rev2
© David Mark Speer
Wheels, Doors, Memories and Windows
Motion draws attention
And the reaction just can't be helped
Swirling things make you look
Forces you to follow a fixed point sliding through space
A shock of plastic streamers in the wind
Covers your hands as they grip the handlebars
In every sunny day summertime shade
Crimson, aquamarine, canary
The lines flow as the front wheel turns
Up the drive and around the back way
The way that's lined with the old shrubs
The ones that smell like turpentine in the night rain
And charred ashes in the heat of the day
Just past the worn down welcome mat
A screen door swings wide for you
Just as it always has
In the cool quiet
As rainwater rushes through the gutters
And the house settles deeper onto its foundation
The rafters creaking like the old bones they are
Wind rattles the upstairs shutters
And briny mist fills your nostrils
The memories come flooding back
The lightning…
Crack of thunder
Gray skies eat themselves up and burn themselves black
Clouds shift as the sun streams through
The air clears and everything becomes electric
Charged with sad silences and quiet breakdowns
You throw open the windows to let the southerly breezes do their work.
7 april 2003
With Only Myself in Mind
Pinpoint accuracy,
Peace with honor,
Death warrant,
Stolen kisses…
Book of life,
Holy writ,
Mortgage agreement,
Satisfaction guaranteed…
The strength of ten men,
Margin of error,
Mistaken identity,
Funhouse mirror…
Rising tide,
Alternating current,
The happy medium,
Poor but happy,
One’s true self…
Glory rising morning time,
Dream veil lifting,
Desire made flesh, manifest, unleashed,
Justice is served.
End. Rev2
© David Mark Speer
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