Cross Talk
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joesmith
the way the world comes in
Several pieces on pith… are published in a book of poems by joesmith. Really. Click the button and buy it if you like. Thank you.
Nativity Scene
There are no camels in this combo crèche, formed in Singapore, assembled in Malaysia. The pieces, each in its place, dominate the living room, diverting our path to where we cleanse and empty and keep my store-bought teeth, neither sneer nor smile in their snap-tight cup. The lone cow’s head is broken, decapitated last season, [...]
He never knows
anyone famous or important enough to land him a job or sufficiently elegant to bequeath him some grace, the names of his favorite quivering trees, the distance from earth to moon or sun to earth, where he last put his keys or where he would go if he could, how many ounces in a pound [...]
Holiday on the Farm
The soap opera organ announces what we can hardly bear to hear. A metal-aproned matron summons the skin ribbon she left on the seat of a Galaxy 500, circa 1969. Her tremolo is a casual torture. We mistake her voice for a choir of a thousand muffled mothers and wobble dutifully in to an Easter [...]
Zeno Whole
I save the spaces. No, I’m no bent surveyor with a three-legged stare bent on destiny, unsettled by innominate expanses, undone by an absence of fences, parsing the plenty. We know how that was manifest. I’ve never been enamoured of wrought geometries and plaid is a bad parody of place. I save only the spaces: [...]
Tagged poetryWaukesha Tattoo
Here in the town of the common and the good, only the flashes reach us. There’s no thunder rumble, no sound to savor, no low music to score the out-of-favor soul. No, first it’s the din, carried air away east, then the bright, the flight of sand as light, breaking in waves on main street [...]
Tagged joesmith, poetrySonnet
Alert as the light that changes color with the weather atop the building some mistake as electric, we’re mingling our blood and juices without the dolor that ought accompany a great big age of disease. We are lovely here and welcome the change we bring to each brown room. In the phone booth, we tear [...]
Tagged poetryUtility
When I’m done, love, when the impalpable me has made his sullen exit, scrape clean the meat from my bones. String it in ribbons in the back yard trees. Wait for morning rain and hear the glorified pigeons attempt to sing. Summon then the odiferous ones, the shunned ones, the old utilarians who speak to [...]
de trop
Half-full of someone like a mother or her lover unbuttoned in dad’s traveling robe, turned around in an instant, to the strained grace of pointed cameras. A kleptomaniac of attention, eyes pinched in to lit aluminum, hoarding the latest loss of memory in a cipher nation of nervous oblivion, entertaining what remains of the children. [...]
Revolution Speeds Evolution
While listening to BBC news coverage of Iran on the radio this morning, the words “Revolution speeds evolution” came to my head. At the time, the words fit the current Iran situation very well and time will tell whether there is a revolution, a new election, or crushed hopes and lives. Since it rang in [...]
Tagged aphorisms, copyright, Iran, wordsTexas Traded to Venezuela
In a bold sign of thawing relations between the countries, Presidents Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez announced today that the state of Texas would be traded to Venezuela for Jesus Moronta, a slick-fielding, hard-hitting 14-yr-old shortstop phenomenon, cash considerations and an undisclosed amount of raw, premium coca.
Home
When home, I’m often standing outside my house, looking in. Perhaps this is interesting. Perhaps examination is due. Perhaps it’s why I smoke, still. And take the longest shits known to man.
Tagged joesmith, thought shardsFavorite 50 Albums of 2008
1-10 The Walkmen – You & Me The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend The Bug – London Zoo Man Man – Rabbit Habits Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig !!! Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight Sons and Daughters – This Gift TV on the [...]
Tagged fave musicAphorism #311
In a cynic, the heart is a vestigial organ.
Tagged joesmithArmageddon
Armageddon has come to my chair. Thrown hair is a result. Of a mother, she is deadly in no wind. Always in poor boast, he is Nostra Domus ogling the end of no sea shore.
Tagged joesmith, thought shardsNew Video Game
“Human, All Too Human,” a new mega-multiplayer, role-playing game, was recently released by Nietzsche End Games, LLC. The game is wildly addictive and takes many months, even years, for players to complete. In the end, all players fail to kill anyone or complete any defined mission. Then each player dies. Alone.
Tagged joesmith, thought shardsThe Walkmen, You & Me
With You & Me, The Walkmen built one of the most complete albums of 2008. It’s of a piece, a whole cloth constructed from its simple constituent elements, like a scarf wrapped about the neck and head. Each song’s exceedingly simple elements – the almost off-key vocals, icicle guitar riffs, basso profundo base, basic-chord synthesizer [...]
Tagged music review, The Walkmen, You & MePalin – Taste, Travel & Reform
Sarah Palin sure DOES dress nice, but, Jesus, this RNC bill seems a bit much for such a regular person, real American, G droppin’ Hockey Mom, don’t you think? Read the full story. I guess it was the RNC who wanted to spruce her up? I’m sure she wouldn’t ask for such a pricey wardrobe [...]
Tagged politics