“I just needed some peace of mind. Thank God it turned out how it did. When we got to be No. 1 in 1983, we were competing with ‘Thriller,’ we were competing with ‘Synchronicity’ — all great albums of that era. That was quite an honor. It was more than just selling records. It was what it meant to achieve that in the company of artists like Michael Jackson and Sting.”
 — Legendary heavy metal bass player Rudy Sarzo talks to New Jersey’s Star Ledger

about how he quit Ozzy Osbourne’s band and rejoined Quiet Riot after guitarist Randy Rhoads died when the small plane he was in crashed into the tour bus.

You know, in my day “flash mobs” were just a way for like-minded pretentious people to congregate ever so briefly in celebration of how much more special and precious they were than the dead-eyed commuters and consumers all around them. It’s sad to see something that started out with such lofty ideals degrade into criminal activity. You thugs are totally destroying the spirit of ‘03!

Strangely, Titus Andronicus’s new video about the popular topic of rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike doesn’t include any of the 200,000 solar panels the state’s Public Service Electric Gas Company is putting up on telephone poles everywhere. (It must have been very challenging, since, as the Times reported yesterday, “If they were laid out in a solar farm, the 5-by-2.5-foot panels would blanket 170 acres.”)

Being from New Jersey myself, I have some feelings about this. 1) This song is good, and with its refrain of “You will always be a loser,” and its final, soothing sentiment of, “but that’s okay,” it makes for a fine new state anthem. 2) If the singer Patrick Stickles shaved his beard, he would look just like actor Michael Shannon. 3) People who live in places where the solar panels are going up and are bothered by them should just pretend that all the telephone poles are wearing giant wraparound Revo sunglasses. Surely no one in New Jersey would mind that. Just put a backwards pastel Nike visor on the other side, and you’re set.

“You’d meet, say, a cook at a Times Square restaurant standing on the shower line behind the Port Authority bus terminal. He’d emerge combed and shaven in his white uniform and rush uptown to work. You’d bump into a Cooper Union-trained fine artist at the Goodwill Back to Work center in the Bronx. You’d hear from decorated war heroes who could back up their stories with news clippings and medals. You’d bunk down with day traders from out of town who carried two expensive smart phones and an internet tablet, monitoring the market for their way back in. You’d joke around with friendly Africans and Chinese who were just here to build a new life with maximum economy.”
 — New York City’s stealth homeless.

The Vineyard Gazette, of Edgardton, MA, covered the elections this week over in Tisbury, (also known as Vineyard Haven). And the people have spoken, nuking ballot measures that would increase taxes.

Tisbury voters also decided two ballot questions which would have increased town property taxes, decisively rejecting both of them.

The first will be particularly problematic for town officials; it sought $85,000 to fund collective bargaining and contract settlements with employees.

The other questions sought $100,000 to begin putting aside for Tisbury’s currently-unfunded liabilities for post-employment benefits — mainly health insurance costs, for town workers.

Oh, no problem! That’ll work itself out in time.

The conservative British government is imposing austerity measures on the working class & they’re celebrating the privilege of these prats?Fri Apr 29 09:03:11 via web

Bruce LaBruce
BruceLaBruce

Also, for those who don’t want to storm the palace and take back the North Sea oil fields, there’s a very hilarious live-blog!

14) Cherry

13) Bean

12) Mince

11) Apple

10) Banana Cream

9) Blueberry

8) Sweet Potato

7) Lemon Merengue

6) Strawberry Rhubarb

5) Pumpkin

4) Peanut Butter

3) Key Lime

2) Banoffee

1) Pecan

“Given the years of political frustration and irresolution, Japan’s voters might be forgiven for asking: Where is their Chris Christie?”

Three Poems By Mark Wunderlich

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Heaven-Letter
Gebet bei Ausfahrt in die See (Prayer for a journey by sea)

Look at me from your pitiless distance, look
as I give myself to the feral sea

where I hang between atmosphere
and the hidden sands below, your fool in this

plaything of a boat, which may no longer save nor salvage.
See me here, face in my hands

wet with spray and sweat, sick with the knowledge
of my unworthiness. The wind pitches,

waves break where they will, neither soil nor stone
beneath me, while overhead the dumb sky strips off

its wet shirt and tosses it to the wind’s hands.
I beg you, push up my chin with your thumb

and press your bearded cheek to mine. Settle me
with the dark soil of your eyes, you who made us

and all the other pieces of the damaged world.
What we men offer each other is nothing

compared to your cold body lying down atop my own,
prostrate on the deck, your breath humid in my ear.

Last night I dreamt the ship grew down and pinions,
a hard and rubbery bill, while the prow shook itself

into the neck of a swan. I clung to its back like a louse
and we flew, feet drawn up into feathers,

the glacier of night creeping by beneath us.
I have forsworn all the others, feel you

tightening me to your large thighs,
nothing left to keep us apart.

I am your little ram,
burying his muzzle in thick grass of your pasture,

folded by you at night, herded by day,
a dedicated dog nipping at my hocks.

The day will come for you to draw
the bright sickle of the moon

across my wooly throat.
Do it with love, without regret.

Heaven-letter
Dwell in My House

Dwell in my house. Take up your spot in the tightest of corners,
in the crumbling cow hair plaster mending the wall. Be found

bound in the blackest nook of the hearth from which
the intelligent eyes of the cats peer forth.

With your care, do dwell there, for otherwise I will be lost,
left to wander the brackish marsh of doubt

left to nurse my small resentments, arguing with no one
while I hoe the sow thistles from betwixt the rows of greens.

Come to me with your palms turned up, your brown hair
pulled back from that open face,

your ring of golden keys ready
to unlock the houses of the Patriarchs.

Snuff out the tomato blight, the beetles in the corn, call the wrens
with their needle beaks to eat the green worms

ciphering the cabbages’ leaves.
Pour down on us the soft water of your rain.

Build your room inside me, for I do suffer.
When I am sleepless & tally what I have lost,

or when I feel for nodes swelling in my groin,
lay your hand upon my brow and shut the hot lids of my eyes.

When I hurry to lock my door, stay my hand.
When I see my aging, childless body,

bring me back to the company I keep.
All this will be taken from me, this I know.

There is more for me to suffer, though I wait for you to bare yourself,
to touch that bloody muscle in your chest.

Adapted from the Heinrich Weiss manuscript, 1791 house blessing, Schwenkfelder Library, Pennsburg, Pennsylvania.

Heaven-Letter

You, looking down upon us from your canopy of air, to you
I commend my body and my brain, & that of my beloveds,

all that I own — stone pile of a house, tilting barn, garden & beloved beasts,
orchards, woods, my sweet furred animals,

the white mare & the brindled gelding,
the goats with their worldly eyes,

my reading & teaching from the books I read — 
let it all rest in your giant hand.

You hang your lantern in the far window for me to see
until the cool blue of night burns and all the world is awake.

With your sorghum broom you sweetened my path, pulled
the woolen shawl around me while I slept.

That the lightning struck the willow
and did not fall — for this I am grateful.

Help me to work. When I mow or plant,
when I seal the summer fruits in jars,

slaughter or pluck, slit the rabbit’s throat, butcher the fallow hen,
when I mend my rended garments, stitch the blanket top,

it is for you. When I wash or scrub upon my knees,
it is to see you more clearly. Each drop of sweat, each muscle pull is yours.

When I tilt my head to gossip,
sting my fleshy tongue.

Your unseen ones have linked willowy arms, drawn knives
tipped with stars and cut down the rat snake coiled in the cellar beams.

They have kept the unleashed Rottweiler from turning down our lane.
Bless Carlos, sharpening his saw in the yard, his night-lamp the emblem of your favor.

There is much for which I am ashamed.
Your invisible world surrounds me.

Let me aid the bachelor neighbors & the harelip with her stupid dog,
the tinker with his yard of noise, & the shape that parts the curtains

of the empty house across the marsh.
With your brush of feathers dust away my footprints.

Stay with me, here in the house.
Urge, with your holy claw, the scratching of my pen.

Adapted from the Johann Heinrich Dechert of Basel house blessing. Roughwood Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia.

Mark Wunderlich’s books of poems are Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf Press, 2004) and The Anchorage (U. of Massachusetts Press, 1999), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. He is a professor of literature at Bennington College.

For more poetry, visit The Poetry Section’s vast archive. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“One reason why I don’t want to get into, don’t particularly — never got excited about the birther business — I don’t want this president discredited and kicked out on a technicality. This isn’t like when Snoop Dogg found himself up on that murder rap and got acquitted on a technicality. I don’t want this president to be convicted on technical grounds. I don’t want this presidency to end on the technicality of whether he was born in Hawaii, or whether he was born in Mombasa, or whether he was born on the planet Krypton. I want these ideas to die — the ideas to which he got elected, because these ideas are killing your country.”
 — Conservative columnist Mark Steyn explains wh — I… man, REALLY? I don’t even…