The Little Planet Daily

Winter Fragrance

darkmatter0205 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:09:47 +0000

Bright sun and high 30s today. Walking through the outdoor patio entrance to my bank today, I was transported by the winter fragrance of Chinese Witch Hazel (Hamamelis Molis.) I looked around for the gangly yellow misanthrope, but it was hiding. There are bacteria living miles below the earths crust making their living in lithic darkness harvesting energy from the radioactive decay of minerals. The diffuse light and cold of the Portland winter at the earths surface is comparative tropical luxury for the Witch Hazel, leaving it energy enough to perfume the air with its sexual vigor. Why do men go to ground in winter, thinking that nature is so feeble as to only grant us it’s favor seasonally? Are we and our modest concerns it’s only measure?

Filed under: journal

Playing the White Keys

darkmatter0205 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:12:29 +0000

I watched President Obama’s state of the union speech before congress last night. He is a good orator, probably the best since Kennedy, but he’s no Jack Kennedy. Obama has no Aeschylus, no Cicero in him. He doesn’t reach for the stars, maybe because he thinks he is the star. The rhythms and cadence of the black preachers are in his repertoire , but he mostly keeps them at the back of the bus. He knows he can’t sound too black, and in him, it is an affect anyway. He mostly played the white keys and delivered a reasonably rendered Souza march from the moderate Protestant Republican side of his family tree. The south side Chicago community organizer who can do a reasonable Al Green impression was not in evidence.

I recalled that ordinary US citizens can no longer sit in the gallery and watch our elected officials. We can only visit a facsimile, presumably soon to be staffed with animatronic senators. Given the state of our actual corrupt sock puppet government, the Disneyland version will at least have clean toilets and a story line that won’t give you a stroke.

Filed under: journal Tagged: obama

Unemployment

darkmatter0205 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:45:07 +0000

Getting fired is
a car accident a mile from town
a funeral on a Tuesday
a child born under a bad sign
the river jumped the bank
took out a row of trees and
the houses now crazy tilted
and silted in
and the L and N don’t stop here anymore
it’s a note stuck to a box of cheap donuts
delivered to your doorstep
on a Sunday morning
saying even though we just
took you off at the knees
we know you’ll land
on your feet

Filed under: journal, poetry Tagged: poetry

Storm Large

darkmatter0205 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:38:30 +0000

Portland’s prodigal daughter and rock and roll diva Storm Large has written an autobiography called “Crazy Enough.” I was lucky to see her perform her one-woman play based on her life, which includes the unforgettable audience sing-along “My Vagina is Eight Miles Wide.” Beneath the sex, heroin addiction and musical shit storm of talent lies a tale of sorrow and love for a mentally ill mother who left her daughter too early. It is an incredibly brave story. Storm tears the shirt and rips the pockets off of life and loves it all the way down. She is the musical love child of Liza Minelli and Janis Joplin. If you ever get a chance to see her perform, take it. She is in her forties now and performing topless is probably no longer in her repertoire. But it would probably distract from her immense talent anyway.

Filed under: journal Tagged: Storm Large

Portland Storm

darkmatter0205 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:06:10 +0000

rain smears the windshield
claymation athletes running
leaves and dogs float by

Filed under: poetry Tagged: Poetry haiku

The New Eden

darkmatter0205 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:00:06 +0000

Noam Chomsky comments on the latest climate talks: “the richest and most powerful nation in history is leading mankind and much of Creation off a cliff. The point of no return is now around 2017, when the carbon budget will be spent.”

Maybe we are attached and desirous, not seeing and accepting things as they are. The coming crash is inevitable. All compound things are impermanent by nature. True. But we are the desirous fools God made us to be. We have already eaten of the tree of knowledge. That horse is out of the barn. If God is banishing us from the Garden lest we gain eternal life, well, too late on that one too. Poetry is eternal. We made that. So are Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations and perhaps the infield fly rule. The moments I held my children for the first time are eternal, and I plan to take them and hundreds more with me when I go. There is a difference between eternal and everlasting. If God fears us gaining everlasting life, he can have it. As Woody Allen says, who wants to sit through the Ice Capades again.

So here is the deal. We will probably take our licking in the evolutionary woodshed, retreat towards the poles as the earth warms and dessicates, drop our population drastically, if that is the price we must pay. We made it through the last evolutionary bottleneck when our numbers dwindled to under ten thousand, and we will make it through another. With Lovelock, the author of the Gaia principle, I believe we will become the new oxygen, the highly caustic byproduct of evolution itself that eventually becomes the catalyst for a whole new fluorescence of life. We will adapt, we will evolve and yes, many of us and our brethren flora and fauna will perish. We did not ask to be put here, nor did we did not ask to be so successful as a species. But we will do precisely what evolution programmed us to do: adapt and survive, even if adapting requires the exact opposite of what it took to make it this far. I expect that the new Eden will likely be strange and wonderful, in it’s own way too.

Filed under: journal Tagged: chomsky

Journal entry 1-14-12

darkmatter0205 — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:47:47 +0000

It was very cold and windy by the Columbia this morning, with flecks of snow. The bird cannons at the airport were booming the whole time, as large flocks gathered in the grass near the runways, seeking heat from the passing jet engines.

Filed under: journal

The Fracking of the American People

darkmatter0205 — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:49:23 +0000

In the synclines of power
deep beneath the arterial flows
channeling the earths treasure
from one hot electric pool to another
lie small seams of change
clinging to the pants pockets
of the substitute teacher
the night nurse
and the landscaper
far from the lavish lucred lakes
formed from the
runoff of wars
the small seams are stirring
gathering, listening
to a great ocean in the distance
big power cannot allow this
so into the taverns
the campuses
the bus yards
the convenience stores
it pumps the pressurized indolent
soothing fluid of lies
but the lubricant cannot reach
into the deepest crevices
where the tenured outrage
of the grandsons and granddaughters
of Sacco and Vanzetti
of Joe Hill
and Woody Guthrie
is finding its own path to
the surface again
without the lubricant
of lies

Filed under: poetry Tagged: poetry fracking

Mount St. Helens

darkmatter0205 — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:31:53 +0000

We slept on black rubber body bags
in the mountain hut
high on the north side
of Mount St. Helens
under the diamond hard sky
the bags squeaked all night
when we rolled over
and the mountain waited
for us to climb
its scabrous slopes
into the brilliant orange white morning
a few years later
that side of the mountain
erupted and slid
into the lake below
at least nobody had to sleep
on those body bags
again

Filed under: poetry Tagged: poetry

The beauty around you

darkmatter0205 — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:23:14 +0000

Look at all the beauty that is still around you and be happy.

–Anne Frank

Filed under: journal