Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Let's Do the Bertdey Blog!

Happy Brithday, Blog! Isang taon ka na! Taba mo na! Teka, may kanin ka sa pisngi! May burnik ka sa ipin! O, pubic hairful ha? Baka muthafucka!

Hehe. Yahhhhhh!!! Isang taon ng kabayawan! Rakenrol!

Stark Trek

NEXT GENERATIONS

1

But, on "Star Trek," we _aren't_ the Borg,

the aggressive conglomerate,

each member part humanoid, part

machine, bent on assimilating

foreign cultures. In fact,

we destroy their ship,

night after night,

in preparation for sleep.


2

We sense something's wrong

when our ideal selves

look like contract players.

The captain plays what's left

of believable authority

as a Shakespearean actor.

The rest are there to show surprise

each time

the invading cube appears —

until any response seems stupid.

But we forgive them.

We've made camp

in the glitch.


Rae Armantrout
Up to Speed
Wesleyan University Press

Sunday, August 28, 2005

This Morning

To see things as they are is hard,
But leaving them alone is harder;
Snow in patches in the yard,
The vacuum in the sky, and in the soul
The movements of temptation and refusal.
I felt a day break. Nothing happened.
The windows gave upon a street
Where cars drove by as usual to the faint,
Unearthly measures of a music
Whose evasions struggled to conceal a
Disappointment all the deeper that the
Hope was for a thing I knew to be unreal.
I can't do it yet. Perhaps no one can do it yet.
The unconstructed gaze is still a fiction
Of the heart, a hope that hides
The boring truth of life within the limits
Of the real, a life whose only heaven
Is the surface of a slowly turning globe.
Yet still I want to think I woke one day to —
To what? The crystal trees, an earthly silence
And the white, unbroken snow of a first morning?

John Koethe
The Kenyon Review
New Series, Volume XXVI Number 4
Fall 2004

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

FOR A SIXTH FORM READER

Don't read odes, my boy, read the timetables:
they are more exact. Unroll the seacharts
before it's too late. Be on your guard, don't sing.
The day will come when they'll hammer lists
on the door again and mark with special signs
all who say no. Learn to go unrecognized,
learn more than I ever did: to change
your domicile, passport, face. Become
adept at petty treacheries and the everyday
dirty get-out. Encyclicals
are good to light the fire with,
manifestos: to wrap the butter in and salt
for those who cannot defend themselves. Rage
and patience are needed
to blow into the lungs of power
the lethal dust
finely ground by those who have learned a lot
and are exact, like you.


Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Translated from the German by David Constantine
Poetry London
Number 47
Spring 2004