Poem: Li Po In Disgrace

By Jack Brummet

Four hundred and forty-thousand
Moons ago, Li Po sits
Drinking wine on a bluff.

The Sun fades into blue mountains.
On the other side of the ball,
The sun scales the horizon.

Crickets tune up
And the first bats
Sail from roost to roost.

I think about Li Po drunk again
In the mountains, waiting for word
And listening to the wind songs.

Lost and alone on so many levels,
He stares at the cup
And wonders when his pardon will come.

He holds a inkpot, scroll, and brush.
He listens to his skin fold
And his hair turn grey.

Between the mountains and stars,
A crow wheels over fogged red pines
Spiring in moonlight.

LiPo shakes wet peach blossoms
From his coat
And fills the cup.

Moonlight dances
On the golden wine
In the silver cup.

Who needs a clear head this night?
---o0o---

Painting: the first strike against the king comes from the clown

Painting by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Painting: 2% real

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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10 short poems

By Jack Brummet

Resurrection

He was ready to live again
Even if living just meant running
To keep ahead of the ghosts.

---o0o---

Tethers

Our tenuous hold on earth
Is disguised in our shadows,
Tethered to the ground
By the soles of our feet,
And a theory of gravity.

---o0o---

[Life Is Not A Hardy Novel]

Life is not like a Hardy novel,
'Though it seems so at times.
God's not mad at us;
But his patience is stretched
To a molecule thick.
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Silence

The stilled hacking of crows
And rainchecked dove's cooroo.
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Counter-insurgency

You think one thing,
Say another,
And do a third.
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A meditation on the I Ching and Mitt Romney’s comment that “the earth can handle pretty much anything we dish out”

She takes everything we dish out.
So far.

Dragons fight in the meadow
Their blood is black and yellow.
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The Reverse King Midas Touch

Sending out feelers and then testing the ground,
The right place was one place he could never be found.
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The Return Of The Kings

We never picture the aliens 

Coming in peace
Because we never came in peace.
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Icarus

The rings of the splash
Send dopplers into the void,
Widening and pushing out
In the cold and lonely sea.
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The Man In The Mirror

There's a civil war in his head:
Lobe against lobe.
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Nine short poems

By Jack Brummet

No Exit, 3

Once you grab a tiger by the tail,

You can never let it go.

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Mission Statement

The Army has two duties—

To break things, and kill people;

Everything else is just fluff and overhead.
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Torches & Pitchforks

The whole
Is far less than the sum
Of its parts:---o0o---

Reds

There is no tomorrow

Until we get through
The day after yesterday.

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Weather Report

Life is a raindrop
Sizzling as it skitters
Across the universal griddle.
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Monism

I'm you,
You're me.
All this
Is That.
---o0o—

It's Getting Crowded

We cover the earth
With Venn Diagrams

As our steps
Bisect old steps.
---o0o---

The Marriage

Two tattered mannequins
Prop each other up
In the Salvation Army Store window
---o0o---

Resurrection

He was ready to live again
Even if living just meant running
To keep ahead of the ghosts.

---o0o---

A bird on Adolph Hitler's shoulder

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Poem: The Variations

By Jack Brummet

1.

I don't know which is better
The thing itself

Or the chicanes lacunae variations
Selections shadings emendations
Redactions prevarications blurring
And sharpening that transmogrify
The tale with time

2.
I don't know which is better
To see the baby emerge

Or who the baby becomes

3.
I don't know which is better
To keep pondering the variations

Or to not

4.
My rogue and rococo thoughts
Skitter sideways
Like a side-shuffling crab

Using evasive tactics
In case anyone locks on
And attempts to impose

A framework
Of coherence and congruence
On these fitfully nuanced palabra

5.
If you actually understand
What I am writing
We have all missed the point

Sometimes I don't know
What it means
Until someone else tells me

6.
Sometimes I don't know
If it's better to pull your leg

Or my own

7.
I don't know which is better
The fog and detours

Or the thing itself.
---o0o---

Mixed media painting: The sergeant at arms

By Jack Brummet

[mixed media, acrylic, pen and pencil on 18"x36" wood panel]

click to enlarge

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Bob Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Hunter S. Thompson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and Woody Allen's typewriters

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The Dog Cafe, circa 1930

By Pablo Fanque, Reluctant Dog Editor (meaning Jack & Mona are definitely NOT "dog people")


The Dog Cafe, ca. 1930. Interestingly, if you search for Dog Cafes now, the results are for cafes that serve dogs (I didn't say serve dog). . .

1930

2013

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Adolph Hitler enjoys a console game?

By Mona Goldwater, German Studies Ed.

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for passing this one along.  We don't know the context or provenance, or the 'shopper!

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The Cuban Missile Crisis: On the brink

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

I recently read a book about the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, and the JFK (+RFK)  White House response. It's incredible how close we came to incinerating everything, and somehow bumbled through it with Russia and Cuba, ending up more or less whole.

This photograph shows an anti-aircraft gun on Key West that week, pointed out over the Florida Straits.

click to enlarge

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