Idus Martias

q2l

On the Ides is held the jovial feast of Anna Perenna not far from the banks, O Tiber, who comest from afar. The common folk come, and scattered here and there over the green grass they drink, every lad reclining beside his lass. Some camp under the open sky; a few pitch tents; some make a leafy hut of boughs. Others set up reeds in place of rigid pillars, and stretching out their robes place them upon the reeds. But they grow warm with sun and wine, and they pray for as many years as they take cups, and they count the cups they drink. There shall you find a man who drains as many goblets as Nestor numbered years, and a woman who would live to the Sibyl’s age if cups could work the charm. There they sing the ditties they picked up in the theatres, beating time to the words with nimble hands; they set the bowl down, and trip in dances, lubberly, while the spruce sweetheart skips about with streaming hair. On the way home they reel, a spectacle for vulgar eyes, and the crowd that meets them calls them “blest.” I met the procession lately; I thought it notable; a drunk old woman lugged a drunk old man.

Ovid

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of the Flint

q2l

Breathtaking
the wildlife that exists in that river corridor:
otter, fox, muskrat, beaver, bobcat…
treasure.

Jimmy Carter

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The Eyes of My Regret

q2l

A lways at dusk, the same tearless experience,
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
To the same well-worn rock;
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun
The same tints—rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;
Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,
Two eyes, unfathomable, soul-searing,
Watching, watching—watching me;
The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk;
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,
—The eyes of my Regret.

Angelina Weld Grimké

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After Striving

q2l

I     think of my father’s one-room woodshop,
how his business sign eventually blew over
beside apple trees and blueberry bushes.

At church, men would ask, Staying busy?
He hated that question, and kept adding logs
to the stove and sanding doors.

There was a time I’d stare at the grass in September
and not think about the push mower.

When work is over, I find his skin. His hips
metronome while rinsing plates like it’s joy
he’s practicing. We relearn simple math like dance,
because how long have we been striving
and what has work numbed?

Corrie Lynn White

RedBoxPlainSm*[ WSB ].

The Forest Road

q2l

T he forest road,
The infinite straight road stretching away
World without end: the breathless road between the walls
Of the black listening trees: the hushed, grey road
Beyond the window that you shut to-night
Crying that you would look at it by day—
There is a shadow there that sings and calls
But not for you. Oh! hidden eyes that plead in sleep
Against the lonely dark, if I could touch the fear
And leave it kissed away on quiet lids—
If I could hush these hands that are half-awake,
Groping for me in sleep I could go free.
I wish that God would take them out of mine
And fold them like the wings of frightened birds
Shot cruelly down, but fluttering into quietness so soon.
Broken, forgotten things; there is no grief for them in the green Spring
When the new birds fly back to the old trees.
But it shall not be so with you. I will look back. I wish I knew that God would
       stand

Smiling and looking down on you when morning comes,
To hold you, when you wake, closer than I,
So gently though: and not with famished lips or hungry arms:
He does not hurt the frailest, dearest things
As we do in the dark. See, dear, your hair—
I must unloose this hair that sleeps and dreams
About my face, and clings like the brown weed
To drowned, delivered things, tossed by the tired sea
Back to the beaches. Oh! your hair! If you had lain
A long time dead on the rough, glistening ledge
Of some black cliff, forgotten by the tide,
The raving winds would tear, the dripping brine would rust away
Fold after fold of all the loveliness
That wraps you round, and makes you, lying here,
The passionate fragrance that the roses are.
But death would spare the glory of your head
In the long sweetness of the hair that does not die:
The spray would leap to it in every storm,
The scent of the unsilenced sea would linger on
In these dark waves, and round the silence that was you—
Only the nesting gulls would hear—but there would still be whispers in your
       hair;

Keep them for me; keep them for me. What is this singing on the road
That makes all other music like the music in a dream—
Dumb to the dancing and the marching feet; you know, in dreams, you see
Old pipers playing that you cannot hear,
And ghostly drums that only seem to beat. This seems to climb:
Is it the music of a larger place? It makes our room too small: it is like a stair,
A calling stair that climbs up to a smile you scarcely see,
Dim, but so waited for; and you know what a smile is, how it calls,
How if I smiled you always ran to me.
Now you must sleep forgetfully, as children do.
There is a Spirit sits by us in sleep
Nearer than those who walk with us in the bright day.
I think he has a tranquil, saving face: I think he came
Straight from the hills: he may have suffered there in time gone by,
And once, from those forsaken heights, looked down,
Lonely himself, on all the lonely sorrows of the earth.
It is his kingdom—Sleep. If I could leave you there—
If, without waking you, I could get up and reach the door—!
We used to go together.—Shut, scared eyes,
Poor, desolate, desperate hands, it is not I
Who thrust you off. No, take your hands away—
I cannot strike your lonely hands. Yes, I have struck your heart,
It did not come so near. Then lie you there
Dear and wild heart behind this quivering snow
With two red stains on it: and I will strike and tear
Mine out, and scatter it to yours. Oh! throbbing dust,
You that were life, our little wind-blown hearts!
                              The road! the road!
There is a shadow there: I see my soul,
I hear my soul, singing among the trees!

Charlotte Mew

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autograph this

q2l

One night I was sitting with friends at a table in a crowded Key West bar. At a nearby table, there was a mildly drunk woman with a very drunk husband. Presently, they woman approached me and asked me to sign a paper napkin. All this seemed to anger her husband; he staggered over to the table, and after unzipping his trousers and hauling out his equipment, said: “Since you’re autographing things, why don’t you autograph this?” The tables surrounding us had grown silent, so a great many people heard my reply, which was: “I don’t know if I can autograph it, but perhaps I can initial it.”

Truman Capote
from: Music for Chameleons

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Death is a Star

q2l

And I was gripped by that deadly phantom;
I followed him through hard jungles
as he stalked through the back lots,
strangling through the night shades.
O the thief of life
moved onwards and outwards to love.

In a one-stop only motel
a storm bangs on the cheapest room.
The phantom slips in to spill blood,
even on the sweetest honeymoon.
The killer of love
caught the last, late Niagara bus.

By chance or escaping from misery,
by suddenness or in answer to pain,
smoking in the dark cinema—
see the bad go down again.

And the clouds are high in Spanish mountains;
and a Ford roars through the night full of rain.
The killer’s blood flows,
but he loads his gun again.
Can make a grown man cry like a girl
to see the guns dying at sunset.

In vain, lovers claimed
that they never had met.
Smoking in the dark cinema,
see the bad go down again.

Joe Strummer;
     Mick Jones

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^6Note

q2l

Plaintiff [Donald J. Trump], and Plantiff’s lawyers,
are urged to reconsider their opposition
to Defendant’s [Attorney General of New York,
Letitia A. James] Motion to Dismiss.
This litigation has all the telltale signs
of being both
                         vexatious and frivolous.

Federal Judge Don Middlebrooks,
of the Southern District of Florida

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man’s bullshit

q2l

Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say ‘Shit, it’s raining!’

Ruby Thewes:
     Renée Zellweger, actress
     Anthony Minghella, screenwriter

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longer abstract

q2l

The Executive Summary [Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol: Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee] is longer than most books I read [A long Title and an even longer (154 pgs) abstract of traitorous Americans].

Morning Joe

Addendum:

FINAL REPORT
Select Committee to Investigate the
January 6th
Attack on the United States Capitol
December 00, 2022
117th Congress Second Session
House Report 117-000
(845 pgs)

Record for the public.

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