To Her Dear Mountains

To Her Dear Mountains

This was posted on the CCAN blog on 08 Feb 2008

Had we but world enough, and time,
This patience, ladies, were no crime.
Thou in the shade of Old Rag Mountain
Should lilies find; I by the fountain
of the Potomac would complain.
We could dance on fields of green
and trust Dominion to clean their steam,
Blithely prancing in their hot air
And on blather that they make fair.

Our love would never be stained
By the blast of Dominion’s reign
Or buried by the waste of mining
For the coal to fuel the shining
Of incandescent lights and energy
Wasted, to cause your injury.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Destroyed and ravaged mountain sides
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
But arsenic and lead surround.

Now let us sport us while we may;
And pledge with our hearts on display
And join with all to write a Valentine
to Governor Kaine to stop their mine
and penetrate the walls of Dominion’s
Long-preserved hegemony.
And we will win despite the money
Because if we roll our strength and all
Our love up into one huge ball
We tear apart the iron gates
of power and find more beautiful fates.

kale and persimmon

Kale

2 t olive oil
3 clove garlic
1 bunch kale
3 t water
1/4 C soy sauce
1 15 oz can kidney beans

Heat oil in large pot and saute garlic. Rinse kale and chop in 2 in sections, add to pot. Add water and soy sauce, cover, and cook for 20-30 minutes until kale is well cooked. Rinse kidney beans and add to pot about 10 min before kale is done.

Persimmon

1 Persimmon

Peal and slice persimmon.

Beer

As many blue heron pale ales as needed.

Lock the top door with the key with no tape

Lock the top door with the key with no tape
The gate key says “gate”
The front door key says “front”
But I’m not done closing down yet.
The basement key doesn’t work, so lock it, and then close the locked door.

No decisions, strait down 14th and end up on the National Mall, parked, next to the fat security guard driving an SUV.

2 tourists hold hands, the third laughs with them
A man lounges with his leg up and arm stretched out over the bench
Trash cans, green lawn, Washington monument towers over, and the capitol presides.

indulgence

The careless driver turning right onto Wisconsin never sees me. These torpid zombies at the wheel, dreaming of the meat sticks they constantly shove into their faces that make them so huge and fat. Their veins and bones haven’t been seen for years under their layer of lard. They are literally made of shit.

it’s good to be a woman

The Concretes know how it feels to be a woman.

surprises

Rich people finally worried about social justice?  Maybe.

fav music vids

They’re old, but must be archived.

Peter, Bjorn & John – Young Folks

Loney, Dear – I am John

Loney, Dear – Saturday Waits

Tobias Froberg – Somewhere in the City

Tobias Froberg – When the Night Turns Cold

signs of the season

1. heat and rain, rain and heat
2. mosquitoes colonizing my legs
3. fireflies fooling fairies
4. spring buds pushed inside out
5. mimosa trees get distinguished again
6. light and insomnia, insomnia and vamp

today’s word: gallimaufry \gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun:
A medley; a hodgepodge.

poppies

“for several weeks in the spring the poppies bloom: lovely, open-petalled white, pink, red, and magenta blooms, the darker colors indicating the ones with the most opium.”

“We came to a wide bend in the river, a stretch of good, flat growing land with broad poppy fields. The fields were neat and well tended, and the swollen bulbs beneath the blossoms on their long green stalks were dripping with dark-brown opium. A heady, acrid odor like stale urine hung in the air. Small groups of men and boys were in the fields, scoring the bulbs to bleed the opium. They stopped and stared at us when we drove past, and then continued their work.”

“The boy showed me how he ran his thumb over the oozing bulbs and then scraped the gooey brown opium into a glass he held in his other hand. When the glass was full, he emptied the contents into a large bowl.”

“In the main square in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan Province, in central Afghanistan, a large billboard shows a human skeleton being hanged. The rope is not a normal gallows rope but the stem of an opium poppy.”

from the new yorker, “The Taliban’s Opium War, ” by Jon Lee Anderson

6 things de la finca

1. crawdad
2. mountain minnows
3. 2 ft diameter cowpatties
4. acres of uncomfortably open space, vulnerable
5. kids making out by the fire
6. crazy man threatening your camera with a fiery death