MI5 agents foil bomb plot

Seems our boys are dishin’ up some tunes in Old Baghdad. Cool.

Link

Well it appears that there really were 911 days between the 9/11 attacks and the bombing in Madrid. Spooky? I think no, just a mass murderer with a twisted sense of irony.

Thanks to Cindy for this one.

I was at my folks’ place over the weekend. Dogsitting, you know. I spent part of Sunday raking up and disposing of the trimmings of their Red Cherry Guava bushes in the back yard. My back is sore, but the truth is that it felt good to be out in the sunshine with a rake. In fact, I had better luck with it than I have with a fountain pen or a computer lately. So it goes.

Did you know that cherry guava berries are edible? I saw some of the berries there on the grass, having sifted through the cuttings, they were resting in the grass. I didn’t see them as food. Maybe it’s residual subconscious suggestion — when we were little, our Mom told us not to eat the berries. She was afraid they might be poisonous. To be fair, she gave us much better stuff to eat. We used to have grapes and homemade jelly makes the best PB&J.

The berries are edible. As are the oranges that hang above them, though the fruit of that tree is best for juice. The oranges from the tree in the corner, where the sun rises, are wonderful. Now that we have oranges sectioned on a plate and oranges juiced, I’ll make some

Toast

It’s time for breakfast, so I

make coffee and toast. A slice

for me and one for the dog.

I have a mug with a red barn on it,

and a radio with piano and guitars.

I break her slice into pieces

the size of my thumb. Her long

whiskers brush my hand

as she takes each bite, then watches

the plate and watches me.

If I hesitate, her eyes get bright and wet

with the grief of unbearable joy.

I leave her whiskers long and wild.

She needs them in the undergrowth,

to shield her face from rough guava

and lilac, to find the trail the cat has left.

One slice is enough for us.

We have the music

and we keep the pieces small.

Kyle Kimberlin

8/14/2001

It’s worse than dog eat dog out there,

it’s dog doesn’t comment on dog’s blog.

Hey, there’s a couple of new blogs on my blogroll. A couple have been removed because they’re idle. An idle blog is the devils … well, it’s boring. One of the new ones is Turning the Tide, Noam Chomsky’s blog. Check it out.

Here’s a company that’s laying off a town and shipping all its jobs to India. The town’s future is dead and scattered like ashes on the Ganges. I say enough is enough. We need to start boycotting companies that ship American jobs overseas.

Link

It’s been over two weeks since Kerry challenged Bush to monthly debates. Bush is still hunkered down behind the waterin’ trough. He’s taking pot shots, but he’s not about to come out and fight like a man.

Link

All of you political journalists reading my blog please take note. Here’s a term I just don’t want to see in print again:

flip-flopping

Thank you for your support.

Along the streets of the town of Tar Harbor, the lights came on and the cats came out as Walter slowly cleaned his teeth. After dark, a breeze came up off the Pacific, ringing the windchimes that hung in his little patio. This was one of his few consolations, since the church closed down. Walter missed the church. But it was now a bookstore/ coffeehouse. They still burned lots of incense, so he would go there sometimes and sit, watching the light gray smoke rise to the ceiling carved and painted blue and touched in better times by cherubim.

…

Poetry never saved anyone from anything, but after he ate his tacos, Walter went to “church.” He drank coffee and read a book on Robert Frost with New England photos. Then he felt the first tightness spread across his chest, arise from his left armpit, coming slowly like a night blooming cactus, fulfilling itself in the right jawbone and ear. Stands of white birches filtering sunrise. He put his hand over his mouth and burped; after a while, the pressure passed. Standing in a barnyard, an ancient hand plow gone to rust. He got up and left, taking a last glance to the counter, at the college girl who was making cappuccino. He forgot about the pain.

* * *

This is a shameless promotion for my Web site. There are poems there, and very short fiction. The paragraphs above are from a very short story called Shasta in the Wind.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

-Bertrand Russell

Who knew that Victor Hugo was such a romantic? Check out this letter he wrote to to Adele Foucher in 1822.

It seems to me that what I feel is not of earth. I cannot yet comprehend this cloudless heaven.