it is fucking difficult to get the news...

as WCW said 'it is difficult to get the news from poems/but men die everyday/from lack of what is found there.'  [i quoted that from memory so sue me (but don't sue me!) if i got the lineation wrong.

but lo!  our world is in a topsy turvy place.  as crazy now perhaps as it was in WCW's days.  & his days were nuts, even murderous.  so i must confess that i pay way less attention to the news in print or broadcast media.  not that i don't want to know what is going on in the world.  only but for the creation of a small space for my sanity.

cuz the news wants to get clicks.  it needs your eyes & ears.  the best way is to engage your emotional responses.  the easiest emotions to exploit are fear & anger.  study exploitation movies for proof.  so i am reading poems, nonfiction, watching movies, & watching youtubers that give me pleasure & comfort.  

that's not a retreat from the world.  rather, i am better placed to absorb the states of our world & how they are presented to us via media when i don't watch the damn news all the time.  one can't live in a constant state of alert.  i need downtime.  dream time.  play time.  ludic not lunacy, dammit.

even as i am suffering from my first cold since the start of the pandemic.  it is just a cold.  but i got the coughs, sniffles & overall mien of daffy duck running from the little man from the draft board.  i am dying!  no not really but really.  i am dying.  & so are you.  but if we are lucky we are not dying anytime soon.

so to beat this fucking horse to death & allow me to be a bit didactic we should all practice humility.  after all, it was announced a couple days ago that we have officially hit 8 billion people on this planet.  our population quadrupled since i was born.  put that in your pipe & smoke it.  think you are important?  sure, but so are 8 billion other human beings.  a little fucking humility!

but goddam it!  ready my poems, my rants & watch some damn fine really bad movies.  why?  cuz we are all dying! & the news is not always that which is found in the media. 

i call forth a catullan poetics that is lusty, bawdy, profane & tells power to go fuck itself.  

fuckin' a!