Saturday Verse: "Snowshoe to Otter Creek" - Stacie Cassarino

                                             love lasts by not lasting

                            - Jack Gilbert

I’m mapping this new year’s vanishings:    

lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces.

This is not a story of return.

There are times I wish I could erase

the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,

my fervor to be touched

by a woman two Februarys gone. What brings the body

back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods

with nothing to confide in? New snow reassumes

the circleting trees, the bridge above the creek

where I stand like a stranger to my life.

There is no single moment of loss, there is

an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle

in the bed. The orchard is a graveyard.

Is this the real end? Someone shoveling her way out

with cold intention? Someone naming her missing?

January Mix: Problematic Nineteenager

01-20-2019

I like listening to music again!

1. Buckeye Jim - Burl Ives



2. In Another Life - Foxwarren



3. Faded Dream - Goldmyth



4. Army Dreamers - Kate Bush



5. Moonlight - XXXTENTACION



6. Darling - Real Estate



7. Hungry Heart - Bruce Springsteen



8. Rich Girl - Daryl Hall & John Oates



9. When Love Breaks Down - Prefab Sprout



10. when the party's over - Billie Eilish



11. Here Before - Vashti Bunyan



12. Red Wine & Promises - Mike Waterson, Lal Waterson



13. Your Dog - Soccer Mommy



14. Be the Song - Foy Vance



15. No Matter Where I Roam - Tom Brosseau



16. He Came From The Mountain - Bruce Cockburn



17. Ol' Man River - The Beach Boys



And here it is on Spotify:



NOTES: 
1. When you'd rather live in a Disney movie than real life
2. When you'd rather live in a Andy Shauf party than real life
3. When you'd rather live in a dream than real life
4. When you'd rather be in Kate Bush's army than real life
5. Sorry
6. They made good
7. I'm reading Warm Bodies and wish I was just watching the movie. I think it's my favorite? The soundtrack is the best
8. A banger
9. It slaps
10. This is what the teens are listening to
11. I read a tweet about about a mom saying her daughter talks about her life "from before" and she's 4 years old and it freaked me out so bad I almost couldn't sleep
12. The best best best that you can't hear on Spotify so listen to it here
13. More neu emo
14. More from the Warm Bodies soundtrack
16. The sweetest song that I heard for the first time when Emily Golightly played it at a Christmas acoustic night
17. Always the best harmonies from these brothers

A Poem: "The Birthday of the World" - Marge Piercy

12-28-2018

The birthday of the world

BY MARGE PIERCY

On the birthday of the world

I begin to contemplate

what I have done and left

undone, but this year

not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged

psyche, shoring up eroding

friendships, digging out

stumps of old resentments

that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call

myself to task for what

I have done and not done

for peace. How much have

I dared in opposition?

How much have I put

on the line for freedom?

For mine and others?

As these freedoms are pared,

sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who

have I tried to move? In

this holy season, I stand

self-convicted of sloth

in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric

bends reason to slithering

choking pythons. Here

I stand before the gates

opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes, and as I approach

what judges me, I judge

myself. Give me weapons

of minute destruction. Let

my words turn into sparks.