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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2006)
PAGE 7 PRISTINE i dreamt last night about the latest political struggle. z waking up it condensed from dream to thought and the very next thing in my head, in my body, is / ..y .»Í. - what’s it going to take today 41 r a to make me feel all right? z i’ve got this knot of restless discontent in my belly ,/ and caffeine will only make it louder. 4M '< *'■1 alcohol! i think alcohol makes everything better except there’s all these funny rules attached ■ca: like you can’t just sit on your porch W first thing in the morning f l a i l 4? with a mug of wine, you can’t really drink wine out of a mug ever i don’t guess. w it has to be in the evening, , i . out of a certain shaped glass, I preferably in front of a nice plate of spaghetti, and (god should hope) not by yourself. so i get up anyway f f & and do the dishes and cry right then and there k about the whole goddamn state of things, the page full of letters to the editor salivating over jobs and ever increasing highways, the S Ü page one article on the loss of pristine forest. w ; • r .. .> , that’s the word they always use, i think, pristine, « and i wonder Z 4 'ià f > M 1 ~ A .< < • ? if it’s because no one ever uses it for anything else so no one has to think about what it really means, Z 'Z : untouched: like the way you feel when you’re walking through the forest and the sunlight filters down through the branches and everything seems so startlingly clear and connected it’s like » f 5. your heart projected an old memory '■ TOM WESSELMANN, straight from your chest onto “ THE GREAT AMERICAN NUDE VI” the blank wall of the world surrounding you. the way you’ll never feel driving over a bigger highway, the way you’ll never feel at the factory turning levers in your flameproof jumpsuit. i like that word, pristine. i think i’m going to use it more often. i think that’s what i’ll tell people when they ask me how i feel today, i’ll say pristine, FORECAST and they’ll be too confused to notice the stale smell of wine and cigarettes on my breath at 10:30 in the morning. Betrayal, all along, will have been the least of it. Some fall like empire — slowly, from the wild, more -TERESA BARNES unmappable borders inward, until reduced to history, to the nothing from which, in the end, These are days of muffled silence, shrouded history’s made; in gray skies, silent whirling birds, TO THE REPUBLIC and others, they fall with the dizzying swiftness of non-descript walkers, seeking coffee, leaving one of those seized-in-the-night lovers, leaving homes, leaving. I dreamt I saw a caravan of the dead kingdoms — chambers start out again from Gettysburg. awash with the blood of princelings, their spattered The morning is the quietest time, river crowns toys now in the conqueror’s rivulets of silver silence, thoughtful Close-packed upright in rows on railroad flat- jumbled repose, awaiting the 1st logical beds inlhe sun, they soon will stink. fine hands. . . As for nonsense uttered from others. the common choice, the rote of exile that most call a life, • Victor and vanquished shoved together, dirt days on end spent muttering about loyalty, tattooing In the car the radio voice yells had bleached the blue and gray one color. the word Who? over one nipple, Why? just below the other, and pretends humor when what foraging is there is filler, jumbled words seemingly Risen again from Gettysburg, as if shirtless among the animals or, worse, only logical, but grammatically lost. the state were shelter crawled to through watching them pass — blind, but for instinct — beneath the stooped cathedrals that the trees make in a storm Nouns lose adjectives, blood, risen disconsolate that we that — forever, it seems — looks permanent. No. Even verbs yet disconnect from nouns, now ruin the great work of time, slaughter will have been better, I think, nouns duty-bound trail their prepositions. Conjunctions join disparate ideas. they roll in outrage across America. than that The pronoun searches for its antecedent. Interjections abound! You betray us is blazoned across each chest. -C A R L PHILLIPS The adverb is lonely, To each eye as they pass: You betray us. modifying nothing. I dreamt I had gone to the park Assaulted by the impotent dead, I say it’s at midnight to moonbathe -L. R. BUELT their misfortune and none of my own. and was busted for picking the plastic flowers. I dreamt I saw a caravan of the dead A CALL TO ALMS move on wheels touching rails without sound. I thought the crowd would hide me. To each eye as they pass: You betray us. Stop working You’ve worked hard enough under brutal capitalists who call themselves -W A L T LIVELY politicians. -FRANK BIDART Stop paying your rent, your mortgage MATERIALISM Stop putting money into banks Stop paying off your credit card bills. Give the money away or pull it together, build a If things aren’t things commune Start a collective Live off the land So much as happenings, Stop putting it back into a system that only works to harm you. Or» a confluence even Stop talking Stand in silence, arms raised, cry in need through quiet eyes. More complex, Leave your home Take friends and family with you. Drive your car into affluent Then there’s no such thing neighborhoods Set up homeless camps, soup kitchens, refugee relocation centers. And, As sky, though sky when asked to move simply say... no. Is real, and we Success kills. Money kills. Lies kill. Power kills. Sick. Born Sick Have not imagined it. Death. The everlasting Death Never began. Death. Everything, then Nobody told you life would be easy Is the direction everything Nobody told you it wasn’t your fault. Moves in, seeming Nobody expects you to ask why Not to move. Nobody expects you to care I am waiting Stop caring For something very Nice to happen, Get up every morning, go to work, ask for a raise If not given, take And then it happens. Wear buttons that proudly proclaim that you are of the working poor. JUDITH NILAND Your long dark Shame them Hair sweeps Stop referring to people by name, only by number. Across my chest The machine works best when the mechanisms are well-oiled and polished to perfection Like sweeps of prairie Be unpolished Rain. Loveliest Let the world know hard work has nothing to do with it JULY 8 — SEPTEMBER 9 Of motion’s possessions, Take a stand O pening Curtain 8 p.m.,Thurs, Frl & Sat Hold me still. Do nothing OLD FINNISH MEAT MARKET THEATER z #48 SHANGHAIED IN ASTORIA 279 W. MARINE DR., ASTORIA * (503) 325-6104 -JAM ES GALVIN I -JOSEPH DELAHANTY