Midwestern machismo

Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest.
There was something athletic about it.
You flexed your face into a smile
and let it hover there like the dare of a cat.

            Lorrie Moore, The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore

 

 

 

 

 

One great secret

Human beings—any one of us, and our species as a whole—
are not all-important, not at the center of the world.
That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret,
offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains
or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.

            Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

A recipe for kindness

Have a heart that never hardens,
    and a temper that never tires,
        and a touch that never hurts.

                    Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

 

 

Worth the effort

Anyone can be a barbarian;
it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.

        Leonard Woolf, Barbarians Within and Without

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Soltice: New York City

By the end of the longest day of the year he could not stand it,
he went up the iron stairs through the roof of the building
and over the soft, tarry surface
to the edge, put one leg over the complex green tin cornice
and said if they came a step closer that was it.
Then the huge machinery of the earth began to work for his life,
the cops came in their suits blue-grey as the sky on a cloudy evening,
and one put on a bullet-proof vest, a
black shell around his own life,
life of his children's father, in case
the man was armed, and one, slung with a
rope like the sign of his bounden duty,
came up out of a hole in the top of the neighboring building
like the gold hole they say is in the top of the head,
and began to lurk toward the man who wanted to die.
The tallest cop approached him directly,
softly, slowly, talking to him, talking, talking,
while the man's leg hung over the lip of the next world
and the crowd gathered in the street, silent, and the
hairy net with its implacable grid was
unfolded near the curb and spread out and
stretched as the sheet is prepared to receive a birth.
Then they all came a little closer
where he squatted next to his death, his shirt
glowing its milky glow like something
growing in a dish at night in the dark in a lab and then
everything stopped
as his body jerked and he
stepped down from the parapet and went toward them
and they closed on him, I thought they were going to
beat him up, as a mother whose child has been
lost will scream at the child when its found, they
took him by the arms and held him up and
leaned him against the wall of the chimney and the
tall cop lit a cigarette
in his own mouth, and gave it to him, and
then they all lit cigarettes, and the
red, glowing ends burned like the
tiny campfires we lit at night
back at the beginning of the world.

                        Sharon Olds

Poem: This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

 

                    Philip Larkin 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juneteenth

I'm not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don't have.
If I'm gonna die, I'll die now right here fighting you, if I'm gonna die.
You my enemy.
My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese.
You my opposer when I want freedom.
You my opposer when I want justice.
You my opposer when I want equality.
You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs,
and you want me to go somewhere and fight,
but you won't even stand up for me here at home.

        Muhammad Ali in 1967 statement on television,
        on refusing to register for the draft and fight in the Vietnam War