Compulsively Aimless

When my parents died, I inheirted their libraries.  One set of 28 books were from The Modern Library series.  The series was created in 1917 with the intent to provide American readers with inexpensive reprints of what were considered important European titles and a few contemporary American books.  The books were issued in compact, hard-cover with a textured cloth in two-tone finish and without dust jackets. (There are different color schemes but I've never figured out if there is a signficance to the color combinations.)  The series adopted a running torchbearer as its logo.  The Modern Library was sold in 1927 to a new publisher, Random House, lead by editor Bennett Cerf. Random House added more titles over time billing tself as “The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books” but kept its mission the same.  The series, published thorough the 1930s, reached some 280 titles and covered authors from Aristotle to Zola.   I recall seei...

Duel at the Haiku Coral Junior fought a haiku duel with the old witch and won! Beach Combing Everyone is a collection of stories and when they die their stories scatter washing up on different shores to be discovered by beach combers or stay buried under the sand. Eternity Road Driving eternity road in an 18-wheeler of flammable emotion the rest stops are shuttered except for the coin-operated machines offering heroism, selfishness, and endless confusion. Dark and Light Dawn and dusk and the boundaries are’t clear but I see rivers of darkness rushing through the night Curl away the brown wrapper and there’s a new morning Here Be Monsters Dark poetry drove sailors over the edge of the map. I Saw This in a Movie A figure on the horizon the hero waits too long deceived and disarmed but if he had acted too soon it would have been murder. Battle of the Bands : Honorable idiots vs. Imbeciles for Hire Wrong Again vs. Revenge Men Favorite Phantons vs. Real Imposters Fancy Types vs. Rus...

Digital morning Everything needs a password Everyone forgets

Cartoons present a wide and nearly inexhaustable spectrum so with this list, I'm emphasizing my disclaimor that the lists presented are completely random and based on whatever I happen to have lying around.  After a couple of cups of coffee this morning, here's a few. Favorite Haunts, Charles Addams (1976).   A collection of Addams "greatest hits" from the leading cartoonist for the New Yorker who inspired the Addams Family TV show and unacknowledged god father of dark humor.  As a kid, I spent many a rainy Saturday afternoons in our basement flipping through the different Addams cartoon collections.  Inheirited from my parents book collection.   Cat, Tiny Footprints, Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon , Whack Your Porpupine , B. Kliban (1975-1982).  B.Kliban started with cat meat loaf drawings and moved on to other more surreal subjects. Bizaar and slightly distrubing, I bought most of them in the local mall where I grew up and even had t...

Summer 1969 June I crashed my Matchbox Ferraris on home-made gravel roads Saturday nights the thunder of stock car engines traveled miles across cornfields the Doppler effect making their revolutions rise and fall like the din of a faraway battle the thunder lasted a thousand summers but maybe it was five or six. July My parents' guests laughed and drank on the patio under the shadows of an 80-year old oak tree spared by the contractor leaving it encircled like a druid meeting place for the first time humans cast their shadows on the moon I ran from our black and white TV to the patio with urgent dispatches The Eagle has landed Stepping off the LEM now … not one Christopher Columbus among the guests to come watch TV with me. August Morning was the hum of a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower marching up and down the yard spinning silver steel against green grass but in the afternoon sprawled on the lawn it was the transient drone of an unseen p...

Five Cent Amusements 
 The dunce did a dance with his cup of love. *** The fox in the dark makes the house dogs bark *** Most everything is expectations that never happen. Weather is the first gift from nature. *** On stage with my fears every day I walk out the door *** Soon my time will be someone else’s time *** After the storm broken branches on the dark pavement look like overgrown tarantulas.

Masters of the Universe Coffee shop idlers everyone at the center of their MacBook universe. Supreme Coffee Brain   After the large latte and venti dark roast there were fifteen minutes where I was at the mountaintop master of all knowledge or at least a Sunday New York Times   Then, slowly my foot slipped from the summit and I spiraled down the caffeine chasm  crushed in an avalanche of my pedestrian ignorance   Sound Memory The sound that comes from one small town is the place where I was young.   Outspeak the Dark Music Frantic man yelling in the distance to fugitive listeners Leaf and star burn at night The destiny of diamonds is dust Bonehouse is the body said Beowolf Words I Like relic atmosphere murmuration You're No Haiku Shark fin old gin make you grin Minor Word Distortions   Company Panic Steel Plates in Head Home Despot Artist Rectal   Band Names + Songs Stage Presence - Last Noise Milton’s Angels - Robbe...