ABlog

I wake up in the night and think about Iran and bird flu, bird flu in Iran and bird flu and Iran. I think that bird flu is in Nigeria. I feel ashamed for thinking that I don’t care too much about bird flu being in Nigeria but only that this increases the likelihood of it coming here. I don’t feel that desperate at the thought of a pandemic, per se, but more at the thought of no effective public health mechanisms in place; I feel desperate at the thought of a pandemic that would be like AIDS only faster, like AIDS in Africa, like AIDS in U.S. communities of color, like AIDS was for even affluent gay men in the 80’s and early 90’s: the worst devastation the outcome not of a “disease” but, as David Wojnarowicz said, “a diseased society.” I feel desperate at the thought of a bird flu pandemic that would/will be like Hurricane Katrina, devastation prophesied and scientifically predicted, sketched out in detail in advance and then permitted to happen, encouraged to happen, at any rate in no way impeded from happening, in no effective way ameliorated once it starts to happen, its survivors in no way assisted to recover from the devastation once it has been witnessed and perfunctorily lamented.

In short, I feel desperate at my inability to prevent a recurrence or ongoing occurrence of what is already occurring.

I picture the young Asian woman—an international student, I guessed—whom I noticed this week standing in line in a store near the New School, a face mask (from the subway , I assumed) hooked gently over her ears, pulled down beneath her chin.

I feel desperate at the thought of the bombing of Iran that is being foretold by John Pilger and Ray McGovern and everyone else who’s following the escalating propaganda campaign regarding Iran’s nuclear program. John Pilger says the real reason for the attack will be Iran’s move to trade oil in euros rather than dollars. Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, projects the likely timing of the attack as “next month.” I feel crazed, almost hysterical yet deeply quiet, deeply stalled and also numb at the thought of my/our apparent inability to do anything effective to prevent this criminal devastation, devastation not only to Iranian self-determination but to the world’s feeble efforts to adhere to any rule but an eye for an eye, might makes right. Solicited multiple times by Howard Zinn and a group of like-minded notables, I take 10 minutes to dispatch e-mails lamenting the preparations for further aggression. I send e-mails to public officials and divert myself with the latest on Dick Cheney’s hunting mayhem. I admire and rejoice in the fact that this comparatively trivial instance of administration irresponsibility, incompetence, and mendacity resonates with the power of media metaphor for all the wrong reasons (i.e. media fixation on the personal and on personalities, on the exploits and misadventures of individual ruling-class Americans rather than on the policy decisions that devastate and obliterate millions and billions of human lives). I rejoice in Dick Cheney’s rough week, in White House discomfiture, and in the real possibility that something as trivial as a drunken hunting misadventure—a lawyer instead of a quail--could be what finally tips the balance with the American public (because unlike the real crimes of this administration, Dick’s incompetence with birdshot makes him look ridiculous and unmanly). I consider the fact that this new pratfall of a lurching, politically wounded administration makes it all the more likely that a vicious bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear capability and whatever else the administration and its Israeli allies feel like hitting will seem an attractive means of demoting Harry Whittington’s cardiac complications from the top of the headlines.

I work on a poem that I’m not sure is even a poem, more like tatting or macramé, compulsive in the extreme.

Just Now

Just when I was being
Just when I was burning
Just when I was lording
Just when I was queening
Just when I was cooking
Just when I was cunning
Just when I was creaming
Just when I was coming

Just when I was singing
Just when I was strumming
Just when I was scheming
Just when I was scatting
Just when I was roaring
Just when I was riffing
Just when I was prancing
Just when I was stunning

Just when I was dicking
Just when I was deigning
Just when I was wrecking
Just when I was reigning
Just when I was duping
Just when I was draining
Just when I was ruing
Just when I was scramming

Just when I was bossing
Just when I was slaving
Just when I was reading
Just when I was writhing
Just when I was herding
Just when I was harping
Just when I was kvetching
Just when I was carping

Just when I was primping
Just when I was praying
Just when I was booing
Just when I was braying
Just when I was brooding
Just when I was breeding
Just when I was bombing
Just when I was bleeding

Just when I was mugging
Just when I was flouncing
Just when I was preening
Just when I was pouncing
Just when I was laughing
Just when I was masking
Just when I was strafing
Just when I was gunning

Just when I was stewing
Just when I was sinning
Just when I was storming
Just when I was vamping
Just when I was flossing
Just when I was dissing
Just when I was lapsing
Just when I was sassing

Just when I was lilting
Just when I was tilting
Just when I as grousing
Just when I was grieving
Just when I was lunching
Just when I was lurching
Just when I was drowning
Just when I was hanging

Just when I was knitting
Just when I was purling
Just when I was camping
Just when I was curling
Just when I was whelping
Just when I was whirling
Just when I was manning
Just when I was girling

Just when I was serving
Just when I was bearing
Just when I was bowing
Just when I was scraping
Just when I was drudging
Just when I was fudging
Just when I was masking
Just when I was lasting

Just when I was catting
Just when I was dogging
Just when I was cowing
Just when I was hogging
Just when I was ducking
Just when I was fishing
Just when I was worming
Just when I was snaking

Just when I was leaving
Just when I was learning
Just when I was eking
Just when I was aching
Just when I was eyeing
Just when I was tonguing
Just when I was lashing
Just when I was loving

Just when I was shining
Just when I was skirting
Just when I was supping
Just when I was mucking
Just when I was wooing
Just when I was wronging
Just when I was tricking
Just when I was treating

Just when I was crowning
Just when I was breathing
Just when I was wailing
Just when I was teething
Just when I was creeping
Just when I was napping
Just when I was willing
Just when I was strapping

Just when I was sinking
Just when I was ceasing
Just when I was going
Just when I was groaning
Just when I was sloughing
Just when I was hushing
Just when I was missing

Just when I was nothing