A rant from Stan Raines Today’s the day. Tax day. I myself am going to have to write a fairly stiff check just as soon as I find that checkbook. All those reductions in withholdings that the Obama administration worked out at the beginning of the year didn’t work so well in our case. It’s [...]

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Recommended reading The New York Times Magazine ran quite a rundown by Charles Duhigg on what we had suspected has been up with the credit card companies for quite some time: psychological profiling of its customer base. The Obama administration has proposed to do something about credit cards. We’ll see whose side it’s on. The [...]

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by John Goggin Memory is shards, just broken pots and bones hidden under the ashes, middens littering the shore of the common sea; memoir is mostly archeology. From 30 some years ago… One early March  afternoon, a raft of co-recreants is horsing around the big dining room table. Outside, it’s bitter cold, there’s rime on [...]

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A reminiscence from Stan I was to drive a bus. I accepted this without deep reflection. The bus in question was parked and we were waiting for passengers; we being the drivers although I now do not recall talking to other drivers. We waited. We seemed to be on Main Street in New Castle, Indiana. [...]

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A momento from Stan Photo: The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

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A poem by Emily Dickinson After great pain, a formal feeling comes The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? The Feet, mechanical, go round Of Ground, or Air, or Ought A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone This [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters BUBBLES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, led to believe her concrete block demesne surrounded by barker and cagéd cat was of her natural habitat unchanging and forever green, is dead.  Beloved, she fell asleep, o.d.’ed like a teen-ager in the park she slipped into the surrounding darkness deaf to the [...]

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A piano blues by Stan Raines You call me up at nine Ask me about a bottle of wine You’re gonna serve to your guests But I’m not invited. So I crashed the party anyway Then I find I don’t have much to say ‘Bout many things beyond whether You and me are ever gonna [...]

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A poem by Stan Raines The hill’s intolerably long and steep; I think myself a goat. Perhaps it’s a mountain Without the slenderest hoofhold. I don’t look long for the top: Pebbles, brown and brown, Strike my eyes Loosened by my crabbing hands. From time to time I imagine I am merely crawling, All fours [...]

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A comment from Stan It appears that Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions have come to their end, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. She still has a loyal base that will quite probably make a show of it for her in West Virginia, the Washington Post says this morning, but Obama is likely to win a [...]

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by John Goggin Pat Buchanan thinks that he can still pontificate. He should stay home and masturbate. The Right Reverend Wright, when he was told to sit tight, then incurred public pillory; although he has a life-long friend in our Lady Hillary. Chris Matthews discussing issues always shouts. I never know what the fuck he’s [...]

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From Gene’s notebook …and there I am on my bike, corner of Boca Chica and Central Boulevard, looking at the $3.55 gas, looking at car upon car and truck upon truck, single person in each …. The heat builds, near 95 degrees; the southeast wind rips bank flags. Half the drivers in those cars and [...]

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A poem by Rudy H. García No one really knows how old She is. But she sure does look old, Under those Mexican dresses She wears to school every day She looks older Than the rest of us, Because her feet, Her feet, give her age away. Like thirty maybe? Maybe more… You can tell [...]

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a poem by Eugene (Gene) Novogrodsky Push and wind, up go the shutters, Noisily, in Mexican shops, with morning sun building. Young women, maybe some junior high, and Then then pour water on the sidewalks, Then, sweep it away … wetting gutters …. Hit a button and up go the shutters in malls. The women, [...]

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A Blues by Stan Now I ain’t got the money And the rent is due And the man at the corner Says my credit’s got shoes Now the weathers got colder And my coat’s mighty thin I think it’s time to admit The shape that I’m in   I don’t belong here I see what you’re [...]

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a poem by Stan Raines Here, for you, my lesson, A turning of words As light recedes: The green has left this leaf And leaves a fibrous web … Here, do not guess at That you would know: Bend and see that Which crawls at you As if fleeing to the room, Which races to [...]

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by Justin Raines Click for full-size Red Eye Comic Click for full Red Eye Comic

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An opinion by Stan Raines The politicians seem to have noticed, perhaps three or four years late as usual, that there’s a problem with fuel prices: They are going up and there seems to be no end in sight. People have been grappling with it for a while, though, not only at the gas station, [...]

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A Declamation by Stan Raines I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United State of America and to the people and co-signers for whose constitution it stands to which I do subscribe- Battered old whore as she is in and out of bed with slavers and churchmen, taking in nine elder opinions for a [...]

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Crowd gathers for Poetry Pachanga. Good times were had by those that wanted them last night as the major events day culminated with a poets’ dinner at the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts center followed by the Poetry Pachanga in the San Benito Community Center Auditorium.

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a choir of leaves makes the unseen known with soft but forceful deep sighs the wet, dismembered marionettes jump up and down on the pulled clotheslines a herd of cotton treks hurredly across the blue sky darkening a lulling dance of blurry shadow tree limbs on the wall leads my dreams Poetry by Patricia A.

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When you hear it Does it thunder? Or bring that chill up your neck? Does it whine in a key you know is real? Is the world split open by its crack? And did it begin as a small worm in your heart A throb that pulses your brain and grows and throws its shadow, [...]

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The world and this Web log are not finished with National Poetry Month, so I’m asking local poets to send in some verse for the immediate gratification of seeing it on the Web. John Goggin, my other brother, did quite well yesterday, sending no less than three poems (or pomes, as he lovingly labels them) [...]

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by John Goggin Foot-sore and ‘mazed on Venetian streets, my Clytemnestra points; “I see the dragon’s tongue… just there, beneath the Lion Gate!” “How cute,” I think. Of course, she has her axe to grind; once more I’ve made her miss her monthly maenadic tryst with the Women’s Will to Power Club. Just so we [...]

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