Tuesday, December 15, 2009

San Pedro Harbor

for Melinda Owen

When you are powerless
To sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, faced
By the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste
In his steel scales: ask for no Orphean lute
To pluck life back.
—Robert Lowell, “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket”

I have never met a man who later died at sea
Owing to my birth far away from New England
In both time and space. The tankers that leave

San Pedro Harbor, black metal-flanked and
Steaming, floating atop the Pacific
Like furnaces, seem things peopled by wan

Ghosts in overalls, greasy slivers of men quick
To be forgotten by those on whose pens fall
The task of romanticizing the specific,

Unseen elements that constitute all
That is thought possible to capture in poetry.
(Consider Beauty, for instance, or those small

Unnamed acts of kindness that so easily
Fit the ontological structure
Of pentameter verse). But what the sea

Swallows out of rage or quietly defers
Back to shore is its own prerogative;
And the heroes it makes out of some sailors

It unmakes in others, allowing those who live
To return home, unsung perhaps, but never
needing that song, so hollow and unlike the waves.

- Ryan Ruby
(originally published in Tabourey Magazine, Oxford, 2004)

They That Go Down in Ships










''''''''''''''Duck,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Duck..........


,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Duck.

...........DUCK,./';,./';,./';,./';


..........Goose!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

More Quotes

"Truly the people are sovereign, but I am their father and their lover." - Hugo Chavez

“If a housewife were given a literary work of art to rearrange, the end result would be a dictionary.” – Jean Cocteau (real quote)

"No, I think that's Don Cheadle you're thinking of." - Don Cheadle

"What frightens me most about myself is that if I ever came to know some troubled young, Muslim man, and discovered that, in his seemingly quiet despair, he was planning and would soon execute an act of mass murder, I would probably do nothing to stop it." - Peter Beinart

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

- - - Screwge

Dialogue Day!


If Dirigible's tales of au jus and gizmo status symbols have got you down, here's a heartwarming holiday tale featuring the ultimate marketing hook, Tiger Woods!