or vacant tools

(by Taro Yamamoto)

Loop of the day.

"In recent history this practice of 'Fujifying' has even extended to the United States, where Japanese Americans living in Washington State renamed the perfectly shaped stratovolcano Mount Ranier, borrowing its Indian name of Tacoma and calling it 'Tacoma-Fuji.' " --H Byron Earhart, Mount Fuji (2011)

A modest proposal for the nucular option.

the path through many sidejags
yellow leaf swirl in guess-wake
can't figure which at road fork
but follow ev'ry ort loss
it's what i do a glum mage
commuting in jazz savage
has left cairns in the desert
has wished on streaks of lit night

Nonexistent compounds.

"It is interesting, however, to reflect upon the implications of the poet Basho's perception that he was living either at the close of one era or at the beginning of a new one." --intro to William R LaFleur, The Karma of Words (1983)

Tell them we are nothing.

(The New Yorker (?) via Firestone Fineberg on Facebook)

   all meanings sliding
like things set on the dashboard
   through turn & return
only this song's sweet sadness
forty years into exile

Recent, illuminating bell hooks interview.

"The dragon is infinitely more ancient than the devil." --Eric Hoffer

   misplaced remedies
& seasons out of kilter
   the same battered streets
where if i scramble the way
i still can find where to go

"Some think the refugees want to come here, stockpile weapons and start killing innocent people. Others fear they won't fit in so easily." --@DanaGould

Race & craft beer.

   over power lines
tennis shoes suspended is
   all that i have done
magenta & Mars red leaves
on the same swaying tree limb

"It's harder disentangling 'hard SF' from the dynamics of the Cold War than it is for the spy genre." Also, Hard SF in 2015.

song that static waves conquer
years not as the rings reckon
hand that lets slip sericon
rose blessed by the last canker

Song before Leaffall.

"The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?" --Dorothy Parker

Some lessons.