Question

What are toupees called in the Czech Republic?

Question

What is "full honkey"?

"How To Be A Poet" by Wendell Berry

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Nightwill (stories 2011)

The Smoke Leper /1
Village, Meadow, Tree & Trial /5
Three Mountains /11
Nightwill /15
The Late Master /20
The Death of the Copyeditor /24
A Thing About Mouths /26
The Lucky Body /30
This Way Between Men /34
Mandeville /39
Spring In Zurveyta /53

Zadig's Way (poems 2011)

Zadig's Way /1
One Of Them Was H.G. Adler /2
Stories On The Half Shell /3

The Gates of Fact /7
For The Skull of Adalbert Czaptienonesz /9
Gray's Low /11
A Tale of Two Hospitals /13
Russians and Men /15
On the Corner of 4th and Breath /16
The Dogs of Tachi /17
B.O.H. /18
The Lives of Modern Lovers /19
For Romy Haag To Her Audience (As She Sings) /20
Two Streams /21
Poor in Flesh /23
Murder Ballad /24
The Best Way /26
Reparation /27
The Circadian Pariah /28
Quincunx The Demon /29
Sea To The Thieves /30
Fire From Water /32

Cock in Water /34
A Plate of Ten Thousand Children /35
Kawabata's Bones /36
If They Should Think Ill of Her /37
Revelations in Joanna /38
Like Suicide Healers /39
La Jollans /40
Some Words From The Risen Old /41
Exchange Rate /42
Like Eyelashes on Water /43
Double Aged Amour /44
Ann In Key of Carter /45
The Genealogy of Horrors /47
Four Tunnels /49
The Tao of Social Strategy /51
Consolation (Without A Compass) /52
Machine Breath /54

One For Aaron /56

Verseworms /62
The Monster of La Mancha /63
Double Nursery /64
Blues For Our Buddy Grub Huck /65
Yet Another Odysseus /66
These Facial Letters /68
Blown Job /69
Holy Michaela /70
Ancient Grease /71
Top Three /72
Real Life in the Gray Market /73
The Resurrection of the Guillotine Is A Koan /76

Excerpts From The Minor Ape /78

Another one for Sunday breakfast. Play it loud & be willing, very willing, to close your eyes, to lean in, & forget everything but the one before you

Bowerbirds - Tuck the Darkness In by The 405

1.27.45

The historian of useless details says: yes I remember. One of my eyes was present at the execution of Herr Schwartzkauld. The historian says: it was quite cold that day. All the people present as witnesses wore gloves. There were half a dozen American soldiers and two Polish prisoners and a mound of bodies set off between two of the barracks but within sight. The man with a star on his helmet turned to Herr Schwartzkauld, who we heard had not committed so many crimes himself but had ordered others to do so, and blowing warm clouds in his ear said, “Do you have any last words?” Herr Schwartzkauld did not understand the language but there was another man, a man without a star on his helmet, who understood how to say this in a way Herr Schwartzkauld could understand. This was the German language. Haben Sie irgendwelche letzten Worte? As the translator spoke clouds foamed around his mouth as well. But Herr Schwartzkauld was by disposition a reticent man, unaccustomed to speaking except when there was some order to be issued. Since he was now in the unfamiliar position of receiving orders he had no language with which to respond. His silence though was accepted as consent for what was about to happen. A noose swung from a wooden crossbeam where one of the soldiers had flung it. They tied its loose end around the axle of a jeep. Some men must be killed in order to meet their conscience, the man with the star on his helmet would write later in his book about the invasion of the enemy homeland and the liberation of the camps. Not that it is my place to have an opinion, says the historian of details, but what could possibly be further from the truth? Isn’t that what living is for? To stand one more afternoon in the cold surrounded by these strangers, your conquerors, but also at a very frank level your fellow men? To shiver and notice them shivering, to say “cold”, to learn each other’s word for that and share it across both tongues? The clouds around their mouths are breath and their breath keeps clouding what they say. It’s worth noting, if he, Herr Schwartzkauld, had lived he might have noticed these things.