I must be suffering from Post-Election Withdrawal Syndrome (PEWS); George W. Bush isn’t even out of office yet, and I’m already beginning to feel some nostalgia towards his Presidency of the past 8 years.

Not because I think he was a good President; far from it, in fact, but the Bush Administration has given me a lot of fodder for ridicule, and inspiration to action over the past several years, and most especially in the run-up to this particular election.

And now it’s over, or very nearly so.

At least President Bush recognizes some of the blunders he has made over the past several years … if only that recognition weren’t limited to things he had said.

Bush: ‘I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said’ - CNN.com

NEW YORK (CNN) — As his presidency nears its end, a reflective President Bush suggested Tuesday that he regrets some of his more blunt statements on the war on terrorism over the last eight years and said he wishes he had not spoken in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner only a month after U.S. troops in Iraq were deployed.

President Bush says his wife told him that as president, he should watch his words carefully.

“I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said,” Bush told CNN’s Heidi Collins when asked to reflect on his regrets over his two terms as president. “Like ‘dead or alive’ and ‘bring ‘em on.’ My wife reminded me that, hey, as president of the United States, be careful what you say.”

addiction is like this

sometimes there is nothing else except for the pen, the ink,
the paper, me, and the muse

Or get modern. Sometimes there is nothing but me the
monitor, the keyboard, the words, and sweet inspiration

looking at the blank paper
looking at the blank screen

watching the words take shape
something comes out of nowhere

a moment to allow for effect
then immediately
on to the next

junkies know this

so do writers

so do you

  — Father Luke (b. 1959), American poet. Reprinted with permission.
  — For more, see FatherLuke.com

Award-winning comedian George Carlin dies

Carlin was probably best known for a routine that began, “I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can’t say.” It was a monologue, known as “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” that got Carlin arrested and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The “Seven Dirty Words” bit prompted a landmark indecency case after New York’s WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the sketch was “indecent but not obscene,” giving the Federal Communications Commission broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

George Carlin was a genius … and to honor him, I can’t think of anything more appropriate than the following:

Yep, that’s ten words, not seven, but as every Carlin fan knows, the list morphed over time.

Requiescat in pace.

TO THE PRESENT TENSE

By the time you are
by the time you come to be
by the time you read this
by the time you are written
by the time you forget
by the time you are water through fingers
by the time you are taken for granted
by the time it hurts
by the time it goes on hurting
by the time there are no words for you
by the time you remember
but without the names
by the time you are in the papers
and on the telephone
passing unnoticed there too

who is it
to whom you come
before whose very eyes
you are disappearing
without making yourself known

  — W.S. Merwin (b. 1927), American poet, Pulitzer Prize winner

… that some of my behavior, blog posts, and comments on other people’s blogs is making some people uncomfortable, or even “freaked out”, as one friend put it.

For that, please accept my most sincere and humble apologies.

I was stunned, and extremely embarrassed by how my actions and words are, and have been interpreted. It was certainly never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable.

I know how difficult it can be to change people’s perceptions, so I’m not going to ask any of you for a second chance.

Instead, I will let my actions going forward speak for themselves, and if I am deserving of another chance, I will have earned it.

MAY  

Let me look at those eyes.
I want to know how you are.
—Rainer W. Fassbinder

Look. May has come in.
It’s strewn those blue eyes all over the harbor.
Come, I haven’t had word of you in ages.
You’re constantly terrified,
Like the kittens we drowned when we were little.
Come and we’ll talk over all of the old same things,
The value of being pleasant,
The need to adjust to the doubts,
How to fill the holes we’ve got inside us.
Come, feel the morning reaching your face,
Whenever we’re saddened everything looks dark,
When we’re heartened, again, the world crumbles.
Every one of us keeps forever someone else’s hidden side,
If it’s a secret, if a mistake, if a gesture.
Come and we’ll flay the winners,
Laughing at our self leapt off the bridgeway.
We’ll watch the cranes at work in the port in silence,
The gift for being together in silence being
The principal proof of friendship.
Come with me, I want to change nations,
Change towns. Leave this body aside
And go into a shell with you,
With our smallness, like sea snails.
Come, I’m waiting for you,
We’ll continue the story that ended a year ago,
As if inside the white birches next to the river
Not a single additional ring had grown.

Copyright © 2007 by Kirmen Uribe, English translation copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Macklin. Reprinted from Meanwhile Take My Hand without the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.,

ADVENTURES IN INK

Fountain pen,
    an adventure in ink.

Words drip from the nib’s caress ———

Strokes flow across the page,
    swooping letters,
        sweeping serifs.

A poet composes,
    filling the page
        with images culled
    from the mind’s
        recess.

Copyright © 2008, Steven L. Sheffield