REQUIEM

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
“Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do.”

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

–Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Vonnegut got it — and he accepted the futility of getting it with heroic grace. This world is one big hospice, but we can still work to make each other as comfortable as possible. That was his lesson for me. Be kind.

In Timothy Green’s appropriately titled AMERICAN FRACTAL a whole vision is created from fragments of American myths, family, religion, the body, holidays, money, food, art, lovers, science, ads, and even earthquakes. His poems are wonderfully original and American in their irony – it’s a kind-hearted irony with truth as its goal. With his subjects “…each image one moment / behind the last catching up and catching up.” Startling and alive, these are self-aware poems that break apart and then come back together. Green writes “One thing is always / mistaken for / another, as if accident were / the fundamental attribute of life.” Green’s poems build with language, imagery, and a sweet cleverness into surprising commentaries and imaginative revelations. This is an outstanding first book.
          –Laurie Blauner, author of All This Could Be Yours and Facing the Facts

I’ve never had a blurb before. Neat. If anyone else wants to read the manuscript — which is still unpublished and vying for one of those first book awards — let me know and I’d be happy to send it. Being read is fun.

Do we need to start a Get-The-Hackers-Laid fund? You’re telling me seriously that you don’t have anything better to do on on a Friday night? Chase.com, whitehouse.org I could see, but this is lame. The least you could do is something cool, like change our name to Prattle.

I actually got a hate email at about the same time as I noticed this, so it has me wondering… Judging by its diction, though, I doubt this disgruntled submitter has the know-how to hack into our web server.

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EDIT: Fixed.