One Hundred and Twentieth Entry

According to certain drinking friends of mine, Idealism is good. Just updating you in case you were wondering.

I read Sarah Vowell's Assasination Vacation and enjoyed it thoroughly, with two major complaints: 1. she really gave McKinley the short treatment, not saying much about him and making unfair comparisons between him and G.W. Bush. When he chose to invade island nations, he was basing it on the best wisdom of his time, and looking at past precedents or lack thereof. The whole reason we know that American Imperialism is dumb now is because it failed in the past. 2. For such an obvious American Indian enthusiast, she makes the understandable accusations towards Andrew Jackson, but doesn't even bring up the failed assassination attempt on him, which would have been keeping with her general subject matter. Don't worry, I'm writing her a letter.

Here's my poem:

STAPLER

Hold tight to the mast or forsake
the whole journey, go bumbling home
to the mid-west, land accustomed
to humiliation, trail of beers poured
out flat and hot, bodies of water
left stagnant but for the swishing
underneath the surface of the drowned
water-skiers. A lot of water imagery
is good for a poem, and a lot of water
is good, planning this trip has been
the greatest pain in my life, you didn't
break my heart but you fucked up my spine.
Here's pennies I don't use, lay me on the
trolley tracks, watch me flatten.