Who doesn’t court surmise there could be None? Beings unconceived with wings strongly matter To the hotly spooked who swing a prophet’s hammer.
Say a godspell ambushed seers in Bronze Age lands: “Unmoving Mover placed us plop in our own hands.” Oh my god, how artfully bashful the Almighty!
Divide by zero times infinity — that solves for Him. Want Him or not, He wants us — go figure, needs us even. Damned if He doesn’t, this odd Remainder! We prove His heaven.
Since I fancy myself poetry curious, I’m ashamed that the lyrics of most rock songs constitute for me so little of the listening experience. I rarely register more than the odd phrase that penetrates the instrumental layer. The frontpersons (I first wrote “singers,” but that didn’t compute) don’t seem particularly vexed to “sell” their words the way a standards or country-western vocalist does. Think, say, Tony Bennett and “San Francisco” or Patsy Cline and “Crazy.” You can’t not understand them.
I like Pink Floyd’s song “Money.” (And Dire Straits’s “Money for Nothing,” as well! Am I hung up on the root of all evil?) When the spirit moves me I look at genius.com just to see what a song actually “says.” Also, to see if the words hold any interest as artistic speech outside their embodiment in the song. Roger Waters’s lyrics to “Money” sort of do.
The song has 3 verses, each with its “refrain.” Have you ever cracked a bullwhip? I did so obssesively as a kid. Each verse of “Money” is the part where you swing the whip around your head in a crescendo-ing arc.
Money, get away… Money, well, get back… Money, it’s a crime…
Jerk the whip just right and you get a righteous crack. That’s the refrain — the money shot: filthy specific: shows more than tells.
A new car, caviar, four-star daydream Think I’ll buy me a football team
I’m in the hi-fidelity first class travelling set And I think I need a Learjet
But if you ask for a rise It’s no surprise that they’re giving none away
The third refrain is bland but interesting for use of the British “rise” instead of “raise.” “Surprise” mates with it; this sort of rhyming salts the song smartly throughout.
Cherry on the sundae: “Money” has a mischievous “spoken outro.” Its last line is:
It came to a heavy blow which sorted the matter out.
It also repeats the egregiously excellent question:
Why does anyone do anything?
Then there’s this:
Hahaha, I was in the right Yes, absolutely in the right I certainly was in the right Yes, I was definitely in the right,…
Heavy blows to sort matters. Futility. Manic repetition. Absolute rightness. Ecce modern times foreshadowed!
An overt latent sshiftiness, both andss, Neither norss, never alwayss the ssame; Sslithering duness, conssisstent sshifting ssands, Familiar, sscarcely recognissable; Crucible, crux, ssacrifice, ssuffering, sshame.
F-150’s rifle rack naked, gun Baked. Cup of staggering fisted. Son Nailed, lanced, bled, mocked, screwed. In car nato birthed, hanged from the rearview. Lent from on high. Sucked up to sky. Who knew?
Peradventure corpses stir, what then? Push come to shove, quoth the Raven. Quake! Flood! Hot seas! Chiggers! A crappy wind! Behold! Faults slipped. Glaciers melted. Crude spent. Halfbreeds gumming dregs. Goddamned. Hellbent.
Paul Thek’s early work, “Untitled (The Rhinemaidens / Wagner),” circa 1962. The painting show an affinity with the second-generation Abstract Expressionists. Credit… The Estate of Paul Thek, Pace Gallery and the Watermill Center; Photo by Josh White. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Although Thek possessed impressive skills as a draftsman and painter, he was an early practitioner of the crude figuration of “bad painting” (a term coined by Marcia Tucker, the founder of the New Museum).
Paul Thek, “Untitled (view of Zannone and Scoglio Grosso from Ponza),” 1969. Thek composed his pictures directly on a newsprint page, leaving part of the paper exposed so that it would yellow as it aged. Credit… Galerie Buchholz. [New York Times caption and illustration]
I don’t know how seriously to take Thek’s “view of Zannone” as picture making, but I’m glad it exists, and I revel in the impishness of his “untitled” titles.
It seems for me the quest to dare and paint “crudely” is of the essence, as it fights against the docile, groomed depiction towards which my complacent brain so strongly urges me. The ideal progression is: First look hard. Then see. Then raise hell on a surface. The mode of engagement is not chaotic; it’s reductive, maybe the fruit of considered impulse. It’s hard and hurts (mentally). May consist of doing the right amount of nothing with pencil or brush, letting pauses or vacancies speak. I rarely succeed in drawing or painting this way, but the craving to break the picture barrier is always on the drawing board.
Paul Thek mocked mortality in the last year of his life. Here, “Big Bang Painting,” circa 1988, on view at Pace Gallery. Credit… The Estate of Paul Thek, Pace Gallery and the Watermill Center. [New York Times caption and illustration]
(Arthur Lubow, “Paul Thek’s Art Legacy: A Shriek and a Giggle,” New York Times, 7-9-26)
My doggy pets herself with my bare foot. The foot is there, she thinks, idle appendage. Why not let it do rewarding work? My foot responds unthinkingly to her command. It fetches the affection she has thrown, And she extols me with her lavish wag.
Translation to English of a poem in Spanish titled “Únicas/Únicos” by Azurea20 published at La Bancarrota del Circo on July 6, 2026.
ONE / ONLY There dwells in the glance an ancient hunger; a buzzing of bees crowns cogitation as one’s own light tries to take root in stellar pulsars. There are days when magnets stray, of walking blind under a firmament thick with ashen rain. A solar vibe, a thunder of gold pierces the stagnation of the mind. Everything gestates there, on the blue crossing that precedes the dawn. It’s the instant when wise laughter erupts; an unbarred relish cleanses the voice like a spring gushing inimitable words. At last, when the world’s clatter dies down, there’s only that blessed quiet of one giving sedentary ear to the self’s own signal.
“MOU” (Memorial of Undertaking). Charcoal, oil pastel and watercolor on wrinkled paper.
… Mr. Trump [promised] that this year’s fireworks display will break a Guinness World Record by exploding more than 860,000 shells.
MORNING NORTHER, HILL COUNTY, TEXAS The wind trees up, rousing leaf rabble, a scramble of squirrel. Water kettled, coffee ground, storm brewing.
Clouds muscled like a ton of riled bull In the chute — dark, bowed up, lowering. Prophets’ eye fire streaks, thunder clobbers its drum. Rain dropkicks the sink window pane.
Ear pulsing to the fray, I will my little house stout: Ride it out, I say. I say, ride it out.
Dagger. The Bible has the story of a fellow who fashioned himself a dagger, fetched it hidden into the chambers of an unsuspecting portly man, and plunged it into the man’s belly so deep that it disappeared, unextractable. The King James remarks laconically that “the dirt came out.” Observationally spot on, no doubt; the dirt would be feces oozing from punctured intestine.
Cock fight. In Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust a character repeatedly puts a bloody rooster’s beak in his own mouth while tenderly stroking the bird, administering a kind of resuscitation therapy in order to motivate the creature to fight its losing battle to the bitter end.
Synthesis. The two narratives, leaking intestine and cock fight, intertwined in my head with the performative carnage staged at the White House on June 16th in which the old boy who “won” the melee screamed that a former first lady, accomplished wife of a living two-term ex-president, is a man.
Moral. Blood and soil: When you stab a country in the gut, the dirt comes out.
Note. The analogy of cage brawling to cock fights belongs to Senator John McCain, Solon-Warrior-Patriot. Rest in Honor, Sir.
EthicalDative 
The Guitars and Drums Do Most of the Talking
“Bullseye” detail, mixed media (JMN 2026).
Since I fancy myself poetry curious, I’m ashamed that the lyrics of most rock songs constitute for me so little of the listening experience. I rarely register more than the odd phrase that penetrates the instrumental layer. The frontpersons (I first wrote “singers,” but that didn’t compute) don’t seem particularly vexed to “sell” their words the way a standards or country-western vocalist does. Think, say, Tony Bennett and “San Francisco” or Patsy Cline and “Crazy.” You can’t not understand them.
I like Pink Floyd’s song “Money.” (And Dire Straits’s “Money for Nothing,” as well! Am I hung up on the root of all evil?) When the spirit moves me I look at genius.com just to see what a song actually “says.” Also, to see if the words hold any interest as artistic speech outside their embodiment in the song. Roger Waters’s lyrics to “Money” sort of do.
The song has 3 verses, each with its “refrain.” Have you ever cracked a bullwhip? I did so obssesively as a kid. Each verse of “Money” is the part where you swing the whip around your head in a crescendo-ing arc.
Money, get away…
Money, well, get back…
Money, it’s a crime…
Jerk the whip just right and you get a righteous crack. That’s the refrain — the money shot: filthy specific: shows more than tells.
A new car, caviar, four-star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team
I’m in the hi-fidelity first class travelling set
And I think I need a Learjet
But if you ask for a rise
It’s no surprise that they’re giving none away
The third refrain is bland but interesting for use of the British “rise” instead of “raise.” “Surprise” mates with it; this sort of rhyming salts the song smartly throughout.
Cherry on the sundae: “Money” has a mischievous “spoken outro.” Its last line is:
It came to a heavy blow which sorted the matter out.
It also repeats the egregiously excellent question:
Why does anyone do anything?
Then there’s this:
Hahaha, I was in the right
Yes, absolutely in the right
I certainly was in the right
Yes, I was definitely in the right,…
Heavy blows to sort matters. Futility. Manic repetition. Absolute rightness. Ecce modern times foreshadowed!
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved