Mr. Lynch,
Figure you can comment on this? I’m not much to pay attention to county politics, but I’d be interested in a job. 17 hours a week for $38 grand a year sounds about right, the Shuey treatment.
I’d totally be a bitchin baliff. Hell, I was a tosser at Amsterdam Cafe once, its gotta be the same thing, right?
I thought of this poem. It is one that comes to mind from time to time, so I thought I would share it with you all.
Axe Handles, by Gary Snyder
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
“When making an axe handle
the pattem is not far off.”
And I say this to Kai
“Look: We’ll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with-”
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It’s in Lu Ji’s Wen Fu, fourth century
A.D. “Essay on Literature”-in the
Preface: “In making the handle Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand.-
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
The cats have missed us
We brought them treats to make up
For being away
We have come back home
To find that we have received
No important mail
Extremely bad pain
Issues from my rear right tooth
A third root canal?
Roofus and Patches
Have chosen to stay behind
Sleepless nights ahead
Thomas Dopplebock
Delicious Left-Hand Milk Stout
Duck-Rabbit Porter
Roadgrader blade drags
Curbside dirt into the road;
He’s done this before.
Roadside dead racoon;
Hands raised about his bloody face.
Frozen sacrament.
The wind blew varnish
dust off our new baby crib.
Old wood grain exposed.
Yardsale this morning,
sold pepper plants and new crib.
Lady left the crib here.
The kids ate cheese fries,
Didn’t notice the fat burger
Missus and I ate.