Tag Archives: death
Another heart attack on the pitch: RIP Piermario Morosini
A few weeks back Bolton Wanderers’ Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the field during the team’s FA Cup quarterfinal match against Tottenham Hotspur. He was attended to by emergency staff on the pitch and eventually stretchered off and rushed to a hospital. Despite being “in effect, dead” for 78 minutes Muamba survived and is now recovering.
Today, another elite footballer had a heart attack during a game, and this time the news is tragic: Livorno’s Piermario Morosini died after collapsing early in the Italian Serie B side’s match with Pescara. Read more
Hallelujah
There is no good way to die, especially when you’re only 21. Read more
Is your house haunted?
Horror of the “gothic” variety that occupied so much of the conversation between Byron and the Shelleys (these would be the conversations that ultimately gave rise to Frankenstein) has traditionally traded in some easily recognizable tropes. Among the most common are your haunted places. Swamps and moors are always a little scary. Graveyards and crypts, of course. Transylvania.
And then there’s haunted houses. Dark mansions, castles on top of hills. Abandoned homes where terrible things once happened. Subdivisions built on top of Indian burial grounds. And so on. Read more
America and its presidents: what the fuck is wrong with you people?
Let’s begin with a brief Q&A with America.
Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.
Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.
Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket? Read more
WordsDay: The hegemony of poetry vs. lyrics, part 2
A couple weeks I go I offered up part one in a series on poetry vs. lyrics, noting from firsthand experience the differences between the two. In brief, I’ve always felt like it was wrong to call rock stars poets – even if their words are fantastic, as they often are, the very nature of bending words to suit a song structure makes what they do a very different thing from what poets do.
In that piece, I looked at the song version of “Hegemony,” which I penned for Fiction 8‘s most recent CD, Project Phoenix. “Hegemony” was adapted for music from an existing poem, which I wrote for my most recent book, Chained to the Gates of Heaven (a book that is in search of a publisher, by the way – so if you know somebody….)
In this installment, Read more
WordsDay: the hegemony of poetry and lyrics
Reach out and touch me now
Aphrodite said
You aren’t the only one
with armies in your head
We’re fond of calling our great rock stars poets. Dylan is a poet. Springsteen is a poet. John Lennon was a poet. Jim Morrison (*gag*) was a poet. And so on. Certainly the first three (have) produced some marvelous words, but as a poet – forgive me if I call myself a “real” poet here – I’ve never quite been willing to accord their work the status of poetry. This isn’t necessarily a slam – their work isn’t architecture, either. Read more
lullaby pit 