Dad said if I didn’t graduate from high school
he’d buy me my own beauty shop. And that’s pretty
much how it went. I worked on heads.
      My students gave me wise advice.
One said the best critique came from a friend
who just wrote Wonderful! Keep going! on every poem.
Another said his favorite mentor
      simply put a giant X on any page he didn’t like.
Some had studied with lyric pooh-bahs
who taught them to be coffee wallahs.

Do birds theorize flying? I believe the best poetry
      instruction leans toward the oblique.

“This seems to be a ransacked candle.
This tastes like lowa. This reads
like the shortest building in the world
      trying to be tall. This syntax feels kissed.
This is like a bandage
that takes the skin off with it.
These lines look laser-cut;
      these need to be debrided, flayed.
Forget Esperanto. This is written
in Blackwatch Plaid. Did you use a protractor
or a pen to compose it? That school
      of poetics is called ellipsograph tech.

Lyric poets give their words to the wind.
It’s how the wind stays alive. To riff
on Miles Davis, you don’t have to write
      your poem every day.
You just have to touch your poem
every day. Even if it sounds like mucus
made for the glory of God
      or twinkles like a pissed-off
harpsichord. Even if it groans like a medieval
cathedral, eroded at the groins. You’ve heard

how flaws authenticate a gem? Usher in a stir
      and weird the real. Forget the celestial

and remember the celeste–
an organ stop that’s tuned to dissonance
to torque the note. Tone
      is the soul of poetry.
If you need a title ‘Lonely Consort
Of Wandering Phenomenon’ works
for almost anything. When revising think
      how a robin throwing himself against the glass
won’t change it into air.”
Poetry is never finished.
Only poets are. Some must be
      wrapped in burlap to survive.

Some must flash their stitches ==
though the deepest scars
are hidden, the damaged infra-
      trauma they intend to tell.
One bent her lines backwards
like the ankles of a sandhill crane.
One unzipped his surface to reveal
      his furtive fretwork. They all held their breaths
until their tongues turned blue.
Wonderful! Keep going!

Alice Fulton

Max Berlinger writes for the New York Times about the return of aggressive skating. I prefer aggressive skating as an underdog sport at the skate parks so I just do my own things without being embarrassed.

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that the farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
And lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Seamus Heaney (from The Cure of Troy)

Hero-banner sliders on homepages, particularly on university websites, are obnoxious and a waste of bandwidth. Though sliders can be useful for other purposes. Recently I needed a photo gallery for a personal webpage and I revisited Flickity developed by David DeSandro. It is still one of the best carousels I have used. The documentation is easy to follow. It is definitely worth 25 bucks for a license.

A kind of bird like a swan but more triangular
dives and lifts behind the knives of a tractor—
five paper airplanes poking at turned dirt.

Sometimes, he wears the condom
for hours after he falls asleep. I feel carried.
His body becomes the way I think.

Not being hungry, but wanting
to halve something.

I’ve never finished with a man
without needing to repeat, in my head,
that I want him inside me.

We pass by piles of salt, orange cattle.
He asks me to rate the day.
We both know there’s nothing emptier
than recognition in a new landscape.

Taneum Bambrick

Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Pence have entered the race. These candidates had once worshipped the ground Trump spat on. Now they all are fighting against him. Ain’t politics a motherfucking bitch? Chris Christie is expected to run as well. Can’t wait to see the GOP pigsty fights.

As for the Democrats, I would like to see a challenger. I am not ageism because I am half of Biden’s age and I already feel so fucking old. Then again, Biden has made historic legislative achievements in his first term. He’ll get more done in his second term. We’ll see.

It’s such a joy revisiting a lyrical storyteller. Right off the opening track, Mr. Dylan tells a heartbreaking story: “Newspaper men eating candy / Had to be held back by big police / Someday everything is going to be beautiful / When I paint my masterpiece.” And damn, isn’t he a blues man? I could feel his pain when he sings the “Tombstone Blues” chorus: “Mama’s in the fact’ry she ain’t got no shoes / Daddy’s in the alley lookin’ for the fuse / I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.” Of course, “What Was It You Wanted?” is so spare yet so heartfelt.

Last night
i dreamed
my son joined a gang
A gang
one million strong

This gang
these brothers
spoke Swahili
Spanish
& street talk

& nobody was afraid

This gang walked around
in broad daylight
& after midnight
dreadlocked
cornrowed
hair kinky crazy

& nobody pointed their pistols

This gang
they wore kente durags
around their foreheads
cowries around their necks
didn’t take no shit

& nobody was afraid

This gang
one million strong
These sons
were intelligent
educable
like they always been

& nobody said they were not able

This gang
they were the future
doctors
lawyers
teachers
poets all about the business
of being correct

& nobody was afraid

This gang
they walked the streets
in great numbers

& nobody cuddled their purses

This gang
they stood up
& spoke up
when justice showed
its true colors

& the swat team didn’t come

This gang
they went to schools
where no teachers made them feel
worth less or like criminals

& nobody cried rape

This gang
they praised god
their way
& remembered ancestors
in old as time ceremonies

& nobody was afraid

They
beat drums
They beat drums
& beat drums

& nobody was afraid

This gang
sang their
warrior songs
baritone voices
stirring all those
with ears bent

& nobody was afraid

Last night
i dreamed
my son joined a gang
a gang
one million strong

This morning
i woke up
said a prayer
& prepared him
for another day
in fayette county public schools

& was very much afraid

Crystal Wilkinson

Yesterday I noticed Everlasting Eye Care website was not working. I called the hosting provider on my client’s behalf. The technician wouldn’t do anything without the site’s owner verification. I called the owner, but she didn’t pick up the home. I had to ended the call with the hosting technician.

I logged into the cPanel to see if I could figure the issue myself. I noticed that the SSL/TLS status page showed warning errors. I reset the name servers from Cloudflare back to the hosting provider’s defaults. The site worked again without HTTPS. I went back to the SSL/TLS status page and ran AutoSSL. The site worked on HTTPS again.

I did all of this for my client on a Sunday evening without charging a penny. It just felt right to take care of my client’s site. The site owner is a good friend and I am terrible at doing business.

Last year when I designed and developed our family book, I needed an easy way to password-protect the entire site. My aunt, who is the author, doesn’t want the book to be public. She just wants to share it with family members. I can’t remember the resource I used; therefore, I would like to document it here just in case others find it useful.

Place the follow code at the top of the page you want to be password-protected:

<?php
 	/* Your password */
	 $password = 'yourpassword';

	 if (empty($_COOKIE['password']) || $_COOKIE['password'] !== $password) {
	 // Password not set or incorrect. Send to login.php.
	 header('Location: /login.php');
	 exit;
         }
?>

Create a login page (login.php). It should live on the top directory. Here’s the PHP code:

<?php
	/* Your password */
	$password = 'yourpassword';

	/* Redirects here after login */
	$redirect_after_login = 'index.php';

	/* Will not ask password again for */
	$remember_password = strtotime('+7 days'); // 7 days

	if (isset($_POST['password']) && $_POST['password'] == $password) {
	setcookie("password", $password, $remember_password);
	header('Location: ' . $redirect_after_login);
	exit;
	}
?>

Create HTML log-in form in login.php:

<form method="POST">
	<input type="text" name="password" placeholder="Enter password">
	<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" class="button">
</form>

The webpage is set to expired in 7 days. If you want a logout link, create a logout.php page with the following codes:

<?php
	/* Your password */
	$password = 'yourpassword';

	if (empty($_COOKIE['password']) || $_COOKIE['password'] !== $password) {
	// Password not set or incorrect. Send to login.php.
	header('Location: /login.php');
	exit;
        }
?>