Here's a Little Thing I Call

 GETTING IT OUT OF MY SYSTEM

“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836. 

Nobody. Nobody “looks upon” a river. Nobody in Late Capitalism has the luxury of a meditative hour when time is money amidst the logistics, the drops offs and pick ups and obligations and to-do lists and appointments and trysts and assignations.  We build bridges across a river, ride boats on top of it, kill fish and flora by dumping into it human waste and labradoodle waste and viruses and  bacteria from storm water runoff, the cides of pesti and herbi, plus gas station seepage, septic system seepage, construction site seepage of aluminum arsenic, nitrates, copper, lead, uranium, magnesium, manganese. Nobody looks upon a river, unless maybe a dead body is floating by and catches peoples’ attention and has them on their phones (and for a minute, not for a meditative hour). Let’s bring ourselves current, shall we? Besides, the flux of all things cannot be contemplated. The flux of all things is too cold. The flux all things goes hard. 

---Randy Waldo Stark, 2026

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Planet On-a-Stick

Kinda doowoppy

Electropoppy

Dubsteppy

Afrobeaty

Dancehall-ish

EDM-y.

You know, speed doom

Lone actors radicalized online

Call from that number you’re dead

Or militants, separatists

What the K-9s find

Officials warn.

It’s so funny like

Day after Earth Day

Defense chief killed

Guard fatally shot

Two dead in clashes

Then the “all clear.”

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Floor Exercises

Rethinking my wardrobe for next season

I need to get with my food group

Cool kids with Tool tee shirts 

Leveraging legacy frisson  

With neural waveforms based on

My likes and preferences.

Charm meets ease, trenchoat to kicks.

Flashing on them pussyass times

When light footprints was considered virtuous

And if it’s true as Lacan says 

That all desire is based on a sense of lack 

Although the jury is still mostly out and

Down the hall to the left

Much depends upon hitting Send.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Field Notes

“Inspiration is a state of collection, not creative dynamism. One must allow one’s vision of the concept to settle and clear. I do not think any great artist works in a fever. Even the mystics get to work only after the ineffable dove of the Holy Spirit has already left their cells and is losing itself in the clouds. One returns from inspiration as from a foreign country. The poem is the narration of the voyage.” 

---From Deep Song and other prose by Federico Garcia Lorca, 1932, translated from the Spanish by Christoher Maurer, 1980 (emphasis mine)

I've continued on my sometimes purposeful, sometimes serendipitous trip through literature written in languages other than English (and again super kudos to the translators). 

Purposeful: the Lorca book above and a classic New Directions reprint that arrived in the mail today, A Season in Hell, by Arthur Rimbaud, 1873, translated from the French by Louise Varese, 1945

Serendipitous: these four fell into my hands:

Good and Evil, by Samanta Schweblin, 2025

English translation from Spanish by Megan McDowell, 2025

The Old Fire, by Elisa Shua Dusapin, 2023

English translation from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, 2026

The End of the Sahara, by Said Khatibi, 2022

English translation from Arabic by Alexander E. Elinson, 2026

Waste Tide, by Chen Qiufan, 2013

Translated from Chinese by Ken Liu, 2019

Plus these bangers: 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, 2002 

The Intentions of Thunder, by Patricia Smith, 2025 poems

It’s been lit the past couple of weeks reading wise.

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

Doing the Whole Trad Wife/Frontiersman Thing

Part I

Like two and a half years ago 

Bed, t.v., moonlight

Sound of a dirt bike way back in the hills

We were watching the Olympics that night

Long story short: coat, shoes (beloved labels), ER.

Swiping is now my life

That and sustained mobilization

Reveals replace show and tell

My large language was too big for the overhead bin

So I always have to check it. 

I needa update my priors

Ropes as I learned them are gone

My brands are non-responsive.

Outfit and make-up inspiration unavailable

Non-Op cars covered by weeds in the yard.

With all the recent going ons 

It’s not reasonable to think at 2x speed

It comes down to Ctrl Hi viz hi rizz

How to attend, how to watch

How to exit out.

Part II

Hello oh hi, no, I can talk

You’re going to the Horn

I was just there

Educating Yemen’s Houthi rebel dog parents

On what their pet needs.

Like I told a Shih tzu owner 

Try these hip new twists to 5-star experiences

And when combined with magic

And a couple of eco-friendly cheat codes

It’s what people do in movies.

I call her Assassin 

That ass’a ki’ya

Ran a photo of it through AI

So hot broke the goddam model

Caused a data center to explode.

But she dumped me and

I’m sitting here looking at Tanker Tracker

Tryna stunt my depression

Higher than a mockingbird on loquats

Mogging upper-level crazy on X.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

The Boys Are Back

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

From Virality to Unscripted Stardom

I’ve got a 3-D computer graphics creation tool

But lately there’s been a downturn in engagement

Idle chocolate is the devil’s food

So it’s time to cameo

I am this, I said

I am that, she said

Test the model  

If satisfactory, deploy directly 

We faced off 

Everything became true at the same time

In another Best Unscripted Miniseries nod.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page