Newburgh Four
Let’s workshop this poem about how, much as we have seen race-baited outrage leveraged to excuse institutional expansion, the FBI induced a terrorist plot on my home turf to keep its machinery funded.
scent of the day: Kinamantan, by Ensar Oud
Flash notes, first wear»
gray-green zest bitterness of Qi Nan (here with ginger zing, but without the spices) plus mint of Tigerwood that you feel in the sinuses and, especially from afar, a juicy-fruit bubblegum somewhere between L’heure Exquise and Jubilation XXV/ this can come across, despite the fact that no vetiver is listed, as an artisanal cousin to Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver—only using something more like the ruh khus of Layers of Jade or Vetiver Nocturne and presenting us with several jarring tensions that the Tom Ford’s much more sober and staid composition definitely does not give us: wintergreen gum yet pink bubblicious (tigerwood and clove meets what seems tolu balsam and blackcurrant and opoponax), garage-band muddiness yet studio-production ethereality (hyrax and oud meets black ambergris and Tibetan musk and Kashmir musk). / ash in base reminds me of Myths Man.
Newburgh Four
Security bureaus too bloated
given the gulf grown since 9/11,
mosque plants troll cash
down crack streets of muezzin melodies
and tilt talk toward
moral rot and wars abroad
to kindle inert-bomb terrorist plots
tailored for flag-defeats-kufi busts
looping on TV.