There’s something fun about doing this in April\u2014maybe this blog is a found poem? As I did before, I’ll try to construct it in a way that is compelling to read. Some people said they enjoyed the last one. Hopefully you’ll get something out of reading a few of these a year, ha. Hey, here’s a poetic exercise for the month of April: do this with a bunch of different books, then write a poem around the lines you excerpt. Sort of like Dan Beachy-Quick’s This Nest, Swift Passerine<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One note: as I’m still figuring out the timing here, this will include some quotes from books I read in December 2025. Other than that, this is all stuff I read in the first three months of 2026. Also, if it’s been an epigraph on the blog, it won’t be included here. Unless it’s that good a quote.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n An image to separate the intro from the meat of the text and we’re off! Have fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cmay I decompose in private wherever I am found dead\u201d – upfromsumdirt, \u201cJFKDLS;A (ORISON TO THE ORISHAS)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2018I am about life,\u2019 i said to myself. \u2018I\u2019m gonna live as hard as i can until i die. And i\u2019m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.\u201d – Assata Shakur, \u2018Assata\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is nothing worse, certain painful and deadly diseases notwithstanding, than an unsatisfactory, piss-poor truth, whereas a satisfactory lie is all too easy to accept, even embrace, get cozy with.\u201d – Percival Everett, \u2018Telephone\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe more we read, the more we wrote.\u201d – Assata Shakur, \u2018Assata\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI amused myself with the thought that people often make a point of declaring their uselessness in order to be helpful. I can\u2019t change anything, but I\u2019m here for you.<\/em>\u201d – Percival Everett, \u2018Telephone\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMuch like the sounds of the birds in the dark outside my tent when I am alone near my cave, my story never hushes.\u201d – Percival Everett, \u2018Telephone\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was grief and sadness walking, but I could not let myself sink into a pit. I had to be strong for my child.\u201d – Percival Everett, \u2018Telephone\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI guess I was simply my animal self, not that an animal would have been so stupid.\u201d – Percival Everett, \u2018Telephone\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201ccan you imagine what bullshit \/ we\u2019d come up with if we \/ got to name the constellations \/ today? \/\/ \u2018Oh look, you can see Mickey & Minnie \/ really well tonight, right off to the \/ east, next to The \/ Beatles meteor shower.\u2019\u201d – Mitchell Nobis, \u201cThe LeBroniverse (Brought To You By Gatorade)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Theodor Adorno] viewed music as an opiate\u2026Adorno saw the jukebox as a machine that drew \u2018suckers\u2019 into pubs with the promise of joy and happiness. But, like a drug, instead of bringing real happiness, the music heard on jukeboxes only creates more desire for itself. He might be right, but he might also have been someone who never had a good time at a honky-tonk.\u201d – David Byrne, \u2018How Music Works\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlso, although she had never been there, she had grown very bored with Gal\u00e1pagos Archipelago. There was such a wealth of films and slides and books and articles about the islands, which she had used over and over in her courses, that she could not imagine any surprise that might await her there.\u201d – Kurt Vonnegut, \u2018Gal\u00e1pagos\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHer heart throbbed, which annoyingly caused her anger to flake away at the edges.\u201d – Lauren Bolger, \u2018The Barre Incidents\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll rock bands have to realize that they can make a transition from being outrageous to being threatening, from being a joke to being an alternative.\u201d – Tony Kinman, quoted in \u2018Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cyour children don\u2019t see you when you \/ lack imagination (and neither does the world)\u201d – upfromsumdirt, \u201cROSETTA POEM\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201clike it or not, \/ the end \/ arrives,\u201d – Mitchell Nobis, \u201cThree-Pointer\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI shatter a pinky toe \/ and my mouth is full of ballads\u201d – upfromsumdirt, \u201cMEGAMORPHOSIS\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cand the only one \/ who always wins \/ is the end.\u201d – Mitchell Nobis, \u201cThree-Pointer\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHer heart was an engine, overworked.\u201d – Lauren Bolger, \u2018The Barre Incidents\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot shoulders\u2026The longer she looked, the more she was sure those fuckers were wings.\u201d – Lauren Bolger, \u2018The Barre Incidents\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe grim reality of it all burned sharp in her stomach; petals of acid opened up their colors to her.\u201d – Lauren Bolger, \u2018The Barre Incidents\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe hadn\u2019t even gotten the chance to think about a possible future living<\/em> together, and now dying together seemed more likely.\u201d – Lauren Bolger, \u2018The Barre Incidents\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201castrology. I still \/ know exactly who I am. \/ I forgive myself \/\/ for it once a day. \/ Moon, please \/ I just want to be seen\u201d – Adrian Sobol, \u201cself portrait with new moon\u201d\u201cIt\u2019s always refreshing to meet a young person who has a good head on his shoulders and a clear vision of the way the world needs to go. They aren\u2019t always right, but they do make things so very interesting, and frequently better.\u201d – N.K. Jemisin, \u2018The World We Make\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIronically, swastikas were a common shock icon among LA punks, but Tony Kinman wearing a hammer and sickle shirt seemed to cause more controversy.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLed by [Millions of Dead Cops], many of the transplants from Texas took up either residence or rehearsal space in an old Hamm\u2019s Brewery, an abandoned complex that became known as the Vats.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1989<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Bad Brains wanted to play music with an edge to it that \u2018knocks the rich people who have forgotten how to feel,\u2019 in the words of HR. The end result of the house party was a lot of holes kicked in the walls, which a nonplussed HR discovered later.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey sit and wait \/ On crooked curbs \/ For dirty work \/ They sit and wait\u201d – Jose Hernandez Diaz, \u201cAn Ode to Los Jornaleros\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor all the talk\u2026things not being the same anymore and everything having gotten too big, the new generation of kids was actually doing a better job of embracing the underground DIY spirit than a lot of the older generation had.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen gigs were looking a bit sparse in DC, [Bad Brains] hocked their instruments in the fall of \u201879 and headed overseas\u2026British immigration officials were not impressed with the band members sum wealth of 29 cents.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not out of control\u2026it\u2019s just wild. Life runs on chaos math. It\u2019s supposed to be varied and hard to predict\u2014and yes, dangerous.\u201d – N.K. Jemisin, \u2018The World We Make\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike countless other bands, most hoped to compensate for their musical shortcomings with speed and exuberance.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey have built a border: \/ At the drive-thru window, when they want fast food\u2014 \/ Between a minimum wage and an artificial convenience.\u201d Jose Hernandez Diaz, \u201cThe Border\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf a border patrol agent found the merchandise after seeing all of our equipment, she might deduce that we were crossing the border to perform, to make money\u2014to work, essentially, and to do so without work permits, which is illegal. This is a kind of illegal similar to undocumented Mexicans working and making money in the United States, not that we made that connection at all.\u201d – Michelle Cruz Gonzales, \u2018The Spitboy Rule\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Little](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-6.png\")
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![Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cI bought a cheap drum set and started madly bashing away\u2026It was one of the great freedoms of punk, that people without the slightest clue about music enthusiastically tried to create it, often with far more interesting results than traditional musicians could have ever come up with. I was not one of those people, however.\u201d – George Hurchalla, \u2018Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe song was tough, and vulnerable, and it had attitude. It sounded like something totally fresh and new, like the female punk band I had been waiting to hear, waiting to discover for some time, the band that I was now in with Karin, and Paula, and Adrienne, the band that would soon be named after a female-body-centric creation story, a story that didn\u2019t involve god, a rib, or a man.\u201d – Michelle Cruz Gonzales, \u2018The Spitboy Rule\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cNo witchcraft, no enemy action has silenced \/ the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. \/ We the people\u2014we have done it ourselves.\u201d – Carla Sofia Ferreira, \u201cCento For Rachel Carson: A Fable For Today\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t call what we did then entertainment, but it was riveting in its own disturbing way.\u201d – David Byrne, \u2018How Music Works\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI thanked him and decided not to tell him how much I made it for, and how it was put together because in the end that shouldn\u2019t matter. I had a feeling that if people just saw it as a movie, without knowing the sacrifices that had to be made to get it done\u2026I\u2019m impressed that a lot of the things we attempted actually came out, but that\u2019s not what makes a movie great.\u201d – Robert Rodriguez, \u2018Rebel Without A Crew\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSomeday I will have a best friend all my own\u2026Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.\u201d – Sandra Cisneros, \u2018The House On Mango Street\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI had no interest in or ability to learn smooth dance moves, though we all watched Soul Train.\u201d – David Byrne, \u2018How Music Works\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cDon Cornelius saw in Black people a promise beyond their pain, and I was always saddest to come to terms with the idea that he could not outrun his own.\u201d – Hanif Abdurraqib, \u2018A Little Devil In America\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Kinosternon_integrum_(Family_Kinosternidae).jpg\"){kind=link}