A story floated across the news about a week ago that according to Nielsen Soundscan, Eminem is offically the best-selling musician of the '00s, edging out The Beatles for the decade's first-place spot. A lot of this success was due to the sales of his second Interscope/Aftermath album, called The Marshall Mathers LP and released in 2000.

I feel sort of silly noding about that album almost a decade after its release, but the Nielsen news caught the attention of a…

Just a note for your hospitality,
for numerous couch pillows, always on the floor

To your collection of piano sonatas
dark as coal coffee,
pine scented candles

I appreciated the fresh biscuits
your handmade quilts
the shimmery window in your den
framed with small Christmas lights
all year…

This writeup is in part a response to Dennis Lehane by Bitriot. Because while I love his writing very much he could not be more wrong.

"Such, in brief, was the physical and mental nature of the third human species. In spite of innumerable distractions, the spirit of the Third Men kept on returning to follow up the thread through a thousand variegated cultures. Again and again folk after folk would clamber out of savagery

This winter's afternoon, I sit
here in my third-floor, lacquer-washed
little glass box.

The boss is away, and there is
just enough work, if I forget
the filing, to fill
half
the time until five.

(I find, somehow, that I can
always forget the filing.)

And so, I write.

When I'm done, I will take
these shaped-and-crafted,
thoughtful words,
and print them…