"Beginning to think that the real product being peddled is not the novel but the edification that the novel will definitely provide and yuck." —@highway62.bsky.social
"This stuff is too much to process it directly..."
Thursday, October 30, 2025
"bloodlust in the leadership"
moon tears with the teeth matched
strange merch where the perch bleeds
shirt of British Racing Green
vans cruising the cruel streets
the last craisin till fasting
glare of autumn afternoons
pale cerulean rendered down
infirm portal irksome
angst militates spitball
light through a gap gougeweb
gone foraging edgegrief
"The adders herd death." (palindrome by pairs) —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
The idea of time is our consolation for losing the moments we fail to pay attention to. We say: it’s got to go ๐ ๐๐๐๐คโ๐๐๐.
“faithful to music”
having only been
faithful to music
too chary of other boon
having only been
as the forests burn
caught in the carolling murk
having only been
faithful to music
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.
“Ode to Eris, Goddess of Discord”
Now that you’ve been given a mini-planet
Fin'lly, of your own, will you go from Terra?
Your laws are here carved out of granite;
All of our wishes wear your tiara.
Maybe if us Earthlings could quit this scrimmage
Long enough to tell if another manner
Of play might suit us more, we’d salvage
Prizes to render the least a winner.
Leave us if you must with the golden apple:
Surely in our poverty something glitters
Of dreams that don’t require iron’s grapnel,
Smoky removal, and marching orders.
“Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place;
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Mood.
"The author of the Journal of a Pupil describes a meeting between Gurdjieff and Crowley, but it is clear that they had
nothing to say to one another. He says, 'Crowley had magnetism, and the kind of charm that many charlatans have; he
also had a dead weight that was somehow impressive'-- that is, Crowley was a 'man of power'. 'His attitude was fatherly
and benign, and a few years earlier I might have fallen for it. Now I saw and sensed that I could have nothing to do with
him.' He does not describe the tea, except to say that Gurdjieff kept a sharp watch on Crowley, and says, 'I got a strong impression
of two magicians, the white and the black--the one strong, powerful, full of light; the other also powerful, but heavy, dull,
ignorant.'" —Colin Wilson, The Occult (1971)
“GREEN LIGHT
Bought at the drug store, very cheap; and later pawned.
After a while, heard on the street; seen in the park.
Familiar, but not quite recognized.
Followed and taken home and slept with.
Traded or sold. Or lost.
Bought again at the corner drug store,
At the green light, at the patient’s demand, at nine o'clock.
Re-read and memorized and re-wound.
Found unsuitable.
Smashed, put together, and pawned.
Heard on the street, seen in a dream, heard in the park, seen by the light of day;
Carefully observed one night by a secret agent of the Greek Hydraulic Mining Commission, in plain clothes, off duty.
The agent, in broken English, took copious notes. Which he lost.
Strange, and yet not extraordinary.
Sad, but true.
True, or exaggerated, or true;
As it is true that the people laugh and the sparrows fly;
As it is exaggerated that the people change, and the sea stays;
As it is that the people go;
As the lights go on and it is night and it is serious, and just the same;
As some one dies and it is serious, and true;
As the corner hardware clerk might know and it is true, and pointless;
As an old man knows and it is grotesque, but true;
As the people laugh, as the people think, as the people change,
It is serious and the same, exaggerated or true.
Bought at the drug store down the street
Where the wind blows and the motors go by and it is always night, or day;
Bought to use as a last resort,
Bought to impress the statuary in the park.
Bought at a cut rate, at the green light, at nine o'clock.
Borrowed or bought. To look well. To ennoble. To prevent disease. To entertain. To have.
Broken or sold. Or given away. Or used and forgotten. Or lost.”
—Kenneth Fearing
"widening gyre productions"
barbed-wire whimsy · rewards fingers
neon the name · of a knack stymied
crystal increase · carves effigy
the plain replentished · buzzard-style
barbed-wire walg · inward hurtle
Nor ziptied children on my bingo card...
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
“The old hunger, left in the old darkness,
Turned like a hanged knife.”
—WS Merwin
Demon Pond. (via @harryskeeler.bsky.social)
gunmetal gray welkin
guzzles the last beastlight
afar there is thrashing
thought cannot quite grasp it
our toys rascal-scattered
escape often hopeless
Godzilla's path picked out
apart from laid gridwork
machine so vast in vying
venture or cub habit
cloudily called Wind-Rose
kept in tiptoe hollows
The Eyes Have It: Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase.
The official revival of the Commodore brand.
"BUILD A SUN (Anagrammed Lines)
I build a sun. Feted, it rises.
Inside its beautiful reds,
in its dust, a blue fire dies."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
“The phrase was still in vogue that ‘only 3 people understood Relativity’ at a time when Eddington was complaining that the trouble about Relativity as an examination subject in 'Part III’ [the hardest, last test for the Mathematical Tripos] was that it was such a soft option.” —Littlewood’s Miscellany
Sure hope this ione s just a conspiracy theory.
“If there is veneration, even a dog’s tooth emits light.”
—Tibetan saying, quoted in A. David-Neel’s ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ ๐ก๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ก (1929)
“Poem
I first loved you
second to
your gentleness
like the blind who
divide their lives into
dark and dark I
have you and your gentleness
as a detail in a painting frames that painting
in the often
memory, your face
is surrounded by your eyes
unafraid
of the grays of gentleness
but better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
the harshness
when you talk about that prison capitalism
when you vow never to stop fighting
never
until each woman and man is free
until each woman and man is in the custody
of their gentleness”
—Bill Knott
The Paranoiac-Critical Method lives.
“Hills of Home
Name me no name for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death—
Homesick for hills that I had known,
For brooks that I had crossed,
Before I met this flesh and bone
And followed and was lost…
And though they break my heart at last,
Yet name no name of ills.
Say only, ‘Here is where he passed,
Seeking again those hills.’ ”
—Witter Bynner, Oxford Book of American Verse (1927)
" 'I invited [T S] Eliot here,' [Oppenheimer] told Freeman Dyson, 'in the hope that he would produce another masterpiece, and all he did here [at the Institute for Advanced Study] was to work on The Cocktail Party, the worst thing he ever wrote.' "
—๐ด๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐กโ๐๐ข๐
"But there are too many signs that everything that used to sustain our lives no longer does so, that we are all mad, desperate, and sick. And I call for us to react." --Antonin Artaud, "No More Masterpieces"
narco-terrorist
carrion retorts
traction errors
cartoon stirrer
nor scarier tort
corner's traitor
carries torn ort
ire rancor trots
purple christmas lights
on a black tree in gray dawn
winds that can tear off
the stitched face of a scarecrow
who once believed in wheeled things
“Sakyamuni, Confucius, and Laotse once stood before a jar of vinegar—the emblem of life—and each dipped in his fingers to taste the brew. The matter-of-fact Confucius found it sour, the Buddha called it bitter, and Laotse pronounced it sweet.” —The Book of Tea
Monday, October 27, 2025
“…a time comes when you stop reading the articles…just the ads…they tell the whole story…” –Cรฉline, ๐๐๐๐กโ (1960)
thriftbingo the throb language
in thrall to mapblank rapture
calendar peel pry ullage
pig kneels on your neck bigly
bigly a doom comes calling
"epstein ballroom"
duskwhine, where the casket creaks
& the wisps of an old impetus
cannot make this strobe stir
the tooth fact'ry tarries to forge
inkspill or spiral
pinchbeck margents barking mad
in the din of the duskwhine
“…a distinction must be made again betwixt the death of Metals, and their rest or quietness.” —Basil Valentine
"Textbooks ended at the year things stopped working."
“For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures.” —Carlyle
British Racing Brimstone
broidered snailtrail daily
stagger on with statecraft
astute poppy lopper
burning flow
flitting topaz
People & bees in Albanian. (thread)
“Skin is the Only Palimpsest”
Out of my proud, hard, melodious ulcer
comes a dream too bitter to be angry,
too sad to be bitter. We dreamers cured of The Answer
must solace our lostness with the Double Ulgry.
This gift, perhaps the last I have to give,
savor of myrrh, orgeat, Chartreuse and blood,
golden at dawn a gossamer caryatid
(contrail or portent), Djuna—is my love.
You said, you could have slept last night in my arms;
I wanted that, too. I wanted, beyond reprieve,
a knowledge that was also a path. We carve
passage in the dark with just such dreams:
a way where none may go, we go. Though not to leave.
The fourth track of this is one of the greatest spoken word recordings ever made.
“A philosopher is crying in a glass maze.” –@magicrealismbot
"They turn in the night, consumed by fire."
“You may be sure that a question which requires music for an answer can’t be put into words.” —A Voyage to Arcturus
“Echo
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope and love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death;
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.”
—Christina Rossetti
Paleo-Scrapbook. (via @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social)
“The Warning
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk—as strange, as still—
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?”
—Adelaide Crapsey
“Ontology is the luxury of the landed.” –Lisa Robertson
“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”
— Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy via @philosophybits.com
"...a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor."
"Denali"
before poachers · raised their palaces
golden olive the thread
unknown writing · morning after rain
for while i know the way
for awhile whether · mountain will fall
dissolves in other questions
coolth leagues whisper
Denali early
in this small toe of mecha
marches played on the harp
keep us in step
& far from any taste of polka
in this slight poison garden
only the hues enmesh
none journeys harsh
in search of breaking Armageddon
in this svelte shrapnel'd corner
in fash'nable ways get sick
the sky's great fork
jabs at now & then some winner
as altarwise we clench the work
"But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
Sunday, October 26, 2025
"The Anthropocene marks severe discontinuities; what comes after will not be like what came before. I think our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge."
—Donna J. Haraway via @jaconwren.bsky.social
"For a little space, between irony and despair, we were very briefly allowed to like things."
“Many Mansions
The last majority attained,
And shut from its small house of dust,
Into the heritage of air
The spirit goes because it must:
And halts before the multiple plane
To look more ways than left and right,
And weeping walks its father’s house
Like something homeless in the night:
For now less largely let abroad,
Though but the world they say is mine,
I shiver as I take the road.”
—Lรฉonie Adams
Pam Bondi and Elon Musk, portrayed by Sally Cruikshank.
"Lovecraft gently let down all such inquirers." (via feuilleton)
Autumnal & eternal rose,
Where dreams divide & time lays siege,
The stuff of deliquescent throes,
A moment in the eyes of one mad liege.
Pale, I remember, ultramarine
Was then the sea. Now fathoms close
About that locket’s fall, while green
Remains to me the wither of the rose.
Her revenant rose & came to dwell
Here with a fragment from that dream
Who twice himself tried ring the knell…
What profits dry bones strewn where roses teem?
So two unfound ones fill the clothes
Of others born to such prestige
And fake it. Nonetheless, some rose
Wafture permeates the rusted cage.
“Man’s greatest epic, his four long battles with the advancing ice of the great continental glaciers, has vanished from human memory without a trace.” —Loren Eiseley
“ ‘Changes come and carry us with them.’
'That sounds more comfortable than it is.’ ” —Ivy Compton-Burnett
Tzefardea Tzedek (Frog of Righteousness).
chaos-nuzzled cardstock
kink scrolloping duppies
the will to be tailgun
torques ferrying neon
A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies.
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Wiles & the alliterisen.
"castles"
art ever perfected
on the weakest practiced
if teams turn from murder
in time, they still mime it
wake & know no warning
will work · blood-mist lurking
cars out like bright castles
“It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.” –G K Chesterton, Browning (1903)
“The fatal Sisters three,
which spun my slender twine,
Knew well how rotten was the yarne,
from whence they drew their line.”
—Gascoigne
Fall issue of Forgotten Grounds Regained.
"accord de fromage"
Zubenelg-lift zimme
zillows Clearview keelyard
the world's missing witness
wones in van's brisk shadow
On the Diminishment of Seafarers' Laments.
"the Rooibos Lopez"
all the ways of magic
i learned
first & last subject
all the ways of magic
& pinchbeck margents,
trophies made of lead—
all the ways of magic
i learned
The Fall of the House of Usher.
๐โ๐ ๐ค๐๐๐๐ โ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐ & left nothing but iconography behind: that, & suffering.