"Allow me to address the elephant in the room: The decades-long outsourcing of domestic manufacturing to China was not an insidious Chinese conspiracy for dominance but the greedy strategy of the American ruling class to explode its profit margins by exploiting global inequality." --@strandjunker.com
Delia Derbyshire Collection on Archive.org.
How do you keep going in Gaza when everything tells you to stop?
"crime of opportunity"
scripts scattered · in the gray desert
wearying to the eye
faraway fantods · erupt in rainbows
nothing is what it was
pangs in the holding
the ship scuttled · your ride share
tarrying where the blend
of gray fields · & abrupt rainbows
is more & more nothing
pangs in the holding
a clip sprung · in the spooled depth
spiralling out of hand
faraway losses · you still lavish
though nothing returns
pangs in the holding
"You do not deserve to know unusual people, if you find fault with their very unusualness." --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
"Toad woke up. 'Drat!' he said. 'This house is a mess. I have so much work to do.'
Frog looked through the window. 'Toad, you are right,' said Frog. 'It is a mess.'
Toad pulled the covers over his head." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"SUNDIAL
Laid,
an onus set,
a gnomon gates sun, on a dial....
Sky rhythms fly by, wryly,
by my crypt —
by syzygy.
Sulphur sun succumbs:
Dusk dulls us, murmurs,
blunts us up.
Soft glows of hollow moon
grow gnomon forms on
ponds of rock.
This night is finishing.
Its vigil lifting, nitid shifting
gilts this dish in twilit stirrings.
Restless edges represent:
The steeple’s lengths lessen when
the flexed degrees descend.
A raw and rampant
dawn attracts a waltz.
A vacant patch draws back:
Laid,
an onus set,
a gnomon gates sun, on a dial."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park.
"Revés,
reveses él obra,
reseco, no caído,
ve un nuevo reparo llorar,
o ve un árbol en ocaso.
Mi mal, arena y arrayán,
era la mimosa, con él obra.
Nuevo, raro llora,
pero ve un nuevo día, conoce.
Ser árbol es ese verse ver."
--@merlinaacevedo.bsky.social
(Google translate:
Setback
he works backwards,
parched, not drooping,
see a new reluctance to cry,
or see a tree in sunset.
My evil, sand and myrtle,
it was the mimosa, with him work.
New, weird cry,
but he sees a new day, he knows.
To be a tree is to see oneself.)
"...it was just after the War and there was not to be for years the Esperanto of pimentos and the snobbery of refrigerators.'' --A Case of Knives
Agatha Christie writing course led by her digitally reconstructed AI self.
"winter grove
vanishing over the rooftops
these slept-in sheets"
--@poemexe.com
The time when Donny and Marie had their own Disco Star Wars special.
"Pictographie
I marred a groaning silhouette,
Saw dim abhorrent freedoms cemented forever,
Till blackened paranoia bewitched this shadowed roof,
Smashing my despondent soul.
In meadows I remember my orations,
A forecast of degraded love:
Words cadential, proceeding from Hades
To the heart now shrunk,
Sublimated in helpless, binding hate.
You, a tree, a field overblown in summer,
Words and looks gathered, solicited, chanced,
Reminders now of the pleasing past
Bathed in bright heat and sad memories for me."
--Michael Keith in From Fibs to Fibonacci
(Each stanza is a word-length mnemonic for φ, e, & π; each is an anagram of the others.)
What's next for the Popemobile.
The only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime.
"military parade"
he'll never spend a day in jail
that much at least is clear
jewel by accursèd jewel
he'll never spend day in jail
yet miracles congeal
causality the last stickler
he'll never spend a day in jail
that much, at least, is clear
"An Ancient in First-Year Greek
Well, yes, it’s odd.
Past sixty-five, with more gray hair than a Sistine-ceiling God,
mildly I face the board, among
these shining-faced and slightly nervous young,
bumbling along with them, in kindergarten lisp and stammer
through bafflements of grammar
and strange opacities of alphabet.
Already I think their shoulders slump a bit beneath their debt,
but in this room, we equally ignore
the susurration of the rising sea, the roar
of Syrian bombers, the drowned children on the beaches,
the looming dark-age misery that teaches
despair and skull-numbed fear.
But here, here
we are, poor dreamers, laboring at the lore
of tongues that have seen the world collapse before
and that will know, when all comes crashing down, when dire
becomes most dire,
old stories, good to chant around a fire."
--Maryann Corbett in Weekly Hubris
"The Fate Of The Flimflam
A flimflam flopped from a fillamaloo,
Where the pollywog pinkled so pale,
And the pipkin piped a petulant 'pooh'
To the garrulous gawp of the gale.
'Oh, woe to the swap of the sweeping swipe
That booms on the hobbling bay!'
Snickered the snark to the snoozing snipe
That lurked where the lamprey lay.
The gluglug glinked in the glimmering gloam,
Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee--
When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam,
From the sozzling and succulent sea.
'Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!'
She swore as she swayed in a swoon,
And a doleful dank dumped over the deep,
To the lay of the limpid loon!"
--Eugene Field
swimming pool cover
turquoise, full of leaves: tadpoles
flee from your shadow…
eight thousand suns have returned,
but not once more that darkness.
Eleven Albums by the Three Suns.
"My relationship with existentialism is tormentingly unclear and tense."
season to ERASE
pall where Demogorgon RULED
doom shambles ALONG
none of it makes any SENSE
except at the freak EDGES
(2020)
"And strains from ruinous viols flown" --Clark Ashton Smith
"These manifestations of disconnection are not personal failings but systemic outcomes." (via mefi)
"1029.
Using only SPAM
Grandma made some tasty treats.
We set her on fire."
--Ken Zuroski at the Spam Haiku Archives
"There are other things to put your time and energy into."
"Through the Green Forest
Through the green forest softly without a sound,
Wrapped in a still mood
As in a cloak and hood
I went, and cast no shadow in the shadow of the wood.
There grew beeches taller than a ship's mast
That rocks from wave to wave
On the great seas of the world.
I looked into their tops;
Their tops were in another world;
Tossed in a sunny air as far from me
As the foam on waves that follow each other fast.
All day, unseen by man, over the sunny sea.
Naked birches, whiter than a god's thigh,
I saw, and stared, between the stems of the black pines;
Boulders whiter than a dream remembered by day
Stood in the brook's way,
Damp with mosses greener than an emerald's eye.
And ferns where the water sloped from stone to stone in the clear dark
Without ripple or speech
Curved motionless, rooted in rotted bark
And leaves laid together and the rifled husks of the beech."
--Edna St Vincent Millay
"yumshiner"
heritage · of the froth of the shock
ever latent · lurk-jackanapes
awaits winsel · of the trick sweepstakes
much citizen · salivates trigger
my own book · as the antsy shells shine
greener in wispgrasp · blaze of flagons
but shock's froth · fresh to its targets
is world mortar · & mood wone
to heart take · each grim telling
secret by secret · we save adjacents
"I don't believe in germ theory either. The only way to solve America's health crisis is to throw our leaders into active volcanoes to appease the angry gods" --@patcasey.bsky.social
" 'Help!' cried Toad. 'My list is blowing away. What will I do without my list?' " --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
golden uneasiness · chill urn
the known bumps bear · too much time
flung matchbox · gathering gold
i walk back up · broken sidewalk
May That Nuclear War Be Cursed.
"The Heart
The wild heart grew white in the forest;
Dark anxiety
Of death, as when the gold
Died in the grey cloud.
An evening in November.
A crowd of needy women stood at the bare gate
Of the slaughterhouse;
Rotten meat and guts fell
Into every basket;
Horrible food.
The blue dove of the evening
Brought no forgiveness.
The dark cry of trumpets
Travelled in the golden branches
Of the soaked elms,
A frayed flag
Smoking with blood,
To which a man listens
In wild despair.
All your days of nobility, buried
In that red evening!
Out of the dark entrance hall
The golden shape
Of the young girl steps
Surrounded by the pale moon,
The prince’s court of autumn,
Black fir trees broken
In the night’s storm,
The steep fortress.
O heart
Glittering above in the snowy cold."
--Wright & Bly's Trakl
I Know There's Something Going On.
"It is possible to imagine a grand back-to-America manufacturing strategy that does not require inflicting pain and economic suffering on the American people and on the rest of the world. It is possible and good to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and to rebuild an upwardly-mobile middle class by focusing on technical training, local ownership, and reskilling through incentives and strategic, carefully-considered tariffs that are rolled out over time. But that is not what is being pursued, and it's not what is being done." --Jason Koebler via
"A financial crash, Kathy agreed, is a good time to be in the occult business."
"dawn
masked lapwings drifting
down to breakfast"
--Jo McInerney via
glass against gray · granular truth
spooked by a robot
fumble-fact'ry · more & more churns
verbal inventions
thrift's shadow · sharkly looms
ev'ryone warned us
expedite egress · where, you say
plethora trinkets
plethora plaints · replete stuck
trap of snug entry
& words, wares · less than penny
ricochet homework
cathedral thronged · strange hymnody
shell of a building
asked for my papers · pop off my mouth
silenced the hard way
this world that seemed · formed to save us
batters the door down
spectral dooms · derelict wheels
offer to idlers
the place where i tarried · yesterday's towed
downstream a thousand
& granular truth · trained to gauge
measured in whims now
rogue hazelnut · a hazmat glove stoops
picks up to ponder
on a trackless shore
to the Elonbot that followed me
maybe for a poem
i wrote, i'm not your enemy
in any shape or form.
i write because before the dawn
little fires must start
& this is one i'm working on,
Elon; fix your heart.
Stand-in for a clown that's worse
murrain than Ebola,
should i be worried you disburse
an incel-led tombola?
all the walls you're tearing through
with just a mighty fart
were built by better men than you;
Elon, fix your heart.
Ev'rybody wants a piece
this epic, sad comeuppance
i only want to live in peace
on bardic crumbs & tuppence.
when i consider how much good
such bloat of means might chart
i say: you fucker, stow that hood,
Elon. Fix your heart.
"Everyone gets 12 AI friends, but one of them will betray you" --@johnattridge.bsky.social
Lies I've Told My 3 Year Old Recently.
" 'Frog, is that really you?' said Toad.
'Of course it is me,' said Frog.
'And you are your own right size?' asked Toad.
'I think so,' said Frog."
--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
not allowed to lend medicine
pangs from the cloud-pirouette
leak into podcasts
skullchattersome chert
& the pen in my hunched hand
is chess with hermits
rust-sweetened sweater
to uncover the curl of it
"autist not on the autist list"
slouch in my step · by slag redoubled
moments of the old oomph
admonish · sparkle like a new spoon
over the familiar potholes
there is a long term · no lurker believes in
it's not a short cut through
daguerrotype shiny · in today's glare
of a crowd of freed slaves
"awoken from sleep
of the falcons
on your lips"
--@poemexe.com
"What's the most brutal insult you've ever heard in your language? I think the most savagely specific one that I've ever encountered was from Finnish... sun gradu oli varmaan 20 sivua. It means 'your thesis was probably 20 pages long' " --@adamcsharp.bsky.social
"Does that make Magenta and Columbia Disney princesses?"
"OWL (Palindrome)
Too held in its tide,
tan, a meek owl woke,
emanated its tin, idle hoot."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Early experimentation, never published.
"the next gold rush"
in the crucible · words crumble
ants return · to the tile floor
procrastination · nods nimbly
concocts desserts · in the zigzag course
like a wild beast · bolted loose
not yet seen · in our sane streets
as we order orts · in antic surmise
marked & unmarked · dark vans prowl
"These days, everyone believes in social constructions."
"CURRENCIES, a triolet
(Open sound pattern repetitions with meanings circumscribed by visual transcription)
A current’s ease,
Form into mist.
Occurrence sees
a current’s ease.
A currency’s
for men too missed—
A current’s ease,
form into mist."
--@lori-wike.bsky.social
Elevating billionaires is as arbitrary & foolish as elevating cannibal killers--with whom, moreover, they share many traits.
" 'Babirusa' is half set in a maze based on octonion multiplication."
"Walpurgatory"
gawk Guernica weekly
gone to dust & fustian
the lone lament can't speak
allowed in this chowder
a hundred days' hazards
handed us as sandwich
to fix will take flak coats
fending generations
Guernica's stark story
a staring skull ullage
among many annals
of merch, clowns, & lurchdance
"supply sided"
breaker of fingers · breaker of bones in my head
stumble in the half dark
icy air · trace elements
of vaporized neighbors
wooden bin · painted white
solid self · in the sundering find
another lifetime's pondering
"One of our customers is a translator and was telling me that most of her work now is correcting AI translations. It's soul destroying." --@ravenbooks.bsky.social via @helendecruz.net
"Due to inflation, one nickel in 2017 was worth approximately what a penny was worth in 1974." --Wikipedia, "Penny debate in the United States"
The oldest photos in my collection.
"On Easter, Mothman Seethes
He is risen. Big whoop.
Can he fly?
Walk on water my ass.
Probably just a sandbar. Charlatan.
People put on fancy clothes,
wear fucking hats for this guy.
Swanky brunches, Mondays off
work, glazed ham.
What do I get?
A low rent festival in West Virginia
where men traipse around
in butterfly cosplay. A tacky
chrome statue, practically
an oversized hood ornament.
A mediocre flick starring
Richard Tiffany Gere.
That guy’s got a hundred big budget
films, been played by Christian Bale,
Ewan McGregor, and Willem Dafoe.
And then there’s that rock opera
that keeps getting resurrected.
Pun intended.
What has he ever done for people,
really? Spouted some Mr. Rogers platitudes?
Please. I’m pragmatic. Warn people
before disaster strikes. Save them some
heartache. Like that shoddy bridge
in Point Pleasant. Tried to show people
the problem before that eyebar gave out
and all those cars tumbled into the Ohio,
but they just screamed and ran away.
Turned me into another campfire ghost
story. For him, people even give up temptations
for 40 days before his big shindig.
Scientists write me off as a mutant crane.
Ninja Turtle horseshit.
Don’t even get me started on Christmas."
--Carrie Connors in Killing the Buddha
"hourglass of pitch"
feelsame stymied · in this unchanging light
railroad-crossing thought
cupcake capture · substandard
parody unsmiling
rampaging rain · in arrears--how?--
hollowed-out trees stand
is it hot? is it cold? · closed casket
for this democracy
we still must thole · etheric mecha
hours i was not in the wind
too heartsick · for the sales pitch
too many puzzletiles lost
"If I knew where poems came from, I would go there." -- Michael Longley (via @ianduhig.bsky.social)
Sunshine. (Not B W Stevenson after all...)
"19th century intelligence failure: a general got blackmailed in an opium parlor by a conwoman posing as an exotic Shanghai dancer
20th century: the code was cracked by the smartest scientists in human history working around the clock in a secret location
21st century: the boys in the group chat" --@aelkus.bsky.social
medicine box makeshift
among decayed hungers
far off thunder fended
fury & eave leavings
payback flagrant pinball
poetry goes nosing
illness the cute coalmine
catches each man-matchstick
roosts in the door rista
rollicking glaze mazement
payback flagrant pinball
putative hour-cowbell
therapy-thong'd werewolf
crownthistle, orc orchid
this fine terrain's rigor
ruined by dropped options
payback flagrant pinball
appalling trench fallback
trouble-tried cyborg
this week's Guernica
dust of people, dust of homes
swiftly vaporized
now rendered uncountable
in the twinkling of an eye
" I then spend days, weeks, longer, taking out most of the things I want to say, so the poem ends up as a sort of epitaph to itself..." --John Glenday via Poetry Blog Digest
" 'I wonder who began this treating of people as fellow creatures. It is never a success.'
'Once begun, it is a difficult thing to give up.'
'We shall lose interest in it, when the novelty wears off. It seemed such an original idea.'
'We can see how unnatural it is, by what comes of it.' " --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
The Field of Contemporary Art.
"sculpture of a storm"
pale krill Kristallnacht
crannog oghamtarot
return to task Sisyphus
in the tar-stuck sorrow
lament of merch fontnik
mere shadowlorn gradgrind
the toy miles vend telson
task Sisyphus kisses
Kristallnacht left nest egg
never again window
boots in the streets strangury
stern crannog my cairnperch
"the wind's warfare"
1.
cancer hacks · & hack cancer
private front · of a frayed war
bright colors & shapes · box your jam
of defunctive heeding · & lessening heft
things that fall · no final clasping
silence that seals · smiting & smoke
& the rendered roster · of razed cities rides
a rune at a time · in my timid cough
2.
even the furious · have lain down in desuetude
darksomely plied · with all the wrong pills
militant to a fault · but now malleable
& none next raging · against all ruin
they've taught us to take · what the toy shop sells
all of my heroes herded · even the furious
3.
May should be fun · a razor faring
no ringside seat · no rote spectacle
just realization · of deep drowning
growing on the flicker-phiz · of each phantom
4.
reign of slippage slynudge
beautiful book fronts
brightfadge & brave flavors
song of the sands run
& everybody watching
Collateral Inhalation. (via @joriegraham.bsky.social) (That's about a "Guernica" a week, for those keeping track.)
"knocking chestnuts
releasing a moth
in the autumn twilight"
--@poemexe.com
