Face at the Bottom of the World and Other Poems.
"congestion pricing"
love is a low-yield nuke
nidings clustered wassail;
nightmare's costive fossil
docks plights we prattle of
"along this road
cicada cries
in a large room"
--@poemexe.com
I'm getting where the only images i believe are weird old engravings.
"The Old Masters
About suffering, they knew no more or less
than we do, being
housed in luminescence;
a local cumulus
of feverfew and jade
reduced to void, the tower overthrown,
the bells upturned.
I see one now, impoverished
and old before his time, a lesser man’s
subordinate, or master to a trade
he never asked for.
Burdened by the weight
of office, or the whim of some mad king,
he stands alone, above the dark lagoon,
and watches, while the city fades from quartz
to plum, from plum
to cochineal, a restless drift
through subtleties and shades
he cannot
capture, though he magnifies the whole
and loves it all the more, for being
useless, fleeting, governed by no rule,
a headlong and unmasterable now
that slips away, one pier light at a time."
--John Burnside
"Is access to information a universal right or a privilege?" (via Mefi)
"Dream of Blood
i
I thought the wealthgoddess washed me with godsfire sprung from the long
sharp, lathered my hair red, that wristbandflame-wearer her hawkholder
blood-red in the woundshower of handglow-spending men.
ii
I thought the watching warflame goddess hooded me with a gory headdress
over my roughmown raking, hands bathed in swordrain. So the quilting
queen woke me from dreaming.
iii
I thought the axe-ogress-shakers’ long steel chopped my fingers, hands, both
my arms to huge wounds, then sliced a gash, my twinemaiden, in my
skulltop, my helmetstump.
iv
I thought, armringprincess, the carrioncatching gods shed my blood from
both broad shoulders with their sharp swords, great mischief of
falconfeeding. Mercy like theirs, my leekleafhealing lady, makes my life
grow grey.
v
I thought the blood ran down both sides, such woundflooding was mine to
endure. I dream, my goldenlady, I am their forces’ outlaw, awaiting the
spikestorm, now as I go to sleep.
vi
I thought in my sleep stood a silverbanded goddess, giant’s daughter, grieving
with wet lashes, glorious seafiregold girl suddenly – what do I make of
this – binding my wounds."
--Peter Daniels in Modern Poets on Viking Poetry
" 'I cannot think what has come over you.'
'Then you cannot think at all,’ said Fabian. ‘But I daresay that is the case. A good many people can’t.' ” --@icomptonburnett.bsky.social
"together'd/ shadows flit at twilight..."
"The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless."
--Hayao Miyazaki via @jacobwren.bsky.social
"Plough of the Sea
Your deep hull lifts and leaps
for leagues: toil forth. Whale-earth
tears to foaming furrows;
you scythe a keel-fine line.
Nestled in the surf-field
sea-mice spurn bow and stern.
Storm-steady, tiller firm,
be ox-strong: prow-ward, plough."
--Beverley Nadin in Modern Poets on Viking Poetry
"In my memory are lagoons." (via @alexanderchee.bsky.social)
"Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.
On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.
On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.
Possess, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger’s feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no."
--AE Housman via vamoul.substack
" 'Frog is late,' said Toad.
Toad looked at his clock. He remembered it was broken. The hands of the clock did not move."
--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"winter mist
snowflake caught
an island"
--@poemexe.com
river of thud-riddles
always twingebanged twice
rune-scored twig
i drawl & watch drift off
there a song screenshotted
must dree its sift
where kinder-handled casket
(stiffbound or staple-pierce)
might catch no stats
none: & we are numbskulls
to the trough snout-snared;
on numbers, snack
10 Great Films of 1925. (via feuilleton)
"Journey to the West
Ship of speech, word-wave,
sails westward, and I, speaking,
hold hard to wind’s unfolding
across air’s parchment, writing.
Lords and lackeys murmur and mill
and I, outside, stoop and supplicate,
seek king’s councillors, crave
access and audience, a prince who pays
for tongue’s treasure, mind’s unfolding,
richly wrapped in iron rings.
Earls of earth’s serpent spend
safety, scorn stability, senses
stripped; proud proclaimers, power-drunk,
cast kings’ cares to the wind’s casket.
Let warriors wait hard on heath;
hope under heaven favours flight.
Broad battles rage bitter,
brave lords drain heart’s mead,
unstinting drink the wine of ravens,
speak soft words, plough hard rows.
Mine is the gift of gold, speaking
strong lines; yours is steel,
a sharp sword, a worthy weapon.
A wise warrior weighs God’s words.
Wind’s servant, across the shifting hills
I return, richer in words and welcomes,
giving gifts undiminishing, gaining
grace of place, proud amongst peers.
I have fared far, fought clinging coils
of earth’s duplicitous dragon, found
home, the giver of true gifts;
one word resolves all riddles."
--Oz Hardwick in Modern Poets on Viking Poetry
“A leopard does not change its spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.” --@icomptonburnett.bsky.social
"Religion is what happens when mansplaining gets out of control." --@jimmerthatisall.bsky.social
"A Violet Darkness
And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness
on soil where myths splinter and crack.
Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.
My share of the people
is the transit of their ghosts."
--Najwan Darwish via @rabihalameddine.bsky.social
rain before sunrise · isthmus
in the spaces spiral-visioned
runaway spook
nuts & bolts nattering
perfectly form-fitted
natheless foul
not the bourn we bet on
to be January-jostling
blindness jettisoned
"night
rings & rings…
into the fire"
--@poemexe.com
This Bear Wants to Have Some Flour Milled.
"Trump is picking his cabinet like he’s in a fantasy league for the apocalypse" --@samlymatters.bsky.social via @amishsupermodel.bsky.social
"Lawless midnight forever composes..."
cruise as if · fateful crossing
narrated richly
floor full of specks · constellations'
animal starlore
these rinds wrixled · catenary chain
winding to issue
not in the delveless dark · doing nothing
sequence set · to serve order
entropy stymied
mere message · made & unmade
tossed on the air tides
Cold.
"Agreeing to a debate on this topic is like agreeing to a debate about whether the Earth is flat."
"the lustre
rumours
in the eyes of that caged bird
celestial music"
--@poemexe.com
I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies.
"Anxiety is just nature[']s ozempic" --@ilovepie84.bsky.social via @prufrockluvsong.bsky.social
"sleepless all night
the cranes alight
stealing"
--@poemexe.com
"A LINE"
how simple the desire
for love, or something that tastes like love
but how many ways there are
for two lines in space not to meet
(1989)
Water in the Desert. (vai @alinaetc.bsky.social)
"The End
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end."
--Mark Strand
"If I'm going to properly mourn something, I will cry about centuries of paper-based literature being disrupted and dis-intermediated. My subculture world I loved so well: xeroxed fanzines, science fiction monthly magazines, publishing houses, independent bookstores, newspapers, magazines, libraries, novels.
I wrote 'em. I really liked novels... As it happens, I recently wrote a new novel. Funniest novel I ever wrote. It's an ebook, you can go and look for it if you want. It doesn't make much difference if you do or you don't. We just don't live in a world where novels can be important in the way that novels used to be important.
Nobody reviews them. There are no paper periodicals that talk at great length about paper novels to people who spend their lives reading paper.
The bookstore chains have been disrupted. They are collapsing. I am a novelist. I myself don't go into bookstores very much now. They have become archaic, depressing places. They are stone cliff houses. They are half abandoned.
If I don't go in there, certainly my readers are not going to go in there. I know where the readers went. They’re all on the internet, or in social media, just like me."
--Bruce Sterling, closing remarks at SXSW, 2013
World of the Future, We Thirsted.
"You are the evening of the future-spongy-asserter day."
"Music of the future, of the inhuman future. Music from after the Anthropocene, of the thanatopocene." --Nietzsche and the Burbs
"Catcher of words, watch
as they wing the day’s light
to hiding: the hidden
insect horde; the best word,
the wing rattle whining
west to the sun, the one
skeleton sound flying
skull caught in your word pot."
--David McKelvie in: Modern Poets on Viking Poetry
Denebola feuillemort
frisk-snirtled anodyne
smaze this morning galore
glisk in forlorn ray’s-den
"In Japan, the Minamoto or Genji clan had chosen Rigel and its white color as its symbol, calling the star Genji-boshi (源氏星), while the Taira or Heike clan adopted Betelgeuse and its red color." --Wikipedia
The Three Stigmata of Donald Trump. (2015)
"One can ask this question forever and not once walk away with an answer."
"I'm here but I'm really good" --Alanis Morrissette
"One Stray Spark
Feuillemort feathers the fickle forest floor,
Sparked by a glisk on a brief winter tour.
Surrounded by smaze, the trees cough and choke
Snirtles are stifled, a forest fire is no joke."
--@thedevilstuna.bsky.social via
On Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go On Singing.
"In a variety of ways literature incapacitates a man for the exigencies of existence." --Charles M Snyder, The Flaw in the Sapphire (1909)
"cycle"
necessary pond
out of all those formed
by the passage of water
over depressions
lone batrachian dwelling
master of all grays
& browns & blacks around him
still as the cold air
then suddenly not
the pond will wither
& its mud grow black cracklings
but the plop remains
gas burner galvanized · by one gaunt lucifer
frying these mushrooms
their aroma rising · roams mem'ry
ice winters prior
power deprived · sickness in tow
promises broken
the aluminum kettle · with its loud shriek
ready for tea-time
the sidewalk smooth · to the still mailbox
pale & untravelled
It actually doesn't help me to keep being reminded these people are not only wrong but pathetic excuses for human beings, too.
"...lots of people remember the sort of funny story about a man explaining my own book to me and not the much grimmer business of people talking over/ disbelieving women trying to say things like 'he's trying to kill me,' which is also in the essay." --@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
'"the logic of extermination"
Galilean moon lacewing
pearl pilgrimage dawn
leaning spiral
asbestos bilm falling
at last clouds clattering
bent thickly
gave us a good answer
but not the one we needed
Truest thing ever said about writing.
Modern Poets on Viking Poetry.
"dinosaur highway"
voidvotive · shell shock crystal
listicle lungfuls · apart from plainsong
pavane impervious · to the pyre we walk through
bleeze-leam all the livelong day
Pavane for the Children of Palestine.
"THE ART (Aelindrome in the Decimal Expansion of √2: 14142135623730950488)
The art,
a losing sun,
as she emerges,
only a swan
to her suffering,
may be dark
as turns of sky.
Do seas turn
so dark, maybe,
suffering her
as wantonly?
So, emerge as she —
sung in a lost heart."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"bleeze-leam" (Scots): 'blaze-light'
"...today’s GOP sees college graduates as the enemy."
"MORNING (Anagrammed Lines)
Nature painted this morning
as a thorn in untried pigment,
a mad night in turpentines, or
the turning points in a dream...."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
I'm trying to wrap my mind around what i just read (i work as a writing tutor). I think the harried teacher told a chatbot to come up with an assignment involving the use of AI & on the subject of using AI in a given field. (I can almost picture them gibbering to Siri around 3 AM this morning.) So the student fed the assignment into their own chatbox, & sent it to me for revisions. I guess the only sane thing to do would have been to give it to another chatbot to complete the merry-go-round. Instead, because i am paid $25 an hour to do so, i had to react to it as though it had been submitted by a human for human purposes... My head hurts.
A mass slaying followed by other mass slayings, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.
"got into a huge fight with the wife but she apologized by buying me a cybertruck and a brand new life insurance policy" --@ndrew.bsky.social via @kimmysunshine
"spiderwebbed lover —
you left me like the old year
mouth full of endings
with your glass shard hands you keep
cutting all the clocks in two"
--@saintghost.bsky.social
"The three closing lines of Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill can be arranged into a perfect tanka.
And it is a
#goodbye
of sorts.
oh as i was young
and easy in the mercy
of his means time held
me green and dying though i
sang in my chains like the sea"
--@dylan.kussman.bsky.social
"Our thoughts cannot be expected to stand at attention indefinitely any more than soldiers on parade in summer; standing too long, they will simply fall down in a faint." (Although i'm a bit dubious about the venue.)
"winter solstice
silent
armadillo"
--@poemexe.com
