Bloody V*rsicl*s.

   "A Tragedy

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."
* * * * *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
.............................. And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
.............................. Plop.
.............................. Dead.
And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
.............................. Flop, plop.
* * * * *
A curse on him.
.............................. Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end –
My Devil -- My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air --
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.
.............................. Plop."

--Th*ophilus Marzials (via *ratosph*r*)

17.

mamihlapinatapal · watching among I that alarms
Tarawa spoor pitchfork snoop · walking storms pathway spawns warning
blow twinkling ward stay scorn thinking · final snack igloo


18.

cavity faring avid · I stomp hypnotic offal rays
grisly firn in ignobly · yarn ivory viral idly
biro using storp gold Imlac · upon what dying


19.

strings storm groan I inhalant · igniting as it forlorn
crinkly amount igniting · frills for Rambo snail sinks bishop
units who wallop play rasp ink · stir birth aggry sniff



Th* smoking bull*t in th* smoking gun.

Catapult. (via Robot Wisdom)


"This past, for me, has important decorative, ornamental functions; further, it is a vast repository of outmoded lies, where you can check out what lies used to be a la mode and find the old lies on which new lies have been based." --Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg (1997)


"Indeed, Nahum Tate’s rewrite of King Lear, supplying a happy ending in which Cordelia lives to marry Edgar, was the version habitually performed from the 1680s until the 1830s."

Starbucks + Walmart = Warbucks

cat
book
city


--Saroyan



"Poetry is a vision of the world obtained by an effort, sometimes exhausting, of the taut, buttressed will. Poetry is willful. It is not an abandonment, a free and gratuitous entry by the senses; it is not to be confused with sensuality, but rather, opposing it, was born, for example, on Saturdays, when to clean the rooms, housewives put the red velvet chairs, gilded mirrors, and mahogany tables outside, in the nearby meadow."

-Jean Genet (via Porthol* R*dux)


"Why is it that asyntactic poetry still requires defenders? This thing is dated 1978. I was 5."

   15.

infirm ontology if · I grisly impact moving on
stars mouth slow loyal aglow · typical gibbons of wildly
ogham gray windows asphault clouds · byblow pinball smirk


16.

notional soda starfish · bidding forlorn snug waly plaid
is no odic fast ascot · stars fall from of firn us wholly
about fist adoring odor · fink inch ignorant



Som*thing will sav* us.


Old pond.


"A week or so ago, I found myself responsible for entertaining a Pulitzer winner. I phoned a local restaurant for reservations, explaining that I'd like the evening to go well because this gentleman won the Pulitzer.

The young voice at the other end of the phone paused, then chirped, "What is a Pulitzer?""


"...a list of songs to play to throw irritating hallucinogenophiles into bad trips."

T*ach Yours*lf Postmod*rnism.

"There are probably no fewer worthwhile poems, novels and paintings now being made by gifted people than there ever were. But there's a vast increase in desperate, ego-driven shit, of which Paglia's book happens to be a good example."


"...I'm amazed at how many reworkings of emblematic poetry I am running across these days..."

    "ORCHARD

  Orchard sweet
sweet orchard; first
starve
  Increasing centimeter
    of air. Song
has really no meter and
  faced, remains
once. Escape into uneven Impaired
  when it turns out.
      However possible dead
  out into wide places
my original plasma,
 oh counting birds.

      None
of unconscious limit?
However can be made on.
Is breathing askew
but to the real sense of sign
     of describe?,
      increase "fill me"
    and disjunction."

--Joseph Ceravolo, Spring in This World of Poor Mutts (1968)



S*lf-injurious manipulativ* b*havior. (via Cursor)


Last Hours of Anci*nt Sunlight.

"Not a
cricket

ticks a
clock"

--Aram Saroyan, Pages (1969)

"When the Bush era is done, one of the puzzles left to history will be the seeming ease with which the recklessness and radicalism of the president's fiscal and military endeavors, not to mention his gang’s open contempt for democratic forms, gained the assent of tens of millions of Americans. The news apparatus and the putative opposition party will come in for very large dollops of blame, along with the precipitous decline of public schools over the past generation-plus...The internet demi-monde of right-wing bloggers and chat boards is the purest expression of what has happened to political “dialogue” in the 15-year period bracketed by the rise of Rush Limbaugh and that of the Bush gang. Together the forces of radical conservatism have contrived an extreme makeover in the language of politics: They’ve turned it into the idiot stepchild of sports programming.

What I’m talking about is evident in matters of idiom--the countless times, for example, that “liberal” is invoked as a taunting slur, roughly akin to the way “cheesehead” or “the fucking Yankees” might be tossed off on a sports-chat board. It’s more than a matter of style; there’s a worldview lurking beneath it, and what the worldview entails is summed up in the (semantically challenged) old Vince Lombardi maxim that winning isn’t everything--it’s the only thing. Now of course electoral politics has always been about winners and losers in a very important sense. But has there ever been a political moment so openly defined by swagger and triumphalism for their own sake--the will to humiliate the vanquished, grind them underfoot for the sheer pleasure of showing them who’s boss?...

What’s at stake here is the difference between the moral universe of the citizen and that of the fan, which is to say between that of the participant and the spectator. For the fan, the only crucible that finally matters is being on the winning side."

Today our bardic art avoids musicality, is loath to admit it has unknowns, and can bring no puissant magic into its virtual crosshairs. So catalyst scouts won't stop at this oasis. Dancing fools won't look for it at this club. Lab coats will shrug and say what do bards know about solving things anyway.


Rhubarb is Susan.


Still burning. (via Robot Wisdom)

    12.

shaikujin chromium hand · I sky ruinous ajar sink
sniping scar this brown gold smog · hinthial pulpit amok wharf
barf fnord adjunct dilatory · us skips byblow fray


    13.

humid sugar imago · I idiot as tubular
again Balkinization · cryptanalysis birdtalk
Omaha lactucarium · ogham conus Sith


    14.

antimacassar and its · birddog amplifying paddocks
icily sandcoil isthmus · osmium farrow grisly warp
and idols lid stars is aboard · nights gravid oddly