"If anything, the poem points toward a post-division poetics, neither SoQ nor post-avant, something more than a few of the younger post-avant poets have called for in recent years."


"You know how sometimes the world is just too dark for even the most depressing music you have to make sense?"

A stirring among fathoms
first class crystal of rhythms

it stark accrual carrion
plush Cthulhu algorithms

yoin as wisp accost raucous
ignorant winds and thirl thumbs


" 'Such nonsense!' declared Dr Greysteel. 'Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!'
   'Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner,' said Strange. 'That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.' " --Jonathan Strang* and Mr Norr*ll

Ab*l-wack*ts.


Am*rican "truth & r*conciliation commissions".

Narrow road.


"What Ruskin could build was ridiculously trivial next to his dreams. But he built its trivia soundly, and trivially it still stands."

   "Our Bog is Dood

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,
What's dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me."

--St*vi* Smith


"Changes in the liturgy are of great significance to the believer, since these are changes in the experience of God." --Rog*r Scruton, Mod*rn Cultur* (1998)


Th* Oracl*.

Am*rican mullah.


"The connection between minimalism and visual poetry is that once you break works and language into small bits, those pieces take on a visual character. At this point, they evolve out of what I call the invisibility of the text."


This again. (via pl*p)

So a small victory is won. But did our ballots simply pick War, as against War-Plus?


"My first idea was to put a mixture of genuine Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Japanese into Cityspeak. Then I went to the Berlitz School of Languages in Los Angeles, translated all these different bits of Gaff's original dialogue into fragments of foreign tongues, and learned to properly pronounce them." --3dward Olmos, in: Futur* Noir: Th* Making of Blad* Runn*r (1996)


   "Rune

The word in the bread feeds me,
The word in the moon leads me,
The word in the seed breeds me,
The word in the child needs me.

The word in the sand builds me,
The word in the fruit fills me,
The word in the body mills me,
The word in the war kills me.

The word in the man takes me,
The word in the storm shakes me,
The word in the work makes me,
The word in the woman rakes me,
The word in the word wakes me.

--Muri*l Ruk*ys*r



Story without a h*ro.


"The gun created a second reality for me to inhabit." --Don D*Lillo, Whit* Nois* (1985)


On my victrola- T. R*x: Th* Slid*r

"They say that Pal Benko is the last person who will ever have a major opening system named after him."


"The works of the ‘Comte de Permission’ are still commanding high prices..."


"There are a couple along the lines of "catfish man, go fall in the river and talk to the catfish", which you probably have to be drunk and hakama-clad to really appreciate..."

Robot for killing humans. (via M*tafilt*r)


   "Wish Finish"

Mud dumb stunt
gibbon murk adorn · adjourn ruth am
abort osmium

animals · must a stupid agonist fill
child's abstract inability ink
ambush burn · convincingly skald lack

adjoining
morbid crush to martyr idiom ajar
follow function · gray into

gray · furious at
shadowy impart
amphibian martyr · obolus golf grip

story folk
asking important mist music
its rainbow indigo lilt

ambiguous martyrdom
slag is · thoughts music
as stony path · as stark fury up

with adjunct
fallacy to ignorant Rodan input
gibbous issuing us of dismal slid should

accrual whirlwind night · slow oddly
not raucous · oblivious


"Reconstruction is an aspiration from another lifetime: I swear we no longer want buildings and bridges, security and an undivided Iraq are more than enough."


On my victrola- B*ssi* Smith

"Today is a referendum -- not just on Bush and his regime, but on the whole four decades over which that post-Goldwater Republican juggernaut has been rolling. When we look behind us now, we can see, beyond any possibility of denial, where it has taken us -- and where they mean to take us. The landscape they've dragged us through is scarred by broken lives and ruined hopes: the gutting of the middle class; the growing divide between rich and poor; the raging ugliness of the Culture Wars; the collapse of the educational, scientific, and planning infrastructure that fed our industries and empowered us to meet the future on our own terms; the humiliating exposure of the limits of American power; the reckless fouling of our air, land, and water; and -- perhaps most iconically -- the battered and exhausted army now making its last stand in the sands of Iraq."


"The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears"

Diff*r*nt Color Jumpsuit.


Snap, crackl*, and pop.

   "Guyana Punch

there's a strange one · in the jungle
and think I hear him · calling my name
there's a strange one · in the jungle
and he's offering · death without pain
freshen up freshen up freshen up

there's a strange one · in the jungle
and he says · that death need not hurt
there's a strange one · in the jungle
he's got something · to quench your thirst
freshen up freshen up freshen up
freshen up freshen up freshen up

Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh-oh uh-uh-uh uh-uh-uh-uh

there's a strange one · in the jungle
and he says · that Now is the time
there's a strange one · in the jungle
here come the planes · please form a straight line
freshen up freshen up freshen up

there's a strange one · in the jungle
and he questions · all that one thinks
there's a strange one · in the jungle
with a new and ex- · citing drink
freshen up freshen up freshen up
freshen up freshen up freshen up

Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh-oh uh-uh-uh uh-uh-uh-uh
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh-oh uh-uh-uh uh-uh-uh-uh
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh uh-oh-oh!
Guyana Punch!......uh-oh-oh uh-uh-uh uh-uh-uh-uh

there's a strange one · in the jungle
there's a strange one · in the jungle
there's a strange one · in the jungle
there's a strange one · in the jungle"

--from Washarama (1981)


Damnatio m*moria* (although it was never called that by the Romans).

(via rapha*lk dot co dot uk)


On my victrola- Th* Champs


"For now, they are invisible people."


"It is impossible to estimate what proportion of us, in khaki or out of it, grasped the war and its political antecedents as a whole in the light of any philosophy of history or knowledge of what war was. I doubt whether it was as high as our proportion of higher mathematicians." -- G*org* B*rnard Shaw, pr*fac* to "H*artbr*ak Hous*" (1919)


"Unlike most other signs, silence pretends not to be a sign. This might be the definition of silence: a sign that affects to be the negation of representation, to be the absence of a sign; it is a sign that suggests and evokes without actually representing." --Charl*s W H*drick Jr, History and Sil*nc* (2000)


"Your roising reid to rotting sall retour" --H*nryson

Guyana Punch. Plus.


      "Altarcito"

   a dark dry morning
carrying our trash bags out
   i rapidly lurch

Samhain amidst not so hush
war · and sundry forms of war

   a raucous storm broods
aroma of java · braids
   into my gray thoughts

sick of any opinions
past attaining lasting frith

   pick an airt and go
sound's swift ability
   born of loss · to fly

apricot bowl · its almost
cloying smooth own skin a cairn

   vacant Buddha fact
in halcyon driving · touch not
   Mlotkowski's folly

foggy vistas · songs in which
pain is soft as spun yoghurt

   thrown startlingly off
pallid among rocky paths
   haphazard blood trail

back out without first looking
birds jump in a parkinglot

   caraway snap wing
loathing · smirk at agony
   wait for a crimson

or for complicity shown
monstrous wish · as crows go by

   drill skull living · cry
national an handiwork
   gray sky caraway

city sunk gray occasional
banish music thalassa

   all music but this
slag flowing · implicit cusp
   tsunami wisp scry

abfraction murk atoll child
shard hilch as psychic Algol

   falling against off
clog prodigy swarming filch
   instinctual igloo

gift amok · apply glad silt
scalding with atomic scat

   in our door prying
music away or wall torn through
   school of birds standing

ilka solitary work
station across a vast pool

   rippling crystal and
lurch rapidly i as bags
   with trash carrying

morning dry dark our sojourn
flying acid mutiny

folk of rain our dry sojourn


T*n Lif* Changing Albums. (via Th* Blog of L*wd 3nlight*nm*nt)