(this and other Eureka Springs trip images by Melanie Pruit)

   "The Journal of Inadequate Braking Distance"

fatigue of the emotion
desuetude
of the pre-Apocalypse
esperantizing
my deaccession
can it matter so much to them
that i don't get through
the mild light
the phantomnation towers


"Moved by impulse, perhaps, I spoke to him in a low voice, using the Turkish language.
A dull animation came into his misty eyes. 'Allahou Ekber,' he muttered, in a trembling voice; 'it is sweet to hear your words, my son.'
   'Mussulman,' I said, 'who are you who recite the Tekbir here under the spires of a Roman church?'
   'Is there harm in bearing witness to the glory of God here under the minarets of your cathedral?' he asked humbly.
   'Spire and minaret are one to Him,' I said. 'Who are you, Mussulman?'
   'My name is Khassar,' he said; 'my nation Eighur; my Iort is the Issig-Kul; Baïon-Aoul my clan. I am an Eighur Turk, a Khodja; and I am able to write the Turkish language in Arabic and in Eighur-Mongol characters.' " --Robert W Chambers, The Tree of Heaven (1907)


Tim Seibles on Youtube (reading my favorite poem of his).


"Vigilance is necessary, but revenge is another thing altogether." --Stephen Billias, The American Book of the Dead (1987)

Meditations in an Emergency. More.


"And when I asked him why he never laughs
He said that nothing was very funny anymore."

--James Kavanaugh


"This is the place where it began..."


"Bitemeter"

until such time as stars' remember
all the shards we save are lost
all the dreams & all the plans
we pressed in amber
for no holocaust


The Wrecking Crew.


"Everyone--even the generals--hated the non-war. It cost much and returned no profit: it was insane. Yet almost all adults were too deeply tangled in the system that produced the non-war to see their way out. That was almost the definition of being an adult: that you couldn't see the way out." --Thomas M Disch, "102 H-Bombs" (1963)


"...like Tin Pan Alley meets TAZ in Darwinian cyberspace."


Journal of Virtual Worlds. (via Golublog)


The trailer. (via Counterpunch)

ibis-headed scribe, coughing
wind farm
homestead my blind spot
the future, spangled with ashes
do the math


I quit sending out for publication after a long stretch of not even getting my manuscripts back. I guess they just couldn't throw it in the wastebasket fast enough. Now you may say, "Porridge, that's being a tad paranoid." But i say: seven or eight times in a row, without apparent explanation, is a climate.


Moon Radif Challenge. (The next is "sugar".)


A Tour of Tycho Crater. (Don't miss the earthrise & earthset animations!)


"...they're not even waiting for November to start firing up the paranoid-nutcase troops with recycled zombie smears..."

mimosa early morning
dry harl load
to West Carcosa

the hanging judge of my sensorium

jellies with a heel
dollar store dream catcher


Obit for Kathleen Kinkade. (via Sharp Sand)


The Gospel of Inequality, preached by means of images.


"Because films are our only means of authenticating our lives. Eventually nothing remains of us except our films - strips of celluloid on which our shadows wander in search of truth and humanity until the end of time."

a sort of damp, earthy shudder
green flash at your eyes' edge
carpet patched with duct tape
lesbian biker bar karaoke night

legend of the dogwood
in hawg heaven
twisting my sobriety

at the formal brunch
waitress with a tattoo on her wrist

spry wallop
the loud night permits
green flash
the internet cafe half glimpsed



Economic Realities are Killing our Era of Fantasy Politics. (via wood_s lot)


Another word destroyed, rendered impossible to utter sincerely or to hear with a straight face; little do we suspect that those dead words, whose loss we never feel, might be the ones to save us.


Top 10 Scientifically Inaccurate Movies. Top 10 Historically Inaccurate Movies. (Of course, these are from among the most recent ones...)

   "Little Switzerland"

Doodlebop House · peach cobbler
satellite dish gazebo
in the heyday of vanilla
Alfheim emu oil

triphibian baby steps
to the refuge of the road
Christ of the Ozarks
Japanese Waltzing Mouse


They set much store by their refusals, yet they do not refuse the siren call of their fear.

We would welcome our deliverance from cars with joy, if only we could see the whole future.


   "The Grotto Spring"

dreadlock'd Santa
among the woodbine
7 years of Bad Luck

bronze triceratops
on the smooth velvet lawns
Shakespeare's flowers

the most absolute unconcern
white with frozen snow
chocolate Islam

i have dedicated my life
to counting alpha particles
followed more slowly by

no antiquities of any sort


"The entire film is "performed" in native Bulbovian..."


Iron Man, Iron Maiden.


Easy to Be Hard.

    "The Legend Lives On"

majestic orb · stray fragments
appear to revolve no more
half painful · half delicious
clear boggy creek
one solitary sea-gull

cold burial ground · secret season
spattering drps of night
quiver · uniglory
the withered flowers
one solitary sea-gull and the memory

of a night full of croakings


In places congenial to the human mind, true perceptions happen readily; in hostile places, they require greater or lesser struggle. A struggle which, in those without the practice, must be prohibitive.

"The Garden of Eden" by Larry Mansker, Eureka Springs


    "Little Jack Melody"

the mild, wordless drama
between fast and slow · cars on the interstate
uniglory · secret season
without darkness · quivering and shifting
say "firefly" and one is there



"With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way." Plus.


"And I can't help wondering how many of these same people would find it perfectly acceptable, even downright nifty, if I had chosen instead to be initiated into the hugely Catholic-influenced practice of Voodoo ... because that's, you know, cool."


One windmill at a time. (thanx Melanie!)


Wu-Tang Chess.

dull cerulean
commute for bloodwork
Romanesque church among the trees

suicide is nothing but
taking depression to the next level

collect all the yellow
blinking lights · a skein
of fireflies

the road sliced to ribbons grinds
its nervewracking fugue

homestead my blind spot
the way to the hospital
i know so well

so far back in the queue
not even rumors reach

swift view
of the unfinished overpass
black ribs against pale sky

gray cloth partition
absorber of so much bad news

a button gone
from this shirt · a hole
in that

two dollars in my hand
medical valet parking



Park far, Triphibian.


Fierce.


"Thanks, America’s crazy right wing. We couldn’t have ignored our most important problems for three decades and thereby made them much worse without you."

balefire
for the non-aquatic apes
sleepwalk macarena becomes the law
war crimes on the road to Mandalay
in my bloodstream ninety-nine Black Ops

who knew Rumpelstiltskin played for keeps
castle made of dried lamb vindaloo
waxwork effigy of Annabel Lee
beckons while the candle flame regroups

and Sxwaixwe wages quartz eclipse


The Ballad of Fannie and Freddie.


Sladek on Disch.

Why this is class war; nor are you out of it.


Video Berryman.


Quran, pallid targ, simple knot
in the crazy skein · form
i build in my mind

a mild breeze lashes
none of this will make any sense
to those coming after

slain by friendly fire
the Japanese waltzing mouse
red truck in the sparse dawn rays

"The Great Coral Reef"

i park by the cart corral
invention of the spork
their context
forever lost to me
mesh backpack
pity for the deceived
magnolia oolong
we never had magnolia oolong

Doveglion.


    "Vampires Should Be Beautiful"

sienna-burgundy marble
silence
laid across my lips like a coin
the miles
carry
their own atmosphere
to sit
in a forgotten courtyard
chill, and gray, and pathless
back:
all these lights in the same harsh place
witnessed in silence
a silence without miles
cancer fears
the smell of wet earth


Global Girlfriend.


Triphibian.


Twinkie Sushi. (Is that a band name or what?)


Weird Universe. (via crowleycrow)


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Donates rice for each word you get right.


Real Vampires Have Curves.


8-bit Glam Rock. (especially the embedded Ben Butler video)

the non-moving part of my bookshelves
is very large

vintage tennis shoes
in the half finished rooms

moon that will outlast it all
vampires in Mormon underwear

reading
on the escalator down



Lynette Roberts.


Micronations--the book. (When i first saw this book, i said: "One day there won't be anything left of nationalism but virtual countries, like CyberYugoslavia, because all the governments will be bankrupt. And maybe those people who are into politics won't notice the difference.")


American Textures. (via Momus) --I am giving serious thought to the lifestyles of the Indians who were living in East Texas first (particularly the Caddos), though what we wear will no doubt resemble the stereotypical Arab or Mexican garb, more. Making hats, i imagine, will be a growth industry. Especially with so many people walking around with untreated skin cancers.


"So that’s why I created the Aspergian Zionist Movement..." Which brings us to Autism rights and Neurodiversity. Some might say that INTJs* already have a homeland--it's called the Internet ("The Internet is for many high functioning autistics what sign language is for the deaf."). But i think a well-ordered society needs every type, just as the human body needs every different kind of cell. And the only homeland any of us needs, is a (functioning) Planet Earth.

-----------------------------
*don't miss the FAQs

Japanese Waltzing Mice.


a bundle
something fallen from a moving car
its rags blowing feebly
as the drivers sped over it


Cheaper Than Dirt.

   "Non-Aquatic Apes"

a snarl of gnats standing
in the still, late afternoon air

wooden spaceships grown in space
breakfast at McDonald's
burnt umber
in artificial dusk
delusions holding strong
the war proceeding
people turned out of their homes
by the thousands

and one less
who wrote & was writing
to the end

let the seas rise
let the storms pummel
let only our highways persist
year by year
as the towers tatter & tumble

suppose i root for the orangutans instead
suppose for the orcas
for the sequoias

the watch abandoned
the record
aborted

an hour of sleep
who needs more than that

   "Blog, Are You Witness Enough?"

wall of pennies
alms
a pittance
the sky knows
all who are under it
all that crawls
or walks
in the dapple light
cfipyboi peons
and i among them
facing a wall
of pennies



Caniculari.


As competition is a faith, so must sharing become one. That is the meaning of Jihad, that is all it can mean.


"I know about the armadillo."


Liz Hand remembers Disch. (Start here.)

    "Readers

Wanting to breathe life into their own dead babies
They took her dreams, collected words from one
Who did their suffering for them.

They fingered through her mental underwear
With every piece she wrote. Wanting her naked.
Wanting to know what made her.

Then tried to feather up the bird again.

The vulture with its bloody head
Inside its own belly,
Sucking up its own juice,

Working out its own shape,
Its own reason,
Its own death.

While their mothers lay in quiet graves
Squared out by those green cut pebbles
And flowers in a jam jar, they dug mine up.

Right down to the shells I scattered on her coffin.

They turned her over like meat on coals
To find the secrets of her withered thighs
And shrunken breasts.

They scooped out her eyes to see how she saw,
And bit away her tongue in tiny mouthfuls
To speak with her voice.

But each one tasted separate flesh,
Ate a different organ,
Touched other skin.

Insisted on being the one
Who knew best,
Who had the right recipe.

When she came out of the oven
They had gutted, peeled
And garnished her.

They called her theirs.

--Frieda Hughes, Wooroloo (1998)


Nothing can be done till i rid my hands and my feet of their feelings of urgency.

(by Adrian Jannetta)

   "The Cancerbaby Cries"

Klingon Lincoln
copper-coated roaches
Mioritic space
cleft digital footprint
questions that should not be asked

till the warmth of the cup fades
holding it in my hand
Godwide tweakers
plague lanyard
birds squeaking in the dapple light
my car barely misses yours

a couple out walking
in matching baseball caps
the shade through my shades · unknowable
turquoise lifetime supply


Five different people pounded on the front door after we closed.

   "Somebody's Cancer Library"

God-Emperor of Duino
this troubled frontier
high crescent
all of those upon the path

i tarry till the station break



Astronomical anagrams.


I imagine a website that takes famous love songs & poems, & matches them to an image of what the girl (or boy) looked like, or might have.


Nudie's Fashion Museum.

no embers, ashes
a broom is drearily sweeping
liquid chocolate
ouchless
the grand piano

lash fantasy 5sycei
hell's kitchen's final two
blue grass
fishhook
tourmaline 3skycusku



Mioritic space.


Only start walking, & the rest will come to you.


"For the moment, it remains for us to corrupt every genre, to drive them to the extremes which deny them, to undo what was marvelously done. If, in this enterprise, we show some concern for perfection, perhaps we shall manage to create a new type of vandalism..." --E M Cioran, The Temptation to Exist (tr Richard Howard, 1968)


Tweakers.


The Death of Gallium.

(via pinktentacle dot com)


thinnest crescent · sky of tourmaline
nuking the fridge · from the thinnest crescent

my back baking · as i stand at the pump
have to add octane · my back baking

finally there was only the · stone remained of me
thinnest crescent · tourmaline flown


Intelligence is a matter of the long run, but stupidity is a matter of moments.


"Leaves blown across the lawns of foreclosed homes; leaves on forest floors, moldering delectably; leaves pressed between the pages of a book, which so have learned, a little, to think; leaves still shocked by the summer's departure, still clinging to their high aeries and in denial; leaves that had promised themselves to take up yoga or ballroom dancing when they had the chance, and now they have the chance; leaves that fell young, half-eaten by caterpillars, and vain about the holes they have to show for that ordeal; leaves in Missouri so unlike the leaves in Illinois but not ashamed; leaves that were never seen by any human, having been hidden, as though in a harem, by other leaves; leaves gathered in the burrows of chipmunks and witness to their love; leaves dissolving into mulch by the margin of the road. Number them all and remember them." --Thomas Disch (who died July 4)

   "The New Dark Ages"

running on empty
sun sets in the east
steel belted won't make no
huaraches

a map of extreme purposes
holds up one gnarled hand

this house used to roll



Road Map to Victory.


The fight is in the press of exoskeleta, nor their hapless occupants.


“The myth of the rugged individualist is extolled by the dominant socioeconomic system because it helps cover up the atomization of society, and it leaves the disillusioned and disenfranchised uninclined to work together towards an alternative.”


"The first thing you may notice...is the abundance of adverbs."


4 Non Blondes on Letterman.


"Why don't you look through the clearance shoes...?"


Takin' Care of Jesus.

by azurylipfe

"An Esoteric Paradigm of Bogosity"

Again in dreaming i've been sent your shade
out of some darker dark, to take my sleep.

You stood as you did once and may so still,
beneath great trees whose fastness gave us peace.
It was the edge of evening; rushing cars
drowned out the leaves' soft chatter and we were waiting
--we were waiting for the others. I had come
only to be, this hour, alone with you.

Whatever stormlash chased me to your door
quite vanished into breezes when i arrived,
all unprepared to share the whole mad tale then...
waiting, while guests began to wander through,
at opposite ends of the yard. You smiled, and though
i saw you, i did not know who you were.

(1984)


We resent the exiguities of modern life, yet we would not forswear the least part of it; no, not even doors that open of themselves.


Behind as-Sahab. (via Global Guerrillas)


Nuking the Fridge. (via Doubletongued dot org)


26 Things You can Do.

“The United States no longer boasts anywhere near the world’s longest life expectancy. It doesn’t even make the top 40.”


   "The Fallen"

Rather than pith
This aerolith,
Rather than make it shine,
I fold it into neat white squares
And call it mine.

Vitruvian scroll
And vaguely droll
The output all can see:
Ignored, while what i chip off blares
In secrecy.


People who will walk right into you in the store or on the sidewalk, are not going to vote for a policy of necessary sacrifice.


Lost Son.

by Liiga Smilshkalne

      "Autumn

There is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
   And clouds like sheep
   Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
   But phantom, forlorn,
   Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Sad winds where your voice was;
Tears, tears where my heart was;
   And ever with me,
   Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was."

--Walter de la Mare


To extract the maximum suffering from setbacks: a sort of validation--in lieu of a Purple Heart.


"What is undoubtedly dying is the landscape of 20th century popular music."


Khaki Switzerland.


Japrocksampler.

   "The Winnowing" (Elton's Hesiod & Royston's Lycophron)

Escapes, and yet escapes, from grievous plague,
Wide wastes, and sands wash'd by the frequent wave,
Where winnowing gales may sweep in eddies round.

The frequent corpse lies dash'd upon the shore
With nectar and with sweet ambrosia fill'd.
One day, one little day, would stand their shock;

I rend my banquet, or I loose my prey.
The tedious moments, closed in dungeon walls
Their glowing eyes, and, mingling desperate hands

In gallant trim the sculptured vessel flew



One for One.


One who finds himself in W***Mart four times a week has got no call to carp at the order of things.


A few good words for TTAPOOC.

    "Oral Wars"

slather the use
hence
through and rest
with ersatz vicissitude faction
like
profligate
languaged give
is curious word
ebb every time
expunge
trenchant to know scholarly amalgam
of languish observation
following upon
and though which festoons
tantamount opaque
you do let lapse from
would make a find abscond
the delve zeal
alleviate
did it rue so
herculean
then i gild
in taut fusillade
than soon after
will spurn as din
they could feel
or why gall roils
on arid beauty
domicile
of never lair



Mesopotamia.


The question really becomes: can we be clever only in frivolous ways?


Poem.


My Neighbors' Hands.


((via) via)


"It’s wonderful to write in that hush."


Oligarchic or oligarchical?


"From there, it’s only a silly millimeter to the edge."

worn gray and black
carpet · the ache
in my throat

fire outside
fire, and fires of fires

small thud
a tap really
i struck a bird

the traffic lights flashing
at that hour

the broken-off light pole
laid on the median
for salvage later perhaps

the music and the wind unite,
my words and the roar of the tyres

just a whisper
from the car A/C
a foot distant

the stranger
hope

and the crows
not yet i say
you who were never minions

American Bucket List
Teheran barbecue

chunk of concrete
i picked up on a long walk,
plastic-coated it

have stored it so long
i forget exactly where

sometimes
i see something good
obscure i already have

it's an ocean
with waves pounding the shore

still that sound
propellor nearing in waves
arouses wonder

a breeze
forgiveness-laden

three contrails crossing
the hand scrambling
over the page

something
beyond decay

her face up close a landscape
her head so small
when i hold it

the compass of our days a song
i stop before it finishes

even when i stand
in an out of the way place
someone comes at once to shoo me

i am intricate
and feckless



The Gulf of Araby.


Top 25 Electronica (Metafilter thread). What--no Mort Garson?! Faust? Tomita? Edgar Winter Group? Hot Butter? Jarre? Morton Subotnick?? (At least Autechre, Future Sound of London, and Bowie's Low made the also-rans.) --And Homogenic at #5 is, IMHO, the greatest of them all.


Cold Blood.

Góngora: De la brevedad engañosa de la Vida

No less than the swift arrow solicited
a mark sharply destined to be bitten,
nor with more silence than the agonistic chariot
glided across mute sands to a winning finish,

does our century run to its prompt, secret end. Who doubts,
though he be beast destitute of reason,
yet may he read the portent of every dawn.
Carthage testifies, & still you don't admit it?

You'll run into trouble, Licio, if you persist
in chasing phantoms & embracing frauds...
Badly the hours'll account you to yourself:
the hoürs that are grinding down the days,
the days that are gnawing away the years.


Warrior.

Burj Al-Arab

demise of the shibboleth
camerabots · shirk

islands of dusk spiralling
child
among the sharp machines
they gave you an Edsel

the lost episode · found


Art of Lovecraft.

garishly regal
a new defense of bigotry
birds mumbling virginal foul
the leafblowers' arval feast
catapults grieving
veer for a tumbleweed

veer for a tumbleweed
the next time not


"You know, if peasants in Bolivia and Haiti can do this, it's ridiculous to say we can't."

(via survive2012 dot com)


Super-hip reading list. (via Beyond the Beyond) --Including the imminent re-release of the Collected Spicer!

they keep
coming through the door
needing money

bloom-crowded mimosa hangs
over the side street i take

my black portion
in the terrible days
a joy

drive carefully back
mindful of the adversary

i summon my will
these boiling clouds deride
and the plywood walls

nothing shall be left of this
least of all my brave words

back through all the tumbledown days
essentially one
not an hour do i forswear

though i drive with circumspection
now, and riot little


Browse Word Ways online.


What to Save from the '80s. (A koan, for sure.)


A whole book about the Black and White Ball.


King Crimson + Apocalypse Now combo [zi], surprisingly timely in feel.