Thursday, January 21, 2010







"Fantasy Kingdoms"

remembrance begins
in the corners of tile floors
in the warm declining rays
of a room without mirrors
what if the show does go on
is it fire this time
coffee and a red flamenco record
4 different kinds of birds at dawn


Mistaken Identity.







"The Sirius Mystery"

a tunnel under peaceful fire
floating golden star
subfusc Eostar sky
scoriac fishsticks

grounding
in the dark in the '86 Buick
floating

golden star


Cancer Vixen.







"Complete Recipe for Reaching a Functional State"

subfusc Eostar
ice thin mogul strut
tentative · yardang focus
and velvety yurts
Nouveau Jurassic

yarons · Ronin spool
carrier wave spies
bustling vacuum yearn
rhost micro-tulips
travel with thin agenda
on the trail of plague


Rochambeau a.k.a. janken.


Werewolf samurai, with spider whores.


Top 10 Grimoires.


Virgil Recomposed.







"Fast Food Fugu"

skunkskin thong
getting to know the earth

the scale of this machine


Black- CHARLIK74 (2130)

1. Nh3 d5
2. g3 e5
3. Bg2 Nc6
4. c4 Nf6
5. cxd5 Nxd5
6. O-O Bc5
7. Nc3 Nxc3
8. bxc3 Bd7
9. d3 O-O
10. Be3 Bxe3
11. fxe3 Rb8
12. d4 b6
13. c4 Re8
14. d5 Na5
15. Rc1 Qc8
16. Ng5 h6
17. Nxf7 Re7
18. d6 Rxf7
19. Bd5 cxd6
20. Bxf7 Kh8
21. Qxd6 Nc6
22. Rf6 Nd8
23. Rxh6 Black resigns.


Sigma.


Homeric Stitchings.







(part 2)

I can draw a line from Carnival of Souls to The Addiction, and feel that this describes a definite quality that has not yet been given a name. In literature, such works as The Orators or Maldoror raise similar questions. Leonard Cohen has a song on his live album, "Please Don't Pass Me By," where aesthetics seems to break down completely, and something like evangelical fervor (stripped of religiosity) replaces it instead. In the landscapes of Baja i have felt the same thing: this place so utterly inhuman its very harshness took on the lineaments of a personality. So, too, can one take pleasure in the on-sense of computer-generated writing, or the acceptable category of Guilty Pleasures (mine include the movie Johnny Guitar, and pulp authors Emil Petaja and Mickey Spillane)> And finally, this is not only a matter of the polymorphously perverse in mandarinland; even pop music has admitted emotionally ambivalent hits, on the broadest scale: Fleetwood Mac, for example. Is not Dark Fantasy and/or Supernatural Romance, already a mainstream taste? Can "jale" (David Lindsay: a color meaning 'dreamlike, feverish, & voluptuous') & "ulfire" ('wild & painful') be far behind?








"For me, the nearest contemporary equivalent of the chivalric knight of the 11th and 12th centuries is the trendy hipster"


    "The Wilder Shores of Love" (part 1)

Drinking some coffee from Sumatra, it occurred to me that the pleasure of this taste actually resides more in the back of the palate than in other portions more commonly associated with delectation. With whiskey, moreover, particularly those single malts from Islay, even the nearer parts of the sinuses partake. I think for all the senses, one form of sophistication (besides discrimination & identifying) must be that of the subaltern (or centrifugal?): raising the marginal to prominence. Dissonant music & color schemes, bitter flavors (kimchee) you learn to relish, but also in reading far more than just the story-message. As when you look through a telescope and point your eyes to the rim of the eyepiece, so that the more light-sensitive portions of your retina can espy a faint star ("averted vision"). From Symbolism on, the meaning of much poetry has been shuffled onto associations and aftertastes, until finally it may have little or no discoverable narrative at all.

This was brought home to me in a different way when i heard that the movie Cruising (which i have not seen), received with some hostility and thereafter placed among its creators' lesser efforts, had upon its recent first-DVD-release occasioned a certain degree of reëvaluation, "Maybe it wasn't so bad," or even something more like tempered praise. Have our tastes as moviegoers changed enough to accept what earlier moviegoers found utterly unpalatable? When not only huge fandoms exist for giallo and "torture porn" like the Saw series, but also Ed Wood and "Joe Coffin" (not to mention Folk Art), nothing in the past seems off-limits. I coined the word armorakiative (resembling horseradish-sauce in the way it divides people into those who love it and those who hate it) for a number of aesthetically-challenging works that may be found in quite a few media & genres, the highly-amplified saxophone cacophony of Borbetomagus being a good example. There was a double live album of theirs i used to play all 4 sides of, straight through; and there must have been a few other people in that early heyday of Industrial Music who did the same. Did we find it beautiful in a new way, or something else altogether, alloyed of pain & pleasure both?








"Ode to the New Deserts"

1.
shlepping pavonine
the wind burdensome
space tourist roundtrip ticket
with tinfoil Pickelhaub

2.
annals of squandered time
remarkable absences to meet

coelenterate frisk
and on the shockwave surf

the collisions i miss
as wildfires gain some

3.
sushi axiom
burned beyond recognition

(4.)
klone sleight makes
your lane
disappear

(5.)
Now we have the burden of their rest
million killed
the rhythm questioned
pluviaminatory sky alertness
with Japanese incense



"Koranic Arabic can thus be viewed as a mixture of Arabic and Aramaic. I wouldn’t go so far as to see it as an experiment similar to Esperanto, but the objective was the same."





(via Under the Fire Star)

Black- hongky (2061). Opening: Ammonia Attack.

1. Nh3 d5
2. g3 c5
3. Bg2 Nc6
4. d3 e5
5. O-O Be6
6. f4 Qd7
7. Nf2 Bd6
8. e4 exf4
9. gxf4 f5
10. exd5 Bxd5
11. Bxd5 Nf6
12. Re1 Ne7
13. Be6 Qc6
14. Nc3 h5
15. Nh3 Ng4
16. Bxf5 O-O
17. Bxg4 hxg4
18. Qxg4 Rf6
19. Ne4 Rg6
20. Ng5 Rf8
21. Bd2 c4
22. Nxd6 Qxd6
23. Re6 Rxe6
24. Nxe6 Rf7
25. Bc3 Nf5
26. Re1 cxd3
27. cxd3 Qxd3
28. Ng5 Ne3
29. Qc8 Rf8
30. Qe6 Kh8
31. Qh3 Kg8
32. Qe6 Kh8
33. Qh6 & mate next move.


Now in partnership with Musea Records.


Momus on "digital shoplifting".


Crowley and Pessoa playing chess (or not?).







"The Closer"

the mists of Acheron intrude
amidst this sunny charivari
and those of us who still have jobs
cling tighter to the pyramid

deraignment from my druidhood
has not released me from the pain
of watching something vaster than
this game of synonyms, go crunch

i carve the mists of Acheron
and lurch through squawking pyramids
and darkest in the sunlight solve
enigmas no one else can see








"The Little House of Silence"

1.
hog's turd reliquary
twitterpated
depravity

and Langpo makes three

2.
pavonine Langerhans sign
fashion keffiyah
metaphysical graffiti
ecgonine Ronin

3.
'Cause the Mayans were right about so many other things


"We have been borrowing at the rate of more than $2 billion a day over the last 10 years, and at some point it has to stop." (via wood_s lot)


Modern Chronology of the Keffiyah Kraze.


Hell and High Water. (via Beyond the Beyond)








searching · for the game of silence
Sebring
spended heart's Brennschluss
digital dropbox coughing
Aeneas Nirn variation

Nothing so annual as
sand to sand









"140 Characters of the Truth"

      ..catsup jumpin'
      and the gibbons are flying
time's wing's Iscariot
scurrying up
God's-eye-view of looters
the framed engraving · seen on a house tour
the face recognized · therein

less & less pissing on tree trunks
making sure you remember me
30 cars
in the left turn lane







"Queen of the Galaxy"

dogfish rescue squad
bedlam mouldering
fremd ingot have
dogfish podcast
red & blue masochist
broadcast massacre file
cometary bagatelle
divulge
the bagnio geometry textbook
Ixtab slowdown
fremd ingot have







i am second in grugprab
i can't afford some Ardbeg
my days of sloth pour jetlag
into goblet of cobweb


The Last Viridian Note.


"We have been America's "sin eaters"..."







"Bounty"

meme plankton feeder
the great potlatch

how many sep'rate acts
of overcoming grugprab

backpack strap fixed
with duct tape and safety pins

drink it like medicine

to see their lives
in the vampire mirror


Islamic Philosophers thread on Metafilter.







"Hot Zombies"

in the snarky depths of Mordor
i met · a zingaree

who is on the Harley now,
you or Señor Snarleyyow?

do i raucous them Nintendogs
the maker's rage
    51 Pegasi b


Landscape of purposes; or if it's left, it's been left for a purpose. I want deserts, deserts, deserts, like silence after noise. Deserts.


"The "placeholder" strategy has taken hold in poetics blogging."


"Next Year in Ulan Bator"

the weakest force · bow
the altermodern fire stomp

troubled souls · friended
by exotic ailments

nanotech
to get a econd chance

remember stars
of Baja


Gwyneth Jones blogs.








Krautrock at Bookninja.


"A phrase of Sappho's, lacking all the rest of the poem, is really no more mysterious than a line of Mallarmé's." --Hugh Kenner


Lavinia.


Black- Albireo (2015)

1. Nh3 d5
2. g3 e5
3. Bg2 Bc5
4. a3 Nc6
5. e3 g5
6. f3 h5
7. b4 Bb6
8. Bb2 g4
9. Nf2 Nf6
10. O-O Qd6
11. d4 exd4
12. exd4 Bf5
13. Re1 Kd7
14. c3 Rg8
15. Bc1 gxf3
16. Qxf3 Bxb1
17. Rxb1 Ne7
18. Bf4 Qc6
19. Nd3 Kd8
20. Ne5 Qe8
21. Qd3 c6
22. Re2 Qf8
23. Re1 Rg7
24. Nf3 Ng8
25. a4 Bc7
26. Bxc7 Kxc7
27. b5 Rh6
28. c4 Rg6
29. cxd5 cxd5
30. Qc3 Kb8
31. Ne5 Rd6
32. Rc2 Rd8
33. Qc7 Ka8
34. Rc1 Rd6
35. Bh3 f5
36. Qa5 Nf6
37. Rc7 Ne8
38. Nc6 a6
39. Qxa6 Black resigns.


Round Trip.


    Why so heavy, Heart?
Were ever you at peace with how the chart
unfurls, it is this hoür, this bright haze
of disaster: why so downcast, Heart,
if what you wished has come to pass? Yet days
crowd with the sheer onrush of breaking glass
just outside your hearing. You asked for change.
You got it, baby. Why so heavy, Heart?


L.E.A.R.N. (via Dave Pollard)


"Of the dream and the marvelous, the Maghrebi knows the weight: it is a nod of the head and a long sigh." (via Silliman)


"Derrida, Foucault, and a hippy are in an airplane..."







Al Azif · out there
Hop-Frog legato
tears · of a clady
necklaced
by the mobile grooming thorn · chill
of a many-fathom'd end


Silver Wings.







carrying out
the old beautiful plans
the doves fighting


Death of the Grown-Up.


Nintendogs.

White- seadiver99 (2112); opening- Tübingen variation of the Polish Opening

1. b4 Nh6
2. c4 d6
3. Nf3 c6
4. e3 Rg8
5. d4 g5
6. Bd3 g4
7. Nfd2 Bf5
8. e4 Bg6
9. Nb3 e5
10. dxe5 dxe5
11. O-O Qh4
12. g3 Qh3
13. c5 f5
14. Nc3 Nd7
15. Re1 O-O-O
16. Qc2 f4
17. Bf1 Qh5
18. gxf4 Be8
19. f5 Nf7
20. Bc4 Nf6
21. Ne2 g3
22. Nxg3 Qh4
23. Kh1 Ng4
24. f4 Rg7
25. Rg1 Be7
26. Qe2 Bf6
27. Rb1 exf4
28. Bxf4 Nfe5
29. Be6 Bd7
30. Nd4 Nd3
31. Be3 Ndf2+
32. Kg2 Qxh2+
33. Kf1 Nxe3+
34. Qxe3 Ng4

White resigns.

"In the end everyone will understand what you meant to say. How you lived is what you meant to say."







"Volley of Remaining"

the beauty of halfway
pogibation
the sky before it rains

i am weary
of completions
i have seen the plans

smashed-face sphinxes
leering
at the uncomprehending ages


Apocalypse Meow.


"The Phantom of Pepper Square"

impervigestigable
ort · bump i don't see coming

germ · of all these massed horsemen
left turn light · not when you need

go among hobbits pushing
how to be so much cooler

amber · the car's patina
better than when it was new

i count · it's what i do · six
years into a bootless war

will my hand · stop functioning
the space · between traffic clumps







"The Long Gesundheit"

a hanging in Fairbanks
train of ruin
the bare trees call

where would we be without these
toxic assets
sold and resold under the midnight sun







her touch
purposeful and gentle
like summer rain


" '...No offence, but human cloning is for tabloid journalists.'
'Even so,' said Lavinia softly, 'that topic will be to genetic engineering what weapons-development was to physics. Irrational, central, alluring, deadly. There will be no denatured millions of brainwashed replicants: just as there has been so far no Global Thermonuclear War. But there will be the same mysterious train of ruin.' " --Gwyneth Jones, Life (2004)





funny pictures
moar funny pictures

"Klyukva"

lip, impossible lip of a dry ivory-country

Weimar Moment · regolith · tapestry of cold

life on a warm superJovian satellite
footpath made of cinders · voices trapped in yearning
from across the Great Divide
· lunatic jasmine
fezhead · leaves on the beach cylindrical a cairn
narcotic leaves smoulder away · all night you drive
eight days of darkness · eight days of light's rollic grace

Comet Wolf · rhythmic stillicide ringing the quartz

subfusc welkin strong in the crystalline grammar
    of many-venom'd Cthulhu
your visage follows me through fall & empire's night
    your raven loosed turns ash dove







"Nessus Shirt of Consciousness"

fires of jubilee

the long deferred debacle

sinking Babylon
what dire trade made Faust
poisoned mothers' milk
and took away Pluto
disappointing comet
wrong desire to dread

choir in forests of azure

Pythagoras's comma
avalanche of swarf
lifeline for the wolf
trapdoor of the pilgrim







house by house · slipping away
the suburbs empty · streetlights douse
and parks accede · to slow decay

the signs go up · house by house

"in times like these" · we learn to say
while fever-eyed · the last carouse
dances in · a night made day

and tents in empty · quarters spawn
their hope of rescue · slipping away







"Builder of the Glass Trapezohedron"

purgative and purgatorial light
em'rald more by my tinted specs · the lawn
coleostomy cumshot
you will never have glory
hydrogen fluoride ocean world
Rotthuahua
What sort of frost
    is it?
Shining
A sun
Sad and glad
Front and back



Mr. 76ix.


The Trouble with Physics.





George Shearing - Latin Lace


"The Wall Going Up"

fastest growing Netscape Irish Spring

chill; a thin crescent of pale sulfur

under the thousand spires of old Prague
Russian-made windup tin Godzilla
i devise a laser-cat charade
in the Sound Garden nary a sound
reason's just another dinosaur
in this light our decay seems beautiful

and i the hoür's rapt otaku

watch street & suburb fill with fine sand
top of the last crystal pyramid
monument to a joke repentence
and a future carved of softest gneiss


"...nothing would be more fruitless than to take Sade literally..." --Georges Bataille


A customer came in looking for this book. I was under the impression that it only existed in fiction!


Meanwhile--the Weimar Moment.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010





"Epsilon Aurigae" by Arriba Stature

"What's Wrong with Just Throwing Trash on the Floor?"

oppressed by synergy
selling our kidneys on craig's list

the red dash light
golden dawn spokes crossing

the rising steel skeleta
begun under a very diff'rent economy

haze between the trees
queasy my stomach

she's still preoccupied
with 1985


dead trellises
backing into traffic

i shall be telling this
haze between the trees

oppressed by synergy
selling our kidneys on craig's list


"We believe, somehow, against the conventions of fact, that we are unique beings, unmalleable and perfectly ourselves, yet we are but individual rivers of experiences that cross the waterways of other human rivers every day. Our waters are not pure or unchanging. Instead they are affected by what they pass, by whom they carry forth down to the mouth of the river and the wider emptier sea."


I notice Espeak includes Lojban...







"Alfablot City"

In twilight you stop a bank,
    wishing around you
Whitish hands and
    constant rays of rot
Wraith
    in a book of ivory
Common and individual
    taking sort







"Attrition Distraction Stultification Derision"

synthpunk grugprab
octo-mom
vacuum burning man
compassion deficit disorder
elective grugprab

Zog in protective custody
cardboard synthpunk
ink stomp of cold
art deco prison
a Pink Floyd album

the color of Pepto Bismol


Carola: "All Alone Am I".


Wikipedia explains "lolcat".





(pic by Luvz2Fly)

"Window and No Wind"

nearing the end of a habit's lifespan
what will come to take its place
panic's fruit and panic's nectar
jostling ratkins on the road
genial rainstorms lace the welkin
clusterfuck and bruise occult

acerb cashew in the gloaming
borax thirst and nether trails
leaves accelerate their bronze
taining napkins stiff with frost
genial rainstorms hoard their beauty
clusterfuck and bruise occult


"I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the same." --John Ruskin


I think my anthology is all fixed now. I didn't want it to cost so much, but i've set my profit at a penny each...


Mexican Pulp Art. --Every one a masterpiece!


Here's an evocative title: Ghost Towns of British Columbia...


Which reminds me--Seattle's Gasworks Park (my favorite place to hang out & write poetry in, when i lived there) has a photo gallery. Super-dieselpunk!!





(via Metafilter)

"Tsarskoye Selo"

in the cold and the rain i flourish
i love it when all
is gray except the stoplights and the
car lights all is slow
and encumbered and complicated
by extra steps fatigue
makes you drop things and they break and the
credit cards always
want more money more money and when
a truck cuts in front
of you without signalling you throw
on the brakes and swerve


Hoyt's own version of "The Pusher".







"The Bleeding Head of Heath Ledger"

decaying banana peels
many decaying banana peels
handicapped fight club
the shadow of the night draws on
i heap my store of music
pausing neither for repair
or verification
i should say goodbye to these toys
already reeking of the landfill
Wachovia Starbucks
down in Vine Land
there's a club house

ecstatic dirge
carved in the cliff face
elevenses







"Men with Guns"

dust storm of Muse-silence
the paradox of thrift
the faces of calculus
diamond burns in the blurred homunculus

the facets of calculus
burn like stars in the human metropolis
the necessity of thrift
silently the storm comes on

the burning babe lights us
without calculations
dust storm of crowd-particles
the paradox of waste

no answer lies in thrift
in this blizzard where the Muse wails
a bonfire of homunculi
is the calculus of dust


"I think we may be hitting the point where enough is enough, there is no longer going to be value for humanitarians to even be there."







Emotions that Belong to the Coming Time & the Age that is Ending

dullness, intoxication, absorption ↔ alertness, curiosity, excitement

fear ↔ longing

clinging to fragments ↔ the will to build anew

isolation ↔ compassion

despair ↔ sorrow

anger, blame ↔ forgiveness

greediness ↔ gratitude

horror ↔ wonder


The Problem of the Worst.


Interview with the present head of our company.


Roland Kirk.


Live "Maggot Brain".







"Yet for all of us there were moments when the game we were all agreeing to play simply could not stand up to events: we would be gripped by feelings of unreality, like nausea. Perhaps this feeling that the ground was dissolving under our feet, was the real enemy..." --Doris Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor (1975)


"Vavasaurus"

predators
in the Em'rald City
the Three Tokays

took my Chevy to the levee
but the levee had popped
velociraptors

in the City of Tomorrow
serendipity Serengeti
spaghetti spadhippity

in the City of Yes & No
the air is rent
black blood pours down off the talons


"In our country the only material for a Statue of Liberty is Russian poetry." --Yevgeny Yevtushenko, intro to Twentieth Century Russian Poetry (1993)


Melanie's website has a new content now--a detailed LGBT timeline in conjunction with SMU's Stonewall-commemorative events this spring.







"Colalp Squelette"

Already she can have watched
a ziqqurat built of debacles
glare of Pleione · the perfect grass
moots quartz phobia

the porous prophecy · noun
for a post-ironic hejira
out of the gunmetal whirligig
close and fervid quartz







"Colalp"

ruach swirl · raxyklu
sometimes when this place gets kind
of empty

morning sun · the maze gifted
with bright rats · right brats

starfish calendar
though we've won
cadmium yellow syrup

undertow Sxwaixwe
"if there's ever to be peace"


Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky.


"Dare we ask then what an alterbelief would be?







"Colalp"

music's refuge
hang an iPod player
on my dashboard

picnic at Tell Daspartinz

dig it
digital archaeolo
tingle

I honor you in dread
locks
myth







"Altruism in Vampire Bats"

not epiphenomenal
wheezily pining
with yet more pain to come

crown of impermanence
the right arm position
2 lanes closed ahead

but I can't trace Time
occurrence of a blurred mote
refrigerator condo lien

thirsty roses flow
yellow tape
where the railing's torn away


The set of languages that my poems move through is an atmosphere, and separate efflorescences of special vocabulary within a poem, are weathers.


"Zog in Protective Custody"

in he lithe quicksand
there is a turbid dance
from his desire
we shall be raised
and made liquid

not to be accomplished through daywork

driven
from looth to looth
the fractured pilgrim never
with less than Gehenna to thole







The poem on a good day is quicksand.


Where Pluto is still a "planet". (via Metafilter)


The Rebel Set.







The six o'clock news each night, told in the form of a dance.


The Snake. (thanx Melanie!) (Previously.)


The New Math. (thanx Pete!)







Knows a hundred ways in which to walk.


Love and Death Among the Gasbags.