"Turn, and with double zest go dredge for whelks" --The Ring and the Book
"unchained elegy"
our own songlines sunless
& sold down the doldrums
gravel & mist graced this
regretful back-tracking
& names knifely crimson
now are dayglow fragrant
the barrelling beasts that · bombed neighborhoods
leave only languid riddles
A very early colour cinema process in Brighton c1906.
"Companions of the Morass
I have seen also your angel,
In the isolation where we had descended
To frequent the naked heart.
Many a time a dove from the thorny branches,
And now one dewy, feathery, tender,
From your eyes will start.
The earth is heavy, and the clouds drop rime,
And night descends without stars;
What does it see, white creature, what do you see, O eyes?
For so at the innocent lady's feet
The blond, the young, delicate ones of heaven,
Stare on the pretty, painted skies.
It is a ground getting demons, but we call no honest demon,
We cannot conjure the swart breed;
The brooding devil at our heels has trod,
But it is he, lord of the circumscribed pit.
Here where holy and unholy are as weak as water,
We encounter the damned god.
It is said, by pinioning the angels
They keep the terrible footway; it is said,
The hardy have traversed the morass,
They that cast out devils to live without sin;
But we, coming between the devil ashamed
And a strayed angel, shall not pass.
How shall we forsake this angel and this devil?
You bottomless tarnished lustre,
And bosom pressed upon the hollow cloud,
How do you visit us, symbols without body?
We are weak earth, we run before the wind
By which our hearts were bowed."
--Léonie Adams
The violent desire to hold on to time as it passes.
"...A very John-on-Patmos for uncoverings and all rhombuses, vaticinations an' anagrams; as see the apotheosis of imperium in a cloud of his own bottled smoke, under the form of a woman clothed with the sea, head-armoured like a Troian-Greek and in her fist the tree of a fish-spear." --The Anathemata
Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring.
When someone tried the Ourangutan on me.
"Every day we encounter death in the street, we greet it. We wish not to upset it. We can see how its crooked hands bleed, how it struggles to cup them around its scorched nose, how its clothes and gray hair are covered with black dust from the rubble of our houses. But we wish not to look amiable to it, for we fear it may fall in love with us, take us somewhere very far from our bodies." --@MosabAbuToha
"It somehow felt too guilty a pleasure to write fiction in a time of war. It felt like something sinful." (via @BorisDralyuk)
"Where, indeed,
On this night lodging
Might I find; my hunting robes
Sash tightening; with the evening sun
Storm winds come from the peak."
--Fujiwara no Teika via
"Voltaire at Ferney
Almost happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed,
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planned were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.
Far off in Paris, where his enemies
Whispered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write
'Nothing is better than life.' But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilise.
Cajoling, scolding, scheming, cleverest of them all,
He'd led the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups; and, like a child, been sly
And humble when there was occasion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But patient like a peasant waited for their fall.
And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win :
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.
Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.
So, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions. Soon he would be dead.
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them : He must go on working. Overhead
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song."
--WH Auden
Byron wins poet-lifestyle in almost any conceivable category, including menageries & making enemies.
I've come to realise that some places are resentful.
"At night when people fall asleep
I write blind poems
And hold my lover's hand
And we pursue the darkness.
—Ghassan Zaqtan
▪︎ Palestinian poet ▪︎
[My translation]" --@ZeeshanJaanam
epoch of espresso cups
lamp taped to the wall
call this drizzle home
god's hobby
is pulling the pullers apart
This is what remained of the Red Crescent ambulance.
"this old door remains closed"
1.
chest ghost-pressure · only sometimes
reminded a moment · seatbelt binds
part of the gig now · i say to myself
grocery store at night · the killer in me
is the killer in you
2.
predecline anthems · circle the wagons
in our armored pods · where the real traffic fades
it itches around my eyes · someone likes to torture cats
let's put him in charge · someone steals from his family
let's give him the keys · it all makes sense now
Herculaneum · the importance of enjoying life
3.
hutment on the parking lot
shadow of the Devil's Tower
antelucan reds, greens, yellows
so what do your actions matter
when you're in hell
"I've never seen Jesus on a piece of toast, but I've seen a lot of Semitic roots on license plates." --@azforeman
I was thinking about "Goblincore" a lot for awhile (not so much now). It's newish (since around 2019), a catch-all term for an aesthetic based on ugliness, nature, & paranormal wildness. Wabisabi, but more in-your-face. Sometimes i do this with "micro-aesthetics": try to find philosophical principles in them, & extend them to things i like. Like Vaporwave, which was first a kind of electronic music (about 10 or 15 years ago), but quickly became a set of visual clichés (mid-90s tech, Classical statuary, pink, violet & turquoise colors, maybe mildly de Chirico-ish surrealism) that become referenceable in other media. Thus it becomes possible to ask: what movies can be seen as an anticipation or precursor to Vaporwave? (One from the Heart, by Francis Ford Coppola; Fässbinder's Querelle). What places have i been to, or could go to, to find V. images? I thought of a futuristic self-service frozen-yogurt place we used to go to, garishly decorated in orange, chrome, & white, with uncomfortable blobby furniture, but which instantly cast you into an altered state of mind, just because it was so unlike what lay beyond its doors. Or the famous old Starck Club (80s), which had a front door like a bank vault, & gauzy white curtains that kept you from being able to see very far in any direction (outside the sunken dance floor); all black & hard-surfaces otherwise.
Well, when i think Goblincore, there's ruin-tourism (which is only an extension of regular tourism)--in parts of Detroit, there are probably more photographers than permanent residents--& then there's Chernobyl-tourism: which is truly monstrous. Incongruous mixtures (well, until they're accepted, as the Paranormal Romance is now), lumpy & messy & not at all principled--which is where it ties into High Modernism, which was, more than just re-intellectualizing established artforms like painting or poetry, but what we now can call "rewilding" (the African scultptures that inspired Picasso; the snippets of actual speech or journal entries in Eliot & Pound), bringing back weird energy from its having been cast out when they tried to tidy up Romanticism. That puppet-movie The Dark Crystal... I can see Goblincore in the earliest AI-art, that soon became too close to human art to bother anyone anymore; & in this recent attempt (now starting to associate itself with the name "Rum Ram Ruf"--Chaucer's pejorative in the Parson's Tale) to write again in meters inspired by Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight. --It's all expressive, to me, of the transitional time between fossil fuels & nationstates, & whatever comes after...
"to desire or be desired"
in aerial bombardment we trust · bully
with a bully's fears · fastness of ignorance
& when nontroops travel · portray ourselves Canadian
Emissary from the treason party...
It's dictator school & Nuremberg pass in one.
"Historic", O guilesome Fox, it is:
Never such degradation under the sun.
"A DOGLOO is an igloo built for a dog. The term was coined in the early 1900s among early polar explorers who apparently found conditions so bad at the poles that even their sled dogs seemed at risk of the cold, so they dug snowhomes for them to shelter from the elements." --@HaggardHawks
"A χmerical word is a word that combines characters from multiple alphabets or writing systems" --@ctrlcreep
With the steady steps of the nomad.
"acquiring the final henge"
towers have turned · into tunnels
i drive drumly · mere skyey twolanes
on the worn way · to my war gig
along the laugh · bafflers that line
this cark course & · cold latticework
count grim Grail of · hospitals heaped
Suppose one supplied some · Passion lay
Liripoop intimates · Orb's ascian play
Only let's onboard · Less cereal orange
Perhaps holding · Your oriole syringe
Polls auraculous & raucous · Ply the tune routine
Yammer i must to thole · Strictly maroon tontine
"Whatever you now find weird...about a new medium..."
"The experience of the present is increasingly one of watching things that you knew were dying--the university, democracy, and the planet--die faster than anticipated." --@unemployedneg
Interview and Tour starting now.
"Of earth I was born; in earth I'll lie someday;
Come to me brimming, therefore, jug of clay."
rat portal
not looking at me
shadowless
documentary
on the invasion
"The floors are slippery with blood..."
"About the Color Green"
Done slathered sloom · Have sloppy shalom
Even shills need · A workshoppy slalom
As idiots ogle me · The side-eye
Returning rampage is · Reason i'd sigh
The perks pinch · Each particle olpe
Hoodoo rehearsal & · Derne article pulp
"This describes..."
" 'We are not afraid!' screamed Frog and Toad at the same time." --@FrogandToadbot
"When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I paraphrased you without citation" --@mccormick_ted
"Too long I go,
no gig,
no loot."
--@Anthony_Etherin
twinge fathoms disrelish
ocean on the death star moon
flipper, shoggles abound
dolmen energy
zwieback machine
to the underpass
Wally
tarn clasp floba
cyclical stilb natter
brings on icicle glittering
dank Usk
sprinkle
of close dosing
ebon card echoed by
actual plunge · wisp scour falling clue
is strewn
lit ills
abate · in caul
stern other nesselrode
or Ubar frore with ink agate
tsouris
savor
ingot risk ace
milch occult glibber serve
agonist blister silt stuffs it
dearth bread
missive
ingot ogham
adjourn map indigo
ukase husk as skin tsunami
spiral Wally
of close dosing
stern other nesselrode
agonist blister silt stuffs it
spiral
"Toad sat and did nothing. Frog sat with him." --@FrogandToadbot
"A SHOGGLE is a chunk or mass of ice floating down a river, particularly following a rapid thaw. It is derived from ‘ice-shoggle’, a 19th century word for an icicle." --@HaggardHawks
"How it's done
Always who turns is more than
the same, being in desire the pivot
of what he would most want: or
the point of fact, they say,
driving through the
early morning, to go to it.
And this is true, therefore, in such sense
as the light will allow. We take leave
of it, in the prospect of being allowed, on
as the rocks are, the folds
let into the saddle, cut down
to any hope, acquired.
All the rage of the heart reaches this lifted
point, then: a fashion of spirit: a made thing.
For this there is no name but the event,
of its leaving. There is no
lattice, we don't sit by
the traffic lights bathing
the soul in the links of time. The place
rises, as a point of change. There are
rocks and trees as part of it, none in
forms of evidence. Within
limits this arena is
where each one is allowed
to be: the movement to be found, in the
distance is the sound that I too hope for,
here at the rock point, of the world."
--JH Prynne
Duck & Squirrel, squire me
to the Black & White Bloomhoard
through such bleary-squelch
drywall hardly holds back
sarsar from the gray ascendence
sort of like hilch
i rest in turned redbrick
queue with cueball-lidless
this coral arroyo
it isn't burning inchmeal
that makes wodwo mournful
nor acts of men
or gods · gussied up towers
turn their all-attentive
regard on the tells
“Inside eternal hours
one can fix lifeless eyes
on the smoke of a cigarette,
on a cup’s form,
the carpet’s faded flowers,
or on imaginary writings on the wall.”
(Forugh Farrokhzad; tr. Sholeh Wolpé) via @dreamsofbeing_
"...F-16s and the smoke of death."
"And all the next day Toad played music for his seeds." --@FrogandToadbot
exact wrong thing to say
take-home pay of the gods
sarsar in the endgame
with a dose of shrapnel splinters
exact same song & dance
for the calaveras who are still counting
in the endgame brittle fictions
& the sarsar knows the score
Big Boss Man. (via Mefi)
"Sun items send a star,
even a sad nadir.
A dit in me gasps:
a gem.
It’s solemn.
I spill a poem
still it’s:
'ola, polen,
arena y arrayán,
eran el ópalo'.
Still, it’s me;
opal lips in me.
Loss, time gasps,
a gem: nitid, arid,
and, as a never;
at sadness,
met in us."
--@MerlinaAcevedo
"Leave one spot, only one spot without blood, so I can explain to the children tomorrow what the color of the sand was like [...]"
—Khaled Juma
▪︎ Palestinian poet ▪︎ (via @ZeeshanJanaam)
Spraggle-upon-Waggle is where i'll build my Globe.
How peaceful 1948 seems now...
i will return for moments
as i was here for moments
flicker in the sun
might have been a bird or just
a poem that you missed
"AELINDROME IN π
And she,
Apollo’s toy muse,
scents a wake for Ceres.
Here, Athena meditates
to find callous stars,
but ends piercing none.
Coercing no spin,
duteous stars bind—
call it a test of the named.
Here, Ares’ forces
awaken toy muses—
cellos to heap sand."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"The cold pareidolia of bathroom tiles in the heat of fever. Swirls that become phantom, become bane augury." --@cultauthor
Translation and Race is already available open access.
"Sick of waiting for my scrapbooking career to take off" --@donni saphire on mastodon
Palestinian Poems with & for the Now.
"Strange Meeting
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .' "
--Wilfred Owen via @AmitMajmudar
"darker-than-usual morning"
redshifted driftglass
made of answered inklings
uneathes rustles
land of green ginger
fast car catapults
into with gasp clink
"If Paddington is the new avatar Of the Grim Fecking Reaper..."
I had a fast car. I opened it up on the turnpike, before there was radar. At 100 the front end shook so bad i had to back off. That was my fastest fast car experience.
:).
I had a fast car. It got 9 miles per gallon.
The royal reading room in Rio.
"jubilee"
1.
this is the dying of the roses
in the regular way
contrail spreads
on Mechanic Street
& i am halfway there
i had a fast car
this is where it left me
2.
reports are falling off
from the trapped people
3.
this is just to say
that the ontological matters
if you ask why
we want to call unreal
or less real
something that already has a name
4.
overarching branches
in this halcyon dowsing
blurred is the debt blatant
that blows halls & roses
metallic beige tinge caught
atoll where the hole blossomed
5.
whispering hills hospice
you had me at Vladwink
"Baphomet perigee"
potsherd traipse in the shelter
like the saraband of satellites
oppugns silt
weave what never wavers
the hard light of having
your mission go haywire
infall of utmost onus
parry & the perfect
echo purls
Fast car or slow, they made sure that no one would ever escape again.
A thread of my favorite entries.
" 'Edward, persistent good humour is really an attack on the sly,' said Julian." --Brothers and Sisters
3 graphs that crept away on their own.
"Like dust of dream thistle-
down as plaited matter,
spliced in skeins of spindrift
whose spume waxes flaxen;
pith of pallid æther's
puffball iron-toughened;
as motes tugged by magnets
muster snaky clusters..."
--Rahul Gupta, from "Gleipnir: To Bind the Wolf"
