"There are stories of people being seen on Glastonbury Tor dressed up in owl masks apparently in some kind of ritualistic gathering. They have been seen through binoculars or at a distance only. When people have climbed the Tor to investigate, no sign of them has ever been found." --@theavalonians
"Amityville Amontillado"
the sea was winedark · & our sails flew
& we had no need then · of chastizing children
And then there's Goblin Academia. I suppose tsundoku points in that direction... Beautiful old damaged books, scrolls charred by Vesuvius, broken Classical statuary, reading Victorian novels in vintage editions.
"Like You
I’ve been kissed
by tragedy and illness,
by clarity
and clouds of mist, by tiny gifts
and little trees
of amethyst, by bursts
of amaryllis, by anger’s fist,
by glimmers
of forgiveness. "
--Wendy Videlock via
Bad bookcovers. (thread)
"Then, at college, in a single day I decided to change my handwriting . . . which meant, I realized later, a change in the making of the words which even then were all of me I cared to have admired. It was a really odd decision. Funny. Strange. I sat down with the greatest deliberation and thought how I would make each letter of the alphabet from that moment on. A strange thing to do. Really strange. And for years I carefully wrote in this new hand; I wrote everything—marginal notes, reminders, messages—in a hand that was very Germanic and stiff. It had a certain artificial elegance, and from time to time I was asked to address wedding invitations, but when I look at that hand now I am dismayed, if not a little frightened, it is so much like strands of barbed wire." --William Gass in the Paris Review
Red River Valley. This song is debating as to where it originated.
"A terrible thought, that after God's withdrawal into silence the ancient mechanisms which made prophets should continue working, like machines left on in an abandoned factory: so that bearded wild men strode forth as before,
howling, to any who would hear, their inarticulate warning." --John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues (1972)
"THE DALE AND THE DREAM
(Aelindrome in 12341234123412341234)
Melody, abloom,
treads a dale
in gloomy March.
A season,
and he abandons
a search.
May, looming,
leads a dream
to a bloody elm...."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"The hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth embody the trend quite well."
"Zoozve"
weathervane sent packing stern
chalice reiver from avid cairn
snoop better tsantsa berry
ancient stereo spurned wary
scoriac ikon fifth snatch egg
as staggering dearth
As far as i can tell, their endgame in all media is to segue over to all-AI production, & put the human creators out of employment forever. This goes for education also.
We Must Rescue Forgotten Geniuses If We are to Read Them.
"I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."
--Simone Weil (via @biancastone)
Graywyvern weathervane
language nattered by no one
dwines naturally
darkness adorned by runic
spheres of soul-ferrying,
Duino for fado
Berryman’s Dream Song 66 after Thich Quang Duc’s suicide in 1963.
"Karl
All day he stood at Weeping Cross,
While with its shot-ripped flags and battered train,
In full retreat, and stunned by loss,
The army came back through the freezing rain.
Behind, the rearguard seemed to swirl and drown,
As the gunsmoke curdled through the pass.
The slamming volleys switched the wet leaves down,
And scythed the dead upon the reddened grass.
Have done! Let none hereafter heed this cry
For the apostolic chivalry of time long past;
This prayer of all that smote the marble sky
Is least, and yet the proudest, for it is the last."
--Charles Spear, Twopence Coloured (1951)
"Who pedaled the first bicycle over that black stain?
"But the end-rune · is already written:
the loaned life-home · collapses in ruin..."
--Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf
"An editor just told me there is talk of wanting to send the FBI after serial plagiarist John Kucera. Wow can you imagine?
*pounding on the door*
'Got something to tell us? About the poems you've been publishing...in literary magazines?' "
--@BeckyLTuch
it has a name
it's called the Cthulhucene
pressing down on ev'ry gnome
it has a name
sovran & specific venom
means you aren't insane
it has a name
it's called the Cthulhucene
Which familiar are you picking?
"epistle to the unwrixled"
lab-grown diamond darbthwart
dally in frore alley
rainbow sign eroding
ruthless & hymn-crimson
"The problem is not that AI will become 'conscious' or 'sentient', but that it will remould society to its level of mechanistic stupidity. Such reduction of everything human to 'systems' suits authoritarian planners & totalising technocrats very well." --@EwanMorrison
"These Fragments (palindrome)
Deific, a poet saw all,
a part, a liar,
gyre, vessel.
On Margate sands
I his DNA set—
a gram, no less.
Every grail a trap,
all a waste
opacified."
--@SpoonerRhythms
"A Courtyard Thaw
The sun was strong enough today
To climb the wall and loose the courtyard trees
(For two short hours, anyway)
From hardship of the January freeze.
Their icy cerements decayed
To silken moistures, which began to slip
In glints and spangles down, and made
On every twig a bauble at the tip.
No blossom, leaf or basking fruit
Showed ever such pure passion for the sun
As these cold drops that knew no root
Yet filled with light and swelled and one by one
(Or showered by a wingbeat, sown
From windbent branches in arpeggios)
Let go and took their shinings down
And brought their brittle season to a close.
O false gemmation! Flashy fall!
The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art,
Staging within a courtyard wall
Such twinkling scenes. But puzzling to the heart,
This spring was neither fierce nor gay,
This summary autumn fell without a tear:
No tinkling music-box can play
The slow, deep-grounded masses of the year."
--Richard Wilbur
"Mallarmé: Angoisse
To-night I do not come to conquer thee,
O Beast that dost the sins of the whole world bear,
Nor with my kisses' weary misery
Wake a sad tempest in thy wanton hair;
It is that heavy and that dreamless sleep
I ask of the close curtains of thy bed,
Which, after all thy treacheries, folds thee deep,
Who knowest oblivion better than the dead.
For Vice, that gnaws with keener tooth than Time,
Brands me as thee, of barren conquest proud;
But while thou guardest in thy breast of stone
A heart that fears no fang of any crime,
I wander palely, haunted by my shroud,
Fearing to die if I but sleep alone."
--tr by Arthur Symons
“By the time he left, they had learned each other's names and a few words in the respective languages — afraid, happy, sleep, love . . . the beginnings of a new tongue, a pidgin which they were perhaps the only two speakers of in the world.”
--Gravity’s Rainbow vuia @oedipaskvass
Five Classic SF Stories About Tidally Locked Planets.
"The icecaps were fast melting, were they not?
The poles were yellowed with a filthy shroud.
Dirty the London sunset too, but what
Sumptuousness. The sackbuts cried aloud
In pageant, gaudy fabrics all aspot
With grease insoluble. An age endowed
With the dry cleaner's blessing made mad sport
With a crepuscular mock-Tudor court."
--Anthony Burgess, Byrne (1995)
"World War II was when firebombing really came into its own..."
"godparch & flighttoad"
lead blessings · from the sniper's snout
bestowed on the hungry the hurting · such hatred
erupts from old wrongs · & new atrocities
no victim revives · by this vicious crime
& the seeds are sown · for subsequent deaths
not this faith or that condones · thesterness
falls · fierce lack of forgiveness
is the only one who wins · bodies
are barely cold · killing continues
throughout the iracund · newsreel night
i slice the loops · off a sixpack harness
to save birds · as i watch this burning
my burden is done · no desolate grief
appeases the Parcae · or pain's power
"It’s something like a meta-specter, really, haunting our hauntings."
"HPL
Those streets were not his
so he kept them in the dark to himself
knowing age for a solid pent in mind
he turned out volumes of locked domed hills
Penciled purples in the daylit dreams
wore wool humid and apology bright
letters in the doorway, arabic at the edges
the colors of science turned jagged at his cease
He was not Poe, he lived on a hill
dreamed afternoon and woke to write
icecream from ivory, an undersea
crystallized Providence cats broke
out of the past and Fomalhaut speaking"
--Clark Coolidge
my collection of Beowulf comics and graphic novels.
"But one must proceed slowly along the road of dead stones, especially when one has lost the understanding of words."
— Antonin Artaud; tr. Helen Weaver (via @lightinkpaint)
Set design drawings by Hermann Warm for 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'.
"I've made a shocking discovery about Somerset."
"We are the eyelids of defeated caves."
— Allen Tate (via @Isidro_Li)
"Ode for Ted
From under the crunch of my man’s boot
green oat-sprouts jut;
he names a lapwing, starts rabbits in a rout
legging it most nimble
to sprigged hedge of bramble,
stalks red fox, shrewd stoat.
Loam-humps, he says, moles shunt
up from delved worm-haunt;
blue fur, moles have; hefting chalk-hulled flint
he with rock splits open
knobbed quartz; flayed colors ripen
rich, brown, sudden in sunlight.
For his least look, scant acres yield:
each finger-furrowed field
heaves forth stalk, leaf, fruit-nubbed emerald;
bright grain sprung so rarely
he hauls to his will early;
at his hand’s staunch hest, birds build.
Ringdoves roost well within his wood,
shirr songs to suit which mood
he saunters in; how but most glad
could be this adam’s woman
when all earth his words do summon
leaps to laud such man’s blood!"
--Sylvia Plath
"PSALM
No one moulds us again out of earth and clay,
no one conjures our dust.
No one.
Praised be your name, no one.
For your sake
we shall flower
Towards
you.
A nothing
we were, are, shall
remain, flowering;
the nothing-, the
no one's rose.
With our pistil soul-bright
with our stamen heaven-ravaged
our corolla red
with the crimson word which we sang
over, o over
the thorn"
--Paul Celan (tr M Hamburger)
Aid dropped to Gazans in the north.
"Let us talk of haunted hodologies. Let us talk of near feral paths, tangle tracks that can be followed to the dark borders of Faerie. For there are ways through the wood that will always walk you towards enchantment. Sublime and terrible enchantments. – #CLNolan, 1935" --@HooklandGuide
"It takes place in a world—or possibly just an alternate Newfoundland—of werewolves who whale."
Sump pump configuration video.
So Uranus has 28 moons now, & Neptune 16...
"Sonnet Suppos'd to be Written at Lemnos
On this lone Isle, whose rugged rocks affright
The cautious pilot, ten revolving years
Great Paean's Son, unwonted erst to tears,
Wept o'er his wound: alike each rolling light
Of heaven he watch'd, and blam'd its lingering flight,
By day the sea-mew screaming round his cave
Drove slumber from his eyes, the chiding wave
And savage howlings chas'd his dreams by night.
Hope still was his: in each low breeze, that sigh'd
Thro' his rude grot, he heard a coming oar,
In each white cloud a coming sail he spied;
Nor seldom listen'd to the fancied roar
Of Oeta's torrents, or the hoarser tide
That parts fam'd Trachis from th' Euboic shore."
--Thomas Russell
Online, with embroidered mountains.
fight scene close to the end of the film.
"...there the great king,
son of Healfdane, · would sit during sword-strife,
never faltering, · fierce at the front,
working his will · while the wounded fell."
--Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf
"On Ōyodo
Beach, laid out to dry is
The algae-just a glimpse, as
Obscured by the haze
The geese call, homeward bound."
Samson on a standing stone gif.
"awakened
to the lonely cottage
interrupted"
--@poem_exe 5-18-2015
"Although I'm writing fiction, no two ways about it, it is a sad fact that such a fabrication is normally a mishmash of autobiographical blood, dung, cannibalism and Socratic squabbling. It is a by-product of my illicit subconscious, wayward spirit and spongy soul." --Adam Adams, Unhooking a DD-cup Bra without Fumbling (2008)
"This all began when I was covering the Nagano Olympics and brought home a can of 'Child Hornets'."
"Disney made FROZEN so that if you google 'Disney Frozen' you have to go back like 12 pages to find anything about Walt’s frozen head" --@EmmaTolkin
"Cynothoglys"
the harm that comes to bodies
is various; & encodes
reasons as there are gods:
meanwhile, the vile toadies
at the far end of the handle
whereby this harm is churned
are free to not understand
while on the ground spilt blood curdles
at the top, faces revolve
& the cruel machine continues
& my words collect in volumes
what otherwise slips the sieve
i remember in the 80s
wanting to fink my troth
but the only other faith
lies in breaking those same bodies
In the House of the Frost Giant.
"Sun odes are erased items.
Time goes,
or a relative, vital era, rose.
O gem!
It’s me…
Tides are erased on us."
--@MerlinaAcevedo
"long after our poor dead friends have lost their place in our hearts, their unvalued dust continues to be mingled, like some base alloy, with the circumstances of the past" --@Daily_Proust
"The fact that we live in a future where we have to meticulously scrutinize images for small signs of surreal dream like hallucinations of text or fingers is very @ctrlcreep" --@RayleighJeans
"They are lovely animals, a bit cruel..."
"my soul's muse
this october morning
has come in
I love nothing better
now beyond the sea fog"
--an'ya
"So neither of them really said a word all night."
"Riddle 5
I’m on my own · iron-wounded,
barb- and bladescarred, · battle-action-cloyed,
wearied by weapons; · to war no stranger,
fighting foemen; · fool’s overweening
to hope I’ll be helped · in the hurlyburly
ere I’m doomed and done for · amid duelling champions,
hacked to pieces · by hammers’-leavings:
hardedged, honesharp · handwork of smiths
bites me in boroughs · and I must abide until
a loathlier meeting. · Never leechcrafty
friend to physic me · can I find in townships
to heal my hurts · with herbal simples,
but my wounds widen · from wicked edges’
deadly onslaughts · by day and night."
--Rahul Gupta from the Exeter Book (via academia.edu)
"From time to time, language dies. / It is dying now. / Who is alive to speak it?"
" 'Ais' is one Etruscan word we may know the meaning of.
Rare evidence for its meaning comes from a story about a statue of Augustus, reported by the Roman historian Suetonius:
When lightning struck off the C of CAESAR, it left AESAR – which 'in the Etruscan tongue means "god".' " --@DannyBate4
"A little rule, a little sway,
A sun beam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave."
--John Dyer
"Vocables
Eternal, you beguile love or ruin—vocables.
Jejune vassals quote ten codas in reliquaries:
A (the ceaseless verses at occult monasteries;
requiems of dust, bound to nebulous particles:
Embers of gold); E (graven urns in sanctuaries;
brass bells, unsold, decreed priceless for our canticles);
I (a senseless verse—a spell, garbled in pentacles;
choruses, deemed perverse in desolate nurseries);
U (a universe, expressed as a murmur of tides,
all its perplexing maxims, exquisite suicides;
dim minds, transcended by vivid, hexadic prisms);
O (a vesper, stressing serenades or solitudes;
a clever muse, to generate endless interludes).
O, my elegiac ode, ends in paroxysms..."
--Christian Bök via
"THE DALE UPSTREAM (Palindrome by Pairs)
We save
long-lost mounts,
and I rain,
led again
in shades,
the river thus a dream….
Rest up.
Go upstream.
Read us the river,
the sad shining —
a dale, in radiant sun;
most long loves’ awe…."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"Flee it who will, · a well-earned fate
is not often altered, · for every earth-dweller
and soul-bearing son · must seek out a spot
to lay down his body, · lie on his death-bed,
sleep after feasting."
--Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf
"I'd wager more people under 40 read poetry than read newspapers."
"Helen also got a new hairdo, a chic blonde bob. Hers worked out a lot better than mine did."
"Ten thousand glorious systems would he build,
Ten thousand great ideas fill'd his mind;
But with the clouds they fled, and left no track behind."
--Thomson
"search history"
cold caltrops · couched in the masks
of time · tool's atonement virulent
long-shadowed · lozenge shape with perks
box of staples · in the wrong place
my road plummets
issuing onto empty space
called to testify · ev'ry ear is turned
in the pallid parkinglot · appeal to the ravens
worry of wildfires · in the antelucan welter
carry your own caltrops · kind as the curbside
summit citadel
serene roster of the yassified
"The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction."
