Pafnucio Santo (1977). ☆☆☆
black bricks · in the classroom
will they make us murder less
silent leg cramps · litter my words
the stillness of the empty kitchen
If i have to teach from a mythological book, make it the Mabinogion.
My first book publication ...wasn't a book, & it wasn't even written by me.
In the late 70s, under the influence of Burroughs, i used my high school computer privileges to make a BASIC program that randomized words. I then started sending out the typed-up output to various poetry zines whose addresses i found in Factsheet Five. One was called The Acts the Shelflife & no one could have been more surprised than me to receive, not an author's copy of a zine, but a whole little chapbook (complete with collage illustrations), Carniverous [sic] Equations 2*, by (then-named) Xerox Sutra Editions (1982--reissued in 2008, where it can be found on Amazon with the title adjusted to normal spelling, & their later name Xexoxial Endarchy).
That was how i got my first book.
If i were to teach from the Bible
a Pharisee-callout i'm liable
to start with, then bears
for the children whose stares
would mock bald Elisha's arrival.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* that was the name of the output. "Carnivorous Equations 1" (ktp) has never been printed, though i kept the raw output
Shapes in flight from Murnau's Faust.
court astrologer
escarpments
forest of candles
"an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom" --@geoffwilt
Deváté srdce (1979). ☆☆☆
A better recording for "Drapa for Roxy".
"And the rivers continue their usual flow
as if we are invisible,
always hidden under the debris.
The disaster watches over us at night
--our recurring, endless night--
like a verb with no subject or object."
- Dunya Mikhail trans. from Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow (via @aliner)
幻想雑貨 ('fantasy money').
"As the mist leaves no scar
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.
When wind and hawk encounter,
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter,
Then turn, then fall to sleep.
As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure,
When one is gone and far."
--Leonard Cohen, from The Spice-Box of Earth
“Are they really going out with T.?” (with apologies to Joe Jackson)
Social media’s one thing, & it bothers me less
But when I look at the news, that’s when my blood starts to boil
Is that the New York Times—gray
Lady that I used to know—?
It’s the Overton Window, or maybe just our cowardice…
Are they really going out with T.?
Are they really gonna kiss his ass tonight?
Are they really gonna make him news?
‘Cause they never would’ve bothered
In the days when reporters had jobs
I start out scrolling, & glance at all the stories on my feed
I’ve Al Jazeera & I kid myself I’m well-informed
Is that the Washington Post—no!
Tell me, not the Watergate champs--!
They say democracy dies in the dark
Well it’s dying now & no one minds
Are they really going out with T.?
Are they really gonna kiss his ass tonight?
Are they really gonna make him the star?
‘Cause they would’ve known better
In the days when reporters had jobs
But if poets’ words could count
There’s a tyrant who’d be Ozymandi-ass’d
‘Cause I’m sick & tired
You’re just a heel that the bosses think makes good copy
They only care about clicks
Hey, hey no way
Are they really gonna give us T.?
Are they really gonna dump democracy?
Are they really gonna pull the plug?
‘Cause we once were a people
Who cared about our liber-ty
Our liber-ty
Cared about our liberty (3x)
Cared about
🫧🐟.
"Mankind’s self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order."
- Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (via @EverySongIveEve)
"There are no beautiful clocks. Everything to do with time is hideous."
"Why do we have a tendency to root for the underdog?" (--@AgnesCallard) We only pretend to, because that makes a better story. In real life, most humans side with the bully.
slow bombs in the slime zone
slant rain whispers crisply
replete plier cerulean
Plath's encounters counted
Krampus being sworn in on a stack of Bibles, detailed oil painting, Egon Schiele.
"planet earth III
Sometimes I let bad things happen
because they can be undone
but when they can’t…
I’m a hopeless frog in your laundromat
my spine is the length of a perfume sample
I’ve begun, inexplicably, to dream
of spare heels in sex cars
and nightclubs next to just-blown volcanos
there’s this shredded chimp vagina
this bludgeoned jackfruit
dragging the Ugandan jurisprudence
it informs me that globalization
is a tenement apartment
like the one I fucked you in
before me flicker tasteful cinematics
of chiming hazel dogs
eating my roommate
she evolved to be
exactly this afraid
I pet the rabbit fur ushanka
feel toward it
a useless maternal emotion
it shivers black light
I pet it
again and again
the salt on the road glitters
like meth at a lavender angle
we’ve babysat this night before
the EBT screen broaching
the subject of faith
snow accrues—
it thinks I’m dead
dead like a mother monkey"
--Benin Gardner at Poetry Daily
Visualization and sonification.
The universe does have a consciousness & the feeling is one of constant mild irritation, which we perceive as entropy.
The Israel army bombs the Civil Defense office in Nuseirat.
that blue that green · death blurting from
stumps on the much-stuttered road
my Green Fairy griffinage · in graysmoke days
sang with a certain chill
gossamer stool · gainsays slugly
in the laggard lane ever
spare me from the pain · of this perishing dot
"Dead, we rest beneath the elder bushes,
Watching the gray gulls."
--Trakl via
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968). ☆☆
What an obscene, irredeemable country this is.
"They came to a dark cave. A big snake came out of the cave. 'Hello lunch,' said the snake when he saw Frog and Toad." --@FrogandToadbot
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably.
my orca yacht is Ain Soph
a needle to play old records
eke enormities
streets that have strayed form
a map of mortal suss
& the strand murmurs
lozenge of light captured
"The rites of a primitive religion."
"Departure
After I died, I could not close my eyes.
And when everything appeared
In sweeping glares where people swayed
Like trees in dreaming blows,
I tried to say, 'The horror is all yours.'
A woman wailed when rocks fell on my house.
I never knew a gentler music.
I hear contrasting rhythms not of rain.
Quiet descends like lint.
The air is being absorbed.
I miss nothing yet unless it's God,
But I am breaking loose,
And as I wander through the stones
That churn like seas inside,
The terror is the getting lost in earth."
--Van K Brock (via @forgottengpoems)
"Memory sometimes provides the one flower more than ever blossomed. Memory sometimes omits the only flower there really was." --Miss Mackintosh (via @nichollsm86)
"what if we kissed while watching the orcas take back the ocean" --@doththedoth
Anthony Burgess on invented languages.
"birds
singing all day,
but not long enough"
--Bashō via @bashosociety
Shader using animated noise field.
"A Northern Suburb
Nature selects the longest way.
And winds about in tortuous grooves;
A thousand years the oaks decay;
The wrinkled glacier hardly moves.
But here the whetted fangs of change
Daily devour the old demesne--
The busy farm, the quiet grange,
The wayside inn, the village green.
In gaudy yellow brick and red,
With rooting pipes, like creepers rank,
The shoddy terraces o'erspread
Meadow, and garth, and daisied bank.
With shelves for rooms the houses crowd,
Like draughty cupboards in a row--
Ice-chests when wintry winds are loud,
Ovens when summer breezes blow.
Roused by the fee'd policeman's knock,
And sad that day should come again,
Under the stars the workmen flock
In haste to reach the workmen's train.
For here dwell those who must fulfil
Dull tasks in uncongenial spheres,
Who toil through dread of coming ill,
And not with hope of happier years--
The lowly folk who scarcely dare
Conceive themselves perhaps misplaced,
Whose prize for unremitting care
Is only not to be disgraced."
--John Davidson
"The wallpaper changes to match your clothing. You become invisible inside a smear of yourself; the house swallows you like a twin in the womb" --@ctrlcreep
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ILLUMINATI.
"I felt that [Mallarmé's poems] must have been endlessly reconsidered in a mental enclosure from which nothing was permitted to emerge until it had lived for a long time in a world of presentiments, harmonic arrangements, perfect forms, and their correspondences; an initiatory world where everything met and collided and where chance itself was forced to linger and find a direction, until it finally crystallized in a chosen pattern." --Valéry
grow away from my words
treetrunk chainlink-trammelled
waxing trespass
yellow & white yesterdays
rumble over trestles
can't ride that yearning
stolid in the witness stand
Early experiment for a 3D kaleidoscopic video ✨🧪.
not-welcoming water · the typewriter ribbon
grown faint & furry · the old keys
tell me tedious · iterations of Windows
pingpong balls upheld · by the peffle of fountains
"WATERFALL (Palindrome by Word)
Light blue streams slowly fall.
The moonshine,
into water,
spills night.
The above is below.
The below is above.
The night
spills water
into moonshine.
The fall slowly streams blue light...."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"With stars, with trailing galaxies..."
"Perhaps it would have been wiser to stress the origins of my problems and to lament the wicked deeds of my own transgression, for I am an ignorant little fellow; I don't know the dwelling of the Muse; nor am I able to produce measured verses with skill." --Ermoldus Nigellus
ghost paper
or the internet
we are ghosts
ourselves our
sky burial long outwears
pyramids & words
La ragazza con la pistola (1968). ☆☆☆
"Roadwork
You hold out your hand again for more world.
I wish I could commission one
of the great sand painters to tell you about it.
To show you in gypsum, or in ochre,
in pollen, bone fiber, acacia gum, or lead.
Seed syllables, shucked from the clouds
in an ambient blitz. Night after night
I feel like a theocracy shriveling in the heat.
Sweep away the ecclesiastical dust in the street
(the sweeper starts on one side of the city)
& find me where you left me, awake
among the yellow horses spilling from their side-
walk stalls, sidestepping fruit vendors
in an inharmonious derby of sugar & gurgles,
bolting headfirst into the backlit river
where the onlookers look unquestioningly
from their glassless windows, their house built of paint,
at the alignments of random points in a plane."
--Gilad Jaffe via Poetry Daily
The god of hares loves you 🤍🐰.
I'm using only AI art for my books, inside & out, now. Sometimes i think that that means there will be people who refuse to touch them for that reason--anti-AI sentiment (a new prejudice, actually, different from justifiable Luddism) is strong & getting stronger in some quarters--while i also think that the idea that they are basically stolen artifacts-based (which is, however, eminently debatable; i prefer to consider them as recycled plastic, rather than looted friezes from the Parthenon), which aligns them with other ethical atrocities of our time (children crawling over vast trashheaps for the tech innards to salvage, slave labor in cobalt mines for smartphone batteries, the earth's water getting sucked-up by massive server-hives), is worth keeping in mind, even as it's a tiny detail in the whole epic tapestry of dystopia. It's not like i'm dictating my lines to a scribe with a ferula in my hand, as Propertius might have done; & whack him for any misstep. We keep all that at a distance.
"The proportion of the US commentariat that continues to actively advocate for a genocide under the guise of supposed liberal reasonableness, balance, and centrism is appalling and revelatory of its total ethical and intellectual vacuity." --@_Eric_Reinhart (via @ZeeshanJaanam)
Remove. (via @vorfrreude)
bulldozer
ran over the car--
three hundred
thirty five
bullets--and the ambulance
was targeted next
via (bonnie & clyde only got 167 )
"Abriendo
grietas al tiempo.
Los surcos
profundos
van arando la piel.
Sabiduría.
Cosecha
ya recogida,
barbecho
de invierno
que se llevan los vientos…
es el olvido.
Translated from Spanish by Google
Opening
cracks at the time.
The grooves
deep
They plow the skin.
Wisdom.
Harvest
already collected,
fallow
of winter
that the winds carry away...
It is oblivion."
--@mariaprieto_san
"How is anyone not on medication right now. Who is out here just rawdogging the decline of man" --@still_oppressed (via @mag_gabbert)
"And still the world doth drag me at its wheel
Over the miry ways and sloughs of time..."
--J Stanyan Bigg
The shadow God casts upon language.
autistic scurvy · the scouring fall
of a broken breeze · what brings closure
thunderclap snap · thickly snared
where a road had run · new lunch bag
to replace this flaking
Grimshaw & Machen, nice combo.
secret i heard once
but failed to comprehend it
will go to her grave
the night lamp turned to the wall
gryllisfœtor late June morn
"...And then
The pluvial god sent rain,
A steady drizzle, filling the dykes,
Flooding the brown fallows,
In purification, till fishes of the sea
Played in the empty furrows."
--Artorius
Keyboard, cranium, monitor & the Void.
"To the shadowy paths of Annwyn, and the wan
Eddies of Acheron, they are passing now,
The spirits of men."
--Artorius
"Nothing beats wandering down Caen Hill after a long day of interpretation planning."
squirrelfare & the squad car
taskweary dun sunrise
swooshing affirms fission
for another southern
horseless carriage cursed with
occult knowledge jolly
the semi i get stuck behind · stirs blended
mown grass & gas smell
To Prosopo tis Medousas (1967). ☆
La fille aux yeux d’or (1961). ☆☆☆
"UNIVERSE (Lipogram*-Haiku)
Universe — ever
sure river; ensure verses
survive risen suns."
(*using only u, n, i, v, e, r, & s)
--@Anthony_Etherin
Has anyone seen Gordon Freeman?
"It was low tide on the Continent of Europe, except for one deep pool at Toulouse where the grammarian Virgilius Maro agitated strangely on the secret tongues of Latin, and told his story of the two scholars who argued for fifteen days and nights without sleeping or eating on the frequentative of the verb to be, till it almost came to knives, rather like the monsters one expects to find stranded in an ebb." --The Wandering Scholars
"The day I'm killed..."
Moral Injury is the new black.
"From 1969-1982, I was was one of the main artists of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust publications."
and this cage of sky · that is all my emptiness
still journals the jab · of a June ending
stained glass stipend · sterves the cobweb word
Château en Suède (1963).☆☆
the tiny minority that cares
their mailbox filling up
with appeals from the NGOs
selling their names back & forth
"By the end of the sixth century Chlovis' grandson Chilperic is figuring on the portal of Notre Dame as Apollo, lyre and all, and adding four new letters to the alphabet..." --The Wandering Scholars
"They appear with no warning and disappear just as quickly."
