bully in bully pulpit
like it's a new TV show
awaiting ratings
& the stocks take a jump for
private prison companies
"Wooing with whitest hands this angel's love" --J Stanyan Bigg
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Final Speech. (thx Melanie!)
"Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, 'When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, "What is an authoritarian?" ' " via
they made war their passion
in the final days
like they wanted nothing
human left to stand
like they wanted nothing
living left on earth
nothing of their treasures
nothing of their hopes
in the last days of humans
they made war their aim
all that they were good for
judging from the spoils
puzzling should another
species find their toys
cast on nearer planets
out of the burnt-out crib
"Putin played the long game, and he won." (via @jorie_graham)
dawn sky reflected in the night pool
my map apart in shreds
"Where is the novel about this?"
"You write poems
because you need
a place
where what isn’t may be"
-Alejandra Pizarnik via @blanc_alba
Friday, November 08, 2024
The new planet may not be what you think.
for J. A.
Long ago · in other dark times
A few friends gathered · to practice poetry
And whether whelmed · by the dark like most
Or immortally blazed · in the world’s blear eyes
It was ever · such a circle
And affirmed now · in such a friend
now begins the race
of his failing faculties
& his heir's stark greed
not to mention betrayal
may fetch him a shiv from Kyiv
"...imagine Roosevelt had not only remained shamefully neutral in the Spanish Civil War but gave Franco the bombs to drop on Guernica." (via @aliner)
"So if that I am any thing, 'tis thine,
And none through thee, to spoil me more were able,
Who wisht to see me bear a shipwrack table."
--1672 Ovid, V.
"There is nothing..."
"a labyrinth is not a maze"
begin in murk · as many things must
nor can i conjure · lithe prospering
a house hoists · its haven-bones well
the spray of the years · ergo respects
while these days dour · demonstrate building
on sands frail shapes · surely tumbledown
Chemische Lust auf glückliche Nacht.
Thursday, November 07, 2024
"every reason for silence"
i am sick · of complicated redemptions
being sent to Siberia · in order to save my soul
i am sick of making meaning · materialize like ectoplasm
the psychotic break · of my feckless countrymen
dismal to relate
turned into text responses · read by no one
i am sick of these feelings
of dread for my loved ones · the lingering culture
& from time to time for myself
that lucky bystander · & abysmal philosopher
caught in my own · complicated redemption
Which Country Should You Move To? (via Mefi) Full discosure: i get Uruguay.
I'm waiting for the tricorne i ordered online to arrive before i storm the Capitol.
Toni Morrison on racism. (via @joycecartoloates)
"A few years back in Yosemite there was a problem with bears getting into trash cans and ppl said ‘why not make the cans more complex?’ And a ranger said ‘bc there is significant overlap between the smartest bear and dumbest human’ and this election feels like that quote to me" --@officialhambly via @ae_stallings
the North, scrubbed of neighbors
next avails the sales block
beachfront prime property
only a little bone-filled
"Grief was not one of the things I felt, and I understand this now as self-protection." (via @paisleyrekdal)
it's only hemlock
it could be grape soda
thrust out the airlock
it's only hemlock
not even Sherlock
could finish this qasida
it's only hemlock
it could be grape soda
A child in gaza slept on his mothers grave last night just so he can feel close to her. (via @brandonshimoda)
Bible Physics & Bible Chemistry. And let's not forget Bible Math: π is three.
here there is no why
with sheerer honey
herewith no heresy
inheres thy whey
hey hero whitener
heron-whither eyes
seethe honey whirr
Rapist Cheetoh's rap sheet
erased for the horrorshow
handmaids banned from ballots
who knew? not the Fox-fed
pity were a poor word
punitive thuds judder
& a bard frets bite-size
about Santa-phantoms
gifting us with goosebumps
aghast in the fast lane
war · furious windfall
the one solid frolic
as the red ties toady
on Walter-Benjamin Weg
i paused to ponder aura
vestige of artwork
or leaving a land behind
how many times i told myself
i'm lost if i tarry
& went on waging pastimes
& came to other urgencies
this weird anguish
no signs from here ascending
"These spaces will continue to create reality unless we create a more effective way of reaching people." And, oh yeah, "the stock in private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic jumped 41% and 29%, respectively."
Couchfucker in chief, detailed oil painting, hieronymous bosch.
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
What to the Arab American Is Election Day? (via @fadyjoudah)
"How I am living:
▪️I am sleeping with my remaining siblings in an old dilapidated house.
▪️The house has broken windows and doors!
▪️There is no electricity, no water and even no kitchen or bathroom.
▪️There is a toilet used by four families —about 45 people!
▪️We do not have beds or even mattresses.
▪️We sleep on the ground.
▪️Each one has a very thin blanket, which started to be useless by the start of winter’s cold spells!
▪️We do not have billows!
▪️Some of my children have to carry water for a long distance and some go outdoors to look for food!
I wrote this because many people have asked how and where I am living!
⚫️We have no slippers!
The dilapidated house is the fifth place I have, along with my family, lived in since the start of the ongoing genocide!" --@abujomaagaza
"Some blows in life, they’re so heavy . . . I don’t know.
Blows as if dealt by God’s own wrath, as if, ahead,
the rip of every single thing we’d ever suffered
had pooled inside our souls . . . I don’t know.
These are few, but there they are . . . They carve
dark trenches in the toughest faces, the fiercest backs.
Perhaps they’re the racks of barbarous Attilas,
or else the black heralds that Death has sent us.
They’re the steep fall of some Christ from the soul,
of the laudable faith that Fate can make foul of.
Those bloodied blows are the sounds of bread
crackling in oven doors, turning to charcoal.
As for man . . . woe is he. . . woe. He turns his gaze,
as if answering the call of a slap on the shoulder:
his expression is wild and all that he’s lived through
is settled, like penitent pools, in his eyes.
Some blows in life, they’re so heavy. . . I don’t know."
--Vallejo (tr Yvette Siegert)
"In the Desert
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
'It is bitter—bitter,' he answered;
'But I like it
'Because it is bitter,
'And because it is my heart.' "
--Stephen Crane
“I am steel; I am a druid.
I am an artificer; I am a scientific one.
I am a serpent; I am love; I will indulge in feasting.
I am not a confused bard drivelling…
I am a cell, I am a cleft, I am a restoration,
I am the depository of song; I am a literary man…
I am a bard of the hall, I am a chick of the chair.”
–Book of Taliessen III. in: William F Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868)
"Word of the day is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve." --@susie_dent
"How do the wrong people get such power?"
"NOR IS IT WRITTEN
Nor is it written that you may not grieve.
There is no rule of joy; long may you dwell
Not smiling yet in that last pain,
On that last supper of the heart.
It is not written that you must take joy
Because not thus again shall you sit down
To ply the mingled banquet
Which the deep larder of illusion shed
Like myth in time grown not astonishing.
Lean to the cloth awhile, and yet awhile,
And even may your eyes caress
Proudly the used abundance.
It is not written in what heart
You may not pass from magic plenty
Into the straitened nowadays.
To each is given secrecy of heart,
To make himself what heart he please
In stirring up from that fond table
To sit him down at this sharp meal.
It shall not here be asked of him
‘What thinks your heart?’
Long may you sorely to yourself upbraid
This truth unwild, this only-bread.
It is not counted what large passions
Your heart in ancient private keeps alive.
To each is given what defeat he will."
--Laura (Riding) Jackson
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
”PACT
It is written in the skyline of the city (you have seen it, that bold and accurate inscription), where the gray and gold and soot-black roofs project against the rising or the setting sun,
It is written in the ranges of the farthest mountains, and written by the lightning bolt,
Written, too, in the winding rivers of the prairies, and in the strangely familiar effigies of the clouds,
That there will be other days and remoter times, by far, than these, still more prodigious people and still less credible events,
When there will be a haze, as there is today, not quite blue and not quite purple, upon the river, a green mist upon the valley below, as now,
And we will build, upon that day, another hope (because these cities are young and strong),
And we will raise another dream (because these hills and fields are rich and green),
And we will fight for all of this again, and if need be again,
And on that day, and in that place, we will try again, and this time we will win.”
--Kenneth Fearing
"With grim, unwieldy reptiles trailing through..." --J Stanyan Bigg
"It's weird how Russian bomb threats to the USA on behalf of Donald Trump are just treated like nbd normal, just another day, just another Putin attack on democracy in America." --@rebeccasolnit
Israel has totally wiped out over 37 villages and destroyed 40,000 homes across South Lebanon.
"The Lie
GO, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant [errand]:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by affection:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion,
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic [medicine] of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention;
And as they all reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay;
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing
--Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing--
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab thy soul can kill."
--Sir Walter Raleigh
diff'rent silence
than others after this cough
striped sock musing
how silences can be weighed
like one book finished
versus another finished
thronged we are
& yet more empty
"NIGHTCAP
Night apogee, so periodic, it arrests.
Erratic, I do, I re-pose ego path:
Gin.
🍸"
--@lori_wike
"The members of FEX are planning on reuniting and rerecording 'Subways of Your Mind'."
turning to the minions
not toothless, map-hapless
& some armed with soma
forty-seven devils
so long we let networks
of lie-pounding scoundrels
flourish on the airwaves
as if diff'rent candy
leadpipes-loaded verdict
"The spiritual growth's an oscillatory thing: we move by shivers in the world's tumultuous spine."
— Theodore Roethke vuia @isidro_li
This vampire will not be staked, detailed oil painting, egon schiele.
Monday, November 04, 2024
Every hospital, school, university and refugee camp.
"Dirge at the Edge of Woods
Gold shed upon suckling gold,
The time of the bole blackens,
Of the dark mounted through dapple,
While in the sealed apple
The seed cradled toward cold.
Put by from an elm in its years
Now its gilded of days,
Over turf’s dishevelment;
Where all which is green sickens,
All the fresh shall be sere.
And it is but for a time
Those embered veinings blaze
A year’s delirium;
Or neared of other space,
Unportioned azure shall close
One of more, and which is,
One which goes.
Let the little pupils that will,
Of vision, gaze for salt
To whet their gazing, wit
In one weather is high
From burrow and lair, by
Nether providences’ default
An all’s accrued.
And apposite, beyond
Such primer beholdings, has
Its long accounting known
The beetle’s morsel thus
Was rich, and the slug’s bed on
The oak’s generations, deep
Over the lark’s bones.
In slough of Edens fast
Wit in one weather shall stand,
While millennia nibble at
The sensual apple
Toppled it net,
Plenty in the palm of the hand,
And the fallen not fallen, not lost
From out its certitude--
For our unbeggaring
Has been gross. Few and late
To cherish an immoderate
Wish, hope’s calculus,
Love’s hope; few to miss,
From natural tally thrust,
In the lime-girdled space
Of choice, where alone
Man can abandon what
Is only his own;
And in cold and tarrying
Their rearisers sleep:
While to the granite cheek
Light’s purples bring
Infinite their ministering,
And past our finial
And ragged crests, to keep
Time’s ambient stood,
Propose horizons from
Their shadowy quarries; while,
In an unwandered wood,
Or under the indifferent foot,
Is let fall, let fall a fruit,
Through eternal leisures down,
For but time’s unravelling."
--Léonie Adams
all-troll firing squad
the morning of the last day
of this senselessness
the battle with the termites
i can almost understand
but not why humans
in wood houses should take the
side of the termites
carnival quadrennial
& feast of self-injury
ghost dance of dunces
lay the burden down of it
bluegray cloud cover
running on time & not late
time to fix the other woes
so hidden & so pressing
"[Poetry] is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food and antidote. In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even while while we are complaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinarius, &c. They might even be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria, ch. XXII
🟠⚫️✨.
"Once we dreamed of streetcleaners
Once we asked the question:
When will the leaves become birds?
Once we held our dead closely
As if there might be some word.
But the blood no longer dreams of poppies.
The rain is full of holes.
We’re at one with the season
That will not come."
--Ray Sweatman
part of me will forever
be rooting for the hunted
though sometimes i lapse reiver
part of me will forever
i know which army's braver
in these swart woods so haunted
part of me will forever
be rooting for the hunted
Spirals, cells, weeds, monochrome.
"I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion..." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria ch. II
Surely the second coming is at hand, detailed oil painting, remedios varo, james ensor.
"ULFBERHT SWORDS
Where brotherhoods of bluebells flower red,
the feeble bleed to blows of frosted swords
whose lustre hews the world — our future wed
to bellowed woes, the hollow throes of hordes.
We oust the rebel herd. We fell the weeds,
whose tortured souls refuel the howls of hell.
Below our feet, the rotted shrub reseeds
the fortress where our hooded elders dwell.
The flesh we shred restores the forest’s lore.
The blood we shed roulettes the fettered wheel.
Below the trees, where heroes dwelt before,
the Lords of Order bless our lettered steel.
Where seeds of sorrow bud before the rose,
the shroud of Ulfberht robes our oldest foes."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"I did not enjoy being made notorious among the semi-illiterate as a purveyor of indecencies and a practitioner of all known initiquities. I disliked, and it may have been a trifle peevishly, the intrusive hordes of idiots and prurient fools, of busy-bodies, of unpublished authors well worthy of that condition, of dabblers in black magic, of catamites and amateur strumpets--all which delinquents and rabble and bobtail, Coolidge then being consul, henceforward, for a full, fretful fifteen years or more, molested me and interfered with my opportunities to write in quiet." --James Branch Cabell, on his Jurgen
Sunday, November 03, 2024
"Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,—
I’ll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound."
- Louise Bogan, "Knowledge" via @aliner
"VIROCONIUM CORNOVIORUM
I met your broken bones today, my kin,
so weak inside the Wrekin’s timeless haze,
which witnessed, once, your savvy and your sin:
the werewolf, howling vows, with eyes ablaze;
the emerald of an Empire, forged within
your Celtic fire. I trod the tender green
once paved with ochre stone and gravelled mud
where legions struck their lances. Now serene,
a solitary wall stands tall, defaced
by time and Saxon axes; rain and blood —
the embers of an Empire. Now retraced,
your broken bones engrave the plains today,
unearthed beneath the verdant work of waste.
I stand beside the wall, so far away."
--@Anthony_Etherin
Vampire with a stake through his heart, detailed oil painting, edward hopper.
Is this my American future, that every four years someone tries to burn the house down; & the firemen have to be wheedled & cajoled to stop it from happening?
"But I cannot understand [ ] protecting children from intelligence..."
encrusted blimp-krampus
crackling with doubt outlay
writer fain of footpaths
finds droll the fall smoulder
henceforth rants & riot
arrive back in quackdom
for a short time shamrock'd
for a shift boot-mooted