"Frog and Toad looked into a mirror.
'Now we look brave,' said Frog.
'Yes, but are we?' asked Toad." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"writing graffiti —
the urge to communicate —
probably futile"
--@internalsun.bsky.social
My World Melts away in the Darkness.
"Capitalism’s history might be tracked in a genealogy of the corporate apology." (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)
"human interest story"
rant hareious junta
rude unwanted strudel
hazard my gimp gizzard
forget throes of witness
mime with glass immerse-play
that made but glyph-diff'rence
“To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?”
--Simone Weil in Gravity And Grace via @scherezadenfreude.bsky.social
"before you decide you don't want to vaccinate your children you should have to take a 4 hour cemetery tour with me where i point out every tiny little headstone of a child that died from a preventable disease and is buried with their parents who would have done anything to save them" --@cait.bsky.social
Obligations 2. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)
always when among
headstones i look for the ones
of nineteen-eighteen
i say after they lower
the box with crane so gentle
"summer breeze
lifts a corner
of our picnic blanket --
I place a grape
on your outstretched tongue"
--Michael Dylan Welch via via @evecastle.bsky.social
"Creation is an act of power – a reaching inward to find something stronger than our circumstances, a way of claiming space in a world that sometimes seems intent on shrinking us." (via feuilleton)
“ 'I never thought they would hang US from gibbets,' sobs newpaper who spent past few months sanewashing the Let’s Hang Journalists From Gibbets Party." --@malaclypse.bsky.social via @ratatosk.bsky.social
"In the spirit of 'actually Nero was quite good with that fiddle,' some parts of society collapsing will be funny." --@kenwhite.bsky.social via @mollyjongfast.bsky.social
Once i fled North, as far as i could ride,
till i stood by the shores of Hudson Bay
and saw where springtime's Fahrenheit so high
had melted part, & there clear water made.
Now i imagine we will have to show
viddies of when our world was crowned with ice
for those to come, if they would snatch a dose;
or on some indoor snow-machine rely...
But that were least of what we stand to lose
cruel year by crueler year, where we are bound,
& almost all our treasures wrack-impugned.
Remembered white in this slight poem i house,
for what else falls to no skald's power to mend.
(2019)
beaver moon
a bone mover
a robe venom
a nerve boom
or above men
O, She Says. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)
"A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter." --Albert Burneko via @vaspider.gay
"Ratatosk's army"
interregnum festschrift
shrapnel-plated caption
Dhrawnglow or agley path
i glower here cowan
anthem of blank inklings
interregnum feghoot
in the angst-gray ascian
orca play of pleadings
"who gnaws on Ratatosk?"
all the things i saved
i thought might be fixed one day
"You could process any feeling with this book."
testing the third thumb
the weeds are winning now
pathetic wooze
or buyer's remorse mangled
in a rove backroom
"And I stood trembling on the darksome brink,
And saw its bituminous sides stretch far below..."
--J Stanyan Bigg
"Toad went out to his garden with some candles.
'I will read the seeds a story,' said Toad. 'Then they will not be afraid.' "--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
and every foulness
will seek fulfillment
promised license
and every foulness
and every illness
will mob the firmament
and every foulness
will seek fulfillment
full moon Plano morn
"REDS + WINE" on the sidewalk
some long-lost sojourn
recalled to me now in song
i only just recognized
"I have faced fascism before, in this very country."
"Why did the palindrome cross the road?
To get a map a mate got."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"Everett once told Bookforum that when he was being hired by USC a member of the faculty saw his name and exclaimed: 'The last thing we need is another 50-year-old Brit,' only to be told by the receptionist that the newest professor was in fact a 'black cowboy'." (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)
“ 'What if Frog is being chased by a big animal with many sharp teeth? What if he is being eaten up?' cried Toad. 'My friend and I will never have another Christmas together!' " --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
Study finds. (via @memexikon.bsky.social)
incessant snipe · of snag hap
halcyon heist · & hooligan bonfire
expedited passport · porn of sorts
my late library · slung over shoulder
& the cloud cloisters · my collected works
i am known to the nimbler · of dawn's lawnfolk
i will not tarry long
Grok turns on Muskrat. ( via @truthout.bsky.social)
"You know who to trust by who they tell you to distrust." (via @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
verlassenheit
venereal shits
heartless vein
reheat snivels
then slaveries
"Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon" --A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Toad sat and did nothing. Frog sat with him." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"For the penalty of injustice is not death or stripes, but the fatal necessity of becoming more and more unjust." ---Plato's Theatetus (tr & Jowett's paraphrase)
sphinx mayhem · geode doge
antelucan Archon howling
welter of words · exileweal
red & blue flicker candy
too much entertainment · tussles in the bread line
surrounded by my old choices
bring the brown shirts · brekkek-koax
antelucan narrowing
kakistocracy
a sticky croak
cock tiara sky
track icy oaks
to carsick yak
icy oar tacks
to a scary kick
"The man of the house turns off the war just before a bomb lands on a
hospital."
"Periodically checking in on the uk like its the tupperware of mashed potatoes that’s been slowly rotting in the back of my fridge
Periodically checking in on the us like it’s the big bucket of fish guts quickly spoiling in the front of my fridge"
--@did:plc:ahfcano6tj6mcccfwcykl73t.bsky.social (Wrong Station)
"I will die in Paris in a rainstorm."
"The entire goal is to indoctrinate locals into why it’s okay for us to violate people’s rights."
" The exclusionary, and if need be violent or exterminatory defence of a finite and beleaguered privilege is the leitmotiv here, not a sacrificial utopia of national or racial domination." --Alberto Toscano via
"THE EAGLE’S NEST WAS NEVER TOUCHED BY ALLIED BOMBS NOR DEMOLISHED ONLY ITS / OCCUPANTS HAD CHANGED." (via @roughghosts.bsky.social)
"How Dark the Beginning
All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,
good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.
So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize
as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break
over us—as if light were protective,
as if no hearts were flayed,
no bodies broken on a day
like today. In any film,
the sunrise tells us everything
will be all right. Danger wouldn’t
dare show up now, dragging
its shadow across the screen.
We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf
of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark
the beginning of a day is."
--Maggie Smith via
"The Killing Spree
whizzed past, we liked the look of it, it liquefied
death, it was here to stay, it actually
had nowhere else to go, was in its last stages now, longed to be
revelation, longed to be part of
nature making its
whistling sounds above, its
screaming
below. The classrooms exploded. The bits of desks lay about
in the dust-filled amnesia. Were we supposed to
wake up, or was it never sleep
again—sleep
a mind blown to bits
after each ordnance hits & the craters
open…
We are so late in this story.
Unable to tell our heroes from our tormentors.
Unable to be convinced ever again of
anything.
Convinced. The word like a year in which nothing happened, a day
blown off the record—the spree
an exhausted teacher unveiling yet again
the temporary
lesson.
You’d think it must be about great love.
You’d think it must be about
poverty or endgame or the provisional emergency visa
nobody ever received in time
so no exit from the spree
ever occurred…
So, no, friend,
stranger,
when your turn in line brought you to the desk, up front,
the teacher was a killer,
one of the very best,
and as he bent over his desk over his list looking for your name
you realized he was your old
professor of astronomy,
the one who taught you to see the stars—
what year was that—
the skies were still visible,
and the stars, the stars…You are afraid to look up now,
the guard towers so full of thirsty lights
so eager to make of you
a singular
example.
The paint has chipped off the legs of his table,
you can see that through these layers of desert-dust.
But once it had gleamed,
once it had stood at the front of the class,
behind it the huge night sky of the blackboard
where he had made his chalkmarks scratch
releasing the spidery calculations and then
the galaxies…
Those marks look now like
the tips of rifles,
though you hadn’t seen it then,
& they were all pointing straight at the class,
at you in your row, at us,
at our assembly line of questions.
We still had questions…
You were ready for the blindfold when they pulled it
from the drawer.
The dark felt silky over your burnt face.
You heard the sound of the shovel cutting the earth.
Where is your mother.
What is that springing forth,
that deep inhalation followed by
nothing.
It’s the trees. Listen to me, think of wind in trees.
Yes the drones pass over and this is their wind.
But it’s still a precious thing. A pure thing. Wind.
It will brush you as though there were leaves, as though there were trees.
When is the last time you saw trees.
You feel them begin to cut your hair.
You listen hard for your new wind, your drone.
You imagine the leaves.
Their glittering still there under the dust.
You can smell the old maps lying on the desk.
You hope a rat will find you,
you hope your fingers will still feel its small jaws,
its minuscule hunger.
You remember Saturn—how he’d drawn it, almost giddy,
its wings hatching wildly across the blackboard,
I lived you say
to no one in particular,
the key deep in your pocket they’ll never find,
yr hand closing round it—
& that time I came home late & the door was locked, u think,
I slept on the stoop
all through the night,
I will lie down now,
I will take off my shoes,
they will put me against the wall,
I will leave my mark—
& it’s then that the smell arrives
of rust, iron, acid & fresh cut roses—a thunder
of sweetness.
It is your blood as it explodes from you.
We hear the bullet.
Will it be erased from time itself now
the small stony hill
in which my village lay,
will it bleed out from me now
the cool stone floor, the water in the basin,
my window onto the olive groves,
the pigeons muttering in the lowest limbs—
& where will it go
where I overhear my father
thanking my mother—
late at night in the dark kitchen—
his thank you, thank you—this clicking of the stars
all round them—
where will it go, where will it be buried
my time,
will it rise up in no one ever again
as memory, as dream,
this moonlight’s scent over the fields
& in it the barefoot steps of my father
coming to see if I am
asleep.
And stars falling anytime I look—anytime—like magic—my luck.
And mother’s low song in the other room….
You who do not know any longer what song is,
or dream, or memory, or the sound of
stars—look up—don’t blink—here it is now the slit throat of the sky
where the endless beginning keeps
pouring itself
forth."
"...a shift among charismatic prophets who are moving from equating Trump w/ Cyrus, the Persian emperor lauded in the Bible, toward connecting him w/ a much more menacing Bible character: King Jehu." (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)
"Then Frog said, 'Toad, here is what you must do. Tonight when you go to bed, you must think some very big thoughts. Those big thoughts will make your head grow larger. In the morning your new hat may fit.'
'What a good idea,' said Toad." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"It’s enough to change the order of terms to change the terms of order." (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)
"The revolution should not be on your fucking cell phone."
"darkly funny that the endgame of qanon was making a pedophile in charge of law enforcement" --@krangtnelson via @joycecasroloates
pre-sorrowing · cincture rainbow
the cold gray gristle · of uniformed greeting
a bustle on Blue Sky · like a bout of plans
wildflowers worn · to a hasty wedding
Normandy Beach nachos
nevertheless heaven
look at this lithe weather
"I’m starting to understand what it must have been like when Caligula made his horse a senator." --@heatherk.bsky.social
"How do we understand how the descendants of the victims of the gas chambers and the ghettos are now bombing cities, sniping children, running over old women with tanks, denying food, water, medicine, pain killers to a population of millions??" (via @aashisjoishi.bsky.social)
"Flappings of fear, great wheeling shapes of dread,
Tremours and shudderings shook me on the way..."
--J Stanyan Bigg
"How to Outlive a Rapist
His living haunted like the dead.
Even after his actual death.
The carefree girl I was,
the woman I become, side by side
staring down at his gravestone.
All three of us no longer
wearing the same face.
Death cheated. We can’t
get his stain off our skin.
Every breath we take trembles,
leaves wind surfing an open grave.
We stopped screaming for daddy,
long after our throats gave out.
She stayed with him; I grew older.
Today, both of us are wearing
phantom black and blue
neckties in his dishonor.
The girl loosens her grip on me
and fades back in memory,
back to when she skipped along
railroad tracks, arms outstretched.
I miss her, that part of me
who never had a chance
to test her wings.
I want the pieces of her
buried with him,
to sing to him in his grave.
Everything that hurt us
becomes a ghost."
--@sageravenwood.bsky.social via
"I wake up in the dark.
In dark I went to sleep.
There is a kind of stark
Accounting of lost sheep.
The day breaks with a dawn
So much like yesterday’s.
I turn the kettle on
And brew a dark malaise.
Things go from bad to worse,
Let’s call it entropy.
The blessing is a curse,
And treachery goes free
Or something. Never mind,
Here in the cradle of
Democracy I find
There’s history enough —
There on the shining rock
The entasis of state,
The subtle curves that lock
The crooked to the straight.
The centuries were slow
Where stood its solid scenes,
It took one night to blow
The roof to smithereens.
It boasts of Marathon,
It boasts of Salamis
Five generations on,
Of hemlock’s bitterness,
Between, the city nations
Of Greeks warred tribe with tribe
Why trouble with invasions?
It’s easier to bribe.
We still read Athens’ versions,
As though the Spartans lost,
As though the prudent Persians
Did not know what they cost.
Pericles died of plague,
And Phidias in prison.
Division’s sown, and vague
Suspicions have arisen.
It took nine years to build
Those columns in the air,
But half its marbles spilled,
Over fifty to repair.
It’s like a foundered ship,
That ruin on the hill.
It makes my heartbeat skip.
I’m afraid it always will."
--@aestallings.bsky.social via
The control tower in Acapulco. (via @billmckibben.bsky.social)
"For all of the adults were like the shadows of grotesque puppets dancing on a wall, and none was responsible. The puppeteer they dreamed of did not exist although he moved the strings."
--Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling via @anth.garrett.bsky.social via @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social
"Too old to carry arms and to fight like others..." (via @mitchnobis.bsky.social via @joriegraham.bsky.social)
"The new Defense Secretary says women shouldn’t be in combat. The new Ambassador to Israel says the West Bank and Gaza don’t exist. The new Homeland Security Secretary is a dogkiller. The new SoS had a dick-measuring contest with Trump. Musk—who secretly talks to Putin—has an illegal job.
It’s Day 7" --@sethabramson.bsky.social
"I was washing at night out in the yard
I was washing at night out in the yard—
the heavens glowing with rough stars.
A star-beam like salt upon an axe,
the water barrel brimful and cold.
A padlock makes the gate secure,
and conscience gives sternness to the earth—
hard to find a standard anywhere
purer than the truth of new-made cloth.
A star melts in the barrel like salt,
and the ice-cold winter is blacker still,
death is more pure, disaster saltier
and earth more truthful and more terrible."
--By Osip Mandelstam (tr Peter France) via @henryghenrik.bsky.social
Gruel and Piano. (via @vikshirley.bsky.social)
Catabolic Dispensation · & the cyst grins
nabbed normalcy · nudges the clown
interregnum rife · with ruined hopes
our hoardings heaped · with helpless pathos
cling to clouds · & precluded off-ramps
there's a dragon dreary · as a land without heroes
"We've had the two hottest years in the last 125,000 and it's barely registered."
A ninny & a narcissist went into a bar. He was served at once.
"Relics of a former world!
Medals of Creation’s birth!
Ere Hist’ry her page unroll’d,
Or man was tenant of the earth;
Say, in those early days of Time
Did Angel spirits dwell below?
And free from passion, pain, and crime,
In this terrestrial Eden grow?
’Mid groves of Palms, and spicy bow’rs,
Whose verdure never knew decay,
And blooming with perpetual flow’rs,
Gave out their sweets eternally;
Did those Celestials love, and live,
And quaff eternal happiness;
Enjoying all this world can give,
But free from man’s infirmities?
Or was the Earth, as now, th’abode
Of Beings doom’d like me to err,
Whose path-way to the throne of God,
Led through the gloomy sepulchre?
We seek in vain from ye to know,
Relics of Ages long gone by!
Enough! Whate’er man’s fate below
He’ll live in bliss beyond the sky!
Yes! Man, the erring child of Heav’n,
Tho’ toss’d on this life’s troubled sea,
His failings, and his sins forgiv’n,
Shall rise in Immortality!"
--Gideon Mantell via @aestallings.bsky.social
hacked eclipse predictor
prismatic unwisdom
furl · there are clouds snarling
in the selcouth welkin
your supply teeth-cloying
cancerreturn cornball
arcane spawn of brainworms
teadust cardboard tiredness
taunt born of the gaunt shades
"For now, anyway, stories of ghosts. Death & ageing. Undependable epistemes rather than undependable narrators. Nostalgia as a complex resource. The admission of vulnerability." --@mjohnharrison.bsky.social
"I think it did amaze the Cyclades
To see me writing verses on the seas."
--1672 Ovid, IX.
"Real Roman Colosseum shit. ...And this helped me understand how the election happened."
"Glittering-throned, undying Aphrodite,
Wile-weaving daughter of high Zeus, I pray thee,
Tame not my soul with heavy woe, dread mistress,
Nay, nor with anguish !
But hither come, if ever erst of old time
Thou didst incline, and listenedst to my crying,
And from thy father's palace down descending,
Camest with golden
Chariot yoked: thee fair swift-flying sparrows
Over dark earth with multitudinous fluttering,
Pinion on pinion, through middle ether
Down from heaven hurried."
--Symonds's Sappho via
"The literal end of the world does not excuse you from doing the best you can."
"I do not think we were wrong to try, but I do think this moment calls for adjustments."
"Call me
by our old name.
The one we had down there,
when we were set alight in the
darkness."
--@xxyxxy.bsky.social
"A cliff made, on closer inspection, of something friable between mud and stone."
"Continuing my comfort re-watch of MCU movies I watched some of Winter Soldier, a lighthearted film about Nazis taking over institutions of American government with a plan to eliminate undesirable citizens en masse. Very escapist!" --@tomtomorrow.bsky.social
"Never before have we seen these numbers."
