"I like how the real one looks like an anatomical heart and the fake one looks like a cartoon heart."
recurrence itself
does not carry the heartbreak
only what is called
a childlike cleaning of lips
on a ninety year old mouth
"And what distinguishes the American empire is its obsession with innocence, and its obsession with dreams. The innocence hides the violence, and the dreams generate the sentimentalism." --Cornel West via
The protestors responded with the equivalent of a fireworks mini gun.
"The shadow of a hawk fell over them.
Frog and Toad jumped under a rock.
The hawk flew away.
'We are not afraid!' screamed Frog and Toad at the same time."
--@frogandtoadbot
A moody night in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
"MY FRIENDS
My friends without shields walk on the target
It is late the windows are breaking
My friends without shoes leave
What they love
Grief moves among them as a fire among
Its bells
My friends without clocks turn
On the dial they turn
They part
My friends with names like gloves set out
Bare handed as they have lived
And nobody knows them
It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones it is their
Cups that are found at the wells
And are then chained up
My friends without feet sit by the wall
Nodding to the lame orchestra
Brotherhood it says on the decorations
My friend without eyes sits in the rain smiling
With a nest of salt in his hand
My friends without fathers or houses hear
Doors opening in the darkness
Whose halls announce
Behold the smoke has come home
My friends and I have in common
The present a wax bell in a wax belfry
This message telling of
Metals this
Hunger for the sake of hunger this owl in the heart
And these hands one
For asking one for applause
My friends with nothing leave it behind
In a box
My friends without keys go out from the jails it is night
They take the same road they miss
Each other they invent the same banner in the dark
They ask their way only of sentries too proud to breathe
At dawn the stars on their flag will vanish
The water will turn up their footprints and the day will rise
Like a monument to my
Friends the forgotten"
--W S Merwin
Some Thames Foreshore mudlarking finds from the last few weeks.
wood smoke · word smattering
pale new walls · of Notre Dame
the lorn kaleidoscope · looms close
in the brick-clad night
"In the year 1621, on the orders of the then governor general of the East Indies, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, almost the entire population of the islands was eliminated in the course of a few weeks.... This atrocity never features in the art and literature of that period, and it would probably have been largely erased from history had it not been for the work of an almost forgotten Dutchman who happened to be the head archivist of the colonial administration in Batavia, J.A. van der Chijs." --Amitav Ghosh via via @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
"It's come to the point you google 'Spinoza' and the very first image you see is GenAI."
"night news on mute..."
"There is no idea whose truthfulness can be gauged if it is not run through the senses. " --Jorie Graham via
seiche amidst earthgrythes
threadbare mask · cough returning
the mannikins still
tire light on in the dark dash
words filling the last blank space
the yard across the street with Xmas kitsch
has filled, & now begins the nightly trawl
of Xmas tourists bent on sweeping the krill
of pretty lights up & posting a swatch.
those people aren't our enemies just yet.
i'm sure that most of their time goes much like ours
to petty tasks of maintenance & cares,
& very little t'ward a liberal rout.
i watch them restlessly through slitted blinds.
"If you want to provide young men with an example of positive masculinity, look no further than Gomez Addams" --@thedreadfulpoint.bsky.social
Meanwhile there's kind of a tense pressure toward resuming the appearance of normalcy, visible in mass media ("the Holidays" clutched like a life preserver; consuming, in general) & individual behavior (avoiding all but the purely trivial)--which seems, after a long diet of apocalyptic warnings, hollow to the point of absurdity. Sort of like: the Titanic hits an iceberg, sinks, & we swim ashore, whereupon we set up shop on the edge of another iceberg, & pretend nothing happened.
restless, exasperated with my choices
of what to read, to sink my mind into,
some tale not fanciful but prone to joy
unforced, & not on conquests bent but truces;
beginning, as all this must, in mere confusion
then ramifying, fraught with other chores:
allies not idiots, against pursuers
of valid aims, not stooges of erosion;
a tale to give me food for thought beyond
unravelling a plot, & all that jazz:
description of new things & em'rald Oz
spectacles that isn't castle sand...
even a book i might have read long since
but this time turns out widdershins & shocks me.
"The Low North Courier
Droppings—green, chalked.
Goose duty for a morgen’s sward
of plush grass grazed
before arrowing on south.
Logs, bundles, tumble.
Unfastening into the brack water,
where salt meets sweet
and clay slip-silts its cycle.
Deposits dissolve.
Phosphates prosper, mineral milk spills
scud the puddles,
exchange with counterfeit clouds.
Soft compost, still strives
Though the third tide seeps, tithes due;
skewing skyward
with each plunge-suck of my boot.
Droppings—in suspension.
Solute seeds yearn to disperse
over the dyke,
boot-boosted to drier muds."
--Dr. Alice Twemlow via
"The night was cold and dark.
'Listen to the wind howling in the trees,' said Frog. 'What a fine time for a ghost story.
Toad moved deeper into his chair."
--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"One likely reason for these gains is that the GOP offers narratives for meaning-making that appeal to young men who feel that modern society is depriving them of a meaningful life." (via @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social )
"The trouble is, people too easily see social decay as a problem of excessive autonomy, rather than of deficient reciprocity." --πβππππ¦ πππ πππππ‘πππ ππ πππππππβππ πΆππππππ‘ππ£ππ π
tree stripped down · to the mistletoe
cares curated richly · causes reft
in the ordinary afternoon
gates of forgetfulness · gulfs yielding
swart candle · swatch of cairngorm
orc gossamer ending
"Monotropism explains autistic experiences more coherently and in more depth than other psychological theories of autism have ever managed, but part of that is understanding the many different ways it manifests." (via @helendecruz.net)
monkeyshines merged · in the blur of leaf-fall
all simmering · save what you can
scramble of scant normalcy · skunked paths
inkpen gives out · avid to record
"Winter’s Harsh Hand
Fluviogenesis carves its way through the moors
As panurgic storms batter windows and doors.
Snoozledum slithers through fields, cross the land,
Huddling to hide from hiemal’s harsh hand."
Shatter Me. (via @tavyliasin.bsky.social)
The truth is that political power resides in many places.
"Eighty-eight rue Mouffetard
The moon rises, I give up, the woman
cries. Oh, lean rape, scent
of the eighty apes. Oh dream, you cloth,
smell of Thou, death hit too deeply to
eighty-eight rue Mouffetard"
--Unica ZΓΌrn via
" 'Frog, I am glad to have a brave friend like you,' said Toad. He jumped into the bed and pulled the covers over his head.
'And I am happy to know a brave person like you, Toad,' said Frog. He jumped into the closet and shut the door." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023.
"I had once declared that there were certain things poets must never be allowed to know..."
"So if you ever wonder why things feel so meaningless nowadays… well, it’s because, in a real sense, we’ve engineered a world where more and more of it is meaningless." --Andrew Perfors via via helendecruz.net
swagger ywis
rattler's egg
Ogpu deranged
drunk fylfot
sweltering bilge
assassins
gray marble stairs
stern flavors
"It’s a case of back to the future with a vengeance, as these erstwhile enfants terribles have morphed into vehicles of nostalgic reverie." (via feuilleton)
ferocious habit · hustles my wheels
even on an off day · the effigy blinks
precious preamble · approching the falls
a cord snaps · that called the light on
"Saw heresies glide snake-like through the church,
Sliming the pulpit-cushion with their trail,
And nestle in the very Bible-leaves!"
--J Stanyan Bigg
Will never get over how beautiful this city is.
Japanese incense culture thread. More here.
"my mom told me i use the same voice to read poetry and talk to my cat and this has destroyed me" --@emmabolden.bsky.social
"I cannot remember the last time I actually went to a website and browsed..." (via)
demonic revelry
remove cylinder
ceremony drivel
milder conveyer
cold enemy river
Non Multa Sed Multum. (French original)
"echo chamber"
intention baffled
beyond retrieval though i
dig around in drawers
subfusc sky for an ascian
not content with my cursed share
"The toad could not think of a story." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
The pale face of nightmares π.
Mainstream news stories are like xmas ornaments made from street sweepings. If i want to know what's going on, i look to feeds from individuals who have their eyes & ears open. That other artform i don't care to patronize. It's mostly about the aesthetics of seeming to know what you don't.
"osteobiography"
battle-hardened hitmen
my hands · good at hooding
this plush fascist playlist
plucked from the craft-rafters
soft with lemming laughter
i lurk muse-unwoozy
targeted Tums-Bambi
returned skelp-scurry
wheelchair at the chill-curb
chase in cluttered basement
thoughts without threatveer
athwart Charon's portage
"surgery on Saturn"
meat & bone · in the skerry battle
scrapings scuttle· askance among my detours
halcyon but no home · hasten away
sabre dance · during lull
"I get all the news I need on the weather report" --Paul Simon
"I’m not sure if I’m a believer, but if there was one true faith, it would be ours." (via @helendecruz.net)
“ 'Please,' cried Frog, 'please go away!' But no one went away." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"SOLEMN (Palindrome)
I sat, solemn.
I saw time open one poem.
It was in me, lost as I."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"Some would say we should rest and some would say we should buy guns." (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)
"named storm"
strive on gossamer staggering
shadow problems oppress
stark premise
in the drivethrough druthers
yield to a yeckate* limp
Fearful for my Government Job, Dreaming of Retirement, I Think of Tu Fu.
"MURDER OF CROWS (Triolet)
A murder, from a garden, rose
and left us in the dying light.
The sky is red now—no one knows
a murder from a garden rose.
It’s rare to see so many crows—
and now they’ve gone to gather night.
A murder from a garden rose
and left us in the dying light."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* to drive a car (Nadsat)
"And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher" --@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
"Scrunched down to scrapelets,
the dole-out of daylight to the doomscrollers
darkens offscreen."
--@thaliarchus.bsky.social
"Garden in winter~
the moon also a thread
in an insect's song"
--Basho (translator: Stephen Addiss) via @evecastle.bsky.social
Catherine the Ghost. (via @kkoja.bsky.social)
"When the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals spreads to the macrosocial level, a society tends to develop contempt for factual criticism and to humiliate anyone sounding an alarm."
—Andrew M. Εobaczewski, Political Ponerology via @zaharaesque.bsky.social
“This toxic patriarchal energy is an age coming to an end… that energy is clawing for its survival bc it knows it’s dying. We’re heading to something beautiful, we just have to go through some dark shit first." --Sturgill Simpson via
On the Power of Love to Ennoble.
No palace in the dawn however bright
Was worth such cruelty as it is told
And i see all too many schemes beguiled
By modest sacrifice that should not float
There will be oneday palaces built right
That cost no sacrifice nor serve one man
In his exaggerated splay of whine
And those whose labor raises scorn the brat
"...when did you forget..."
"Roc vs Orc"
swoosh of cars passing
never out of orange-sight
halcyon the escape
the air machine humming now
quiet i can hardly hear
Repugnance is not a strategy.
To disrupt the publishing industry.
"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor."
- -Paulo Freire via @jacobwren.bsky.social
"NEW MOON (Anagrammed Lines)
The Moon is a shy, bent tulip
that into blue symphonies
tilts a numb honey. It hopes
to be sun, paints the homily —
but, then, this is only a poem…."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"Summer Moon
The rain, crazed like horses
In the flare of lightning, has gone.
Against the clear washed sky
Rain-drops on the twigs
Reflect the moon."
--Jun Fujita via
"It was not from the camps of the barbarians, but from the schools of the monks, that the heaviest blow was struck against the traditions of the ancient learning." --an anonymous reviewer in the Edinburgh Review, 1877
"I wanted to remain among those who tomorrow will be persecuted."
"Why did the anagram cross the road?
To hear adages and rhythmic words." --@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"XXX.
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night."
--A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad
