"I couldn’t kill the painter in me. In fact, it resurrected."
The Three Suns · in the thick of winter
jaunty & tiki-adjacent
a lull allayed · with lessened stress
strew with laughing arpeggios
"I thought to live
two centuries, or three--
yet here comes death
to me, a child
just eight-five years old."
--Hanabusa Ikkei via @josephfasano.bsky.social
"Long before I became me, I could see myself."
"hospice garden
a shifting constellation
of fireflies"
--Chen-ou Liu via @evecastle.bsky.social
"STARLIGHT (Palindrome by Quartets)
Start in a nebula, lost ray.
Go astral —
alone, but in a star."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Ukrainian Bull, Three Years Old, Went Walking Through the Woods and Garners Strength.
"And all the next day Toad read poems to his seeds." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
leafmeal alibis
& to outlive this empire
proved not such a feat
bruise colors in the heart's-vault
where autumn made its last stand
"It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It."
Bells of Atlantis. (via In Search of Pagan Hollywood)
"The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain."
--Edward Thomas (1915). via @bertrom.bsky.social
"Toad thought and thought. But he could not think of a story to tell Frog." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"burdened with dark thoughts
bones
lilac"
--@poemexe.com
Cockburn Street from Advocate’s Close.
ember days or so
another wretched chapbook
struggles to raise wings
in this thrice-blasted landscape
in this garden of hoodwink
What's the worst that could happen?
green neon inane
nautilus bore forward
three ghosts who cannot heal me
mists that never move
anointing thin windscreen
blurred shapes on the shore
sharing restless guesswork
silver threads of suds
three ghosts who cannot heal me
"the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is like being at the airport" --@blainecapatch.bsky.social
"that no man’s land between Christmas and New Year, which I like to call ‘The Yuletide Perineum!’ ☺️" --@kevmoore.bsky.social
Rules for the Direction of the Artificial Mind.
An old-fashioned blogroll. (somewhat right-leaning but not MAGA)
"Sleep hath two gates: one, said to be of horn,
To real visions easy exit gives;
The other, of white polished ivory,
Through which the Manes send false dreams to earth.
Anchises, having thus addressed his son,
Together with the Sibyl, leads them on,
And through the ivory gate dismisses them."
--Cranch's Virgil
"He's just made a chess set out of cheese."
in the gray trails · trouble bides
glass towers · glare like pumpkins
a route ranging · around pylons
black sombrero fluorescents
what is danger · a dark choice
a menace met · at a lonely crossroad
the wrong label · on a list of citizens
black sombrero waitingroom
they do not bring sickness · but they find it here
invisible vectors · inveigled & sorted
if the map itself · be soaked in fearsweat
black sombrero partings
on the highway hustle · tall trucks laden
with destinations · duly inventoried
my words wither · where the wood begins
black sombrero entering
New Ghost Stories by Lettice Galbraith (1893).
"XLVIII
Be still, my soul, be till: the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh why do I awake? when shall I sleep again?"
--A E Housman
" 'I went around the corner to see if spring was there.'
'Did you find it?' asked Toad.
'No,' said Frog. 'There was only an old worm asleep on a tree stump.' " --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"...generative 'AI' is a threat to the processes of making & certifying knowledge & consensus reality."
Behold a Marvel in the Darkness.
“ 'I sat under a tree and waited. The woods became dark. I was afraid. Then I saw two huge eyes. It was the Old Dark Frog. He was standing near me.'
'Frog,' asked Toad, 'did this really happen?'
'Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t,' said Frog." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
“Important down and heavy children
A leading lip, heavy
lip, important lip of a dry ivory-country
The look of people reworked to science
in the harbor
My psyche was my psyche
I had no such preconceptions
Within there were questions
Important supposed children of the bittern: viridian
interest, silver down, bony
down, true posts
Is that people then, that
beautiful science?
Because I ignored myself, lifting, giving, turning pair inside wisdom.”
–Robot X, 2357.
I made a gingerbread panopticon. (via @vjoshuaadams.bsky.social)
“Song
I make my shroud but no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair,
With stitches set in even rows.
I make my shroud but no one knows.
In door-way where the lilac blows,
Humming a little wandering air,
I make my shroud and no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair.”
--Adelaide Crapsey
"...it would still be creepy if Obama was telling you to read Annihilation."
“Her wyvern-warded spires of celadon, enruned” –Clark Ashton Smith
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that I had within me an invincible summer."
—Albert Camus via @josephfasano.bsky.social
"Life-size is too Large
To the microscopy of thinking small
(To have room enough to think at all)
I said, ‘Cramped mirror, faithful constriction,
Break, be large as I.’
Then I heard little leaves in my ears rustling
And a little wind like a leaf blowing
My mind into a corner of my mind,
Where wind over empty ground went blowing
And a large dwarf picked and picked up nothing.”
–Laura (Riding) Jackson
Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty.
"🎵TELL A RIVER
Never evens,
ill, a fog is all:
a cosy away.
All lied.
A fog is all,
in me lost;
I, a buoy,
fire, viral.
Let´s send a song,
no sadness.
Tell a river:
'if you bait, solemn,
I´ll, as I go, fade.
I´ll lay away,
so call as I go.
Fall is never even.' "
--@merlinaacevedo.bsky.social
Horses. Boys for Pele. Homogenic. Aqualung. The whole series.
"O one, o none, o no one, o you:
Where did the way lead when it led nowhere?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,
and on our finger the ring awakes."
--Hamburger's Celan
gates of ivory
groovy fiesta
forgives a toy
foist voyagers
variety goofs
i overstay fog
"Although this collection was never published, the work is strange and astounding."
" tens of thousands of words written on the phenomenon of Alice Munro & her bewildering (moral, maternal) failure to protect her daughter from a live-in predator/partner; but the revealing story isn't Munro's, it is Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.' " --@joycecaroloates.bsky.social
"...in my opinion, with all deference to some writers we can name, it is the best novel written in 16 hours ever." (via @joycecaroloates.bsky.social)
"Feel like it's not remarked upon enough that in Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland sings 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' not just to her younger sister but also to an audience of terrifying snowmen and animatronic monkeys." --@emilystjams.bsky.social
"Every town has a two-headed something."
"a day of winter
rises unnoticed
on the shoreline"
--@poemexe.com
Finally a Political Movement I can actually get behind.
How can we live with ourselves? (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)
Ucalegon · this side that side
smell of wood smoke · on the night air
steam rising · from the kettle
keys found · in the white sand
"somewhere between
an empty snail shell
the bird makes a nest"
--@poemexe.com
Evil (sociopathy)-empathy is one continuum; clever-dumb is 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 to it. We misuse "intelligent" for "clever"; genuine intelligence includes empathy as well.
lowering skies lulz
lazar-house of grouse gnomes
World War III some thread
enthralling shilled fallout
bare branches high tension
brusquely enact dusk-work
mansion lit with meat hooks
moving like smooth seaweed
where are my lost whist-peals
awhile built with pill-bricks
filigree-sift loft
sapphire-tooth'd sarsar
"Obedience is like sex: nothing like it if you’ve been without it too long."
"bargeboard"
a quilter germinates
a meagerer lit squint
a siren-quit telegram
enlarges a quiet trim
"Reading wartime novels I just never understood how it gets trivialised to a point where characters can go on with their lives and perform daily activities
Now I’m like
Oh that’s how" --@reshetz.bsky.social
Frog murder and boiled children. (via @anthonyetherin.bsky.social)
"To want words charged in their places will surely be like having a notion what use the
Lascars and Malays in Sax Rohmer, fodder of thrills, might come to as this book not quite
the color of revolution could go on the shelves of any of our Cambridge bookstores catering
to dissent and not look out of place..."
--Gerald Burns
"meat eating squirrel"
meggle till the tag
tells renewal for yuleshard
heap holyverd LARP
white crickets belsnickle
( via )
"Now we have the sign without the thing, and forgot the thing."
The first truly atrocious hell in literature.
"cold moon harvest"
galenium rain
wearing grooves in rubles
dark gray Accord grackles
groggy Xmas isthmus
& i don't know to go or to stay
mild winter the morn
marking a last bastion
so bright brutal road
so easy brand's lesion
& i don't know to go or to stay
these words wander find
worn maps sudden lapsing
radio bands bode
abandonment central
& i don't know to go or to stay
thunderbolts at throats
as though wry highwayman
clowns in their clink tinsel
clog barricade staredowns
& i don't know to go or to stay
sky of portents scant
skip your benumbed grumbling
doomscroller's speed dial
destined for shroud vestment
& i don't know to go or to stay
"Published in 2014, its author, Bessel van der Kolk, has become like the Colleen Hoover of psychology." (via @karidru.bsky.social)
Read the first three [Vandermeer], want to catch up with that one [Absolution] too. I like it that he's not afraid to mess with his original idea. It's rare in a novel (unlike poetry) to feel the material pushing back against the author. Like he wanted to write one thing, but the Southern Reach wanted something very much else...
"Who knows what wonders await us in popular entertainment?"
"riding the rodeo clown"
boxcar for cash box
in the blueblack Casbah
jingle barbed wire jib
jabs futurecast suture
bore hole is boxcar
"Sonette an Orpheus, II. 29
Quiet friend of farflung furlongs, feel
how more & more your breathing swells the room.
Among the rafters of the gloomy belfry
let yourself toll. What takes its life from you
gathers to a greatness over this repast.
Embrace the transmutation,--there & back.
What's your most excruciating practice?
Does drinking twist your face? Turn into wine.
Be, tonight, out of overplus,
wizardry at your senses' intersecting;
of their weird conjunction make the sense.
Then, when all the homely round forgets,
to the sempiternal earth declare: I run.
To the rushing waters answer: I remain."
--Rainer Maria Rilke (my tr, 1987)
This Bird Looks in all Four Directions.
missurvivalled marvel
immense chagrin benchpress
into the dim cold comedown
called by the derne hiss
pictures awhile cherished
the rules awhile observed
"in thin rain
shadows speak
as i drive"
--@poemexe.com
