( "dark side of the moon" by morten solgaard petersen via @michaeltcisco / via )

Triolet.

“There is no news from Auschwitz
along that funeral plain
green wipes away old waves
that rolled the eyes
and tangled flowers veil vile kennel dust
bequeathed to dawns.
the years are done.
the earth bent toward canals bears
sterile bowels repenting woven eyes
while bone-filled drifts that scattered blood
yield other births.
death is not there: no special people
trailing alien dens,
or children moving in the rain of ash
unraveling minds.
life is not there: not even myths that rode
young stallions to a circus tent
and carried torches on a convent wire
beyond the tides.
no other signs that men patrol chained
sheets of sea.
i grieve our empty ships.
there is no news from Auschwitz.”

–Sonia Sanchez

The Spectral Jihadi.

“You see how I stand, an altar consecrated to the Pythian god, polished by the craft of the musical art of the poet; so fair am I, bringing most sacred offerings, suitable for Phoebus and ftted for these temples in which the choruses of poets make their acceptable gifts, adorned with so many woven fowers of the muse, of such kind as must be placed in the Heliconian groves of song. No workman polished me with sharp tool; I was not hewed out of the white rock of the mountain of Luna, nor from the shining peak of Paros. It was not because I was cut or forced with the hard chisel that I am straight, confned and hold back my edges as they attempt to grow and then, in the succeeding portion, let them spread more broadly. Cautiously I force each edge to be drawn in, line by line, by tiny steps, in lines turning in, thus following on, regulated everywhere by the measure, so that my margin, within the limit which rules it, is that of a square. Then again, continuing on to the bottom, my line, spreading more broadly, is artfully stretched according to the plan. I am composed of the measures whose rhythm the muses beat out, and the number of feet is never changed. As the rules of the learned principle keep these measures unchanged, it is the letters of the poem that increase and decrease. Phoebus, may the supplicant who offers these metrical pictures take his place joyfully in your temples and your sacred choruses.” –translation of Optation’s Altar, by Jan Kwapisz in Morphogrammata

Death of the World of Now.