( via / via )

This is Fine.

"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

I'm a Stranger Here.

"The Mystery

I WAS not; now I am--a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says 'no' to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,
Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.
Whene'er, o'ercoming fear, I dare to move,
I grope without direction and by chance.
Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand
That draws them ever upward thro' the gloom.
But I--I hear no voice and touch no hand,
Tho' oft thro' silence infinite I list,

And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;
Tho' oft thro' fateful darkness do I reach,
And stretch my hand to find that other hand.
I question of th' eternal bending skies
That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;
But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes
On me, as I one day shall do on them,
And tell me not the secret that I ask."

--Paul Lawrence Dunbar

On Conclave & some of the people in it.

( via / me )

Chess art thread.

"RIVER OTTER
Lontra canadensis

an oiled rascal as elastic as an accordion,
alert, slender,
it darts or reclines at an inland coastline;

an earnest sailor,
at ease in a den in dense cattails"

--Luke Bradford, Zoolalia

Knight on the Rim.

"by the brumous numen drawn on" --The Anathemata, III

Elexia Judouga.

( via / me )

"I’m mildly fascinated by scenes, in the same way that I’m interested in capitalism and religion and magic and every other system that assigns value to things based on its own mysterious set of criteria running entirely orthogonal to quality."

"A week ago, someone convinced me to live each day as if it were my last.

Now I’m penniless, 40 pounds overweight, and the town is in ruins." --@rlpastore.bsky.social via @kimmysunshine.bsky.social

"There are words for this; there are always words. Is it 'positionality'? Is it 'situatedness'?"

"night
and now the scent
filling up with snow"

--@poemexe.com

Knife Edge.

( via / via )

Crowsongs.

small rabbit dawn, a blur
as i return with coffee
almost like a trick of light

"The rulers of all late empires, including the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero or Charles I, the last Habsburg monarch, are as incoherent as the Mad Hatter, uttering nonsensical remarks, posing unanswerable riddles and reciting word salads of inanities. They, like Donald Trump, are a reflection of the moral, intellectual and physical rot that plague a diseased society."

"let’s drink shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them!" --@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Make sure you look in the lower right hand corner.

( via / me )

When Doves Cry.

"Mood set an amen or omen. One moron emanates doom." --@lori-wike.bsky.social

Cities in Dust.

"no cowboy like death"

boygmask bearing · virtual fangs
down time attained · only to tap
gloat inescapable · sneer of Sauron
   whether or not i asked

i blow my nose · on a napkin halved
before sunrise · strong black coffee
there are things to do · a dullard's mug
bigly ubiquitous · nilpertains
   & i go to complete them

such considerations · assailed their minds
in the waning wyrd · of the carnosaur empire

Goncharov.

( via / via )

"There's never a shortage of material. But by the time the book went to press I thought it was time to turn the page and see if I could write anything using the whole alphabet."

golden pager

angel groped
pal engorged

lapdog genre

grapnel doge
gargled nope

Autogolpe.

"stillness and solitude
the moon's tide
on the window seat"

--@poemexe.com

Delivery

( me / via )

Haiku.

" 'I am not hungry now,' said the Dark Frog. 'I have eaten too many tasty frog children. But after I jump rope one hundred times, I will be hungry again. Then I will eat YOU!' " --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Brillig brandished.

incremental mock
messaging bulletpoints

concrete gray walg-welkin
wambly in traffic

normalcy's narcs swim
nab whom they want to

half demolished hull
holds me an hour

unwinding barb'-wire
wanhope to venture

red ties for the rizz
robbers in sharp suits

yet will i yeckate
yesterday's pathways

subfusc skies ablaze
no one now goes there

Ashbreath-pilled.

( via / via )

New on Youtube. (via Metafilter)

bear-claw necklace nourished
anent former torment
alt-text a pert poultice
passing strange derangement

& sun is the only thing round

untrammelled age more tragic
trim to the grim breezeturn
or devour-globe vibeshift
vast disheartened dart board

& sun is the only thing round

through rubble-prowl sans problem
prayer to beach front leechcraft
blind eye & a blonde roast
bloody well worth fudging

& sun is the only thing round

beyond this tinned yarrow
i learn to gloze closure
never forged in ninja
namesake the first breakdown

& sun is the only thing round
round is the only thing sun

"...the cognitive dissonance of this moment is caused by two things being true at once: Democrats are gaining a foothold in opposing Trump's coup, and Trump is accelerating the chaos."

"their snoring
smoke rising
by the vending machine"

--@poemexe.com

Proverbs of a She-Dandy.

( via / via )

"It is a funny sort of nihilism that believes in nothing except belief itself."

"attempting to describe the vibes of the moment. have yet to do better than: 'imagine watching a documentary reenacting the burning of the Library of Alexandria set to the soundtrack of "Yakety Sax" ' " --@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social‬

Enaiposha. (Which i named Nachash [#24]. )

"A nerve awry | knocks him earthward,
stutter-muscled. | With stick urgent
he knock-tests floor, | newly fearful,
strained pain-walker, | stricken poplar.

Weight of winters | wears the shoulders,
age like skybolt | so early met,
wasting soul-home. | On woe-mat he sinks,
now oldmost in hall, | whatever his years.

Then grief withdraws | its grim banners.
Truce is offered. | Then trust revives
in grip shoe-sole’d, | in gracious peace
for troubled flesh. | Yet troops linger.

To be hale is a high | heart’s-bliss for mortals,
but miserly brief | and merely held."

--@thaliarchus.bsky.social

"These Nationalist Christians need a shorter name. How about: Nat-C's?"

( via / via )

"One of the asymmetries of contemporary power is that it treats the fantasies or paranoid fears of one group as more valid than the actual conditions and dominations of another group."

computer at each
table but not a student
at each computer

to talk about tutoring
not about Guantánamo

PXL DEX.

"just saying: it's possible that 'I'm gonna dramatically constrict my state capacity while plotting dramatic imperial expansion, and expanding my set of internal enemies while alienating most of my foreign allies' is the beginning of a world-historical masterstroke. but also possible that it isn't

that said: I think the 'it's not fascism unless they're good at it' brand of analysis probably isn't the move"

--@‪olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social‬

Rat on a journey.

( via / me )

Haiku.

"lyon off season
frozen bridge over the rhone
silent thoroughfare
in summer it will be swarmed
tonight it is ours alone"

--@dylankussman.bsky.social

Accursed clown in the clown factory, detailed oil painting, remedios varo, james ensor.

dire · garret
tupilaq · a lip
utter rage · rid

"I keep wondering which will kill us first: global warming, or the rampant ego of this terrifying moloch."

( via / via )

"If fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy."

"PARTS

A last fire rises solemn.
I was it: ill, last fir; tinier.
I, faded light, obsess.

End:
as we fade,
if I deemed a rape,
he parade me;
edified a few sadnesses.

Both gilded.
A fire in it rifts all.

Lit, I saw in me losses
ire, rifts, a last rap"

--@merlinaacevedo.bsky.social

Night Over the City.

"even for us
      whose robbery is coterminous with empires"

--The Anathemata

Fake agency.

( me / via )

They be escalating.

"Elon hasn't slept in weeks so if we get someone to creep up behind him dressed like Slenderman, I think we could break him. Who is the tallest Congressman?" --@crouton.bsky.social

UbuWeb resumes.

"SENSORY CHORD, a triolet
(Open sound pattern repetitions with meanings circumscribed by visual transcription)

Sensory chord
Intuits whole
Sense or record
Sensory chord
Censor recored
Into its soul
Sensory chord
Intuits whole"

--@lori-wike.bsky.social

Modest counter-proposal. --Hear, hear!

( via via @kellylink.bsky.social / via )

" 'You can’t say that the West doesn’t have a plan for climate change. Catastrophe is the plan,' he said. 'It is a well-thought-out decision to continue to sow chaos and believe that the consequences won’t hit in your lifetime'."

"Bone Saw Villanelle

My friend, an AIDS survivor, will be cut to the bone
again today. He’ll be short another digit.
Surely by now you’re a pro at amputation.

Khashoggi’s fingers were sawed off one by one.
As the forensic doctor worked, he listened to music
—one needs focus while cutting to the bone.

Who will take the blame? Not son
of a king not king—oil and cash make all legit
as democracy’s drugs kick in for amputation.

A hell of a lot better than the whole
foot, says my friend. It’s not like I can quit
because they cut me to the bone.

In the museum, the Victorian cutting saw shone
with its curved jade handle. He asked me to snap a pic,
stunned by beauty paired with amputation.

We wait for updates on Twitter, by phone.
Half of us half-here, half not giving a shit
because either way they’ll cut us to the bone;
each day is its own amputation."

--Andy Young via.

"It is hard enough to call lawmakers, attend school board and city council meetings, write op eds for the local papers, go to protests and rallies, and build mutual aid networks as things are now, but with every level of insecurity that gets added—emotional, financial, physical—every single one of those actions is more difficult." (via @coffeehousepress.bsky.social)

"I’ve read enough to know that people are the products of their material realities, I just wish we hadn’t created material realities that made us so selfish and stupid" --@exhaustdata.bsky.social

"Silence, like Dante’s hell, has its concentric circles." (via @mariafarrell.bsky.social)

( me / via )

Not now, Melville.

"Rot in a jar of edam I made for a janitor." --@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"In other words, it is a question of speaking of destructiveness as the 'psychological foundation' of fascism, and not merely as a characteristic of the inherent dynamics of social struggles and processes of conquest." (Google translate) via @tir2.bsky.social

"What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees."

--Adrienne Rich via @alinapleskova.bsky.social

Fentanyl Czar.

( via / via )

Best Anti-Fascist Films.

"England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day."

--Percy Bysshe Shelley via @aestallings.bsky.social

Epitaph on a Tyrant.

We need kindness, but more than kindness, we need courage.

10-Story Book.

( via / me )

Someday we will have.

"stonehenge
we swear our love
from late autumn"

--@poemexe.com

Alonement under a blank sky.

unseen geese murmur
i climb the brutalist stairs
winter-overdressed

The Trial.

( me / via )

Let’s go inside Bryn Celli Ddu!

on a long ledge fadging
fierce bivouac unshriven

light in the tunnel

fogbound hover figments
harsh in the sane marshlands

light in the tunnel

follow taillights' tally
tightly devised visor

light in the tunnel

Piñata.

"...I hate the politics/ which have crept/ into my poetry." -Eric Lerner, Seditious Delicious #2

Teacup.

( via / via )

The Life.

"deal, infidel, the night is indeed difficult" --Gwendolyn MacEwen

Against Entropy.

"the bosses"

hyaline hornbook · house shattering
the screen skittish · scours each eye
   early in turning
   a stern thing
four feathers · fit inside
the old army · aches to wander
   watchful rooks know
   no scarecrow
in the seedtime · of the torn simmer

"It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla’s catalog..."

( me / via )

"We have a president with a tenuous grip on small legislative majorities who is out of the gate with a flurry of dramatically unpopular orders and who has just demonstrated his weakness on the international stage."

"Verses Written in a Copy of Beowulf

‍Sometimes I ask myself the reasons why
I'm driven, with no hope of satisfaction
as my night pushes onward now, to try
and learn the language of the roughneck Saxon.
Used up by years, my memory begins
to lose its grip upon the uselessly
repeated word, the way my own life spins
and soon unspins its weary history.
The soul (or so I tell myself) must have
some secret, some sufficent wherewithall
to know it does not end, that its vast, grave
circle can take all in and take on all.
Beyond this yearning and beyond this verse
it waits endless for me: the universe."

‍--JL Borges (tr AZ Foreman) via

I'm sorry.

"So much of the work of oppression is about policing the imagination."
- Saidiya Hartman via @jacobwren.bsky.social

Isn't that so.

( via / me )

Doge.

"Do you consider that virulent Pagan Goddesses and the flying torch-furies are extinct? Error of Christians! We have relinquished the old names and have no new names for them; but they are here, inextinguishable, threading the day and night air with their dire squib-trail, if we would but see. Hissing they go, and we do not hear. We feel the effects." --Lord Ormont and his Aminta

Haiku.

hurling shadows shyly
you shan't hit the cancer
still we make our stickers
stark mad in a padlock
cars roll smoothly smizeproof
smack dab for the grabbing
& gray dawns grisly

Down there.

( me / via )

Never Been Any Reason.

tupilaq
into the ether go

tupilaq
with claws of long

tupilaq
into the ether go

Europa.

"Jamie Raskin: 'There's not a fourth branch of the federal government called 'Elon Musk.'

That may be the first great line of the resistance" --@billmckibben.bsky.social

Morgiane.

( via / me )

One More Cup of Coffee.

"I was seeing something that would only make sense later – I mean, something that only later would profoundly not make sense. Only later would I understand: what seems like a lack of meaning – that’s the meaning." – Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. via @jacobwren.bsky.social

Saltarello II.

"Love & Rage

This plane we’re on is crashing.
The masks have fallen from above.
I adjust my own then help the person beside me.

*

My heart is full of love and rage.
I float and shake.
I dream and plan.

*

As a kid I wanted to be
a paleontologist, to study beings
so much larger than myself.

*

The sound of the wind has now covered
even the whine of the engines.
Flames lick the wings.

*

Later I decided to be a priest.
I audited a seminary class,
still wanting to connect to the immense.

*

Soon many questions will be answered.
Or none at all.
I grip the armrests and wait."

--Jason Crane via

Palästinalied.

( via / me )

Make Contact with UFOs and Aliens.

"DEEP SLEEP (Palindrome-Haiku)

Led north, gilded dew….
A deep sleep’s eyes peel, speed a
wedded, light rondel."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Don's Posture.

"Incredible to see a president tanking the world’s economy simply because he doesn’t understand it and is too dedicated to belligerent posturing to learn" --@astrokatie.com

How Our Love Ends.

( via / via )

Magageddon.

"bells chime
above the fish
now autumn arrives"

--@poemexe.com

Tanka.

"field notes in the zombie apocalyse"

Wellcare playing cards
cold tupilaq drooping
gaunt list management
among crashing hashtags

no sun yet sends urn
such trimglitter touching
explosive steam plume
that is plague-breath's tether

mercy in the moon

Kleptocalypse.