the glittering charade hardly swerves
nor can anyone make it stop
stories tell of a hero
& a world to be saved
conventional moves
none of which show
the madness
& fanged
bite
No led Nemesis: emend Elon.
Several Durkin games. A book from 2011.
A story that is the story of our failure to make a story, can only be told in terms of heroes & monsters.
"What Michalina did with reverse painting was entirely distinct from the stiff religious imagery of traditional Polish glass painting." (via feuilleton)
"Unresolved (palindrome)
Sun igniting.
Is it fire?
Lit a love of foe volatile.
Rift is igniting in us."
--@palindrometry.bsky.social
"Sea Change
I Throwing the Stone
The sea is a stark · Sargasso still-life
choked with wrack · in rafts of torpor.
Great skeins of eelgrass · skirt the reefs
round islands slumped · in lumpen stupor.
As mud-bound moon-snails · sink in their spirals,
slimes slide with the tide · where it puddles the pebbles.
I test one for heft. My stifled mind mills
with storms and maelstroms. The sea stays still,
unruffled. Not even · reflections tremble.
It’s close and clammy. Before I know it,
I've thrown the stone. A crash... I climb…
Winds lash and the splash · has become a tsunami.
II Awaiting the Wave
Black, you broach as you · breach the horizon,
fall, lunge forward, surge · long miles landward,
wide killer-pod wake. You close like an omen.
Head-crack on rock you · crash-land, transform
to migrations of sea-birds, surf-white and fanned,
to the wall of an iceberg, an imminent icefall.
Thirty feet up, from lobster-claw fingers
I cling to this cliff · in the pall of your power,
pilloried by consequence, waiting your sentence,
your cliffhanger verdict · of vapor or vengeance."
--John Beaton via Forgotten Ground Regained
"Opposite Guar-Kala is a city of the dead: the sprawling necropolis of Mizdarkhan."
"If we could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become." --The Counterfeiters
"They suggested the creation of 'radiation cats' or 'ray cats' whose fur color would change when exposed to high levels of radiation." (use 12ft.io) More. A 2017 contest.
"I think of the warmth spun by the word
Around its center the dream called ourselves"
-- Tristan Tzara, L’homme aproximatif via @alinaetc.bsky.social
Fox.
"o autumn winds
the red
lost to sight"
--@poemexe.com
Starting to understand the coming war, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.
purposes scarp-scattered
excuse drumly fumbling
little squares alluring
release flaccid klaxons
light of minions spools
veil of cribs
car out front with frore curbs
ferry me O who harrows
the airspace of onset
& upside flerd's dumpster
light of minions spools
veil of cribs
Slowly corroding on the rocks at Eggerness Point.
"strong wind—
flowers and leaves turn
inside out
a door slams and I welcome
a visit from my mother"
--Kirsty Karkow via @evecastle.bsky.social
Aircraft Boneyard, Tucson, Arizona - Satellite Photograph.
"Clubbing baby seals is next." --@johnsipher.bsky.social
"no need for Krasnov"
string that broke · to the closet light
after i had fixed it
hale harbinger · on habitat falls
shadow of the talon
hum in the sharp dark
thrashing sea of threats · seething around
what passed for a rock
years of not yielding · yammer like a small dog
to look back at them
hum in the sharp dark
place our hopes · in placid nook
etherwise or paper
a scouring sky · skittishly lours
& these black letters
hum in the sharp dark
"...his books resemble an edifice of rare stones shattered by an earthquake..."
"The Thing That Eats the Heart
The thing that eats the heart comes wild with years.
It died last night, or was it wounds before,
But somehow crawls around, inflamed with need,
Jingling its medals at the fang-scratched door.
We were not unprepared: with lamp and book
We sought the wisdom of another age
Until we heard the action of the bolt.
A little wind investigates the page.
No use pretending to the pitch of sleep;
By turnings we are known, our times and dates
Examined in the courts of either/or
While armless griefs mount lewd and headless doubts.
It pounces in the dark, all pity-ripe,
An enemy as soft as tears or cancer,
In whose embrace we fall, as to a sickness
Whose toxins in our cells cry sin and danger.
Hero of crossroads, how shall we defend
This creature-lump whose charity is art
When its own self turns Christian-cannibal?
The thing that eats the heart is mostly heart."
--Stanley Kunitz (via Language Hat)
"It’s almost as if we belong to a rival religion."
"Israel has killed more than 700 Palestinians in the last 48 hours and there is almost zero coverage by American news outlets" --@akelalacy.bsky.social
Where the frozen gesture falls away.
"A political movement defined by its hostility toward expertise, knowledge, and education — and bulk rejection of empathy and empirical reality — is using the full force and power of state and federal government to harass and attempt to demoralize people of learning and institutions of education." --David Dewitt via
"Showdown at the Institute of Peace"
all-aftermaths future
cold in the calmed half-light
eyes kindle
pilgrim of the blue blast
hope against hope
blithers hard
you drive drugged on
sounds & sentiments
drover's cell
Blowing up the Friendship Hospital.
Blade Runner soundtrack thread.
"The Lady with the Heron"
I walk athirst
In a month of rain;
Drought I learned
At the feet of a heron.
Green trees, full rivers;
Athirst I went,
With a shrieking bird
In the drawn breath.
At the only spring
When I went for water
I met a lady
And thirst I had none.
I say, at the fountain
There I met a lady,
She led a blue heron
By the beck of her hand.
Moon-wise the owl is,
The wren not tame,
But I unlearned patience
At the feet of a heron.
So deep the water
As those her eyes
Kissed I never
At the lip of April.
Drink, sir, she said,
Of so sweet water.
The bird was blind
That she led by a shadow.
Lady, I said,
Thirst is no longer.
But she led my eyes
By the beck of her hand.
Of her eyes I drank
And no other water.
Hope I unlearned
At the feet of a bird.
And saw no face
When I bent there;
Such saw I never
In other water.
My lips not wet,
Yet was she gone
Leading a heron
By the shade of her hand.
And my eyes thirst
On the birdless air;
Blindness I learned
At the feet of a heron.
--W S Merwin
If it can be put into words, it's not a Vision Quest.
"This shell was the fantasy world."
This futuristic car is old now.
The white chrysanthemum
is disguised by the first frost.
If I wanted to pick one
I could find it only by chance.
--Oshikochi no Mitsune (tr Rexroth)
White chrysanthemums,
lost amidst the handiwork
of this first snowfall:
if i tried to pick one i
could find it only by chance.
(my tr.)
Martin Johnson Heade, Thunderstorm on Narragansett Bay, 1868.
Someone passes,
and while I wonder
if it is he,
the midnight moon
is covered with clouds.
--Lady Murasaki (tr Rexroth)
Night in the garden;
someone passes. I wonder
if it could be him
as the moon, till now unseen,
disappears behind a cloud.
(my new tr.)
Steps in the garden.
And while i wonder whether
it is he i seek,
the terrible plenilune
slides behind a cloud curtain.
(10/02)
"The best revenge against these grifters and bigots and billionaires and bullies is to live well, richly, together." (via @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social)
"Like an octopus getting out of a sports bra, so are the days of our lives." --@girlawhirl.bsky.social
Uchi.
Thin-skinned for the basest of reasons: a surplus of privilege.
"NPC"
quid rosary · fremd waiting
words on the wall · scroll fitfully
not yet used to · robot typos
chantpleure where · plant the seeds
of new language · luring piper
bards & dayscribes · dispossessed
my phone furnished · too few gadgets
valets lean with · pitying looks
out there airspace · angrily teems
gray here · agroof pilgrim
early enough · narcs the vigil
subcaf sained · sort of thinking
prior presidents · that proved dismal
why we keep on · cutting ourselves
march mecha · to a mighty fall
goofy this game · gungho crashtest
& limed dissident · delving tiles
on the eighth floor · out of fleers
"What does Vladimir Putin have on you?"
"U Klaatu"
not as jackboots jolting
jangle on swerve nerve-ends
things you refrain from
doors knocked · in the tender night
harsh-fraught symbols make homesick
the hills green of a meanwhile
ever receding
& fresh outrage · for the ill friend
these jackboots' tinned thunder
Therion Lite smiting
nesh acquiescent
but a rage reared · beyond runing
raggeder ruched question
for a roach-fast 'croachment
owing to Caesar
roof, ramp, · & rollicking road
The only thing America manufactures anymore is new nonsense-syllable names for pharmaceuticals.
scour fringe with flickers · blanket nescience
pea soup sifted · equinox axed
up in the high floors · breaking things
hard to keep · at it in the dwarf workshop
burning winter afternoons
Just because it's mostly blanks doesn't mean they're not shooting off cannons in our front yard.
Joan's scenes in The Caretakers.
"To a certain ugly cloud-shape, goblin-shred" --The Ring and the Book
"morning dew
on the neighbor's grass
a newspaper
in its pale neon sleeve
holding all the world's ills"
--@evecastle.bsky.social
Spiral Staircase of the Old Hotel.
"We tend to think of Anglo-Saxon poetry as issuing from the uniform voice of the great poet Anonywulf."
"Hasbrouck and the Rose
Hasbrouck was there and so were Bill
And Smollet Smith the poet, and Ames was there.
After his thirteenth drink, the burning Smith,
Raising his fourteenth trembling in the air,
Said, 'Drink with me, Bill, drink up to the Rose.'
But Hasbrouck laughed like old men in a myth,
Inquiring, 'Smollet, are you drunk? What rose?'
And Smollet said, 'I drunk? It may be so;
Which comes from brooding on the flower, the flower
I mean toward which mad hour by hour
I travel brokenly; and I shall know,
With Hermes and the alchemists—but, hell,
What use is it talking that way to you?
Hard-boiled, unbroken egg, what can you care
For the enfolded passion of the Rose?'
Then Hasbrouck’s voice rang like an icy bell:
'Arcane romantic flower, meaning what?
Do you know what it meant? Do I?
We do not know.
Unfolding pungent Rose, the glowing bath
Of ecstasy and clear forgetfulness;
Closing and secret bud one might achieve
By long debauchery—
Except that I have eaten it, and so
There is no call for further lunacy.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, I devoured
The mystic, the improbable, the Rose.
For two nights and a day, rose and rosette
And petal after petal and the heart,
I had my banquet by the beams
Of four electric stars which shone
Weakly into my room, for there,
Drowning their light and gleaming at my side,
Was the incarnate star
Whose body bore the stigma of the Rose.
And that is all I know about the flower;
I have eaten it—it has disappeared.
There is no Rose.'
Young Smollet Smith let fall his glass; he said,
'O Jesus, Hasbrouck, am I drunk or dead?' "
--Phelps Putnam (1931) via
Remembering the Port Huron Statement. [This is the 60s i identify with--not the fashions or the music--& which has been nearly obliterated in the retelling...]
"Looking behind me as the roller coaster slows down: well Clarice have the lambs stopped screaming" --@prufrockluvsong.bsky.social
"the funniest thing about JFK assassination theories is that conspiracists accidentally discovered a seedy nexus of intelligence agencies, organized crime, and political extremists and then judged it irrelevant because it didn't provide proof of what they were originally looking for" --@aelkus.bsky.social
Cool map, to what i don't know.
"late snow
scattering
my sister's ashes"
--@marjoleinrotsteeg.bsky.social
"gala"
faded mask · rista aroma
more & more one thing
cold garage · occult frame
used to know what to do
used to have yarons · to let things lie
slippage was minimal
iceberg aeons · only an inch
& the tradewinds winsome
"Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one." (via @leaveitalone.bsky.social via @katewagner.bsky.social)
All these crime fighters on TV & yet no one in real life is fighting the crime in front of our very eyes.
“You perceive what dies with you. What lasts cannot be grasped.”
(Edmond Jabès, The Book of Resemblances) via @yoonkim.bsky.social
Sailor Moon is Tired of Fighting Evil.
1.
Loab fhtagn
aviyohatta
imperiled cease-fire
shattered bricks rebroken
a breeze pricks the lesion
woofus slated for erasure
2.
brittle cairns
who know no more than i do
by orc-light
glass of fairy green
caregivers' judo
extraordinary rendition
a dandier territory: no nix
Literature Clock. (via @presentcorrect.bsky.social)
“WHAT SEWS
this voice? On what
does it sew, this
voice
here-and-now, elsewhere?
The abysses are
sworn fast to White, from them
rose
the snow needle,
swallow it,
you order the world,
that counts
as much as nine names
named kneeling,
Tumuli, Tumuli,
you
hurtle away, you the quick,
come
into the kiss,
a fin-beat,
steady,
clears the bays,
you cast
anchor, your shadow
leaves you stranded in the copse,
arrival,
ancestral,
a beetle recognizes you,
you are about
to happen,
grubs
spin around you,
the Great
Sphere
permits your passage,
soon
the leaf knits its vein to yours,
sparks
must pass through,
for one spell of short breath,
there should be a tree for you, a day,
it deciphers the number,
a word, with all its green,
goes into itself, transplants itself,
follow it”
–Washburn & Guillemin’s Celan
December Day. (via @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social)
Book of Lewi. (via @memexikon.bsky.social)
"All of these existential notes and blogs won’t even exist and none of this will be here and nobody will see this page, and all of this work and writing and thought will be erased and gone, like the way we left MySpace and Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, all gone now, our poems and posts, our notes and stories, songs and art, like rusting abandoned shopping trolleys in the lake of the lost forest of time covered in moss and frogs spawn. " --Salena Godden via @vianegativa.us)
What's the darkest stuff you've got?
"In the Midnight Hour (magnetic poem)
a thousand recalls
tongue
moan
whisper
shadow sleeping storms
cry hot man-made howls"
--Charlotte Hamrick via
This is Grace. (via @vianegativa.us)
"acid godzilla"
geesewhinny
gravel shadow
into soft
carpetstep gray
& the words
of flickerwhirl
kill kismet
Monkey Riding a Four-Headed Beast.
"POEM (Palindrome)
Spill a poem:
Its selfless
sensuousness,
selfless time,
opal lips...."
--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"stillness
a squirrel burrows
stillness
cool spring breeze"
--@poemexe.com
"Krasnov Avon Sark"
pylons apparelled · in pale cerulean
at firstlight fossick · no fiercer lure
& tires' growl is telling
terrible the arrow
empire or ageing · body boding
rust in the mailbox
steer into glare · glistening new
world without will · to right any wrong
fact'ries furnish victors
fangplethora deathwards
cannot mourn · the moult of populace
ongoing ruthless
overpass reveries · rather droll than not
you get used to · yelled at by drivers
clouds bring to the broadsword
brutal drop their poppy
innocence & wind-dance
“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
Now that the Neanderthals. (this is metaphorical--i'm pro-N.thal)
"Digital entities perceive virus-ridden computers the way we perceive ruins: as strangely lovely things, as beautiful decay, as order vanishing under nature's cloak" --@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
