( via / via )

"Border surveillance has not detected any abnormal activity."

Van Gogh rats.

"a chilling moon
on the beach, dusk pours out
on the ledge"

--@poemexe.com

"When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, 'You get three in the morning and four at night.' This made all the monkeys furious. 'Well, then,' he said, 'you get four in the morning and three at night.' The monkeys all were delighted."

( via / via )

End of the day in Pompeii.

"Place is layers of story. When walk those pale chalk lines, we scuff up not only temporary dust phantoms, but a thousand tales of those who went before us. Whether wraith way or not, all our hodology is haunted. – #DAKilroy 1982 #LandscapePunk" --@hookland.bsky.social

Crazy.

"Poppies in July

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless."

--Sylvia Plath via @rabihalameddine.bsky.social

"The body matters. But it doesn't matter the way reactionary camp says it does."

( via / via )

Like a Stone.

"Gray Fog

A FOG drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea—
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead."

--Sara Teasdale via @evecastle.bsky.social

Burning.

" 'I cannot remember any of the things that were on my list of things to do. I will just have to sit here and do nothing,' said Toad." --@!frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Woolwich, London, early morning.

( via / via )

The world is falling apart so let's dance!

"You can totally see how this mf bankrupted a casino." --@professajay.bsky.social

Ongmanibamai.

"moral injury a cohort"

cyborg garbage sags
assembled large scrimshaw
the mind's bitter bonesaw
in the bashcloud crashdown
sixty shillings Shakespeare
shatters your leaves grieving
see where ruins sow bright
symptoms in our dimpse-rage

"The illusion of freedom will continue..."

( via / me )

Skathon.

"Sultan of Mars"

glairy gleet · glistens in the near dark
   stars that guide us
runoff from the roof · dark roaring
   in its wake shudders
tiptap droplets · drain randomly
   consult radar
how much measured · whether this amount
   is some kind of record

Celestial Sign.

Dibs on the driest corner under the viaduct.

Honeybee Elegy.

( via / via )

The Court of the Crimson King.

"I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold"

--@verybadllama.bsky.social

Tanka.

"mad king's vengeance"

through the Tesla's red glare
glean hyena noontide
geese squawking a klaxon
the spooled Occam duller
ascian groundhog groceries
grins the mad king's vengeance

in the chop ward snirtles
jester Alabaster
two-bit Batman villains
a clenched fist of henchmen
gyrate hourly newsreels
grins the mad king's vengeance

"Foreign affairs journalist David Rothkopf was more graphic: 'These aren’t tariffs,' he wrote. 'They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader'."

( via / via )

Highlands on 16mm Beaulieu R16.

all this gray
& i am still too bright
i know that ache

many fathom’d dreamcatcher

Statue of a fox.

"When we’re ancient people will ask us how we just sat there frozen like dumbass deer and let this happen AND WE STILL WON’T BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN IT." --@catvalente.bsky.social

"Though it feels strange, in this time of imperial violence and hypernationalism, to even attempt to create something that fosters a sense of shared history and culture, we view this issue as a salve and a form of resistance."

( max ernst "europe after the rain" [1940-2] / via )

Vanishing Point.

"We put tariffs on an uninhabited island full of penguins but not Russia.

Very normal administration we have here." --@angrystaffer.bsky.social

Blind leading the blind.

"Afternoon

The fear of afternoon
Is called afternoon
Old sleep uptorn,
Not yet time for night-time,
No other name, for no names
In the afternoon but afternoon.

Love tries to speak but sounds
So close in its own ear.
The clock-ticks hear
The clock-ticks ticking back.
The fever fills where throats show,
But nothing in these horrors moves to swallow
While thirst trails afternoon
To husky sunset.

Evening appears with mouths
When afternoon can talk.
Supper and bed open and close
And love makes thinking dark.
More afternoons divide the night,
New sleep uptorn,
Wakeful suspension between dream and dream--
We never knew how long.
The sun is late by hours of soon and soon--
Then comes the quick fever, called day.
But the slow fever is called afternoon."

--Laura (Riding) Jackson

A model of demurral.

( via / via )

Drottkvaett.

"Robe & Sandal Days"

oil leak ill · of wheeled maladies
ring finger shrunken · memory-shred
into pale strings tangling · strange glow
in the gray commute · mute witness
to continuing things · taskshatter
but shadowed still

"Serra’s purpose in Malaparte: A Biography is not to vindicate Malaparte, which he couldn’t do even if he wanted to..."

"Psalmanazar represented himself as a Japanese from Formosa. He published a book which contained an alphabet of his own manufacture, portraits of false gods, pictures of fictitious people, and with them engravings of imaginary shrines. It was accepted as gospel." --Edgar Saltus, The Pomps of Satan

"A metre can ‘mean’ quite different things at different times."

( via / me )

Roma Riot Ska Brigade. (Looks like this may be AI of some sort. I still think it's interesting.)

“Sometimes I feel that it is the room that writes. But it needs the hot nib of my pronoun.”

(Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal) via @yoonkim.bsky.social

Iron Horse.

"Wasa Wasa"

mustyplum sunbrittle plastic
faded · sad fact'ry
platforming sift
of irked airplane parts

study dark promises
study how not to disappear

long table under lights
where we ate languidly
newly minted money
drinking dreams in the night

study dark promises
study how not to disappear

mocking drakes
appear in the turquoise pool
all things xeric dissolve
in the xiphoid process

study dark promises
study how not to disappear

"People live in growing isolation and with the feeling of low-level dread, and these are the defining conditions of living in a secret-police state." (via @ottiliemulzet.bsky.social)

( via / me )

Short shadow puppet thread.

hazmat spider sign
carved into a hunger stone
night sky full of such stars

when will this battery cease
of stones that are the muse’s flowers

Reichenbach's Soliloquy. (via @lastpositivist.bsky.social)

"It would be nice / to interfere with the accuracy of the world."
- Lisa Robertson, Palinode via @jaconwren.bsky.social

Czerwono - Czarni - Sandwicz ( 1967 ).

( via / via )

"But the moral injury feels less acute."

" 'You’re like our Katniss!' No the fuck I am not, the book is about class struggles and set in Appalachia. I was literally born into the aristocracy😭" --@thevivllainous.bsky.social

Treatise of the Three Impostors.

"AND THE CITY STOOD IN ITS BRIGHTNESS

And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned.
And life was running out, Ruteboeuf's or Villon's.
Descendants, already born, were dancing their dances.
Women looked in their mirrors made from a new metal.
What was it all for if I cannot speak.
She stood above me, heavy, like the earth on its axis.
My ashes were laid in a can under the bistro counter.

And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned
To my home in the display-case of a granite museum,
Beside eyelash mascara, alabaster vials,
And menstruation girdles of an Egyptian princess.
There was only a sun forged out of gold plate,
On darkening parquetry the creak of unhurried steps.

And the city stood in its brighntess when years later I returned,
My face covered with a coat though now no one was left
Of those who could have remembered my debts never paid,
My shames not forever, base deeds to be forgiven.
And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned."

--Czeslaw Milosz, Selected Poems (tr by CM & Peter Dale Scott, 1980)

Dead Names, Dead Dogs.

( via / via )

"I’m tempted by the arguments that the easiness of all cultural availability does lose a certain intensity, at least potentially, to a certain set of subcultures."

meshes of the thwart
dull gelatinous path
a pus coming-forth
a kicked-through piney slat

the mist stings my face
that has no questions left
by dire minutes strafed
nonexistent address

& gas running lean
years with their brutal toll
say it's no big deal
to perish here alone

"But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark..."

" 'Frog,' asked Toad, 'did this really happen?'

'Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t,' said Frog."

--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

The White Heron.

( via / me )

"You told Cædmon, a cowherd, to use his song-making gift in your service to spread the word of God. He did. His song, his poem, Cædmon’s Hymn, was written down in the vernacular, probably at your abbey, very likely at your instigation."

"mournful wind
over quick sand
open skylight
lockdown"

--@poemexe.com

80% of all American bees.

quebrith quisling · in food & air
   the builder & dreamer drive
incongruous is in session · the dark cave
   of the rain-threatened morning
running on fumes · furlglisten
   a blurry machination
Team Quebrith · taunted by the thought of peace
   rips up just-laid floor
looking for a lost · glimmer of hopelessness

his early anth[o]logy of concrete poetry, published as a special issue of the Chicago review in 1967, remains in print.

( via / via )

Norman Rockwell on April Fools.

liberation day

no readability
libation ready

a diatribe only
a blarney idiot

bad airline toy

Most recent painting.

"bright moon
it looks very important
among the blossoming flowers"

--@poemexe.com

"...the worst music ever invented." yuk yuk

( via / via )

"The current record for the longest speech in the history of the Senate is held by the late segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes filibustering against the Civil Rights Act of 1957."

"If life gives you lemons, make giant brass church bells. Oranges: ditto." --@adamroberts.bsky.social

Penguin's Fever Dream.

"LILITH AND HADES (Palindrome-by-Word Shakespearean Sonnet)

'Rise, Lilith, see above the burning light!'
Skies hollow into empty, bleeding clouds.
Death purest, the revenge of weary night,
draws Hades where, below, the answer shrouds.

Breath steady, her resolve to follow snakes
roars measures she demands to ever hold:
Cold visions in opaque and fiery lakes;
lakes, fiery and opaque in visions cold.

'Hold ever to demands!' She measures roars.
Snakes follow, to resolve her steady breath.
Shrouds answer the Below, where Hades draws.

Night weary of revenge, the purest death;
clouds bleeding empty, into hollow skies;
light burning the Above — see Lilith rise!"

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

The Peace of Wild Things.

( via / via )

Disappeared Tracker.

"first thing
awakened by birdsong
the desire to answer
in kind"

--@sarahhina.bsky.social

Magnification.

"Philosophy is the art of thinking about things we don't know how to think about." --@keithfrankish.bsky.social

Lisbeth Reading.

( via / via )

"That sorrow ended. So might this."

"a world of dew
the melting snowman
teeth and bones"

--@poemexe.com

Tanka.

"Goldberg afternoon"

card there's cash on · bright morning
pants in my size · sold at the thrift
a walk wending · up from the haircut
months overdue · bypass the books
this redbrick · relict district
oddly apt · away fom outrage-
blazing news · none of us wanted
the belly battered · abaft splinters
of a frail future · we ferried long
did not foresee · savage downfalls
citizens shanghaied · off shivering streets
& one wearies · of wanting otherwise
of plenty planning · riven to splinters
can't process plight · unless dark lager'd
hours only · & dollars lost
a walk in sunlight · safe wand'ring
thrift & no threat · though black threnody
tells me toom · of the far boil
& stupor saves · not one wanderer

"We chatted in earnest about the unwritable book and the literary urge to fuck around and find out being no less urgent as the world burns."

( via / via )

"So, the DOGE kids intend to rewrite the social-security administration's COBOL code-base!" (thread)

"meat contraption breaking down"

scolding riddle skydark
a scant quartet banters

when it's gone, gat-lightning
a gas kettle lassos

entails black metallic
totalized fret patrol

i want to see winters

The book with Alastair Reid's famous palindrome.

"As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in one or more of its most important features." --Ruskin

Hindemith String Quartet Op. 22. (via @violanorth.bsky.social)

( via / via )

The Lady's Not For Burning.

I want my writing to do to people what catnip does to cats.

Fairly Relentless Quartet.

"zero sum game
how much a warplane rises
as bombs fall away
the air expanding
with a terrible silence"

--John Hawkhead via @evecastle.bsky.social

Jisei call.

( via / via )

"...more optimistic take, predicting that the translators will lose their jobs but the historians will survive."

“Season Finale”

When i return, it will not be to smile
At these bizarre shenanigans, or judge
By darker portals’ wisdom, how the play goes.
But let me return as one whom fresh delight
Or terrible fear can move, having partaken
Of that forgetful potion once more proffered;
I want to return as a child, with empty hands.

From Apostrophe (2002)

Pi (1998) online. Haven't seen it in forever, but i found myself thinking, "I'd rather watch Pi again, than Requiem for a Dream." ☆☆☆

"And out we flung and on we ran or reeled
Romeward. I have no memory of our way,
Only that, when at intervals the cloud
Of horror about me opened to let in life,
I listened to some song..."

--The Ring and the Book

Feuilleton on Meyrink's Prague.

( via / me )

Creation.

"The locust armies warping, on the bark" --Royston's Lycophron

Gardom's Edge Rock Art.

"DEATH ROOM BLUES

Before the songs I sang there were the songs
they came from, patent shreds
of Babel, and the secret
Nineveh of back rooms in the dark.

Hour after hour
the night trains blundered through
from towns so far away and innocent
that everything I knew seemed fictional:

the squares of light beyond the paper mill
where wolves crept from the woods and found their way
to soft spots in the slick of memory;

the boy who killed his mother in her bed
for Jesus' sake.

Small wonder that I overcame my fear
of sweetness, when the only white I knew
was first snow at the margins of the world,

and any chore is sweeter, now,
than scripture, where the hand that smoothes away
each local asterisk of stripped desire

can seem so much like something I once lost
I'm half convinced that childhood never happened."

--John Burnside, Black Cat Bone (2011)

Mother and Daughter.