Epidemic.

"starry night
the gift
for a while"

--@poemexe.com

( via / via )

"On X, Mangione followed Sam Altman, Ezra Klein, Edward Snowden, RFK, and AOC."

"Habibti Ghazal

Nineteen’s slow violence. Your arm a tusk slicing the air—whoa, habibti—
for that first Jack-and-Coke. Here we go, take it slow, habibti.

Soon, you’ll become an emergency: I.V. bag and emerald bruise.
First love hammering your door, but you’re no habibti,

no bait turned proposal. On the third page of an old journal,
the same question in pale ink: Can I be my own habibti?

You glaze-eyed. You lit like a county fair. The long twine
of a decade, hold the tattoo needle to skin and sew .

Even the sea rots here. This prop city with its prop heart.
The hot-eyed men whistling the streets: Hello, habibti.

Hello, cream. Hello, daughter of men. Hello, almost-wife.
I can’t teach you about metaphor; I’m stuck in the future. O, habibti,

I want to see those legs running. There’s the oncoming headlight of boy:
Ribcage. Fist. War. It’s time, habibti. Please, habibti. Go, habibti."

--Hala Alyan via @rabihalameddine.bsky.social

the pre- and post- nft clown show that is contemporary art.

"Growing up, I had contact with refuseniks, people who, after long fights, managed to get out of the Soviet Union. And I remember, listening to their stories, asking (paraphrased). 'when they hold all the power, what can you do?'

And I’ve never forgotten what one of them said.

'Don’t be afraid.' "

--@lauraannegilman.bsky.social

Tanka.

( via / via )

Giraffes on Horseback Salad.

"Beware: Venom mustn’t summon ever a web. " --@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Do you remember the Smash Group?

quicksand homestead flopsweat
flurry amid riddles
little pains at land's-end
alotted knack jackpot

de-extinction duck soup
doll witness to crawlspace

The Shanty in the Center of the Wound.

( via / via )

American Pie 2025.

"Consider this: My longest book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Lived, has around 120,000 words. The US version has words like colour, flavour and favourite edited to be color, flavor and favorite. There are 79 uses of the word colour, colours or coloured in the UK version. So there are four times more edits in my book than in the wolf genomes." --Adam Rutherford via @ncecire.bsky.social

"The rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election believed they were writing a new history of the United States, one that brought to life the hierarchical version of American history claimed by the Confederates before them. On that day, one of the rioters accomplished what the southern troops during the Civil War had never been able to: he carried the Confederate battle flag into the United States Capitol."

"like some of us
pale moon in
a snail"

--@poemexe.com

Season of the Witch.

( via / via )

Bomb It Again.

rogue craisin
chrysalis disco
long shadows laden
with the lies one dies from
snarleyyow
open barley beeping
birth silhouette fettered
hungry always hill-scars
henchmen vaunting pinchbeck
snarleyyow
where grim lunar lampreys
in long shadows congregate-
keepers occultdeft
carnivore clumped tarnside
snarleyyow
snarleyyow yowza

Inventing the Aelindrome.

"FIBONACCI
(Aelindrome in 1-1-2-3-5-8-13)

No sires,
a progeny of tenacious sums,
we deny, often, a progression."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

High Value Target.

( via / via )

Out East, where the wind is blowing.

" 'Toad,' said Frog, 'your pants and jacket are lying on the floor.'

'Tomorrow,' said Toad from under the covers."

--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

The pond faded.

"let's go Brandon"

mad king's court · best counsel
   skies red with burning
bad thunder · thrashing treeline
   we go about our bus'ness
grim futhark · of the granular pledge
   i build scaffolds

Creatures.

( via / via )

"Nero, famous for fiddling while Rome burned, plays heavy metal on a lyre crossed with a rocker’s axe."

CARILLON TOWERS

Oil-strewn coral,
slow carol trine.
Rat loin escrow,
allot iron screw;

nor will coaster
allow nicer sort.
Scowl in art lore.
Let iron scar low.

Worn solacer lit,
we scroll-ration;
crawl into roles.
O winter collars!

Sorrow, lilac net
no car lilt worse...
raw silent color.
Worst cell: no air.

Tell Orion's craw
creator ill now;
slow iron cartel.
Rote lion scrawl.

Clean-lit sorrow
lest narrow coil...
Twill scone roar.
Coil-strewn coral.

(1994)

An English translation of Thyestes.

The Pleistocene is empty.
All the dire wolves are here.

The Only Possible Poems. (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)

( via / via )

Serenade Melancholique.

Who could have known having a mad king is a bad thing?

Magpie Morning.

a little parking lot with various
rough patches · to rest here
like a raptor
in the twenty first twig-tor

dilemmas & stupid stories
twisted & struck by
nor can i figure to fare
elsewhere or quite otherwise

fine! i'll
shop around bare shelves
shuffle my poor papers
sharpen a pencil

Tanka.

( via / via )

Gumby triceratops.

"clarifying serum"

dire wolves prowl on Wall Street
wet elfxyster Delft-frail
mazed in surprise mischief
morth circled in turquoise

=.

"They are are eating the checks; they are eating the balances. " --@jasmineforus.bsky.social

The Shadow Ticket.

( via/ via )

"In 2023, the last year that data is available, it sourced those four metals from 79 different countries, from roughly 200 different refineries and smelters."

"The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that speak it."

💙George Orwell via @eclecticera.bsky.social

Before I was a Gazan.

"Can speak of trouble, pressure on men
Born all the time, brought forward into light
For warm dark moan.
Though heart fears all heart cries for, rebuffs with mortal beat
Skyfall, the legs sucked under, adder's bite.
That prize held out of reach
Guides the unwilling tread,
The asking breath,
Till on attended bed
Or in untracked dishonour comes to each
His natural death.

We pass our days
Speak, man to men, easy, learning to point
To jump before ladies, to show our scars:
But no
We were mistaken, these faces are not ours.
They smile no more when we smile back:
Eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils bring
News of revolt, inadequate counsel to
An infirm king.

O watcher in the dark, you wake
Our dream of waking, we feel
Your finger on the flesh that has been skinned,
By your bright day
See clear what we were doing, that we were vile.
Your sudden hand
Shall humble great
Pride, break it, wear down to stumps old systems which await
The last transgression of the sea."

--WH Auden

Southwark: 2.

( via / me )

Atmosphere of Tylos.

alien enemies act

a seance timeline
a matinee silence

eliminate a scene
maniac elite seen

emanates nice lie
nice teen malaise

see animal entice
nice steel anemia

⋈.

"Ever since I was a little girl I knew I wanted to live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape." --@prufrockluvsong.bsky.social

Message from ENIAC.

( via / via via @aliettedebodard.com )

Skathon.

"This thing with no place in language is a gauntlet the writer picks up—to carve space for the unspeakable." --Alina Stefanescu via

"Lucier’s organoids were grown on to a fine mesh of 64 electrodes, developed with a German bioengineer, allowing neural signals to be captured from multiple layers – much like a developing brain. Gingold then adapted an open-source platform to interpret this activity and generate sound, turning the artificial brain into a live, responsive performer."

"Panican"

point to point · navigation
   tin ducks trundling
nerves for the derne detour · daily swapping
   nerves for the unmarked van
bright morning brood · deep shadow
   drones in the eastern glare
bobbing & weaving · bickersome gnats
   against the frieze of habit

Yesterday in a book shop in Glastonbury.

( via / via )

"...we reckon it is fine to send Afghanistani women who have been fighting for equal rights back to Afghanistan."

"Heckument"

under-the-gun goadsome
gather loose excuses
toast dither & distance
educe startled fardels
the long shatter-shanghai

Simulacra for Bootlickers.

"All I’m saying is that President Harris wouldn’t have us looking at the futures market on a Sunday night." --@santiagomayer.com

Resurrecting the Dire Wolf.

( via / me )

A spooky walk home from the pub.

"Saw someone on Insta compare the current state of publishing to fast fashion and that is the most depressingly accurate analogy. I’ve lost count of the books I’ve DNFed whose seams are already coming apart, are missing a button, or who think one size fits all and it’s a 6 in taupe." --@joannanadin.bsky.social

"The same face recognition and IMSI tracking tech that allowed the Biden administration's Department of Justice to track down a few thousand January 6 rioters is now better-developed, and when the generative AI bubble collapses (as seems to be already happening) there is going to be a lot of surplus data center capacity that the emergent dictatorship can deploy for crunching on that data set to identify protesters."

"The Moth

Isled in the midnight air,
Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
The flame cries, 'Come!'

Lovely in dye and fan,
A-tremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
Uplifts her face:

Stares from her glamorous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
To her strange tryst."

--Walter de la Mare

Leftover Wine.

( via / via )

The Plan.

"The book of nature

   Professor of sobbing--I said to a tree--
stick of quicksilver, murmurous
linden, at the bank of the Marne, a good student
is reading in your deck of cards, in your dead foliage,
between the obvious water and the false sun,
his three of hearts, his queen of diamonds.

   Rector of the chapters of heaven,
of the ardent fly, of the manual calm there is in asses;
rector of deep ignorance, a bad student,
is reading in your deck of cards, in your dead foliage
the hunger for reason that maddens him
and the thirst for dementia that drives him wild.

   Expert in shouts, conscious tree, strong,
fluvial, double, solar, double, fanatic,
knowledgreable in the cardinal roses, totally
embedded, until blood spurts, in stingers, a student
is reading in your deck of cards, in your dead foliage,
his precocious, telluric, volcanic king of spades.

   Oh professor, from having been so ignorant!
Oh rector, from trembling so much in the air!
Oh expert, from so much bending over!
Oh linden! Oh stick murmuring by the Marne!"

--Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Vallejo

"The accelerated destruction of the United States, the global economy, and the modern liberal democratic order is underway. Yet Curtis Yarvin – Peter Thiel’s 'house philosopher,' who has been advocating such extremism for years – is disappointed." (via @mollyjongfast.bsky.social)

"autumn wind
my wind-bleached bones
pierces a cloud"

--@poemexe.com

Wharn ompiallo yeorem helmth lascade.

( via / me )

In aeternum.

"And all the next day Toad read poems to his seeds." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"While they all remain jailed in Texas, classmates leave cards on the student’s desk and hang a welcome home banner they hope will be seen."

irrevocable & blurred the sep'rate days
once crossing the Plimsoll line & lesson-dwindled
marches once avid-shared & fiery-cradled
become but stations t'ward historic ends

i want to keep this moment as it balanced
precarious & precious, on the cusp
of something almost ludicrous to grasp
in obviousness, & triumph's spectral ullage

I am swept darkly, fearfully afar
close-captured in a pentacle of beige
under cerulean battlements we lodge
& watch atrocities occurring there

stories cannot contain nor feelings jibe
i only form the prongs of a feathered barb

Necro-Karaoke.

( via / via)

Dream On.

coughtryst on the Donner trail
listicle to listicle
tripwire lackeys
swap sleepwalk for slaughter

lift my head from the hardware
slughawk dive
a buzzing in my bald ears
V2 in the violet haze

big vict'ry
crowds crease the curbs
if i were well i should like to watch
flag & crow welter

Bluesky when the sky's gray
coughtryst on the Donner trail

Take Five.

"I fail the novel again here as a reader because my thought is that the stones were never mute, and that just now on Knossos they’ve dug up a piece of ivory with 119 characters of Linear A that means we might finally decipher it. Linear A, in my lifetime, speaking! This was a great joy in a dark time to me..." --@saintsoftness.bsky.social

Maggot Brain.

( via / chesley bonestell "surface of pluto" [1944] )

Dreamers of Decadence online.

"I have laughed in despicable ways as well, but I have never confused that with proper laughter."
- Pierre Andler, The Way of Necessary Harshness via @jacobwren.bsky.social

True portrait.

“Oracular Time

In this oracular time I sense you prowl,
My glistered demon, saint upon the coals
That quake to ash beneath your waking feet.
In this oracular time, the darkness climbs
Beyond the highest rung; illimitable Grace,
All space is you and moves in muffled shriek.
In this oracular time, how dare I speak.”

–Lorita Whitehead

Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love.

( via / me )

"These little creatures were flying under the noses of dinosaurs while humans were still stardust." (via @terriwindling.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

Telling the Bees.

“And zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage” –-Alfred Noyes

"Across the world, time and time again, civil society has taken history into its own hands and written a better ending to an authoritarian story. Now it's our turn."

( tamara de lempicka "girl with gloves" [1929] / me )

Tanka.

"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’ "

--The Masque of Anarchy stanza XXXVIII via @asharangappa.bsky.social

The Raising of Lazarus.

faces remade · to mark allegiance
a noise raised · behind rife doors
bitter turquoise · teems emptiness
find dreadfare · a card on the phone

Antediluvian.