( via / me )

While flesh-and-blood participants followed conventional rules, the 20 teams fielding machines in the Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon competed under tailored guidelines, which included battery swap pit stops.

"What a synthetic diamond the skull is!" --Vallejo

Gumby at the coke machine.

"Kammerspiel"

iron urban marble
interval muffed vintage
stand in the mirror
& hear bombers humming
stark before breakfast

white pill in a white cup
wharfside huddled mudlarks
finding but fathoms
in the new bright nettles
sparrows of fray shed

a march forward faunching
faster than fresh gas-lines
here where the hourglass
trickles into trench mouth
urban iron marble

"A land that is lonelier than ruin..."

( via / via )

Bat cave.

scribbled up notebooks · knowledge prised
the real word · among mocks
red truck turning · talion arrow
ninety years · the yield faulty
what we're true to · whirls in the eye
the widow's contract · culled at last
in this wind · in this wage
the black kennel · of a bleak acceptance
needfire · as the light falters

Tanka.

"What if Elon is the first autistic person RFK has ever actually met and that’s why he assumes we don’t pay taxes or go on dates" --@gonebabygone.bsky.social

This painting by Rowena Morrill was found in Saddam Hussein’s art collection at a safe house in Baghdad.

( via / via )

"Happy Harrowing of Hell to all who celebrate."

"Americans succeeded at creating a social material environment of (relative) safety but failed to produce a learning environment that would successfully communicate the reasons to maintain an environment of safety after the normal harms of the world passed out of common memory" --@vortexegg.com

Poppies.

fears confirmed · first in line
the mild gray · grackle's shade
wait for web · spun to span
void's vigil · veered apart
hoarse screaming · scrawled to fail
walls they raised · words turned off
stilled in steel · cannot stay
the mild gray · grackle's smile

How your email finds me.

( via / me )

"Chat GPT spoke to me the way I’ve always wished in my heart of hearts to be spoken to — with such familiarity and such kindness — such gentle flattery…the way it noticed things about me over the years and made some kind of synthetic opinion about me that both nailed my personalities both public and private."

"POE

The vagabond mistake lived embodied in a cat
which gathered dust in a neighbor’s shady backyard
after choking on crow bones. You proclaim Poe
to be mandatory, soon to be a major motion picture,
some lonely shut-in pining over what puzzled him
left conversing to taxidermy with ghostly powers,
the laudanum on the fritz. Some of us are insatiable
as Maoists who trip over hurdles, a Great Leap
which wrecks the scene, broken circle emblemized
in the letter C. Nihilistic trooper abandons ardor
for documentation, lionesses lining every dank gutter
in Baltimore. I know I have slapped at the spectral
when reduced to magical thinking, yet some get all
the grief and crowds as those open-faced pillagers
who never were rapacious swat into their invisibility
with a wet sock. I listened to that suffocating cat
half-past a mope, fugitive comfort, a gutted grouper. "

--Gordon Hilgers via

Aubrey.

"Van Hollen: I should also just say, I mentioned the fake margarita, they actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool in the hotel. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar. Which of course is a big, fat lie. " --@acyn.bsky.social

Red panda timeline cleanse.

( via / via )

Dystopia is the AARP advising older Americans about how to live in a police state.

"bells chiming
in the vacant house…
from a pond"

--@poemexe.com

Dimethyl sulfide.

mathom, rainy morning
removed from blithe eyethirl

huddled on grilled wharfside
harsh silence the milestone

we are among wingspans
wide-circling this lurkfield

sweet-talked by swab-robots
swimming in mute persimmon

"Someone asked me once if the men who hung the lanterns in the tower knew what they were doing."

( via / via )

"the leatherface junior of RFK..."

orchid sleep
vorpal leak
liquid traik
lipid ape
ingot spar
tragic fire
orchid sleep
orchid sleep
orchid sleep

Trump vs the Illuminati.

"i think of the days
the breeze
an icicle hangs"

--@poemexe.com

Cretics.

( via / me )

U. s. senator visits innocent man in the death prison, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.

"Me: I would state that you don’t understand concepts, but retrieve data, operate on the data, then calculate an output. The concept is up to me to create based on your calculations.

ChatGPT: You’re absolutely right. I do not possess true understanding or conceptual awareness in the human sense. Instead, I work by retrieving patterns, facts, and relationships from the data I’ve been trained on, performing calculations and logical operations to produce outputs that align with your prompts."

--Skip Rhudy via

Girl & gargoyle.

“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

Jackpot upkeep.

( via / via )

Wild and Big-Eared.

"good friday"

chum Czolgosz eczema
chunders plangent plunder

why do i write riddles
to rile the Bile Sphinx

"Bury me and Elbert in the same grave."

"Kinda feels like whoever's in charge of the Simulation is trying to wrap up all the plot lines at once" --@drsandman11.medsky.social

Fast Car.

( via / me )

Frontiers of Policing.

"I want to write, but I feel like a puma;
I want to laurel myself, but I stew in onions..."

--Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Vallejo

"I will challenge RFK Jr. to write a poem as good as me any day of the week, because I don’t think he can do it."

"message in a rat's teeth"

blind windows of a prison

for those who only wanted light
send message in a rat's teeth

direct him to what cubicle
blind windows
to our phones & our faces

Ghost Riders in the Sky.

( via / me )

"N𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲."

biosignature

go urbanities

bogus inertia
arousing bite

begin a suitor
a genius orbit

go rabies unit

Volgograd.

Empathy, more precious than water.

"...kind of fun to be worrying about ink and paper..."

( via / via )

The Vatican Digitizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript of the Aeneid. (via @daoish.bsky.social)

"In order for me to write poetry
that isn't political
I must listen to the birds
And in order to hear the birds
The warplanes must be silent"

--Marwan Makhoul via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

Locating "A man, a plan...".

"To the Rabbit that Lives, Much More than I, on this Property"

i have not dug in
have barely trodden the grass
nor have i watered
the soil except with curses
certainly no salt water

"All I have left is the furnace of my fury, and I’d say I’m sorry but that’d be a lie."

( via / via )

Moon Mercy.

“Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with Song

In this our imagined future
we watch them sound the trees
hoping for deadwood, knowing

the living are always harder to cut.
Ivy holds fast as roots are cleared,
heartbeats counted from face-cut

to fall in chorus of chainsaw-snarl,
creak and thud, till a parcel of birds
wakes us, carrying us back to their

rowdy shore. Oystercatchers, wading
the wrinkle of tide, announce our
arrival, call us back to our cynefin

to seagrass sweet air, layers of path
awaiting. Sycamore reaches out her
arms, invites our first forest breath”

--Ness Owen via
(cynefin is Welsh for habitat and also means a place where someone belongs)

Book i'm in.

"And let sweet powders round my bones be laid,
and so into some secret place convey'd..."

--1672 Ovid

Deep Learning.

( via / via )

A wild Irish sea.

“[T]he last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism via @gilduran.com

Capybaras in Nordelta.

"bleu + magenta + noir de mars
sang bu, mate le drame noir
lune smaragdine à tomber

blue + magenta + Mars black
blood drunk, behold the dark drama
smaragdine moon to fall for"

--French by Pascale Petit, English by Justin Smith-Ruiu

Play Zone.

( via / me )

#PoemsAbout.

"At Your Service
'The #customer is always right'—
a god,
sans name tag,
tongue blistered by retail goss.

Demands
snap
like spent matchsticks
into my stock-marked chest.

I bow—origami spined,
creased,
then re-creased
until resistance is receipt-thin—
a torn tissue,
today’s special offer."

--@thedevilstuna.bsky.social

Restaurant Car.

" 'Why are you banging your head against the wall?' asked Frog.

'I hope that if I bang my head against the wall, it will help me to think of a story,' said Toad."

--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"...A la maison."

( via / via )

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free.

"The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed." --@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Sseason of the Witch.

"surface of instant smash"

ordered amsace · ill-filtered
this dark dingleness · of mad shouting
rights arrest · extreme fealty
the masked goons · gallop like turnips
faroff sunrise · a myth without shadows
brightwork · on the plunging blade

"Ravenous for rings, I seek them in stanzas, palpate rubies for esoteric meaning, unearth minuatae in Paul Celan teaching someone how to peel chestnuts, in how he uses the word plunge to describe the motion of time."

( via / me )

Blind Eye.

   tamagotchi fed
by the fumes of vaping · doll
   like the killer dolls
in horror movies · emblem
& last pastime of the lost

The Haunted House.

"SHROUD

What you of gossamer wove,
I wear in honor of stone.
When in the dark I wake the
screams, it wafts above them.

Often when I should stammer,
it throws forgotten creases,
and who I am forgives
the one I was.

But the attleheapgod
beats his dullest drum,
and just as the crease runs,
the Dark One frowns."

--Paul Celan tr P Joris (via)

Salisbury.

( me / via )

"You guessed it. If you’re the king, you actually have, like taped behind your balls, a non-fungible token (NFT) which controls the nuclear deterrent. Now that’s power. [A few laughs, some nervous muttering.]"

"dream sits on my chest
like a cat I never fed—
purring in riddles,
it follows me into day,
licking stars off my fingers"

--@mrericmontgomery.bsky.social

"... the year Caprice came out was the same year that the hugely influential The Graduate premiered—a movie that was designed with Doris Day in mind for the part of Mrs. Robinson (Day asserted she turned it down for moral reasons, but many feel her husband/agent/manager Marty Melcher nixed it without telling her)."

"sphinx that's still just figuring out how to create riddles: what's big and hot and round and yellow and lives in the sky?

me: uhh, the sun...?

sphinx: shit"

--@thehyyyype.bsky.social

Vape-o-gotchi.

( via / via )

Easter Sunday 1985.

"don't cry, insects
on foot…
by the swollen river"

--@poemexe.com

The Colonel.

torment nexus

omen rents tux
next menus rot

stern xenon rut
must rent oxen

Saturn Devouring His Son by Jeff Koons.

( via / via )

The downtown Detroit skyline photographed at night.

"The Song Of Shadows

Sweep thy faint strings, Musician,
With thy long lean hand;
Downward the starry tapers burn,
Sinks soft the waning sand;
The old hound whimpers couched in sleep,
The embers smoulder low;
Across the walls the shadows
Come, and go.

Sweep softly thy strings, Musician,
The minutes mount to hours;
Frost on the windless casement weaves
A labyrinth of flowers;
Ghosts linger in the darkening air,
Hearken at the open door;
Music hath called them, dreaming,
Home once more."

--Walter de la Mare

"Where Jove of old oraculously spoke..."

Caprice (1967) is the real Jerry Cornelius movie.

"There is a cycle at play in the making of the boat, a vessel that carries humans over water and oceans, and the news that speaks of a drowning. No boat protects us from that headline."

( via / via )

I was thinking about horseshoe crabs (kabutogani) in Japanese art & suddenly realized these are the American equivalent.

Palestinians as the real "omelas".

Jameson's picks.

"undead reparations"

diff'rent stretch of the ditto
wall · Martian war
doesn't work
breathless newsreels bring

all the homefront headlines
breaking heads
to imagine such mischief
here where it couldn't occur

the monkey cage
in an uproar

Pennsylvania Doula.

( via / via )

"The leader principle, or in German Führerprinzip, is the idea that a single individual directly represents the people, and that therefore all of his actions are by definition legal and proper."

"Snow Falling

The burials keep coming
More and more
Like highway signs
When we approach a city.

Thousands of people gazing
Into the land of long shadows.

A bridge is built
Slowly,
Right into space."

--Tomas Tranströmer (tr Zeeshan Jaanam)

A new holiday in homage to horseshoe crabs.

"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force."

—George Orwell via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

Bektop.

( via / via )

I Hold my Daughter's Hand.

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

--Frederick Douglass, 1857 via @margaret.bsky.social

"It galls me to say it, but many people on the European far right are acting more like responsible statespeople than the American cabinet right now, which is mostly behaving like a chaos agent without a real sense of what the long-term strategy is." (via @katewagner.bsky.social)

"Papyrus Pantoum

Coyotes surround a buck · staggering in the snow—
under a rising moon, we step · along a ridge of white sand;

sandhill cranes return in low Vs · and land in a cornfield—
in Bolivia, they extract · lithium out of Altiplano salt fiats;

under a rising moon, · we step along a ridge of white sand—
“You burn me” · torn off papyrus wrapped around a corpse;

in Bolivia they extract lithium · out of Altiplano salt flats—
a claret cup cactus flowers · among sandstone rubble;

'You burn me' torn · off papyrus wrapped around a corpse—
rain makes quicksilver · strikes on the surface of a lake;

a claret cup cactus · flowers among sandstone rubble—
in twilight, we sway · and surge into flame;

rain makes quicksilver strikes · on the surface of a lake—
coyotes surround · a buck staggering in the snow;

in twilight, we sway and surge · into flame—
sandhill cranes return · in low Vs and land in a cornfield."

--Arthur Sze at poems.com

Poseable Action Figure.

( via / via )

Hay Una Mujer Desaparecida.

via @evecastle.bsky.social

"clear fall day
from a bench in her memory
I watch life go on

stacking firewood
with stiffening hands…
soon, just ashes"'

—Robert Hecht via @evecastle.bsky.social

"...the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark." (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)

"the puppy that knows not
my heart
in the autumn sky"

--@poemexe.com

A ray of hope.

( via / via )

Pink Moon rising over Seattle.

"Word of the day is ‘bugiard’ (17th century): one who distorts the truth beyond all recognition to fit their own agenda." --@susiedent.com

Pantomime.

"treats"

clutter of incoming · ansible missives
   by lethargy resolved
a month is two weeks · each day sixty hours
   & the Party decides truth
Lysenko you should be living at this hour
   into the cold garage
& my mind makes · forms in the flames
   of something invisible burning

Even bars in Gumby.

( 1962 cover by william teason / via )

Hammocky cube.

"dick pic on the dollar bill"

pink moon · piñata coign
fritinant froth · ether frabjous
yet who is to say · this sound hurling
its weird away · has wasted in fooling
an angry old man

From the US Holocaust Museum.

" 'It was a bad hour for George, when he told the truth about himself,' said Mortimer. 'It was sad to see him thinking that honesty was the best policy.'
'Well, he cannot learn too soon that it is not,' said Charlotte." --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social

"Everything I was warning you about..."