( via / me )

Nothing Else Matters.

curating chaos · blobs occur
   on my debt forgiveness journey
by the turquoise pool · apparel mist
   voices devoured by time

will this hour ebb · idolous spurned
   leaves blown in the gutter
linkrot levied · alike with the homes
   in a deadly zone erected

Long Day's Journey into Night.

I pace the English language like a leopard's cage.

You can always say no.

( via / via )

Pogibation (& yet nostalgic now).

"Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth,
odourless myrrh borne by the wandering kings."

--Geoffrey Hill

Cat & shooting stars.

"At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps."

--Hart Crane

"What we of the Mobility love to watch, is any of the great Motrices, Greed, Lust, revenge, taken out of all Measure, brought quite past the scale of the ev'ryday world, approaching what we always knew were the true Dimensions of Desire."

( via / via )

"In my experience, so much human conflict is rooted not in our inability to be understood by others — but in our inability to make ourselves understood, and to understand others ourselves."

   In short, I have nothing with which to express my life except my
death.
   And, after all, at the end of graded nature and the sparrow in
bloc, I sleep, hand in hand with my shadow.
   And, upon descending from the venerable act and from the other
groan, I rest thinking about the inexorable march of time.
   Why the rope, then, if air is so simple? What is the chain for,
if iron exists on its own?
   César Vallejo, the accent with which you love, the language with
which you write, the soft wind with which you hear, only know of you
through your throat.
   César Vallejo, fall on your knees, therefore, with indistinct pride,
with a bridal bed of ornamental asps and hexagonal echoes.
   Return to the corporeal honey comb, to Beauty; aromatize the
blossomed corks, close both caves to the enraged anthropoid; mend,
finally, your unpleasant stag; feel sorry for yourself.
   For there is nothing denser than hate in the passive voice, no
stingier udder than love!
   For I am no longer able to walk, except on two harps!
   For you no longer know me, unless instrumentally, fastidiously
I follow you!
   For I no longer issue worms, but breves!
   For I now implicate you so much, you almost become sharp!
   For I now carry some timid vegetables and others that are fierce!
   Because the affection that ruptures at night in my bronchia, was brought
during the day by hidden deacons and, if when my morning begins I am pale,
it is because of my work; and if when my night begins I am red, because of
my worker. This equally explains this weariness of mine and these spoils, my
famous uncles. This explains, finally, this tear that I offer as a toast to the
happiness of men.
   César Vallejo, it is hard
to believe that your relatives are so late,
knowing that I walk imprisoned,
knowing that you lie free!
What dazzling and shitty luck!
César Vallejo, I hate you with tenderness!"

--Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Vallejo

"I know two immigration lawyers, the kind who are devoted to helping immigrants stay in the US, and they have been preparing for this for a while, being arrested for doing their legal, by-the-books jobs."

"Algorithms are like aunties who once heard you liked a thing and then base all future presents on that." --@christinamartin.bsky.social

"I'm going to teach it anyway."

( via / via )

"It emerged on Friday that the pontiff had said he was told by the Virgin Mary that he should be buried at the church in one of the less salubrious neighbourhoods of Rome rather than in the more grandiose surroundings of St Peter’s which is where popes in the modern era have been laid to rest."

" 'We must stop eating!' cried Toad as he ate another." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Hazy Shade of Winter.

"vampire hunter hunter"

full fumarole goalpost
affordances sizzle

the afternoon infall

Kintsugi.

( via / via )

Autobesity.

"drivethrough Mexican"

you nab crunch now
early warming ingot
narghile angst
for the shuttered shape newsreels

glittering ghosts hurtle
shake gulf

It's odd.

"I like how the CIA deputy director's son getting killed fighting for Russia because he loved Lord of the Rings is like the 7th most outlandish story of the week" --@nameshiv.bsky.social

Headline from Hell.

( via / via )

A dry-colored vine.

In the politics of fantasy, only the feeling of blame is real.

Thinking about tomorrow.

"spiny penny"

shadowy shark turquoise
eating up neighbors
ashamed of moon taming
doing the numbers
rubber ducky dieback
sealing in amber
in the dust-hutch touchdown
perfect caliber
catenary turquoise

Hacienda de los Ángeles. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

( via / via )

Suspiria.

battering the panes
of the lamp--mothlike worry
(nothing can be done)

watching the great trees topple
from across the calm valley

"I wouldn’t say it’s a horror movie at all, despite the vampires."

"power out
the feral cat
falling"

--@poemexe.com

Shiver of the Vampires. ☆ ☆ ☆

( via / via )

Monsters in the garden of heroes, detailed oil painting, hieronymous bosch.

“AI is when a computer thinks it is in a band.” –@ibogost

PH-118.

“POEM ONLY

Poem talking silence not dead death
Security not from danger drowning
Only from fear and fearlessness
Lasting weakness stronger than prompt strength

Pale health like tranquil mourning
Mourning nothing or rejoicing
Wholeness without whole
Whole of wholeness

Self-pitiless illumination
A shrunken world no pride no after-shame
Inhospitable welcome deaf the door
To who is not within.

Cruel if kind and kind if cruel
And all if nothing.”

–Laura (Riding) Jackson

Path through but not out.

( via / via )

Revenants.

“Full Moon (Santa Barbara)

I listened, there was not a sound to hear
In the great rain of moonlight pouring down,
The eucalyptus trees were carved in silver,
And a light mist of silver lulled the town.

I saw far off the grey Pacific bearing
A broad white disk of flame,
And on the garden-walk a snail beside me
Tracing in crystal the slow way he came.”

–Sara Teasdale

Things that won't be televised.

“A broadcast about wolves, with recordings of their howls. What a language! The most heartrending I know, and I shall never forget it. From now on, in moments of excessive solitude, I need merely recall those sounds to have the sense of belonging to a community.”-E. M. Cioran (via @cielosueloastro)

Gumby triceratops.

( via / via )

Hot Generation. (via @wendyo.bsky.social)

"Recently, I was in east Chad, where most of the people I met had seen loved ones murdered or had been raped or had been shot or saw bodies piled along the road from el-Geneina to Adre on the border with Sudan." --Patrick Freyne via

Et (Densha).

"the cozy judge & the hanging judge"

grunion dreams of Grimscribe
to grok furtive urticants
rust is the one waste proof

root indigo, pinned down
word without right wardrobe
rewilded hearse thyrsus

Malfunction.

( via / via )

"Jane Collier, meanwhile, wrote a savage satire — way more biting than anything Henry Fielding ever managed — called The Art of Ingeniously Tormenting. This is just what it sounds like: a handbook on how to abuse anybody you have power over."

"cascade of arrows"

camphor fare
venomramfeezled
swabs, bubbly curfew

a page from a Bible
to roll up this smoke

ICE arrest quotas.

"Cherishable fact that I just learned from a biography of Vaughan Williams: when he was first married, the ceremony was performed by none other than the famous Reverend Spooner.

I wonder if it was followed by a performance of the Sondon Lymphony, or possibly even his opera The Koisoned Piss." --@jonathancoe.bsky.social

"The Civil War was a religious war in addition to a racial, economic, and political one." (via @hollybfletcher.bsky.social)

( via / me )

There's a reason.

"Word of the day is
'quockerwodger' (19th century):

a puppet individual whose strings of action are pulled entirely by someone else."

--@jodiepp1948.bsky.social

Life expectancy.

"storied venue"

bad & broken sleep
looks like it could rain
flood this green
luck we can't escape
flood this green
luck we can't escape
all our pretties hid
case the christthugs come
copter hymn
streaks of still-fresh blood
copter hymn
streaks of still-fresh blood
writing it all down
nothing else to do
tattered view
virulent baboon
tattered view
virulent baboon
bad & broken sleep

looks like it could rain

The Soft Machinery of Collapse.

( via / via )

Fence of Sticks.

"the zombie's cucumber"

   bug hissing
in the big dark
   fishing night
not to escape
   voice gravel
degrade vengeance
   ripple slide
riddle slander
   & dispute
the wrong pitbull
   bug hissing
in the big dark

"McKinsey is to the middle class what flesh-eating bacteria is to healthy tissue."

"That the head of a cosmpolitan but authoritarian religious hierarchy had more feeling for the world's displaced and persecuted than nearly all the rich world's 'liberal' politicians is an indictment of what nationalism does to our brains and our hearts." --@crookedfootball.bsky.social via

Wooden nickel.

( via / via )

Distractingly white.

"I have a buddy who’s former federal law enforcement and is now a lawyer. So I called him and asked him if federal agencies have the technological capability to shut someone’s Wifi down without them knowing, and if that’s something they do. And he said ‘Hell yes.’ He said they do it all the time when they want to have an informal interview with somebody and don’t want to be recorded." --Clayton Jackson via

Situationship.

"when i have gone away
one crow
this autumn evening"

--@poemexe.com

Nice night on the river.

( via / via )

Halt Me.

patch of Theseus
me remembering Nixon
dark clouds half the sky

what else didn't they tell me
as the deep mirror parted

"In its broad scope and, despite its many different themes & settings, much of my fiction attempts to evoke the kind of light–and everything associated with it–this striped curtain offers when closed on a bright morning."

"$5k pls fuck off you couldn’t pay me $500,000 to bring a child into this" --@kimmysunshine.bsky.social

Butt music.

( via / me )

One foot in the material world.

"In my silence there are thousands of blood-soaked desires."

—Ghalib via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

You can't lick a badger twice.

"Sun as I:
no sin:
unisons
are deified.
never evened dust’s all Infinite
rifts all
Lined dust,
solemn in me.
Losses send star;
a carat;
sadnesses;
solemn,
in me lost.
Sudden, ill:
last fire,
tin,
if nil:
last sudden,
ever even
deified eras;
no sin:
unison is an us."

--@merlinaacevedo.bsky.social

I don't think it gets more Second Gilded Age than this.

( via / via )

The Last Slender-Billed Curlew.

"pink crescent"

lightning splash
behind the gray veil

rain of former days

maybe a line
   on a wall--
dream of injury jackpots

Zombie.

"...while there are many plausible candidates for the deep-historical event that might be nominated as the true Fall, I am attracted to the idea that it was the Cambrian explosion of 540 million years ago." --Justin Smith-Ruiu

"...as soon as I say something negative about somebody, I go to a dinner party and I’m seated next to them accidentally."

( via / via )

Arcaicam Esperantom.

"Today, a quenched flame has gotten into the oracle"

--Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Vallejo

Some poem-objects.

frailest silo saves me
sound of geese policing

Kriegspiel's gilded splinters

Depictions of Europa.

( via / via )

Bareback on the Ox.

"REMARKABLE REPORT BY SOME POETIC AGENTS

There was from March 3rd to April 3rd the appearance of reality.
Jake said welcome. Perceived by lyrical action
All’s leader. Amen to all. Doves conquer all.
In the vivid convention of an old harmony
A man shouted out, involved in outcry.
Man is a third class road. (Which I myself,
Problem of task subterranean to fact,
Perceive and show by means of grievous survey.)
A man shouted out, involved in outcry.
Chiefly by accident (which I myself prefer)
Freedom is reached continually. The king
Paid tribute to rebellion and astronomy.
A man shouted out, involved in outcry.
Death (its apparatus through the anxious rafters)
Appoints the Spring. Relate, by means of grief
Your own fled court to its once-pleasant country.
A man shouted out, involved in outcry.
Where animals sheltered in a high houseboat
A man shouted out, involved in outcry."

--W S Graham

"But now that poetry has regained its claims to verticality, the aerial exhilaration of language itself becomes its own authority."

" 'Is there something in Horace that twines itself about the heart? Perhaps it is his being his own worst enemy. That seems to be thought an appealing attribute.'
'The trouble with those who have it,' said Charlotte, 'is that they are bad enemies to other people, even if not the worst.' " --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social

Waters on Ivy.

( via / via )

How we got here (one of them).

"killing my Tamagotchi just to feel something" --@dly.bsky.social

The two types of tickling.

"a smudge
of blackbirds swirling
into evening...
how fluid the shape
of this sorrow"

—Debbie Strange (via @evecastle.bsky.social)

"The addition of large tapioca pearls, nicknamed 'boba' in reference to the busty assets of Hong Kong actress and sex symbol Amy Yip, came in the late ’80s when a Chen Shui Tang staff member, Lin Hsiu Hui, poured fen yuan tapioca balls into her iced Assam tea, Lin tells CNN."

( me / via )

"I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity." (via @thetnholler.bsky.social)

blurb nails · amber road
anywhere else · bluebonnets
   feng shui of fathoms
to guide me gone · pale cerulean

the tower torn · with tart missives
Tantalus rends · his soft hands
   chortle of software
to guide me home · to cruel habits

staggering sunlight

Troll-haunted woods.

"and in this inexpressible, demonized sky,
my machinery emits technical whistles"

--Vallejo

Tanka.

( via / via )

Tanka.

"White smoke from the Vatican CAN mean that there’s a new Pope but don’t overlook the possibility that it needs a new head gasket" --@portmanteauface.bsky.social

Why Publish?

"geometric clown"

burnt umber
the ink cantor
a room void
verify shapes
paper trail
labyrinth breadcrumbs
not yet bled
of black newsreels
i forge fiends
& urgent fibs
this dead day
labyrinth breadcrumbs
crows follow
increase blizzard
lost is when
whinny lusters
script unscrews
labyrinth breadcrumbs
take burnt umber

I Walk on Guilded Splinters.

( via / via )

The Great Fire of 1904.

"dogfood shaming"

wodget not a widget
i wield 'gainst the fenced-in
Fordist assemblers
who gatekeep the cute bins
hunt down the feral

when the ice comes oozing
ever fed & dreadful
then shall my voice count
white smoke in the smack pipe
sleep & sleep's killers

Darkest shade on Dark Sky Map.

"Watching Chernobyl again to cheer myself up." --@woolbotherer.bsky.social

"Sanity is, arguably, merely the most familiar form of irrationality."

( via / via )

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals.

"my old home
a game of chess
of empty boats"

--@poemexe.com

Dear Friends, I Give You the Sun and My Sunny Art.

"when I
awoke this morning
I thought your
funeral was today—
it was three years ago"

--Esther Altshul Helfgott via

Higgins meteor captured.

( via / via )

Rabbits.

"A VILLANELLE

Motifs compel
me now to free
a villanelle.

Restrictions sell
the melody
motifs compel.

Allusions swell
in harmony —
a villanelle

whose echoes yell
the formulae
motifs compel.

A sacred spell.
A symphony.
A villanelle.

I hear it tell
its form to me:
motifs compel
a villanelle...."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Somewhere Someone's Eyes.

"Our societies are too enslaved to market logic, and everything risks being subject to self-interest and the quest for profit." --@pontifex (via @tomaashby.bsky.social)

"Coke and ketamine, flash photography, but also Simone Weil..." (via @lastpositivist.bsky.social)