mist piano purling
shrouded in past loudness
a wall made of weary
refusals weaves newsreels
the dark hides its hazards
& its small hosts crawling
i will join them justly
“Can’t see the rain
but see where
the sand jumps”
–W S Merwin
Marino Marini's Horses and Riders.
"We're gonna need a bigger truth and reconciliation commission." —@anthonymkreis.bsky.social
There never was rose-hologram
As rises in my mental eye,
Nor ever one received the sham:
And now the giver's on the lam
Who safely tells
With all the wasted poems once flung
That hologram will always bloom
And after this deceitful tongue
Has fizzled out, no longer young,
A rose remains
What Borges hymned, what Milton held,
What green Graywyvern might in trade
For at that time so sore a weld
Let go of, though a cat thus belled
Still jingles on.
(2017)
The Colour out of Space ( 宇宙からの色). "Bringing in vengeful ghosts/ from the Kuiper Belt..."
melting years
fearsome hand we're somehow dealt
who only wanted browsing
a thousand things died to haunt
"We are ruled by ancient dying sex offenders doing one last scam before they go, as if they're willing the world to end with them. At least we can outlive them, but that energy hangs heavy in the air." --@garrettgilchrist.bsky.social
"salt splay, slur and matte brink" --Reginald Shepherd
what is it i have carried
through the edge-crowded shambles?
this breath that only
swirls in one place a moment
releasing its forms
(2008)
"Autumn Comes
For base and noble the same end
When every ambition's won or lost.
Galloping waves urge on the endless night,
Falling dew hurries the brief dawn.
--From Song of the Underworld (Tai k'ao-li hsing) by Pao Chao (414-66)
The wind in the wu-t'ung startles the heart, a lusty man despairs;
Spinners in the fading lamplight cry chill silk.
Who will study a bamboo book still green
And forbid the grubs to bore their powdery holes?
This night's thoughts will surely stretch my guts straight:
Cold in the rain a sweet phantom comes to console the writer.
By the autumn tombs a ghost chants the poem of Pao Chao.
My angry blood for a thousand years will be emeralds under the earth!"
--Li Ho, Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons (tr J D Frodsham, 1970; 1983)
"chat, can you make up a list of names for 'jail' that all alliterate & use a different word for 'jail' each time?"
Not a book i actually wrote. AI imposter? (Here is one i did.)
You don’t need random signifiers if you have something to signify more than you need to use signifiers.
"festooned with measure"
raghdirst of the roughshod
bewrayed faded temple
pale cerulean Porlock
passers-by defier
raghdirst as silt dogma
deadlier cold smouldered
umber cradle craquelure
increase dwale-cicalas
smog of eclipse smuggler
rains in the small drainpipe
& i drive through thistle
whisperthrongs like Oswald
in the thesternoon theater
nothing left but reftwinds
or raghdirst karst rummage
a roar ears might doorbell
yet raise again gunsights
gobble the dawn's clobber
our caverns frail frass-crunch
to forage berth further
liripoop scrum-scrambled
ascribe to thug bibles
pretend just this tinsel
attained without raindance
the day's obtuse axis
utters its gauze buttress
my car has wheels whetstone
to whoosh roads corroding
it sits out there sulking
we've sought grail of failure
& how can i hounded
by haunts find my blindside
desert of fell fumbles
affordance nil for swill-churl
cracker barrel bombhush
blurts its heinous train-howl
what can i do wharfstint
to whittle down clownface
the days grow dark bloodtide
adorning each speech act
"trap cloud in the spring"
funny numbers
plague these embers:
chop our fingers'
ledgegrip, ogres
which we raised up
fierce & fistic
(seeing nothing
in an earthling)
& the onset
of our sunset
lured with whispers
of sweet vespers
all the progress
rendered useless
urged more stupid
reason's deathbed
scaffold arbors
funny numbers
"One of the surviving kids on CNN: I used to want to be a police officer, but now I want to be a surgeon so I can help people.” –@marcslove (via @ae_stallings)
"He was a rat made entirely out of plague."
"In the shadow of desire, the past becomes a wound we cannot heal." —@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social
newly shorn lawn
the smell wafting off of it
after i water
instead of just looking
i feel in my mental image of the room for the book
"At least we're finally asking the right questions."
“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons,–with gestures and with attitudes and with wholly charming phrases; with tears, and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of all lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart’s desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the might of my own folly.” –The Way of Ecben
Columbia Heights drives out ICE.
awning scrape—on scrannel
scrimmage malign Plimsoll
one-storey this waniand—
weave of Babel leavings
umber in shrift shambles
shalloping gray ballad
all the pilcrow places
pillaged in broad bodkin
erased my path writhing
a rumble sky summoned
melody dear marbled
with motes bloodhued votive
stone that intact turned out
the time curled at world's end
it rains lightly lonesome
along Midas sidewalks
a dark chamber checks with
uncharted dull mullwork
to write epic's rap sheet
where rotten days blazon
treason & mob trouble
a tranche of hell mansions
spectacle field spoiled with
spoonerist carved runesticks
the poet learns parsnip
apparel—drone airspace
unwinding—weird fardels:
this war which seems dreamsick
& quiet streets straying
"It will not be punishment this time; it will be total erasure."
"Heaven"
Unaccountably thoughtful, Cheetoh muses
on getting into Heaven. Gilded plastic
& underage girls. Yet it must be Heaven
where Cheetoh is; nowhere else is better;
Cheetoh must be straightway primed to get there—
except for that dying part. His thought veers off.
He cannot hold that train for very long.
Sincere for half a breath, it does him credit
—like a gleam of wit in the eye of a rabid dog.
"Ah, Elizabeth had her ways. A leopard does not change its spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit. Well, women of her kind have a right to put their gifts to their natural use. We must not find fault with what is natural." —@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
“Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do: but this turns out to be something which not many people want done.” –C S Lewis
“I honour you in dread
Since your voice like a soft vapour laps me
and my eyes, offered to the eternal scythe,
dare for you to contemplate the coffin;
since to me your red sanctuary affords
a joy half chill, half cardinalate, before
the posthumous avalanche weeps upon the vane;
since the bold cervix of the ardent skeleton,
predestined to the brand of the funeral
walnut, has hurled for you defiance to Death;
I honour you in dread of a lost alcove,
necromantic, with your rigid face
ecstatic, on a shin, as on a pillow;
and since you are my blood’s harmonious chosen,
Amada, and life’s convulsions seem a bridge
above an abyss, on which we tread together,
my kisses scour you devoutly serried
over a sacrilegious cloak of skulls
as over an erotic domino.”
–Ramon Lopez Velarde (1888-1921), in: Octavio Paz’s anthology Mexican Poetry
My Grandfather's Church Goes Up.
"Oral Wars” (fridge magnet poem)
slather the use
hence
through and rest
with ersatz vicissitude faction
like
profligate
languaged give
is curious word
ebb every time
expunge
trenchant to know scholarly amalgam
of languish observation
following upon
and though which festoons
tantamount opaque
you do let lapse from
would make a find abscond
the delve zeal
alleviate
did it rue so
herculean
then i gild
in taut fusillade
than soon after
will spurn as din
they could feel
or why gall roils
on arid beauty
domicile
of never lair
“It is lucky for the world that fox didn’t exist during WW2” —@lawrenceodonnell.msnbc.com via @newsjennifer.bsky.social
Olé.
"Forgive me: when bad fates leave good men stricken,
I doubt the gods are real, and I am shaken.
Live just, die just. Be holy; keep your vows;
still Death will drag you to the charnel house.
Trust in good poems. This tiny urn constrains—
so little’s left!—Tibullus’ scant remains."
—tr of Amores 3.9 by Christopher Childers via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social
Withdrawe, this sable Disclosure ere devot’d
Of the black cone amid the polar waste,
That the black presence of its violence is.
I do not know if ever it existed–
Yet whence, except from guessed sight, does touch teach
A row of sphinxes where the way lies clear
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Bedraggled birds into the yawning sky
By no exterior voidness being exempt
Had left a certain monstrous aftermath.
To a new flesh my travelled soul shall come,
Parting the cobwebs with a curious lack.
"I think a lot these days about these lines from the end of Lykophron’s Alexandra..."
The Goad I Seek
Rose, is your light
so very bleak
that if i came upon a way
of aliquot surmise,
your close would only ember
prism & all it thought to make distinct?
(1985?)
Elizabeth Catlett's 1946 print honours Phyllis Wheatley.
"The vibe of the Tomorrow Belongs to Me scene, but for global politics. Just watching more and more people stand up and sing a long to the murderous insanity of romantic ethnonationalism. And feeling utterly powerless to stop it." —@lastpositivist.bsky.social
"We've been Christians for nearly 1500 years..."
"...when you’re watching a film for the wallpaper you know you’re in trouble."
"When Woody Allen was asked whether he would make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he’d do 'everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus.' " (via)
“The Journal of Inadequate Braking Distance”
fatigue of the emotion
desuetude
of the pre-Apocalypse
esperantizing
my deaccession
can it matter so much to them
that i don’t get through
the mild light
the phantomnation towers
Two eruptions of filament plasma.
Approximately Eleven Apothems.
stainless bingo · in the battle cell
excellent ashheap · for angel poison
my mark tentative · spiralling mistward
this word or that word · irretrievable
in the desert sunsets · of another doom
but i want something · wiser than simply
pass through the portents · survive the culling
of this century · of hunchback mechas
in a darkened room · finding a reason
or a vision of · vast peaceful acres
Blackacres on the · obliviated map
a verse kept humming · in the late August
gathering of sounds
"Philip Larkin said 'What will survive of us is love,' but research based on previous collapsing civilizations suggests it's more likely to be inorganic items that can be buried, burned, or struck without significant degradation. Likely what will survive of us is ceramic toilets." —@premeemohamed.bsky.social
"And all the next day Toad read poems to his seeds." —@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
Michelin tire mandrake
masked against justice
passing crowds decry you
your cruel deeds & dealings
in broad daylight
"Sotades"
bloodcar, dim flame—daedal
addiction—finds mineshaft
angstrommeal this illness
echo of worse verseforms
& the Heil hog struggles
(half-runes carved on starvebreath)
the gods' rival gives us
garrulous steps, septic
"My ideal style is greaser, but it's a tarot deck rolled up in the sleeve" —@lecagle.bsky.social
Devastating and beautiful curse.
"Maybe King Oedipus had an eye too many." --Hölderlin
Modesty Blaise (1966). ☆☆
"...PLASHES THE FOUNTAIN
You prayer-, you blasphemy-, you
prayer-sharp knives
of my
silence.
You my words being crippled
together with me, you
my hale ones.
And you:
you, you, you
my later of roses
daily worn true and
more true—;
How much, O how much
world. How many
paths.
You crutch, you wing. We——
We shall sing the nursery rhyme, that one,
do you hear, that one
with the hu, with the man, with the human being, the one
with the scrub and with
the pair of eyes that lay ready there as
tear-upon-
tear."
—Hamburger's Celan
"I learned that breaking language was not only an option, but an urgency."
"MARINA (Anagrammed Lines)
Hear that solemn rain
on the marina: her salt
aroma; the snarl in the
lather…. This near moan
alarms another, in the
harsher lamentation…."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Ruth Gordon: “Shall we compare poverty stories, Lieutenant?”
Columbo: “Not in a Rolls Royce, ma'am.”
"Then twanged a cord. Through space, from Oultremer
That other arrow veered toward your heart."
—Charles Spear
"EARLY MARCH ON FARM-TO-MARKET 302
A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
O let them be left, wildness and wet
A sapphire zephyr out of the south sky
Has filled the creek and packed the bright brown shells
Of oakbud, mesquite, cedar. And the high
Sephiroth of the season calls its spells.
Sandro's blue lover bursts into the time,
A rough annunciation: Chloris speaks
Forth April's Flora like a wanton rhyme:
In pains of love the flowery cosmos shrieks.
My priest Saint Gerard, you knew the desire
That made the father father-forth the spring:
However cruel and violent the fire,
It cannot help but sing."
—Frederick Turner via
"Why Is Life So Hard?
Because iron is hard, and steel, and granite and marble.
Because of hard sauce poured over plum pudding.
Because it’s hard to explain
Gibraltar, St. Peter, the anchor,
hard liquor, hard landing, hard pressed,
hard labor, hit hard, hard stop,
this shadowy place,
these difficult, arduous days."
—Dick Allen via
"a reason why i just generally do not like the idea of men as a coherent political class is bc intensifying patriarchy actually does not benefit the majority of men and as fascism is on the rise i think it's dangerous to just agree that fascism will make things better for men" —@androgynyfiend.bsky.social
