( via / @archillect )

Exodus.

“Blondin

With clinging dainty catlike tread,
His pole in balance, hand to hand,
And, softly smiling, into space
He ventures on that threadlike strand.

Above him is the enormous sky,
Beneath, a frenzied torrent roars,
Surging where massed Niagara
Its snow-foamed arc of water pours:

But he, with eye serene as his
Who sits in daydream by the fire,
His every sinew, bone and nerve
Obedient to his least desire,

Treads softly on, with light-drawn breath,
Each inch-long toe, precisely pat,
In inward trust, past wit to probe—
This death-defying acrobat! …

Like some old Saint on his old rope-bridge,
Between another world and this,
Dead-calm ‘mid inward vortices,
Where little else but danger is.”

—Walter de la Mare

Isopsephy in a wider context of alphabetical counting-systems..

“There is nothing that indicates the presence or absence of a political instinct so much as the exquisite and artistic appreciation of when to break the law.”

— GK Chesterton, ILN, May 19, 1906. (via @GKChestertonian)

Silverberg on High Castle.

( via / via )

"The combo of a cruel and real project of authoritarianism and the most infantile high school meme humor is dizzying."

   “…Jupiter
With roiling bands of rufous oil and whorls
And paisleys, brown and white and palest blue,
And storms in which the Earth would be a bubble”

—Frederick Turner (1943-2025)

Wild.

“There is no news from Auschwitz

along that funeral plain
green wipes away old waves
that rolled the eyes
and tangled flowers veil vile kennel dust
bequeathed to dawns.
the years are done.
the earth bent toward canals bears
sterile bowels repenting woven eyes
while bone-filled drifts that scattered blood
yield other births.
death is not there: no special people
trailing alien dens,
or children moving in the rain of ash
unraveling minds.
life is not there: not even myths that rode
young stallions to a circus tent
and carried torches on a convent wire
beyond the tides.
no other signs that men patrol chained
sheets of sea.
i grieve our empty ships.
there is no news from Auschwitz.”

—Sonia Sanchez

To the Light of September.

( via / via )

Hawaii Five-O theme.

"vatnik"

brillig targe untying
moist spherical sere-'suage
growling behind heaven-screen
grab fortunate chinwag
the webweave of fathoms
drops instantly chant crumbs

So-Called Life.

"Yale Law is like Hogwarts for supervillains." —@brynntannehill.bsky.social

At Least.

( via / via via )

"Detainest-thou not.."

"Every once in a while I tell people from other countries about how the health insurance system works in the US and they are aghast. Yesterday a guy straight up didn’t believe me when I said people can die because of not being able to afford medicine. He was sure I meant in the distant past." —@astrokatie.com

How Fortunate the Man.

“Death of the World of Now"

This word was not from any of your scarrings made.
This wood was not. Corrupt spells stalked the glade.
It is better they don’t ask me to say.
From hardship’s lack, a world-shaped wound protrudes.
This small corrupt spell takes too much of my strength.

The tire split lengthwise, metal mesh protrudes.
It sang before i knew the why of it.
Or is it only the beginning of the end of the end
that we salute, suspended in the air?
A large corrupt spell held us in its maw.

I wade midway between two shores of madness.
Burning lands and shiny gimcrack leaves.
The pain within my gut a lodestar pointing,
and mountain once i climbed and tumbled down.
I made this spell from scurrying corruption.
It took all that i had and wants still more.

(2007)

Volkgeist.

( me / via )

The Mask of the Orange Death.

terminator
face half shaded
reminds me of other times
sleep was hard
head buzzing with slakeless thoughts
face half shaded
from a light i never asked for
in a place i had happened to come

"This year, by way of contrast, I started to use my anti-Shelob stick on August 12.."

This world-changing event or that world-changing event, they've been like a series of funhouse mirrors, each with its own peculiar distortion, except that you never return to a world that looks like it should.

The Planet of Eternal Night.

( via / via )

Alliterative Meter.

"Important to remember that everyone involved in renaming the DoD to the Department of War is afraid to take the subway." —@strngwys.bsky.social

Mothra being very batlike.

“Who Shapes the Carven Word

Who shapes the carven word, the lean, true line,
And builds with syllable and chiselled phrase,
To rear a sheltering temple and a shrine
To house a dream through brief and meagre days

Must know that time wears words away like stone
And blurs the sharpness of the clean, straight thought;
A ghost will wander out and leave alone
And tenantless the temple that he wrought.

This will be ruins for another day,
Of lichen-bitten stone and empty tower,
A tumbled shrine whose god has moved away…
Yet later-comers, in some moon-hushed hour,
May find a strange light haunting still the shade,
And footprints that no mortal feet had made.”

—David Morton, Anthology of Magazine Verse: 1925

Slaying the Dragon.

( via/ me )

Dark plume of plasma.

“Little Grey Dreams

Little grey dreams,
I sit at the ocean’s edge,
At the grey ocean’s edge,
With you in my lap.

I launch you, one by one,
And one by one,
Little grey dreams,
Under the grey, grey, clouds,
Out on the grey, grey, sea,
You go sailing away,
From my empty lap,
Little grey dreams.

Sailing! Sailing!
Into the black,
At the horizon’s edge.”

—Angelina Weld Grimké via poets.org

Was It Wrong.

“The source of all disorder was the loneliness of the jackal, God’s first- born.” –Marcel Griaule, 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑂𝑔𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑚𝑒̂𝑙𝑖 (1965)

I Am The Walrus.

( via / via )

Coronal Mass Ejection simulator.

“Think about those who haven’t long to live, who know that everything is over and done with, except the time in which the thought of their end unrolls. Write for gladiators…” –E M Cioran, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑊𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐵𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐵𝑜𝑟𝑛 (1973)

Love is a Skinny Kid (1962). (via Pseudopodium) ☆☆☆

These make the last few embers of dinosaur sunlight.
This will be a legendary day: we were so free,
so bold, so murderous. Our mayfly-brief
glory will be unsurpassed & the talon
of our joy has marked the spot indelibly.

What is there more to say? We touched the stars
but our hearts were not touched. Our first resort
was annihilation. Waking now, we still won’t label
this fury of a pastime anything but innocence.

What wonder if our trinkets, that litter the earth,
when they work no more, become bleak plethora
of talismans? Holding them now, our karma upon us,
we still want to click on a window & do it over.

(2013)

The Legend of Lylah Clare (1963). ☆☆☆

( lanny quarles on fb / bubblegum-casket-deactivated202 on tumblr )

Play It As It Lay's.

“Awesome

When I came down from the mountain, I didn’t know
where I had been, what I was coming back to
but I soon found out. Billboards by the roadside
threw colors in my eyes used to none
and I inhaled a waft of broken molecules
that taught me, even wondering at this
to cough and speak the cough that was my name.
   Fire, but having lost or left that view,
another fire was promised me though I
be blind until its shining…

And namer of everything since, I named them one.”

—Ryan Orion, Debt is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (1980)

"A killing/ at the heart of all their stories..."

History of American Literature from 1901. Melville’s only mentioned in one sentence–& they misspell his name.

A Brief History of the Canadian Ghazal.

( via / via )

Why humans love sports.

"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."

—Life On The Mississippi by Mark Twain via @sardonicus.eu

Kant's Question about Monica Vitti.

"A pilgrim

Ice
Ingesting hubbub
Gnash written into cold

Thilling existence
Creation

Intent
An extremity
Gone
Ample as a dandelion

Wondrous as a place
Vast as a mountain
Eternal as a hat
Dead as a cabinet
Torn as a mountain

The sagacious pilgrims
A hovel of pilgrims
Callous shanties and late pilgrims
Desisted”

—Issue 1, 3610

"But the editors didn’t budge, since a dictionary’s purpose is to describe language as people use it, not as we wish they did."

( mehmet aras “solar eclipse, portugal” via fb / via )

Reminder.

"Auto Wreck

Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating,
And down the dark one ruby flare
Pulsing out red light like an artery.
The ambulance at top speed floating down
Past beacons and illuminated clocks
Wings in a heavy curve, dips down,
And brakes speed, entering the crowd.
The doors leap open, emptying light,
Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted
And stowed into the little hospital.
Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once,
And the ambulance with its terrible cargo
Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away,
As the doors, an afterthought, are closed.

We are deranged, walking among the cops
Who sweep glass and are large and composed.
One is still making notes under the light.
One with a bucket douches ponds of blood
Into the street and gutter.
One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,
Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.

Our throats were tight as tourniquets,
Our feet were bound with splints, but now,
Like convalescents intimate and gauche,
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With the stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.
The traffic moves around with care,
But we remain, touching a wound
That opens to our richest horror.
Already old, the question Who shall die?
Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

For death in war is done by hands;
Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic;
And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms.
But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones."

—Karl Shapiro

"Violence is initiated..."

Exile without cunning is just being lost.

Buick.

( via / via )

No Other Land.

   "I am indeed alive: through all
Extremes I drag my days.“

—Cranch’s Virgil, III.405-6

Just Imagine.

"Vigil For Winter

Autumn:
loose-leafed article
of orchard bruises,
of horses lurching
through violet fog

A sun-scarred scarecrow
slumps,
a hawthorn bough folds itself
into blossom bones.

and the soil?

The soil,
hardens,
braced
for frost’s brutality."

—@thedevilstuna.bsky.social

Rainy Road.

( via / via )

"What I really find endlessly appealing about this series is the cover art."

costive glacial glass tire
glob calendar robs us
bonze in bucket leather
banters antelucan
coffeehouse curved scaffold
of cairns seicheblack glacial

The fourth stress is illegal.

"A nice complete collection of old English alliterative poems in translation, including Caedmon and The Dream of the Rood and a whole bunch of stuff. Free on Gutenberg and very good. I was bemused at the poem arguing that the existence of the phoenix proved resurrection, because you don’t often see a phoenix, but hey. If you want a free edition of these poems, here it is." —Jo Walton reviews Cosette Faust.

Gurrelieder. (playlist)

( via/ via )

"There are few of us now, soon/ There will be none.."

“…‘I’ve got a little trifle here, now,’ said Mr Slum, taking off his hat which was full of scraps of paper, 'a little trifle here, thrown off in the heat of the moment, which I should say was exactly the thing you wanted to set this place on fire with. It’s an acrostic–the name at this moment is Warren, but the idea’s a convertible one, and a positive inspiration for Jarley. Have the acrostic.’ 'I suppose it’s very dear,’ said Mrs Jarley.

'Five shillings,’ returned Mr Slum, using his pencil as a tooth-pick. 'Cheaper than any prose.’

'I couldn’t give more than three,’ said Mrs Jarley.

’–And six,’ retorted Slum. 'Come. Three-and-six.’

Mrs Jarley was not proof against the poet’s insinuating mannere, and Mr Slum entered the order in a small note-book as a three-and-sixpenny one. Mr Slum then withdrew to alter the acrostic, after taking a most affectionate leave of his patroness, and promising to return, as soon as he possibly could, with a fair copy for the printer.” —The Old Curiosity Shop

"To use film is to forego immediacy."

   smoke so dark we can't
see each other—should it leave,
   we would have to look
at what we have let happen
& what we have made happen

Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down.

( me / via )

Mothra sawing air.

saffron i don again
on some other begging road

the machines keep breaking down
it is their way of having fun

i realize a clown is not complete
without a real, cruel, wounding

clown this clown is complete
three steps into the begging road

Rare photo of Gwendolyn Macewen.

“but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade” –@MobyDickAtSea

Further Arrivals.

( via / me )

"Step inside the ring, and you’ll find yourself bedazzled and disorientated."

"LOSS (Palindrome)

Warm in me,
loss is so laden.
I pined.
A loss is solemn.
I’m raw."

—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Perilous concrete creep.

cranchfolly · ascension
andábatist wristkiln
cassowary twostep
to the lemming grimcliff
sleep when i can trapdoor
ballad of marsh prowling
they will chart it later
this tart wrath of fathoms

The horror never stops.

( @bitsofjupiter / via )

Yellow Jackets.

dawn's liquescent deathwatch
dusk-hem'rrhaging fidget
nine knives in the doorway

Bargibant’s Pygmy Seahorse.

“Derived from ‘andabata’, the Latin name for a gladiator who fought wearing a helmet with no eyeholes, ANDABATISM is the act of struggling vainly in the dark, or of endlessly quarrelling or debating with no clear solution ahead.” –@HaggardHawks

A critical position in the Green Parrot Opening.

( via/ oak cliff tornado of 1957, via dallas filth )

City of Lost Children.

“ ‘If you ask me,’ his companion pursued, 'whether I came back here better satisfied with a state of things which broadly divides society into two classes–whereof one, the great mass, asserts a spurious independence, most miserably dependent for its mean existence on the disregard of humanising conventionalities of manner and social custom, so that the coarser a man is, the more distinctly it shall appeal to his taste; while the other, disgusted with the low standard thus set up and made adaptable to everything, takes refuge among the graces and refinements it can bring to bear on private life, and leaves the public weal to such fortune as may betide it in the press and uproar of a general scramble–then again I answer, No.’ ” —Martin Chuzzlewit

Anomaly.

row of sphinxes · ice formation
they vanished back · into the fond forest
practice my speeches · in the dim livingroom
   i forget my second coffee

Parma Eldalamberon.

( @abandonedameric / me )

Naming the first exoplanets.

“The Children of Stare:

Winter is fallen early
On the house of Stare;
Birds in reverberating flocks
Haunt its ancestral box;
Bright are the plenteous berries
In clusters in the air.

Still is the fountain’s music,
The dark pool icy still,
Whereupon a small and sanguine sun
Floats in a mirror on,
Into a West of crimson,
From a South of daffodil.

’Tis strange to see young children
In such a wintry house;
Like rabbits’ on the frozen snow
Their tell-tale footprints go;
Their laughter rings like timbrels
’Neath evening ominous:

Their small and heightened faces
Like wine-red winter buds;
Their frolic bodies gentle as
Flakes in the air that pass,
Frail as the twirling petal
From the briar of the woods.

Above them silence lours,
Still as an arctic sea;
Light fails; night falls; the wintry moon
Glitters; the crocus soon
Will open grey and distracted
On earth’s austerity:

Thick mystery, wild peril,
Law like an iron rod:—
Yet sport they on in Spring’s attire,
Each with his tiny fire
Blown to a core of ardour
By the awful breath of God.”

—de la Mare, via Walter de la Mare on Fb

Whimsy and rage.

“The opposite of ‘serious’ isn’t ‘funny.’ The opposite of both ‘serious’ and ‘funny’ is ‘squalid.’ ” —R. A. Lafferty (via @pnh)

"Don't send me Christmas cards."

( wilhelm friedstumm in asemic group on fb / me )

"The designers of this simulation are just phoning it in."

“Wherefore all joyless shalt thou strike the lyre,
Trilling vain chords and bootless melodies…”

—Royston’s Lycophron

When vampires started drinking their own blood.

tilth so HARSH
wheatfield at dawn’s AROMA

cheerful harrying canine ROBOT
fruit fly i just SMOTE

tired of the litany of wrongly-aimed HATES
in-group & out-group hard WIRED

hide behind IMAGE
on the barbed-wire caterwauling RANGE

on was EGGED
by the shadow of mere unforgotten DEEDS

in the dunce niche BRASH
schoolbook-depository RIFLE

raffle madrigal AFFIX
made of glistening drive-in movie screen SLIME

triumph HEXED

Somehow endangered genres is not high up on my list of concerns these days.

( via / coming soon )

Short video tribute to the Lizard Lounge.

"Air as atlas drawn in me,
lost,
solemn, inward—
salt as aria."

—Pedro Poitevin

Wait for the punch line. It's worth it.

"So in an air less rare than longing might
The dream of flying lift a marble bird.”

—Léonie Adams

"I'm reading about the guy who invented the guillotine..."

( via / richard lindner )

The possibility of justice.

"The suicide booth is free but if you're deemed potentially useful to society they make you watch 8 hours of ads before it activates" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social

The Promise.

medal of freedom

defamed ole form
of federal modem
off emerald dome

leader memo, doff

Present tense.

( via/ via )

The 10th Victim,

wind & longing road
it always starts in the dark
rains on this terrain

where we shuffle the landmarks
as if for a better hand

"Too bad that lovely Arcadian name didn’t take off more."

"I refuse to get over the fact that it’s 2025 AD and people who run the United States are actively fighting against windmills and germ theory." —@punkademic.bsky.social

"...but might is right has never ceased to be how things actually work at least some of the time."

( noelzii on tumblr / me )

"I did not go into science to make money, nor did I go in to push a 'liberal agenda'..."

“Always now the thought of the perfume in its cheap fluted glass bottle with gold paper label brings me back to that shitty room, its darkness, the blue typewriter on the folding table, the bad linoleum, these traits a carapace camouflaging a small freedom that gently expanded inside me like a subtle new organ, an actual muscular organ born of my own desire for what I took to be an impossible and necessary language. Its sillage was an architecture.” —The Baudelaire Fractal

August 2025 on the Sun.

wise in final things
drowsing at nine o'clock now
what book could give that

heard but went to the back door
to see for myself the rain

"Certainly, it is villanelle adjacent."

( via/ me )

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs is a pangrammatic novel: twenty-six chapters of twenty-six sentences, each sentence containing every letter of the alphabet. (Not found at Addall--.)

butterfly disguised as a snake
the sound of rustling leaves or wind in the trees
the legend of these days
how we kept on hoping
in our shuttered houses
maintaining a link
with the lost world of before
heroic our resistance
to the winds of madness
battering
at ev'ry window
telling us it’s too late when it was only
just after the last of the easy choices

"As the third instalment, Exodus, begins, things have not gone quite so far, but W. now teaches only sports science students, humanities having been abolished at his college; and he predicts that all humanities departments in the country will follow. Not because the government has anything against philosophy or the humanities. No, ‘they’re simply going to marketise education, W. says. They’re simply going to turn the university over to the free market, just as they are turning all sectors of the public services over to the free market. They’re going to submit philosophy to the forces of capitalism’ (Exodus 15)."

"how many rubicons has it been now" —@caitlinmoriah.bsky.social

"Now that philosophy is collapsing before our eyes..."