"I remain convinced most of my problems can be fixed by the right notebook"
—@grubstreetwomen.bsky.social
It eats algae & rather than just digest them, it harvests the chloroplasts & becomes photosynthetic.
"corpsebutt blues"
velcronomiconcrete
crisp amethyst nothing
splutter to a stop now
sharp fahrenheit grinheap
13 Neglected Classics of Experimental Fiction.
7 mysterious languages that have yet to be deciphered.
hum outside; old days.
drinking tea into the night.
what i didn't know.
the colored lights in eclipse
as bodies move among them.
Still Life with Glass Under the Lamp.
"The design is outside the world.
We are its children, its orphans.
Cicadas shrill in the willows."
—Guy Davenport,
from “Archaic Ode” via @kimdorman.bsky.social
"Neither you nor I is mythic but the saxophone/ probably is."
—Gerald Burns
"...the International Palindromist Club, the CPI. It was born in 1986 in Catalonia at the initiative of an engineer named Josep María Albaigés." Currently.
"wind chimes…
and only then
the wind"
—@herbtate5.bsky.social
Meters, Matriarchy, and Magic.
not yet jolted justice
journeying heartburn dawnwise
organ music miregauze
muffles the weird tint fluff-slash
"being a rich tech guy in the 90s must have been so sick. every morning you start a web page that sells ring tones, sell it at lunch for 2 million dollars, get dinner at a 'sushi' restaurant and go to a night club wearing a cologne called Apartheid Sapphire" —@shutupmikeginn.bsky.social
Beta Pictoris b (star pictured above).
El Misterioso Doctor Satan. (Following up with a bit of the film.)
"Pandiculate: go get a lucid nap." —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Northumberland aurora livecam.
"Geis"
Strangely unmolested now these leaves
fallen in hectic evenness & motley,
as if it took our utmost just to barter
gift for paltry gift in the season's dregs.
I gave & took with both hands, yet i feel
as if i missed the point of ev'ry jest
under the overpasses, in the halls
each tragedy that only ping'd my radar.
Story not mine to tell, & no one will.
This city's not that city, won't be dug
from any berm. Some words escape, that's all,
out of a million more that never did,
& i am charged by ghosts with garbled tasks.
Snowing around a yard lamp at night.
"All Souls’ Night
Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night.
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost’s right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind’s pondering,
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Horton’s the first I call. He loved strange thought
And knew that sweet extremity of pride
That’s called platonic love,
And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,
Anodyne for his love.
Words were but wasted breath;
One dear hope had he:
The inclemency
Of that or the next winter would be death.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind’s eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And by foreknowledge of the future vexed;
Diminished beauty, multiplied commonplace;
Preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,
Among dark skins, and there
Permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
Before that end much had she ravelled out
From a discourse in figurative speech
By some learned Indian
On the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.
I call MacGregor Mathers from his grave,
For in my first hard spring-time we were friends,
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did
And I grow half contented to be blind!
He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less;
They are neither paid nor praised.
But he’d object to the host,
The glass because my glass;
A ghost-lover he was
And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
But names are nothing. What matter who it be,
So that his elements have grown so fine
The fume of muscatel
Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
No living man can drink from the whole wine.
I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought—such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world’s despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind’s wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound."
—Epilogue to A Vision, W B Yeats
A Theory-Fiction Reading List.
"Just heard Duke Ellington use a magnificent phrase in a 1974 BBC interview with Stanley Dance. Asked whether he regrets never having received a grant to sit at a university somewhere and compose in peace, he says he has no interest in such a stretch of 'ornamental stagnation.' "
—@bdralyuk.bsky.social
A puppet painting a portrait in acrylic.
"So in an air less rare than longing might
The dream of flying lift a marble bird."
—Léonie Adams
3D printed living room furniture for the rats.
"NSPM-7"
—maskcrowd— polycrisis
accrues —Ensor— hard musing
my old days reëcho
no answer worth blur-thinning
so blurt (why not whimper)
whammy we dree, fly-amber
in the long munched mournfest
main with black flags strafe-haggard
chainlink-kintsugi silence
silo crammed, morn's corona
smooth clasp of lost jasmine
the smudge that brings day judgment
indigo sky skin-deep
Death and Rebirth on the Road Home.
"...the louthly one whose loab we are devorers of..." —Finnegans Wake
"And that was the first peace of illiterative porthery in all the flamend floody flatuous world."
—Finnegans Wake (p. 23)
"¿A los adioses amó?
No sé.
Toda la sed usó.
Su heroica, sola diosa,
paso ida.
Lo sació;
rehusó su desalado tesón o más.
Es oída sola."
—@merlinaacevedo.bsky.social
(google:
Did she love goodbyes?
I don't know.
She used up all her thirst.
Her heroic, solitary goddess,
passed by.
She satisfied it;
she refused her disheartened persistence or more.
She is heard alone.)
mild, burnt orange elder
arch capstone of drain rapture
winterdead award hands
weird old book that brims hookworm
cybertruck in silver
soft granite skies no fly zone
gatekeeper megilp stains
Garamond graved bare bodkin
In Praise of Shadows. (pdf)
"The only places we really need are the in-between places that aren't places for they are trajectories of maximum possibility..." —Barefoot in the Head
"As his glass eye tinkled its way gently to the bottom of its tumbler of Listerine, lying atop its pupil like some queer fragile optical mollusk of some sort, she spoke, again most honeyedly."
—@harryskeeler.bsky.social
"Wholegrain Entitled
I came to be a gift, take a treat home
to keep and gobble underneath the stares
of all the retching groupies whilst hands
are sentries on the smalls of backs.
The fingers on the waists of maids,
I get laid and it’s simply out of adoration,
they don’t love any of my ways or means,
they have beans for mighty rights.
I am wholegrain, the spine of middle glan,
walking incoherent in the wine,
my own star shining – love is only
something that I know in the bathroom.
Born a twenty thousand league,
I follow laws I don’t believe an ass
to kiss, and trash the moves of delicates,
brushing hair back from their lashes.
I can only be like this, change is not
a place I know, I only walk alone
in bald tuxedo and with good long bones
all full of vertigo, lanes outside my hometown.
Pity the previous who open their purse,
witness the wails of young, glacial girls,
life is so priceless to those who ain’t earned it,
swished like a mudlark shaking silt from his spade.
I own the coins that you found in the marsh,
at last, it’s a whole lotta faith in this world,
google my name and you find lists of bruises,
presents from women found dead in the sea."
—Tessa Foley via @tessafoley.bsky.social
Christmas 1948, Trafalgar Square.
rolling ball writer
sound · after the songs have died
watching the teeth flash
so much yet to be destroyed
so many lies to enshrine
"In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion." —White Noise (1985)
flit [sparrow]. (via @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social)
"If I decided it was too much bother to clean my house so I moved into an igloo in Antarctica for the rest of my life, you'd think I was awful stupid.
Tech bros deciding they'd lose too much profit if they stopped destroying the Earth because they can move to Mars someday is even stupider." —@ashleyzacharias.bsky.social
mist-assailed maunder
suddenly mugged flutter
what am i to art with
flesh actual in thresh-teeth
sadly ragged road brings
redbrick auburn mind-baubles
warm winterdim vantage
from the weird outcome scrumfest
back on streets so strangely
strung with replacement faces
my own has it altered
eerie among black mirrors
ferrying true treasure
trystless hero, blur-journey
from iv'ry tree orchid
alt-text pages drift, nifty
to affront ghosts guzzling
my gall acorn ink —shakedown
at Tao master dirgeshunt—
sadly ragged road
Coronal rain, supra-arcade downflows.
"[approaching Americans in a dark alley wearing a trench coat] you kids want to try some, uh… political documentary footage?" —@verybadllama.bsky.social
Circling back to LLMs & AGI:
A priori arguments don't interest me, pro or con. I see two processes at work that need to be kept distinct: 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐚 (attribution of meaning, or "seeing faces") & 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, where groundhog & wombat that started differently end up in the same place. Not helpful: using one name for both...
"Poem: Change
So much coin jangling in my pocket.
I need to find a well and wish.
I need to put two coins over my eyes and go on that boat trip.
I need to cut the corners straight.
I need to stop cutting corners.
It's only Tuesday!
It'll pass.
It's only the end of an era.
They knew it couldn’t last that’s why
it was so important to pretend it would.
They said 'now is the time of monsters',
they’re saying it again now.
The mind reels because my feet haven’t moved.
I’m only a quadruped in a machine that could kill me.
I can only take flight in a machine that could kill me.
All the machines are insured and none of them ‘fight fascism’.
But on the way I saw something four legged with a soft gait,
which reminded me,
I’ve seen animals in traps before.
When their legs can’t move
they use their teeth.
I was also built
to get to one place
from another. "
—Ayesha Siddiqi on Substack
Evening Peace. (via @henryghenrik.bsky.social)
"Skip the introduction and read the rest of the article."
"this is just to say
I have loosed
the blood-dimmed tide
that you were probably saving
for the ceremony of innocence
forgive me
the best lack all conviction
while the worst
are so passionate
and so intense"
—@tomtomorrow.bsky.social via @bruces.bsky.social
"We are entering a new nihilist era." —Hannah Smart via
"The bootleg has now gone viral, and may end up being the most-watched 60 Minutes segment ever.” —Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, qtd by Heather Cox Richardson
"Alas for ancient Veii, a mighty kingdom,
forum set with golden throne:
your walls now hear the horn of loitering shepherd, fields
are harvested above your bones."
—from Colin John Holcombe's Propertius (2009), IV. 10.
"golden fleet"
cupped cauldron of whiplash
klepto, hot Dr Pepper
the bluegray road, bladed:
blasphemous stone, name only
i worry 'bout wait times
wallow in harsh-reft chef's hats
secret-network nacre
annulled in blueblack hull wounds
"You may be angry at your government, but you are still not throw rocks at tanks angry."
—@youranoncentral.bsky.social
Red airglow fills Death Valley lake.
Although writers (myself included) often like to pretend the only arena they work in is the lofty nebulous Mt Olympus of “World-Literature”, their books are physical objects whose fates are decided by the hands they fall into & the conversations they occasion, & these things are necessarily local. We talk about national literatures when we really should say: the city-literature of cultural capitals.
"syllabus"
lungfish running shoes
shroudfiligree lug nut
in the red, blue, greenmurk
roars pentagram lint trap
roars pentagram lint trap
de gustibus gantry
game-shadowy hoedown
nothing i do drees
the nothingness vespered
the nothingness vespered
child, come to the gallows
occult in reward hoarded
in the red, blue, greenmurk
you march without pity
Everyone's craziest archive stories.
"science fiction jellies"
the vein hungers, verdant
lawn, varying airspace;
an eye upon pinwheel
gossamers —pus gloaming—
the eye has airts hymnaled
& uneathes brings ringtone
caparison else silence
the vein, sung once, hungers
"Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country." —White Noise
"We, the friars of Perigon, and all others who have knowledge of this thing, agree that its advent was coeval with the first rising of the red comet which still burns nightly, a flying balefire, above the moonless hills." —@klarkasht.bsky.social
Inside CECOT. Which has been saved.
spiralling stillness
can't bring to this rendezvous
more than the shorn world
a street i would have turned at
now pass without a flicker
in the umber floor
its own abyss · particles
with a raking light
Milky Way & pale regrets
incense not sold anymore
"WINTER SOLSTICE (Anagrammed Lines)
Winter Solstice:
Written close is
woe. Strict lines
wrestle in stoic
selections, writ
low in its secret."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"The marriage of reason and nightmare..."
