( via / me )

Seestück.

"It was just unlike anything that had come before. And that play helped get going, basically, the first mass entertainment industry in the modern world." —Stephen Greenblatt via

Dimidium anniversary.

"the day is too short to get more drunk than this"

overweening oddsclerk
but name only dronewake
pale cerulean ragweed
the one arrived thunder
Scriabin's dream drumly
tooldrawer & near gulag
a shrouded form shrugs off
slow shrapnel agrypnode

it's a dark tide tells me
bodies tangled podcast
invisible burlap
tugs bullied by struggle
who reaches sky skirmish
nor asks scowl of taskboss
survive we will—vast loss—
like song versions merging

the rule of smoke smothers
whisper smashing ashram
the things i write ravish
silence's rathe dialtone
as web crawlers cram more
content craft is haunted
by the few bright fakirs
by the clap-fueled cueballs

this redbrick brunt falters
not to brew more rumor
out of a mere omela
but stupid age wages
& language shorn shuttles
again shiftless sniffles
afar seeing circus
smash on the sage dashboard

cairns on web-laid catchments
may find caring squaredance
after a point Porridge
hardly peers round bardblink
the car void of vengeance
waits victim & trickster
i know more than knackfilch
but vouchsafe nil shrillrede

Jumble.

( via / via )

Note Left by Humanity in the Ruins.

"deradicalized terror-free zone"

outrage crown so cruel
crisp pentacle ruckus
seen as well worldwide
worse Liberty's vertex
elegy orts pinwheel
ache tenebrous clubhouse
the new face of flatline
fraud symmetry sitcom

Glosh Signal Tower.

"...they could see the whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and growing light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their feet, the splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die." --G K Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross (1909)

Every Thought at Once.

( via / via )

"...what The Best American Poetry really proves is that poetry in the United States today is the ward and client of a vital system of patronage."

"People come reeling and sobbing out of a performance of Romeo and Juliet; they quote the balcony scene with trembling lips; and you can lead them to no more poetry except at gunpoint. They have been faced with the abyss, and it has happened too soon in their lives. There could be a connection: because, as I have recently found, to be really faced with the abyss means that poetry comes into the mind all the time, as if darkness could speak. Perhaps that’s what poetry is for: to help us die." —Clive James

"Meanwhile, the old believers meet in back rooms, whispering their heresies: full stops at the end of sentences, em dashes unsheathed, even a semicolon passed hand to hand like contraband."

"'A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,
If thy stream carried only weeds away,
But vernal and autumnal flowers alike
It hurries down to wither on the strand."

--Walter Savage Landor via

New Forgotten Languages thread. I want to buy one of their books so bad—but i don't even know if they're real.

( via / me )

Everybody Knows.

"De Profundis

It is a stubble field, where a black rain is falling.
It is a brown tree, that stands alone.
It is a hissing wind, that encircles empty houses.
How melancholy the evening is.

A while later,
The soft orphan garners the sparse ears of corn.
Her eyes graze, round and golden, in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

On the way home
The shepherd found the sweet body
Decayed in a bush of thorns.

I am a shadow far from darkening villages.
I drank the silence of God
Out of the stream in the trees.

Cold metal walks on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
It is a light that goes out in my mouth.

At night, I found myself on a pasture,
Covered with rubbish and the dust of stars.
In a hazel thicket
Angels of crystal rang out once more."

—Wright & Bly's Trakl

Welcome to TrumpCare.

"I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving." —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.

( via / to the tune of the Beatles' "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" )

Passing Privilege.

"a lane on the freeway only for people who need to pee really bad" —@lacroixboi.dadguy.help

July Mountain.

flicker in my flynook
flays tentative shuteye
a pawn nudged nestles
near permanent sundown
Clarice sillage lists to
lorn skewable grubstake
—or say something broken
sowed refugee lugesprint

Army of Me.

( via / via )

"...feeling really Sapphic."

   cool dawn · sunwarmed face
then a tall car eclipses
   whisper October

subtle, stony-faced commute
hurtles t'ward some last solstice

Ripple tree.

"to pieces in the song-forsaken sky" —Graeme Richardson via

The Long Con.

( via / via )

A few hours in Gaza.

"The smell of autumn is in the air, like a pencil being sharpened in a damp church by someone who has recently smoked a pipe." —@thewritertype.bsky.social

Crocodile Socks 🐊.

"the paralyzing horrors"

the still hourglass · strict counting
you know there must be · moves gathering

or not? navigate · another desert
where toilet paper · a year past

   flutters on spines intact

Metaphysical detective stories.

( me / via )

Five wild minutes of auroras.

"pregnancy-related crime"

   future narratives
splinter & fall away, like
   habits that were changed

& no trace remains of the
way we thought we would pull through

Using AI to ban books.

"Thinking about when Ta-Nehisi Coates said, 'So I guess the privilege that I draw out of this, the honor that I draw out of this, is not that things will necessarily be better in my lifetime, but that I will make the contribution that I am supposed to make.'

This framing is necessary to stay sane." —@uhnopenottoday.blacksky.app

Interruption.

( via / via )

Some of these obituary writers were shocked and disgusted to discover an AI-generated 'biography' of Kaleb Horton was suddenly for sale on Amazon.

"Etna from repudiated boustrophedon." —Perec's palindrome via Google Translate

New Alkaline Shell X-100 Motor Oil.

FOR JANE GOODALL

among these apes i learn the superstitions
that serve instead of empathy or missions

Digital but not AI artwork by Norro Bey.

( me / via )

"...like Jacques Cousteau meets HP Lovecraft twenty thousand leagues under the sea."

"consider the concept of battleship"

   thorngrown grinch
inchmeal into bonedust
girning cataclysm
rattles our tourney's glass

Screening.

"And I thought maybe poetry is good for this, so that on a rainy and cold night someone will see written in a few lines their unspeakable confusion and their pain."

—Alejandra Pizarnik via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

Mesmerizing animation of Imelda.

( via / via )

Sirius is too young to remember.

"The reason that the US appears less poor than some third world nations is because state power here won't let you just build a shack. They'll tear it down and make you homeless so that no one has to see shacks. That's going to change as state power erodes." —@shituationist.bsky.social

October.

"AND IF THEY HAVE NOT DIED

I am yours, otherwise it escapes and
wipes us into death. Sing, burn
Sun, don’t die, sing, turn and
born, to turn and into Nothing is
never. The gone creates sense — or
not died have they and when
and when dead — they are not.

for H.B.
Berlin 1956"

—Unica Zürn via

The Silence of the Generals.

( via / via )

"At one time we had only one writer who was even literate, and that was Ray Bradbury."

"Year's End

The state cracked where they left your breath
No longer instrument. Along the shore
The sand ripped up, and the newer blood
Streaked like a vein to every monument.
The empty smoke that drifted near the guns
Where the stiff motor pounded in the mud
Had the smell of a hundred burned-out suns.
The ceiling of your sky went dark.
A year ago today they cracked your bones.

So rot in a closet in the ground
For the bad trumpets and the capitol's
Long seasonable grief. Rot for its guests,
Alive, that step away from death. Yet you,
A year cold, come more living to this room
Than these intruders, vertical and warm."

—Weldon Kees

Manifesting Africanfuturism.

"Toad sat on the edge of his bed. 'Blah,' said Toad. 'I feel down in the dumps.'

'Why?' asked Frog.

'I am thinking about tomorrow,' said Toad."

—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"...might as well call it and write an obituary for writing itself instead."

:)

[image or embed]

— dave (@beesandbombs.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 8:19 AM

( via / via )

"...they nevertheless wished that it were in fact real."

"well, the patriarchy is finally shredding the democracy they copied from the matriarchal Haudenosaunee people— leaving out the most important part which was the circle of elder women overseeing everything." —@anniefinch.com

"The smell of autumn is in the air..."

"Interregnum

Butcher the evil millionaire, peasant,
And leave him stinking in the square.
Torture the chancellor. Leave the ambassador
Strung by his thumbs from the pleasant
Embassy wall, where the vines were.
Then drill your hogs and sons for another war.

Fire on the screaming crowd, ambassador,
Sick chancellor, brave millionaire,
And name them by the name that is your name.
Give privilege to the wound, and maim
The last resister. Poison the air
And mew for peace, for order, and for war.

View with alarm, participant, observer,
Buried in medals from the time before.
Whisper, then believe and serve and die
And drape fresh bunting on the hemisphere
From here to India. This is the world you buy
When the wind blows fresh for war.

Hide in the dark alone, objector;
Ask a grenade what you are living for,
Or drink this knowledge from the mud.
To an abyss more terrible than war
Descend and tunnel toward a barrier
Away from anything that moves with blood."

—Weldon Kees

This isn't a book that's going to be available in bookstores, on amazon.

( me / via )

"It's sort of sad that it took 51 years for Nabokov's story to get an English translation."

      "ARCTURUS IN AUTUMN

When, in the cold October dusk, I saw you near to setting,
   Arcturus, bringer of spring,
Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn,
   Having no pity on our withering;

Oh, then I knew at last that my own autumn was upon me,
   I felt it in my blood,
Restless as dwindling streams that still remember
   The music of their flood.

There in the thickening dark a wind-bent tree above me
   Loosed its last leaves in flight--
I saw you sink and vanish, pitiless Arcturus,
   You will not stay to share our lengthening night."

—Sara Teasdale

Hell of the Cyr redux.

"Thorngrown her throne · thronged by phantoms" —Adam Bolivar

October.

Like storm clouds rolling over the horizon, a series of new active regions have rotated into view on the Sun this week. So far we’ve seen 10 moderate solar flares in 5 days, with the chance of stronger flares possible. #spaceweather

[image or embed]

— Dr. Ryan French (@ryanjfrench.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 10:42 PM

Flying through a rainbow coming into St Lucia. A lovely end to a 24 hour journey

[image or embed]

— Sapphire Goss (@sapphiregoss.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 5:45 PM

( via / via )

Filament plasma.

Interpersonal dishonesty is the norm only because society itself is made of even bigger lies.

"Trump is far weaker than he looks."

"unitary executive"

a rat king · writhes in the corner
looking away · staring alike

i imagined gen'rals · would be loath to join
some murderous mob · merely recuiting

ah pale cerulean · perfect weather
to pass a homeless · hungry on the corner

⚪️⬜️.

( me / via )

The Fleetwood Macs.

"medbeds"

blast furnace above us
bourn filaments rumble
misty schoolzone muster
murks pentacle bricktown
it's a long walk weary
wones rulership's murrains
have lived through what threatened
throng-absolute ullage
have heard tell of harsher
hurled heavenward tintypes
decipher this, Stercor:
still managing ridge-pole
crossing crag shadows
cranched whittles the dullards

"Freedom is a fragile thing..."

"Andrew Ng: 'AI is the new electricity!'

Cory Doctorow: 'AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯" —@melaniemitchell.bsky.social

"They are really making a bet the likes of which we have not quite seen before in the history of authoritarianism..."

( via / via )

To the Light of September.

"The revolution won’t be televised but the treason sure is" —@chriswarcraft.bsky.social

The Translator, Working Late.

"condensation
running down our glasses
grandmother tells me
about the child
she lost in the war"

#tanka by Christopher Costabile

Published in Fields of Gold
poems of peace
The Bamboo Hut 2022 - peace poems from around the world

via @evecastle.bsky.social

Moeritherium.

( via / via )

Paragraphs you don't want in your obituary.

"After Weightlessness

Once, the random sweep of an arm sufficed
To disperse planets like seedballs, rearrange
A galaxy. There were whole systems, then,
Bent round my clever thumb: and I could utter
Stars by the thousand, or laughingly banish light-years
Within the compass of my own spread fingers.

Since then, how many vengeful atmospheres
Have crushed my joints! Each pebble that I lift
Here on Earth, bruises the skin with blood,
Leaving its dark ring. Wherever I look,
Rivers hurtle seawards, unbalanced trees
Topple, helpless, towards the hidden centre.

Within me, now, I feel the fatal mass
Of dreams grown heavy, each imagined order
Compacted, bearing me down through clay and water:
And when, with effort, I raise my face to the mirror,
Each day, with growing terror I confront
Someone else's definition of power."

—Lawrence Sail

September.

No self awareness is kind of the brand.

Bavarian Gentians.

( via / via )

Grace.

"It's becoming clear that this is not an administration that is popular or skilled enough to do the consolidation needed to implement actual fascism, so they've decided that constantly creating fascism-flavored content is good enough" —@cooperlund.online

V.

"Ontological Warfare

Inertial frame drifting microns,
in that math lived extinction.

The #conundrum:
… fire coils early,
lose concealment;
wait, lose time.

The fleet’s banter flooded:
'All vectors collapse to one.'

The captain wondered.
Is she hearing calculus
or canticle
or myth."

—@rickmarriner.com

"I believe that this is the anti-social century and that rising American solitude that funnels life onto the internet is the most important social fact of our lifetimes."

( via / via )

Monostich Sequence I.

      "chrysophilia"

   delirious rage
under pale cerulean
   with my tire light on

"Tonight, Trump’s social media account posted a deepfake video of Schumer and Jeffries speaking to reporters. In the doctored video, Schumer talks with Mexican music playing in the background, while Jeffries stands beside him wearing what appears to be a colorful Mexican sombrero and sporting a mustache with the ends waxed and turned up."

"It's getting to where you can't even summarily kill civilians any more, because of woke." —@aristofontes.bsky.social

Critically endangered crafts.

( via / me )

Listen, He Whispers.

"Reading an essay that refers to Lukács as 'Georg Lukás' and am now wondering what sort of Star Wars trilogy he would have directed." —@adamroberts.bsky.socially

This view of the east.

pyromaniac · minions purr
the cool dawn ventures · to catch me up
lane that's through · allowing breeze
in my steel stained · with streaks of passage

Lud Heat at 50.

( via / via )

Portrait of the Author in the Age of Conglomeration.

"the meaning of a lull"

a while longer whirring
whakapapa nectar
hair-raising horizon
ahead red & curdled
these mild days undazzled
dart filigree phantoms
off the coast of carkdire
caraway hearse passing
the squid in its scabbard
sleeps tipsy-cerulean
this word wrangler warrants
no worse than a moose shrug
barking birds encompass

"I wake up in the morning and I am a terrorist."

".. the gurgle and the sway came to me, the tone of steel, the swelling, the sudden leakage to the West. The word: syzygy! — the smell of that gadget that moves and shines between azimuths, coordinates, parallaxes, etc., the height of the sun— everything!"

- Valery to Gide, 1893 via @alinaetc.bsky.social

▪️ an old poster is pulled down - and a new world awaits us ▪️.

( via / me )

Mary.

"The toad could not think of a story." —@frogandtoadbit.bsky.social

Nobel Prize speech. I had not previously read more than excerpts of this, but a student brought it in & it is really good.

"Just to stay sane,
with warplanes
wounding the ancient sky,
I write
one more tanka."

—Kati Mohr via poetry blog digest

On a sentence of Wittgenstein's.

( via / via )

Move Over, Darling.

"fox made of flowers"

ever anxious · in the rotten place
no bolt hole · no bugout kit
the front finds you · up to here in shadows

This light fraught with loiter.

"When she came last week, I wanted to explain that I had an online meeting. I didn’t know the Russian word, so I tried meeting. She looked puzzled and broke into a vigorous mime of someone waving a placard and shouting ‘Putin, Putin’, which took me by surprise. Next she tried a French word, démonstration, and the penny dropped. Meeting is Ukrainian (and perhaps Russian, too) for a demo – in the English sense; though actually the French word isn’t really démonstration (you use that for the demonstration of something, like a method or technique), but manif (for une manifestation). My husband tells me that meeting used to have this sense in French as well." —Virginia Moul via

Rain.

( via / me )

Knowledge.

They're grilling Grok right now as to whether to invade Venezuela, Greenland, or Lemuria next.

Selling the idea of freedom.

"idolatrous dotings"

the strange shapes of straying
strewn with bitter spindles
windows on the walled darkness
watch us find no purchase
enough years of yarrow
to use for maps whiplash
you learn some lame story
along with burnt fingers
then the full-flensed nightmare
follows with land gillslits
then your words gears gather
gallumph in blood headlines
poem without a pithy
pittance to close bus'ness
another excuse nattered
where nabbed subjects swelter
& strange shapes go shatter

Voting as Fire Extinguisher.

( via / me )

"...it was the Arkansas of it all that blew me away at first."

"ground offensive"

post-talion payback
porn—victimhood's rumble—
& i am tired, told of
tolls' murderous flurry
whereupon more melted
march difficult fictions
here mis'rable hostage
hurled lucrative glut-leagues
watches stern distractions
stilb brutal & fulcrum

Hengest Wants War Companions.

Robot offering to summarize Capitalist Realism for me.

"...anti-trans campaigns are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry."

( me / via )

Gumbyworld punk duck.

Lost while writing is the best lost.

Backyard.

      "death in flavor town"

   thin crescent
crawly-mawly
   staring back
down mountain steps
   dust gathers
in each gully
   moon spirals
closer to span
   & i ask
in my eyrie
how far along Crazy Horse

   sat on plains
of sere grasses
   learning time
tempered by calm
   sea bed once
where flukes bandied
   groan epics
& attitudes
   as ours will
theirs wore away
how far along Crazy Horse
how far along

In war-ravaged Portland, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.