11.

apricot spongy griot · I accord to it ascian sports
mouth gnaw again by ago · bring nights so stars birdtalk walking
icy scrytch forlorn grot idyll · stow moodnust hiccup

"All arts are not in one's country
But everywhere in the world
There to be gathered and sought."

--Zukofsky

"...Internet Slang in Spanish is being created by online translators!!. What is the Royal Academy of Spanish Language doing? Shouldn't be spanish speakers the ones deciding how to call new terms in spanish? Nooooooo, instead of that, american dotcoms, decide that they are just going to use whatever comes out from a translator or from somebody that minored in Spanish at some point in their lives..."

   "The Fountain

All through the deep blue night
  The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
  Of the satyr carved in stone.

The fountain sang and sang,
  But the satyr never stirred--
Only the great white moon
  In the empty heaven heard.

The fountain sang and sang
  While on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
  And their dreams were strange and dim.

Bright dew was on the grass,
  And on the ilex, dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
  Were all a-glisten, too.

The fountain sang and sang
  The things one cannot tell;
The dreaming peacocks stirred
  And the gleaming dew-drops fell."

--Sara T*asdal*, Stars To-night (1930)

   Quiz from B*msha Swing:

1. What is your sense of the poetic tradition? How far back does your particular historical sense range? What defines your tradition? Nationality, language, aesthetic posture? What aspect of your poetic idiolect or tradition most distinguishes you from your closest poetic collaborators? I take all poetry from every tradition as my heritage. I see similar tendencies in Modernism & the court poetries i have studied, & i try to synthesize them; however, ultimately i follow my own whimsy. In order to give a name for my Do-It-Yourself poetics, i have co-opted the term "Umbrism". If there is something that distinguishes me from other poets writing online at this time, it might be my inclusiveness, that doesn't reject apparently mutually contradictory modes of writing; & of course my bizarre fixation on the practices of the poets of Classical Antiquity, who would not at all approve of what i do with them.

2. How would you define contemporary poetic practice? (Say, the typical poem that would be published alongside one of your in a magazine where you are published.) How does this practice relate to the tradition defined above? Does poetry of the "past" (however you define the past for these purposes) occupy a different corner of your mind? So many people writing nowadays seem to think history started with five years ago, or twenty. In my book it's the myopic sameness of whatever "stream" you pick up on, that makes non-poets find contemporary poetry boring. (I know this is unfair.) Having said this, i must admit there are adventurous writers hiding out everywhere i look--just not the ones receiving attention & acclaim, by & large.

3. Whom, among poets you most admire, do you understand least? What is hindering a greater understanding of this poet? It's hard to think of someone in this category, since my admiration tends to proceed out of my understanding. But i admit Egil Skallagrimsson's writing comes from a mindset that's hard for me to imagine.

4. Are we over-invested in poetic "hero worship"? Is it necessary to have a poetic "pantheon"? How does the poetic pantheon relate to the notion of an academic "canon"? Are they mirror opposites, rivals? YES. I would rather that each poet choose her own ancestors. It's better still to be able to switch your worship when a god fails you (that was always the advantage of polytheism). Naturally, what constitutes The Canon will continue to evolve. I would like to think of the concept as heuristic rather than prescriptive. In other words, asking "do we still get something out of this writer today?" for famous as well as obscure authors, makes us examine our assumptions about poetic value.

5. Is "total absorption in poetry" benign? How about "poetry as a way of life"? I think it's silly. How can you write anything good if you're not insatiably curious about the world? And i don't agree with those who feel that they approach every experience in their life as potential poetic input. If you don't know that there's lots of things you'll never be able to put into words, you haven't been paying attention.

6. Do you see poetry as a part of a larger "literature," or is poetry itself the more capacious category? Poetry defines itself as certain practices of language, even though these change. But if i had to file it under another super-heading, i would make poetry a part of Magic, rather than a part of Literature. Literature, like exercise, is Good for You. Magic is a secretive vice.

7. Are humor, irony, and wit (in whatever combination) a sine qua non? Or conversely, is humor a defense mechanism that more often than not protects us from what we really want to say? It would be more useful to think of meaning as a continuum, rather than a binary disjunction of saying/not saying what you mean. It's true that some decent writing has come out of utter simplemindedness, but it greatly tends not to. As for constant joking--yes, that's a concealment, & everybody knows it. So how is it a concealment? It's a texture.

8. Is the poem the thing, or the larger poetic project? "Projects" is a kind of superstition. But not, perhaps, a fruitless one.

9. What is the single most significant thing anyone has ever said about poetry? So far no one has hardly said anything. I find much more interesting analogies in what has been said about the other arts, & even science & games. But saying stupid things about poetry is a time-honored genre. So why shouldn't i play it, too?

10. Which of these questions asks you to define yourself along lines of division not of your own making, in the most irksome way? How close do these questions come to the way in which you habitually think about poetry? What other question would you add to this list? Overall, this has not been an aggravating questionnaire, or i wouldn't have posted it on my blog. It does scant the whole question of Personal Mythologies, though. I think this, more than technique or clannishness, divides us. And it might even be a good thing.



"As trends move out of focus, consumers are not discarding them as new trends move in. Rather, they are keeping bits, discarding others and redefining them on their own terms." (via Dr M*nlo)

Not that John and Yoko.

"Some day someone will explain why the Romantics wanted to rewrite Paradise Lost and the moderns to rewrite the Odyssey. And then we will have a clearer understanding of why Ronald Johnson returned, as a signal act of the postmodernist period (The Age of Olson the books will get around to naming it), to Milton."

"Guerrilla movements can succeed if more than 40 percent of the local population supports them. While the guerrillas are a small proportion of Iraqis, they are very popular in the Sunni Arab areas. If you look at it as a regional war, they probably have 80 percent support in their region."

"Each of his one thousand cranes is a unique individual, yet at the same time also a member of the grey flock." (via gmtPlus9)

Ogham. (via Pl*p)

Catching up. (via Click Op*ra)


"...Governor Schwarzenegger, who had memorized one of Young's poems..."


Bog by Glob.

Death List Five

(voice of the lunatic fringe)

The arts and literary magazine is having its Volume Two feature
reading. Sunday June (the fifth) at the Balcony Club from 5pm - 7pm. We are very
excited about this reading, my nipples are hard just thinking about
this event, Featuring; Dan Evans, Deborah Dana, Paul Sexton, Jolee Davis and
Josh Lewis. Note the fifth member in volume two has run away to California,
but maybe we can do a "dial-a-poet" thing or have the M.C. joey da’rrell
cloudy read Josh’s poem. Admittance is free but donations are accepted and
appreciated. As usual, there will be cake and sodomy, coffee, and
whatever liquid refreshments you care to purchase from the bar, the Balcony Club
is a bar after all. The newest volume of the premiere in your face arts and
literature magazine in Dallas DEATH LIST FIVE (voice of the lunatic
fringe) will be for sell, so get your little five dollars ready. Tell anyone
and everyone, bring your “appetite for destruction”, bring your posse, your
crew, yo mamma or whoever might be interested. This promises to be a
reading to remember. the Balcony Club is located at 1825 Abrams Rd Dallas, TX.
75214

phone 214 826 8104

Th* Smil*.


Th* Oth*r Baxt*r. (via Wood_s Lot)

10.

Luminarias rural · umgang I insulating bark
from birdtalk walking aspic · crow quasar cramp sandcoil sloppy
sunlight amok against fancy · onyx agony

    9.

Quaint tubular walking I · incog stars storp hustling ablaut
quasar sluzhba caracul · dry iwi ballast flowing skulk
king onion uglily lithic · Cibola anarch

8.

Dalit ballot flunk I stars · abort vacuum sloppy alloys
robotic starfish of all · quasar unknown sky oilcan as
atom fanu origami · Usk walking U-boat

Oxyrhynchus updat*. (via Robot Wisdom)

P*nnyfarthing odyss*y.


Hodag.


On my victrola: Th* Transform*d Man.

6.

ibtida abtar starry · I adult barrarang bargain
abstaining starfish Caro-Kann · arroyo assist stiffly gas
grisly grasp byblow kick Iapyx · addict bulk sluzhba

7.

sandcoil walking indigo · idiot accrual mouth nights
claypit swoop darkbook glory · skip birdtalk and Ygg rishima
incog idols wink agnostic · forlorn wing odor

Solution to logical conundrum: "The Norwegian drinks wine. The man in the fifth house owns the zebra." (Took yours truly an hour. Significant Half was told that JFK got it quickly, without using writing.)


5.

Broil tripton gorilla I · flood atop frogurt riding spawn
storp conus snowboots aglow · forlorn fragrant riddling glut blog
Mavortia rid of claypit port · pornographic ad



Invisibl* Calvino.

Gambit.


4.

Dubious Vuokho abort · I vow pulumchva as oval
tubular sobbing skuas · who wobbly factions ibtida
go origami atavist · rival ovoid wog



A logical conundrum my Significant Half got for philosophy class:

"The Norwegian lives in the first house. The man who smokes Luckys drinks orange juice. The man in the red house is English. The Spaniard has a dog. The green house lies to the right of the ivory house. The man who smokes Old Golds has a snail. The man who smokes Kools lives in the yellow house. The man who drinks coffee lives in the green house. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives next to the man who has a fox. The man who drinks milk lives in the third house. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. The Japanese smokes Parliament. The Ukrainian drinks tea. The man who smokes Kools lives next to the man who has a horse.

Who has the zebra, and who drinks wine?"

Solution tomorrow.


Smashup D*rby. (via M*tafilt*r)

    "The Solid Idols"

waiting for democracy to fall
waiting for
waiting for democracy to fall

you work on your art
and I'll work on my hobby
waiting for democracy to fall

all of the people they'd punish
we must be pretty far down
turn off the sound and pretend as
democracy
democracy takes a dive

glued to the spectacle gladly
waiting for democracy to fall
waiting for
the winners
the winner to be proclaimed"

--Lor*tta Mod*rn

Kazakhstan Idol downloads.


Pollution L*v*l Orang*.


Happy Bonxdorfing. (scroll down)


On my victrola: Taraf d* Haidouks.

"Attend.There is a banquet in the inner room:
Shall we remove the plate?

Varin.    Leave it alone:
Wine in the cups, the spicy meats uncovered,
And the round lamps each with a star of flame
Upon their brink; let winds begot on roses,
And grey with incense, rustle through the silk
And velvet curtains: then set all the windows,
The doors and gates, wide open; let the wolves,
Foxes, and owls, and snakes, come in and feast;
Let the bats nestle in the golden bowls,
The shaggy brutes stretch on the velvet couches,
The serpent twine him o'er and o'er the harp's
Delicate chords:--to Night, and all its devils,
We do abandon this accursed house."

--Th* S*cond Broth*r



Still at it.


3.

tomorrow call this a fall · dark and guard autumn sky spirit
mossy sounds all that's not lost · and i could almost cry radint
in smoking ruins my words rail · against you liars

Cut* ali*nation.

"Bashshar, and Abu Tammam after him, were leading pioneers in the badi' style. Badi' can be translated as 'new', 'discovered', or 'invented'. In poetry, it refers to the ornate style using rhetorical figures that became fashionable from the beginning of the 'Abbasid period onwards. At the same time a debate began between the qudama (the 'Ancients') and the muhadathun (the 'Moderns') over the merits of this newfangled fancy poetry as against the sort of poetry produced by the Jahili poets and their imitators in the early 'Abbasid period. However, as we shall see, even those who defended the new style in poetry customarily defended it by claiming that it was not really new and by finding ancient precedents for the rhetorical figures favoured by badi' poets."

--Night & Hors*s & th* D*s*rt


"...if I was interested in narrative and tonal variety per se, and I wanted to say something to my culture on any sort of scale, I'd go write for The Sopranos."

Oh, that hat...

Cicatrixity is a philosophy of allowing things you find to stay that way without changing or improving, as my old car still sports its stuck-on signs that i hardly would plant on my own. Torn or stain-brandishing clothing--but also (possibly) to go along with a typo.

This is a path toward humility.

Latt*s in Riyadh. (via Robot Wisdom)

2.

Cadillac radint idol · I gloomy planlingvoj carbs act
pry catastrophic id · rig anticommunism stand
birddog odium sounds sly zij · agar glows mossy


Fargo Rock City.

$4 a gallon. (via R*b*cca's Pock*t)

"Revenge of the Sith is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, 'If you're not with me, you're my enemy.' Obi-Wan's response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: 'Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.' " (via This Mod*rn World)


"O Portius, is there not some chosen cure,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heav'n,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?"

--Jos*ph Addison, Cato (1713)

"The Umayyad poets took for granted the superiority of those who had gone before them. Thus Farazdaq, when commenting on the inferior poetry of a contemporary rival, declared that
    'Poetry was once a magnificent camel. Then, one day, it was slaughtered. So Imr’ul Qays came and took his head, 'Amr ibn Kulthum took his hump, Zuhayer the shouldrs, al-A'sha and Nabigha the thighs, and Tarafa and Labid the stomach. There remained only the forearms and the offal, which we split among ourselves. The butcher then said, "Hey you, there remains only the blood and impurities. See that I get them." "They are yours," we replied. So we took the stuff, cooked it, ate it and excreted it. Your verses are from the excrement of that butcher.' --Cited in Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought"

--Night & Hors*s & th* D*s*rt

    "In the Scottsville Cemetery

Mutter of geese drifts across blithe sunshine,
the placid stones all gradually losing their words.
Poetry, here, for a while adorns the granite
termini of separate settings-forth.

Someone has hacked off the outstretched hand
of the famous angel weeping over a tomb.
Their angels would not weep, being assured;
but the thought of such a veshch, affects us most.

Go, angel, mourn; the sort of fervid Christians
we have anymore, are not this landscape's ornament:
where faith burns high, the censor and the fist
of theocracy now fulminates--and sneers."

--Yvonn* Drywall

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Cultural Creative 88% Fundamentalist 63% Materialist 63% Existentialist 50% Romanticist 44% Idealist 31% Modernist 25% What is Your World View? (corrected...hopefully) created with QuizFarm.com

Druid King.


Orb Th*ory.


Fisch*r Random.

I hardly watch a film now without putting on oddly contrasting music; i call this art of matching, zi. Its old words i mostly don't want to know. Too obvious, and usually banal signals to what i should think of it. If our films last at all, probably in a short form and with varying music.

    "2M1207b"
1.


Riding dictionary add · I an ugly idiom wink
occult stir rind forlorn snow · badly arroyo zymurgic
raining adlib adorn sing ban · snood bug Ogpu flaw

Bit by bit.





"I'm considering doing some of my future lyrics in Lojban! True, few listeners would understand what I was talking about -- but I reckon that, in many cases, the verbal contents of lyrics aren't all that important -- what's important is the genuineness of feeling attached to them, which is achievable if the words have deep meaning to the singer, whether or not the listener can understand them."

Aub*rgin* r*vi*w*d.

and a mist boils up · lost long
with stony light and stars · Ophir chill
or door to carol · Plutonium frost
occupation adorn · and a mist

‘UNDER THE FLOOD
they fly, past
raised black
sacrificial stones,

the sadness endlessly earth-bound
in the
shafts of landing gear,

drunken air-scribes in
the slopes of longing,

fragments of future findings, silver,
in
the cranial cockpit,

tunnels of vision
blown into the fog of speech,

self-kindling flowers
on every cable,

in the great wheel
not yet worn away,
your shadow, Saturn,
etched deep.’

--Paul C*lan, Last Po*ms (tr Katharin* Washburn, 1986)



"Embery along with Carol the artist elephant later became welcomed guests on the Johnny Carson late-night television show where Carol demonstrated her artistic ability by splashing Carson with her paint brush."

And in Ft Worth... --Voila.


"I wonder what the Texas legislative floor debate sounded like when they were trying to decide that 5 dildos is okay but 6 dildos is not."


Volapuk at Yahoogroups.

Grumman on cummings.





"If they know their old Mongol script, they can once again use it. Abolished by a Soviet language reform in 1924, it is being taught again in schools."

    "To the Etruscan Poets

Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young
Took with your mothers' milk the mother tongue.

In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,
You strove to leave some line of verse behind

Like a fresh track across a field of snow,
Not reckoning that all could melt and go."

--Richard Wilbur


Shamus. (via Robot Wisdom)


Looky! (via Lisablog)

Ouija Plath. (via Dumbfoundry)

"The reason you find an army of right-wingers ratcheting on the radio and so few liberals is simple: Republicans are in need of affirmation, they don't feel comfortable in America and they crave listening to people who think like them." (via ALDaily)

Quitting Am*rica.

You and I in a little toy shop,
buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got.
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone.
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, "Something's out there."
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by.

99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye.
Focusing it on the sky
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Decision Street, 99 ministers meet
to worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call out the troops now in a hurry.,
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war!
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Kriegsminister
Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Hielten sich fuer schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Riefen: Krieg und wollten Macht
Mann, wer haette das gedacht
Dass es einmal soweit kommt
Wegen 99 ballons

(99 war ministers
Matches and cans of gas
Thought they were really smart
Thought they found some good prey
Yelled war and wanted power
Man who would have thought that
It would go so far
Because of 99 red balloons ) english translation

99 dreams I have had,
And every one, a red balloon.
It's all over and I'm standin' pretty
In the dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here...
And here it is, a red balloon
I think of you and let it go....

Walrus.


A pulp P*ssoa. Plus.


Canary. (via M*tafilt*r)

snowman snaught conus · owl-light
amort · rapacious antfarm
Ísvara and halcon punt
igniting this · italic

octagon nomadic · inks
wuybarq · rsta · cosmonaut
awash slip blight pinks · ago
what I-tal · calculating

amok monarchist fruits stump
from barm sphinx · backgammon Oc
did you fungal as · panic
snowman storp · off Tarawa

Rhino.

Viridian insomnia ·raucous I
dimit ingots away · nip
icily nuthatch scalping · orchid maxima nod

if aroha ruinous · apt uproar croak
or ultion spiritous · imp
dismal ivory moon · inclamation thaw idiom

nymph gnarl ocarina · tonight so army
won and yawing nigh · irk pods
iodous collation · Istanbul lolling yarrow

nor until Tryphiodorus · hazards a torn coin


Victory at any cost.

"Ruby's painting soon raised some puzzling questions. For one thing, she seemed to make definite color choices. With her trunk, she would touch a specific jar of paint on the palette. If the keepers dipped her brush in any other color, she would either refuse the brush or drop it in the dirt.
    The keepers were surprised by this. Do elephants see in color? There was nothing in the books about color perception among elephants. Ruby also had a strong preference for certain colors: red, blue, and yellow. Were these real preferences or was Ruby merely pointing to colors at random? To find out, the helpers switched the position of the jars on the palette and offered more jars. They discovered that, regardless of position and other choices, Ruby continued to choose red, blue, and yellow most often.
    The keepers also noticed that Ruby often used colors that matched objects around her--construction vehicles working nearby and even the clothes worn by visitors to the elephant barn."

--Dick George, Ruby: the Painting Pachyderm of the Phoenix Zoo (1995)

"The world we created that book shop for is gone. It doesn't exist anymore."

    "Festus. Whose woes are like to my woes? What is madness?
The mind, exalted to a sense of ill,
Soon sinks beyond it into utter sadness,
And sees its grief before it like a hill.
Oh! I have suffered till my brain became
Distinct with woe, as is the skeleton leaf
Whose green hath fretted off its fibrous frame,
And bare to our immortality of grief.
Marian. Like the light line that laughter leaves
One moment on a bright young brow;
So truth is lost ere love believes
There can be aught save truth below.
Festus. But as the eye aye brightlier beams
For every fall the lid lets on it,
So oft the fond heart happier dreams
For the soft cheats love puts upon it.
Marian. I never dreamed of wretchedness;
I thought to love meant but to bless.
Festus. It once was bliss to me to watch
Thy passing smile, and sit and catch
The sweet contagion of thy breath--
For love is catching--from such teeth;
Delicate little pearl-white wedges,
All transparent at the edges."

--F*stus


Downsiz*d Antichrist. (via M*tafilt*r)

"...chess, like ice sculpture or cave painting or architecture, was an art of dreamlike impermanence." --Th* Ch*ss Artist

"Chess was like an aircraft carrier forever at sea, at war with the world and always on the brink of mutiny." --Th* Ch*ss Artist


"Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour..." (St*v*ns)

"As one comes across Java from Batavia by motorcar, Borobudur is the first temple one sees..." --Rob*rt J Cas*y, Four Fac*s of Siva (1929)

    "Wandering at Morn

Wandering at morn,
Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,
Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine!
Thee coil'd in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,
This common marvel I beheld--the parent thrush I watch'd feeding its young,
The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,
Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.
There ponder'd, felt I,
If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd,
If vermin so transposed, so used and bless'd may be,
Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;
Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for for you?
From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,
Destin'd to fill the world."

--from my 1892 Whitman

Pic of Bobby Fisch*r, with music.

Translations of a song. (via Pr*ntiss)

Phony tournam*nt.

"Here, briefly, are the rules for Hostage Chess (courtesy of Variant Chess number 32).
You need a chess set and four beer mats (two for each player: one on your left - an airfield; and one on your right - a prison). Normal set-up and rules, except:
1) Once you capture a man you stick him in prison. He's a hostage.

2) Before each move, you may offer a hostage held by you in exchange for one held by the enemy. The hostage offered must be at least equal in value to the man you ask for (normal values of pieces, with B=N). The opponent can't refuse the swap.

3) The man you have claimed must immediately be placed on any vacant square (except pawns can't be put on 1st or 8th rank). This ends your turn.

4) The hostage you released is placed on the enemy airfield. It may be 'dropped' by the opponent on any vacant square at any time in the game, instead of a move.

5) A pawn can't be promoted unless there is a piece (N,B,R,Q) for which it can be exchanged. And if there isn't a piece available, it follows that a p on the seventh is not attacking (or giving check) to any piece diagonally ahead of it. Where a promotion is possible, the pawn changes places with the hostage of the player's choice. The released hostage becomes the promoted piece, and the pawn is removed to the enemy prison.

6) A pawn dropped on the second rank regains its two move option; and a rook dropped on a home corner square is deemed to be unmoved for castling purposes.

This fascinating game was invented by Professor John Leslie of Guelph, Canada."

"As well, the effort to include chess in the Olympics fell apart, derailed in part because chess players did not want to undergo drug testing." --Th* Ch*ss Artist


"Jupiter is the planet with the most moons, 63 at the last count. Saturn now has 46. Uranus has 27 and Neptune 13." (via Robot Wisdom)

"Moments come in the hyper-sensitive life of artistic natures, come unbidden and uncaused, when we are assailed by desolate intimations of the inutility of all things, the vanity of our existence, the visionary fabric of the universe, the incomprehensibility of self, the continuous and irreparable flight of time--when our joys and sorrows, our passion and our shame, our endeavours to achieve and our inertia of languor, seem but a mocking film, an iridescent scum upon the treacherous surface of a black and bottomless abyss of horrible inscrutability. At these times, like Pascal, we fain would set a screen up to veil the ever-present gulf that yawns before our physical and mental organs of perceptiion. Alas for those who, feeling the realities of beauty and emotion so acutely having such power at times to render them by words or forms for others, must also feel with poignant intensity the grim and transitory nature of the ground on which we tread, of the flesh that clothes us round, of the desires that fret our brains, the duties we perform, the thoughts that keep our will upon the stretch through months of unremunerative labour.
    It is easy to stigmatise these moods as morbid. It is clear that yielding to them would entail paralysis of energy, decrepitude, disease. It is not certain that recording them serves any useful purpose. Yet they are real, a serious factor in the experience of sentient and reflective personalities. Duly counterpointed by strenuous activity and steady self-effectuation, they constitute for the artist and the thinker what might be compared to a 'retreat' for the religious. They force a man to recognise his own incalculable littleness in the vast sum of things.
    They teach him to set slight store on his particular achievement. They make him understand that seeming-bitter sentence of the Gospel, 'Say, we are unprofitable servants, we have not done that which was our duty to do.' Also they have the minor value of dissipating vain glamours of fame or blame, of popular applause or public condemnation, of vulgar display and petty rivalries with others. Emerging from them, the man, made wiser and saner, proceeds to work at that which lieth nearest to his hand to do."

--John Addington Symonds, in: V*nic* As S**n and D*scrib*d by Famous Writ*rs, ed. *sth*r Singl*ton (1911)

Tr*ndy hijab.

Against Thinking Machin* 4 i got this (as pallid): 4r3/7p/r3p1p/5p1k/5q2/5N1P/4p1P1/2R1Q2K.
Black did Rd6?, and i: g4+! Kh6; Qh4+ Kg7; Rc7+ & fin...

"Most of the stuff we encounter these days remains pretty twentieth century, but "21C" phenomena are like animae cyborgs waltzing through your supermarket. Ten-year-olds with Gameboys in one hand and cell phones in the other are 21C. Breaking last year's extreme weather records (and drooling over the resulting weather porn) is 21C. Tiger Woods -- with his multiethnic, corporate persona, his rich-man's game, and his preternatural mastery of fame -- is 21C. Faster-than-light photons, cloned pets, Napster, and millionaire tourists on Mir are all very 21C. And so are mainstream cartoon TV ads for cosmetic psychopharmacology." (via abuddhas m*m*s)


Also 21C.

"Victor Hugo wrote, 'There is in every village a torch: the
schoolmaster -- and an extinguisher: the parson.' "


"I want to persuade booksellers, at least in conversation, these books have more in common with The Turner Diaries and Mein Kampf than they do with The Purpose Driven Life and Tom Clancy."

Talabama. (via Orcinus)

Bon*s of th* Mast*r.

"[Lucifer speaks:] Why Mammon sits before a million hearths
Where God is bolted out from every house.
Well might He say He cometh as a thief;
For He will break your bars and burst your doors
Which slammed against Him once, and turn ye out,
Roofless and shivering, 'neath the doom-storm; Heaven
Shall crack above ye like a bell in fire,
And bury all beneath its shining shards.
He calls: ye hear not. Lo! he comes--ye see not.
No; ye are deaf as a dead adder’s ear:
No; ye are blind as never bat was blind,
With a burning bloodshot blindness of the heart;
A swimming, swollen senselessness of soul.
Listen! Whom love ye most? Why him to whom
Ye in your turn are dearest. Need I name?
Oh, no! But all are devils to themselves;
And every man his own great foe. Hell gets
Only the gleanings; earth hath the full wain;
And hell is merry at its harvest home.
But ye are generous to sin and grudge
The gleaners nothing; ask them, push them in.
Let not an ear, a grain of sin be lost;
Gather it, grind it up; it is our bread:
We should be ashamed to waste the gifts of God.
Why is the world so mad? Why runs it thus
Raving and howling round the universe?
Because the Devil bit it from the birth!
The fault is all with him. Fear nothing, friends!
It is fear which beds the far to-come with fire
As the sun does the west: but the sun sets;
Well: still ye tremble--tremble, first at light,
Then darkness. Tremble! ye dare not believe.
No, cowards! sooner than believe ye would die;
Die with the black lie flapping on your lips
Like the soot-flake upon a burning bar.
Be merry, happy if ye can: think never
Of him who slays your souls, nor Him who saves.
There is time enough for that when ye are a-dying.
Keep your old ways! It matters not this once.
Be brave! Ye are not men whom meat and wine
Serve to remind but of the sacrament;
To whom sweet shapes and tantalizing smiles
Bring up the Devil and the ten commandments--
And so on--but I said the world must end.
I am sorry; it is such a pleasant world:
With all its faults it is perfect--to a fault:
And you, of course, end with it. Now how long
Will the world take to die? I know ye place
Great faith upon death-bed repentences;
The suddener the better. I know ye often
Begin to think of praying and repenting;
But second thoughts come and ye are worse than ever;
As over new white snow a filthy thaw.
Ye do amaze me verily. How long
Will ye take heart on your own wickedness?
Come now; the year and month, day, hour and minute,
Sin’s golden cycle. Do ye know how long
Exactly Heaven will grant ye? how long God,--
Who when he had slain the world and wasted it,
Hung up His bow in Heaven, as in his hall
A warrior after battle--will yet bear
Your contumely and scorn of His best gifts,--
Man's mockery of man? But never mind!
Some of us are magnificently good,
And hold the head up high like a giraffe;
You, in particular, and you--and you.
Good men are here an there, I know; but then,--
You must excuse me if I mention this--
My duty is to tell it you--the world,
Like a black block of marble, jagged with white,
As with a vein of lightning petrified,
Looks blacler than without such; looks in truth,
So gross the heathen, gross the Christian too--
Like the original darkness of void space,
Hardened. Instead of justice, love and grace,
Each worth to man the mission of a God,
Injustice, hate, uncharitableness,
Triequal reign round earth, a Trinity of Hell.
Ye think ye never can be bad enough:
And as ye sink in sin, ye rise in hope.
And let the worst come to the worst, you say,
There always will be time to turn ourselves,
And cry for half an hour or so to God:
Salvation, sure, is not so very hard--
It need not take one long; and half an hour
Is quite as much as we can spare for it.
We have no time for pleasures. Business! business!
No! ye shall perish sudden and unsaved.
The priest shall, dipping, die. Can man save man?
Is water God? The counsellor, wise fool!
Drop down amid his quirks and sacred lies--
The judge, while dooming unto death some wretch,
Shall meet at once his own death, doom, and judge.
The doctor, watch in hand, and patient’s pulse,
Shall feel his own heart cease its beats--and fall:
Professors shall spin out, and students strain
Their brains no more; art, science, toil shall cease.
The world shall stand still with a rending jar,
As though it struck at sea. The halls where sit
The heads of nations shall be dumb with death.
The ship shall after her own plummet sink,
And sound the sea herself and depths of death.
At the first turn Death shall cut off the thief,
And dash the gold bag in his yellow brain.
The gambler, reckoning gains, shall drop a piece;
Stoop down and there see death;--look up, there God.
The wanton, temporizing with decay,
And qualifying every line which vice
Writes bluntly on the brow, inviting scorn,
Shall pale through plastered red: and the loose, low sot
See clear, for once, through his misty, o'erbrimmed eye.
The just, if there be any, die in prayer.
Death shall be every where among your marts,
And giving bills which no man may decline--
Drafts upon Hell one moment after date.
Then shall your outcries tremble amid the stars:
Terrors shall be about ye like a wind:
And fears come down upon ye like a house."

-F*stus


Fat*s.

Still in print...!

"Put another way: this is open-source literature."

Hiniku
island · narrowly I kingdom ump

indigo · swim loo
abash Narcissus dybbuk · nonjuror airt

rank rodomont · owl-light warp
low Yalta ironhat · Kalmuck ivy-owl nab grim dump

only morass until murk platinum · idol numps
dungfly · illicit grisly

orbit snag which · inks mulch lungfish obitdorp
ormolu · ambit

bituminous antfarm · sarcasm
hook · nougat

2M1207b.

    "May our country ever lead
The world, for she is worthiest; and may all
Profit by her example, and adopt
Her course, wherever great, or free, or just.
May all her subject colonies and powers
Have of her freedom freely, as a child
Receiveth of its parents. Let not rights
Be wrested from us to our own reproach,
But granted. We may make the whole world free,
And be as free ourselves as ever, more!
If policy or self-defence call forth
Our forces to the field, let us in Thee
Place, first, our trust, and in Thy name we shall
O'ercome, for we will only wage the right.
Let us not conquer nations for ourselves,
But for Thee, Lord! who hast predestined us
To fight the battles of the future now,
And so have done with war before Thou comest.
Till then, Lord God of armies, let our foes
Have their swords broken and their cannon burst,
And their strong cities levelled; and while we
War faithfully and righteously, improve,
Civilize, christianize the lands we win
From savage or from nature, Thou, oh God!
Wilt aid and hallow conquest, as of old,
Thine own immediate nation’s. But we pray
That all mankind may make one brotherhood,
And love and serve each other; that all wars
And feuds die out of nations, whether those
Whom the sun's hot light darkens, or ourselves
Whom he treats fairly, or the northern tribes
Whom ceaseless snows and starry winters blench,
Savage or civilized,--let every race,
Red, black or white, olive, or tawny-skinned,
Settle in peace and swell the gathering hosts
Of the great Prince of Peace! Oh! may the hour
Soon come when all false gods, false creeds, false prophets,--
Allowed in Thy good purpose for a time,--
Demolished, the great world shall be at last,
The mercy-seat of God, the heritage
Of Christ, and the possession of the Spirit,
The comforter, the wisdom! shall all be
One land, one home, one friend, one faith, one law,
Its ruler God, its practice righteousnes,
Its life peace!"

--F*stus

"His writing, as Schalkwyk points out, is full of labyrinthine cities and restlessly criss-crossed landscapes..." (via wood_s lot)

"I've also always enjoyed more traditional art and poetry. I think there was a false division between abstract art and figurative art for instance. To like one and not the other was always ridiculous. As Schoenberg said sometime in the 1930s, 'there is still a lot of music to be written in the key of C major' and a lot of contemporary composers seem to be trying to write a new kind of music which also can sound traditional. This is kind of what I'd like to do myself. I'd like to write like Tennyson but make it new." (via Hotel Point)

"Ay; strange and startling is the first hot tear
That we have shed for years; and which hath lain
Like to a water-fairy in the eye's
Blue depths--spell-bound in the socket of the soul.
Death brought it not--pain brought it not--nor shame;
Nor penitence--nor pity--nor despair:
Nothing but love could. For a fearful time
We can keep down the floodgates of the heart,
But we must draw them sometime; or it will burst
Like sand this brave embankment of the breast,
And drain itself to dry death. When pride thaws--
Look for floods!"

--F*stus


Spooky.

"Bacon always seems to write with his ermine on." --Al*xand*r Smith, Dr*amthorp


"For traditional Muslims, the converse of tyranny was not liberty but justice." --B*rnard L*wis, What W*nt Wrong? (2002)


"I envy the big noises,
The yew hedge of the Grosse Fugue."

--Plath


"Forthwith, in fell Gorgonian venom steeped." --Cranch’s V*rgil


"And style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature." --Dr*amthorp


Booty.

Phranc: Cap*d Crusad*r

   (spoken:) When Pope John Paul 2 · was in Japan
   He read a comic book there · about the life
   Of St Francis of Assissi · and said the Pope,
   "I think there should be · a comic book about me,
   So let’s call up Stan Lee."

(R, fast:) And move over Captain America
Step aside Incredible Hulk
Make way for the Caped Crusader
The one they call "The Pope"

They hired a Roman Catholic artist
And a Roman Catholic artist too
Every word and picture in this comic book
Is gonna be the truth

He was born in Poland
This comic book will tell
When the Nazis were invadin' em
Everything was going to hell
He was going to be an actor
Then he became a priest
Even after he joined the clergy
He wrote a couple plays

Wow, what a comic book
What a supreme pontifical release
Sixty four full color pages
Five hundred thousand copies
Wow, what a comic book
What a supreme pontifical release
Sixty four full color pages
Of infallibility

So move over Captain America
Step aside Incredible Hulk
Make way for the Caped Crusader
The one they call "The Pope"
Move over Captain America
Step aside Incredible Hulk
Make way for the Caped Crusader
The one they call John Paul


(from Folksing*r (1985)

"Orb of perdition! thou too shalt die out,
And thy red sheeted flames shall fail for aye.
Thy palpitating piles of ruin, hot
With ever active agony, and quick
With soul immortal, down whose midnight heights
The wrath of God in cataracts of fire
Precipitates itself unceasingly,
Shall rush into destruction as a steed
Rushes into the battle, there to die.
Thy quivering hills of black and bloody hue,
Death-breathing, shall collapse like lifeless lungs,
And end in air and ashes."

--F*stus

Got back my bout-rim*:


Falling swiftly into no blonde June
our Huygens went, and through three hours' stress
stonily gazed upon an orange moon,
one whose mystery sometime did obsess
a teenaged poet. Striped like coral snake
and cobweb-frail, those flailings now so moot
--yet still can freeze: one dream of yellowcake
found, with rippling waves, intact, a beaut.
And I will clasp it to myself, as Garbo
maybe no mighty secret withheld; but play
as if it might. I also as a hobo
piled stones upon a shore, my art for a day:
this gadget’s voyage, last and lingered rhinestone,
maroon clouds under, never-again cologne.


Arch.

B*ll*rophon discussion.

Spasmodics.

Umbrist imgrat · abuts frost
misgiving ostrich stash · zinc ammunition

ogmic · broil
tantrum sty · fallback

ubangi huzzahs sting · askant off
frabjous · sobornost

using · ithyphallic amps
ginormous asparagus · against

wisp · avant
gird and aglow so · isotopic strum grunt

My vocabulary did this to you.

In Axum...



"NEW DELHI—Thanks to widespread outsourcing of telephone-service jobs, a sixth caste has blossomed in India: the Khidakayas, a mid-level jati made up of technical-support workers."

     'Pessoa: Ah, Quanta Melancolia

So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.

What an anguish stripped of hope,
what grief that only tastes the end;
if nevermore returned the ship,
if in the street a blind man fell--
give it up, there’s nothing else.

Without content, without repose
not a single hour of mine
in which a soul finds full employment;
the blind man in the street succumbs,
the ship then dwindles out of sight.

So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.'

(My translation.)


Fado on M*tafilt*r.

Dr*am Tim*.

"The Kalmyks did not have the same relationship with Lenin that other Russians did. He had been one-quarter Kalmyk; and when the Soviet Union fell, Bair said, rather than take down Lenin's statue, the Kalmyks had simply turned it so that it faced out into the steppe." --Th* Ch*ss Artist


    "TOMORROW

Now that the others are gone, all of them, forever,
And they have your answer, and you have theirs, and the decision is made,
And the river of minutes between you widens to a tide of hours, a flood of days, a gulf of years and a sea of silence;

If, now, there are any questions you would like to ask of the shapes that still move and speak inaudibly in the empty room,
If there are any diferent arrangements you would like to suggest,

Make them to the riverboats, whose echoing whistle will be a clear reply,
Speak to the seagulls, their effortless flight will provide any answer you may wish to hear,
Ask the corner chestnut vendor, ask the tireless hammer and pulse of the subway,
Speak to the family on the illuminated billboard, forever friendly, or to the wind, or to the sign that sways and creaks above the stationer's door."

--F*aring

"Glenn had played more than four hundred tournament games, which I would come to understand was something like saying he had written four hundred sonnets, in public, while opponents who didn’t particularly like him tried to write better sonnets using the same words." --Th* Ch*ss Artist


Sidis in Dallas I slink · insalubrious nadir
dunks aggry lost long · and slushfund igloo skirmish

liquid ingots nab · kingdom island noctid
simoom asomatous looming · ulnar brouhaha ruinous

"Imagine Tom Delay as Pol Pot. I certainly can."

"Lisbon, Warsaw, and Naples vie for the title of grimmest city in Europe. But they’ll never match Istanbul, says Orhan Pamuk..." (via ALDaily)

"At the entrance, after the city's emblem, one finds the most typical symbol of Lisbon, the raven. Today, this raven is stuffed and in a cage, but it's ancestors were those which accompanied the boat which brought the body of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of the city, to Lisbon. The raven walked freely between the tables, accepting with good faith what the customers gave it to eat and to drink, appreciating especially the wine." --liner notes to Fernanda Maria canta Fernanda Maria

    MOKO: SITH SONGS AND ANTI SONGS

1. Sith songthink says words backwards · sing with doubly strong sound.

2. Any song has its anti song · that mocks its point.

3. Pick words first to star · as claws in a song.

4. A Sith song always starts out · in a familiar spot.

5. Two colors in a Sith song · sort its two moods.

6. "I" is its only pronoun · found fourth in any song.

7. Sith gods show in a song’s modifying words · not nouns.

8. Pazuzu is: tubular, rapacious, sly, twinkling, grisly, forlorn, and ruinous.

9. Mid high dots split · two parts of a "tart" string.

10. Sith songs do not tarry · past a handful of strings.

Night Gall*ry. (Much inspiring my first thoughts of art and painting.)

"William Carlos Williams is going down."

    "Comet Fever

By one blue gleaming
the sidewalk crawls with water.
I listen to chatter and squeaks.
Most of it’s past.

Beyond my snug embrasure
except that lamp, night hides.
I watch what no one watches.
Sleep has taken all.

Unblinking star, I used to home
only as the row of them went out.
Then snuffed I as suddenly.
That was awhile ago.

Suburbanite's sentinel, catching nothing
night after night, not even cats:
rain and wind quicken you.
But I glare unchanged.

Out of a measured labor
where days cycle blind
I stepped to become a fiction
as one leaves a car

that no longer runs
by the side of the road.
The pavement's sheen is twinkling.
With a rush, the cataract resumes."

--Tono Bungay, Chick*n N*cks for Th* Soul (2012)

"I am forbidden to make a living, therefore I am; my impossibility is my defiance."  --Ivy F*rrari, A S*ri*s of Unfortunat* Pr*sid*nts (2009)


My window works for a day.


"Kalmykia was a desperately poor Maine-sized republic on the northwest coast of the Caspian sea. Here, a chess movement was underway. The republic's president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a former chess prodigy, was using the game, I believed, the way tyrants used religions to unite people."  --J C Hallman, Th* Ch*ss Artist (2003)

Plan B. (via M*tafilt*r)

Ouch.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

Hitl*r's pop*.

Glandular Omnism. (via wood_s lot) (I said.)

Mich*ll* Hartman has a w*bpag*!

Kipling hands this draft in:

"In time, the whole place wangled another fame,
and torture flourished loud too in freedom's land.

This parable I cannot understand
inscribes unfurls across the sky in figured flame
and though we crawl swarm beneath as then and barely name
our fear anymore, our dragon terror is at hand.

How long since we put let baboons mandrills in take command,
and how much longer must they swagger still? No tongue may frame
the public question. Blindfold justice, she
who firing squads can face, with aim as poor,
        Weil saw more, and she
spoke of the Great Beast... Misfortunes pour
now; what else can poor Pandora free

but that which always hoicks gathers swept them to our shore,
a recklessness that sometimes works? Like me
you dare left turns --but I do not adore.
        For me
freedom is a window, not a door.
        To me
but chaoslight on Shrub’s Plutonian shore?
Small future stays in sight for mine and me,
And as for what I’ve made --drunk toreador--"

What would Lazarus think?

Statu* of P*ssoa in Lisbon.

"At the age of eight he accomplished the spectacular feat of devising a new table of logarithms using a base of twelve instead of the normal ten..." --Wallac* op cit

Also, 'th* bowman obscur*s' in his lingo V*nd*rgood is: "The toxoteis obscurit."

Th* Ch*ss Artist.

Ambi*nt C*ntury.

Art prostitut*.

No man's land. (As if drawn during that war, and not just now.)


"There are literally hundreds of songs about why one sings fado, who sings it and to who it should be sung." --Donald Coh*n, Fado Português (2003)

"He told the story of Benjamin Franklin's leaving one hundred dollars in his will to his native town of Boston, to be put out at 6 percent compound interest for a century, then used for a work of public benefit. At the end of that period--in 1890--the one hundred dollars had grown to forty thousand dollars. The money was used to build Franklin Park, which is the same size as New York's Central Park." --Amy Wallac*, Th* Prodigy (1986)

"Pessoa became profoundly influential as a poet; a number of his lyrics were set to music and became popular as fados." --Coh*n, op cit (Also.)

"loving,
    hating,
        waiting
            for the fates"

--Dani*ll* St**l

Razbliuto, alas.

"Watch long enough, and you will see the leaf
Fall from the bough. Without a sound it falls:
And soundless meets the grass... And so you have
A bare bough, and a dead leaf in dead grass.
Something has come and gone. And that is all.

But what were all the tumults in this action?
What wars of atoms in the twig, what ruins,
Fiery and disastrous, in the leaf?
Timeless the tumult was, but gave no sign.
Only, the leaf fell, and the bough is bare.

This is the world: there is no more than this.
The unseen and disastrous prelude, shaking
The trivial act from the terrific action.
Speak: and the ghosts of change, past and to come,
Throng the brief word. The maelstrom has us all."

--Conrad Aiken

William Jam*s Sidis. Most of his works.

Caliph Marburg slack
pillbug uptown, physical ambolic cairn

gray ubiquarian cups
fry ogganition (asp slow hazaj)

act sky opt,
sill flow sly abs bunk; ugh gunk apt struck logic

twig and sport throwstick
cynanthropic ascian firm/.



Vikings.