"These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us."
"this plum tree
is soon to become
prayer beads"
--Issa (via @bashosociety)
What is This That Stands Before Me?
"Then fancies greet each goblin's eye" --Betelguese: A Trip Through Hell
Goblin standing under a waterfall, sepia-toned photograph.
"So I have farewell'd Listland's
Landwarder's garth, and Gunnhild's,
Rich in deeds (I'll draw no
Darkling veil to hide them),
As that some three thanes there
Of Hlokk's thriving rowan,
In Hell's huge dwelling,
Hell-gone, end their goings."
--from Eddison's Egil's Saga
"Boon
Heat-weary head · the humid morning
moves with mounting · menace into day;
dims the deep woods, dulls the skyline.
Sullen, slow-paced · sisterhood of haze
hover hang-breasted · hairy over fields,
fill with forthcoming · flood and thunder.
Thirst threads earth · in thin rootlets,
reaches restlessly · rock-branched for water
waiting for weather's wild-handed boon.
Breath, a first breeze · brightens aspens
airy, easy. All at once dark
dour-faced, driving, day's burden
bursts in a blind flash · blunders among trees,
twists over tops, tears bits away.
Outgush, Earth-hammer · issue of gods,
grandeur that gives · and grieves, magnificent."
--George Johnston at Forgotten Grounds Regained
Which medieval elephant are you today?
"Sun is ill.
A fog is all:
a cosy away,
a way all lies.
I rain, I arise.
I’ll lay away, away...
So, call as I go.
Fall is in us."
--@MerlinaAcevedo
"No one asked you to write. And no one will care if you stop."
--George V. Higgins (via @seventydys)
The creepy "Occult Surrealist" landscapes of Dutch painter Johfra Bosschart.
"like priests and goblins shake the pews with censers" --Joyelle McSweeney, Death Styles (2024)
A Prayer That Will Be Answered.
"your fingertips
caressed my skin as if
reading by braille
on this dark winter's night
how felt the written word"
--an'ya
wan sickle moon
lore of the Old North
reacher for a lip brush fallen
The South Downs Paths of the Dead.
"Asking ChatGPT to write me an essay called 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' " --@exhaustdata
Found this crazy thing on my hard drive.
"Dishonesty accrues in our bones like lead or mercury." --@buffalo_wallow
"glimmer matte"
invasive churn chiselled
chalice of silence milestone
fortified by frailty
affix thy beam, dreamer
"...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts..."
"pilgrim silverfish trace"
not a firn-clad morning
but bright cold & tholed more
caffeine sends its brainwave
straighteners work cirqueward
& liquid glare shackles
yield distinct their tinctures:
never again raven
"It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots."
They were good at imagining things that didn't actually exist.
"NOTHING IS SACRED (Anagrammed Lines)
Nothing is sacred:
the gods in cairns,
and gnostic heirs;
once-hiding stars
and echoing stirs....
Nights, scored in a
sigh constrained."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"ordered days, disordered skies"
stark cove · to a cold start
unequal orts · answer the yellow light
breaking brambles · where the brumous neumes
dissolve into zygote ash · zeroing out
& wrixled woirds · row upon row
accumulate calmly · in the starting cold
"Are We Not Drawn Onward, We Freer Few, Onward to New Era?"
taisk tacit · totalizing yearn
walls won't hold · words written on
hitchhiker huddled · hails a driver
the lake left · drenched & dribbling
but fades finally · for night's fool
the strange story · all in our whirl that stays
"The entire population of the Roman Empire at its height under Hadrian was about ten million fewer people than Germany’s population today. The whole Ottoman Empire maxed out at about the same population as Texas. The scale of the world’s population explosion boggles the mind." --@AmitMajmudar
Snakey Wakey Grandfather Clock.
"I don’t know where else these presses can go."
"You know how on the airplane if the oxygen masks come down you are supposed to put yours on before helping anyone else. Writing for 90 mins in the morning before dealing with everything else feels like that!" --@rezekjoe
Study for a painting of St Jerome.
"The Runes on Weland's Sword
A Smith makes me
To betray my Man
In my first fight.
To gather Gold
At the world's end
I am sent.
The Gold I gather
Comes into England
Out of deep water.
Like a shining Fish
Then it descends
Into deep Water.
It is not given
For goods or gear
But for the Thing.
The Gold I gather
A King covets
For an ill use.
The Gold I gather
Is drawn up
Out of deep water.
Like a shining Fish
Then it descends
Into deep Water.
It is not given
For goods or gear
But for the Thing."
--Rudyard Kipling
I wanted to fangle a limerick,
But the second line turned out a bottleneck;
Plus the noise from those slaughters
Next door simply totters
My wits with despair in full cataract.
"I have devoted the first eighty years of my life to philosophy, and propose to devote the next eighty years to another branch of fiction." --Bertrand Russell (via @_ryanruby_)
"The world is too fucked up for us to pretend to be cooler than we are."
Only a desperate situation like this.
"The fire twists the tints of twilight.
Our mistakes move from ash to mist to moonlight."
--Mary Alexandra Agner
"eclipse watchdog"
keep flashing photos · of the before time
this morth mulch · amercing innocents
wanders among unwitting · warriors perne
five green globes · goofily bob
i hit a bad bump · badgered by pollen
my peers pullulate perishing · warriors perne
in my bloodstream blarney · in my bleary eyes sorrow
at the things our thoughtlessness · tharfs transpire
in rancid cerulean rote · warriors perne
Loop.
"spring prayer"
spiralling whoosh · wherry
no whited tomb standing
water tower tango
taking the gone story
proceed knowing nothing
nap of windshield seedfall
something great outside us
"Claw hangs in claw..."
"All Lockhart's prejudices were roused and he rushed to his doom—the worst that can befall a reviewer. He committed himself violently, he betrayed himself completely. He tried to snuff out between finger and thumb one of the immortal lights of English literature. For that failure he has been gibbeted ever since. No one who sees him swinging in the wind can help a shudder and a sigh lest the same fate may one of these days be his. After all, new books of poems still appear." --Virginia Woolf, "Lockhart's Criticism"
Nothing but the slow death of survival.
Timelapse of Europa and Io passing over Jupiter’s great red spot.
"Religious judgements tend to fall into two camps imo—1. experiences with awe and 2. doctrinal alignment. In the first you experience the Other, in the second you experience an echo of yourself. Aesthetic experiences are ones with awe. Doctrinal ones more with resonant ideology." --@buffalo_wallow
The growing number of homeless robots.
"LOCH NESS
Upon the vernal equinox,
when all our fictions come to pass,
a shadow leans across the rocks.
Beneath the water, clouds amass:
a nebula absorbs the loch’s
illusions — hoaxes, dreams in glass,
the jostling haze of history’s whims —
until, at last, the creature swims."
--@Anthony_Etherin
A lovely day for a sailing trip.
"Freeway Dawn
Stop-and-go traffic staggers along,
bumper-to-bumper past the brink of dawn
till the raw gaze of the ragged sun
glances off fenders
and glares on the hills.
The news-anchor’s voice keeps nattering on,
like the humming motor or the hissing fan,
and with rapid pulse an arresting tone
pierces right through
each portable cell—
There’s a public listing for this private hell.
But under the brush on bright-edged hills
where pattering feet turn poised by holes,
and high up in haze where hawk-shadows wheel,
and cloudbanks mirror
the colors of dawn,
and even where traffic inches and crawls,
another pulse measures patterns revealed
in balance of limb, in breath held still,
when a moment freezes,
moves, and is gone
like a sudden deer in the slanting sun."
--Paul Douglas Deane in Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival
"an essential component of writing any book is wanting to give up on it at various points :)" --@chenchenwrites
"...at the end of his life he was reputedly both a staunch Catholic and a member of the Communist Party."
"2016 was a sad year when April Fool's Day lost all meaning. since then, every day has been April Fool's Day with no resolution in sight." --@joycecaroloates
“Canticle to the Sun”
Draw the floppy screen frame out
And glide two finger tips across
So what is lightly there will curl
Into substantial fluffy lump
But whether into regular trash
Perchance recycle who can say
It makes a scrape to put it back
And then i may proceed to dry
And while i do so, half my thought
Hovers around the seven dead
Who only sought to carry food
Into the present killing zone
And these were only in the way
Not even that but targeted
And there imagination fails
My clothes grow thinner every pass
Through this machine that all my life
I’ve used to make my wet clothes dry
Instead of hanging in the sun
Which might as well had not existed
Dün gece Adıyaman'da çekilen görüntü muhteşem🫶.
eye inflames the moon
as it does to itself-O
you'll never grow old
& we return to that crescent
with strip mining plans in mind
"The thing is, they seem to need less and less of us working as time goes on and they figure out how to stripmine us more efficiently." (Mefi thread with good comments)
"It is very bizarre that human beings have never significantly evolved the capacity to find intolerable the persecution of other people." --@bernardtjoy
"How many anagrammists does it take to change a lightbulb?
One, but the glow is misty and black. Hot ash. A granite magma."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"blood of a centipede"
bloodstained normalcy blurs
threatening sky · thriftstore
blogger enthralled
with Grand Guignol spectatorship
spotless spirograph landscapes
& Gethsemane spoonerists
"He even has her passion for cats."
"Rebirth of a Palindromist (palindrome composed in head on walk)
‘Tis a wit I see!
Stone swords parted a vessel.
Motto:
Be born in robe bottomless.
Evade traps.
Drowse not.
See, sit.
I was it."
--@SpoonerRhythms
"Can I just admit now that I thought an 'em dash' was named after Emily Dickinson?" --@RoisonCNorton
Junk.
"But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artifact, a moment of seemly & robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is"
-- Mary Oliver via @stonecirclerev
"Ballade of an Artificial Satellite
One inland summer I walked through rye,
A wind at my heels that smelled of rain
And harried white clouds through the whistling sky
Where the great Sun stalked and shook his mane
And roared so brightly across the grain
It burned and shimmered like alien sands;
Ten years old, I saw down a lane
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.
In ages before the world ran dry
What might the mapless not contain?
Atlantis gleamed like a dream to die;
Avalon lay under faerie reign;
Cibola guarded a golden plain;
Tir-Na-Nog was fair-locked Fand's;
Sober men saw from a gull's-road wain
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.
Such clanging countries in cloudland lie;
But men grew weary and they grew sane
And they grew grown - and so did I -
And knew Tartessus was only Spain.
No galleons call at Taprobane
(Ceylon, with English), no queenly hands
Wear gold from Punt, nor sees the Dane
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.
Ahoy Prince Andros, horizon's-bane!
They always wait, the elven lands;
An evening planet gives again
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands."
--Poul Anderson [1958, written for Sputnik--the discovery alluded to is that of Vinland]
"If there is intelligence work being done here, it seems more likely to be an attempt to generate anti-Russian sentiment." (Mefi thread)
"SONNET FOUND IN A DESERTED MAD HOUSE
Oh that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!
For the old egg of my desire is broken,
Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and
As the mild melancholy contents grease
My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time's trashy purse is as a taken token
Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken
By mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.
And yet, why should I clasp the earthful urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?
Or choose to chase the cheese around the churn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast."
--anonymous, from A Nonsense Anthology ed Carolyn Wells (1915)
Alternative to the periodic table.
"every time a student uses chatgpt to write an essay on Never Let Me Go it always fabricates hilarious quotes like, 'So this is what we’re made for, eh Kathy? To be clones so the rest of the world can use our organs in this so-called ‘donation’ system? It makes me want to scream!' " --@dee_of_e
"Which does not mean that we should do nothing."
”We endure creatively due to our imperative ability to say No to reality, to build fictions of alterity, of dreamt or willed or awaited otherness for our consciousness to inhabit. It is in this precise sense that the utopian and messianic are figures of syntax.” - George Steiner via @johannesgoranss
Hiszékeny & more. (thread)
write a poem called "blood of a centipede"
In the shadow's crawl,
centipede's silent glide,
blood of ancient lore.
Each crimson drop, a story,
etched in time's endless sprawl.
--ChatGPT
not bad, tin man
"This April morning offers..."
Guide to Lustmord. (via feuilleton)
"balloon bunnies waggling in the graveyard"
Just here is where you start, no other coign,
no other eyes, in the bluegray commute.
Ev'ry hand is raised against, boss or dacoit:
an April whose warm gaze might well be June.
Begin if you must though none will blame
the falling-silent of the snirp-discouraged
beneath such lowering moons & all-disparaged
necessity to cry. Then try to affirm
the human in the corner of the picture
& thereby fadge a tutelary caption...
So our wheels roll, our news feeds fill with fiction;
the shade will glide across, evading capture--
they'll clepe it what the rest will take for scripture.
Thread about fictitious TV-Republicans.
"If anyone needs an archaic-sounding word for ‘wizard’ that NOBODY has used yet, you can try ‘galdergale’, which I just coined from the Old English for ‘spell-caster’ (*𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘢)." --@wylfcen
"every night, another moon rises, and over time the sky fills up" --@allgebrah
Bill Knott's collection of "Chanson d'automne" translations. (from about p. 4 on)
"cutout bin"
1.
this light that's only lent to us
can be taken away at times
a lantern tumped
sun-devouring virus
& our games gone like smoke
evanish each guest
holding up dark glass high
2.
another screed against scrolling
act harrying the empire
ascribed uffishness
the ichneumon wields Nardil
or Lojban like a lead pipe
in the night of lessons
Passio Verbigenae. (via Feuilleton)
"As a critic I began with little except passion and an ornery nature."
"I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
'It is futile,' I said,
'You can never —'
'You lie,' he cried,
And ran on."
--Stephen Crane via @RobertAllenPoet
We're so amnesiac now we're like the guy in M𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜 scribbling notes to himself on his own body he can't figure out the meaning of. That's why we repeat the old stupid conflicts. We can't even get their basic premises right.
