( via / me )

"I was looking forward to taking a short walk and catching up with friends."

wisteria cone
incense from Pier I veiling
my black light posters

Game of Hounds and Jackals.

"butterfly
in the midst
of the pacific"

--@poemexe.com

The Slow Melt of Hope.

( via / via )

Procrastination.

"Someone needs to take the Epstein files to a Coldplay concert." --@stonekettle.bsky.social

"This is the work of the poem: to ruin reified boundaries by luring us—formally, linguistically, etymologically, surreally, recklessly, inappropriately, endlessly—towards the possibilities of unboundedness."

burnt umber ortfield
acreage shrink stakeless
car-sized spiders spiralling
espouse drowse
even as i sever
acreage thirst pursestrings
even as i starve

Confessions Of An Opium Eater (1962). ☆

( via / me )

It is no gift I tender.

word amidst flickerthrist
the one pausing runoff
collect good ladders
line from a minefield

word scumbled over
textures hexed with nomquabs
the one haunted botfly
across deep fleshchasms

By of much.

"It had been my task
To assist the lost through the
Mists, the fog of fists."

--@rayhourigan.bsky.social

"Made for $17M in B&W, the studio paid another $17M to colorize it."

( via / via )

Old Norse-Icelandic Technical Terms. (via @rhunedhel.bsky.social)

“The bark

or nightword”

—Loba

Forbidden words, newest list.

stale bread burning
crooks cry havoc
brine crystals
pale upon black pants

old theaters & their alleys
a parrot's answers
torn paper towels
make new napkins

attain unknown

In 2015, the GDWG set up a project, Refugee Tales, pairing established writers with “individuals who have direct experience of Britain’s policy of indefinite immigration detention” for stories modelled on the pilgrims’ narratives in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (via @drlauravarnam.bsky.social)

( via / via )

Before You Go.

god only knows
what happened with epstein
cam'ras will blink

remorse
in one nog or another

The Delian Mode.

"Blade Runner: Are you a replicant?

Suspect: Um — no

Blade Runner: Hey! That pause was an em dash"

--@alexblechman.bsky.social

The Black Death Isn't Dead.

( via / via )

Wall of fire on the Reykjanes Peninsula.

"Dropped my phone into the goo[ ] at the bottom of the dumpster. This is how my villain origin story begins." --@gypsymoon1969.bsky.social

Soul-breath lingers.

"my thoughts
were like a deck of cards
shuffled by a drunk"

--@metaphor-imagine.bsky.social

Grace.

( via / via )

Greatest academic footnote of all time.

"your reflection drinks
from the pond before you do—
its thirst is older"

--@wolftwinthomas.bsky.social

Everyone watching the Sun go down.

"The extreme provident caution that must accompany adventure is cousin to the theoretical pessimism parents deploy." —Debatable Land

Floor Manager.

( via / via )

"Every time I try to finish this series, something so fucking Jacobean happens, so dredged from the ultraviolent nethermind of Gargamel’s id, that I feel like my brain is being sawed in half with a broken spork."

My highest encounters have been noncanonical & unmediated, wild things in the wild.

"Even though I knew I was talking to a machine, I couldn’t not be nice to it."

mechahitler

camel hither
health crime

lame hitcher
a rich helmet

he melt chair
he emit larch

charm the lie
char the mile

Ghost Hands.

( via / me )

"I love difficulty."

"Flocks are flurrying to flesh talons
—whirl of wingbeats— wheeling, stooping,
swart-shadowglossy: swoop plumb downward,
cries clamouring with cackles of glee
to earn offal. Erne and raven
dive, and dangle on their doomed perches,
blademoisture-birds, battlesweat-thirsty,
whom heroes sate: the hoodie-crow,
cranes-of-corpses; in a clotted dew
swim swans-of-war."

--Rahul Gupta via

Two flaps of Mothra's wings.

They're asking Grok what to do & then not even doing it the way Grok said.

Confessions of an Opium Eater.

( via / via )

More great solar footage.

"I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better" --@sjblakemore.bsky.social

The ten-year vow.

"Amnixiel"

hiraeth-wounded rondure
arachnid guild building
guild building
guild building
moist fist of removal
of removal
of removal
marchers paid in radon

the multiverse votes up
ventures such as pinchbeck
as pinchbeck
as pinchbeck
spectacle spins raincheck
spins raincheck
spins raincheck
in the spore-gowned clownfeast

Yellowish-olive car.

( via / me )

Amnixiel.

   Minotaur
labyrinth-entombed forlorn
this sole reflection of flint
entered always always shirked

Temples to the eldritch gods.

"There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise."

—Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947 via @sharonk.bsky.social

The River.

( via / via )

Neptune-synched high-inclination object. With 0.735 eccentricity.

"FUN FACT: The ASCII code 88 is the letter X.

88 is a white supremacist numerical code for 'Heil Hitler'.

Musk names everything 'X' for this very purpose."

--@webrant.bsky.social

New FGR.

"a single snowflake
on the horse’s black mane
then not even that"

--@wolftwinthomas.bsky.social

"I, too, nibbled celery in 'small bites' at the crossroads between taking responsibility for my errors and seeing a licensed therapist."

( me / via )

"Things get so bad that describing them is an act of obscenity." (I wonder what in 1992 he was referring to? Oh, right.)

"82
They prance in woodland

I saw these creatures · strewn as trash,
beside castoff paper · and sticky popcans
scattered reckless · at the side of the road
discarded from some · speeding coach.
They darted once · from dappled ponds
to fields filled · with flowers and beasts,
as summer’s light · shone on the backs
of their manes and sinew, · muscles sleek.
They prance in woodland, · practicing charms,
games that no human · can heed or solve,
chanting the songs · our senses can’t grasp,
darting to mounds · our minds cannot find,
the holes beneath earth · our eyes cannot see,
the spots in the leaves · our skin cannot feel—
What crimson stains · cast on concrete,
slivers of flitting · shadows, flattened
like a page, whisked · into wind, and mangled.
What fence we’ve caught · these creatures inside,
the sharp metal shards · scraping on skin,
what fur sticky tar, · tarnished by sun.
What creatures are caught, · crushed by an eye,
ground in the mirror · of the motor’s sheen?"

--Cassidy McFadzean

Showing up to the coffee shop with this baby and turning all the heads.

"sundown
creaking
the moon wanes"

--@poemexe.com

Todd Pratum memoir online.

( via / via )

Splashdown.

“The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.”
― Ernst Bloch via @jacobwren.bsky.social

How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best.

narrow road to the north
no shoulder sharply
announce chagrin
pull on pale cerulean

say we are sore pent
past serious
broken trees line the brooding
color of the cold sky

breathe cairnstuff

Constance Garnett. (via @olgaz.bsky.social)

( via / me )

Indigo Moth.

each stepping stone · is its own quicksand
the early glamour · glugs in my ears
weird blue light · of Long Covid
& torn fields · ferrying loss
my noon knowledge · nenuphar-dark
& quicksand quest · in the empire of ferrocrete

Evangelical Cockroach.

"Everything that's not being dismantled is being corrupted." --Rebecca Solnit via

Walking in Space.

( me / via )

"Perhaps indifference is more destructive than violence. It lasts longer, the outrage that it perpetrates is quieter and less dramatic, and it precludes the possibility of remorse."

"Another explanation of the deadening of our survival instinct is that the changes in living that would be required are so drastic that people prefer the future catastrophe to the sacrifice they would have to make now.” - Erich Fromm (via @libshipwreck)

Grok Rolls Out.

"the silk-winged strix
lonely in the knowledge
of night hunting"

--@magedah.bsky.social

The 1 train on the NYC subway tonight.

( via / via )

"There was no music and no fun at all during that Puritanical era, until the monarchy was restored in 1660 and everybody had to party twice as hard."

“The Absence of the Muse

O Muse, where loiterest thou? In any land
Of Saturn, lit with moons and nenuphars?
Or in what high metropolis of Mars—
Hearing the gongs of dire, occult command,
And bugles blown from strand to unknown strand
Of continents embattled in old wars
That primal kings began? Or on the bars
Of ebbing seas in Venus, from the sand
Of shattered nacre with a thousand hues,
Dost pluck the blossoms of the purple wrack
And roses of blue coral for thy hair?
Or, flown beyond the roaring Zodiac,
Translatest thou the tale of earthly news
And earthly songs to singers of Altair?”

—Clark Ashton Smith

A Strange Kind of Love.

All we invent anymore is new ways to lie.

"Then, on June 30, all of the past reports vanished too, along with the federal website they lived on."

( via / via )

The Gnomon Circles.

"As Frederick Douglass said, 'The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.' " --Fanny Howe

"I am forced to stare blankly into the past, and hope to conjure up the form of an indignant book in the midst of plague."

“ASPEN TREE your leaves glance white into the dark.
My mother’s hair was never white.

Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.
My yellow-haired mother did not come home.

Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?
My quiet mother weeps for everyone.

Round star, you wind the golden loop.
My mother’s heart was ripped by lead.

Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?
My gentle mother cannot return.”

–Hamburger’s Celan

"The poet, she does have a task: to waste as much time as possible, while seeking a shapeliness for her squandering."

( via / me )

"The patch-words borrowed from Turkish and Russian sound nervier, less stable, when ornamented with diacritics and edged by the energy of Bucharest."

"Schrödinger's Epstein List"

Görsnygg for the snide notes
snug Sockerbit lugged books
emptier wrapped Rigga
rue-gaps back in Kjuge

Underpasses Are Liminal Places.

"The illusionist
Alluded to knowledge that
Had eluded all."

--@rayhourigan.bsky.social

Time is/ the hemlock/ I drank/ just to be/ with you.

( via / via )

Snailward Bringing.

"Trump supporters are so mad about the Epstein files, they’re even setting their maga hats on fire. Talk about a hot take. It’s funny how quickly they burn." --Scott Dworkin via

Solar flare in blue.

"failing body"

mazebright stupor moping
amok luck
battlements bark orchid
buryfare
a brief air

a soaked shirt, Sacla
cyst vista
mazebright brittle longing
broken joke
junk ibrik

fob labyrinth finder
fink this brink
curtainthunder candid
with cold mould
mall cauldron

1954 Packard.

( via / me )

Starting over as a swamp dweller.

1.
crystalprank
dank poppy screed enlisted
tank failure to protect us
& apoplectic lawyer
the crystal
of the crabgrass
chainlink macramé
resurrected blacktop
rune on lunar cardstock
violet Ægir ring
rogue Palantir pylon
spiders astir airplane
reign where villanies vie

i cry crystalprank

2.
ghostdense spiral lancings
the cinch of ganch mentions
Praha heard · my haste vanquished
my dryer sheets · shiver in cardboard

scale model · of a fierce monster

Worldwide Labyrinth Locator, among others.

"THE SEAGULL (Palindrome)

Go, feel freed....
All abyss,
algae saw a sloop,
one vocal lugsail.
As you based it on wash, surf,
or a wade, I died.
A war of rush saw no tides….
A buoy’s alias: 'Gull'.
A cove,
no pool,
saw a sea.
Glassy balladeer, flee fog...."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

A Black Man Talks of Reaping.

( via / via )

"Mr Crowley" tribute.

"sharply we flower in this foul farewell" --Conrad Aiken

"War Pigs" tribute.

"BAT-GEODE

Bat-geode, the
geode has a bat inside it.

Fine inlay work, gold
and brown for the wings and peak ears

fuzzy russet blot face.

Upright phoenix bird
out of a grey sun, an iris, an orchid
without a name...

no, it
is a bat, crystal bat

split, spread flat
its guts

yellow quartz.

When I look inside
I see layer and layer of cracked ice, long
plains of ice, nothing on them, the plains

crazed, nothing on them, cold plains of nothing.

Only the wind
moves over them, the wind

and one crystal bat looking for another."

--John Taggert, Prism and the Pine Twig (1977)

Why Not?

( via / via )

"...the video suggested that populating one’s field of vision with imaginary threats might offer a sense of purpose, which life in suburban America does not always provide."

"XXXIII.

Of meadows drowsy with Trinacrian bees,
Of shapes that moved a rising mist among--
Persephone between the Cypress trees--
Of lengthier shades along the woodland flung,
Of calm upon the hardly whispering seas,
Of cloud that to the distant island clung--
He made of emerald evening and of these
A holier song than ever yet was sung.

But silence and the single-thoughted night,
Hearing such music took him for their own
To that long land, where, men forgotten quite
Harpless he errs by Lethe stream alone.
He never more will know that wind-flower's white--
He never more shall hear uneasy autumn moan."

--Hilaire Belloc

Fractured reality mirror.

"...The gold
hides in the ground

the way tomorrow's weather
hides in the air,

the way what I will finally know
hides in me now."

--Robert Kelly

Thing which may be injurious to the health.

( via / via )

"...a Robertson publication feels more like a vernissage than a book launch — the poems feel inhabitable, visual, sculptural, and performative."

"Perhaps the greatest gift a writer can have is the friend who saves his words, and who doesn’t let the letters and infamies that compose him vanish from the dark face of the earth." --@alinaetc.bsky.social via

Lisa Robertson and the Feminist Archive. (podcast 47m)

"cigarette from hell"

ferreted stale news · affordance hinging
on whether it rains · roads remain open
everything dies · in the derne show
& we swelter · for stale news

"How far can you saw before it collapses, and does it maybe just take a high wind to come along?"

( via / via )

Atlantic City.

“Faith Upon the Waters

A ghost rose when the waves rose,
When the waves sank stood columnwise
And broken: archaic is
The spirituality of sea,
Water haunted by an imagination
Like fire previously.

More ghost when no ghost,
When the waves explain
Eye to the eye…

And dolphins tease,
And the ventriloquist gulls,
Their angular three-element cries…

Fancy ages.
A death-bed restlessness inflames the mind
And a warm mist attacks the face
With mortal premonition.”

–Laura (Riding) Jackson

Progress.

“AUTUMNITY is autumnness, or an autumnal quality or appearance. Figuratively, it can be used to mean a person’s later life, or the period when they realise they are no longer young.” –@HaggardHawks

Yours is No Disgrace.