"stuttering about
old water wheel turning
by my smoke"
—@poemexe.com
History is unfolding before our eyes. 👁.
"My quote of the day
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell" —@jeremymberg.bsky.social
"I've been pulled into a disciplinary meeting for saying robotic slurs at work."
"Frog tied some string around the box. 'There,' he said. 'Now we will not eat any more cookies.'
'But we can cut the string and open the box,' said Toad.
'That is true,' said Frog."
—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
I didn't know "Hot Rod Lincoln" was a cover.
“Pork Chow Mein”
grebes have no hist'ry,
personal or collective,
like the sands they stalk
a grebe is like: snow
the morning after it has
melted, unobserved
a grebe is like: fire
that can rage through a forest,
light an incense stick
a grebe is: clumsy,
graceful, ugly, beautiful,
as the light changes
grebes never speak their
hearts, no matter how heavy,
the sea can do that
i can only watch
a grebe so long: my mind snaps:
that is their defense
the first grebe stood at
the edge of the first sea and
then there were others
if something survives
the earth’s destruction, will be
a grebe’s thin shadow
(1983)
"so name it vict'ry"
days of scree · scrabbling up the
scrolloping vundesh
what can be seen · from such vantage
nothing like closure
nothing like vict'ry
so name it vict'ry
Behold the ICE officer piñata.
"Wonderful quote I just heard on the radio from a neurodiverse person: 'I used to think I was a broken horse. Now I realise I’m a zebra.' " —@marcuschown.bsky.social
"Did we die out in those futures? Did we not make it? Were we purposefully excluded?"
"In 2017, I wrote an essay for Literary Hub, 'How Far Can Fascist Satire Go?', that revisited his books The Skin and Kaputt, along with his persona, during the first Trump administration. Malaparte’s adoption of a provocative pseudonym, an allusion to Napoleon Bonaparte, seemed of a piece with, say, Curtis Yarvin’s use of the nom-de-plume Mencius Moldbug." --Tobias Carroll in The Metropolitan Review
Marlboro-Livery F40-Style Children’s Ride at No Reserve. (via @lollibrarian.bsky.social)
cliff walk dared
in the thick dark
or rote dunk
rotten the ref
harlequin's
turn at quelling
butterfly
flintknapper's urge
"dragonfly frolic"
the true slant · slung Excalibur
in the half light · little peace
underpass poacher · melt into muggles
interurban · the axe swing
flicker effluent · & no red flares
Alpha Centauri Ab? (via @philplait.bsky.social)
"How I wish stupid and greedy were fatal conditions" --@itsabbyyep.bsky.social
“The people who built their heaven on your land are telling you yours is in the sky.” - Nina Simone via @daniellehelena.bsky.social
Advantages of Being a Woman Artist.
arrow in the ice dark
Theseus' own heart-thread
pale cerulean pismire
lean places is led to
A low-relief model fits better than a real body, supporting the idea it may be medieval artwork.
“Into Ghede”
Worship is a reef against storms,
rough water, unmanageable tides.
As fast as the ocean erodes it
you forge new coral from beloved repetition.
You have a single blueprint for survival
the ritual that cosmologizes ferocious universe
into something small, hard, and shiny:
building blocks that click together neatly.
Not that you can ever forget how fragile
your shellcraft is, nor how terrible the packaged forces,
when every surface touched too long transmits a tremor.
You have heard the stars were falling but you knew it already,
the Surgeon-General’s warning just confirmed your resolve
to leave no dawn-beached body for the gulls to gouge.
(1983)
"Call me unhinged, but I just ordered six books on minimalism."—@lisabug.bsky.social
"Pritzker said he showed his son a book of all the Illinois governors. He turned to the back and said, 'There's a 40% chance I wind up in prison after all this. But if you accept my collect calls we can talk all the time.' " —@dicknixon.bsky.social
sonnet of hate speech unhatching
i hear, cannot release, ceasefire
or chemtrail keen. Echoes hem me
of the cagmag pageant badge-first
into Edselbin.
Photogrammetry capture of Holy Trinity Church, Buckfast.
the pair that sometimes splashed
our backyard pool, two ducks assumed were one,
have some time past held off; my hopes, half dashed,
still glance with work undone.
they'd found their way across
a thousand miles or more, with season's lapse;
then once i moved too quickly—creep like moss
not cat, lest you seem traps—:
thus turquoise stands the pool
empty, as ever, while cicadas reign;
the furious clasp of fire to wax & wane
unwitnessed, save one fool.
Memorial by Rudolph Valentino.
"slow night
sinking into the weeds
taking me in its arms"
—@poemexe.com
"The answer may surprise you."
"A man that unironic would be valuable in war." —Debatable Land
"offering to the crows"
in nuclear fire
twice only have we perished
but such long shadows
names my lips still scorch to speak
yet music scarce skipped a beat
viaducts of distance
the thin drape of silence
song of the rash wristwatch
where the dumped rest, end up
we go, fearful-fathom'd
each footstep leaves hurtstains
tracking them, now, troubles
grudge & tryst collector
blindfold to the black maw
"My friend never knew the difference between 'infer' and 'imply' which was never a problem until he opened a club called Disco Implyno." --@craiguito.bsky.social
17 handy tips on how to hang onto yourself.
"I stand here like some ashes that used to be a clown, looking out quietly from my face to watch the failure of these words to be those things." —Denis Johnson, "For Jane" via @mdbell79.bsky.social
Cobalt is the blue I always squander
Your eyes so clear refill when mine there clasp:
Now I forget what to say, next lose the grasp
That names and place and time enforced. I’m yonder.
How then might I help but downcast wander,
If Lethe’s fountain’s close and I must rasp
All my other days with ego’s hasp
Murderously snug?—the worse loss as the fonder?
Could I not scry beyond, vast asphodel,
Gazing would only heal me by its candor.
Anguish to join and eagerness for the wasp
Ravel my purposes; yet did once an infidel
Venture the holiest; yet did lunar-lander
Impinge an orb of ancient hopeless gospel…
Eventually these eyes shall learn to dwell.
(1987?)
my typewriter squirrels
away the circus peanuts
i used to locust
by Phoebe light i rabbit
my shadow that is deathless
(via)
I Love Lucy. (via @aestallings.bsky.social)
"One of the reasons I long for sleep is to be back with the houses that have been destroyed." —Debatable Land
"A roach clung to the paper label of one of the tins. She flicked it off. No one wanted to kill the creatures directly by squashing them. The crack and release of oyster-sized innards was unpleasant. A fear of multiplication through death in insects seemed to stop them, too, a kind of medieval theory of spontaneous generation. The roach Elspeth had flicked away walked off with sectioned purposefulness." —Debatable Land (--at first i read "sanctioned")
"Most people think opposition movements rise or fall based on charisma, ideology, or momentum."
of a fire on the moon
—mention omelas shove—
festive amid famine
ramifies each rid oeuvre
"I was born from an apocalypse..." (via @evecastle.bsky.social )
things transcending time are
not stone, tomes or chrome words
a rote murmuration
has stock rules of flocking
horseshoe crab wrote crystal
in the stars' crunk unction
Schrödinger's Cat shrives us
with dope shrug of opal
"Men will literally turn into a gigantic insect instead of going to therapy" —@johnattridge.bsky.social
Made a machine to make me tea.
"I shall face the fiend · with a firm heart.
Let every man's Ruler · reckon my fate:
words are worthless · against the war-flyer."
knock on the door drawn there
& cry dismal prison
blinking traffic truthgates
in the pale trim scrimmage
more than the herd minim
you crave—much like pavement-
busting weeds of wildsurge—
your phiz wears a schism
underpasses paw at
eyes with appraise lazy
carrion-littered landscape
would mainline all the raindrops
pale cerulean wraps me
Chiron's rich of stitches
Stupider than the Tesla diner.
"The two of them trek · untraveled country:
wolf-haunted heights · and windy headlands,
the frightful fen-path · where falling torrents
dive into darkness · stream beneath stone
amid folded mountains. That mere is not far,
as miles are measured."
—Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf
"a bruxist's resistance to fascism"
amongst piles of metal
scorched merle walks by torchlight
power-mad & tribe-pilled
rooms upholstered in solstice
ramshackle testing
on the umber floor
sprained sprinting mandate
sprig of hope eloping
opiated floatpig
on rabid wheels
Maelstrom for the hermit crab
A goodly bit of Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf.
"a favorite Zen story...
A pair of monks looking at a flag flapping in the wind were having a little debate over whether it was the flag that was flapping or it was the wind that was flapping. They asked the future Zen teacher, Huineng, for his view.
Huineng replied, 'Your mind is flapping.' " —@bodhidave.bsky.social
"I started to have ‘favourite’ ruins, usually the ones that were a bit spooky."
"Hell is a place ravers aspire to." --Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo
Rock.
trying to read
what cannot be read
blank dawns seldom succeed
trying to read
the fruit of bombseed
in pink & red
trying to read
what cannot be read
grumble blindsthrough bloomdark
a blurt made of metal
lashing with winds washboard
warns the crimson morning
bigtime phantom flogfest
a flicker limb ember
our lit brougham at Lammas
lurches into search mode
"History uncoiled itself before him in a shudder. In its spasms he saw the myriads that have fought and died for dogmas that they did not understand, for invented principles of patriotism and religion, for leaders that they had never seen, for gods more helpless than themselves." —Mr Incoul's Misadventure
"The point was to make it obvious and undeniable how powerless they were."
" Stole this one from a recent skeet I saw:
If generative AI could REALLY make the next GTA in 6 months with 10 staff, or write the next bestseller, or produce 10 blockbusters a day? They wouldn't be trying to sell it to YOU. They would keep it for themselves and guard it from you ferociously." —@ironspike.bsky.social
wedge-shaped aluminum · codpiece lurker
neighborhood · now grown gray
that funny flag · my gaze forgoes
for a tree hides · troubles me less
our yard man · yet on Wednesdays
revvs the roar · of these trimmed blocks
& my bought books · bounce on the little table
"I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know who's name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what an individualist he was he spelt it HEN3RY. The 3 was silent, you see. Henry was financially independent having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business and was therefore able to devote his full time to such intellectual pursuits as writing. I particularly remember a heart-warming novel of his about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boy-hood ambition by becoming coroner.
The rest of you can look it up when you get home. In addition to writing he indulged in a good deal of philosophizing. Like so many contemporary philosophers he especially enjoyed giving helpful advice to people who were happier than he was. One particular bit of advice which I recall, which is the reason I bring up this whole, dreary story is something he said once before they took him away to the Massachussetts state home for the bewilderd. He said: "Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." It's always seems to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need in these trying times of crisis and universal broo-ha-ha, and so with this in mind I have here a modern positive dynamic uplifting song in the tradition of the great old revival hymns. This one might more accurately be termed a survival hymn.
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
But don't you worry.
No more ashes, no more sackcloth.
And an armband made of black cloth
Will some day never more adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.
And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement,
An inspiring achievement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.
We will all go together when we go.
All suffuse with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.
Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
Down by the old maelstrom,
There'll be a storm before the calm.
And we will all bake together when we bake.
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.
Oh we will all char together when we char.
And let there be no moaning of the bar.
Just sing out a Te Deum
When you see that I.C.B.M.,
And the party will be 'come as you are.'
Oh we will all burn together when we burn.
There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When it's time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn.
You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas.
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dolla's.
And we will all go together when we go.
Ev'ry Hottenhot and ev'ry Eskimo.
When the air becomes uranious,
And we will all go simultaneous.
Yes we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go."
—Tom Lehrer
How Would You Like This Wrapped?
"Every now and then you find a familiar loan word when studying Hungarian and it's like finding a glass of water in the desert." —@causticcovercritic.bsky.social
Social media lets everyone interact with their favorite artists.
"This would suggest a Roman world capable of compassion but constrained by logistics."
"We are living through The Dunning-Kruger Years." —@spryoldlorax.bsky.social
One of several "Donald Antoinette Trump" memes.
"And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know-how, that's what. As provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
'Ha, Nazi Schmazi,' says Wernher von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"'n German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese,' says Wernher von Braun."
--Tom Lehrer
"What I did not predict was the capitulation. I didn't see that coming."
I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular, about one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Ev'rything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo
We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park."
--Tom Lehrer via Allthelyrics
"Sooner, rather than later, all information on line will be do tainted that the world will return to books for the truth." —@anonopin.bsky.social
Sharon Tate & Valley of the Dolls.
"Tossed my scale into the bay because I didn’t like the numbers." --@lisabug.bsky.social
burying karma
armchair flicker chariot
daily dose of windshield mire
in-flinders ukulele
hegemon
in the Ronco sedge swirling
dark gray Accord unskirling
merle that hovers with eyespark
