"Resistance begins with our care with truth and language."
" 'Water mixed with night is an old remorse that will not sleep,' writes Bachelard."
—@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social
outrage has its season;
now i steer through oobleck.
pure night, tide of daedal
undoings, pain's rainbow,
& all the fine pillow
words refer to nothing.
outrage has its season.
now i glean one meaner.
The word for elephant and butterfly is the same.
“They recalled but dimly their former existence; and the state to which they had been summoned was empty and troublous and shadow-like. Their blood ran chill and sluggish, mingled with water of Lethe; and the vapors of Lethe clouded their eyes.” —Clark Ashton Smith
"the sky"
birds fell dead from the sky
struck by invisible kiss
we who look for no sign
wander through teeming darkness
we flow like urns
we grow like alms
nameless
our death is in the sky
A Further Word for the Monitor.
“a cicada chirrs
one crow
no messages yet”
—@poem_exe
Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box.
"Hard to believe the Great Cracker Barrel War was only a fortnight ago." —@yankdownunder.bsky.social
“To an archaicism which is inimitable because it is purely capricious, he was drawn at once by its reminiscent picturesqueness and by its musical possibilities. …he took advantage of the unsettled state of English in his day, not only to revive the obsolete, but to coin new words on old analogies, and to adapt both his spelling and his pronunciation to his desired effects of cadence and melody. …He cherished words which though still in use were rapidly passing out of fashion, and the sustained colouring and atmosphere of his style is thus given by a constant use of words which are found in Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Sidney, perhaps once or twice. …he was the first conscious inventor of a distinct poetic diction, which drew from ‘well-languaged’ Daniel a criticism of his ‘aged accents and untimely words,’ and from Ben Jonson the charge that ‘in affecting the ancients he writ no language.’ “ —E de Sincourt, introduction to The Oxford Spenser (1921)
"We left that tower with nothing but our lives."
"disavowal of my bad thoughts"
the feral word weathers
warfare & surf-ravage
hides in the stone staring
" 'If so many songs circle round you,' Callimachus asked Delos itself, 'what kind shall I weave about you?' " (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)
"essential tremor"
Noir in rooms that only wireless fills;
sugary yonder, though there too dwells the nightmare.
A minute passes, making landscapes blur
while tomorrow filches razors for its veils.
Our things become ephemeral, no plans
possible. I shuffle next to shelves
clenched against that other blatant cranch
as somewhere far, the world’s last glacier melts.
"Hope is something we generate, not something that settles on us like a ray of sunshine."
“[C]ivilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”
—James Baldwin via @esglaude.bsky.social
“I’m just here for the degradation of the discourse.” –@NeinQuarterly
Report from the Besieged City.
"the sterile neutrino"
world-ending delirium
kind silence of the moth sphinx
sole steering by Gegenschein
surgebundle return
flee headlong
in the incommunicable hour
in radiant frost
old selves fester chanting let’s march addicted
Glock woke fnordage-agley wisp
angst stripe pert
world-ending delirium
kind silence of the moth sphinx
(2020)
“Huge sea of sorrow, and tempestuous griefe,
Wherein my feeble barke is tossed long,
Far from the hoped hauen of reliefe
Why do thy cruell billowes beat so strong,
And thy moyst mountaines each on others throng,
Threatning to swallow vp my fearefull life?
O do thy cruell wrath and spightfull wrong
At length allay, and stint thy stormy strife,
Which in these troubled bowels raignes, and rageth rife.
For else my feeble vessell crazd, and crackt
Through thy strong buffets and outrageous blowes,
Cannot endure, but needs it must be wrackt
On the rough rocks, or on the sandy shallowes,
The whiles that loue it steres, and fortune rowes;
Loue my lewd Pilot hath a restlesse mind
And fortune Boteswaine no assuraunce knowes,
But saile withouten starres gainst tide and wind:
How can they other do, sith both are bold and blind?
Thou God of winds, that raignest in the seas,
That raignest also in the Continent,
At last blow vp some gentle gale of ease,
The which may bring my ship, ere it be rent,
Vnto the gladsome port of her intent:
Then when I shall my selfe in safety see,
A table for eternall moniment
Of thy great grace, and my great ieopardee,
Great Neptune, I auow to hallow vnto thee.”
—The Faerie Queene III, 4.
"Even though the Roman commonwealth has sunk to such an extremity of helplessness that it no longer rewards those who are devoted to it, it does not follow that my times never give birth to a Brutus or a Torquatus." --πΏππ‘π‘πππ ππ πππππππ’π π΄ππππππππππ (tr W B Anderson, III.viii, To Eucherius)
A neural network is picking the topics it wants to discuss, then uses AI to generate that video.
"Girls only want one thing, and it’s to see everyone in this admin tried in The Hague" —@toadcialism.bsky.social
"apotheosis of ignorance"
pale cerulean ponder
past the exact bracket
a thousand years thronging
in the thrashed air herald
of fall—whence our festive
affordance—glum crumble
& masked thugs a-marching
manymong the dwindle
afar barely bothered
in boredom's vast fastness
assassin won't save us
nor sulk of rote voting
i count on heart haywire
& healthy droog knellthirl
the curtain drops cat-soft
chaos in the daydream
we were ever warpspeed
at wing-augur logging
"Each occasion is worse than the last..." (thread)
broken wipers · weeping of trees
drive into sun · drastic glaresmear
my least folly · occults fierce
somewhere to cross · on my cruel path
silhouette wiped · blind to receive
on this droll way · & drab murder
"The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic."
—H. L. Mencken via @michiganpapa.bsky.social
“Poets insist on writing about their divorces, even though robots are taking pictures of orange, ethane lakes on Titan.” –@christianbok
"barren torrent aggregation"
is this Heorot
hung with the shields of valor
under overcast
no it is only my mind
light ever fails to stick to
(2020)
"Poem
I first loved you
second to
your gentleness
like the blind who
divide their lives into
dark and dark I
have you and your gentleness
as a detail in a painting frames that painting
in the often
memory, your face
is surrounded by your eyes
unafraid
of the grays of gentleness
but better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
the harshness
when you talk about that prison capitalism
when you vow never to stop fighting
never
until each woman and man is free
until each woman and man is in the custody
of their gentleness"
—Bill Knott
"Our task is to crouch in the dark..."
The highest magic is letting-be.
"If a shadow is a text, then truth is not singular."
"It’s as if everyone wants to wash their hands of us – like Pontius Pilate."
“The West won the world, not by the superiority of its ideas, or values or ideas… but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence.
Westerners often forget this fact;
Non westerners never do.”
—Samuel. P. Huntington
American political scientist, advisor and academic (1927-2008) via @lyndseydoob.bsky.social
“source”
Then the unmitigated dark —Edna St Vincent Millay
unmitigated night
as quiet as they come
where news & chaos chime
in some whale’s gut
close imperfect dark
axis a-tilt
i feel whirl in my heart
its promise & its bilk
mind at once cast
on tides opaque & thick
prefers to such mist
unexpurgated black
"It is sometimes considered gauche..."
"belling the cat"
out of my entrails silk
but no parachute weave
goatspider nightmares delve
movie of the week
cobweb where crystal sphere
might have focussed view
bitter nativity
& tinchelfetch spoor
"...they do not have the capacity or competence to do this at the scale they want you to fear they do..."
“sing
my last
book of surprises”
—A Humument
"The problem is treating racism like a minor character flaw and not the major mental deficiency it is" —@thewayoftheid.bsky.social
"the Master's tools"
von Trapp escape skillful;
scuffle concrete fluffers
cicalatide curdled
caffeine fails this traffic
words—what are words worth
aware as the bear is
First World problems wobbly
warred against & fenced off
sing like the silk clankers
assigned words their burden
in the pale dawn-pinwheel
putrefying muteness
"full armor of god"
Horst Wessel rehearsing
in the half-mast fastness
silence has its seizures
a circus grown onus
not so much i'd notch this
nattering boob rubric
as wings made of weird love
wander across bondsmen
"I often think of the poet and critic Tom Paulin, who in 2000 was awarded a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts worth £75,000 (equal to almost £150,000 today) to write an epic poem about the Second World War... Unfortunately, Paulin only ever published the first instalment of what he himself called a monstrous project', The Invasion Handbook (2003), and seems to have written very little poetry since..." —Jeremy Noel-Tod in the Poetry Blog Digest: 2025, Week 37
How Patriarchy Happened and What It Was Like Before.
“The authors of London were formerly computed by Swift at several thousands, and there is not any reason for suspecting that their number has decreased. Of these only a few can be said to produce, or endeavor to produce new ideas, to extend any principle of science, or gratify the imagination with any uncommon train of images or contexture of events; the rest, however laborious, however arrogant, can only be considered as the drudges of the pen, the manufacturers of literature, who have set up for authors, either with or without a regular initiation, and, like other artificers, have no other care than to deliver their tale of wares at the stated time.” --Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler
"secret lecture on the antichrist"
windmill-goaded gasbag
God-Emperor turbine
wheel to a halt whizzing
whelk-incarnadined nudnik
"You'll pry my fantasies of a second civil war from my cold, dead brain."
"With airy repercussive sorceries" --Thomas Carew
"My first instinct is to laugh..."
old vigils avenged now
by salt Viking bike lanes
windshield spatter sparkling
like stars despite mar-zeal
π₯ "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (1992).
"beaver moon"
1.
plunging ahead into Pale Fire
head back
eyes closed
like an armless Paschke hero
armory of movies
its own kind of cabinet dust
penultimate frog stamp
defaced icon not
batrachian
between two worlds
2.
pictures of the gone world
mixed with a few slightly realer
the sun for an hour or two
too late in the day to walk in
the old stories
spooks from the future
of next week
come back in time to solace me
or maybe warn
ambiguous as all oracles
new things on the skyline
since last i was there
3.
inside the poem
a commentary that refutes it
more than usual?
more than this sky?
“How may these rimes, so rude as doth appeare,
Hope to endure, sith workes of heauenly wits
Are quite deuourd, and brought to nought by little bits?”
—The Faerie Queene, IV.2
"Eerdmans is Sub Pop for people who like Jacques Ellul."
"I’ve been let into a sorry muddle." —@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
"EARLY MOON (Anagrammed Lines)
Early, misty Moon.
My solitary omen.
My rain looms, yet
it’s only a memory."
—@anthonyetgherin.bsky.social
"music"
choosing guiltless choc'late
chill penetrates hutment
bright swastikas swarming
swag utterly nervewracked
the red raddled carpet
The Drama of Discontinuous Space.
"When State Magic fails unofficial magicians become stronger” –ππππππ€ π΅πππ π
ππππ π΅ππππ-π·ππ€π
"And now, when we stood gathered..."
There’s nothing epic about our bad choices, merely exorbitantly consequential.
“deep fried murder hornets”
chartreuse cloud in billows on trenches GASSES
no more than rays of bunkum ASLANT
days i never got tired of
riding the SLUICE
till the sea
free them, each must roam as a SAILOR
for the illustrious dead
these things i ENCODE
Graywyvern burns his fears & autumn leaves in
STEREO
Let a Critic Dream of Open Rectangles.
"Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are objectively pro-cancer."
"MAERCHEN
Soundless the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick;
Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing;
Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick;
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked;
Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing;
The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked;
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep:
O air scarce-stirred with the Court’s far junketing:
O stagnant Royalty–A-swoon? Asleep?
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.“
—Walter de la Mare
"God: make a bird that hangs out with pirates and repeats everything they say
Angel: look man, I know Mrs God left you, but get a grip"
—@thehyyyype.bsky.social
"Listen closely to hear the screams and cries of those being burned alive in these merciless strikes."
"Tell a body: do ballet." —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"Beneath a golden altar
This bishop’s regal ‧ resting place
is in a glass enclosure, a gleaming cage
where his body has long ‧ lain on display,
bones glossy ‧ and grit with glaze,
beneath a golden altar ‧ and angel’s gaze.
Dressed in vestments, he’s doomed and fated
to tarry, ever flanked ‧ by twin figures
on either side, saints treasured,
and clothed in white ‧ with crowns of gold,
palm leaves saved ‧ for centuries.
In this crypt beneath ‧ the basilica, the skeleton
sleeps in slippers, snoozing in a mitre,
his eternal slumber, his smiling teeth
like Sleeping Beauty ‧ if the sultan never came,
like Briar Rose ‧ if reaping was her game.
A ghost in a window, a waking dream.
Who is this creature? Say what I mean."
—Cassidy McFadzean at Alliteration.net
Meanwhile, on the surface of the Sun...
"Venus or Jupiter, low; ghost persistance"
needle packet · for the pickled heart
forget bookends · all those bald shades
as once wilderguess · allday from a perch
Davy Jones' locker · looth & alibi
"Thought crimes against the regime are all the rage."
"The avant-garde art community in New York at mid-century was tiny, but about one-third of the serious artists who formed part of it at any moment were women—sometimes a dozen, sometimes as many as thirty." —Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women (2018)
