'Should Somebody One Day

Should somebody one day knock at your door
Announcing he's an emissary of mine,
Never believe him, nor that it is I;
For to knock does not go with my vanglory,
Even at the unreal door of the sky.

But should you, naturally and without hearing
Anyone knock, come to your door, unbar it
And find somebody waiting (it appears)
To dare to knock, give it some thought. It was
My emissary and I and the retinue of my glorying
In what drives to despair and what despairs.
Unbar to who does not knock at your door!'


(05-09-1934)

'Selected Poems' translated from Fernando Pessoa by J.Griffin.



"The work is the death mask of its conception."


"As our life is very short, so it is very miserable; and therefore it is well it is short." --J*r*my Taylor


Turn your Hamst*r into a Fighting Machin*.


" I like hot springs, and I think that Titan organisms would like them too." (via Robot Wisdom)


"If you want to see the true face of war..."

Dhrawn (Laland* 21185) (via daviddarling dot info)


   "Volcano Commando Tsuka"

halcyon mountain daring · on a suicidal path
skulls in sand bright glaring · on a suicidal path

toys and candy swirling · all i want is truthful words
lost among clowns blaring · on a suicidal path

soon will know a trying · much will crash and many fail
halcyon furry faring · on a suicidal path



H*t*ropt*ra.

Wishing i could turn on songs about what's actually occurring: in Iraq, in Louisiana...with our changing sky stuff and our swift oil finish; with our mad king... Too many dooms for a singular today.
 :  Sing it.


A must-grok post. (via wood_s lot)


"Mr. Bush's life after his presidency was marked by misfortune." (via B*rub*)


" "So this is pop music's fate," I thought gloomily, "to monitor our hearts while a camera monitors our bodies. To control our inside, the part the camera can't see." "


Th* Salt Roads.


Proj*ct C*nsor*d.

   "The Battle of Blenheim

    1

It was a summer evening,
   Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
   Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

    2

She saw her brother Peterkin
   Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
   In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

    3

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
   Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
   And, with a natural sigh,
' 'Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he,
'Who fell in the great victory.

    4

'I find them in the garden,
   For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough,
   The ploughshare turns them out!
For many thousand men,' said he,
'Were slain in that great victory.'

    5

'Now tell us what 'twas all about,'
   Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
   With wonder-waiting eyes;
'Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.'

    6

'It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
   'Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
   I could not well make out;
But every body said,' quoth he,
'That 'twas a famous victory.

    7

'My father lived at Blenheim then,
   Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
   And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

    8

'With fire and sword the country round
   Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
   And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

    9

'They say it was a shocking sight
   After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
   Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

    10

'Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
   And our good Prince Eugene.'
'Why 'twas a very wicked thing!'
   Said little Wilhelmine.
'Nay...nay...my little girl,' quoth he,
'It was a famous victory.'

    11

'And every body praised the Duke
   Who this great fight did win.'
'But what good came of it at last?'
   Quoth little Peterkin.
'Why that I cannot tell,' said he,
'But 'twas a famous victory.' "

--Rob*rt South*y, 1798



Plund*rphonics.



ing · ma · air · zy · imp



B*atallica.


Buy Cobalt. (via T*xfil*s)

Cubi XVII (via msjc dot 3du slash art slash djohnson)



   "IN AUTUMN

The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton

Now they will
Never arrive

The stars are like that

Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall

The hours their shadows

The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening

Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live"

--W S M*rwin



"Unfortunately, this Hello Kitty was too big to bring back on the plane."


"To believe that "a sysop cannot possibly be a vandal" creates the Sysop Vandal point of view..."



Martian G*n*sis.

(via usa-japan dot com)


"...the centerpiece of a Tochigi Prefecture theme park about the settling of the American West is a 215-meter-high, fiber-reinforced plastic replica of Mount Rushmore."



   fall stars across chill
again changing goad tsar storm
   as it madly adds

dimna furious smirk fang
schismatic stomp bungalow

   rally all flaring
ryotwar Ishtar shaping
   royal sport apart

find any aground abort
gulf slilu swarming fatwa

   crisply akimbo
osmium skirl gumbo flalu
   all us bright folk back

among oblong fragrant silk
usurps skiff · fallow asthma


   Lojban words

nilca (Loglan)- contrary of on top of; tcidu- city; manku- dark; crino- viridian; sidbo- thought form; skari- color; frica- dissimilar; dimna- Wyrd; slilu- go back and forth; flalu- law



"Certainty and uncertainty
Two sides of the same flame."

--Garcia Villa


Praying To Th* Ali*ns.


"Everyone who now has power will lose it. Soon. You have been kissing up to the wrong people."


Granit* Shadow.

King in Y*llow actually. (via Blindh*it)



   spasmodic clasp · moist
song lost in bringing it back
   lost all that tumult

drug cupboard in which fluoric
acid lay in a wax tomb

   pray for no pardon
cyborg laughing thick damp grass
   orphan octopus

calmly about to drown talk
can play back now from victims

   filch tchukor stars silt
amok tsantsa · affords nil blurb
   scratch ghost stadium

actually shopping · bulwark
skulls roam brisk as stilb fathoms

   crino is asking
sidbo flimsy Atlantis
   laughs smog cough skari

starry Osiris calx snag
starts as a bag of offal

   sorrowing brumous
addiction isthmus and rill
   glamour abolish

blood lungfish frica abrupt
Iscariot ichor wraith



"What would compel a successful scholar of 18th-century English literature at a state university to give up academia and become - gasp! - a professional musician?"


Th* Long 3m*rg*ncy.

Making of an Icon.



   a lost acronym
adorns cardboard and within
   i would stow dark plans

am i misty for this flow
piloting an iron rhino

   closing lids on stars
unmindful of scorpions
   in transit · ago

grinding sound and carbon tip
toward its last point spiralling

   glimpsing from a coign
prior to our gravity
   our acts laid out plain

into a swamp of robots
sifts mild algorithm

   frigid dusty world
with rusty sands · winds stirring
   around a solid

all this art about making
a god of dissolution

   tcidu now manku
only two hours · not from
   bomb plot · from stupid

first of last bards shiny book
about · not oft so bright such



Balikbayan box. (via Th* Chat*lain*)


"...we need a new definition of "evil"..."

A long wait for translation: Tungst*n; La D*rni*r* Mod*.


   for an instant words
bob up in a music flow
   vacuous · twinkling

and dull gray noon is burning
i pass my turn and go back

   salmon-apricot
sky this morning as prior
   and will blossom again

nilca and gnomic salmon
kodak turncoat apricot

   a tiny lizard
gold porchlight · lotophagoi
   dog collar tinkling

in a dark livingroom
mix two kinds of granola

   sunny and dark clouds
and words fail · furious shift
   sands · a body floating

crimson glow on a building
turns cobalt as i slog back

   its windows as bright
as that day of wild watching
   folk running from dust

my own past has but scant sign
of tracks · contrails gold against



"The only books in Santayana's cell were his own--and a set or Toynbee's recently published history, which he was reading characteristically; that is, he first broke (or foxed) the spine of the book and undid the sections; then, as he finished reading each section, he would throw it in the wastebasket."

    "Poems for an Unhumble One I.

But the leaves and you are proud--
so no.
    It is summer now and did they
have you.
        So then
        when
        and if you can.
And a rose was bought:
it was as never and as still.
            The doves
came: they too were proud.
    The cherries and the bees: but these
were meek.
      I asked forgiveness
until lost."

--Garcia Villa



Fictional P*ssoa.

"Ozymandias

  I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desart....Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away."

--Sh*ll*y




(via lak*vi*wstudios dot com)


Shirl*y on Gurdji*ff. (via Scl*rotic Rings)


Watching This Island 3arth to Nils P*tt*r Molvær's Khm*r.

"We wore the necklaces, but we also sometimes broke them apart and melted the beads into different shapes that we used to make pins, earrings, toys, or oddly shaped, multi-colored things that had no real purpose. Mostly we just liked melting the beads, which we could do in my mother's oven or in my Easy-Bake oven. Sometimes we cut up the strings of beads and made them into necklaces or bracelets for our dolls. We drilled holes in the doubloons and made earrings or pins out of them too. Or we put them in one of the plastic pages of the books that housed our doubloon collections. We saved the best necklaces, the longest ones with the beads that looked like shiny, colored pearls, to wear as part of our costumes the next year."

Cthulhu Chick tract. (via M*tafilt*r)


Stairway to B**thov*n (scroll down).


   "For Harvest

The year turns to its rest.
Up from the earth, the fields, the early-fallen dew,
Moves the large star at evening, Arcturus low with autumn,
And summer calls in her many voices upon the frost.

I who have not seen for weeping
The plum ripen and fall, or the yellowing sheaf,
Am not unmindful now of the season that came and went,
The hours that told of freshness,
The bud and the rich leaf.

Though I turned aside before the summer
And weathered but a season of the mind,
Let me sit among you when the husk is stripped,
Let me tell by the bright grain,
Those labours in an acre of cloud and the reap of the wind."

--L*oni* Adams

   "Virtual Colonoscopy"

chatoyant Thanatopolis cairn
staying for mystic hazaj

and starry Atari who was anagram
bard stulm aorta

spirals word
along with us across Carcosa




Th* Burnt 3arth 3ns*mbl*.



"The emperor of China asked his court painter, 'What's easy to paint and what's hard to paint?' and the answer was 'Dogs are difficult, demons are easy.' "

--Al*x Krr, Dogs and D*mons (2001)


"Chinese has advantages; you cannot make an English poem out of the 16 words you find most interesting."

--Hugh K*nn*r, op cit


"The Narcissist needs Catastrophe."

Boyd.



Charlott* S. points out that an old song "Moonlight in V*rmont" is just right for 5-7-5 haiku.


Juan's wrap up.



"Of Delphi a poet might write with some assurance, since it gathered an articulated cult."

--Th* Pound 3ra


Shadows Ov*r Bak*r Str**t.



"The whole clanking machinery of our genre is at once a bug and a feature..."

--Jam*s Patrick K*lly in: Asimov's Sci*nc* Fiction (F*b '04)


A Mozarabic tabiya is what i call 1 Nh3 Nc6 2 d4. (This was play*d in 2004 [Round 4] by two computadoras.)

"The Internet is a great place to go if you already know that the mainstream media is heavily biased" and you actively search out sites on the outer limits of the Web, he notes. "Otherwise, it's just another place where they try to sell you stuff..." (via wood_s lot)


"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Thomas Jefferson said, “it expects what never was and never will be."


"Lull himself had said so repeatedly: he was a Sufi whose Beloved was Christ."

--Hav*lock 3llis, Th* Soul of Spain (1908)


"It may be that the kind of thing I have been trying to make is no longer makeable in the kind of way in which I have tried to make it."

--David Jon*s, pr*fac* to Th* Anath*mata (1952)


   "Chango Walk"

blur cling turmoil crystal scram
flying dim unto ignorant stomp

lungfish iron
among foggy kills

cloud scratch aright by us stain vanity flush
as across profound

havoc import of blood vying night
unknown ago idolatry discolor

ombudsman
mutiny unto star works

   "An Orison for Autumn"

finish burning still · Samhain in Autumn
gold our hands can grasp · ingot of Autumn

may this turmoil run · brash to its finish
sands an hourglass pours · aurora Autumn

build a world unknown · out of this ruin
war and storm allay · music for Autumn

i too long for gifts · conscious and twisting
morning's orchid glow · Xanadu Autumn

(via nb dot no slash bas*r/schoy*n)


"Bartan, I seek vengeance!"


1000-yaron-old Caissa icons.


Gazpacho.


"As each guest entered the courtyard garden, they exchanged impeccable formal greetings in English. After a few minutes, conversations naturally drifted to Spanish and became more effusive and intimate. However, each time it was necessary to great a newly arriving guest, all responded in English, after which the conversation immediately returned to Spanish. The children playing in the garden spoke Spanish to one another, but when a parent had occasion to speak to a child in a loud public voice, English was always used. Finally, as the guests were leaving, as they passed out of the courtyard gate, goodbyes were once more said in formal English."


Dog and wolf.

'Where pure snow flakes melt

Dark clouds gather threatening

Where art the spring flowers abloom?

A lonely figure lost in the shadow

of sinking sun, I have no place to go.'

--L** Saik


"...Tsegihi, Aztlan and Quivira."


Found.


"...it's ironic how poorly science fiction anticipated the computer..."


Bananas in Scotland. (via Robot Wisdom)



   "not yet all dispersed,
the nidor of this burning
   & weeping echoes:
where slag has been hauled away
shall the fruit of the forge bloom?"

--from In th* Tim* of th* Fall of th* Tow*rs

" "The men of my islands are all a bit mad," William said proudly. "Let us look in the other case."
   "Virgil."
   "What is he doing here? What Virgil? The Georgics?"
   "No. Epitomae. I've never heard of it."
   "But it's Virgil of Toulouse, the rhetorician, six centuries after the birth of our Lord. He was considered a great sage..."
   "Here it says that the arts are poema, rethoria, grama, leporia, dialecta, geometria. ...But what language was he writing?"
   "Latin. A Latin of his own invention, however, which he considered far more beautiful. Read this; he says that astronomy studies the signs of the zodiac, which are mon, man, tonte, piron, dameth, perfellea, belgalic, margaleth, lutamiron, taminon, and raphalut."
   "Was he crazy?"
   "I don't know...those were times when, to forget an evil world, grammarians took pleasure in abstruse questions." "

--Th* Nam* of th* Ros*


Th* Oth*r China Mi*vill*.


Distant Dark Stars.


"The real war is in the air, civilian. We're just skirmishing on the macrolevel."

--Gr*gory F**l*y, Th* Oxyg*n Barons (1996)


"...his favorite foods are apples, yams, corn, and peppers."