( via/ via )

"I saw in your eyes so many times the wish that I was not your child."

Oregon Blue
bluer than cobalt blue
appearing now
but not a sign
neither deliverance
nor harbinger of woe
in this development

of a pigment
hitherto unknown
Oregon Blue

when all the sky is gray
will be something to show
to the children
& say

this was once ours

Anabasis.

( via / me )

Mothra.

Blackmarket polio-vaccine futures are looking up.

Because stupid knows no bounds.

not as afraid now
what’s wrong is still wrong
mornings
and my hand finds
this light
wasn’t ours prior
and it flows
around us and is lost

(6-27-06)

Letter to a Bridge Made of Rope

( via / via )

"And what about those suspended laws?"

"On a photo of Saddam"

Bad Santa
without his minions

to kill and maim on command · now awaiting
hanging · but how many still

who would follow a killing command
a bunch still

of willing hands · who would not know what to do
without God’s bidding

(11-18-06)

A beautiful sight.

“The weakness that leads to folly, does not involve the strength to meet its results.” –@icomptonburnett.bsky.social

Přecvičování.

( via / via )

Modern dance in Intolerance.

Up until now, i confess, it hasn't occurred to me to ask which of my neighbors would have turned in Anne Frank.

"They were a nightmare like a Robert Aickman story, but with a lot less happening and a lot less learned."

ghost i only partly saw
flying away down a hall
unfamiliar roads
now i own and turn guardian of

"You’ve never beaten the first level of the game on bunny mode but are convinced you’d complete the entire thing easily if the difficulty went up to nightmare plus."

( via/ via )

"A writer-friend & I decided to start a little islander group to share emotional support, info & resources. She posted about the 1st meeting on NextDoor. IMMEDIATELY, MAGAs sailed in to scream, mock, & threaten us."

“evening mist
still waiting
leading to nowhere”

–@poem_exe

Throbbing Gristle are on the cover of the new issue of Electronic Sound.

"It’s all I can be, all I can offer, this small bent thing in the face of it, the wind and the Volga, and weight of human guilt. It’s all I can offer, this refusal, the form of the refusal that is our last laurel, woven into an inadequate and mostly posthumous crown." --AV Marraccini via

"There is a very specific visioning that happens when one generates art thru the copier, often times mistakes, slips of hand, degeneration, overprinting all come into play as ways of transcribing a new reading over an[ ] older reading."

( via / via )

St Louis Noir #398.

"More and more of the ice cream was melting. It dripped down on Toad’s jacket. It splattered on his pants and on his feet.
'Where is the path?' cried Toad. 'I cannot see!' " --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Start of a series on Wagner.

the truth of the dick · when other truths die
requires no quest · or qualification
marries its mandate · to the march of morons
called keep on building · the big gallows
   we only know how to do

Hauntology starter pack.

( via / via )

El Futuro Regreso a la Semilla.

Random # 244 = 466 in base-7; 4 + 6 + 6 = 16 lines

Origami car
Mustn’t get it wet
Ilka plot
Unravels in the mildew air

May we call this lilt
Something more than doom
Silent film
Preserved where fire & knives permute

Boiling waves of light
Folded in my palm
One more crime
That wouldn’t be the wizard’s fault

Origami soul
Sketch of fragrant stars
Sweet shops close
But not the mat where lovers quarrel

Ground Control to Emon Lusk.

"Amongst my chiefest faults I must rehearse
My love of study, and my looser verse."

--1672 Ovid, II.1

ET (Densha).

( juan brufal via amazing art via chris murray on fb / via )

Best poem of all time.

"MORNING (Anagrammed Lines)

Nature painted this morning
as a thorn in untried pigment,
a mad night in turpentines, or
the turning points in a dream...."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Queen Victoria.

"buyer's remorse"

goldsmith clown ungainly
  paperwork blizzard
against present desert
  razbliuto Orpheus
cave of the Oz ovens

belong
little enough
to the earth · no, it is
opposition to the frayed veil
of sleet

the gleeful wreckers · we were warned of them
no riddle unfolds · in the feral garden
craw copyright · & smashtanny smidgens
lead us through ludicrous · labs of torture

pathos of the straggler
the only living thing in a rubble field
sunny day stalked by killer tornados
crud on my glasses suddenly lit like confetti

Strange Kind of Love.

( me / via )

"It’s relegating art and writing to a hobby only, while simpering incel chimps press buttons and get their rocks off by having the AI make images and stories of whatever mediocre garbage is passing through their minds at any given moment." (via)

"learn to do without"

windshudder · commute-'midst
  ward off rogue twisters
crosswise to our crooned · crisp farrago
  let the droves go by
mechanized music · suits the roll-sidewalk
  leaves lash in the interim
redly radar · a rumble hints
  i speed through scant downtown

"I’ve been a keen poetry reader all my life, but one thing I still don’t quite get is the point of the ‘pamphlet’ (or ‘chapbook’)."

“The sestina strikes me as the poetic equivalent of an instrument for removing Beluga caviar from horses’ hooves – bizarrely impressive, but finally useless." --Craig Raine via via

"Autism began as a psychiatric designation intended more to strip people of their subjecthood than to better understand them." (via @ada-hoffmann.bsky.socvial)

( via / me )

The Pingu.

" ‘Confelicity’ is finding joy in the happiness and success of others." --@susiedent.bsky.social

Trump Declares Jonestown Massacre as National Holiday.

"congestion fee"

Mithridative dot-bites
of daring louche futures
acornward but oakless
& ice among flung fire
   lowering morn
   beaver moon
   sweep no mine

abandon all bundles
on the bark's nesh threshold
rowdier now roads yield
bereft-gospel prospect
   still must run
   whether rain
   or eke ruin

prog like other exiles
the ort-bread of dreadfeast
& save silver heart-songs

"And for everyone telling me to shut up and write a song about what happened on 5th November, I already did three years ago."

( me / via )

"To intentionally choose to tell a story about a real LGBT person and then exclude their queer identity is a failure on an entirely different level."

Waldsterben

blade strewn
brawled nest

bald Western
blared newts

lewd banters
wrestled nab

slanted brew
rawest blend

So hilarity, much amuse.

“ 'What happened then?' asked Toad.

'I had to save my life,' said Frog."

--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"Updated periodic table with origin of elements in the Solar System."

( via / via )

"Imagine Trump as a Chaos Lord bound to spread darkness across the land. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that’s what we’re facing down."

"The vampire can't get into your house unless you invite him. His offer to debate you about this situation is his first step across the threshold." --@mjohnharrison.bsky.social

"It was a disaster so bad that a new word, Waldsterben, or 'forest death,' was minted to describe the result."

"paradigm"

doge Ratatosk-dusky
predict dereliction
leaf-sift intersection
sort it out sans quarter

trouble on the turnpike

antelucan Arkham
abscess intact practice
waiting in the white room
it's a weird char garboil

four limbs & all useless

"History may well want a clear account by an unprejudiced observer of what happened on our Alphas trip." (via @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social)

( me / laura ostteen on fb )

"I wrote ten million palindromes, each one of them in the form of a sonnet and assigned a unique index. You can generate one at random or click on any line to cycle through the various possibilities ..."

"encyclopedia of skin infections"

after the upside down crucifixions
& the outcry, there were calls to moderate tone

i know those people

"I just found out that my book 'Icarus pirouettes in the clouds', which brings together my best palindromic poems, is for sale at the link." (Google translated)

"gallery of unfinished paintings"

Ratatosk entitled
  blur bludgeon
the time before limebird
  a grim growl
walls wedged in the vigil
  stalk our stars
worry & knives' burden
  shade shivers
Ratatosk entitled

A Walk with Kurt.

( via / via )

After the Alphabets.

"In The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, after hearing about a massive & deadly scapegoating, the narrator asks why the peasants didn't attack the landlords, their true enemies, & is told, 'When your real enemies are too strong, you get weaker enemies,' & every day I think about this & also see it" --@kateschapira.bsky.social

In Orbit 18.

"Spectacle

My vision burned like microfilm, frame to core.
Then it was all shadow & line. That fist
of candy stars scattered across the ER—
that could not be my mind—but I was already
expelling my body from my body.
My body turned inside out, then outside in.
I felt like a bag of blood. I was a bag of blood.
Feeling & being: twin pebbles passed between three shells,
identical & vanishing. Everyone thought what a waste
because I thought what a waste. Oh it was humiliating.
I wanted to be monogamous with my suffering,
to be regarded only by the obsidian eye
of that which devours me. Instead, I made myself a drama
of dry obsessions, my seaweed & my animal parts
spit into the suicide’s scrutinized theater.
There was death. Death was a single-celled organism
reacting to light. It moved towards me
on its slow bristles of cilia, crawled over my face
& continued its journey elsewhere."

--Kathryn Hargett-Hsu via @poetrydaily.bsky.social

198 kinds of nonviolent direct action.

( me / via )

"I wander in a city that feels ghostly, depopulated, even when bodies are on the street, and I feel like a ghost myself in the lack of acknowledgment..."

"Pray
the stars
are all the feelings

we refused to love
and somehow
they have forgiven us

our refusal
to address them
by their animal names"

– Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems via @jacobwren.bsky.social

"A moral fatigue and paralysis seems to have overtaken much of the world. Individuals, organizations and institutions seem to have reached the end of their credulity and ability to be outraged at the ongoing genocide in the Middle East. We protest, hold sit-ins, challenge politicians, appeal to international tribunals, yet it seems nothing works."

"This process includes the replacement of all first-rate talents, regardless of their political loyalties, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is the best guarantee of their loyalty." (The Origins of Totalitarianism, renewed version, A Harvest Book New York, 1976, 339) via @tamardewaal.bsky.social via @joriegraham.bsky.social

Invasive Species.

( lanny quarles on fb / via )

"I see only the horizon, rosy-fingered dawn, cool dusk, broad yellow afternoons. The way time dilates sometimes; a pastel wash that is at once strict and elastic."

"Frog and Toad looked into a mirror.

'Now we look brave,' said Frog.

'Yes, but are we?' asked Toad." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"It's no consolation, but this couintry will not know what hit it, and first the low-information electors with their red caps for brains."

"writing graffiti —
the urge to communicate —
probably futile"

--@internalsun.bsky.social

My World Melts away in the Darkness.

( me / via )

"Capitalism’s history might be tracked in a genealogy of the corporate apology." (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)

"human interest story"

rant hareious junta
rude unwanted strudel
hazard my gimp gizzard

forget throes of witness
mime with glass immerse-play
that made but glyph-diff'rence

Scheherazade.

“To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?”

--Simone Weil in Gravity And Grace via @scherezadenfreude.bsky.social

Prospect Park Partita II.

( via / via )

War Pigs.

"before you decide you don't want to vaccinate your children you should have to take a 4 hour cemetery tour with me where i point out every tiny little headstone of a child that died from a preventable disease and is buried with their parents who would have done anything to save them" --@cait.bsky.social

Obligations 2. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

  always when among
headstones i look for the ones
  of nineteen-eighteen

i say after they lower
the box with crane so gentle

Vortex.

( via/ via ["and in TINY little print in the top right, 'We're Not Prepared for the Next Pandemic' "] )

Musk, bitcoin & the bro vote.

"summer breeze
lifts a corner
of our picnic blanket --
I place a grape
on your outstretched tongue"

--Michael Dylan Welch via via @evecastle.bsky.social

"Creation is an act of power – a reaching inward to find something stronger than our circumstances, a way of claiming space in a world that sometimes seems intent on shrinking us." (via feuilleton)

“ 'I never thought they would hang US from gibbets,' sobs newpaper who spent past few months sanewashing the Let’s Hang Journalists From Gibbets Party." --@malaclypse.bsky.social via @ratatosk.bsky.social

Crazy.

( me / via )

Depiction (again).

"In the spirit of 'actually Nero was quite good with that fiddle,' some parts of society collapsing will be funny." --@kenwhite.bsky.social via @mollyjongfast.bsky.social

Shroom & Doom.

Once i fled North, as far as i could ride,
till i stood by the shores of Hudson Bay
and saw where springtime's Fahrenheit so high
had melted part, & there clear water made.
Now i imagine we will have to show
viddies of when our world was crowned with ice
for those to come, if they would snatch a dose;
or on some indoor snow-machine rely...

But that were least of what we stand to lose
cruel year by crueler year, where we are bound,
& almost all our treasures wrack-impugned.
Remembered white in this slight poem i house,
for what else falls to no skald's power to mend.

(2019)

Spring.

( via / via )

Ak-Maknadi.

beaver moon

a bone mover
a robe venom
a nerve boom

or above men

O, She Says. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

"A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter." --Albert Burneko via @vaspider.gay

Interrupted Narrative.

( via / via )

Crown of Shadows.

"Ratatosk's army"

interregnum festschrift
shrapnel-plated caption
Dhrawnglow or agley path
i glower here cowan
anthem of blank inklings
interregnum feghoot
in the angst-gray ascian
orca play of pleadings

Asemic Piombino.

"who gnaws on Ratatosk?"

all the things i saved
i thought might be fixed one day

"You could process any feeling with this book."

( via / me )

Ratatosk.

testing the third thumb
the weeds are winning now
pathetic wooze
or buyer's remorse mangled
in a rove backroom

You Don't Own Me.

"And I stood trembling on the darksome brink,
And saw its bituminous sides stretch far below..."

--J Stanyan Bigg

Mandate.

( me / via )

"Stags regard us with momentary irritation from the bracken, then go back to honking & clearing their throats at one another like theorists."

"Toad went out to his garden with some candles.

'I will read the seeds a story,' said Toad. 'Then they will not be afraid.' "--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Haikube.

and every foulness
will seek fulfillment
promised license

and every foulness
and every illness
will mob the firmament

and every foulness
will seek fulfillment

This is Fine.

( via / via )

Willin'.

   full moon Plano morn
"REDS + WINE" on the sidewalk
   some long-lost sojourn

recalled to me now in song
i only just recognized

"I have faced fascism before, in this very country."

"Why did the palindrome cross the road?

To get a map a mate got."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"All of these people are ostentatiously evil and shame the institutions they will lead and are a disgrace to the Republic and so forth but do they have the skills or patience to achieve their weird goals?"