( via / me )

What to the Arab American Is Election Day? (via @fadyjoudah)

"...Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, who graces our pages still today, used the term SWANA in our first issue, decades before it became popularized as a less Eurocentric term for the region..."

"Some blows in life, they’re so heavy . . . I don’t know.
Blows as if dealt by God’s own wrath, as if, ahead,
the rip of every single thing we’d ever suffered
had pooled inside our souls . . . I don’t know.

These are few, but there they are . . . They carve
dark trenches in the toughest faces, the fiercest backs.
Perhaps they’re the racks of barbarous Attilas,
or else the black heralds that Death has sent us.

They’re the steep fall of some Christ from the soul,
of the laudable faith that Fate can make foul of.
Those bloodied blows are the sounds of bread
crackling in oven doors, turning to charcoal.

As for man . . . woe is he. . . woe. He turns his gaze,
as if answering the call of a slap on the shoulder:
his expression is wild and all that he’s lived through
is settled, like penitent pools, in his eyes.

Some blows in life, they’re so heavy. . . I don’t know."

--Vallejo (tr Yvette Siegert)

Waiting for the Barbarians.

( via / via )

Simmering cathedral.

"In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
'It is bitter—bitter,' he answered;

'But I like it
'Because it is bitter,
'And because it is my heart.' "

--Stephen Crane

Rippling wound.

“I am steel; I am a druid.
I am an artificer; I am a scientific one.
I am a serpent; I am love; I will indulge in feasting.
I am not a confused bard drivelling…
I am a cell, I am a cleft, I am a restoration,
I am the depository of song; I am a literary man…
I am a bard of the hall, I am a chick of the chair.”

–Book of Taliessen III. in: William F Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868)

Death on the Pale Horse.

( me / via )

"In 2016 this country was fucking around thrill-seeking and wrecked the family car. I think now we're just openly self-harming and seeking the void."

"Word of the day is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve." --@susie_dent

"How do the wrong people get such power?"

"NOR IS IT WRITTEN

Nor is it written that you may not grieve.
There is no rule of joy; long may you dwell
Not smiling yet in that last pain,
On that last supper of the heart.
It is not written that you must take joy
Because not thus again shall you sit down
To ply the mingled banquet
Which the deep larder of illusion shed
Like myth in time grown not astonishing.
Lean to the cloth awhile, and yet awhile,
And even may your eyes caress
Proudly the used abundance.
It is not written in what heart
You may not pass from magic plenty
Into the straitened nowadays.
To each is given secrecy of heart,
To make himself what heart he please
In stirring up from that fond table
To sit him down at this sharp meal.
It shall not here be asked of him
‘What thinks your heart?’
Long may you sorely to yourself upbraid
This truth unwild, this only-bread.
It is not counted what large passions
Your heart in ancient private keeps alive.
To each is given what defeat he will."

--Laura (Riding) Jackson

What a difficult day …is.

( via / via )

"By utilizing the ideo-cultural stance of the avant garde, Charlotte Jung’s concrete poems address reproductive freedom, domestic violence, rape and gender identity."

”PACT

It is written in the skyline of the city (you have seen it, that bold and accurate inscription), where the gray and gold and soot-black roofs project against the rising or the setting sun,
It is written in the ranges of the farthest mountains, and written by the lightning bolt,
Written, too, in the winding rivers of the prairies, and in the strangely familiar effigies of the clouds,

That there will be other days and remoter times, by far, than these, still more prodigious people and still less credible events,
When there will be a haze, as there is today, not quite blue and not quite purple, upon the river, a green mist upon the valley below, as now,

And we will build, upon that day, another hope (because these cities are young and strong),
And we will raise another dream (because these hills and fields are rich and green),

And we will fight for all of this again, and if need be again,
And on that day, and in that place, we will try again, and this time we will win.”

--Kenneth Fearing

"Though a notorious scrapbooker and bibliophile from the 1870s forward, Twain did not adopt this style of proto-modernist collage until after his 1895 global lecture tour."

"With grim, unwieldy reptiles trailing through..." --J Stanyan Bigg

Winter in America.

( via / via )

The copper stills arrive.

"It's weird how Russian bomb threats to the USA on behalf of Donald Trump are just treated like nbd normal, just another day, just another Putin attack on democracy in America." --@rebeccasolnit

Israel has totally wiped out over 37 villages and destroyed 40,000 homes across South Lebanon.

"The Lie

GO, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant [errand]:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by affection:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion,
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic [medicine] of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention;
And as they all reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay;
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing
--Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing--
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab thy soul can kill."

--Sir Walter Raleigh

Capybara dreaming.

( me / via )

"It’s been the same gang of Pennywise understudies slurping out of the public trough while starving the rest of us since my parents were kids, and yes, they are fascists. They just think it’s not fascism when they do it."

diff'rent silence
than others after this cough
striped sock musing

how silences can be weighed
like one book finished
versus another finished

thronged we are
& yet more empty

Amitruq Nekyia.

"NIGHTCAP

Night apogee, so periodic, it arrests.
Erratic, I do, I re-pose ego path:
Gin.
🍸"

--@lori_wike

Strange Paradise.

( via / via )

Distant Music.

“In our house of lamentation
We light the candle from the lightning.” --Mirza Ghalib

Unbothered.

subways of your mind

woodsy rumbas unify
swim foundry bayous

you fumy braids sown

Drinking Alone by Moonlight.

( via / me )

"The members of FEX are planning on reuniting and rerecording 'Subways of Your Mind'."

turning to the minions
not toothless, map-hapless
& some armed with soma
forty-seven devils

so long we let networks
of lie-pounding scoundrels
flourish on the airwaves
as if diff'rent candy

leadpipes-loaded verdict

Tornado Crossing Power Poles.

"The spiritual growth's an oscillatory thing: we move by shivers in the world's tumultuous spine."

— Theodore Roethke vuia @isidro_li

This vampire will not be staked, detailed oil painting, egon schiele.

( me / via )

Every hospital, school, university and refugee camp.

"Dirge at the Edge of Woods

Gold shed upon suckling gold,
The time of the bole blackens,
Of the dark mounted through dapple,
While in the sealed apple
The seed cradled toward cold.
Put by from an elm in its years
Now its gilded of days,
Over turf’s dishevelment;
Where all which is green sickens,
All the fresh shall be sere.
And it is but for a time
Those embered veinings blaze
A year’s delirium;
Or neared of other space,
Unportioned azure shall close
One of more, and which is,
One which goes.
Let the little pupils that will,
Of vision, gaze for salt
To whet their gazing, wit
In one weather is high
From burrow and lair, by
Nether providences’ default
An all’s accrued.
And apposite, beyond
Such primer beholdings, has
Its long accounting known
The beetle’s morsel thus
Was rich, and the slug’s bed on
The oak’s generations, deep
Over the lark’s bones.
In slough of Edens fast
Wit in one weather shall stand,
While millennia nibble at
The sensual apple
Toppled it net,
Plenty in the palm of the hand,
And the fallen not fallen, not lost
From out its certitude--
For our unbeggaring
Has been gross. Few and late
To cherish an immoderate
Wish, hope’s calculus,
Love’s hope; few to miss,
From natural tally thrust,
In the lime-girdled space
Of choice, where alone
Man can abandon what
Is only his own;
And in cold and tarrying
Their rearisers sleep:

While to the granite cheek
Light’s purples bring
Infinite their ministering,
And past our finial
And ragged crests, to keep
Time’s ambient stood,
Propose horizons from
Their shadowy quarries; while,
In an unwandered wood,
Or under the indifferent foot,
Is let fall, let fall a fruit,
Through eternal leisures down,
For but time’s unravelling."

--Léonie Adams

Rows of flickering dots.

  all-troll firing squad
the morning of the last day
  of this senselessness

the battle with the termites
i can almost understand

  but not why humans
in wood houses should take the
  side of the termites

carnival quadrennial
& feast of self-injury

  ghost dance of dunces
lay the burden down of it
  bluegray cloud cover

running on time & not late
time to fix the other woes

so hidden & so pressing

How far can you jump?

( via / via )

From the weekday archives.

"[Poetry] is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food and antidote. In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even while while we are complaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinarius, &c. They might even be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria, ch. XXII

🟠⚫️✨.

"Once we dreamed of streetcleaners

Once we asked the question:
When will the leaves become birds?

Once we held our dead closely
As if there might be some word.

But the blood no longer dreams of poppies.
The rain is full of holes.

We’re at one with the season
That will not come."

--Ray Sweatman

Cosey remembers Delia.

( via / lanny quarles on fb )

"While I’m not sure just how high on the list of critics I am, I have definitely shared some unflattering memes about him on social media over the years and don’t want to chance it."

part of me will forever
be rooting for the hunted

though sometimes i lapse reiver
part of me will forever

i know which army's braver
in these swart woods so haunted

part of me will forever
be rooting for the hunted

Spirals, cells, weeds, monochrome.

"I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion..." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria ch. II

Surely the second coming is at hand, detailed oil painting, remedios varo, james ensor.

( me / via )

Zeppelin moment.

"ULFBERHT SWORDS

Where brotherhoods of bluebells flower red,
the feeble bleed to blows of frosted swords
whose lustre hews the world — our future wed
to bellowed woes, the hollow throes of hordes.

We oust the rebel herd. We fell the weeds,
whose tortured souls refuel the howls of hell.
Below our feet, the rotted shrub reseeds
the fortress where our hooded elders dwell.

The flesh we shred restores the forest’s lore.
The blood we shed roulettes the fettered wheel.
Below the trees, where heroes dwelt before,
the Lords of Order bless our lettered steel.

Where seeds of sorrow bud before the rose,
the shroud of Ulfberht robes our oldest foes."

--@Anthony_Etherin

Three sine waves.

"I did not enjoy being made notorious among the semi-illiterate as a purveyor of indecencies and a practitioner of all known initiquities. I disliked, and it may have been a trifle peevishly, the intrusive hordes of idiots and prurient fools, of busy-bodies, of unpublished authors well worthy of that condition, of dabblers in black magic, of catamites and amateur strumpets--all which delinquents and rabble and bobtail, Coolidge then being consul, henceforward, for a full, fretful fifteen years or more, molested me and interfered with my opportunities to write in quiet." --James Branch Cabell, on his Jurgen

Orange dream car.

( via / via via @faallwy )

Alignments at Menec.

"Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,—

I’ll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound."

- Louise Bogan, "Knowledge" via @aliner

Sanford and Son theme.

"VIROCONIUM CORNOVIORUM

I met your broken bones today, my kin,
so weak inside the Wrekin’s timeless haze,
which witnessed, once, your savvy and your sin:
the werewolf, howling vows, with eyes ablaze;
the emerald of an Empire, forged within
your Celtic fire. I trod the tender green
once paved with ochre stone and gravelled mud
where legions struck their lances. Now serene,
a solitary wall stands tall, defaced
by time and Saxon axes; rain and blood —
the embers of an Empire. Now retraced,
your broken bones engrave the plains today,
unearthed beneath the verdant work of waste.
I stand beside the wall, so far away."

--@Anthony_Etherin

Evening Tram.

( via / via )

Paint it Black.

  Charonwave
charred carrion
  crowned botflies
ink swarm ratfuck

  even dearth
scars whose dark crave
  brings melted
adorn script nard

Javelin Round.

"Man is born free but he is everywhere on hold with his internet service provider" --@john_attridge

Time stays. We go.

( via / via )

Vampire with a stake through his heart, detailed oil painting, edward hopper.

Is this my American future, that every four years someone tries to burn the house down; & the firemen have to be wheedled & cajoled to stop it from happening?

"But I cannot understand [ ] protecting children from intelligence..."

encrusted blimp-krampus
crackling with doubt outlay
writer fain of footpaths
finds droll the fall smoulder

henceforth rants & riot
arrive back in quackdom
for a short time shamrock'd
for a shift boot-mooted

Pastoraali ceramic design.

( me / via )

Embedment.

the music is lost · that limned still feculence
black & white wharf · whirl glitter
say there's certain · of the stakes remaining
that shift shadowy nodes · in the all-connected

"We need a word for someone who refuses to entertain hypotheticals."

"A very John-on-Patmos for uncoverings and all rombuses, vaticinations an' anagrams; as see the apotheosis of imperium in a cloud of his own bottled smoke..." --The Anathemata

A grey start in Glastonbury.

( me / via )

"Come, selfsame and ageless Night..."

"Nonsense and mystery are not substitutes for truth; they are its consorts, engaged with it in perpetual dialogue."

—Louise Glück via @chenchenwrites

A handful of curious links.

subfusc swathes · as a bug balances
halfway between here · & glassed off heaven

to manage mangled · nerves now
to find peace in being part · of a rathe process

having done what i deemed · was the thing needful
from a rude roster · of impossible choices

"Much of the New York City subway depends on mechanical switching systems installed in the nineteen-thirties; many banks rely on software written in COBOL, a basically obsolete programming language." (via Mefi)

( via / via )

Almost Winter.

skeletons in the yard
or smashed amidst rubble
gray fathoms garble
aether's pellucid mud
debate werewolf-bitten

Famine Moon.

"Kierkegaard said that if Hegel had finished his system and then claimed that it was a joke all along, he would be the greatest thinker of all time." --@nakfourium

Monk Bretton Priory ruins.

( via / via )

"In other words, the only source on the entire World Wide Web that mirrors content in real time has been disabled."

"Trying to imagine explaining to postmoderner-than-thou me of 30 years ago, when the WWW was also brand new, that 'Sell online courses about how to scam people into buying online courses' would be like one of three viable future jobs, another of which is 'autopornographer'." --@ibogost

Dusk, New Jersey, 1978.

dia de los muertos

a desisted ormolu
a disused tremolo

a dolomite duress
a silted dormouse

a tedium odorless
a dossier moulted

a deed silos tumor
a slum desired too

Mount Fuji experienced its first snowless October in 130 years.

( me / via )

Time Has Come Today.

"lazy
as a slug
in the autumn wind"

--Issa via @bashosociety

Zombie. (not the whole thing)

"My griefs are more than stars within the skies,
Or little motes which from the dust arise..."

--Tristia, IV.

Ghost Q&A.

( via/ chalk hill drive-in in west dallas via jessica lonsberry in historic dallas grop on fb )

Most frightening paintings.

"We are digging the pit of Babel"

—Franz Kafka via @fedeitaliano76

Woman Creature.

genocidaire

iron cage die
canoe i dirge
core i gained

go nicer idea
ode icing era
i regain coin

i encode a rig

O Death.

( me / lanny quarles on fb )

Sinclair Gas.

navigate the gnarly hour
with soft grizzled grace

known the graves
known the brazen breaking

in this dim dell crouched
i brag of dodging

Unfold/check/refold.

"Prophesying the end of the world is a thankless task, it's been predicted too often down the centuries for it to be credible any more. Inspite of that, I think that those who feel such an event is approaching will be proved right this time. It doesn't have to mean the destruction of the earth, the destruction of a way of life is also the end of a world." --The Green Face

Halloween is officially over.

( me / via )

The Angels Hung Around.

"All in all, accuracy of prediction may well be the least important characteristic of science fiction." --Thomas D Clareson

"To go to sleep..."

the new unspeakable · spiralling
i am empty & half idiot
i spook at anything

i am tired of soldiers soldiering
as writers write on writing
so much wrong

in the many-mouthed firm

Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses.

( via / via )

A Morris column in the fog.

as the strands find · their fated end
chooser's chase · chockful of stumbles
helm in the half-dark · a pen hampered
by jostle of headlights · by tally of fathoms

"Each video of hers is a reinvention of cinema and a reminder of the magic inherent in the medium."

“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems / to the absurdity of not writing poems”
- Wislawa Szymborska via @everysongiveeve

Fancy headgear.

( via/ via )

All of Leonard Cohen’s Books Ranked.

"In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested against the massacre of the Palestinian population in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in western Beirut by Maronite Christian militias, facilitated by the IDF. Today, this kind of response is inconceivable." --Omer Bartov via via @jeannemarieM3 via @dreamsofbeing_

A Glass of Water, a Burning Boy.

lavender Corolla in the broken driveway
  rented for a day, to ferry
blind eyes for a doctor visit with AC
   the only thing my gray car lacks
i might as well be blind for all the sense of future
  turning to the sky can bring
soft in the steep dark outside on the patio rain
  a rusty tide to drag cars
elsewhere & more welcome here as parch cure
  i sense a great wheel turning
that i won't live to see the iteration next
  but what it won't have swept away
prefigured in the tribes that sort themselves by caps
  will fan out over the broken land
& she who led me here is still beside me now
  my main task this Halloween
is try not to be frightened by the noise of wolves
  that she must flee as much as i

:̴̤͍͑̌̾̉͊͌͊̆̽.̴̛̹̈́̉̒̈́̀̽͐͝:̴͓͚̬̼̅̆͑͛̏͝;̷̡̰̤̎-̸̖̱͈̠̬̬̹̉͗͛͂̌̇̾̓̐͜͝/̶̱̻̻̬̥͚͖̬̌̂ͅ:̵̠̼͌̈́̽;̸̨̦̝̺̪̖̩̺͑̔͘͜gm ,̶̠̜̞̻͊̄̌̽̃!̵̧̻̖̗̦͇͂͒͘͠͝(̷̦̳͓̖̻͈͈̼̦̌͗̀̏́͆͜;̴̲̺̻̥̿̏̀̋:̵̧̧̢̖̃͌.