Digging into a dusty old backpack for any leftover blotter.
"They've convinced us these prisons are fundamentally portals."
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
We kill Socrates anew in every generation.
Isn’t that what dreams (& by extension, subconscious-fuelled artworks) are?
"last & first algorithm"
you—burn
in your own way
golden-leaved pestilence
one light-day from Earth, jumping
bugs dream
"WORD FACT
A 'psithurism' is the sound of a tree’s rustling leaves. It comes from Greek psithurízō (ψιθυρίζω), which means 'I whisper'." —Anthony Etherin
Conceptual art often leaves me cold but this is genius.
The Natural History Museum ha[s] put a T-Rex in a Christmas jumper.
"There was one guy who edited and published War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Fathers and Sons: Mikhail Katkov." —Hyun Woo Kim via
“I Voted” stickers starting to accumulate at the Alex Pretti Memorial in Whittier, Minneapolis.
"Two Graves
Alone in Rome, I watch ash land on my dress.
Charred scraps float by and barely miss my drink.
The scrollwork of smoke rising from the west
bears an acrid stink.
One in shade and one in sun, as I recall.
And each had a friend to keep him company,
buried later – Severn, fearless and faithful,
and wild Trelawny.
Cicadas shook the trees like maracas.
The ring road sang with traffic.
On the enclosure wall, graffiti was
colorful and graphic.
Shelley’s epitaph took the impersonal view.
Keats’s stone was medicinally bitter.
Like crushed cans of Mountain Dew,
the pigeons’ necks glitter.
'The only true protest is beauty', says an ad
on the piazza wall. People stop their cars
to film the smoke, as if it had
style to rival ours.
Orpheus is dead. His music could bewitch
the rocks, the pines, all creatures, even lions.
No, lions are obvious. It’s the ostrich
he sang to. The shy ones."
—Ange Mlinko via
Walinska often paid her doctors' bills with paintings.
Monday, November 02, 2026
"Buffalo"
1.
the map of the bad place
& the safe route arrived at
poem by poem
discerpted
drawing with the left hand
2.
sound of paper towel tearing
cooling toast
that never popped up
first one nostril
then the other infected
living in the day after tomorrow
reply to a wrangle online
with your pithiest threadkiller
real ghosts haunted by
we write in water
sound of paper towel tearing
in the close dim kitchen
3.
before a mask was anything
bysack from those days
notes only i could figure out
poems in four languages
none of which i know
i did this
to my vocabulary
Monument to the Children Killed by USAID Ending.
"And who is this clown
doffing his mask at the masked threshold"
—Geoffrey Hill via
"Oddly, it takes a good amount of reading literature before a dictionary is at all useful to you."
"Too pompous to think about the ruin value of secrets, weren't you, Albert?" —The Rouse
"Nardo among the Simplifiers"
edged days no shortening
dizzy sunshine & churnwheels
melody thread madlibs
merge oblivious Divshroud
porch pirate of the witchhouse
poured Nardo gray & swaying
CHARLIE KIRK MEETS JESUS CHRIST.
The story of a house. (thread)
"Night in November
In the eleventh month, every hour
is the eleventh hour. Accepting defeat,
leaflorn, the oak trees sway on bony feet.
The last wings out can feel their blood go sour,
the royal jelly curdled, crystalled in the hive.
A terminal diagnosis latches on
to everything aloft, to everything alive
as gauzy opiates mummify the dawn.
There is a gnosis that begins with No
and dead ends always, always in November.
No reassurances, however tender,
that winter winds are ghosts that come and go
can seal the bone twig festering in the cast
or keep this night from feeling like our last."
—Amit Majmudar via
"It’s a song that crashes against the future, calling attention to the limitless possibilities that spread out before them, but also the rising terror that accompanies the responsibility to actually navigate this infinitude of futures." —Oh That Magic Feeling via
And Vates.
"Canadians are watching our elections the way you watch your drunk neighbor attempt to launch fireworks from his garage." —@sundaedivine.lol
"EMPTY THEATRE (Anagrammed Lines)
At the empty theatre, I was busy drinking
whiskey by the pint. I made a stranger tut.
He turned away, striking this empty beat —
but I kept rhythm. I was in a tense tragedy,
rethinking ideas better put away; myths
that weary my sun.... I’d kept the rising beat,
by angry muster, and I kept its white heat,
but the needy spirit was taking my heart...."
—Anthony Etherin
Sunday, November 01, 2026
Outside the genre it’s not common knowledge that this decade (the 70s) produced not just one great writer—let’s say PKD—but ten or a dozen of the first water, all utterly unique.
Aluminum fountain pen. ($17 on Amazon.)
"interesting times"
tower usually faint
outlined clear today
stand by
for an unfolding
what could i do
with a lifetime of such clarity
call it clarity
not foreknowledge
the sun brought only the light
"Inside, the columns suggest a sacred grove, and the holiness seems older than the faith."
"an experiment in kakistocracy"
grudge miles
ferrying black stars
would you pray down
crossroad sloyd
“[The University of Buffalo poetics program] has changed American literature and it should be allowed to continue to do that work,” [Juliana] Spahr wrote. “Someday, someone will write a laudatory history, and if it ends now, that history will have to say who let it end and why.” —via
Better together: tailfins & Brutalism.
"nor is the piano's carnal humming
ironical"
—Debbie: An Epic
"From Far, from Eve
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way."
—AE Housman
"Monster Means 'To Reveal'
[After] 'The Laughing Demoness' by Hokusai
The horror lies within these smiling eyes
which glimpse a Nothing deeper than despair.
After despair, it comes as a surprise,
a punchline: that there’s really nothing there.
All is well. Go, stroke your baby’s hair,
then twist the whole head off in laughing rage.
No harm is done. A bird flown from its cage.
Play catch with it, then toss it in the sea.
Or else go out and play the holy sage:
Point to the dumb dead face. You see? You see?"
—Elijah Perseus Blumov
There’s lots of painters i like for themselves, but Francis Bacon is the only one (—& maybe Goya when he went black) who painted the world i live in.
"My wife is currently dressed as Tippi Hedren being attacked by Flock cameras."
"It took me a while to figure this out...It is called a Fecal Management System."
—@ebisback.bsky.social via
"SONNET XVIII: On the Late Massacre in Piemont
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubl'd to the hills, and they
To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe."
—John Milton
"the cult where he never died"
tall
blonde roast
in the claw-laden dawn
things the audience
doesn't know
ørlöglauss November
green star's discovery
understood only for the hue
The artist must’ve been into Hilma af Klint.
"Fierce was the wind. Fallen the willow." —Matthew Dickerson via
The ancient church of Kirkmaiden.
Saturday, October 31, 2026
A deep dive into Young Frankenstein.
"the yew hedge of the Grosse Fuge" —Sylvia Plath
"elite capture by shoggoth"
painted scary masks but not this street
don't knock
clowns eclipse aboutness of the whale
oil shock
Rorschach, leaves veer brown, unveil
shapes fleet
murmurations wafting in the mind
steer blind
Lament in the Reign of Skordis.
"Dr Stephanie & the Rabbit"
1.
peeling blue dumpster
fun'ral march of the marionettes
a hundred dollars for a stuck key
ascian thinks it's Groundhog day
2.
Götterdämmerungfish
one skeleton registers
another to vote
going as Joan Vollmer
with a cutout of William
drive down Waterview
one meeting one tea
3.
chryelephantine misgivings
"The causal power of the past inexorably rises." —Andreas Malm via
Friday, October 30, 2026
" Frog put the cookies in a box. 'There,' he said. 'Now we will not eat any more cookies.'
'But we can open the box,' said Scorpion.
'That is true,' said Frog."
—@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
Under Mars's moons instead of Earth's.
"Miasma"
besoke flint brainfuse
brillig's spent tinchel
could've gone
to the gray fields
it's all recorded · all caraway
green-star stonebotherer
to stalk among stark angers
vocal fry
on the last trump
it's all recorded · all caraway
"planet of a green star"
Valley of Death we crossed, or most of us;
now this.
Madmen-run asylum, dirty trick
good luck.
Public was a resource to extract
bucks from.
Now it is a hollow thing & sham
bare plucked.
Waking from a dream of other days
long gone,
breakage & the suffered wrong remain—
fed jaws.
Will we rise to save the wreck they made
or—nod?
"To latibulate is to find a cosy corner somewhere and hide in it." —Susie Dent via
As i grow older, i have less & less patience for bad faith, bad choices, bad communication & bad design. Especially, bad design.
as if backcountry
little thuds mark the season
the dashboard glimmer
that warns me of nothing real
concurs with these blunt acorns
tiltdecantative newsreels
buttress the wry vertigo
of a ghost watching quick hijinks
of a lone sane asylum'd
tribe of frogs boiling
happy as a clam
stupidity on tap, given
all the avid moguljaws
moguljaws at my arval feast
like sands in the hourglass
That, in turn, I have translated back into English.
”My self-confidence comes from the fact that I have discovered my own dimensions. It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am.” —Edith Södergran via
"I still keep company with magicians and giants, fairies and fauns."
Thursday, October 29, 2026
"In fact, historical records show that as many as half of the million fatalities didn’t result from direct starvation. They died from illness and disease trying to prepare food that was unfit for consumption." —Jessica via
On this day in 1962 he persuaded his submarine captain not to launch a nuclear torpedo...
Emperor Waltz, outsourced
orpiment verve, vorpal
client loud
in the cold noon
no peace here · nothing but clink
waltz at the end winding
past worn piles of turnips
your nerve tweaked
twiddle at dodge
car ailing · unaccountably stymied
for all this dread drilling
adroit flinch the tinchel
reward placed
a plight cave-set
who knows the rest · a wrong enthroned
no less peasant lasered
along the thronged causeway
crushed windpipe
dawn of ruins
supposed to dance · to this dark music
things fail us thralls of
thunder asthma's jazz hands
obsessed probe
into void proof
gracious amber · the illness paused
looking afar fictive
fighting kites above us
rooting for
the right one win
causality
saudade swoon
go fight in
good boy gray
"The great days of jesterdom are over and are not coming back." —Franz Kafka via
I am No Longer That Jabalia Child.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
"Origami club has welcomed me into the fold." —@misshavishambles.bsky.social
"African Moonrise
The wind with fœtid muzzle sniffed its feast,
The carrion town, that lulled its crowds to rest
Like the sprawled carcase of some giant beast
That hives the rustling larvæ in its breast.
When the cold moon rose glinting from the fen
And snailed her slime of fire along the hill,
Insomnia, the Muse of angry men,
To other themes had chid my faithless quill.
But wide I flung the shutters on their hinges
And watched the moon as from the gilded mire
Where the black river trails its reedy fringes,
She fished her shadow with a line of fire.
Against her light the dusty palms were charred;
The frogs, her faithless troubadours, were still,
Alone, it seemed, I kept my trusty guard
Over the stone-grey silence of the hill,
Till a starved mongrel tugging at his chain
With fearful jerks, hairless and wide of eye,
From where he crouched, a thrilling spear of pain,
Hurled forth his Alleluia to the sky.
Fierce tremors volted through his bony notches
And shook the skirling bag-pipe of his hide—
Beauty has still one faithful heart who watches,
One last Endymion left to hymn her pride!
Sing on, lone voice! make all the desert ring,
My listening spirit kindles and adores...
Such were my voice, had I the heart to sing,
But mine should be a fiercer howl than yours!"
—Roy Campbell
abyss dirge
wipes
threatsong—
proud rook plays
these cold wretched rooms
coign
" 'I went back home. When I got there,' said Frog, 'I found another corner. It was the corner of my house.'
'Did you go around it? asked Toad.
'I went around that corner, too,' said Frog." —@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"Because of the economy every trick-or-treater can have one cable from the random cables box." —@prufrockluvsong.bsky.social
limerential tally
on the lost walls
bloodbright costly tinchel
topic hovering
pale cerulean haunch
with cave-traced animal fat
limerential tally