( via / via )

"This portrayal of both sides of war, capturing both the military conquest and the human suffering brought by it, brought a storm of controversy to the Imperial capital during the exhibition of 1874."

"The crystalline structure he calls snow, ­mingling with the burning glow in which the angels of the First Order gather around God’s throne, is dust, scoured by the hour and the minute, as though with a divine scraper, from the flat plateau of the spiritual body we call the sky, like an animal grooming itself." —Alexander Kluge via

"We both loved philosophy and craft and craved ways to put those parts of our lives back together..."

beast rumorous · gray return
not my nemesis · scabilicious
sword's rust · & the pale light
ghost army · nowhere tryst
my words fall · feeding frenzy
of merle shadows · i call monster

( jim roche on substack / via )

"I have gradually come to think that we might be best served by taking The Waste Land as a toboggan ride rather than, say, a step-by-step guide to forensic accounting."

   i would like to hear
the music made Confucius
   forget to take food

ten seconds in front of a
painting that staggered the world

"I’m usually an Ex Ponto person more, a later Donne in the Holy Sonnets sonnets with concerns both mundane, constant, and salvational."

"Through the half-leafless wood that breathes the gale"

—Charlotte Smith via

"The Global Justice Project says that rapid decarbonization is a must, and that it needs to be paid for by the rich, and that that payment should come in the form of a global wealth tax and a global income tax, which funnel fairly large sums of money from the north to the south."

( oil painting by me / via )

Right-brained poems & Left-brained readers.

Although i am such a fogey i still use paper dictionaries (both Webster's 2nd unabridged & the 3rd) & my own head (complete with ambivalent spots) for grammar, this is splendidly nuanced. If only the rest of the mechanism were as linear! But as yet, they do not seem interested in ways of powering this renaissance that involve solar energy or water from comets, nor compensatory retraining along the lines of small-scale urban agriculture. Which might make it tolerable, if inartistic.

All my Enemies are Stupid.

"metal latch of a wooden gate"

despair in free fall · spiral elegy
mind's potholes · made manifest
wait for the man · with the Gadsden flag
to come by door to door · for a contribution
   sunset of small repairs
you will miss this so · when there aren't any

"We hear a lot about disenchantment but i think what is happening is also a different form of enchantment."

( via / me )

"He was used to dealing with madness because of his mother and Peter Orlovsky and any number of unbalanced friends, so he could show tremendous kindness and patience."

"Who kneel? Pooneel!"

mandarin tin can phone
resurrected banquet

trash pretend solutions
scrape the wax tablet

for awhile almost the bad guy
puddle reflected squirrel

lavender tea, tear-vase
terribly poured storeroom

vast hostage

"The crews who dug it signed nondisclosure agreements, nearly all of them, painters and carpenters and electricians and guards alike."

Of course moons dream. Moons dream planets.

"Its poems became difficult, ambiguous, so intricate and charged with meaning that they were totally incomprehensible." (via)

( via / via )

The Oral Literature of the American People.

"I have ridden steppe ponies across the plains of Inner Mongolia, I have meditated under the tree where the Buddha first attained enlightenment, I have seen the ruins of Aztec monuments made from human skulls plastered with lime, but I’d still managed to go thirty-five years without once setting foot on the next island over." —Sam Kriss via

"...no enduring cultural narratives..."

"squirrel in a puddle reflected"

wan contested sepulchre
walls perilous builded
hearthstone dinosaur gizzard
deliquescent noontide

sun clawing cloudsthrough
acclaimed form of gaming
charcoal promise
walls frenzied of credence

The Taste.

( via / via )

Big Tex Burning.

"DISTANT MUSIC (Palindrome)

Emote to me. Refill a note.
By eking, I sedate my awe.
Now all I give, lines dash, promote,
to visit inward — rose, yet raw.
Art eyes, or drawn it is. I vote
to morph sad, senile vigil. Law,
one way, met a design I key.
Be tonal, life remote to me!"

—Anthony Etherin

"...the French Republican Calendar, which I adopted shortly after the electoral Ragnarok of 2024.."

“Dear, so thou only move thine head,
Shall all mine old despairs awake!”

—Dowson

"Despite its controversial beginnings as the house Wright built for a woman who was not his wife, to becoming the site of the deadliest single-killer rampage in Wisconsin’s history, Taliesin remains open and is visited by thousands of tourists every year."

( via / via )

"In terms of mood and aesthetics, I’m looking to Gordon Parks, the photographs from the Black Archives on instagram, the work of Deana Lawson, as well as Candyman (the original, as well as the 2021 version)."

"The new book idea I started working on even before the first one had come out gathers digital dust in the neglected corners of my computer, but what do you know? You might turn your head away for a second, and your home and your people are on fire and the flames lick inside to your heart and brain and guts, burning away all that feels unnecessary, leaving just enough breath for a strangled cry of help that no one hears." —Saghar Setareh via

In Extremis.

slendermanian slide rule
slick leather case, sunk Facebook
       brillig dusk
   to be sorted
the news nattering · anempst Crashsound

rain scrabbling Zog's ribcage
ruin-deep swirl leapfrog

The Only Ground Available.

( via / via )

With reference to David Lindsay's "jale" & "ulfire".

"Every writer I know from my MFA years has stopped writing." —Chris Stuck via

Antiphonies.

      "robo advisor"

screwworm cuneiform
on Omaha Beach
   dying of sadness

"Some names stay because they became part of the first map you made of yourself."

( via / via )

Glyconic meter & Alliterating Tumbling Meter.

      “NIGHTS WITHOUT SLEEP

Nights without sleep and days
   That burn like smoldering fire,
Nerves with the ceaseless cry
   Of wind in a tight-drawn wire—
Years of this leaving me nothing
   But a handful of songs like these,
That people think were happily written
   In an hour of ease.”

         —Sara Teasdale

"Everyone knows there are nine witch hills in Hookland, but no-one can agree which nine hills they are."

"But what do you mean, the purpose of life is happiness? That’s like saying the purpose of milk is cheese." —Alexander Fayne via

"If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint."

( via / via )

Brown paper packages.

"The Dread is faded, durable, pervasive. It sounds like a ceiling fan motor in the back of my soul. I try to sit up straight, take deep breaths, look at the sun on the leaves on the trees outside.

But it doesn’t help, it just shifts everything around like a snow-globe filled with confetti..."
—Brandon Smith via

iI you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue.

   "Moorawathimeering

Into moorawathimeering
Where atninga dare not tread,
Leaving wurly for a wilban,
Tallabilla, you have fled.
Wombalunga curses, waitjurk—
Though we cannot break the ban,
And follow tchidna further
After one-time karaman.
Far in moorawathimeering
Safe from wallan darenderong,
Tallabilla waitjurk, wander
Silently the whole day long.
Go with only lilliri
To walk along beside you there,
While douran-douran voices wail
And Karaworo beats the air."

—Rex Ingamells via

Octopus pots.

( via / via )

"And they they were assured that it was all off the record, and it was only much later that I began to write up, with their permission, what had happened, because I thought it was so important."

"106. Spring, Watching

The country is smashed; mounts and rivers persist.
It is spring in the castle; grass and trees are thick.
Feeling the times — flowers sprinkle tears.
Regretting the goodbye — birds astonish my heart.
Beacons have been kept lit for three months;
A letter from home will be worth ten thousand gold.
I scratch my whitened head … it has become shorter again:
All of it will not hold a hairpin."

—Du Fu via

"I am going to spend whatever years I have left making sure my children know the difference between a leader and a man asleep at a desk. That is the only apology worth the paper it is printed on."

"In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour… " — Egon Schiele via

"Where are the princes of the heathen become, and such as ruled the beasts upon the earth..."

( via / via )

"If it is facing demise, I wish it were because of the riotous blossoming of student and worker rage, not because of ecocidal robots."

"Robinson also, as Elliott points out, can lay claim to the astonishing distinction of being, 'the only Australian poet ever, perhaps, to carry the whole of his repertoire in his head; he has always scorned poets who could not remember their verses and speak them, as well as print them.' "
—Lucas Smith via

"The vulgarity begins when sharing ceases to be an offering and becomes leakage."

      "four june bugs"

murkswaddled midrash · march as numbered teeth
      muggy air
   eerie brillig
blood fragrance frabjous
fracture of a sick child

Aerodynamics of a guinea pig, visualized.

( thx Melanie! / via )

Just What I Needed.

"Song of the Horseman

Córdoba.
Remote and lonely.

Jet-black mare and full round moon,
With olives in my saddle bags.
Although I know the road so well
I shall not get to Córdoba.

Across the plain, across the wind,
Jet-black mare and full red moon,
Death is gazing down upon me,
Down from the towers of Córdoba.

Ay! The road so dark and long.
ay! My mare so tired yet brave.
Death is waiting for me there
Before I get to Córdoba.

Córdoba.
Remote and lonely."

--Garcia Lorca (tr Roy Campbell) [In Lojban.]

Signs of Fascism nicely displayed.

"Galsworthy apparently coined a new word (and a good phrase); 'the mufflement of circumstance'." —@anthonybevilacqua395559

MAZAÏ.

( via / via )

"...self-employment wasn’t a career choice so much as a diagnosis."

" Only heroes could survive in the maelstrom, and only idiots would want to." —Nero Wolfe via

"It no longer feels like an emergency. It feels like weather."

"a flicker sandwich in Memison"

grugprab grindstone · gruelling plush
   pixel hamster wheel
overpriced lattes · wielding laser cats
   Prairie Creek bivouacs
slow to a crawl · at the train crossing
   there are never any trains
this cattle car stands still

Unclench Yourself.

( via / via )

"Then I reflected upon its peculiarities, and told myself: The gods that built this place were mad."

"Heatherdale"

tan overpass urnferry
apogee of mapfire
subfusc welkin wisp bag
weary to land andirons
flicker in stark staying
stumble among lungfish

indigo perfused fardels
effectively fake brake-pedal
sifting plankton secrets
pothole by pothole in the motley
stabilized fall stillborn
stumble among lungfish

"The uncanny allure of whimsy conjoined with doom, sad Christmases, playground loneliness."

"What gives a person born in 2005 nightmares from 1994?" —Carol Grant via

"The wrong way of seeking. The attention fixed on a problem. Another phenomenon due to the horror of the void."

( via / via )

"It’s a small lie for any single individual to make, but because the lie is so widely distributed throughout the entire corporate world right now, it’s totally destructive, and gives leadership a wildly false read on their ROI."

"It's worth noting that the people selling AI have no problem with the idea of a conscious, sentient entity that exists only to do uncompensated work for them--an entity to which they have no ethical obligations, and one whose wishes or needs are of absolutely no interest; a consciousness which can be called into existence or snuffed out as thoughtlessly as you would turn a light switch on or off. That is exactly what they think of you too." —Sing or Swim via

Sad Heart.

"metallic red owlclip"

crew Gilligan's Island
gully ullage
gerdanlouk-lit · endgame

   think of the dry season
empty bookcase · in the garage
hail Gilligan's Hamlet

haruspicial dishpan

"Having failed to un-brainwash myself, I thought about how to proceed."

( via / via )

"We live our lives as if we are telling ourselves a story. And we live surrounded by the stories of others."

   golden leaves against
slate gray sky after so much
   staring at pixels

"One also need not be canceled to be problematized, but being problematized is, I think, an inevitable byproduct of having been canceled."

" 'Chasm' feels like the correct word to describe what is left behind, because what has been done to the future, in a process that still seems nowhere near its conclusion, is essentially an extraction of possibility." —Julian Brant via

Early DALL-E was honestly the pinnacle of AI and it should have never been allowed to move beyond this point.

( me / zao wouki )

Sudden Jock Pointe Shoe Ekphrasis.

"Just as God, being outside the universe, is at the same time really at its center, in the same way all humans imagine themselves to be situated at the center of the world. This illusion of perspective situates us in the center of space; a similar illusion falsifies the sense of time in us; and again another similar illusion arranges the whole hierarchy of values around us. This illusion even extends to our sense of existence, because of the intimate connection between the sense of value and the sense of being within us. Being seems less and less concentrated the further it is from us." —Simone Weil via

"I think it’s only natural that vaporwave – at its heart a hauntological form of pastiche – will be embracing and exploring new subjects of nostalgia as it evolves. ."

      "Basil Clench"

   turquoise hum
hasty gurgle
   ascian grid
of the doomed days
   old crimes hilch
in the hopper
   polaroid
trapped entity

"I forgot to turn off the electric. Would you mind doing it for me please."

( me / via )

"Australia has 2 great loves and both of them float."

auburn brown interview
iron Denebola bedrock
redbrick corridor crackling

cry, halcyon highway,
tranche of troubled auburn

Personalized license plate.

"The CSS encryption layer that Hollywood spent the entire 1990s defending in federal court was bypassed transparently in the background by a library called libdvdcss, written by a Norwegian teenager in 1999, now bundled inside every modern media player on every operating system." —Patrick Quirk via

First masterpiece of the 21c.

( via/ me )

Processing.

"Heidegger, who admired Celan's work, tried to make him feel welcome in Freiburg. He even asked a book-dealer friend to go around all the bookshops in the city making sure they put Celan titles in their windows so the poet would see them as he walked through town. This is a touching story, especially as it is the single documented example I have come across of Heidegger actually doing something nice." --Sarah Bakewell, The Existentialist Cafe (2016)

Poor Bastard.

"sounds"

never enough slackness
all needs seek fulfillment

incidental music
festers on the vine

dim fluorescents dowsing
derelict ricochet

pickled whispers

Pantoum.

( me / via )

In the Nursing Home.

“Reckless Biscuits” (Vancouver Island)

You don’t see many crows around here
they prefer the really remote areas
of extreme latitude, and ageless brooding forest…
where, interlacing their severe discourse,
the silence becomes another orator
mor baroque than the rest, whose necessary lapses
—a leaf’s fission, a breeze rattling dry branches—
are awaited often for days, among the treetops.

Mothra's rainbow wings.

I enjoy the technology in old movies (dial phones, great cars, manual typewriters) & the obsolete pop culture & defunct slang in books, as interesting in themselves. I've spent enough time in certain periods that there's not much that gets past me anymore. This is a good thing to have.

Flight was never an option.

( florine stettheimer / me )

"This industry will die and our souls with it if all you do is endlessly devalue the next generation of artists and their fans.."

I have books on high shelves, i have books on low shelves. I even have a few big, heavy books that take both hands to lift. And i have books in boxes i have to uncover from a stack of other book boxes. I get plenty of exercise with my books. (That’s not even counting the miles i have browsed in used bookstores.)

No, it's because their cell phones kept getting smaller & smaller.

"Rust

Riding in the backs of cars
At night wrapped up in the illusion
Of getting out as light pollution
Drowsily gives way to stars

How often have I put my trust
In one-time strangers at the wheel
And prayed that I could make the toll
With coins like hubcaps dark from rust?

Time, perhaps, to turn my attention
Away from the buckshot-riddled sky
And study with somnambulant eyes
The unknown figure riding shotgun"

—@huckastley

Call Me When You Win the War.

( via / via )

The Tube Train.

"Word Made Flesh

Word whose breath is the world-circling atmosphere,
Word that utters the world that turns the wind,
Word that articulates the bird that speeds upon the air,

Word that blazes out the trumpet of the sun,
Whose silence is the violin-music of the stars,
Whose melody is the dawn, and harmony the night,

Word traced in water of lakes, and light on water,
Light on still water, moving water, waterfall
And water colours of cloud, of dew, of spectral rain,

Word inscribed on stone, mountain range upon range of stone,
Word that is fire of the sun and fire within
Order of atoms, crystalline symmetry,

Grammar of five-fold rose and six-fold lily,
Spiral of leaves on a bough, helix of shells,
Rotation of twining plants on axes of darkness and light,

Instinctive wisdom of fish and lion and ram,
Rhythm of generation in flagellate and fern,
Flash of fin, beat of wing, heartbeat, beat of the dance,

Hieroglyph in whose exact precision is defined
Feather and insect-wing, refraction of multiple eyes,
Eyes of the creatures, oh myriadfold vision of the world,

Statement of mystery, how shall we name
A spirit clothed in world, a world made man?"

—Kathleen Raine

This drama is ancient history.

"The Russian propaganda weapon is not built only to persuade you.

It is built to exhaust you. To stuff up your brain."

—Gavril Ducu via

Patti & Allen.

( via / via )

Glory, Glory. (thx Melanie!)

"The moment of absolute clarity comes just when you stub your toe upon the bed." —Will G. via

Pastures of Plenty.

"LUCIFER (Palindrome by Pairs)

Seraphic one,
my divine sire,
fate fires
in ivy, demonic phrase."

—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world."

( via / via )

"Microtonal virtuosos have been going viral a lot recently: Maddie Ashman, Bryan Deister."

"pith helmet"

passage to Nineveh
packaged in pale cerulean
sputter on layaway
Crashsound gold-vermilion
anchors aweigh

pirates on holiday
ransack the wealth of ages
bent heads pursue their play
careless of broken edges
anchors aweigh

passage to Nineveh

Whimsy & Stettheimer.

"I write poetry so I can leave behind these frail, brittle memory cicada shells"
—@poemakontsa.bsky.social

The Alien Within.

( via / via )

Sanskrit itself is a creole langauge which formed when Indo-Aryan-speaking male migrants moved into the subcontinent.

"i love it when the clock strikes 10:30 every morning and the usual sites publish their 3 infuriating news stories that will drive all discourse today like zookeepers raising the enclosure's gate and letting the seals get into the day's bucket of chum" —@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com

Mad Magazine from 1991. (With Crumb in the replies!)

"Weimar solutions"

pale cerulean window
trauma porn
kilnforward courier
catalogue page wedgekrieg
stone lion in styrofoam
it could still rain
pale Ramones
Beethoven's Ninth bone-house
bright trapdoor, trucks both lanes
seeing the web
when i see nothing

"It’s a great time to be writing. What could be better for any art form than to be called upon to rise to the occasion of an emergency, let alone a moment of civilisational crisis?" (—Jorie Graham)