Monday, October 05, 2026
"Apparently, in Rus, there have been two types of poetry since ancient times. One stream is poems without rhyme, based on deep thought and image, where words are cramped but thoughts are spacious (historical poetry, poetry about traditions, about the people’s exploits), and the second stream is rhymed poems, where rhyme plays a dominant role in versification. In ancient times, such poetry was created only by buffoons." —Ksenia Nekrasova via
Houses on the green on Angel Road.
"MUTATIONS
The scribe’s frames are atomistic. But in
mutations, the Scribe Afar scribes time.
Become a rubric, matter shifts in its sea,
but its core, its fabric, remains the same....
It is a cabinet, a crib, the summer forests.
It is the ember cut from a cane. It is brass.
It is a mimic, stubborn secrets, a feather.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)
It is the brief but mesmeric sonata’s arc.
It is absent rites; chamber music to fear.
It is a manic orchestra’s ebb. It must free —
but its core, its fabric, remains the same.
It is sacrifice, abasement, sombre truth.
It is a ceramic urn, a fresh tomb. It besets.
It is a cherub become man.... It starts fires.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)
It is the scientist, macabre form; a rebus.
It is mechanics, time’s barbarous fetter.
It is a cosmic number. Set far, it breathes —
but its core, its fabric, remains the same.
It is a bust of Artemis — her bent ceramics.
It is a statue from birch — timber séances.
It is a tribe’s rich number — a totem’s faces.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)
It is a sermon — the burst, beatific scream.
It is an Arabic secret, the umber of mists.
It is a burnt fresco, a scheme’s bitter aim.
But its core, its fabric, remains the same.
It scribes afresh. It embraces mutation.
A chimera of cries, it ebbs; it transmutes.
Acts remember the fabrications: It is us
(but its core, its fabric, remains the same.)"
—Anthony Etherin
"puddle on the catwalk"
three dragons · or only three
in the pinkgold dawn glow
rumble of rude wheels · & mean roads
join the sputtering train
complain about prices · puerile pop groups
something said on Substack
elsewhere with goblin ire · unimaginable crimes
unspool daily ramified
golden the treetops · the rest still in shade
"Revenge is what these people do. Justice is what we do. Here’s the architecture."
"I don’t care where you started out on the political spectrum
If your kid comes out as trans & you don’t become a rainbow-clad, parade-cheering ally & rock-solid supportive girl/boy/enby dad/mom?
You were never a parent at all
You were a doll collector furious they didn’t stay in their packaging." —@catvalente.bsky.social
"I wonder if we’ll see any resurgence of writing beyond paper and laptop?"
Sunday, October 04, 2026
"So fucking glad we don't have to listen to Charlie Kirk's opinion on the Cornell story"
—@chadloder.dev
"ODE: frozen in place"
when the old lies wheedle
whipless now insipid
emissaries booed
on the iron stage
& minions hungrier · as the harg wanes
dénouement by moonlight
in the minds' spill ullage
cause-effect
boomerang flicks
trap set · by the silt wizard
Jitterbug, i want to take out a hit
a jolting epigram scepter'd
black & white
on a small screen
& these dwale clowns · clipped packing
"As I discovered, it is a) often visually stunning, and b) absolutely crackers."
gigantomachy gawker
ghoul toolkit
foaming-up wastebasket
wisp busker
wisteria church spire
splotch eyewear
subfusc foible-eater
fancy stance
to the horizon shells
crunch-trudging
a skull tells this story
to the stunned wind
"In 2016, 33EMYBW and fellow Shanghai-based electronic music producer Gooooose spent two weeks in the remote Guizhou village of Xiao Huang, immersing themselves in the culture of the Dong, a people renowned for their folk songs. From the field recordings they made during this time, two albums emerged: Dong1 and Dong2." —@jakenewby via
"It still may come as a surprise to some that 'rape free' is even a possibility."
"...it’s as if the burnouts of the 1960s split into two tribes where one decided to surf and hike and ended up in Santa Cruz & Marin, while the others who liked to ski and hike ended up in Manitou Springs & Vail." —Phil B via
"XXXVI
West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day's beamy banner up the east is borne,
Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,
Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.
But over sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.
See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb."
—AE Housman, Last Poems
The Student of Prague. (Online, colorized.)
"I broadcast white noise
I broadcast white noise;
alas, white is not a thing. Regret
whitewashes hindsight.
Smoke stings silk. Sweetness is like
whiteness. Screams: Don’t do it!
It is I! Be sweet dark dear!"
—Unica Zürn via
Grok please do an extremely vulgar roast.
Everyone smoked.
Everyone used plastics.
"The nursing home cantastoria fills..."
"Jesters can only be slain if it's funny. They are engaged in perpetual war, and thirst for the blood of other clowns. They grow a bell on their hat for every kill" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
what world
ago was it
did not fear its food or
an unmarked van slow driving down
the street
"Ideas are the engines of history, and ideas never quite die."
we are all half crazed
in the full gloom · splintery
expedients spawn
strange prohibitions of words
that once had simple meanings
"For when people do you an injury they always slander you afterwards."
Raku may be the single most beautiful art medium humans have found.
Never in history has there been a war ...
Joy.
"Paul McCartney earns 93% of his income from touring. Only 7% comes from the songs that made him the most famous songwriter alive." —@mdemarco via
"Metal Breach
black sand
no gulls
just iron filings in the air
harbour water yellow with tannery drain
a dead battery bubbling in the bilge
taste of tin
eyes soured
throat salted
the water doesn't wash
it stains"
—@thedevilstuna.bsky.social
Saturday, October 03, 2026
Sligo, Slidell, argyle
slant-told homecoming
midnight doors
could not stay me
a thouand deaths
(moist gulag)
Sligo, Slidell, argyle
(gulag moist)
We argue diction in the shadow of the gibbet.
"Over the course of the summer, ICE detained more than one person per minute."
"Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing." —Vaclav Havel, in The Power of the Powerless (1978) via @markchristian135924
In 1925 fashion designer Sonia Delaunay customised her Citroen B12 to match her clothing.
tiltdecantative hent
heinous drudgery adjunct
shadows i
mistake for bugs
coolth lethargy · though eyes mended
margin short mammals
emerge with cruel alertness
these grays sing
gruesome of storm
broken tower · testament in the cards
"I have come to appreciate execution’s place in our national life. It’s an heirloom of doubtful value."
“George Crabbe
Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,
Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,—
But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still
With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.
In spite of all fine science disavows,
Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill
There yet remains what fashion cannot kill,
Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether or not we read him, we can feel
From time to time the vigor of his name
Against us like a finger for the shame
And emptiness of what our souls reveal
In books that are as altars where we kneel
To consecrate the flicker, not the flame."
—Edwin Arlington Robinson
"At the time it was written, there was still a firewall between the rock and classical worlds."
"In what may turn out to be one of the most prescient pieces of sci-fi ever made, the movie posits a superintelligent AI called the Entity, which monkeys with PLC systems making it impossible for humans to trust any information that comes to them digitally." —Jonathan V Last via
"He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it would make him go mad."
"The segments of a jester's cap are its "true arms" (distinguished from its false, humanoid arms). They are used for tasting the air, manipulating prey, and intra-clown communication"
—@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
"If the dream is a writing system...."
shamefastness blurred
prowlwood chore
loom spawn
oily idyll garb
No Land to Stand On. (Mefi thread)
"Moths
They speak of having been condemned
for crimes committed in some other
world—for torturing a lover
perhaps, for cuckolding a friend
Their penance is to fling themselves
against the lesser lights of Earth,
then freeze against the wall in fear
like haunted Midases of silver
Of silver—yes, the moths have touched
your eye for lustre, the fly-by-night;
as though they bribed you to admit
the wrongs that saw your own wings crushed"
—@huckastley
"If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult." —Simone Weil via
The Occulted Paintings of Robert Lenkiewicz.
Friday, October 02, 2026
“ ‘How do you explain the thousands of books that come out every year?’
'I do not explain them. There seems to me to be no explanation.’ ”
—@IComptonBurnett
"how to lose the oil war"
pale horsemen's hooves
shut eyes barrage
how soon these
joys shall fall
Taking the Keys Away from Grandpa.
ransom,
Resonulo,
out of all the unseen
Borgesian roses one that
bites back
"The fact of the matter is that America is the most powerful and wealthy civilization in the history of the world, yet a great many of its citizens spend an inordinate amount of time surrounded on all sides by cheap drywall and drop ceilings, along with the ever-present headache inducing buzz of fluorescent lights... and in these spaces largely useless tasks are performed, often under surveillance, hour after hour, day after day. " —Aaron Lange via
THE MOST HEAT EXTREME EVENT THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.
A guy filmed a Soyuz launch from a distance so close it should be impossible, since safety zones usually clear the pad for kilometers around.
— Digital Brain (@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social) October 2, 2026 at 7:12 AM
[image or embed]
Some of us golf, some of us putt-putt.
I hate to say this, but that's kind of awesome.
gibbous
our derangement
ask clanker clarify
what will become of these wights so
carbon
We used to make so much cool stuff with our hands
— Solomon (@solomonrmissouri.com) October 1, 2026 at 8:00 AM
[image or embed]
( me / via)
moon split
in the black sky
like the sura foretold
a thing that never happened to
earthlings
"Lionesses keep the male lions in check out in the wild. I’d love to see women doing similar things here in society." —@mouthyrenegade.bsky.social via
The School that Became a Grave.
Thursday, October 01, 2026
"The author/artist who is the subject of dethroning is a stand-in for some larger transgression."
"John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett were all on GWBush 2000 'Florida Recount' team." —@jfallows.bsky.social
"The Calvinists' biggest mistake was that they were insufficiently fatalistic."
form, the
pentagram that
can capture a spirit
or with its vacancy evoke
Maya
"In 1946, Germany ran out of Nazis."
cold, limp
the honey toast
the hospital served me
yet it was a first glimmer
of home
"Another day spent fruitlessly searching for the Black Library in Weychester Cathedral."
"It really says something when both of my therapists are saying that the sense of dread is fully justified and the best I can do is tune out what isn't an immediate threat to my well being."
—@gnome-artificer.bsky.social
HOLDMESE / MOON FLIGHT (1975).
Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Angel of Death Following Two Lovers.
"In scenes that are far too reminiscent of a Patricia Highsmith short story for my liking, it turns out that our dishwasher was broken by a slug - yes, a slug - climbing in through the external waste pipe and then sitting on the motherboard." —@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social
New definition of surrealism just dropped.
trill ghosts
haunt our halfway
unregarding tree-lined
repositories of parked cars
today
Five Vintage Fountain Pens for Beginners.
the day
shrouded & wet
asudden · elsewhere floods
are tugging parked cars awry, here
green throbs
Authored first full-length Manx language novel.
"Because of the difficulty of obtaining whale song and the absolute proliferation of birds, scientists are shifting their attention toward the actual language of the birds." —Damon Rolnick via
It’s hard to square re-enchantment with generational trauma.
"that's so agentic"
maddest October
without any help from me
dashboard lights embellish
labyrinth of Ixtab
chess grognard grass-fed
& graying rogue mogul
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Texas. Not what you think!
blood bus'ness
zarf
rotkohl spiel
moon-mad aisle
loud woods
stage voice
If i had to do it over again i'd be a puppeteer in Prague.
"Automated moderating has decided that Artemisia Gentileschi's Susanna and the Elders is adult content." —@evacide.bsky.social
"That sentence is so peak 2026." —@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social (thread)
That time i wanted to write Old English in runes.
"One thing not living in America has made really hit home is how much truly global cultural dominance is a thing of the past. I have not heard 'Choosing Texas' once in the urban Western European wild, I could not hum a single bar of it if you put a gun to my head. 40 years ago we had uncontacted island tribes full of Michael Jackson fans. It is more over than we can possibly imagine." —@ellecarroll
Ausonius' Nuptial Cento translated.
“Song
I make my shroud but no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair,
With stitches set in even rows.
I make my shroud but no one knows.
In door-way where the lilac blows,
Humming a little wandering air,
I make my shroud and no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair.”
—Adelaide Crapsey
I've always had a soft spot for yogh.
"CAESAR
My shoes are almost dead
And as I wait at the doors of ice
I hear the cry go up for him Caesar Caesar
But when I look out the window I see only the flatlands
And the slow vanishing of the windmills
The centuries draining the deep fields
Yet this is still my country
The thug on duty says What would you change
He looks at his watch he lifts
Emptiness out of the vases
And holds it up to examine
So it is evening
With the rain starting to fall forever
One by one he calls night out of the teeth
And at last I take up
My duty
Wheeling the president past banks of flowers
Past the feet of empty stairs
Hoping he's dead"
—WS Merwin
Some of the bigger fountain pen makers and their flagship pens.
It used to be accepted wisdom that the best poets were the earliest, & perhaps one day we will say this about film.
I don’t mind computer-made work that advertizes itself as such. I like elephant art & monkey art, too.