( via / via )

A Brief History of Russian Culture.

"In this flat and watery land live a people who have been here for thousands of years, famous in Europe for their astounding ability with time and for their former civilisation which now lies in ruins, dwelt in by iguanas with blue tongues, covered in vines." —Charlotte du Cann via

Dusk.

( via / via )

Out of hatred for the ant.

"place names from eradicated peoples"

skint subfusc hours
ascribing libels
lakeside puppet show
shingle grit in flurries
sandy overpass salvo
wires span & tears tangle

The Sea of Ice.

"where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable" —Finnegans Wake

Sad & entirely predictable.

( via / via )

"We are feeling beings who sometimes think."

"His refusal of institutional catharsis, his Ligottian lucidity, his insistence on the tunnel without light, has not protected him from Carcosa. It has, if anything, prepared him for it, because it has stripped away every cover story that might have insulated him from the unmanaged condition that Carcosa represents." —Tristan via

Black Rock.

"idea of having fun"

Reich LaBrea · wrecked executive
human blurs · hideous prolixity

bagel inspected · for spots of mold
empty library · looming checkout

"The Baroque becomes pertinent when, in the very midst of the performance, and in full knowledge of its artifice, the viewer becomes convinced that the artifice in fact refers to some truth just beyond the camera’s glare."

( via / via )

"And a glamour of clangor · gored cloudward gaily."

      "the boss & the boss's boss"

assuage-least with the large glass
lambency now brink shambles
      umber wood
   whirls t'ward dial phones
stabbed with a decorative · wall dagger

farther from real, flailing
figments in the rigged show
      past midnight
   mustered symptoms
cold shining · in all ways shrunk

crookedly steer

Kronos &...Moondog?

"Sensing that the Singaporean authorities would never allow him to make a film about an expatriate pimp, Bogdanovich submitted a fake synopsis for romantic caper movie called Jack of Hearts (what the director called a cross between Love is a Many Splendored Thing and Pal Joey) to officials and shot the real film guerrilla style." —Andrew Nette via

"Just as people seldom think of water outside a desert, people seldom think as much about authenticity outside a twenty-first-century city."

( via / via )

I only take calls from this phone.

"If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises – were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." —Michel Foucault via

"The ballet does so via its asymmetry, its 'thick melange of instinct, sensuality and fate'..."

       "Oh Happy Day"

Delusion comes boxed in a sporange
of prejudice, folly's squeak-doorhinge,
   & craving for blood;
   we wade through the mire
of its downpour & pustulent persimmon.

If I May Ask It of the Dying.

( via / via )

Dating Advice fom Trakl. (Somewhat later:) Aside on mindfulness.

“ANGÉLIQUE

Have you seen Angélique,
What way she went?
A white robe she wore,
A flickering light near spent
Her pale hand bore.

Have you seen Angélique?
Will she know the place
Dead feet must find,
The grave-cloth on her face
To make her blind?

Have you seen Angélique… .
At night I hear her moan,
And I shiver in my bed;
She wanders all alone,
She cannot find the dead.”

—Adelaide Crapsey

Unmet Needs.

"And just as many people's facial expression is false, mine too can be false. But the hands with which I speak are truth incarnate, they are always unmasked—regardless of how often I paint my own portrait!" —Egon Schiele via

"The ways to not quite be present are infinite but the same cannot be said of the ways to be fully there."

( via / via )

"Yesterday I was at the desk when a man came in." (thread)

We’re going to need a bigger vocabulary for “cringe”.

Defragging was cool.

thicket of pretending
mackerel sky
the one needful word set

wending among dungheaps

Infinitives.

( via / oil painting by me )

"... the uncanny is what keeps me most grounded in reading and writing. The best writers of the uncanny are often women writers of the short form..."

"waste & use"

the wind
from Sagittarius A
nothing you can sail on

the wind
i can understand
blows in days long ended

the wind
from Sagittarius A

"Vegemite is an espresso shot that punches you in the face, then steals your wallet."

"A break-the-state, twig-quick snap or a long divining" —Susan Briante via

Darkness.

( via / via )

To the Rain.

"Spencer Pratt is a rare instance in Los Angeles of something shitty not getting greenlit."
—@frankconniff.bsky.social

My Name is Ruin.

"margentian violet"

chaos of cobwebs · crowded inside
shrill pentangle
can rubble · rampike horizon
collect recipes
for when · ketamine scowls

My Revolution.

( via / via )

"Belugas demonstrate a high level of self-awareness and a sense of self."

      "Nascarborough Fair"

mylar ribbon rulebook
terrain of blank anguish
      brisk gaslight
   garish trestle
silenced cicadas · misspent odyssey

show of shaky pictures
krait Shalimar limerick
      hospital
   inhabit shapes
blink afar · final yardstick

nitrogen ice artwork
only courtroom portrait
      fist gaslight
   end of ergcreel
hiss kitchen · pendulum dumbfound

"The metamorphosis of indie as both a genre and a concept is inextricable from the evolution of the hipster as a cultural entity."

These [consciousness] arguments will not end until we get tired of using the words & start looking at the phenomena. (--my comment on this & 2 answers.)

"But now the world has made a self of its own."

( 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

"Albayzin was the perfect breeding ground for flamenco."

( 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."