( me / via )

"I dutifully wrote all this down, but there was no place in the detective novel for such a thing as an alive hillside, and the whole story warped around it."

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

Surplus Dispraise.

( me / via )

Haunted house.

causality
saudade swoon

go fight in
good boy gray

2026 ED138.

"The great days of jesterdom are over and are not coming back." —Franz Kafka via

I am No Longer That Jabalia Child.

( via / via )

Bacon thread.

"Origami club has welcomed me into the fold." —@misshavishambles.bsky.social

The Explosion.

"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

Painting, 1946.

( via / via )

How couples met, over time.

abyss dirge
wipes
threatsong—
proud rook plays
these cold wretched rooms

coign

Nor would I be a Poet.

" '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

Cobwebs from an Empty Skull.

( me / via )

Talk about provenance.

"Because of the economy every trick-or-treater can have one cable from the random cables box." —@prufrockluvsong.bsky.social

"This is the power fantasy of the clever child: to see one’s actual or imagined brightness qualitatively distinguishing them from others, enabling them to perform feats far beyond the capability of common dullards.."

limerential tally
on the lost walls
bloodbright costly tinchel
topic hovering
pale cerulean haunch
with cave-traced animal fat
limerential tally

The Fatal Hour (part 2).

( me / via )

Autumn is not in the sky.

"Theranos Nosferatu"

thunder asthma, Oz
uncurtaining murrain
ever after fovea
& cartel of Telstars
sleep disorder sledding
slant without grout antler'd
fire in the belly Fillmore
defies pale cerulean

Tokenizer tax.

"Whether we chase our Joys, or tempt our Woes,
Pursue our Toil, or deviate to Repose,
To Manhood rise, or verge beyond our Prime,
One Tide transports us, and that Tide is Time."

—David Lewis via

Red Right Hand.

( via/ via )

Genocide to Stay Out of Jail.

"WORD FACT

To 'pandiculate' is to instinctively stretch the torso and upper limbs, typically while yawning.

The word lends itself nicely to this palindrome:

Pandiculate: go get a lucid nap." —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology.

"uphill & uphill"

glittery metallic cloth
ev'rything put back right

a project of centuries

rathe cathedral in this book
that breaks & wavers before my eyes

glittery metallic cloth

Pluviaminatory U-Bahn.

( via )

Harp Concerto: Movement 1.

      "the thousand fingers of sepsis"

gauche phosphene, in Gaza
gutdarkness hearkens
      stained cup tilts
   tattered grognard
no Star Trek future · in this flash desert

daily breadcrumb tumbril

Untitled (AB80).

The fact of overcrowding does not justify the belief in jostling.

Haunted Omnibus.

( via / me )

Best Giallo soundtracks.

"And 'Immortality' / mildews… / in the museums of the moon"

— Mina Loy via @mtthwtmknsn

"Actually the leading open problem in philosophy is if there are open problems in philosophy."

"rosary of elves"

built to last wraith
night full of elbows
dark coffee joy
vow

Golden Orifice.

( via / via )

The Sun over Athens.

"Answer me this Malcolm Gladwell you fraud if 10,000 hours doing something is all it takes to master it then how do you explain why nobody in LA knows how to fucking drive?"
—@otsumamiboy.blacksky.app

Cherokee word for 'strange'.

scrawny output
piss smell
strange alloy i mold
a soft loop

Exquisite Paradise Mountain.

( via / via )

"how can one elegy stitch your/ map of wounds."

"directory of forgotten purposes"

old battlefields haunt my
playground sloom in debts'
crookdark soil

Afternoons and Early Evenings.

"Even if meant in jest, Burgess once gave a revealing answer in response to the question, 'On what occasions do you lie?' to which he replied: 'When I write, when I speak, when I sleep.' "
—@thememoryhole via

This Solitude of Cataracts.

( me / via )

Cretans.

"Janet was dismissed by the art world as a self-taught housewife and grandmother, while Pollock was celebrated as a revolutionary genius." —@sarahfuchss via

Sweet are the songs of bitterness and bliss.

“All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing,
for all that is cometh from unreason.”

—Glycon, The Greek Anthology, x.124 (tr Paten) (In Lojban.)

I Was Taught to Read Using an Alphabet That No Longer Exists.

( via / me )

Updated Uzbek alphabet.

blaze at Eagle's Nest
wolfish smile
dark swoop home
crowds hoist bosh

"Then the universities discovered that poets and novelists would pay tuition to sit in a circle and be honest with one another."

Things tribalism is not the answer to: everything that's a real problem.

"He’s talking really about music (and probably Hegel), where a waltz is recognisable as ¾ time, but in which we encounter something else, some residue of thousands of dances, mostly in Germany; all these feet scuff the surface of the dance, so that you can’t help but smell a certain kind of shoe leather when you hear tum ti ti tum ti ti."

( via / via )

Fake Moleskine.

",,,ultimately I view a poem in translation as a poem written by two people - and nobody objects to a song written by two people." —Huck via

"He misunderstood what people wanted. He thought it was answers..."

"The Flying Fox

At times the vision settles in his eyes
like water clearing in a muddy stream;
half-waked, he seems to hold the whole of day
englobed within the amber of his dream.
All light is at the edge of what he thinks
as, dense with dreams, he tents each arching bone
against the fabric of his wings and sinks
into himself, as if his sleep alone
could still the will that urges him to flight.
His senses strain against the fading light
like a dog claws the chain around his neck.
Night undoes that knot: then, great wings unfurled,
he holds his voice out like a hand to stroke
the solid edges of a dreaming world."

—Tyndall Brandon

A poem written just for them.

( via / via )

On an image in Marvell.

"October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost —
For the grapes’ sake along the wall."

—Robert Frost

Threshold.

"thinking about cosmologist Steven Weinberg's reflections on scientific enterprise again, written in 1977 — 'The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.' "
—@jjvincent

Superstition and darkness.

( via / via )

Tipoff.

“Trump’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory.” - Barack Obama in Ohio. (via @sundaedivine.lol)

The sky in July '89.

"Not miles of sea
nor mountain snow
Could cool this constant fire;

The moth knows not
the lamp's far flame
Yet circles its desire,

And I, a smaller
creature still,
Beat wings against your pyre."

—@greachan.bsky.social

The 4706th Floor.

( via / via )

You Shall Not Speak.

"Perchance the moon caught:

An eerie stench of black wolves,

beleaguering bane."

—@authorsidbasu

But here’s the thing: It’s not just about convenience. It’s about authenticity.

"A superman movie but the whole thing is just Clark Kent fighting story deadlines and newspaper funding cuts" —@thehyyype.bsky.social

Joseph Mugnaini: illustrations from "War of the Worlds".

( me / via )

"The Empire was drawing to a close. It killed at its leisure..."

"The true enemy of literature is passionate about literature; he or she works with and within literature and uses literature as a weapon in some extraliterary quarrel." —Amit Majmudar via

Heat Lightning on Lake Michigasn.

front the unknown fropwards
friend weldbook, held back
teacher in tall dudgeon
tarry harbor
loops of barbed wire warpspeed
go, little book, gawky
togetherness of feathers
crisp whisper
front the unknown fropwards

The first woman.

( me / via )

"And an altarpiece was never a portrait of God. It shows what a church wants you to believe about God."

"the blurry messenger"

still dark
here to vote
south nook
what fate dodge
plans foil

Polaris is now the highest amateur liquid rocket ever launched, setting a new record at the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge—altitude of 63,497 feet.

In the 1960s public schools had special classrooms for the “educable mentally handicapped.” Most of those kids had lead poisoning.

Lead paint was banned in U.S. in 1978.

Leaded gasoline was banned in 1996.

Kids’ blood levels dropped by 95%.

Bans work. We should ban shit again." —@ssteoingraber1.bsky.social

Stabilize.

( via / via )

"Leonard Cohen belongs to us all. But everyone who has ever loved him believes their relationship to be intimate and exclusive."

"The difference between modern and non-modern societies was once marked by the presence or absence of certain forms of rationality but now that difference might as well be marked by the presence or absence of the category of fiction." —Simon During via

Safer in Paris.

      "cry bastion"

the day's posed palette
deponent wisp enters
      one shade brings
   back, jaws snapping

The Art of Bruce Pennington.

( via / via )

The Kelpies.

"As I look about,
no blossoms, no autumn leaves,
only a thatched hut by the shore
in the autumn dusk."

—Teika via

Godzilla vinyl.

"Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted." —Emmet Fraizer via

Rubik's Cube-solving robot dog.

( via / via )

Lines for LBG-30, Computer, Poet.

"We shall find the cube of the rainbow..." —Emily Dickinson via

Speculative Visions.

ullagethrist pastime
pert gen'ralship bulwark
      minstrel botch
   egghead fathom
Ouachita Parish · pagbeast wristwatch

misplaced grimoire moiré
marrow of roam homeward
      minstrel botch
   stone bothering
ullagethrist thronged · pantherish hush

The speed of light.

( via / via )

Night Guard.

"Casino IV

‘Whichever way we decide, there are risks.’

Citizen, you’ll never understand House
if you think of it in ontic terms. Don’t name me
such-and-such a statistical law, this or that shady
bookmaker, or rows upon rows of rigged machines.

House is the presence that allows all houses to come
into being. Even this house is but one of House’s
many wagers, on which it has staked our nation’s
savings. Fear not though: House always wins."

—Caleb Leow in Bad Lilies

His book on teaching a computer to draw is fascinating & important.

"...in the year since it’s exploded to 6.8 million, which means there are now more people subscribing here than to the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker combined. I’m read on a scale that’s usually reserved for people who write novels in which it all turns out to be the husband’s fault." —Sam Kriss via

That the Night Come.

( via / via )

Momijigari.

I'd like to see average new york rents added to the same graph. Artists & writers got priced out of the city following the 60s. In fact, when it comes to concentrations of creativity, i'm a geographic determinist. I saw it happen here, in Deep Ellum & then Oak Cliff.

Here's That Rainy Day.

"TPMS"

undertowbeneath Nabi
annul mirthless surface
absent even converse
instress of red guesswork
wraith citadel southpaw
sibtchidna, Charon's Yiddish
trauma of the not-yet named

Pinecone Breath.

( via / via )

Helpless.

gray maroon Ardbeg
rubber covered carframe

words underwater
i snatch them like minnows

livingroom rabbits
gray maroon Ardbeg

rubber covered carframe

Jane.

"Nowadays it covers a broader spectrum, as the meanings of 「詩」 (shi) and 「歌」 (uta) shifted, but the term itself, in that earlier sense, was like an aiaigasa (相合傘), the umbrella shared by two lovers, under which stand poetry governed by Chinese tonal and rhyme rules and poetry governed by Japanese mora count." —@vstokyo via

Looney Tunes AI boomerslop on Facebook.

( me / via )

Johnny Cool.

No matter how nihilistic i become—it's never enough.

The Times They Are a-Changin'.

"war dogs"

crookfief
dim ammo, used
stompface coign—
why allow moth
rest

Joan Didion on John Huston's The Night of the Iguana.