"Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part."
Moby-Dick, Ch. 11 via @celticstoic.bsky.social
Another great painter of nocturnes.
"We are the damned--the strain and moil
That Death has washed from earthly time;
Drawn down by tides of Hell, we boil
Like toads within a torrid slime."
—Clark Ashton Smith
"Piso Olpe"
from myself secret
hawk's hood dipped
don't get your hunch in a bunch
clouds fade to land
no choice
narp2 widening wopwops
inward drawn
emptiness
with its fishhook
clouds fade to land · legend-laden edge
icy chair & bruisechase
achieved sessile blessing
colors shift
off in the West
from myself secret · clues in the firmament
foamcore legend fadged with
furious green ideas
Tween Island
hovers over
other silences · other breakings
cast my eyes past isthmus
aren't you mourning floor-shine
windshield specks
& the warped door
empire s brittle · as the brine crust
words that seem to settle
at some finny pinnacle
not this blur
or blaring chill
lost among leads · that end in lessons
the whole log handed me
by happenstance rancid
years to read
like fingerprints
betrayals burn · not theirs mine
less & less eclipses
clatter in the hat fact'ry
those wall shapes
with ochre traced
those beasts hunted · with harsh love
our hands turned tangle
to take what chase lost us
now pixels
portend keeping
carcasses in bits · sieved in the dark sky
"Building a time machine just to go back and destroy Less Wrong."
"Distant Howling
In Alsace,
on 6th July 1885,
a rabid dog knocked down
the nine-year-old Joseph Meister
and bit him fourteen times.
Meister was the first patient
saved by Pasteur
with his vaccine, in thirteen
progressive doses
of the attenuated virus.
Pasteur died of ictus
ten years later.
The janitor Meister
fifty-five years later
committed suicide
when the Germans occupied
his Pasteur Institute
with all those poor dogs.
Only the virus
remained above it all."
—Miroslav Holub (tr Ewald Osers) in: Poetry With an Edge (ed Neil Astley 1988)
"Owning a senator is more attainable for most Americans than home ownership." —@arr.bsky.social via
"...the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen." —Wilkie Collins via
"spool pie"
dreamsward laden
more dread than reward
invadinta, konkerinta
cheating the landfill
watering this time this area
another time another area
dreamsward laden
mixed typescript & manuscript
like the one i made
on the subject of runes
parcelling out
in the lightless dawn
a route of days
invadinta, konkerinta
snow flurry on a comet
on a comet flurry snow
"critique of my generalship"
autumn that burns · in the old recordings
bold remedies · when there was something to burn
faint echoes · follow my footsteps
in the halls · of the hardly meaningful
"Standing next to my desk is an attractive woman of about fifty in a raincoat. 'Where are you from'" I ask in my library whisper.
'Malibu,' she says. Her name is Sally, and she writes mystery novels. Is she here just for this event? 'Yes. I've thought about it for thirty-five years. And I just felt I should be here to see if he shows up.' "
—[Raymond] Teller via
Dormant lawns in burnished light.
"Gavin Newsom is like, 'What if Don Draper was born in 1967 and got into politics instead of advertising' " —@joshdobbin.bsky.social
Discovery of radio emission from the exoplanet β Pictoris b. (Boabdil.)
"Memorial
If we do not lift quickly the dead bodies from the beaches
the tide begins to put them down like a disappointment
carried beneath the clothing, or hidden
in the intricate folded greyness of the brain.
Now we can know again, even more plainly,
how quickly the world changes.
The land and life too are interrupted
by the indomitable fantasy of extreme violence
and the awful terror.
The body, eager with its wants and its rich few years,
is dead now on the beaches.
The war came as a water rising, leaving us homeless.
The easy company of the dispossessed was a grave joy.
On the crest of waters we invaded the distance.
Recession will find our shells far: high up in mountains.
It will be explained how they came there.
It will not be understood."
—William Bronk
"TOMORROW
Now that the others are gone, all of them, forever,
And they have your answer, and you have theirs, and the decision is made,
And the river of minutes between you widens to a tide of hours, a flood of days, a gulf of years and a sea of silence;
If, now, there are any questions you would like to ask of the shapes that still move and speak inaudibly in the empty room,
If there are any diferent arrangements you would like to suggest,
Make them to the riverboats, whose echoing whistle will be a clear reply,
Speak to the seagulls, their effortless flight will provide any answer you may wish to hear,
Ask the corner chestnut vendor, ask the tireless hammer and pulse of the subway,
Speak to the family on the illuminated billboard, forever friendly, or to the wind, or to the sign that sways and creaks above the stationer's door."
—Kenneth Fearing
" 'bed bug' and 'colonizer"'are synonyms" —@chanda.bsky.social
"so i may be out of my depth here but hes at 30% approval, you elites can stop capitulating now"
—@ndrew.bsky.social
Pessoa: Ah, Quanta Melancolia
So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.
What an anguish stripped of hope,
what grief that only tastes the end;
if nevermore returned the ship,
if in the street a blind man fell—
give it up, there’s nothing else.
Without content, without repose
not a single hour of mine
in which a soul finds full employment;
the blind man in the street succumbs,
the ship then dwindles out of sight.
So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.
(My translation.)
"THE FAILED CARTOGRAPHER (Palindrome)
Demand a hill, at solid nadir….
Damn it!
One morn,
I saw I was in Rome,
not in Madrid,
and I lost all I had named...."
—Anthony Etherin
"When Theo died, he left behind his wife Jo, an infant son named Vincent Willem and hundreds of canvases the art world mostly despised.
Jo was left with barely any money and a rented apartment full of paintings and an infant to support." —Jo Piazza via via Mefi
Just another glacier collapsing.
"... there is a word for the night the moon does not come[:]
'Mugetsu' (無月). No moon. The fifteenth night, arrived at properly, with the moon behind cloud.
'Ugetsu' (雨月). Rain moon. The fifteenth night, in rain.
Both are established autumn season words." —The Tokyo Hermit via
"Stetson Cocytus"
quern's final catcher
can't gnash on a whiplash
morn-golden
galethesterness
Brutalist algebra · Illig dividend
course of fierce finagling
confessed not at gunpoint
morn-golden
taken back oath
halfbuilt timbers · of the World of Tomorrow
beast equinox boxcar
From Issara Winitchai Throne Hall.
"praticle xiphics"
Sopwith Camel caltrops
occult Plath pathworking
malliberigita
greets pale cerulean
cerulean
gorillas in black leather
thousand cuts of thoughtcrime
therapy merle furlongs
glare blinded at Blair Witch
blithering smithereens
smithereens
gorillas in black leather
sparkledew predictions
deduct quartz fortnights
punch drunk in the slow lane
overpass shadowed sliderule
sliderule
gorillas in black leather
"So staunch in his outlook, he almost wrote himself out of the historical record altogether."
"Someone from Exeter was buried on Friday and one of their wishes was to have dinosaurs and the Grim Reaper present." —Johnny Mains via
Atmospheric paintings by Tim Wilson.
"Touching grass is not enough I need to fight a raccoon over a pizza crust"
—@lukelukeluke.bsky.social
fulmvortoj
chance rain
walls pushed on
tribe
without melt
green pool
"How many more times can I declare victory?"
"A petrified cry,
Suspended breath of one who
Had hoped for better."
—@rayhourigan.bsky.social
"The krasny ugol, the beautiful corner, is where the icon hangs and the little lamp burns under it, and you cross yourself towards it from the door; you do not approach, no one stands there, and yet it steadies the room as a keel steadies a boat, anchored in a place forever out of reach."
—Vittorio Zappa via
To a Minor Poet of the Greek Anthology.
"Gas has hit a price where siphoning it is a white-collar crime." —@sundaedivine.lol
Equinox soldier
bounced back email
wood pylon
coign lose
"It occurs to me that preliminary sickness of Yage is motion sickness of transport to Yage state."
"moon lost between moons"
living with halfsilence
hilch like Jimothy
shadow from two suns
marplot at my own wisecracks
half-seen, half-felt, what next
in a world that's wholly dark
black light & sparklers
on a whisker
"Japanese counts small creatures with one word and cattle and horses with another. Silkworms are counted with the cattle. Ittō 一頭: one head of silkworm. They were given the best room in the farmhouse, and the name for them was o-kaiko-sama お蚕様, the honourable silkworm, with the suffix otherwise kept for customers and gods." —Renares via
Bruce Conner's film & one more.
"Riches are certainly no proof of merit: nay they are often (if not more commonly) acquired by persons of sordid minds and mean talents: nor do they give any intrinsic worth to the possessor; but, on the contrary, tend to pervert his understanding, and render his morals more depraved."
—Humphrey Clinker
Narrative of an American Girl.
"redefinition of the second"
stormlight, jet plane
still, some ploy
spools past rout
caught on beastfoot
"Venus ate its moon"
leapfrog bookcrawl
Sunday
with web lure
why sort clouds
at boil
"One moment at the Marlon James Powell's event I wanted to highlight, because it made me happy: We both love The Church's Under the Milky Way w/ fond memories of hearing it the first time. There's a great paragraph about the song in his new novel The Disappearers that captures the essence of the song" —@jeffvanderbeer.bsky.social
GoGo Penguin’s Window into Thrownness and Beyng.
"Silently the three came to the portals of the chamber, where entrance was barred only by a black arras wrought with the signs of night in silver, and bordered with a repetition of the fives names of the archfiend Thasaidon in scarlet thread." —@klarkasht.bsy.social
Marginalia: Nick Land’s Annihilation as a Station of the Cross.
"barrage of sides-taking"
deadbolt clunk
root hog
speedway whining
loss can pull
found poem
scoriac mist
ruse of scathe clout
bronze swoosh
thought cries
guest foist
"By the third day, my phone had died. There was no electricity, no way to recharge. All the extreme contingency plans I had carefully arranged (contacts in the UK experienced in ransom negotiations, FBI connections through family) became meaningless. We were unreachable." —KK Kozik via
Clown minimal: 20 tracks from techno’s goofiest moment.
Even though i enjoyed seeing Jessica Lange do her best each time with those scripts, nothing in AHS ever was as disturbing as the opening of Season 2: Asylum.
" 'How did Plautus get back into the room?' said Miss Burke.
'The door is ajar. Did you think he could open it?'
'No,' said Miss Burke, who knew he could not. 'But it is only ajar about an inch.'
'That is enough for Plautus. He can make himself into air. I believe he could get underneath it.' " —@ivycomptonburnett
Through the long years of the war.
"Skunkworks"
There are no atoms
indivisible at last to be broken to.
If i was once
the site and source of such resplendent fire
or, oak, stood riven
lit from a forking lode, then more i shall be.
Atoms into atom-shards
and into shards of shards, there is no ending,
no last dust
but may be made to walk and weep again.
2 24 84
In 1966 the Shadows of Knight recorded a song about potato chips. (thread)
"News Aggregator"
We know the rustling grom sweeping irksome land
Eaten from within, come; stone
Dense desolate rustlings stir in the sand
Of therk frown
Infamous command.
Tadpolian Napoleon flashbangs read
Not the cost, dense, of each thing's
Age never-to-be, to Moloch fed...
Slags appear,
The spoor of bad kings.
Dark unspeakable will, our lordly despair
Under cushioned leaves' decay:
End, foreseen not by Waihopai bare;
End blown off, away
12 07 03
Pack my box with five-dozen liquor jugs.
“Nevertheless, he still tarried about the skirts of Parnassus, translating some of the classics, and writing miscellanies; and, by dint of an invincible assurance, supercilious insolence, the most undaunted virulence of tongue, and some knowledge of life, he made shift to acquire and maintain the character of a man of learning and wit, in the opinion of people who had neither; that is, thirty-nine in forty of those with whom he associated himself.” –Peregrine Pickle
Lost and found: an impossible watchlist of hard-to-see cinematic curiosities.
"In the late 1800s one scientist, Willy Kuhne, from his studies of the action of the chemical rhodopsin, saw the possibility of taking pictures with living eyes, 'optograms'. Among other things, he exposed the eyes of a rabbit to a barred window, then kiled the rabbit, removed its eyes and fixed its retina, upon which was seen the light and dark pattern of the bars. In 1880 he arranged to obtain the eyes of a man who was beheaded, and from them he printed an optogram that does show an image, but one that is impossible to interpret." —Jillian Smith, Senses and Sensibilities (1989)
“For Harvest
The year turns to its rest.
Up from the earth, the fields, the early-fallen dew,
Moves the large star at evening, Arcturus low with autumn,
And summer calls in her many voices upon the frost.
I who have not seen for weeping
The plum ripen and fall, or the yellowing sheaf,
Am not unmindful now of the season that came and went,
The hours that told off freshness,
The bud and the rich leaf.
Though I turned aside before the summer
And weathered but a season of the mind,
Let me sit among you when the husk is stripped,
Let me tell by the bright grain,
Those labours in an acre of cloud and the reap of the wind.”
–Léonie Adams
I'm Five Years Ahead of My Time.
"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
"O[g]den
Is top dogden"
—@adamroberts.bsky.social
"Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions."
—Tony Kushner, Angels in America/ part 1
"The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
"This Earth should be called Ocean and the water is the most powerful thing on it." (thread)
"To a Cat
O curious cat · curled like a question
asked and never · answered at my feet,
your whiskers twitch · like wet wires
electrified by elements · of earth. Blood red
as mine seeps slow · from fresh scars
wrought in feline · forest fights.
Sleep light, for life · lurks full
of sudden fiends · who flash a claw
then disappear · like devils, into darkness."
—Carla Galdo at Alliteration.net
Aretha & Carole at the Kennedy.
loud croon cark
joy's quietus
watches soot float
at pain set
Listen Up: Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.
"In the wake of Wendell Berry's passing there have been a number of memorials rightly extolling his advocacy for local culture and attachment to one's geographical origins, one's hometown, etc. All good stuff, a necessary corrective to the uprooted internationalism of late capitalism. Not enough is said, however--and Berry himself was lacking in this--about people for whom this prescription doesn't work: migrants, immigrants, displaced people of all stripes. People like me, for instance, whose 'homeland' is a complicated mix. Sometimes 'home' isn't home, and the heart finds its place in other ways." —@andrewfrisardi
A Dozen Undervalued Movie Satires.
Poets are used to seeing each other freaking out. Math nerds, not so much (apart from A Beautiful Mind that is).
"speedreich"
missives from far marrows
migrate tigress
in the jumble jamboree
adjust small failures
where i put my pyre-crumbs
passes from eyes
only this green placemat
garish in the bare dawn
going like bird migrants
going like smoke
wingshapes of weird love
warp the harp remaining
Saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue.
