( me )

Lobocraspis griseifusa.

"The great Karl Popper: I think that there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it and to live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting, though perhaps difficult, problem children, for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days." —@britishmythology

"diagetic payroll"

still can't go back to not caring
court reporter for the Cthulhucene

( via / via )

Midterms.

last-minute aasvogel
divebombing
nothing about this date

there were surely things that fell
how would now be diff'rent

rain of droppig margents
i've checked
nothing about this date

turquoise chill
how would now be diff'rent
last-minute aasvogel

A flute unseen.

Bezoar poems are the best poems.

Carving a frog fully in the round from this material is doing something the stone was not supposed to allow.

( via / oil painting by me )

Young Magpie Catches a Grub.

When i was young i much prized the idea that a painting had secrets that could be read like a book if you were patient enough.

"Throughout his wanderings, from Greece to Ireland, America, the Caribbean, and, finally, Japan, Hearn never felt rooted in any one place, in any one time, which makes him an apt guide for human experience at its eerie and fascinating extremes."

   "Prison

Man said:
Blessed are the birds in their cages
For they, at least, know the limits
Of their prisons."

—Mourid Barghouti via

"Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times."

( me / via )

"If there's one thing right the day is made."

         "untitled"

      "My Druid heart" --Walter de la Mare

My Druid heart has found its final lair,
and in its last redoubt made fast its sleep;
yet this has not preserved from lancing pain
   my Druid heart.

The world let go of me, but not the moon
in whose regard i dance out some charade
with rays that ricochet around the vugg.

Now i emerge, a pharaoh from the sand
or from the night, a lustrous crackling grackle.
Silvery-crackle-shines in another kiln
   my Druid heart.

(publ in Illya's Honey vol 15 spring/summer 2009)

"Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness, and the greater melodies about our country-side have all issued through the pipes of Greece."

"One who reads with some awareness of the parapolitical theories, trying to discern what DeLillo himself thought about the assassination, is wrapt at once into a microcosm where more appears to be conspiratorial than possibly could have been, and yet where even the most naked cases (at least in the novel’s fictional account) of conspiracy manifest ultimately as little more than poetic enjambment, indifferent to the truth." —Gyres via

Builder's End.

( via / via )

"What shall we call contemporary Republican ideology? Is it conservatism? Libertarianism? Authoritarianism? Trumpism? Fascism? How about kayfabe?"

"You can tell AI is a very real industry by the way it implodes unless a sympathetic political party has totally unchecked power" —@stuntbirdarmy.bsky.social

New Updates on the Arc of the Moral Univrse

unlock leeway · lost inkpen
watching the insect · swarms descend
in the gloaming

i could walk now · out of this work
we set down · our dire directives
in the gloaming

opulence · one learns a taste for
old ruins · & new
in the gloaming

in the gloaming · in the gloaming
what might we not achieve
in the gloaming

In the Light of Darkness 4.

( via / via )

A redemptive urge to wander the earth.

in close woods
dark hours pool
years-long plan
haywire
death foiled

The Broken Bridge.

"On his first day in prison, Russell Brand should walk up to the biggest, meanest-looking inmate and misquote Voltaire to him." —@pattonoswalt.bsky.social

"It has often struck me how few unarguably great poets did not also translate."

( me / via )

I should have been a pair of shiny claws.

"in 50 or 100 years people are going to read about the trump years in history books, learn about the president who spent all his time obsessing over grandiose home renovation projects while offhandedly imposing crippling tariffs and starting the stupidest war ever and...just not believe the stupidity" —@tomtomorrow.bsky.social via

Emily Dickinson Opines on the NSA.

veil thin hour
sootfall slow
choice-haunt
newsreels
rags set fire

Matches.

( via / me )

"That's like Darth Vader losing the Death Star."

this gray sky
after so long blue
looks deadly
fraught
loud-voiced

"Hold on, are they selling printed Substack articles over there?"

America's decision to abandon psychology has had the very real consequence of rendering whole classes of problems insoluble.

No Drapa Pardon.

( me / via )

String Quartet No 14.

"and chucking utility one
longs to be useful"

—Debbie: an Epic

"...he found [a] way to turn filmmaking into something more like painting..."

"margent psyop"

ordering bombs to fall
that's not catsup on the wall
and I saw my reflection on a snow-covered hill
will the last light bring it down

Piano Trio in D Minor.

( via / me )

Kindling.

"interlunation"

1.
Horton hears police
helicopters
tries not to breathe heavier
supernal chiaroscuro
the plunge sloppy dead
of insight, of meteors
(should be done soon)
a box of soft peppermints
defrocked signifiers
thieves' oil, dream the alarm
& halcyon
day like the towers fell

2.
of late become limberger
lunes spooled
by a handless pickpocket
star collisions notwithstanding
spans lured
to the dragonfly Silurian

3.
melancholy cairns my team's success
perp walk
more than earned & mindless malice splurged
dwale's loom

4.
skirmishing
on the astro
to ride the train
groaning loudly
a wood balks
points not shed

scuff hanging
in the luminous air
i imagine prisoners freed

i will not see them

5.
alternating inks · etch the smoke
unveil vistas · that devour gazing
with what tentative · telling you begin
decrypt traceries · & crenulated barriers

people lured · by the wrong candy
scalding void · no other escape
then Cheetoh raised · a rotting fist
& the crowd roared back · spittleflecked approbation

'twas a miracle · of marsh gas
the asskiss rapture · each promise snaps
& when it was finished · smouldering ruins
blessed this landscape · far as the eye could see

i was here at the beginning · i will last till the end when
Horton hears · police helicopters

"Wild that everyone treated..."

"My skepticism of doctrine, after all, comes from an apophatic place." —Elijah Perseus Blumov via

Some fun slop-animation.

( via / via )

The King Will Come.

"@gallowsfolk: American friends, emotional support Canadian here, how are [you] feeling tonight?

@shawnd202: Like a hostage who's just heard the police helicopters"
—@mouthyrenegade.bsky.social

White Rabbit.

shadowed gravel
antelucan chill
slow remedy proffered
by the hand on the wall
& you go gainly
with all four wheels
a citizen of Fillmore
sad at sun's advent

Helvegen II.

( via / via )

"Trumpism is not a protest against how the world works. It is a rejection of the very concept of knowing how the world works."

      "the lonesome vampire"

the bitterness of pain that will not cease,
a conflagration painting all the sky
   pale cerulean scree
   masked agents of ICE
huddled cars yearning to go much faster
& stoned buzzards tracing an isopleth
   all is aftermath
   flailing deranged jester
   & pain that will not cease—
i whisper to the workers on the bench
our freedom lies the other side of the crunch

"...‘Bird On The Wire’ appearing at funerals as a slightly more bookish alternative to Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.."

"English is not an especially good language for daring experiments with form or for pure style. There is a burgheresque stolidity to it. When I think of the lyrical richness and sheer romanticism or mysticism possible in the other languages I know, I am again startled anyone attempts the lyric or visionary mode in English." —Jayaprakash Satyamurthy via

"In a sense we defeated the Confederacy last night. But this time we must get Reconstruction right and not let it get sold out the way it was in 1876-7."

( via / via )

Africa’s most remote village/ Seen here celebrating MAGA’s demise/ Decency Prevails - The world rejoices.

Dear 2040,

If there's anyone still alive in 2040, it will only be because we did more than stand in line to vote on this crisp fall day. It will be because we stood up to monopoly media, tech oligarchs, & all the recrudescent bigotries of the early 21c, & refused to let them set the rules or keep the score. It will be because we individually decided that there was something in life more important than maintaining a cool vibe & flow of toys, endorphins & seamless fantasies. It will be because, after decades of trying to ignore that racket in the background, we chose to take our stand & fight.

(via)

"Can we simply… turn off the overfitting?"

"sonnet using a word by Majmudar"

Birnam Wood is come to Dunsinane,
& soon we'll find his head upon a pole...
or so the morning's ecstasy would hail:
soapbubble made of stone.

Groyperdammerung among the cars
returning to a pumpkin from a coach.
If not the Reflecting Pool, you else must parch
O scarecrow in God-Man clothes.

This long, strange trip or detour cruel
or bed we made ourselves by being dumb
ends in a margent-lit unpadded room
& a dying animal.

Birnam Wood, if we would carry trees
much lighter than our dreams' unceasing buzz.

This is the second new "apocalypse bingo sheet" i've had to make, sheesh.

( via / via )

"We all know what happens if you gaze long into the abyss. Her photographs give me the Void’s perspective on matters."

"lawyer up"

sometimes you must speak
in the language that they know
they won't heed consent
let the sharp subpoenas grow

Nuremberg is far
& the Hague too slow
the Rose Garden razed,
by a late sun's glow

Austin, Texas sounds like an Eastern European city that just overthrew a dictator.

Birnam Wood is come to Dunsinane.

From the Codex Seraphinianus.

( via / via )

"I am hearing that on the deathbed of MAGA, Laura Loomer received the light of Islam and unhesitatingly recited the Shahada."

"But there I have been living ever since." —RP Blackmur via

Great-great-granddaughter.

"snapshot"

a girl drugged & bound
in the rape room—
America

manifold the handlers

1950 Tatra at sunrise.

( via / via )

Battle of Maldon.

"torrents"

the shitbox on the president's back
senses that this ride will soon be done
the froufrou & the spluttering harangues
emptied one last time

Clear.

"It seems like no matter what fucked up, deranged, antisocial things Vollmann might say, the author still concludes that Vollmann is either a blessed angel or just 'a regular guy.' Sometimes he’s somehow both." —Eris and Discordia Review via

Little Things: a Ring.

( via / me )

The die is cast.

"TOAD WILL NOW WALK ON A HIGH WIRE, AND HE WILL NOT FALL DOWN."
—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"If it’s a factory,” Patterson tells Kevin Nance of Gulf News, “it’s a factory where everything is hand-tooled."

the dead wizard kept sorcering
crops were blighted
as cobwebs filled his eyeholes

Update from the Parker Solar Probe.

( via / via )

Ceramic animation.

hate is too weak a word
in the verminous darkness

as the robots say
this changes everything

i will accept vict'ry
but i want the game finished

let the winners
be the bartered brides of Epstein

Digging into a dusty old backpack for any leftover blotter.

"On November 1, 2026, the global sea-surface temperature anomaly exceeded 7 standard deviations above the 1982-2011 baseline for the first time, reaching 7.12σ.

In 'normal times' this would be about a 1-in-1,800,000,000,000 event." —Prof. Eliot Jacobson via

"They've convinced us these prisons are fundamentally portals."

( via / oil painting by me )

To his skeleton.

We kill Socrates anew in every generation.

Isn’t that what dreams (& by extension, subconscious-fuelled artworks) are?

"going in circles"

faces that recur
across the timelines
dip & flicker

im Bunker
im Bunker

Church, electricity, sky eye.

( via / via )

Hymnus.

"last & first algorithm"

you—burn
in your own way
golden-leaved pestilence
one light-day from Earth, jumping
bugs dream

"Decades later he admitted the most chilling detail of all: he could no longer remember whether the door had been open or closed when he found it."

"WORD FACT

A 'psithurism' is the sound of a tree’s rustling leaves. It comes from Greek psithurízō (ψιθυρίζω), which means 'I whisper'." —Anthony Etherin

Conceptual art often leaves me cold but this is genius.

( via / via )

The Natural History Museum ha[s] put a T-Rex in a Christmas jumper.

"There was one guy who edited and published War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Fathers and Sons: Mikhail Katkov." —Hyun Woo Kim via

“I Voted” stickers starting to accumulate at the Alex Pretti Memorial in Whittier, Minneapolis.

"Two Graves

Alone in Rome, I watch ash land on my dress.
Charred scraps float by and barely miss my drink.
The scrollwork of smoke rising from the west
bears an acrid stink.

One in shade and one in sun, as I recall.
And each had a friend to keep him company,
buried later – Severn, fearless and faithful,
and wild Trelawny.

Cicadas shook the trees like maracas.
The ring road sang with traffic.
On the enclosure wall, graffiti was
colorful and graphic.

Shelley’s epitaph took the impersonal view.
Keats’s stone was medicinally bitter.
Like crushed cans of Mountain Dew,
the pigeons’ necks glitter.

'The only true protest is beauty', says an ad
on the piazza wall. People stop their cars
to film the smoke, as if it had
style to rival ours.

Orpheus is dead. His music could bewitch
the rocks, the pines, all creatures, even lions.
No, lions are obvious. It’s the ostrich
he sang to. The shy ones."

—Ange Mlinko via

Walinska often paid her doctors' bills with paintings.

( via / me )

A look back at Cluster.

"Buffalo"

1.
the map of the bad place
& the safe route arrived at
poem by poem
discerpted
drawing with the left hand

2.
sound of paper towel tearing
cooling toast
that never popped up
first one nostril
then the other infected
living in the day after tomorrow

reply to a wrangle online
with your pithiest threadkiller

real ghosts haunted by
we write in water
sound of paper towel tearing
in the close dim kitchen

3.
before a mask was anything
bysack from those days
notes only i could figure out
poems in four languages
none of which i know

i did this
to my vocabulary

Monument to the Children Killed by USAID Ending.

"And who is this clown
doffing his mask at the masked threshold"

—Geoffrey Hill via

This Vortex for Awhile.

( via / via )

"Oddly, it takes a good amount of reading literature before a dictionary is at all useful to you."

"Too pompous to think about the ruin value of secrets, weren't you, Albert?" —The Rouse

Pluto, 1977. (Hmmm...)

"Nardo among the Simplifiers"

edged days no shortening
dizzy sunshine & churnwheels
melody thread madlibs
merge oblivious Divshroud
porch pirate of the witchhouse
poured Nardo gray & swaying

CHARLIE KIRK MEETS JESUS CHRIST.

( via / via )

The story of a house. (thread)

"Night in November

In the eleventh month, every hour
is the eleventh hour. Accepting defeat,
leaflorn, the oak trees sway on bony feet.
The last wings out can feel their blood go sour,
the royal jelly curdled, crystalled in the hive.
A terminal diagnosis latches on
to everything aloft, to everything alive
as gauzy opiates mummify the dawn.
There is a gnosis that begins with No
and dead ends always, always in November.
No reassurances, however tender,
that winter winds are ghosts that come and go
can seal the bone twig festering in the cast
or keep this night from feeling like our last."

—Amit Majmudar via

Volupté.

"It’s a song that crashes against the future, calling attention to the limitless possibilities that spread out before them, but also the rising terror that accompanies the responsibility to actually navigate this infinitude of futures." —Oh That Magic Feeling via

And Vates.

( via / via )

Hunting with Your Mom.

"Canadians are watching our elections the way you watch your drunk neighbor attempt to launch fireworks from his garage." —@sundaedivine.lol

Rest in Power.

"EMPTY THEATRE (Anagrammed Lines)

At the empty theatre, I was busy drinking
whiskey by the pint. I made a stranger tut.
He turned away, striking this empty beat —
but I kept rhythm. I was in a tense tragedy,
rethinking ideas better put away; myths
that weary my sun.... I’d kept the rising beat,
by angry muster, and I kept its white heat,
but the needy spirit was taking my heart...."

—Anthony Etherin

"What they all have in common, though, is that they are entirely fake and trying to con me out of money."

( via / via )

Wolf Town.

"recusant"

vile jabberwocky
that never ends with the last word
i will go among rabbits & lawns
& only sing
like they do
in the jaws of a trap

It Won't Take Long.

"You were not here at the beginning. You will not be here at the end." —William S Burroughs

AARON.