"Whales categorize vocal music by species; whale-song, human-song, mouse-song, parrot-song. But all instrumental music is called tool-song" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
Makes more & more sense all the time.
Monday, September 28, 2026
"HOW POETRY COMES TO ME
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
—-Gary Snyder via @alinastefanescu
"these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
This is probably the first book devoted to the Ottoman night before gas lighting.
One more marathon road trip and the book would write itself.
"One way of looking at the rise of the Male resentment politics is that we're still producing secondary males -- and, in fact, our system is producing more than ever -- but it's become increasingly difficult to find a way to get rid of them." —@braak.bsky.social via (thread)
One Ring-Tailed Roarer to Another.
"THE ART (Aelindrome in the Decimal Expansion of √2)
14142135623730950488
The art,
a losing sun,
as she emerges,
only a swan
to her suffering,
may be dark
as turns of sky.
Do seas turn
so dark, maybe,
suffering her
as wantonly?
So, emerge as she —
sung in a lost heart."
—Anthony Etherin, 2012
"consolatio"
no justice
just us
steel mistress
no justice
all questions
be lost arts
no justice
just us
"It brings me masses of joy, and I don’t want to sound saintly, but if it can do that for me, then surely it can do it for other people who are not in the lucky position I am in to be able to read these things." —Richard Village via
Sunday, September 27, 2026
Forestiere Underground Gardens.
"Only the physical failure of solitude drove the spirit at first into society, as the moral failure of society may drive it later into solitude again." —Santayana
"musical journey"
antelucan blue flicker
flatiron bard effigy
curdled sky of div-scads
scowling engine warnlight
tailgating gets you nowhere
no cicada nods here
nor nibbling hare edgewise
flush of something simmers
celebrants shuffle roughshod
tailgating gets you nowhere
after the odd turncoats
beyond ill-planned gallows
pale cerulean stalwart
plasters the wrecked sectors
tailgating gets you nowhere
"...autofiction (which used to be called romans à clef)..."
"kept across fathoms"
text: amended murksome
marred garden
spiral grown cathedral
dry choir
scars that were real, scored by
scant answers
not the real record
runes' tsunami
wrongly buttoned sweater
"It has a kinship with the saxophone."
"The wind that knocked our generation down
Was not a harvest."
—Djuna Barnes, The Antiphon
British trains & snow, from 1963.
"Can we just decide that art is made by humans in the same spirit as we decided that champagne can only be made in Champagne?" —@kunstkijken
"Oftentimes, and on a clear day, it feels like the 1970s."
"ads that can read my mind"
insect carvers union
all dues
the invisible interviewer
doesn't want your secrets
the ring alarm gets reset
by a rabbit in the yard
the library takes your book
& puts it in special collections
"He told the magazine that he might be the only ufologist who still did not know what UFOs were."
"ENVOY FROM D'AUBIGNÉ
Go book
go
now I will let you
I open the grave
live
I will die for us both
go but come again if you can
and feed me in prison
if they ask you why
you do not boast of me
tell them as they
have forgotten
truth habitually
gives birth in private
Go without ornament
without showy garment
if there is in you any
joy
may the good find it
for the others be
a glass broken in their mouths
Child
how will you
survive with nothing but your virtue
to draw around you
when they shout Die die
who have been frightened before
the many
I think of all I wrote in my time
dew
and I am standing in dry air
Here are what flowers there are
and what hope
from my years
and the fire I carried with me
Book
burn what will not abide your light
When I consider the old ambitions
to be on many lips
meaning little there
it would be enough for me to know
who is writing this
and sleep knowing it
far from glory and its gibbets
and dream of those who drank at the icy fountain
and told the truth"
—W S Merwin, The Carrier of Ladders (1970)
"Most of our students are functionally illiterate."
"The old become surface at a time when they are most deep, yet this is not something done to them." —Nocebo
Saturday, September 26, 2026
"Richard Slotkin, in his Bancroft Prize-winning study of the American frontier myth, argues that the captivity narrative did not just function as propaganda aimed at Native people. It functioned as self-absolution." —Renee Stonebraker via
"blinking regatta"
after long rolling
oil well wheelpull
highway loop
car out
The Art of Making the Same Deal Again.
"crow road"
cicada dusk, gatesqueak
watering should be done
but it isn't · boxes of books
so many boxes of books
things finish in pantomime
or not at all
a kind of peace descends
"...the quality of her work persists and what we're really finding out is a large portion of her fan base doesn't understand camp" —@pavlovcat.myatpro.social via (thread)
"French people are Italian people in a bad mood" —Jean Cocteau via
A length of cloth that agrees to be a person's shape for a while, and then is let go.
"anti-pattern"
robot bullying
moon pale run
fraught wild plan
self-coined doubt
Mood.
Jimi Hendrix backing The Ronettes.
"ON RODIN'S 'L'ILLUSION, SŒUR D'ICARE'
She started up from where the lizard lies
Among the grasses; dewy hair, and flew
Thro’ leagues of lower air until the blue
Was thin and pale and fair as Echo is.
Crying she made her upward flight. Her cries
Were naught, and naught made answer to her view.
The air lay in the light and slowly grew
A marvel of white void in her eyes.
She cried: her throat was dead. Deliriously
She looked, and lo! the Sun in master mirth
Glowed sharp, huge, cruel. Then brake her noble eye.
She fell, her white wings rocking down the abyss,
A ghost of ecstasy, backward to earth,
And shattered all her beauty in a kiss."
—Trumbull Stickney via
"Most art objects created today are created for the ruling class." —Jay Isaac via
Aesthetics of the Hermit Crab.
Autumn Road through the Glens.
"Poetry used to have prestige and popularity. These days it has one or the other, rarely both, and not enough of either." —Graeme Richardson via
Trilobites are still economical.
"I was born in Gaza
I was born in Gaza
In the city of lost yearning,
where memories fade
and hope goes missing
I was born there
With the taste of despair
memorialised on my tongue
I was born in a besieged land
where death, deprivation
and poverty still invade
I was born in Gaza
To redefine the meaning of peace
and soothe the city of fears
Where I was born,
dreams are buried alive
But I am not scared
to defy this throbbing life
and beat the stormy winds of wars
I was born in Gaza
and one day I will be back home."
—Mohammed Moussa
Friday, September 25, 2026
"Broken Arrow"
shipwreck rap sheet dwelling
half-hid ceasing to gurgle
bread that needs a knife
inherited fun, penumbra
driving by where a building
was removed by a wind
ciklono, clown messenger
from dead poem clown town
words in half the time
reach for their waif mark
before the buzz can start
sip down your brimming cup
shipwreck rap sheet dwelling
"If you can catch a hare
and look into its eye,
you will see the whole world…"
—Anna Crowe via
"A veritable Casanova in her 20s, by the time she died her only friends seemed to be the pet snails she cared for, which she smuggled over European borders in her bra." —Robert Minto via
"I don’t mind being assumed to be outside Art."
honey of the vandal vaults
pervades casket whisker
seine sanity
insists on landmine Xmas
blessings of the blaze scourge-all
blue upon black lampads
leisurely lodge
alert to brisk curtains
dire chronicle downward
faithful darkpen scathe-scroll
& the fools' fall
& the fire pyring backwhelm
a ditty asks duskright
else doom names no nextframe
amber jab-imped
only as the sweep deepens
piebald Watergate · as the heat breaks
on the wire clicks · & the red dots cluster
fence grain · but no record
bleached jeans the hard way · Bleriot's wings
& the limits of Rock
Tzara already · luxury minutes to midnight
sow broken SSTs
& the first halting · words of cyberpoetry
unintended tells · like tanlines
swore by · the Scotch Gambit
pale cerulean · even in those days
sewing machine encountered
on a dissecting table· clownwhite
& the clankers say
piebald Watergate · as the heat breaks
“For I had pondered on a rune of roses,
Which to her votaries the moon discloses.”
—Ernest Dowson
"Few more significant events happened in fifties American culture, I’d say."
"Tales take time to tell. To rush them is a form of theft." —Nocebo
"Clowns were forming mobs to terrorize the non-clown population."
but time disappears nonetheless
& my projects lie idle
i fumble my lease
but time disappears nonetheless
no wine in the chalice
the world itself turns turtle
but time disappears nonetheless
& my projects lie idle
Thursday, September 24, 2026
low moon, faint & fuzzy;
& the tiny lizard also i
almost didn't see
"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
"ODE: 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."
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
"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.
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
"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