Wednesday, March 04, 2026
When i assume my final form, it will be something like this.
"Live music is at least 50,000-60,000 years old (Divje Babe flute)
Notated music is at least 3400 years old (Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal)
Recorded music is only 160 years old (Au Clair de la Lune)." —Dom Aversano via
The only explanation of poetry.
"Jellyfish have survived all 5 mass extinctions which goes to show the best way to succeed in this world is to not have a brain or heart" —@nameshiv.bsky.social
"antidote to houseshame"
Styxcrossing a strange fold
stack pennies on the thin seesaw
gray spindly agreements
grasp the pathway's dodge-logic
ravens spiral spurning
transport bearing new dances
dying sun the real deal
don't you misconstrue it
Styxcrossing with stout hearts
alone, stained with brainstuff
pixels in bright pantomime
parallel to siege-Egypt
ravens settle rightful
rulers where the lens game ends
"silence of the iambs"
Armageddon imgrat
only to pass grass burns
algorithms' riddle
rede from one stupider
dark green on burnt orange
graveside firelit conclave
night shaken & shapespoilt
shelter where the melt goes
the gift taken gaudily
gunfire a firm sermon
dark green on burnt orange
graveside firelit conclave
before sunrise sears with
sensible repentance
exact change at the zigzag
zoom laughing like glim rumors
Ducks eating peas from one of our best writers' hands.
“I realized that regardless of the tragedy, regardless of the grief, regardless of the monstrous challenge, some of us have not died. Some of us did not die [...] And what shall we do, we who did not die?”
—June Jordan via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social
"did RFK release his spores or something everyone is sick" —@howlitzer.art
"why wait"
lulzmaxxing from mayhem
shop now pay later
marksmanship its own riptide
abstract cat. wolf down innings
of angleworm bruise cloying
hot take on hot take on TikTok
stakes in my toolkit, oolong-
phaeic velocirapture
Tuesday, March 03, 2026
Everyone who goes to war should wear this helmet.
"fennec-eared larva"
riot more red neon
than ruin, dream brewer
scattered crumbs & crimson
increasing thirst, cursed thing
but welcome
“ 'So it’s a Meow Wolf type thing'” I ask the hopelessly nerdy Chinese girl behind the counter.
She’s deeply offended. 'They actually copied us.' Her face says I might be intruding on her TikTok time." —Cairo Smith via
"They came to the top of a mountain. The shadow of a hawk fell over them."
—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
What i warned you of
In my bloodstream sings
Though the paths remain
Where i mark my pain
And i teach my love
Cratered ways & things
That bite. No dry end,
Nor veils be the friend
Of this. I but wait
Creaking at a gate
And the ullage sings.
(2000)
“POEM
As a prison is most prison in
the tiny cracks in
its walls
I am most me in my pores
I lower my pores into the water
what will that net me
I open my pores to the air
what will that apprehend
now even those outer elements
dream of escaping
from the felony in each
of the body’s cells
the murderer
I pen within”
—Knott
"I maintain the firm belief that everything we've been suffering through since 2015 is directly tied to President Obama making fun of trump at a White House Correspondence Dinner. That was the catalyst for all of this pain and suffering." —bejamointhomas616.bsky.social
To bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus.
"LOST (Palindrome by Pairs)
On most
loyal ash
lay a lost
moon."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"study war some more"
three evil old men
in five, ten years will be gone
but their bombs fall now
mackerel sky, later storms
i will take due precautions
A bit on Emily Hahn, one of my favorite forgotten writers.
"wolf blueberries"
some wild place left · solaceless
from the turmoil go
"This is a place that supposedly receives three days of sunshine a year, has no jobs, alcoholism is the only past time, and eviscerated Soviet era buildings bookend concrete khrushevkas. The population here is overwhelmingly Russian, and they pray each day for a Russian invasion. It might improve things." —Jace Shugden via
Monday, March 02, 2026
Lots of good thoughts on Dickens.
"...I knew you were not stasis
bedded in the marl
...What we know
wouldn't
fill
a lemur's fist..."
—Diane Ackerman, "Neptune"
"Grandpa Fester"
razbliuto blood moon
as black ice writes crackling
double tap in turbid
tincture: Epstein unction
blood moon amid fathoms
of mild seiche-erasure
The Children Speaking from the Rubble.
"Sonette an Orpheus, II. 29
Quiet friend of farflung furlongs, feel
how more & more your breathing swells the room.
Among the rafters of the gloomy belfry
let yourself toll. What takes its life from you
gathers to a greatness over this repast.
Embrace the transmutation,--there & back.
What's your most excruciating practice?
Does drinking twist your face? Turn into wine.
Be, tonight, out of overplus,
wizardry at your senses' intersecting;
of their weird conjunction make the sense.
Then, when all the homely round forgets,
to the sempiternal earth declare: I run.
To the rushing waters answer: I remain."
—Rainer Maria Rilke (my tr, 1987)
A screaming comes across the sky.
I remember back in the 80s when i was starting to paint & hung out with other painters. Everyone knew about the one artist in town who made his living by making plausible cubist counterfeits. His name escapes me, but i still feel the heat of the scorn we felt. He was like a quack doctor.
A preview of coming attractions.
"What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that."
—Arundhati Roy via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social
"102. Seeing Off A Friend
A blue mountain cuts across the northern ramparts;
White water coils around the eastern castle.
In this land, we bid farewell for once—
—Lonely mugwort, on the road for ten thousand lis.
Floating clouds are the will of wanderers;
The setting Sun is what the old friends feel.
Waving our hands, we leave from here;
Desolate are the cries of the departing horses!"
—Li Bai tr Hyun Woo Kim via
Atlas 31
on its cold passage elsewhere
gives a nod to earth
where the apes in charge frolicked
by civilization's fire
I would totally check out a band called Ghost Galaxy.
"Kafka understood that an even greater indignity than being turned into a giant insect was still being required to go to work afterward." —@pogform.bsky.social
"In a calm morning in March 1968, a shipment carrying the latest Korgs, Moogs and Hammond organs set off from Baltimore harbour, heading for an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro... A few months later, it finally reappeared. Somehow, the ship had been marooned on the São Nicolau island of Cabo Verde (now Cape Verde, but then a Portuguese territory 350 miles off the west coast of Africa)." —Huw Oliver via
"If we do not weep in the final moments of the drama we are either hard-hearted or obdurately Verdian."
"the archer’s arrow
blazes a trail in the sky
and disappears . . .
the way you let me go
before my song was done"
—Susana Menon Roychowdhury, USA
Waka Society of America, 2025 Premier Edition via @evecastle.bsky.social
"cubic altar"
ceremony, Sacla
sackcloth thrash your ashes
the gray morning grins at
agreeable ultion
yellow loading leylines
last of the hard questions
nor pictures convince you
paralleloGramsci
brown leaves on the brain stem
imbroglio-green Soylent
lily white allotment
last of the hard questions
on Beltline & bearing
bulletins from Skull Place
music's sanguine sizzle
still the direct cue, feckless—
illimitable limbec,
last of the hard questions
Nanoparticle promise of a cure.
"SWAN (Palindrome-by-Pairs)
Met,
I am read in answer,
a paper swan in a dreamtime...."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Sunday, March 01, 2026
WORLD WAR 8.25√ 8647
5 Images from the Life of Georg Trakl.
"the time to do that would be then"
expired food · in the shadowed pantry
not like books · born a diff'rent sun
coffee cools · in my heart of darkness
griffin's ride · burnt umber
two more bites · of honey toast
Tantalus knew · such mornings
Saad Kamel (Egyptian, 1924-2012). Untitled (print).
Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow.
"AI Psychosis" is the name of my next band.
poolside temple · tilt gate
raucous the desuetude · in my fade mem'ry
a book about cliffs · climbed in my sleep
it was all so long ago · before gas rose
i had written · in the poolside temple
dust curls on the tabletop · sinopia
the bullet meant for me
An ocean's phantoms surge
Bellicose in my mind
A sort of dreamy dirge
By all the lurking things that crawl
Behind the light
Verily i would purge
Myself of these unkind
Accompanists who merge
With fathoms in the crystal ball
To bind the light
But i must still indulge
Or else my shores are blind
And hurl me only bilge
And leave me as a wizard thrall
Maligned by light
08 17 04
" 'Are we talking of actual evil?' said Ninian, as if he had not heard. 'Or of natural effort for our own welfare?'
'Oh, that is almost too evil to speak about,' said Hugo. 'Some subjects should be forbidden.' "
—@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane.
"There are some rather persistent stories about an Esperanto instructor who had a crocodile hand puppet. Supposedly he used it when he would occasionally answer a question from a beginner in their native language rather than in Esperanto. Thus, only the krokodilo spoke in any language other than Esperanto." —Dale Gulledge via
“Many Mansions
The last majority attained,
And shut from its small house of dust,
Into the heritage of air
The spirit goes because it must:
And halts before the multiple plane
To look more ways than left and right,
And weeping walks its father’s house
Like something homeless in the night:
For now less largely let abroad,
Though but the world they say is mine,
I shiver as I take the road.”
—Léonie Adams (somewhat elucidated here)
“The Horn
While coming to the feast I found
A venerable silver-throated horn,
Which were I brave enough to sound,
Then all, as from that moment born,
Would breathe the honey of this clime,
And three times merry in their time
Would praise the virtue of the horn.
The mist is risen like thin breath;
The young leaves of the ground smell chill,
So faintly are they strewn on death,
The road I came down a west hill;
But none can name as I can name
A little golden-bright thing, flame,
Since bones have caught their marrow chill.
And in a thicket passed me by,
In the black brush, a running hare,
Having a spectre in his eye,
That sped in darkness to the snare;
And who but I can know in pride
The heart, set beating in the side,
Has but the wisdom of a hare?”
—Léonie Adams
“A great deal of what people goggle at in Briggflatts is merely an undisciplined and indiscriminate use of Cynghanedd” —Basil Bunting via
Mothra. Mothra's Song. Mothra. (via feuilleton)
"We owe the words quantity and quality to Cicero.
Latin didn’t have words for these concepts, so he made them up. He coined quantitas (from quantus ‘how much’) and qualitas (from qualis ‘what kind’) to translate Greek philosophical terms into Latin.
When 14th-century English writers wanted English words for these concepts, they could have followed Cicero’s lead and made something up.
But they copied Cicero’s work instead, so we were deprived of what would have been two glorious words: howmuchness and whatkindness." —Colin Gorrie on subst feed
Homographic translations : a brief history & Attempts at trilingual sentences. L'Egal Franglais.
"The Domestication: A Riddle
With huffings and blats · they hied themselves
into our presence, · eagerly massed,
warm though weightless, awaiting their call
and the wished-for burdens · that a breath would load
or a sob, a shudder, a seething rage.
In time, conceiving, we took them on,
fumblingly first · then faster, learning,
our skill as packers · improving till
in a single moment · we could send hundreds
abroad, laden · with burdens of ours
though they, unseen, lacked substance and bone.
This, too, we found: these flying things,
energized air, once out, were gone.
No tears of ours could · toll them back.
The wonder is how · once, as they milled,
their strength unguessed, we stood unbroken
by loads that the moaning herds · longed to take from us."
—Donald Mace Williams at FGR
Saturday, February 28, 2026
drowned cities in dróttkvaett
laid-wrong streets afraid now
—crime has it minions—
the world is full of rage
why must you give it more
into the wildwood creep
weird lover & gearshark
—osprey & dive angle—
the world is full of rage
why must you give it more
"Solid worldbuilding doesn’t mean a magic system with set and comprehensible rules (boring), or a well-documented history on which everyone generally agrees (uninspired). My worldbuilding demands ambiguity. Think of all the things we don’t know about our own world. History depends on who writes it. Even methods in science are far from objective. The origin of our own existence is informed by equal parts fervor and inference. We continuously struggle to understand our own world, so why would I expect people in a fictional world to understand theirs?" —Hiron Ennes via
"Shelley, with Milton, has to be the most humorless poet in the English language." —Sunil Iyengar via
"I start to think about all the stated reasons..."
"a pheasant cries
in the temple room's
dead center"
Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)
Tr. David G. Lanoue
Date of poem: 1818 via @evecastle.bsky.social
"The Lease is Up
Walk the horses down the hill
Through the darkening groves;
Pat their rumps and leave the stall;
Even the eyeless cat perceives
Things are not going well.
Fasten the lock on the drawingroom door,
Cover the tables with sheets:
This is the end of the swollen year
When even the sound of the rain repeats:
The lease is up, the time is near.
Pull the curtains to the sill,
Darken the rooms, cut all the wires.
Crush the embers as they fall
From the dying fires:
Things are not going well."
—Weldon Kees
Strangest book, stray cat wrote.
"it feels weirdly appropriate to have been rewatching The Prisoner this week, a tale of a man locked in a mad simulation of ordinary life, in which the rules constantly change and the underlying objective is to break him" —@tomtomorrow.bsky.social
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of garbled, misattributed quotes.
—Sayings of Asmodeus
"Balrog"
wag the balrog, Roger
bone-splinterers, scoot
renderers of scathe
tranches in the fam'ly tree
pills that represent hero-acts
in treacly posers
flashes on a mildewed monitor
words not to be beckoned back
Forty years of wandering later.