( via )

( me / via )

"Who erased surrealist cinema’s godmother?

      "last one out get the lights"

boiling Nile prognosis
      dunce plague prog
gnaw pint exoptant*
   dowff past greedpull
runes sown cloy precluded
half-deaf noon · harrowing stillness
cascades

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* (Barnes) ='wanting what is out of reach'

On Maya Deren.

"A rancher named Robert Reed Ellison is usually credited as the first documented non-indigenous observer, though the Chisos Apache had their own accounts of the lights long before that. They described them as stars that had fallen from the sky and were searching for a way back up." —Isa Grant via

Mood.

( via / via )

Harlem Nocturne.

"I want to be as self-possessed as the whales I have come across. I want to trust myself as implicitly as they seem to trust themselves. I want to build something different than the system that has left all of us, whales and women alike, struggling with every aspect of our reproductive lives. And for those who have ever been demeaned by a questionnaire, a sampling procedure, or a numerical metric, I wish to return their dignity." —Mary Beth Rew Hicks via

They want us to go home.

   some say nothing's more
glorious than an unmarked
   van with masked men

taking away parents who came
to pick up their school children

Stockholm.

( via / via )

The Shampoo.

"rusty moon"

poems of low ebb
liable to trail failure
no other airt pathsent
only a wish dished out
only a wish dished out
parable here pelting
partisan tort chortled
fade upon wud wakeful
wallops the small clamor
wallops the small clamor
low ebb lensing

"David was the guy who actually said I love the smell of napalm in the morning … the now oft-quoted line used by Robert Duvall. David did actually have his surfboard on his chopper in Vietnam!!"

"The series moves with the grace of art cinema but has the bite of investigative journalism, taking in the exodus from Gaza, organ trafficking in Iraq, migrant prosecutions in the Mediterranean, Britain’s Bibby Stockholm prison ship, the French aftershocks of the Gaza war and, finally, homelessness in the United States." —Joseph S Furey via

"His unceremonious death in 1916 after being crushed by a moving train as he tried to board it at Rouen station in northern France was as cruelly fitting as an end could be." ( via feuilleton)

( via / via )

Nine Key Jacques Tourneur Movies.

( via )

" The language needed to discuss the novel and what it was doing hadn’t been invented yet."

“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” —Rod Serling via @itsagoodlifereview

"All of these inspired, or were adapted into, movies.."

( via / me )

Wolves.

“Being a writer and a Texan is an amusing fate, one that gets funnier as one’s sense of humor darkens.” Larry McMurtry via @catfishcaviar

The most whimsical wallpaper ever.

"73.

The fire tongues
My dry life away;
No more stone songs,
I sing wood today.

It is light and rough,
From one piece, no more;
Both the heart of the oak
And the fisherman’s oar.

Drive piles more firmly in,
Hammers, pound tight,
O wooden heaven
Where all things are light."

—Tracy's Mandelstam via

"Octopuses are also special creatures in that we know they are remarkably intelligent and through that are easy to perceive as kind of kin. And on the other side, they might be the closest to aliens that we humans have come across."

( via / via )

I’ve moved on quite a bit since i first read this in high school, but it is still one of my favorite poems.

”DIVIDENDS

This advantage to be seized; and here, an escape prepared against an evil day;
So it is arranged, consummately, to meet the issues. Convenience and order. Necessary murder and divorce. A decent repute.

Such are the plans, in clear detail.
She thought it was too soon but they said no, it was too late. They didn’t trust the other people.
Sell now.
He was a fool to ignore the market. It could be explained, he said. With the woman, and after the theater she made a scene. None of them felt the crash for a long time.

(But what is swifter than time?)

So it is resolved, upon awakening. This way it is devised, preparing for sleep. So it is revealed, uneasily, in strange dreams.
A defense against gray, hungry, envious millions. Aveiled watch to be kept upon this friend.
Dread that handclasp. Seek this one. Smile.
They didn’t trust the others. They were wary. It looked suspicious. They preferred to wait, they said.

Gentlemen, here is a statement for the third month,
And here, Mildred, is the easiest way.
Such is the evidence, convertible to profit. These are the dividends, waiting to be used.
Here are the demands again, considered again, and again the endless issues are all secure.
Such are the facts. Such are the details. Such are the proofs.

Almighty God, these are the plans,
These are the plans until the last moment of the last hour of the last day,
And then the end. By error or accident.
Burke of cancer, Jackson out at the secret meeting of the board. Hendricks through the window of the nineteenth floor.
Maggots and darkness will attend the alibi.

Peace on earth. And the finer things.
So it is all devised.
Thomas, the car.”

—Kenneth Fearing

The Long Walk Home.

"Who thought it was a good idea to have the Attorney General (who’s supposed to hold himself above partisan politics), take the stage and promise death and destruction to drug dealers and criminals of all stripes, only to be followed by guest speaker and convicted drug dealer Ross Ulbricht, who earned himself the showy and somewhat redundant sentence of two life terms plus forty years for torture, contract killing, and trafficking $200 million in narcotics before being pardoned by our Pedophile-in-Chief." —@Mark Slouka via

War Crimes Won't.

( via / via )

Riddle.

"...I don't write anymore
I just sit looking at the wastebasket
with this alert intelligent look on my face."

—Bill Knott

"...he was convicted of blasphemy for his poem, 'Lázadó Krisztus' (“Rebelling Christ”)."

invoke stares
   oil should not burn
thousand moon night
   false needs swell
desolate palazzo
   shadows long
invoke stares
   oil should not burn
area we find
   alibi
rufous sweater
   thousand moon night

15 lesser-known African literary masterpieces.

( me / via )

Uranium Sundaes.

The air did shimmer for awhile with sound
& now it doesn't. Heat like fear instills
solemn grugprab*, as mad the world's end howls.
I muse on those cicadas & their trills
changeless as the itch to understand.
Drivers haste to pretend
to & fro. Unquestioned haggard vows
dragging the trees like vast unruly wind
propel me too, t'ward no acceptable outcome.
The car yearns to rest. I go with one foot
on terrible wrongs, the other utter bunkum
proposing what i'd save through verbal output.
Singing-time is almost past, for sure;
seventeen years gone up in literature.

-------------------------------------------------------------
* lethargy (Dalgarno's word)

Sleepwalk.

"Scholars have identified the books, newspapers, and magazines Joyce was reading, and found the places in Finnegans Wake where he used the words." —James Elkins via

Afrique Victime.

( via / via )

Mary of Silence.

"But, day by day, joy waned and withered off" —The Ring and the Book

Someday a mortician.

"Midsummer

This starbreak is celestial air,
Just silver; earthlight, dying amber.
Underneath an arch of pallor
Summer keeps her brightened chamber.

Bright beauty of the risen dust
And deep flood-mark of beauty pressed
Up from earth in lovely flower,
High against my lonely breast;

Thou rhythm like the changing moon's,
The catch to which the waters play,
That as they kiss moon-silver sink,—
As soon to spurn the baffled clay;

Only before the waters fall
Is Paradise shore for gaining now.
The grasses drink the berry-bright dew;
The small fruits jewel all the bough.

Heart-breaking summer beyond taste,
Ripeness and frost are soon to know;
But might such color hold the west,
And time, and time, be honey-slow!"

—Léonie Adams

人間だった (Once Human).

( via / via )

"...we have constructed an arts system which too often rewards compliance."

lacustrine crutchyard
wields swoosh
highway southpaw
t'ward hatchvoice

"So what do you call this new scene of you and the Bangs, and Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate? At that time it was really just those four groups. And I said, ‘Oh, it’s the Paisley Underground.’ I didn’t think much of it – it was just an off-the-cuff remark."

"I'm finding out way too much for someone who fucks around so little" —@sofarrsogud.bsky.social

No Easy Way Down.

( me / via )

Ancient feather star.

"they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Old Rocker.

⊐ ∧ ⋂ ⊕ ⊂ *ol1a

"...let us not be passionate about picayune, ephemeral, ugly, or mortal things. If we have to seem to be moved by all that, then we can pretend to be: but let us only pretend."

( via / me )

Geese of North Sauty.

"Tongue-Dust

Behind the library’s frosted glass,
dust has its own eloquence.
Settling on the spine of forgotten Latin,
coating verbs in velvet silt
until the past is translated
into a single,
drift-grey grammar
that says everything
by staying completely still."

—@thedevilstuna.bsky.social

"Some time ago, casinos learned how to hack human psychology to create on-demand addiction (B.F. Skinner noted this in 1950s, and Michael Easter in his book Scarcity Brain describes how he learned it from a casino research laboratory)."

"I’m so glad I don’t have to live in a rammed earth cottage eating foxtail millet." —James Marriott via

"Austria-Hungary is no more. I do not want to live anywhere else. I shall live on with the torso and imagine that it is the whole."

( oil painting by me / via )

Emendations.

"On the same day that Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that those in power did not understand the danger in time to prevent what happened, the Trump CIA released 71 newly declassified intelligence reports showing just how many warnings about al-Qaeda had reached the highest levels of our government before 9/11." —Heather Delaney Reese

"...poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of anything."

   "loaded checks"

dark gray welkin · stone wilderness
awhile traiking · the posh snakepit

awhile traiking · trystward blindfold
retreat blocked · in the owl octave

in the owl octave · dark gray welkin

Moonlessly.

( via / via )

A common misconception.

"fulguriator"

setting suns
& lonely radar looms
watch skyhook
gouge Troy

hoodwinked sound
conjyration mode
beauty's mesh
that sought coign

sleep's file clerk

"Your ’artistic voice’ isn’t something you invent. It’s something you gradually recognise. Your job is to listen. It will already be there."

"I myself, during 60 years of writing for publication, have never needed anything but grammatically sound sentences for the countless things that I’ve wanted to put into words."
—Gerald Murnane via

Colorized tornado i think.

( me / via )

Fasano's tribute.

“Leave only three wasps alive in the whole of Europe and the air of Europe will still be more crowded with wasps than space is with stars.” —Sir James Jeans

Jordan Belson retrospective.

erosive tanks tussle
toylike through fraught woods
locked out threat game threnody
within Fimbulthwart
frexious thrip
is snake trove

"But if there’s anything the road will teach you, it’s that none of us is where we are for any good reason at all."

( via / me )

"Whole chapters are dedicated to the evil portents which foretell the fall of various Emperors."

cloven hoof rock
foggy setback

crust strife
sage dowse moon

voy dire

"The books are dense, navigational, built for return visits. The only complication is that the game does not exist."

--What makes something poetry?

Aside from the inescapable timebound (faddish) criteria, these two seem to be permanent:

1. "yugen", or mysterious beauty; i.e. resonance with the subconscious. (in the 18c.--often called the least poetical time for english-- this was not expected nor sought.)

2. "calliditas", or concise aptness. Some--a very few--good poets lack this (Whitman, Jeffers) but there will always be those who refuse them the first rank for this reason.

I would also add: "melopoeia" or phonetic coherence (for some time now, in eclipse); "phanopoeia" or visual imagery; & "logopoeia" or conceptual originality (these are Pound's coinages).

"Poignancy" belongs in here somewhere, but since every age draws the line between pathos & bathos differently, i can only suggest that poetry must be about the human feelings & situations which are thought to be worth exploring at that time. Nowadays bad childhoods & famous artists appear frequently, while epics on the founding of political dynasties would be a very hard sell.

Having one of these excellences is sufficient; but having many of them is still better.

(2003)

Ghoul-haunted woodland.

( via / via )

Nine movies that capture the aftermath of 9-11. (via Joshua Rothkopf)

"Not only did the Edsel outsell the cybertruck, it sold almost twice as well.

The Edsel sold about 116,000 units over two years.

The cybertruck? 63k." —@stephenblackmore.com

The Hadronic Seeress and Other Wyrd Tales (2025).

"PRESIDENTS

The president of shame has his own flag
the president of lies quotes the voice
of God
as last counted
the president of loyalty recommends
blindness to the blind
oh oh
applause like the heels of the hanged
he walks on eyes
until they break
then he rides
there is no president of grief
it is a kingdom
ancient absolute with no colors
its ruler is never seen
prayers look for him
also empty flags like skins
silence the messenger runs through the vast lands
with a black mouth
open
silence the climber falls from the cliffs
with a black mouth like
a call
there is only one subject
but he is repeated
tirelessly"

—W S Merwin, The Carrier of Ladders (1970)

Bowie.

( via / via )

Answer to Fermi Paradox just dropped. (via Jorie Graham)

      "unclean thing"

unclean thing begone
gnarly lure of flycraft
      diligent
   skull burrower
give us this day · our daily Krasnov

Hollerith Shanghai
Boabdil addendum
      Hugging Face
   hootenanny
fast times · in the Führerbunker

Building monuments to alien gods.

"Was ever an insect flying between two flowers
Told less than we are told of what we are?"

—Cavender's House

Dread Pirate Roberts in Dallas. (thread)

( me / via )

"...a friend who attended San Diego State University told me he voted Republican only so that his diploma would come adorned with the Terminator’s autograph."

"There may be places in us all where things
Live that would make us run if we should see them."

—Cavender's House

Laughing While Leaving.

"It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountains and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been."

—Dickinson

"I cannot speak for someone else’s wounds. But I know what it is to be healed by something born from those wounds."

( via/ via )

Sonnet to Sleep (lipogram & lipogram translation).

encased in 'splainin' narpools
school zone world, gnostic
      bullion
   & faded shame
erse to inks · my iracund word

tricorne tarn patrolling
tryst azure & crash pad
      carillon
   smoke rises
watched by all · on their small screens

Modern shaped poem.

"I picked that year — call it 2014 — because I’d say that was the last little gasp of the blogosphere’s cultural relevance. Blogs still exist, sure, but they are institutional, professional, and (to employ a term that will read as very mid-twenties ten years from now), niche."
—Biblioklept via

Leaf by leaf.

( via / via )

Person to draw any seine.

"Out of nearly sixty presentations, more than two-thirds were some variation of 'here is how AI is impacting my practice.' " —Wrath Mania via

Bayeux tie-ins.

      "color banished"

pratfall flurry
loom output noisefire
pillow stepped on
chase
brim pentacle poemclasp
appoint joint ratchet
face turned away fandom
      filigree
   smoke of sapphire
chase figments · in a frail landscape

eclipse dust din branded
determine next turmoil
      law of things
   their own landfall
landfill take my map minefields
little enough vanquish · the vague velleities

abrogate all bruntlapse
Brutalist foyer coin toss
      as the wind
   of madness wones
too many glints · that once were gladness

"Evidently, letting literary intellectuals give a definition of culture is like letting billionaires decide how much tax they ought to pay."

( via / via )

A familiar place that becomes increasingly strange.

"helicopterese" (The Matrix, 1999)

1.
greenish golden light
in some encumbered alley
your chimp shades resting

in some encumbered alley
redbrick & bruised passage
& no certain turning

your chimp shades resting
where a moment back you tarried
crushed now beneath fathoms

2.
it is red pill or blue pill
it is Bhopal Chernobyl
nimble but to squander

it is Bhopal Chernobyl
shiver under Saturn
sleek black van

nimble but to squander
squidwise inkier delve
it is red pill or blue pill

The only Iron Man.

"She was ready to skip town much earlier than I was, probably around the time my car was stolen from in front of our apartment. That same week we stayed up all night waiting for the evacuation warning, as the flames crept down from the mountain and wiped the town above us off the map." —Henry Begler via

Storyteller's Wisdom.

( via / via )

Jekyll Island.

"john fetterman is the first rat in history to climb onto a sinking ship." —@covie93.bsky.social

THE END OF SUMMER (Palindrome).

4.
silence remains
through cruel zones
fought standstill
called cowboy reef

"...she saw the vast desert as a feminist space that should not be plundered for its resources." (thread)

( via / via )

Joy.

2.
trek evasions swarm
no right school
fishhook out

that long boil

3.
dead thousands
sot knaveries
i should laugh
all those void rules

Boon.

"For [VALIE] EXPORT, this was precisely the emancipatory effect. The rejection of unambiguity, intelligibility and communicative constraints shows a resistance to those symbolic and political orders that determine who is allowed to speak, how one should speak and which bodies are considered capable of speaking at all. " —Thomas D Trummer via

I like to imagine myself trapped in some kind of non-euclidean alien prison made of concrete rooms the size of planet.