( rue morgue / via )

Fairport Harbor, Ohio.

" 'Don't stay on twitter so long you stop believing in sunscreen' sounds like an idiom people 200 years in the future will be using but won't remember what it means" —@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

The other Marvel Universe.

"world without eyes to see the world"

parse the small bones left
smatterings made natal
storm & blazing blemish
obliterate lit scroll
focus on keeping fauxpas
& phantoms out doubtful
the long game is lambent
with luck's inward aspect
becalmed with my toucan crew
parse the small bones left

( via / via )

New piece, all hand drawn paper animation.

"more of the same at lunchtime"

in the quizchase unrequited
the prize given prolethwart
earthquake & loothprog
nevermore for niding

the prize given prolethwart
nudibranch promise
& drive among drizzles
dark wood & worn apothegms

earthquake & loothprog
drastic wipe
if escape were a reason
& scazons could run rampant

nevermore for niding
skullface rune
winner at the wrong game
in the quizchase unrequited

"Spotify partnered with a handful of production companies to churn out cheap instrumental filler, released it under fake artist names, and had employees seed it across the platform’s own editorial playlists so the company could pay real musicians less."

"The locust armies warping, on the bark" --Royston's Lycophron

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932).

( me / via )

"You need to smash every screen in your house curtis. you need to destroy them all and live in a homeless encampment under a bridge. those are your people now."

"Cicada songs abrade the air
All afternoon."

—Sally Thomas via

"The bottle was black and octagonal, alternating between matte and glossy surfaces. The name was meaningless and slightly strange. 'Black Number' sounded like a code, an error in a calculation, or the title of a film.."

"old story of dread & harsh injustice"

penurious trail, trawling
tralatitious alter
in cardboard make bone time
in barricades cradle
busier buzzdozer

tralatitious alter
patrolling flesh ashfields
no shade for the sharing
the sure fix of quicksand
& decay carved starvelings

in cardboard make bone time
in boneyards find playmates
pale turquoise, dark circus
resumes the clown clatter
cluster bomb found tempo

in barricades cradle
crystalline loss phosphors
spread maps of the madness
among whitecoat monkeys
perfect with bale bulwark

busier bulldozer
my muse & merch searchlight
one more golden goblet
ganch or stiff definition—
penurious trail, trawling

"As doctors use A.I. to get faster at writing prior-authorization letters, Dr. Wachter said he had 'tremendous confidence' that the insurance companies would use A.I. to get better at denying them."

( via / via )

Not to be confused with "quesadilla".

"cough that has a seat at ev'ry table"

1.
scenes of things we knew
in palindromes explain
the play of light
that holds nothing
for awhile set aside
i can't watch the thrashing
what is it all but thrashing
& patterns
that crutch of crutches
time's up

2.
vulturous feasting · as is done
      no hard times
   for henchmen

3.
overlaid fictions · old satisfactions
      wasp hovers
   by the back door
hour on its own tries
to tryst howling mallets

burgeoning kiln · cast off
      points of view
   vaporous rise
i find fizzled reasons
rose-overlaid fictions

At the Tomb of Agamemnon.

"Onstage, members of a full symphony orchestra supporting Mi’kmaw soprano Emma Pennell prepare to perform the piece You Can Die Properly Now – a komqwejwi’kasikl poem written by Mi’kmaw poet, artist and educator Dr. Michelle Sylliboy to honour the children who did not make it home from residential school." —Mackenzie Pardy via

I caught a butterfly.

( via/ me )

Monumental.

"...oil turns Time toward apocalyptic blasphemies." —Negarestani

Roberts on Crowley.

   failson shootout
at Not Okay Correl
   wasphaven
city on fire
   Nero violin
or recording biro

   failson watch
wearier inning
   wasphaven
having foundered
   windows down
before you go

   failson menu

⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ - ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂:̴͓̞̑̌̂̆̊͋̀:̸͎̟̯̂̓̌ ҉ ͡ ͞ ͞ ͞ ҉● ࿀ ● ࿀ ●.

( me / via )

"I mean, I thought I was gonna be as famous as Bertolt and little German schoolchildren were going to be reciting my poetry before school starts."

but i cannot · stop his mouth with clay
   the microphones from humming
treasure · i cannot turn redhats back
   into the broken children they were
come sit with me · in this becrimsoning
   chantpleure of crawlspace
sunset · where a million bucks
   is not too much for a bomb

Steering Wheel.

"How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs"
—@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Bucket list.

( via / oil painting by me )

"If the underlying assumption behind the oppositional aesthetics is 'the world is broken and that’s not good,' then the underlying assumption of the floating world is 'the question of the world’s rottenness is not an interesting one; it may very well be rotten but we don’t see why we should care'."

"Joyce used to read me Finnegan's Wake [sic]. I'm in it but I don't know exactly where, and I'll be damned if I'll go and look for it." —Djuna Barnes

Dusk Triolet.

iced inkhorn roisterer
into further earthstede
      your shew-stone
   fin'lly shatters
myst'ries left · luminous clear
for the feckless seeker

(for John Crowley)

Burrowing years' yardstick.

( via / via )

14 vowel-sound poetry.

Haiku looth as though,
Whispered, the argent
Book boiled down all day.

(2016)

"The Fall of Baghdad"

Dark candle, you could call me
Now or let this knife make
Noise
Across my moon snow
Each slavish landscape void
Puts less out.

(4/2003)

The Dalliance of the Eagles.

"Remembered that year I wrote entirely in copperplate (I was 13, you can imagine, doing three languages at school 🙄 and humanities subjects, all that essay writing)"
—@minxmarple.bsky.social

"...it was a trip her 12-years old son had organized for the two of them - from flights to visas and hotels, from Tianjin to Abu Dhabi, London, Oxbridge and York - all were done by the 12-years old boy with the assistance of Doubao, the Chinese AI chatbot."

( via / via )

Triple and quadruple entendres, and the search for the elusive quintuple.

"Hanc brevem fabulam generis horrorifici Hugardus Philippus Lovecraft (1890-1937) anno 1927 exaravit. Ipsa, tamen, anno 1938, Lovecraft iam ante emortuo, typis est data.

Primam huius versionem Latinam exaravit auctor Latinus hodiernus Johannes Maria Tosi, cuius de vità pauca modo narraturi sumus." —Officina Latinitatis via

On the insane Alfred Hitchcock episode "Maria," Nita Talbot's husband falls for a chimp.

motor from this kit
grille from that
radiant Hannibal
malfunctioning shoppingcart wheel

"Grief is a (closed) system."

( via / me )

Don't Smoke in Bed.

"Try Tropic for Your Balm
(On the Properties of Nature for Healing an Illness)

Try tropic for your balm.
Try storm.
And after storm, calm
Try snow of heaven, heavy, soft, and slow,
Brilliant and warm.
Nothing will help, and nothing do much harm.

Drink iron from rare springs; follow the sun;
Go far
To get the beam of some medicinal star;
Or in your anguish run
The gauntlet of all zones to an ultimate one.
Fever and chill
Punish you still,
Earth has no zone to work against your will.

Burn in the jewelled desert with the toad.
Catch lace
In evening mist across your haunted face;
Or walk in upper air the slanted road.
It will not lift that load;
Nor will large seas undo your subtle ill.

Nothing can cure and nothing kill
What ails your eyes, what cuts your pulse in two.
And not kill you."

—Genevieve Taggard via

How to Latinize Your Name.

"I need not dwell upon the pallid, contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then presented with the worst milk, thickened with the worst flour, into a bad likeness of cream: but the milk itself should not pass unanalysed, the produce of of faded cabbage-leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot water, frothed with bruised snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings, discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco-quids from foot-passengers, overflowings from mud carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the joke's sake, the spewings of infants, who have slabbered in the tin-measure, which is thrown back in that condition among the milk, for the benefit of the next customer; and finally, the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid." —Humphrey Clinker

"The inhabitants of Tenochtitlan and surrounding regions that recognized their dominance were technically Mexica, but as far as is known the Mexica, along with other peoples of central Mexico, never identified themselves as 'Aztecs'."

( me & night cafe / via )

Cat, pigeon, vase.

"You want to destroy all the smartphones in the world, Alexander? You cannot even destroy one." —Alexander Fayne

That is the question.

"between two fires"

hulk wants to smash
but spidey says wait
between them gray mush
hulk wants to smash
it's the mutagen mosh
& plenilune waltz
hulk wants to smash

but spidey says wait

Old Phone Box, Barra, Outer Hebrides.

( via/ me )

Leonard Cohen, Clytemnestra.

"cyborg jailbreak"

black glass silhouette is mine
a rabbit with the coloring
of a tuxedo cat

disembodied sneeze

"Hey, Citizen Kane is great, but have you seen Touch of Evil?"

"...swift sheets of flitting vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense clouds throwing an inky pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparent steel-gray black sky I have noticed under similar circumstances, on which the moon would beam for a few moments with calm lustre, throwing down a broad dazzle of highway on the waters; then the mists careering again." —Walt Whitman via

This one, as in many of her drawings, features her patient number which was a symbol of dehumanisation to her.

( via / via )

Don't fear the Reaper.

"The air is thick with invisible ciphers, while we, so trusting in our citizen lives, carry on with our retro- sense of how the world works." —Sven Birkerts

Afterimage.

"mysterious alien egg"

barely notice the wasp-swerve
on the way out the back door
Backrooms Overlook bivouac
Goldenseal en queue
Geist infustigation
turn over a new loaf

add a link
without even listening to the song

overhang menace
overnight has grown

looth maintenance
in a cranny of the sheer face

"Systems can persist in dysfunction indefinitely, and absurdity is not self-correcting."

( via / via )

North American Cardinal, Heard in the Attica Zoo, Greece.

"blue lamp in the witch house"

tentative touchdown · mandolin intro
Mulciber eerie · riddle of the bluefin

minor character · in some murder tale
conceited & sad · on the putting green

shrunken knurl · wishkebab
thrown at random · with no cars parting

the old castle crumbles · at broad noon
we touch wonderingly · on the way elsewhere

in my sleep vision · i beheld ending
that tangerine monster · who eclipses Godzilla

& such joy spilled · that at once i woke
in a curdling world · that calls itself future

"And that is what the difference consists in."

"The 1878 El Niño caused widespread crop failures, floods and epidemics on a global scale. In parts of the planet, crops were scorched by intense drought. In other zones, the rain hit with such a ferocity that entire regions were washed away.

Weather upheaval caused the death of 50 million people around the world. This represented as much as three to four percent of the global population.

Follow-up weather chaos between 1896 and 1900 caused mass famines and widespread outbreaks of cholera, plague, and malaria. As many as 30 million died.

Mike Davis, in his book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño, Famine and the Making of the Third World, writes that these events were so catastrophic that they broke apart many social/political systems and left large parts of the world susceptible to the rise of gunboat diplomacy and the emergence of what became known as the Third World." —Charlie Angus via

"The deeper they conceal him—the more remote the cell, the smaller the cell, the colder and stonier the walls of the cell—the more vivid and living is the writer."

( via / via )

"All the efforts of the Ottoman state to ban coffee and coffeehouses ultimately were to no avail."

"...if a Glasgow were a unit of measurement, it would be the shortest distance between a swagger and a stretcher." —Joseph S Furey via

Aftervisions.

"monkey gone to purgatory"

doc intersection
sick Fillmorlocks sortie
mugglemelt August
mazesong is ray's cavern

calendar watch kitschbleed
occult gold filter
marrowbright bear trap
intrusive thoughts goosestep

sworn carnal sweven
chanceweb along jangles
jungled-up orc trail
atmospheric Flatiron

fallout feast crystal
festination seiche slobber
wake woozy tarn edge
werifester cistern

scoriac rue, briarcrown
risk attends lost hatchet
post into verstveldt
involves tragic hedgekeep

bed vigil budging
burly gulls dive earwax
my origami
mirthlessly rides sidecar

Gloomy Sunday.

( via/ via )

I have a farm in Africa.

"on trading a pajama top for a dress shirt of the same color"

dark labyrinth of using
yegg cornered by feghoots
pistachio shell, stalag
trail, stirious freon
secret rain before sunrise

"At the banquet, another notable figure was present: the novelist Thomas Mann, who took the seat beside Disney and brought to his attention the book about a young deer named Bambi."

What i don’t like about religion is how religion makes people act.

Early Sex.

( via / via )

Carcosa Stories; Or, a Stoic Caress.

"... there is no other city on earth the idea of which is so fiercely promulgated." —Sam Leith via

The Insane Story of Natalie Harp.

"Elegy for a Shadow Follower"

Ah, but they have made a cult of war
   that never needs to advertize;
its toys & sickly liberties come gloze
   in flickers that belie the fire.

Obedience & the willingness to kill
   are still the measure of a wight—
the castle's stones, from some high parapet—
   & not their essence, which is vile.

"This was madness on a whole different scale, even than Epstein’s."

( via / via )

For Our Students Reading The Odyssey.

"the usual suspects"

world ready to grab, legible
as an hour gone is not;
direction of losing

murderers are not caught

an emptiness enamored
of its not-being-crossed;
that color to the eye

murderers are not caught

looking back to those bad years
whose recipe is lost

Stars, I have seen them fall.

"Where do you think it will get you, to wage war against all the smartest humans?" —David Brin via

Listening to Leverkühn.

( via / via )

Amon Düül II / Call of Cthulhu intersection.

"I have always been on the side of ornament and artifice."

—Lisa Robertson, Riverwork via @levistahl.bsky.social

Coffee, Cigarettes & Memories.

      "Waspshudder on Wilshire"

1.
drive a Shining · Trapezohedron
   in the Angeldust Bowl
redbrick pivo Rogaine
      beach of split
   quest plenilune
Choc'late Ralston vaultdoor

chartreuse Twelfth Street · Twombly epigones
   a few curated hardcopies
      new potholes
   for viaduct
Gestapo scarce, skatepunk
scratched runes in the underpass

2.
Tara taradiddle
so dark the waves

on Biscayne Bay
corpsepaint fiesta

3.
aesthetic murderboard

"My mother used to tell me fairy stories, most of which she made up herself, which were wonderful—and many of which I’ve ripped off for things, subsequently!"

( image from my 12/23 blog. the news link is twitter & broken. a reverse google image search retrieves similar photos from aleppo, damascus, gaza city, mosul, beirut, & homs / faall[a]w[a]y via )

"We are not persuaders. We are the children of the Unknown."

bluegray slab · slithercam
       glass tinted
   revolving doors
purposes dark perking
palindrome the calendar

probable treachery · traffic crossings
       canyons dim
   with missed warnings
forest clearing finish

"Things last either too long, or not long enough."

Once i coined a difrasismo for Noir with the Lojban words for “night” and “fate”.

"51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12–999 copies."

( via/ via )

"The books being destroyed by AI companies are exactly the opposite. They come from curated selections of titles that booksellers decided were worth saving. For every book on the shelf, each bookseller considered five or ten or even twenty other books and found them wanting."

"For the disembodied entities that dwell in language, the cloth mother and wire mother are best analogized as bouba mother and kiki mother" —@ctrlcreep

"We had no way to talk about any of this."

      "SOMEWHERE OR OTHER.

Somewhere or other there must surely be
   The face not seen, the voice not heard,
The heart that not yet--never yet--ah me!
   Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;
   Past land and sea, clean out of sight;
Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star
   That tracks her night by night.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;
   With just a wall, a hedge, between;
With just the last leaves of the dying year
   Fallen on a turf grown green."

—Christina Rossetti

A Christmas Ball at Catville.

( via / via )

A new crater.

"Squalicum Nocturne

Pavilia of the moon's aperture tonight
the veined lineaments of desire to the Bering Strait
beyond. This is jealousy's perfection, the aftermath
of the pack-ice. I only mention it because

reticulated into the stratified, the beatific.
& there are raptors along the high ridges
nomadic Clovis hunters of the Cascade Crest
ostensibly a promenade of phalanxes

for the skulls of ungulates, the bare white plinths
scratches, indentations, scrolls
of predation's delirium, a validation,
the frescoed trellising obviously its grim stain.

& so it goes here in these rainshadow archipelagos.
The humped backs & hooked snouts of the dark ones,
invalids of the parapets, the fish ladders...
of the holding ponds. The climax conifers soothe

somewhat, as does the vale & warp of the moon.
But the gaudiness of the death-rattle remains."

—Anselm Parlatore via

Medieval Beach Reads.

Big Suicide coughs in the wings.

We really need a word for.

( via / via )

My Philosophy in Seven Covers.

"If you want to know why someone would grind their life away scrolling the jackpot in their pocket, look no further than these drive-by bits of reality." —Travis Wright via

"I knew that one day my gallery would get me laid."

sea of humans choosing
those for whom slop is more real
pale cerulean powerhouse
Zeus is angry

"Verse dramas have died out because nobody writes them. Diaries are dying out because everybody writes them."

( via / via )

Network.

"all that allows us to plan"

lanes closing in
Hiroshima

on a morning like this

dance
because nothing
dance

because nothing
dance

"One might think he had gone blind on principle and with an august masochism perversely preferred the return of the Stuarts."

"Polymarket has millions of dollars in wildfire-related bets & more than $1M in beds were placed on the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires!" —@malena.bsky.social via

Catharsis Interruptus.

( via / via )

Re-enactment.

"We submit ourselves to fantastic degradations of image and sound consumption in order to anaesthetise the pain resulting from having lost reality." —Ivan Illich via

Michel Ocelot & "Earth Intruders".

"ergotism of the administrators"

pomp of hurled paragraphs
a poor show quarrelling
what we wish to seem is finished
in the wild druid grove
libraries burning like beaconlights
in a time of vast eclipse
the stout mind with a merle's shrug
mutates lately

Zine revival in England.