( via/ via )

Hat honour.

"What gives this its peculiar grief—and Watteau knew it, the affliction and the genius arriving together—is that Rococo is not unconscious of what it has lost. The fêtes galantes are pastoral haunted by the knowledge that pastoral is fiction."

"...Sergei Khoruzhii, something of a Renaissance man among whose quite unbelievable achievements is translating Joyce’s Ulysses into Russian." —Victoria Stoilova via

Daughter, your frontier is the brutal jut and dint of their conditioning.

( @faallwy / via )

On the E at Delphi. (Along with citing modern attempts at interpretation.)

“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons,–with gestures and with attitudes and with wholly charming phrases; with tears, and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of all lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart’s desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the might of my own folly.” —The Way of Ecben

"The ache of incompleteness is not a problem to be solved but a sacred disposition to be inhabited with full intellectual and spiritual seriousness."

"For years after I would wake shrieking."

( via / me )

Mnemonics for metre.

"Góngora: De la brevedad engañosa de la Vida

No less than the swift arrow solicited
a mark sharply destined to be bitten,
nor with more silence than the agonistic chariot
glided across mute sands to a winning finish,

does our century run to its prompt, secret end. Who doubts,
though he be beast destitute of reason,
yet may he read the portent of every dawn.
Carthage testifies, & still you don’t admit it?

You’ll run into trouble, Licio, if you persist
in chasing phantoms & embracing frauds…
Badly the hours’ll account you to yourself:
the hoürs that are grinding down the days,
the days that are gnawing away the years."

(my translation)

On a Line by Celan.

"This site is making me think Plato was right about banning poets from the republic"
—@jordandavis3

Programming.

( me / via )

The poetry of the pseudoscience of poetry.

"To the moneyed amateurs who ushered the subject into universities at the beginning of the twentieth century (men who fondled poems like antique clocks and ranked novelists like vintages of claret) the study of literature was 'a glory of the universe' or 'the spring which unlocks the hidden life'." —James Marriott via

"Eyes filled with wonder, she went home and changed her baby’s Vietnamese name to an American one."

"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

When Words Collide.

( via / pic by me )

Beelzebufo.

      “The Fountain

All through the deep blue night
   The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
   Of the satyr carved in stone.

The fountain sang and sang,
   But the satyr never stirred–
Only the great white moon
   In the empty heaven heard.

The fountain sang and sang
   While on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
   And their dreams were strange and dim.

Bright dew was on the grass,
   And on the ilex, dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
   Were all a-glisten, too.

The fountain sang and sang
   The things one cannot tell;
The dreaming peacocks stirred
   And the gleaming dew-drops fell.”

—Sara Teasdale, Stars To-night (1930)

"Patriarchal societies are fueled, at their deepest root, by a fiendishly simple maneuver: separating women from each other."

A hundred photographs of stairways.

"The gothic, in my view, is the story of the dead coming back, told in a thousand decaying houses."

( via / via )

"True warfare in which large rival armies fight to the death is known only in man and in social insects."

"bsky needs a sad like button" —@wristroom.bsky.social

"I doubt it helps for it to be categorized as science fiction, or for it to be categorized at all."

"Like any good son, I pull my father out
of the water, drag him by his hair

through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail
the waves rush in to erase. Because the city

beyond the shore is no longer
where we left it. Because the bombed

cathedral is now a cathedral
of trees. I kneel beside him to see how far

I might sink. Do you know who I am,
Ba? But the answer never comes. The answer

is the bullet hole in his back, brimming
with seawater. He is so still I think

he could be anyone's father, found
the way a green bottle might appear

at a boy's feet containing a year
he has never touched..."

—Ocean Vuong via

Nicolai Fechin in Taos.

( via / via )

Predictive Markets song.

"looking for where i thought was the obvious place"

Penderecki pizza
unpacked by foul owllight
once dripping sparks burgeon
sippy cup costs bupkis

Two Akutagawa stories.

"Both novels are meditations on the aftermath. They ask the same question: what remains after the fall of meaning? " —Brock Eldon via

I want to steal that typeface.

( via / me )

Birubi.

"In the wake of the Michael Jackson biopic success, producers are now planning a John Wayne Gacy movie that focuses only on his career as a clown." —@frankconiff.bsky.social

With Wavering Feet.

lights with me
here & to the end:
should give them names
brighter as the landscape dims,
by saffron figments sained;
i clasp & release no solider show.
so cardboard season
with fiery glee will soon bedizen
& i who left such dreams
say: this is not my crimson.

"The moonlight catching the keys on the first visit, the music scores in pink, light blue, pale yellow scattered among the debris, the same rubble shining in clear autumn sunlight on the second visit: none of this names what was lost when the earthquake came."

( via / via )

Some giant solar flares lately.

century's gem, sampo
filtered softly wharf-left

eyes on the prose, prickly
practicum teeth-umgang

decades mix, still this diction
that drifts t'ward riftshade

amber & what utters
an orc skull at cull tide

"You look at these photos for 3 seconds and the AI tells. Are there."

"In Italian, the word tempo is used for both weather and time. A compromise for everything that lies beyond our control, yet remains within reach in the long run." —Jörgen Löwenfeldt (via

"From then on, I was able to appreciate even the most unsightly Brutalist architecture simply by imagining it reclaimed by the elements."

( via / via )

Latent.

the velocity
of chocolate is invariant

Great Fire of London.

mountain lantern tent
test filigree dugout
Rushmore rapist septic
& room sorted warthog

Delphi has its dizzy
derelictions tricksome
floaters attest darkflirt
of the flak-dodge lodger

vacuoles hold hawkish
hymns, gatherer's purview
i move to next nervetwinge
not adroit loitering

carousel with killers
crisp centipede cupcakes
whirlcrake & thick whinny
whiplash from the diptych

charcoal gray & sky gridlock

Boojum tree.

( via / via )

Wood_s lot.

"Philomela

It ended sooner than a song,
The thing he did without a word.
They hadn’t known each other long.
It ended sooner than a song,
And no-one seemed to think it wrong:
She was not changed into a bird.
It ended sooner than a song,
The thing he did without a word."

—Matthew Buckley Smith via

Archaeology says otherwise.

"Caroline’s new book Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King describes asking King why he used 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream', and he said 'the Stevens poems is about death and also about the ephemeral quality of life (ice cream melts fast)' but also picked out 'her feet protruding: horny, cold and dumb'. He added, I think very charmingly, 'let’s face it, Caroline, I was working to a large extent in an EC comics pulp horror vein, and I wanted to class up the joint a bit'." —Sam Leith via

"The chaos of the sun has gone on forever and will continue forever. But here, now, we have deer, and sweet berries ripening in the wilderness, and the quail whistling about us: this is as much as we will have of paradise, and it’ll do."

( me / via )

Our Little Boat Drifting.

"You wouldn’t feed a child nothing but candy and call it dinner, but you feed your mind nothing but content and call it thinking." —@whitenoise

Only represented as.

"Redbrick rubric pantisocracy"

abstract sculpture orpiment
Illig's daze figment
we craze to find floors gone

crenulated inbox
pothole full & pillaged
report stolen mortmain

commute L33T Scarlatti
pass long dead confederates
abstract orpiment sculpture

Boring Classics that are Actually Unhinged.

( via / via )

Masters of disguise.

      "Brutalist alma mater"

dead soldiers & Nixon's clubhouse
      navigate
   the gowned antheaps
wooden gate gadding
some gilded thrall squalor
brutal brillig · red door optional
      plastic jug
   aglow Isis
horseshoe Biscayne shinto
shattering dead medflies

Wait up Dajjal.

"My favorite James Baldwin line: 'There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend.' " —@thehumanityarchive

But they'll never compare.

( via / via )

Things My Grandmother Said.

"The purpose of an artistic star system is to undermine solidarity." —@jacobwren.bsky.social

"First there was my motorcycle Donna, the Ducati Monster 695. The first truly swish vehicle I’d ever owned. My sexual stock instantly went up about 54%."

"the lonely robot"

postman's perne smashtannies
repair itself veering
resume scant lattice
soft mission of nesh days

songs as before faze this
furious still hollow
wrap-up better buildmaze
barely erect victor

saving bread when Rome burns
truth barrier dreeing
distant witness werewolf
welds cobweb to feldspar

"Cyril Connolly had a fantasy about owning a ganadería where he would train bulls to murder matadors."

( via / via )

"You ever try to code switch at work and fail? 😂."

       "the watcher of a rock"

crakeshinies · on a crooked wind
       much curdled
   flow of monsters
stories of downfall · stories of treachery
too long bent · over silver laptop

Commuter cycling in the Dallas area.

" The historian discovered that all the mentions of natural phenomena recorded in the Welsh annals appear to have occurred at the times scientists had calculated corresponding events did – and these events included one mentioned in an entry that also names King Arthur." —Bernard Mees via

An Aria.

( via / via )

"Once fully committed, afflicted parties float free in a fantasy world unconstrained by the gravity of reality; their natural expansionist tendencies, reinforced by mythic construct, become fixated on achieving perpetual economic growth."

"The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves." —Vincent via

It’s not just a calamity, it’s a pandemic.

"XIV. Star-Winds

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,
But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,
And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,
Heeding geometries of outer space,
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!"

—H P Lovecraft

Babe wake up, the Pontiff is baudrillard-posting.

( via / via )

When He Calls Your Name.

"HPL

Those streets were not his
so he kept them in the dark to himself
knowing age for a solid pent in mind
he turned out volumes of locked domed hills

Penciled purples in the daylit dreams
wore wool humid and apology bright
letters in the doorway, arabic at the edges
the colors of science turned jagged at his cease

He was not Poe, he lived on a hill
dreamed afternoon and woke to write
icecream from ivory, an undersea
crystallized Providence cats broke
out of the past and Fomalhaut speaking"

—Clark Coolidge

"I didn’t think much about the last part, because as a Black man living in the United States, I’m aware that my whole country is a friendly space for white supremacists."

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

― Theodore Roethke via @poeticoutlaws

"The first rupture of democracy isn’t really between people and power. It’s between language and what words are willing to acknowledge or betray."

( via / via )

"The black smog speaks."

"Did ever he walk the twenty-six wards of the city, within and
extra, did he cast his nautic eye on her
         clere and lusty under kell
in the troia'd lanes of the city?"

—The Anathemata, V.

Berenice.

"i wish children would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the war ends
then they would return home safe
and when their parents would ask them,
where were you? they would say,
we were playing in the clouds”

- Ghassan Kanafani via @gazapoetssociety

"It is as though a poem gave the reader as he left it a single, new word, never before spoken and impossible to actually enunciate, but self-evident as an active principle in the reader's consciousness henceforward."

( via / me )

The Leaves.

pursuit of closures · in the growing dusk
      puzzles climb
   crag rosary
story lurches · a large spider
with a small head

" 'Crake' is a dialect word for crow, leading back to an echoic origin in Old Norse krâka. A corncrake is a field-haunting, night-calling bird, more often heard than seen, whose Latin binomial — Crex crex — is also onomatopoeic."

"Within the great aquarium of language the light refracts and can bounce by inclinations not previously observed." —J H Prynne

"...the philosophical devotion to contradiction is what has driven this poetry to ever greater obscurities."

( via / via )

Topology of Loss.

"This was no time to consider the mother-baby aspects of the firebeast ecology nor to quote from Edgar A Guest at great length." --Emil Petaja, Lord of the Green Planet (1967)

"Van Vogt adapted by Disney."

      "hereness"

Atlantis mints owllight
& lush drifting cliffthreats
      warning sign
   wags insolence
redspangled · spigots of hark
familiar coil merging
mitigates dense frenzy
      pale yellow
   yearn pentacle
necromancer's · mercy to wander

That Trump meme perfected.

( via / via )

Not enough room.

"the audacious proposal"

Gegenschein-flavored dreams
wake to smoke foaming
no shirt pocket at all

sharpened by the cold
my outline in the dark glass

insight is the best catnip

Thinking about the immortality of the crab.

"What if it were the other way around? What if the faculty of storytelling were not specifically human but rather the last remnant of our animal selves?"
- Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island via @jacobwren.bsky.social

"I once had a literary agent, but after the book we sent to editors was rejected thirty different times, she slowly stopped responding to my emails."

( via / via )

"We often write our poems as if they were our last words."

"I replaced doomscrolling with the company of fractal machine elves dwelling on the other side of a chrysanthemum-like mandala. Here’s what happened" —@rmhaines

"...deep inside stalactite town there were these big huntsmen spiders gripping slabs of rock."

"Prophecy

I shall die hidden in a hut
In the middle of an alder wood,
With the back door blind and bolted shut,
And the front door locked for good.

I shall lie folded like a saint,
Lapped in a scented linen sheet
On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint,
Narrow and cold and neat.

The midnight will be glassy black
Behind the panes, with wind about
To set his mouth against a crack
And blow the candle out."

—Elinor Wylie

"I knew from dialectical philosophy that certain aporias can’t be resolved through contemplation alone, so as an experiment, I decided to live my life as though I were autistic, and I found that doing so generally improved being alive for me in pretty profound ways, which convinced me that “identity” is kind of a pointless thing to think about."

( me / via )

Wheel in the Sky.

"space needle"

i knew it well
a long, long time ago

skyey wheel
i knew it well

days gone AWOL
cast upon Zubenelg gray

i knew it well—
a long, long time ago

Windows, towers, and hoodoos.

"Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death"

—William Blake, Milton, Plate 23

"By the time we reached the second and third pages of these pronouncements, in their booming, prophetic, diabolical but also weirdly funny voice, I was sitting in the strange suspended energy that seeps in after certainties have been shattered."

( via / via )

"Hence the urgent need to disarm its ambush..."

"Our generation’s first revolution may not be in the style of mass protest. It may instead be a spiritual re-orientation away from technology and towards romance, wonder, peace, love, spontaneity, and beauty." —Magazine Non Grata and Marigold via

"We are dealing with the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent presidential administration in the history of the United States."

"My Rome praises, loves, sings out our little books,
At every breast--every hand has me.
Look: someone blushes, pales, is struck, yawns, loathes.
This, I want: now our poems please us."

—Martial 6.60 via

"It has also been attacked as 'blasphemous' since the central woman figure sits on a rehal, which is traditionally used for reading sacred texts."

( via / via )

In Mildew Velvet.

who in the dark hours
has died on the other side
tersehook on the wet street

oligarchs barking
playback singer dies
only glowing red

amidst suffering gray
waiting to cross
the great freeway

you may find yourself
waiting for the asteroid
who in the dark hours

Trolley to Sheboygan.

"Oh, when will ignorance be dethroned, and reason and justice reign supreme?"
—Lucy Parsons, letter to the editor, The Socialist, 12/7/1878 via @resistancereborn.bsky.social

A Directory of Formal Poetry Authors.