Zaha Hadid’s Antwerp Port House.
"I wish I didn’t know as much about the end of Reconstruction as I do.
If you understood what is being unleashed now, how it will touch every aspect of our civic life, and how difficult it will be to undo it, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else." —@trevondlogan.bsky.social
"One man, seeking to develop steel of a high enough quality to make razor blades that could compete with foreign offerings, sought out an aged former swordsmith in the mountains and became his apprentice. They attempted to mechanise the ancient tatara process of smelting iron ore into tamahagane, jewel-steel. Trial was met with much error, to the point that the old smith swore to the gods that he would disembowel himself if this one final attempt did not work. Thankfully, they got the air blast setting right and produced some very excellent steel, which became the foundation for the company’s razor blade business." —Jonathon via
Whatever happens to musicians will happen to everybody.
Some reviews i wrote about Dallas art.
"The Advertisement
In the Manner of the Earlier English
Whether to wend through straight streets strictly,
Trimly by towns perfectly paved;
Or after office, as fitteth thy fancy,
Faring with friends far among fields;
There is none other equal in action,
Sith she is silent, nimble, unnoisome,
Lordly of leather, gaudily gilded,
Burgeoning brightly in a brass bonnet,
Certain to steer well between wains."
—Rudyard Kipling via FGR
"In East Germany, the Berlin Wall stood for nearly thirty years. The regime called it the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall. The barrier that locked East Germans inside their own country was officially described as protecting them from the West. The state media and textbooks said it. Children learned it in school. Their parents knew what it really was. But both versions existed at the same time, and the citizen’s job was to choose the official one." —Heather Delaney Reese via
"Can you explain this gap in your resume?"
"Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
"Allah is great"
matutinal dove; crescent
songs beyond our cinders
scansion; dord's hardball
& the whole thing screaming
Allah is great; grackles
follow me past grieving
i run with the pack, rickshaw
i am five wide extinctions
24 Hours. With reference to my essay, Live at Brighton Polytechnic.
"It’s like cool nihilism, to put it facetiously."
"anthrax island"
Parnassian leeway · lightless knowledge
golden chewtoy flung
kill cascade · at the scenic outlook
they'll name new eras for this
bend to pick · the quid shuffled
without leaving my seat
things i have had my · fill of, marching
to the spry horizon
Louis Armstrong performing for his wife at the Great Sphinx of Giza.
"The Maroon, our school newspaper, had published two articles completely written by AI. This had gone unnoticed for a few months before the only UChicago student with free time on his hands decided to see what sort of groundbreaking coverage of Chicago-area sports The Maroon might have and was certainly dejected to realize that instead of being furnished insider scoops on the Bulls’ roster moves, he was stuck reading sentences like: 'Chicago’s perfect start isn’t a fluke; it’s the product of cohesion,' and 'And through it all, there’s Giddey — the calm in the chaos, dictating the tempo and keeping the team grounded in the momentum.' " —Owen Yingling via
☒.
Individuals don't impel, but sometimes they catalyze.
"i am lost to the world"
"Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" —Friedrich Rückert
capsules mesh
in the gray morning
stern focus
staggers aimward
i am lost to the world
as prices
tremble like drops
of leaf dew
& shelfvoid looms
i am lost to the world
worn habits
& hurt scribble
solve nothing
that needs fixing
i am lost to the world
mathoms heaped
in this rent house
decades' work
to see no sun
i am lost to the world
lifeline wire
a cloud threaded
as wink ghosts
sometimes gaslight
i am lost to the world
for a while
we would wander
coffeehouse
& antique mall
i am lost to the world
robots take
word after word
—as i watch—
with rude vigor
i am lost to the world
what remains
this culdesac
two rabbits
sometimes ducks
visit the pool
i am lost to the world
“Proem in Heaven”
Jubilee in the nostrils · never forest burned so bright
Crowns crushed · ferrying mercy
Brake for dun rabbit · “Ode to Joy” rides
Citadel of mayhem · mean hands Aztec
On the golf course grass
Pale cerulean granite · parable of hogans
Whispering midnight · vociferous noon
All that isn’t basalt
Jubilee in the nostrils
It’s a question of quislings · lines you cross never
The child behind chain-link · the ballot box clouded—
And then some bleeze-leam · issues anagram
Opens culdesac · of the kuklux-polka
Drizzle of clown innocence · on the Odradek maremma
Jubilee in the nostrils
“bleeze-leam: (Scots) lightning-flash
Number-rhymes (“rhime”):
64- never, noon, grass, hogans, mercy, clouded, maremma
55- Aztec, trap, cloud, anagram, polka, basalt
“Portal: Forest of Straws”
altarpiece of botched mercy
in clank parades
threat-chintzy
melodies our madness rides
yes-men with lapel-pins plastic
no setback rids
& this stone mystic
burns his share of dino grease
waltz purged obsidian Aztec
stars' disgrace
limned in neon
green as Augustinain grass
chugging through the vast inane
& perfect basalt
fluttery pennon
hostage to some fralgrant insight
empty-handed save this cleaver
shortcut dulcet
dying never
gilded steely ixodid
& huge Cosmic Ice believer
polka more crowded
with anagram curtsey
at last all the masks discrded
quenched the buzzing paparazzi
"To think by different lights. The unreadable philosophers do not submit to any changes in their light." —Elias Canetti
"A knife is neither true nor false. But someone who grasps it by the blade is truly in error."
– René Daumal, Mount Analogue via @jacobnwren.bsky.social
A beginner's guide to Chinese shoegaze.
pursuing & pursued
hum over the trees
trawler among molehills
immense lack of snack foods
"May"
vict'ry parade without vict'ry
evil throngs long after
my autumn, ort's witness
angst—Starbucks—harbinger
still a fire we'll fuel more
affordance worth onboarding
song of a fall sullied
by sixth extinction hijinks
I thought learning to talk would be cool.
"Refugee Camp → High-Density Pop-Up Community (Beta Phase)"
—Chafic Larouchelle via via @barnes7
Every mother's day I think of the time.
"I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, ‘Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?’ ” —Julia Ward Howe via
"Extraordinary Premises
I saw an angel in a teacup on a screen.
The Invisible Hand slaughtered it.
Demand evolved to give us inner tubes and blue eyes.
Fireworks libate the billboard behind our house. Relentlessly, the markets provide
magic. We overhear many die quietly, and felt like commercials
for hearths lit by fake logs. The faux-hissing
of screens puzzled me. The extraordinary premises
the ordinary. I wore my palm
like an eye patch to silence the migraine, and stood
near the rotting wood window like a screened seraphim,
a girl on film making pain precious.
I pimped my pain-peonies for socil media.
Later, a wise screen told me that starlings take turns
sitting on eggs, though the mom always nominates
herself for the night shift.
The surgeon said do not run, do not bend, do not move
except to get water or go potty. If you can't follow instructions, no one
can help you. A screen told me two cute
radiologists read my film wrong.
I wore a fake log to the wake for my third
misdiagnosis. We overheard an eye patch telling a teacup
demand had evolved into a mother-like figure.
My stitches kept getting infected. My peonies
acquired some fungi. A screen sold me
a pain angel of positivity.
Only death and this little stool for company.
I stayed lit for the starlings on night shifts.
—Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies (2025)
"flicker parade of wounds"
beyond the reach of music
the flicker parade
of wounds hastes to refuse it
beyond the reach of music
sends us after ersatz
& cloud signs to read
beyond the reach of music
the flicker parade
"Lightning is a kind of fabric, as evidenced by how it is measured in bolts. Ethereal and glowing gold, crackling every moment—kings used to wear it into battle, draped with shining murder" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social
Various pulls on Strathmore paper.
"Yet to rouse the zeal of a true antiquary, little more is necessary than to mention a name which mankind have conspired to forget; he will make his way to remote scenes of action through obscurity and contradiction, as Tully sought amidst bushes and brambles the tomb of rchimedes." —The Rambler, 161.
"80s music"
words folded in fillets
fossil strata Batcave
recipe brings rancid
rathe gaiters together
clown stilts redbrick cloister
clabbered feldspar
paregoric lintel
words gifted with liftoff
correct intel
fossil strata Batcave
golden
calf —shark swimming—
bathtub full of water
as the calendar starts now to
matter
"One of the main political stories of the last 50 years, but especially the last 20, has been the displacement of planning by prediction." —@kevinbaker.bsky.social
"Or sordid wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils" —Akenside
"robot reading my words out loud"
debating to buy another book i've read
Hormuz plug · glides down the python
sleepwalk is an art like ev'rything else
answering machines · on old TV shows
May getting toasty
"This was actually the second ceremony held in just two days for gold statues of Trump."
"how much higher will the antheap grow?"
rogaine energumen
gulf parallel ullage
beautiful
the bitter spring
spiralling downfall · in the dim portents
"The soft animal of my body loves what it loves, I mutter belligerently to myself, as once again, I try to triage all the psychic damage of living at the end of days with another little treat I can’t afford" —@regretteruane.bsky.social
Burning the Confederate flag in a Tennessee statehouse.
"Maybe we could say that the genre exists entirely for this reason - that something exists in the world that is not adequately described by literature, art, or architecture." —CJ Cooke via
⋮.
"Trailing in,
Spring has come;
In the mountain streams
Between the rocks the ice
May melt today, I think."
—Fujiwara no Akisue via
"riddle of the sands"
diminishing mathoms
spore-munchkins scrunching
lost on the freeway
calendar
of some past day
cobweb into catwalk
crawl across like Falstaff
classic rock
arrears fathoms
wheels that stop turning
such sunset colors snarled
assailing the eyes
apocalyptic window
warded off
panic knowledge
& to keep snail snipping
desert chrome
& blood zephyr
snafu ciphered inly
what could these others
teach me of the telson
that is touch nonce onset
each moment
under that sky
Central to and defining the poetics I am trying to suggest here is the conviction that the order man may contrive or impose upon the things about him or upon his own language is trivial beside the divine order or natural order he may discover in them. To see, to hear, to feel or taste [...] comes about in a formal organization so complicated that it remains obscure to our investigation in all but its crudest aspects. To be alive itself is a form involving organization in time and space, continuity and body, that exceeds our conscious design."
— Robert Duncan, “Towards an Open Universe” via @alinastefanescu
The Curious History of "Mad Girl's Love Song". (via Jeremy Noel-Tod)
"The question is not whether poetry matters, but whether it matters that it doesn’t matter."
—Alexander Fayne via
Shipwreck with Northern Gannet.
"thirsty work"
A boot stamping · on the human face
forever
or six months more
in the rain dark diner
doula seems unruly
Zeroing out · all the debts
like a flood
flensing records
jubilee for lab rats
liripoop bank nada
Or serve · less than symbol
just wet drive
wearier slog
madman with the launch codes
mold crept into g'rage fridge
Tale told · by an idiot
fog shroud plunge
into playtime
second cup of coffee
cajoles stanza doldrums
How do we find · scasttered our wits
in soaked night
shelves turned empty
guest we shouldn't have let in
lazar smooch the pooch screwed
Real sheepish · with murder in their hearts
we lost souls
chirp saturnine
among ropbots ringing
roughshod in the tall weeds
Ingot of fang fathoms
ferrying
topnotch fumble
Pachelbel's irked other
after many halftimes
Moselle mildew · Godzilla returns
in thunder
on the thirstshore
blindfold wispchore bluster
blameful awry-naming
Olive whirlpool · where each step lands
sticker shock
in ticker tape
fiery woes in warehouse
wearisome lies smizing
Famine mill · mainline flickerings
the suits give
gilded woundfare
sunsets rife with rancid
tumult & rank urncatch
Reckonings dodge · didjeridoo-dah
as the poem
puddles at feet
smouldering grief grab-bag
greebled song of bong days
Unwise heft · harrowing replay
all we have
will be taken
in the half-light halted
hare where grass meets asphault
Slow ombalom · slithers earthward
grackle stares
refuses yield
all tomorrow's Fillmores
mitigated gibbous
Turbid clears · as the light claws
my phone clock
hands me respite
bayonetted nidor
enough dreich to speak of
The Magi. (After many hours i was able to write this down.)
An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles.
"The Magi
Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor."
—William Butler Yeats
"TriQuarterly magazine, gasping on the floor in a pool of blood: Find the evildoer that did this to me. Find Substack. Avenge my death." —@petercbaker
"Then on through trackless woodland I went alone
and met no mark of human handiwork."
—Ausonius, "The Moselle" (tr Jack Lindsay) via, 78
"Aldine Elvish"
sequestered tollbooth
terrier of murmurs
in the sill-locked city
flickers & stained concrete
carrier waves daven
the least sound of landing
you lean into hentquest
"false answer to get past this question"
cold again conclave
crenellated plating
of the Lakeside lidless
liaison with neons
who hold Sacla's secrets
days, some not sizzling
eye gas prices uglier
answer the bug census
chill steals inward: chain gang
achieves grievous window
where do you stow starlight
unless stabsheath futures
Sparks that will outlive us.
{ }.
"Forty-one years ago I bought a 40 acre farm. Ten acres of that farm had been industrial corn every year since World War II. When I took over that land and didn’t inject anhydrous ammonia into it it literally would not grow one single weed per square yard of land. Ten acres of bare lifeless clay.
Within 5 years I had it growing a full coverage of Korean lespedeza, a low productivity, acid tolerant, annual legume. Every year that legume died all its roots turned into life in the land. In another four years I got enough oats to grow on it to be worth hand harvesting grain and feeding to my horses. I returned the straw to the land.
Today it’s a forest." —Jeff McFadden via
"petition for thirty more years"
days of virulence & opium dreams
the ledge widens · but the whisper falls
we are here as on a hurdy gurdy
steam rises · from the standing cars
"Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings
For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores,
Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good,
To sound the constitution of just wars,
Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood.
Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust,
Their usage, pride, admitted within doors;
At home, under caved chantries, set in trust,
With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted,
Before the scouring fires of trial-day
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head,
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead."
—Geoffrey Hill, For the Unfallen
Each monument to bad design is bigger than the one before it.
"Consider Rudyard Kipling. The man sent his son to die in a war he championed, then wrote a poem instructing the rest of us on what it means to be a man. Do not take advice from this person." —Barnes via
"excantation"
1.
darker-than-grief grackles
aggress on art heartland
they have their rathe rapture,
rollicking ash snowfall
no one makes them write this
2.
goblinical gale-skew
gars redbrick sledding
spiky dovegray spar-veal
spiralling fire
tree corridor ridebarn
rude goblin in hobnail
mad king musing
a map with bright tapmarks
3.
Chevron shiv in charge now
shank array akimbo
kiln's line of cars
called the starry nidor
"It was a place filled with plotless stories..."
"The Road to Thebes II. Interlude
After the intolerable weight of tyrant suns
(Caesars with masks of gold), wave after wave the early evening
Comes with the sound of sea and siren cave
To continents and cities after the long heat
And echoes in buried cities—the azoic azure
Calls to the sphinxes of the silence and the unburied sapphires
Staring across lion-breasted sands in the great deserts,
And to the azoic heart (where Time, that Medusa, reigns, turns all to stone)—
To the orange-flower, the oragious hair of youth that cool airs lift—the orb;
And the golden nodding nurse that we call Eve
And evening, sighed, 'The first and final Adam, he who is one with the immense Ceres
And all day broke the gold body of the giantess as in love,
And he who forsook her for that other giantess,
The city, the vast continent of stone,
Are homeward-going.'
Soon night falls like fire, yet vine-dark.
In the cities
The girls, with breasts like points of sun in the vine-dark night
And gowns the color of the thunders' reverberations
Among the forests, seek a love in which to sink like the sea.
What do the seraphs and sapphires of air among the branches
Hear as the voices pass? 'Your hair is ringed as the tendrils
Of the first plantations of the Vine after the Flood.'
'The vines of the Sun? Or the vines of Darkness and of all damnations
The vines of Medusa's serpents?' 'Ah, your kiss is the light of the planets, burning among the leaves!'
'No, It was Lucifer,
Son of the Morning—then it changed to the Prince of the Air, the brightness
That rules in Hell! Grown cold! I am Medusa—and my other
Name is Time!
Come to my lips—the long horizon—
Cold with the serpents' buried wisdom, that has known the azoic
Continents, the secrets and night-haunted jewels of the catafalques!
Come! I will seal your eyes that they no more shall weep,
No more behold another. Once, at your grief,
The unfraught sea would swell, and the unsought diamonds
Rise with your tears.
Now you shall faithless be
To the flesh of orange-blossom and arbutus honey-hearted,
Seeing my lips, cold as the unburied sapphires in the desert air,
Approach your own:
The one horizon, the azoic continent of night and stone.' "
—Edith Sitwell, Gardeners and Astronomers (1953)
"TRANSFORMATIONS (Anagrammed Lines)
Transformations
first ran on atoms....
Transformations
form stars, anoint
arts, form nations
of man or transits
of storms... In an art
far torn into mass,
stir formats anon."
—Anthony Etherin
"Children are not afraid of their dolls coming to life—they may even want them to."
"There is more tenderness/ than one can fathom in wearing what never happened." —Alina Stefanescu
"more cold, more dark"
more & not after
—the only way—
nor epitaph
they'll bother, just a little later...
ruins-to-be, where lights now shine;
our piracy fled
in suicide,
& long time dream dread's flag again.
the concrete split, eyes lusterless.
