Monday, March 02, 2026
"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.
"Calefactor"
An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king
distracting from his crimes begins a war:
in this wintry discontent, nothing's more clear
& all a poet now can do is burn.
Our old sad habits, not so much deranged
as prodded by a chill beyond our ken,
our rabid discourse, this too must remain
sacrosanct, while bombs drop, soon revenged,
kigh teal ploo. It's hard to sit this out,
having seen much idiocy go down
—a new sun ev'ry day if you don't learn—;
ravels & dribbles, subject to hurt scorn;
bare trees' shadows my wheels in seconds cut,
the one thing left not taunting me with thwart.
"Why men rape seems to be a niche topic of interest reserved for women.
Why men do or don't get caught raping however, now that's a universal interest. Call in the experts."
—Celeste Davis via Annie Finch on Substack
Friday, February 27, 2026
"that top DOD officials spent the entire day feuding with a tech company and the boy scouts before launching a war in the middle of the night should probably inform your opinion about how well planned and executed this will be" —@golikehellmachine.com
Dorit Chrysler & a bit of Saint-Saens live.
"aside"
i would go Downtown · & make noise
here i'm far · from anywhere to stand
Downtown standing · is a sturdy thing
it's what you do · when your dirty leader
declares war
Their hunger for those robodobermans is palpable & scary.
"this is only Alma"
thirsty wetwork · limnned, SELAH
as the redbrick rubric · grapples grimthorn
mild the winter
slurred the mutter
of a slithering morn
fingerpaths pale · cerulean ERASE
for a moment mute · among gargoyles
this rathe gamble
takes someone nimble
nabbing its furled toils
mission of munchkin · launched like LAIKA
for long a cranched take · in the beige battlements
as kaiju burgle
the concrete jungle
for the last loose pence
splurge for a spliff · of ill-enough ASKER
dim here dally · with the cool covers
umber my droog
melting my iceberg
& its alphabet verse
still, the stern · harrow takes HEART
from mild Minneapolis · in the glist'ning snow
who face the Gestapo
—retrieves Polisipo
for my jedburgh snarl
They spoke to each other so contemptuously.
"How else can these forty-odd letters be arranged?
To be self-ordered and create the ghostly answer."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
lit part of the lawn
no lapine hop-venture
a cold draft drizzles down
Dracula-nip scripture
i don't like this episode
anguish pursues Reichproles
have yet to spot spoilworms
aspire tunnel heirlooms
The King in Yellow: the Forbidden Inversion.
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Curious Eno album list, with valuable comments.
adaptogen diphthongs
digging Austin prospects
my salad doze Rosilica
sifts, halftime of Romefall
& this song feasts fangglance
(affordance turned spurnprice)
& the blinds yield bloodstains,
blearily wooed food truck
To Remember in America. (via @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social)
"If we have to pay to rent movies again on a subscription service, we should just reopen Blockbuster." —@zoeysdown.bsky.social
"White Americans will invent self driving cars just to avoid getting on a bus."
—@eternalskies.neocities.org
"the yellow triangle moment"
stilbfurious fountains
snide fists serenading
Lipschitz angel tidepool
eloigns over raveglass
"Why Is the Color of Snow?
Let's ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.
What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.
Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn't?
Do you see how it is for me.
Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.
A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.
It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,
or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,
is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!
Who won't stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.
Don't we melt it?
Aren't we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question—
if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?
A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.
Oh Materialists! Thinking matter matters.
If we dream of snow, of banks and blankets
to keep our treasure safe forever,
what world is made, that made us that we keep
making and making to replace the dreaming at last.
To stop the terrible dreaming."
—Brenda Shaughnessy
Stronger Together (In Times of Dragons).
" 'And you are afraid of nothing,' said her son.
'I don’t feel I am going to meet my Maker. And if I were, I should not fear him. He has not earned the feeling. I almost think he ought to fear me.
'I think he must,' murmured Hugo. —@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
Emil Cioran to Edmond Jabès:
“This curiosity may seem naïve. Yet one clearly senses that your reflections, your verses, or your formulations are the culmination of a process, and one tries to imagine this process without ever being able to reach it.
This impossibility does not harm the reading: on the contrary, it intensifies it. Thus one becomes grateful to the author for keeping to himself the secret of his face-to-face encounter with the ultimate presences.”
(Paris, February 14, 1983; trans. from French) via @yoonkim.bsky.social
again, enter the lists · in the never never
what paper drives us to · poor in spirit
the fog muffles · morning & noon
half blind · they caught me
said my cane · was a weapon
dropped me off · in the freezing cold
after escaping · one genocide
i died here · alone & afraid