( Murnau's Faust @42m / via )

LGBTQIA+ Reanaissance.

Remembering that Kissinger poem.

"Well, she had to sort of tap them on the head with the blunt end of an axe, and cut their heads off--to bring her love to a rounded and satisfactory conclusion." --@harryskeeler.bsky.social

Snap Out of It.

( via / me )

"He visited Dachau and offered a few canned remarks about how inspired he was by the stories of the ‘unspeakable evil’ he witnessed… Then, when his trip to Europe concludes next week, he’ll return to the United States to continue overseeing the construction of internment camps to house migrants."

"The more you know how things work behind the scenes in any art form, the more difficult it is to take a given works stated intentions at face value." --@jacobwren.bsky.social

Makers' Marks.

"Snow theology was sacred to her."

( via / via )

Impact of a nuclear bomb on the Dallas area.

"Revisiting

Our bridge home mortars
the broken wrist of water
in air and earth--a prosthetic
gesture. From here, our road
seams like a frayed gravel skein,
and home is a wooden knot
the width of my closed fist.

Apologies we've shifted,
like sand held in an houred
hollow with a rust of patience;
but each visit we've overstepped.

In retrospect, the way back's unkept,
and though I parse my breath in tandem
(treading an Odyssean pace), this
re-run road needs a porch light's grace.

In gratitude for arriving, our
door loses its latitude, unhandled
as a bone ajar, severed
at a knuckle's beating

(these are words for welcome,
tokens, like a host retreating)

but in the bare ache of greeting,
our arms are unlike a simile,
when proximity brings careful parallels
to breaking points of possibility"

--Emily Osborne in Safety Razor

Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl.

"Reread a flawed but personal favorite time travel novel called Time on my Hands, and at one point the protagonist is trying to explain his world-- 1994--to someone in 1938 and it occurred to me that it might be more difficult to explain 2025 to someone in 1994." --@tomtomorrow.bsky.social

Erasure.

( via / via )

Hell is for Children.

"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

— James Baldwin via @portfoliocarmel.bsky.social via @sardonicus.eu

Here Comes the Rain Again.

doge rid a dire god
ashclamor
elonaical

To the Lover Who Left Me Flowers in a Pepsi Bottle.

( via / via )

"I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern..."

ghostly
paper burning
sends these words to the sky
what use to have lived by reason
long years

This thread..!

“Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.”

--Albert Camus via @kradke.bsky.social

Elon looking for corruption.

( me / via )

Getting to Ghost.

"An underrated virtue of all other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time" --@billmckibben.bsky.social

Haiku.

"now and again
as it falls, it vanishes
watching me"

--@poemexe.com

This Ukrainian Ram Did Not Gather His Crop.

( via / via )

"She sits there, where no light reaches, and she makes her own light."

drably malevolent draglines
on shrubs by the river
winter shred
my drawled shriek
malevolent monkey lift
& release my heart that is holes
a lozenge halts
on the floor to find me
quarrybright

Wikipedia prepares.

"PANGRAM-HAIKU

My pangram-haiku:
Letters squeezed inside a box.
A refractive jewel."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"...unlike Stalin, Musk doesn’t appear to have any particular macroeconomic goal other than more money for himself and fodder for the worst imaginable epic bacon jokes on Twitter/X." (via @tomtomorrow.bsky.social)

( via/ via )

Before the Law.

"The only way armored Teslas make sense is if you give them away free to the enemy." --@misingthept.bsky.social

HPL & Hart Crane. (via Metafilter)

"disappearing weather"

the order that is
is where things come to rest
consummate ease
the order that is
if you drink Oz
or divide your wrist
the order that is
is where things come to rest

all we on the outside can do now is hope.

( via / me )

"For at least 50 years now, ours has been the era of engraved concrete and foam columns covered in plastic."

"order details"

plaguedoctor pleasantries
ring in the halls of mist
tolerate a certain degree
of disorder
parrot with a domino
the edges of the folded quid
from being repeatedly creased
by inkpen tabs
are torn & dogeared
sunflowers
on TV
the commutative principle
& those who meditate destruction
are here also here

Tanka.

"I myself believed for most of my adult life that I could support myself and my family, in the catastrophic absence of all other income sources, by catering." --Joan Didion on Martha Stewart, 2000

"What really happened was Austrians filled the streets, cheering and waving Nazi flags..." (via)

( via / me )

How Epigram Became English.

"The Devil chooses to deceive some people in the following way. He will marvellously inflame their brains with the desire to uphold God's law and destroy sin in everyone else."

-- 'The Cloud of Unknowing', unknown author, c.1400's via @jayhumlepoet.bsky.social

"Even in a piece of journalism reporting on the damage and destruction, talking about efficiency as the goal legitimizes the motives and muddles the impact."

redwhiteandblueland

enabled a wild thunder
a twinned halberd duel

then a durable dwindle

"...we all sat around raving about how much better it was than the old world, how rich and robust and almost exactly like real life it tasted, how excited we all were to make the switch..."

( via / me )

Ampersandinistas.

a fleck cloudily flown
explosion's frozen splash
flack explains
drab gray the drowse

lanes mobled permute
dream murder
subfusc eye scintillant
nears the destination

secret name
in the annals of the shadow orc

Fish Sticks.

"Word of the day is ‘arsle’ (19th century): to have a distinct sense of going backwards." --@susiedent.com

The Moon.

( via / via via @tribe.bsky.social )

Haiku.

"soft breeze
whichever way i turn…
of memory"

--@poemexe.com

"But insiders tend to think that falsificationism in its full power is wildly implausible, and that talk of paradigm shifts is so vague and overplayed as to be a bit meaningless at this point."

olive & rock ark
urchindrown abounding
this desert darkblaze
ideal to wreak steal in

sussuration rash
rawdogging the ogham

Quotidian. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

( via / via )

Minitru.

"WHO GOT TO YOUR SIDE?
The lark-shaped
stone from the fallow land.
No sound, only the light for the deathwatch helps
bear it along.

The heights
whirl themselves away
still more fiercely
than you."

--Washburn & Guillemin's Celan

Waves in the space of a grid & a square.

"I shall soon have to weed my book. Books are very like plants. They are better, the more they are weeded, and they come up out of each other and are all the same." --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social

Trailer for Opens and Closes.

( me / via )

Something negative about I. C. E., detailed oil painting, edward hopper.

"Toad opened the front door. He looked out into the night." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Embroidered lanscape.

exist · nestdesire

Tiffany bottle
for sprite capturement

exist · nestdesire
zigzag neon being
virulent flicker
a flash then the ash thrown

images of Oz

carry nothing
but know where to find

bleeze-leam of the lays
of loothcarksome darkness
exist nestdesire
zoldering gold crackle

So You Think You Want to Expat?

( me / murnau's faust )

"...philosophy is ‘the way in which we service the deep infrastructure of our lives – the patterns that are taken for granted because they have not really been questioned’." via @helendecruz.net

sit on my hands
& wait for the killing to start

rusted the hinge
sit on my hands

the forwarder hounds
keep baying without respite
sit on my hands

wait for the killing to start

Haiku.

"in my deserted home village
one tulip
the crescent moon
the sea"

--@poemexe.com

Murnau's Faust. (via openculture)

( via / via )

Night on Bald Mountain.

"GARDEN OF EDEN (Palindrome)

I made, in Eden, a cradle.
Here we were held.
Arcane, denied am I."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Valley of the Moon.

wiseacre or is
elsewhere wine deemed seltzer
maravedi mid
amok scree of details
thrasyleon thrall
throng entertained brainless
& ice shadows us
unable curb neighbor
unable bling blab
blown our fancy chances
& a state let stand

"Wondering how many of the noble truths you could teach through Bruce Springsteen songs."

( via / me )

"The larger the payoffs to social coordination, and the less commonly beliefs are tested against reality, then the more social demands will determine belief—that is, network fixation of belief will predominate."

"A Star from the Land of the Dead

Why are you sitting there like a bereaved woman
forgotten by the world
near the tent of condolence on the Jordan’s banks?
The people used to call it a river,
but now it’s only called Sharia, a name
that falls short, that fails
to cleanse the body of a dead goddess.
What’s this miserable death that waylays us
only in times of drought?
I told her: I saw you always leaving,
always coming back,
your departure’s no departure,
your return is no return.
(The earth does not bear you,
the sky cannot contain you.)
I asked her:
Couldn’t you have gone
and never come back?
Since I first set foot here
I knew this land was dead
and that all these creations were ancient ghosts
like me and you.

Hear the howling rend the darkness,
look at the light and how it cannot see us,
feel around for your footsteps
in these valleys that split apart of their own accord.
Take comfort in this, try
to have love fill you with oblivion.

A star from the land of the dead
follows you to the land of nativity.
Your suffering’s not over—
there’s another birth to come."

--Najwan Darwish, translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid via

"Inevitably, most reports of Davos’s character are made during the week of the forum, and thus, after a customary name-check of The Magic Mountain, employ a vocabulary situated somewhere between that of a Pentagon briefing and an ad for an all-inclusive ski vacation..."

"Work requires a new password every four weeks so I just got another pet." --@momsoverhere.bsky.social via @unfitz.bsky.social

ABYSSAL BLACK DEMON FISH.

( via / me )

fil de fer #676.

"I love all my friends saying things like, 'I wish I could make a career off being petty and making diss tracks' after the halftime show, and I’m out here like, 'Have you considered academia?' " --@anthonymkreis.bsky.social via @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social

"How do I know that the dead...?"

like part of me
the pressure of you there
when you're not there

things close for me
that don't reopen

The One Thing That Can Save America.

( me / via )

Triolet.

"HYMN (Palindrome)

We dye
no hymn
in words.

Drab bards drown
in my honeydew."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Your perplexed longing.

"snail
with all its might
how cold the wind"

--@poemexe.com

Heronry.

( via / me )

Genuary day 28: Infinite Scroll.

"They call themselves practical for having an addiction to the palpable." --Lord Ormont and his Aminta

"Instead of seeing the catastrophe as a kind of shadow following us, I began to see it as something lying in wait for us, like the beast in the jungle in that Henry James story."

"a good world
the cry of wild duck
autumn dusk"

--@poemexe.com

Making bitter memories.

( via / via )

The Siren.

"the circle of life"

1.
grown men chase a ball
& this is the thing matters
when your country dies

2.
no curse i could call
upon the vast unthinking
worse than what they'll get

3.
all these phones like the
Roman dodecahedrons
will be a myst'ry

Hay una mujer desaparecida.

"At Cabaret yesterday, Cliff said his line '…if you’re not against all this then you’re for it. Or you might as well be'. The audience interrupted the scene to applaud that line so strongly it stopped the show. Doing a show about the onset of fascism right now is. . . chilling." --@bebeneuwirth.bsky.social via

Harry Clarke – Selected Poems of Charles Swinburne 1928.

( me / via )

Roman dodecahedron thread.

"We strum our banjo-strings and call them lyres."
--Paul Laurence Dunbar

Behind the Arras.

"Love

A life was mine full of the close concern
Of many-voiced affairs. The world sped fast;
Behind me, ever rolled a pregnant past.
A present came equipped with lore to learn.
Art, science, letters, in their turn,
Each one allured me with its treasure vast;
And I staked all for wisdom, till at last
Thou cam’st and taught my soul anew to yearn.
I had not dreamed that I could turn away
From all that men with brush and pen had wrought;
But ever since that memorable day
When to my heart the truth of love was brought,
I have been wholly yielded to its sway,
And had no room for any other thought."

--Paul Laurence Dunbar

I want to believe.

( via / me )

Little Talks.

"Longing.

IF you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o'er and o'er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,

I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor fine my hand and heart and all the world so cold.

If you could walk with me upon the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter for the Ocean's moan!"

--Paul Laurence Dunbar

Why is the USA the only country.

"Searching for something,
the form's origin changes."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"At the end it should restate its themes and moods then, in the same gesture, do something absolutely, unforgivably unlike itself."

( via / via )

This is Fine.

"The night was cold and dark.

'Listen to the wind howling in the trees,' said Frog. 'What a fine time for a ghost story.'

Toad moved deeper into his chair." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

I'm a Stranger Here.

"The Mystery

I WAS not; now I am--a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says 'no' to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,
Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.
Whene'er, o'ercoming fear, I dare to move,
I grope without direction and by chance.
Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand
That draws them ever upward thro' the gloom.
But I--I hear no voice and touch no hand,
Tho' oft thro' silence infinite I list,

And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;
Tho' oft thro' fateful darkness do I reach,
And stretch my hand to find that other hand.
I question of th' eternal bending skies
That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;
But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes
On me, as I one day shall do on them,
And tell me not the secret that I ask."

--Paul Lawrence Dunbar

On Conclave & some of the people in it.

( via / me )

Chess art thread.

"RIVER OTTER
Lontra canadensis

an oiled rascal as elastic as an accordion,
alert, slender,
it darts or reclines at an inland coastline;

an earnest sailor,
at ease in a den in dense cattails"

--Luke Bradford, Zoolalia

Knight on the Rim.

"by the brumous numen drawn on" --The Anathemata, III

Elexia Judouga.