"As for Elias, there is one example I’ve found of him existing pre-generative AI, as a time traveling mad scientist in the 1980’s trading card series Dinosaurs Attack!. And a real-life Elias that comes close to the stories told by LLMs did actually exist, Hamilton found—Elias Allen was a 16th century clockmaker in London." —Samantha Cole via
"Style was a necessary sacrifice made to the exercise of power without limits, and a method for the liquidation of a refugee camp, however unexpected or ingenious, could never exhibit style. A longing for style remains, and the knowledge of its insurmountable absence." —Chapman Caddell via
What Did you Do During the War.
A Dead Summer Begs for You in Gaza.
"density's child"
merch, interim mishmash
maze without abating
whiplash conclave
nameless plagues
the crunch beachhead · on the stained cusp
ditch problems of plenty
for problems dearth cobbles
symbols splinter
holey sieve
doomscroll darkens · the dry plain
things not solved by headscratch
scribble inane plainsong
puzzle pieceswitch
Titanic
chaise longue · guillontine rust
boredom's legions Bijoux
the bent lamp of Hamlin
Cambodian psych-pop cover of A Hard Day’s Night.
"Each of these explanations is being prepared now. Each of them is being seeded into the record now. Each of them will be deployed, at the appropriate time, by the appropriate person, through the appropriate journalistic intermediary, with the appropriate degree of plausible deniability. This is what an orbit does when it begins to anticipate that it will have to answer." —Mike Brock via
"Nothing is fair in this world of madness."
"Becoming a skilled and rigorous reader is a life’s work, informed by one’s own reading and experience, by the example of others, and by one’s character." —Ann Kjellberg via
"prospectus for a solid dictionary"
screwworms in charge, scheduled
ice cathedral feeding
squidcrunk dachshunds
hovering wasp woven
the sky pressing down, screwworms
on the march
Even the dead trees are covered in concrete dust.
"The word apocatastasis crops up more than once!"
Chicxulub alarm
Calm cerulean smile
Bring the rainbow snarl
Another time
Maybe we can furl the gleam
Love’s the luck that counts
War a crime that pays
Chicxulub allows
These blue complaints
Spattered on the burning air
Oracle of dust & firestorm
Chicxulub alarm
"But it's not a strawberry anymore. It's just a chemical that kind of tastes like a strawberry. Soon enough, you forget what one actually tastes like. Or worse, you prefer the chemicals. Or even worse, you can't even find real strawberries anymore because the market is flooded with synthetic replacements. Or even worser, the real ones have long gone extinct because no one wanted to grow them anymore when the synthetic version was cheaper and more convenient. And whoop-dee-doo, you've erased about 500 individual human experiences and replaced them with a single, shared one. And that's just strawberries." —German via
A Brief History of Russian Culture.
"In this flat and watery land live a people who have been here for thousands of years, famous in Europe for their astounding ability with time and for their former civilisation which now lies in ruins, dwelt in by iguanas with blue tongues, covered in vines." —Charlotte du Cann via
Dusk.
"Blackout
What happened in the dark asphyxiates
years since: deserted knockdown, crawlspace hold,
socket jagged where the ceiling light snapped
off. Dead-end tunnel carved with hieroglyphs
commemorating those who took the dare
and entered, never seen again. Constrained
from oxygen the brain drifts out, then in,
flame guttering, moon dim through vagrant cloud.
Damp hands across the mouth pinch nostrils shut.
Some memories adhere as residue—
trace chemical or corrugated scab—
but faces disappear, as drainage ponds
beget and purge whatever thrives therein.
What happened in the dark stays dark because
you couldn’t look, but didn’t turn away."
—George Witte via
"We are feeling beings who sometimes think."
"His refusal of institutional catharsis, his Ligottian lucidity, his insistence on the tunnel without light, has not protected him from Carcosa. It has, if anything, prepared him for it, because it has stripped away every cover story that might have insulated him from the unmanaged condition that Carcosa represents." —Tristan via
"idea of having fun"
Reich LaBrea · wrecked executive
human blurs · hideous prolixity
bagel inspected · for spots of mold
empty library · looming checkout
"And a glamour of clangor · gored cloudward gaily."
"the boss & the boss's boss"
assuage-least with the large glass
lambency now brink shambles
umber wood
whirls t'ward dial phones
stabbed with a decorative · wall dagger
farther from real, flailing
figments in the rigged show
past midnight
mustered symptoms
cold shining · in all ways shrunk
crookedly steer
"Sensing that the Singaporean authorities would never allow him to make a film about an expatriate pimp, Bogdanovich submitted a fake synopsis for romantic caper movie called Jack of Hearts (what the director called a cross between Love is a Many Splendored Thing and Pal Joey) to officials and shot the real film guerrilla style." —Andrew Nette via
I only take calls from this phone.
"If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises – were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." —Michel Foucault via
"The ballet does so via its asymmetry, its 'thick melange of instinct, sensuality and fate'..."
"Oh Happy Day"
Delusion comes boxed in a sporange
of prejudice, folly's squeak-doorhinge,
& craving for blood;
we wade through the mire
of its downpour & pustulent persimmon.
Dating Advice fom Trakl. (Somewhat later:) Aside on mindfulness.
“ANGÉLIQUE
Have you seen Angélique,
What way she went?
A white robe she wore,
A flickering light near spent
Her pale hand bore.
Have you seen Angélique?
Will she know the place
Dead feet must find,
The grave-cloth on her face
To make her blind?
Have you seen Angélique… .
At night I hear her moan,
And I shiver in my bed;
She wanders all alone,
She cannot find the dead.”
—Adelaide Crapsey
"And just as many people's facial expression is false, mine too can be false. But the hands with which I speak are truth incarnate, they are always unmasked—regardless of how often I paint my own portrait!" —Egon Schiele via
"Yesterday I was at the desk when a man came in." (thread)
We’re going to need a bigger vocabulary for “cringe”.
thicket of pretending
mackerel sky
the one needful word set
wending among dungheaps
"waste & use"
the wind
from Sagittarius A
nothing you can sail on
the wind
i can understand
blows in days long ended
the wind
from Sagittarius A
"Vegemite is an espresso shot that punches you in the face, then steals your wallet."
"A break-the-state, twig-quick snap or a long divining" —Susan Briante via
"Belugas demonstrate a high level of self-awareness and a sense of self."
"Nascarborough Fair"
mylar ribbon rulebook
terrain of blank anguish
brisk gaslight
garish trestle
silenced cicadas · misspent odyssey
show of shaky pictures
krait Shalimar limerick
hospital
inhabit shapes
blink afar · final yardstick
nitrogen ice artwork
only courtroom portrait
fist gaslight
end of ergcreel
hiss kitchen · pendulum dumbfound
These [consciousness] arguments will not end until we get tired of using the words & start looking at the phenomena. (--my comment on this & 2 answers.)
"But now the world has made a self of its own."
"The crystalline structure he calls snow, mingling with the burning glow in which the angels of the First Order gather around God’s throne, is dust, scoured by the hour and the minute, as though with a divine scraper, from the flat plateau of the spiritual body we call the sky, like an animal grooming itself." —Alexander Kluge via
"We both loved philosophy and craft and craved ways to put those parts of our lives back together..."
beast rumorous · gray return
not my nemesis · scabilicious
sword's rust · & the pale light
ghost army · nowhere tryst
my words fall · feeding frenzy
of merle shadows · i call monster
"Albayzin was the perfect breeding ground for flamenco."
Right-brained poems & Left-brained readers.
Although i am such a fogey i still use paper dictionaries (both Webster's 2nd unabridged & the 3rd) & my own head (complete with ambivalent spots) for grammar, this is splendidly nuanced. If only the rest of the mechanism were as linear! But as yet, they do not seem interested in ways of powering this renaissance that involve solar energy or water from comets, nor compensatory retraining along the lines of small-scale urban agriculture. Which might make it tolerable, if inartistic.
"metal latch of a wooden gate"
despair in free fall · spiral elegy
mind's potholes · made manifest
wait for the man · with the Gadsden flag
to come by door to door · for a contribution
sunset of small repairs
you will miss this so · when there aren't any
"Who kneel? Pooneel!"
mandarin tin can phone
resurrected banquet
trash pretend solutions
scrape the wax tablet
for awhile almost the bad guy
puddle reflected squirrel
lavender tea, tear-vase
terribly poured storeroom
vast hostage
Of course moons dream. Moons dream planets.
"Its poems became difficult, ambiguous, so intricate and charged with meaning that they were totally incomprehensible." (via)
The Oral Literature of the American People.
"I have ridden steppe ponies across the plains of Inner Mongolia, I have meditated under the tree where the Buddha first attained enlightenment, I have seen the ruins of Aztec monuments made from human skulls plastered with lime, but I’d still managed to go thirty-five years without once setting foot on the next island over." —Sam Kriss via
"...no enduring cultural narratives..."
"squirrel in a puddle reflected"
wan contested sepulchre
walls perilous builded
hearthstone dinosaur gizzard
deliquescent noontide
sun clawing cloudsthrough
acclaimed form of gaming
charcoal promise
walls frenzied of credence
"DISTANT MUSIC (Palindrome)
Emote to me. Refill a note.
By eking, I sedate my awe.
Now all I give, lines dash, promote,
to visit inward — rose, yet raw.
Art eyes, or drawn it is. I vote
to morph sad, senile vigil. Law,
one way, met a design I key.
Be tonal, life remote to me!"
—Anthony Etherin
"...the French Republican Calendar, which I adopted shortly after the electoral Ragnarok of 2024.."
“Dear, so thou only move thine head,
Shall all mine old despairs awake!”
—Dowson
"The new book idea I started working on even before the first one had come out gathers digital dust in the neglected corners of my computer, but what do you know? You might turn your head away for a second, and your home and your people are on fire and the flames lick inside to your heart and brain and guts, burning away all that feels unnecessary, leaving just enough breath for a strangled cry of help that no one hears." —Saghar Setareh via
slendermanian slide rule
slick leather case, sunk Facebook
brillig dusk
to be sorted
the news nattering · anempst Crashsound
rain scrabbling Zog's ribcage
ruin-deep swirl leapfrog
With reference to David Lindsay's "jale" & "ulfire".
"Every writer I know from my MFA years has stopped writing." —Chris Stuck via
"robo advisor"
screwworm cuneiform
on Omaha Beach
dying of sadness
"Some names stay because they became part of the first map you made of yourself."
Glyconic meter & Alliterating Tumbling Meter.
“NIGHTS WITHOUT SLEEP
Nights without sleep and days
That burn like smoldering fire,
Nerves with the ceaseless cry
Of wind in a tight-drawn wire—
Years of this leaving me nothing
But a handful of songs like these,
That people think were happily written
In an hour of ease.”
—Sara Teasdale
"But what do you mean, the purpose of life is happiness? That’s like saying the purpose of milk is cheese." —Alexander Fayne via
"If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint."
"The Dread is faded, durable, pervasive. It sounds like a ceiling fan motor in the back of my soul. I try to sit up straight, take deep breaths, look at the sun on the leaves on the trees outside.
But it doesn’t help, it just shifts everything around like a snow-globe filled with confetti..."
—Brandon Smith via
iI you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue.
"Moorawathimeering
Into moorawathimeering
Where atninga dare not tread,
Leaving wurly for a wilban,
Tallabilla, you have fled.
Wombalunga curses, waitjurk—
Though we cannot break the ban,
And follow tchidna further
After one-time karaman.
Far in moorawathimeering
Safe from wallan darenderong,
Tallabilla waitjurk, wander
Silently the whole day long.
Go with only lilliri
To walk along beside you there,
While douran-douran voices wail
And Karaworo beats the air."
—Rex Ingamells via
"106. Spring, Watching
The country is smashed; mounts and rivers persist.
It is spring in the castle; grass and trees are thick.
Feeling the times — flowers sprinkle tears.
Regretting the goodbye — birds astonish my heart.
Beacons have been kept lit for three months;
A letter from home will be worth ten thousand gold.
I scratch my whitened head … it has become shorter again:
All of it will not hold a hairpin."
—Du Fu via
"In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour… " — Egon Schiele via
"Where are the princes of the heathen become, and such as ruled the beasts upon the earth..."
