( via / via )

"The post-historical period in which aesthetics become what only theory can determine has turned out to be another period in history, another finite chapter in the narrative that gets tiresome at times but never ends."

Be hard like Avvakum.

"I wonder if there is a 'Tao of Polycrisis' where no crisis is ever confronted and resolved. Rather, the ever-renewing crises gently compost the older crises, which fade from awareness, because their victims are mostly dead" —@bruces.bsky.social

Top 15 Weird-Folk Albums.

( via / me )

The Mandé Variations.

"I finally saw this [One Battle after Another] and can best describe it as an ABC After School Special for the Weather Underground." —@pagesandframes

Four Walls. (via)

squirrel outside
in dead flowerbed
brown on brown

Too hard to train.

( via / via )

Preview of coming attractions.

“The Prisoner

I walked along the winding road;
It was high summer; on one side
Behind pale foliage sinuously flowed
The hand-sown wheat in rustling pride.

Grey sprawling stone, before me towered the school;
I touched the chapel-corner through the hedge,
Traced dimly in the window’s painted pool
Three mitres and the shield with rope and wedge.

Deep peace! Yet there was panic terror shut inside;
The bronze bells rolled and reeled in flowing tide.
Against that shock time buckled to resist,
And no sound pierced the loneliness, no voices cried;
Only the great towers trembled in the pouring mist.”

—Charles Spear

Robber uses Google translate to announce hold up at Ecuadorian restaurant in New Jersey.

"The real body count is how many people are in therapy because of you." —@justmackenzie

Why I Like Strange Books.

( via / via )

What Kind of Times are These.

"Obsessions are the most durable form of intellectual capital."

- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick via @jacobwren.bsky.social

"Being online enough to tell which gen z slang terms..."

2.
Venetian blindfold blaspheme
blurry weather, scrub subfusc
hygge hatch conscription
halted in mid-falter

coign on the Third Coast
castaway villain moustache
blue & green fake getaway
gastro-pub for stubble

sterling the loss scar-count
spurious chromebright kitestring
amber dragonfly's rapture
rushing into flush mode

storms fugitive fathom'd
ferry to parts stared at
wreckage i call cookbook
calm amidst meme-pretzel

so go, army ortsweep
antheap-jostled earth-hostage
bombs are words that work
wearily dropped optics

3.
they thought they knew things they didn't know
nature has a special plan for them

Black Hours manuscript.

( via / via )

shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

"all things dwell in raking light"

1.
coiled virulence · Death's-Head moth
   teal cup on the table
the cracked column · of the cooling unit
   that the surd night come

   and the deep river ran on

river right & river wrong
Osage hazel hearse-hump
huge Pentagon grugprab
river of lies · filth river
   animation of golf
standing before · that oblong looming
   it was like the Coliseum
   who knows what i remember

and the deep river ran on

i think of'en · of the Strait of Hormuz
   like if your toilet's blocked
two miles wide · at one point
   two fuckin' miles
   in the Coliseum, slaves
died for others' amusement

and the deep river ran on

A diagram of Spectacle.

"If your god needs Pete Hegseth to usher in the eschaton, get a better god." —@seamripper

"This has been going on for so long that people wouldn’t know meaning if it walked up and bit them in the ass."

( via / via )

Layout.

"shitposting on substack feels like invasive rats arriving in Hawaii" —@moultano

Herzog in the Forgotten Cave.

"white earwig"

mushroom dreams, the drastic
will drawn upon spillways
needle budged t'ward blindfold
abased chatter on platforms

molten display spirals
to spoil blurs where toils spring
chilled in the char-kitchen
don't sleep—sleep—let sleep perish

The Decline of Deviance.

( via / via )

Cover up.

   yearning that there should
again be the silhouettes
   burned into brick walls

& slow dying for millions
after the first, vaporized...

"The island was the physical node, but the network itself was the point. It ramified and in so doing connected everything."

I'm not a critic, i'm a sad epicure.

Robert Crumb, 1985.

( me / via )

A Brief Look into a Locked Room.

"Still am I faithful to the lonely faith.
Dreaming, alone and melancholy here..."

—Lionel Johnson via

"Is there any real point in yelling into the Universal Void-Equipped Vomitorium that the internet has become about a thing many, many unconnected people say every day?"

“Memoriter

Ovals of opal on dislustred seas,
Skyshine, and all that indolent afternoon
No clash of arms, no shouting on the breeze;
Only the reeds moaned soft or high their empty rune.

The paladins played chess and did not care,
The crocus pierced the turf with random dart.
Then twanged a cord. Through space, from Oultremer
That other arrow veered toward your heart.”

—Charles Spear

Poem.

( via / via )

不失者 — あっち (fushitsusha – acchi).

"The Church of a Dream

Sadly the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind,
Around the weather-worn, gray church, low down the vale:
The Saints in golden vesture shake before the gale;
The glorious windows shake, where still they dwell enshrined;

Old Saints by long dead, shrivelled hands, long since designed;
There still, although the world autumnal be, and pale,
Still in their golden vesture the old saints prevail;
Alone with Christ, desolate else, left by mankind.

Only one ancient Priest offers the Sacrifice,
Murmuring holy Latin immemorial:
Swaying with tremulous hands the old censer full of spice,
In gray, sweet incense clouds; blue, sweet clouds mystical:
To him, in place of men, for he is old, suffice
Melancholy remembrances and vesperal."

—Lionel Johnson

Behind his Resolute Desk.

Editors are like the doctors in old times who didn't wash their hands.

The Lady's Not for Burning.

( via / me )

A Short Introduction to Carnatic Music.

"if 500 people read your posts that means you’ve got about the same readership that Moby Dick had during Melville’s lifetime" —https://substack.com/@simsben1

My old review of The Skin.

funicular nescience
the same nab & tablet

behind a van vending
sky vanishment psyop

words to a quid welded
what next world unsnecks them

"The equivalent in not-quite contemporary English might be a four poster bed."

( me / via )

Every technological era gets its “retrowave” moment.

"SUMMER SOLSTICE AT STONEHENGE (Palindrome)

Sun!
In my halo,
open,
I mull its altar: All.

I plait its lost light.
I lag, emanating:
I lay a ray, align.

I tan a megalith gilt.

Solstitial pillar, at last illumine —
pool a hymn in us."

—@anthonyuetherin.bsky.social

"A sort of innocent decadence follows."

Among the greatest works of impermanence is the idea of permanence.

DJ Regime Change.

( via / me )

Wood and Stone.

"The Sierra Nevada, groved with sequoia and blackjack pine and smelling like a hardware store run by sasquatch..." —Joseph S Furey via

When they bring "democracy".

said Housman to Huysmans
your swerves spared no crisis
said Huysmans to Housman
scant sense to those vows, man

"Each year the amount of energy in this ecosystem goes down. And people are desperate for some way of staving off the end."

( via / via )

When i assume my final form, it will be something like this.

"water cremation"

thunder, bombs fall, bone-deep
ballast of tryst-whisper
the ant scramble screen test
scrutiny through ruins
tumble of torn marble
attests skyey piehole
in the mild cured morning
moult vertigo legwork

Polymarket pulls nuke bets.

"Live music is at least 50,000-60,000 years old (Divje Babe flute)

Notated music is at least 3400 years old (Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal)

Recorded music is only 160 years old (Au Clair de la Lune)." —Dom Aversano via

The Exile's Song.

via / via )

The only explanation of poetry.

"Jellyfish have survived all 5 mass extinctions which goes to show the best way to succeed in this world is to not have a brain or heart" —@nameshiv.bsky.social

Cromwell Textile Cloth.

"antidote to houseshame"

Styxcrossing a strange fold
stack pennies on the thin seesaw
gray spindly agreements
grasp the pathway's dodge-logic

ravens spiral spurning
transport bearing new dances
dying sun the real deal
don't you misconstrue it

Styxcrossing with stout hearts
alone, stained with brainstuff
pixels in bright pantomime
parallel to siege-Egypt

ravens settle rightful
rulers where the lens game ends

Monk Near the Sea.

( via )

"As a painter, it is positively embarrassing to admit how much I have learned about tone, value, proportion, mid-tones, composition, color theory and other art ABCs by watching the tattoo critiques on Ink Master."

"silence of the iambs"

Armageddon imgrat
only to pass grass burns
algorithms' riddle
rede from one stupider

dark green on burnt orange
graveside firelit conclave

night shaken & shapespoilt
shelter where the melt goes
the gift taken gaudily
gunfire a firm sermon

dark green on burnt orange
graveside firelit conclave

before sunrise sears with
sensible repentance
exact change at the zigzag
zoom laughing like glim rumors

Ducks eating peas from one of our best writers' hands.

“I realized that regardless of the tragedy, regardless of the grief, regardless of the monstrous challenge, some of us have not died. Some of us did not die [...] And what shall we do, we who did not die?”

—June Jordan via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

Mississippi Goddam.

( me / via )

The offing.

"did RFK release his spores or something everyone is sick" —@howlitzer.art

Alstroemerias.

"why wait"

lulzmaxxing from mayhem
shop now pay later

marksmanship its own riptide
abstract cat. wolf down innings
of angleworm bruise cloying
hot take on hot take on TikTok
stakes in my toolkit, oolong-
phaeic velocirapture

"We didn’t save movies from mediocrity. We made good taste a gated community and then wrote think pieces about how the gate is actually a door."

( via / via )

Everyone who goes to war should wear this helmet.

"fennec-eared larva"

riot more red neon
than ruin, dream brewer
scattered crumbs & crimson
increasing thirst, cursed thing
but welcome

Golgotha.

“ 'So it’s a Meow Wolf type thing'” I ask the hopelessly nerdy Chinese girl behind the counter.

She’s deeply offended. 'They actually copied us.' Her face says I might be intruding on her TikTok time." —Cairo Smith via

The Eightfold Year.

( via / via )

"It was painful to hear that man stand up there and gloat about the good job he felt his secret police force did in our city."

"They came to the top of a mountain. The shadow of a hawk fell over them."
—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

"You like lists, because rather than being one big thing they are lots of little things, and you are also not one big thing but rather lots of little things."

What i warned you of
In my bloodstream sings
Though the paths remain
Where i mark my pain
And i teach my love
Cratered ways & things
That bite. No dry end,
Nor veils be the friend
Of this. I but wait
Creaking at a gate
And the ullage sings.

(2000)

"Nora, — the commonest of readers, — said, 'what’s all this talk about Ulysses? Finnegans Wake is the important book'."

( via / via )

"The whole city smells like weed and piss. DC also smells like weed, but only parts of it smell like piss."

“POEM

As a prison is most prison in
the tiny cracks in
its walls
I am most me in my pores

I lower my pores into the water
what will that net me
I open my pores to the air
what will that apprehend

now even those outer elements
dream of escaping
from the felony in each

of the body’s cells
the murderer
I pen within”

—Knott

Audio Gylfaginning.

"I maintain the firm belief that everything we've been suffering through since 2015 is directly tied to President Obama making fun of trump at a White House Correspondence Dinner. That was the catalyst for all of this pain and suffering." —bejamointhomas616.bsky.social

"Some pieces numb themselves with the aesthetics of mystery in order to guise their commitment to vagueness."

( via / via )

To bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus.

"LOST (Palindrome by Pairs)

On most
loyal ash
lay a lost
moon."

—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Selected experts.

      "study war some more"

   three evil old men
in five, ten years will be gone
   but their bombs fall now

mackerel sky, later storms
i will take due precautions

"Once, when I was about twenty-five and not yet entirely aware of the extremity of my unclubbability, I did try to go to a writers conference."

( me / via )

A bit on Emily Hahn, one of my favorite forgotten writers.

      "wolf blueberries"

some wild place left · solaceless
   from the turmoil go

Hey Siri.

"This is a place that supposedly receives three days of sunshine a year, has no jobs, alcoholism is the only past time, and eviscerated Soviet era buildings bookend concrete khrushevkas. The population here is overwhelmingly Russian, and they pray each day for a Russian invasion. It might improve things." —Jace Shugden via

"I immediately wondered about this poem, this poet, and down the rabbit hole I went, to discover that Carl Sagan had been Diane Ackerman’s doctoral adviser at Cornell and that she had gone on to publish a collection of astronomy-inspired poems."

( via/ via )

Lots of good thoughts on Dickens.

"...I knew you were not stasis
   bedded in the marl

...What we know
wouldn't
fill
a lemur's fist..."

—Diane Ackerman, "Neptune"

Refugees.

"Grandpa Fester"

razbliuto blood moon
as black ice writes crackling
double tap in turbid
tincture: Epstein unction

blood moon amid fathoms
of mild seiche-erasure

The Children Speaking from the Rubble.

( via / via )

Thrushes.

"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.

Ordering a magic.

( via / via )

A preview of coming attractions.

"What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that."

—Arundhati Roy via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social

Cities in Dust.

"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

Now I am quietly waiting.

( via / via )

Of this we can be certain.

   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

This image contains the Pleiades star cluster, Barnard's Loop, Orion Nebula, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Witch Head Nebula, Eridanus Loop, and the California Nebula.

( via / me )

The Dead Language Tier List.

"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

Not only have i had a painting of mine hung there, i finished my cable docu on the '84 War Chest Tour with "Joey" (whose conviction was later overturned) holding forth in front of the pool where everyone got arrested swimming.