Theory is making a game that is like the problem—& then thinking that to win the game is to solve the problem. Well, maybe for especially gamelike problems...
Sunday, August 02, 2026
gibbous moon high
assassin of koans
Cerberus overshares
“By the way, Melville reads Old Books. He has borrowed Sir Thomas Browne of me and says finely of the speculations of the Religio Medici that Browne is a kind of 'crack'd Archangel.' Was ever anything of this sort said before by a sailor? - Evert Duyckinck to his brother George.
Upon his return from adventures at sea, Evert Duyckinck had given Melville the freedom of his 16,000 volume library."
—@gregorykindall
"If an AI proof works for the Riemann Hypothesis and particularly for the Goldbach’s Conjecture, I will lose a piece of my humanity forever." —@avmarraccini via
"Some initial thoughts, and a complicated mix of feelings." (thread)
"lizard drizzle"
old atrophied riddles
roost stipulate gulag
the unwilling guests
gather at the mainspring
pills, pint interventions
fiery slide begins
banana peel
calling things by the wrong name
Saturday, August 01, 2026
rapt cranioklepty
klicks past ever bursting
bookcase yaws
with yearn slumber
Moloch imbibes · boxes of lament
olive tinted sky skirling
& scattered casings rasp
kilnward fall
your face blisters
velocity into · threadbare infanticide
My didgeridoo story. A correspondent in the 80s sent me a cassette which included some didgeridoo music. This fascinated me, not least because i could subsequently find scarcely any mention of the thing anywhere. --And then, somewhat later, i had been contacted to find a performance venue for some travelling improvisatory musicians who were coming to Dallas. I found a house, & contacted as many people as i could. So we were sitting there beginning, when in walked: one didgeridoo. Two didgeridoos. Three didgeridoos. (2015)
"And the thing that's so messed up about American culture my sister? An American will spend all their money getting entertained by Hollywood films of catastrophe & disaster & gore. But that stuff happening in real life to real people? All they can do is look away."
—chantalalive.blacksky.app
Periclean Bourgeoisie Syndrome.
“A Crocodile
Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking, merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy troculus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)
Our robots whistle. What they ask we fetch.
Heaped upon our plates, supernal spinach.
We won't go back to knowing things, nor rest
till ev'ry last human's cured of even the itch.
"Even the world of literature and taste is divided into the most virulent factions, which revile, decry, and traduce the works of one another." —Humphrey Clinker
I think just about the only good depiction of an artist is the title character in Waitress (2007). We see her life, we see what she makes of it, & for several recipes she explains how she works.
"The Black Heralds
There are blows in life so terrible ... I don’t know!
Blows as if from God’s loathing, as if
the sudden wake of every suffered thing
just welled up ... I don’t know.
They are few; but they are ... they dig deep trenches
in the finest face, the straightest back.
Maybe they’re the outriders of some atrocious Attilas;
or the black heralds that Death sends.
Those steep plunges the Christs of the soul take
into despair;
some adorable faith that Fate’s blasphemed.
Those blows are the red crackling
of the loaf that burns at the oven’s door.
And man ... poor, poor man ... he glances round
as when someone, standing behind him, claps him
to attention: his crazy eyes glance round,
& everything he’s always lived
pools in guilt-puddles on that glance’s floor.
There are blows in life so terrible ... I don’t know!"
—César Vallejo, 1918 (tr Cameron Clark)
"A Welsh Testament
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
I spoke a tongue that was passed on
To me in the place I happened to be,
A place huddled between grey walls
Of cloud for at least half the year.
My word for heaven was not yours.
The word for hell had a sharp edge
Put on it by the hand of the wind
Honing, honing with a shrill sound
Day and night. Nothing that Glyn Dwr
Knew was armour against the rain's
Missiles. What was descent from him?
Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.
Yet men sought us despite this.
My high cheek-bones, my length of skull
Drew them as to a rare portrait
By a dead master. I saw them stare
From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep
In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand
By the thorn hedges, watching me string
The far flocks on a shrill whistle.
And always there was their eyes; strong
Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said;
Speak to us so; keep your fields free
Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar
Of hot tractors; we must have peace
And quietness.
Is a museum
Peace? I asked. Am I the keeper
Of the heart's relics, blowing the dust
In my own eyes? I am a man;
I never wanted the drab role
Life assigned me, an actor playing
To the past's audience upon a stage
Of earth and stone; the absurd label
Of birth, of race hanging askew
About my shoulders. I was in prison
Until you came; your voice was a key
Turning in the enormous lock
Of hopelessness. Did the door open
To let me out or yourselves in?"
—R. S. Thomas via
"Some creative writing gurus will tell their students 'there’s no universal ideal length, each work is unique'. This is wrong. There is an ideal for each medium and I’m going to share it with you:
Poem: 14 lines
Short Story: 3000 words
Play or Movie: 2 hours runtime
Novel: 0 pages (novels should not exist)" —@alexmckeown
poem: 5 lines. every sonnet but Shakespeare’s is padded out. 5 lines was good enough for anything Heian Japan wanted to say. we just need to learn to make our lines work harder. starts with ceasing to write like we talk.
movie: 60-90 minutes. in the 60s a comedy or a thriller could do it, why can’t we? long movies are like a rock concert that stops dead just so each player can have their solo spot. that’s not the way to tell a story.
novel: 120 pages (half of an Ace Double. aspire to be an Ace Double.) the trouble is, nowadays we expect a fiction book to be three or four stories tangled together. disentangle them & publish separately.
PS a sculpture should be small enough to fit in your pocket. a master whittler can express any concept or emotion (as Baudelaire famously said about perfume). and everyone knows the power of 3-minute songs.
North American Cryptid Museum.
Friday, July 31, 2026
"...actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen every where rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, justling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption—All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest." —Humphrey Clinker
""initiulator"
1.
wapsnets, bitter season
of sizzle poptacular
deep in the dog days
prodigious
squirrelmummy
swart topiary
music that served its time
2.
turbulent sunset · considered as fall
of this configuration
blue cardboard · walls too far
as i write
the sad figures · dwindle
words in my pocket
a long catalog · of the untimely dead
3.
wastewaps boomerang
barreljail
abysmal fizz gathered
just in cut time
vinegarswerved vintages
vaster than bilge aspic
turquoise dusk
glimmers over the fence
patter of blown twigs
on a car roof
a murder of crows
approaches, misdemeanor-bent
hammer in a bag
rancid pale cerulean
shadereft, as the bone cradle
boils inly, a fool's choice
to fetch back
shapes of Feghoot
confinement steel wheelwell
patter of blown twigs
on a car roof
this parking lot
alive with birdsong & traffic mutter
nothing like lyric
Jupiter eats a comet
calmly amidst headstand
my magnum opus mapped out
in merle-colored furlongs
high summer
with long simmer
patter on a car roof blown
"There is no line, now, if there ever was, between there and here, burning and breathing, their life and our own." —Becca Rose Hall via
Thursday, July 30, 2026
A murder of crows approaches, misdemeanor-bent.
"The hat now sits in the Smithsonian, made at Duke-Rigs Men's Shop in New York."
"Tvashtar"
half halfdeaf
ideawise weighstation
hissing kitchen
warrior in sackcloth
"...the voice makes lots of precise gestures of meaning, mixed up with bafflingly imprecise jokes."
"ekphrasis"
ho velura kverelo
ravel velour verdure,
violet grail
awelight by autumnal shine
urns carnage
unearths frith
despair escapes containment
torn attire
the whole wrench of hilching
gleamgold in the rolldark
garble carbs
noclip trip
ravel velour zugzwang
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"awelight"- the project of making Poliespo useable
"autumnal shine"- the taste of Newcastle ale
epigraph- a line from an Esperanto poem of mine: 'oh velvet quarrel!'
"Whether that means exploring the history of a word, composing a lipogram, creating nonsense literature, crafting alliterative verse, constructing a word puzzle, or taking language apart to see what else it can do, Elementary Penguin will be a home for that spirit of playful curiosity."
—Anthony Etherin via
All Pieces of a River Shore. Found #70 here (?).
"vacuance (VAK-yoo-ants) n. The emptiness a person leaves; vacancy that keeps their shape. He sold the chair at last, but the vacuance kept its tenancy, an emptiness the exact shape of her evening posture." —RB Barnes via
The Egg - Aquatron VX-33c radio & 8 track by the Brother Corporation.
"clankerphronema"
Vatic harrumph. vifgage
converted to dirt bike.
after train tracks gift turnip
troubles the grub axiom.
many such cases
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
"...hōgan-biiki (判官贔屓), a Japanese phrase still used today for siding with the underdog."
"BURGLAR (Palindrome)
Cased lucre
in a zanier
cul-de-sac."
—Anthony Etherin
"An empty box need not be THIS WAY UP." —Alexander Fayne
I asked booksellers how AI is changing their field.
Gertrude Stein is Having a Moment.
"We glamorize travel, but running away to find a less damaged place will not save us." —Amy Brunvand via
"parataxis & dyfalu"
should have birch switches
shimmer in Niflheim
long ago festivals
things shelved in the back & forgotten
new ways of being present
foodways lost & found
from who i was when i saw that movie
a postcard
encrustation
on the daily cup
I always regret when i see this amazing art that so little of it is on public display & has to wait for a special show or a book that most people will never open. We should have around us as many war paintings as the Renaissance had madonnas.
"Do you know you have Lee Marvin."
injury, illness, banjo cover
earnest burning
blind futures
shiny big menus
grinding pale cerulean
walks into an empty house
goblinescamotage
"A Finnish professor of literature, Jukka Ammondt, from the University of Jyväskylä ...once recorded two albums of Elvis Presley songs in Latin. His later release, you will be relieved to know, consists of songs of the 'King' in Sumerian. The first cut is 'Blue Suede Shoes,' which translates into Sumerian as 'E-sir Kush-za-gin-ga' ('Sandals of Leather of the Color of a Blue Gem')." —Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
"In the main WWI gallery my eye was caught by a display on aerial bombardment ...and when I looked closely, this map recovered from a Zeppelin in 1916 contains a note saying that a copy was also carried 'by Casement when landing in Ireland'." —@inpursuitofthepast via
wodwo sanguine
scintillating lantern
this bright rose
left on Dalit velvet
Rough Trade (the band) thread.
Arriving Early at the Griffin Observatory.
"Betelgeuse companion again"
baleen grep bupkis
broken statue catchment;
1B34 turns,
duck turquoise huckster
on the war chump path change
"Your occasional reminder that I used to review films for a site called Sci-Fi Wire. My negative review of Inception met such a fierce reception from Nolan die-hards that not only was I fired, the site stopped reviewing films." —@nickmamatas729830
The Hundred Schools of Thought. (via Axial Age)
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
"Moody Latin Ides used, in Italy, doom." —Anthony Etherin
A couple of Kripkensteinian fables.
"questions that aren't questions"
a sun you could fire · stoneware with
stands in my mind before dawn
wrong way · in the test tube
drop a white pill
stiff & staggering · & partly fueled
drop a few rules
suits deciding · poison's okay
after all
i blend two coffees
"Above the water passes the shadow of a cloud,
something will not let me be at peace."
—Santoka (tr J Abrams via )
"The modern bicycle owes its existence, in small part, to one of history’s greatest natural disasters: the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora..." —Rob Stephenson via
How an albatross gave birth to an entire aviary.
Tolkien's Generation and Alliterative Verse.
"I’m sorry moosh, my boyfriend Darius texted, using his pet name for me, Farsi for 'mouse.' I know it’s frustrating but you’re very brave" —@cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social via
"He harnesses a rage (riddle: a cough)
I heard a bastard · hovering about me,
an absolute nuisance · nestled by my side,
clinging, like a child · clasped around my neck
he cries out, sputtering, · clamouring to speak.
When I temper him, · tending to his whims
I listen to him blather,· the burden I must bear.
Stifle him and he shrieks, · shouting louder
the firmer he’s held down. · In fierce winter winds,
he harnesses a rage · racking my breastplate
with all his foul force, · fists constantly flying,
battering my bones · a bludgeon, though feeble.
Who is this creature, · this constant pest
growing ever galling · though I grip him by the throat?"
—Cassidy McFadzean, 2012
"This is just to say
I have turned into pigs
the men
that were on
my island
and which
you were probably
saving
to row you to Ithaca
Forgive me
they were disgusting
so male
and so disrespectful."
—Marie Phillips via
Bitterness would be nothing without the conceit of its reasons. Unfortunately they exist. But not as reasons for bitterness.
The roadside lined with ragweed.
"Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past--as it is to some extent a fiction of the present--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology."
—Thoreau, cited in 𝑆𝑦𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑊ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒
poppyhorse, grayfaced harpist
inhale concrete dust, tailspin
worthy, teeth-turnlane
tulipmaniac trainwreck
poppyhorse, punk rehearsal
in pale cerulean hailstones
How French Theory Lost its Cool.
"better guac than a Glock"
1.
Garland tokonoma
Tianannwn
cruentation crashsite
accrues purple lozenge
in the thick green graveyard
squandered hour's onus
2.
the stars
fugitive urn
the war in the air
narrated
3.
poppyhorse
I’ve met a small handful of poets who knew their own poems by heart. They were like emissaries from a lost golden age of bards. Other poets hated them.
Monday, July 27, 2026
I remember an academic party once, there was a piano & a guy sat down & seemed to not know what he was doing at first & then this incredible wave of sound came out of it. He finished, everyone was amazed, & he said “Jeaux d’Eau” which i looked up later was by Ravel.
"Knowing I Live in a Dark Age
Knowing I live in a dark age before history,
I watch my wallet and
am less struck by gunfights in the avenues
than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face
calling a shabby poet back for his change.
The crows mobbing the blinking, sun-stupid owl;
wolves eating a hamstrung calf hind end first
keeping their meat alive and fresh...these
are marks of foresight, beginnings of wit;
but Jesus wearing thorns and sunstroke
beating his life and death into words
to break the rods and blunt the axes of Rome:
this and like things followed.
Knowing that in this advertising rainbow
I live like a trapeze artist with a headache,
my poems are no aspirins...they show
pale bayonets of grass waving thin on dunes;
the paralytic and his lyric secrets;
my friend Al, union builder and cynic,
hesitating to believe his own delicate poems
lest he believe in something better than himself:
and history, which is yet to begin,
will exceed this, exalt this
as a poem erases and rewrites its poet."
—Milton Acorn