( via )

Riddle.

"...he was convicted of blasphemy for his poem, 'Lázadó Krisztus' (“Rebelling Christ”)."

( me / via )

Uranium Sundaes.

The air did shimmer for awhile with sound
& now it doesn't. Heat like fear instills
solemn grugprab*, as mad the world's end howls.
I muse on those cicadas & their trills
changeless as the itch to understand.
Drivers haste to pretend
to & fro. Unquestioned haggard vows
dragging the trees like vast unruly wind
propel me too, t'ward no acceptable outcome.
The car yearns to rest. I go with one foot
on terrible wrongs, the other utter bunkum
proposing what i'd save through verbal output.
Singing-time is almost past, for sure;
seventeen years gone up in literature.

-------------------------------------------------------------
* lethargy (Dalgarno's word)

Sleepwalk.

"Scholars have identified the books, newspapers, and magazines Joyce was reading, and found the places in Finnegans Wake where he used the words." —James Elkins via

Afrique Victime.

( via / via )

Mary of Silence.

"But, day by day, joy waned and withered off" —The Ring and the Book

Someday a mortician.

"Midsummer

This starbreak is celestial air,
Just silver; earthlight, dying amber.
Underneath an arch of pallor
Summer keeps her brightened chamber.

Bright beauty of the risen dust
And deep flood-mark of beauty pressed
Up from earth in lovely flower,
High against my lonely breast;

Thou rhythm like the changing moon's,
The catch to which the waters play,
That as they kiss moon-silver sink,—
As soon to spurn the baffled clay;

Only before the waters fall
Is Paradise shore for gaining now.
The grasses drink the berry-bright dew;
The small fruits jewel all the bough.

Heart-breaking summer beyond taste,
Ripeness and frost are soon to know;
But might such color hold the west,
And time, and time, be honey-slow!"

—Léonie Adams

人間だった (Once Human).

( via / via )

"...we have constructed an arts system which too often rewards compliance."

lacustrine crutchyard
wields swoosh
highway southpaw
t'ward hatchvoice

"So what do you call this new scene of you and the Bangs, and Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate? At that time it was really just those four groups. And I said, ‘Oh, it’s the Paisley Underground.’ I didn’t think much of it – it was just an off-the-cuff remark."

"I'm finding out way too much for someone who fucks around so little" —@sofarrsogud.bsky.social

No Easy Way Down.

( me / via )

Ancient feather star.

"they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Old Rocker.

⊐ ∧ ⋂ ⊕ ⊂ *ol1a

"...let us not be passionate about picayune, ephemeral, ugly, or mortal things. If we have to seem to be moved by all that, then we can pretend to be: but let us only pretend."

( via / me )

Geese of North Sauty.

"Tongue-Dust

Behind the library’s frosted glass,
dust has its own eloquence.
Settling on the spine of forgotten Latin,
coating verbs in velvet silt
until the past is translated
into a single,
drift-grey grammar
that says everything
by staying completely still."

—@thedevilstuna.bsky.social

"Some time ago, casinos learned how to hack human psychology to create on-demand addiction (B.F. Skinner noted this in 1950s, and Michael Easter in his book Scarcity Brain describes how he learned it from a casino research laboratory)."

"I’m so glad I don’t have to live in a rammed earth cottage eating foxtail millet." —James Marriott via

"Austria-Hungary is no more. I do not want to live anywhere else. I shall live on with the torso and imagine that it is the whole."

( oil painting by me / via )

Emendations.

"On the same day that Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that those in power did not understand the danger in time to prevent what happened, the Trump CIA released 71 newly declassified intelligence reports showing just how many warnings about al-Qaeda had reached the highest levels of our government before 9/11." —Heather Delaney Reese

"...poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of anything."

   "loaded checks"

dark gray welkin · stone wilderness
awhile traiking · the posh snakepit

awhile traiking · trystward blindfold
retreat blocked · in the owl octave

in the owl octave · dark gray welkin

Moonlessly.

( via / via )

A common misconception.

"fulguriator"

setting suns
& lonely radar looms
watch skyhook
gouge Troy

hoodwinked sound
conjyration mode
beauty's mesh
that sought coign

sleep's file clerk

"Your ’artistic voice’ isn’t something you invent. It’s something you gradually recognise. Your job is to listen. It will already be there."

"I myself, during 60 years of writing for publication, have never needed anything but grammatically sound sentences for the countless things that I’ve wanted to put into words."
—Gerald Murnane via

Colorized tornado i think.

( me / via )

Fasano's tribute.

“Leave only three wasps alive in the whole of Europe and the air of Europe will still be more crowded with wasps than space is with stars.” —Sir James Jeans

Jordan Belson retrospective.

erosive tanks tussle
toylike through fraught woods
locked out threat game threnody
within Fimbulthwart
frexious thrip
is snake trove

"But if there’s anything the road will teach you, it’s that none of us is where we are for any good reason at all."

( via / me )

"Whole chapters are dedicated to the evil portents which foretell the fall of various Emperors."

cloven hoof rock
foggy setback

crust strife
sage dowse moon

voy dire

"The books are dense, navigational, built for return visits. The only complication is that the game does not exist."

--What makes something poetry?

Aside from the inescapable timebound (faddish) criteria, these two seem to be permanent:

1. "yugen", or mysterious beauty; i.e. resonance with the subconscious. (in the 18c.--often called the least poetical time for english-- this was not expected nor sought.)

2. "calliditas", or concise aptness. Some--a very few--good poets lack this (Whitman, Jeffers) but there will always be those who refuse them the first rank for this reason.

I would also add: "melopoeia" or phonetic coherence (for some time now, in eclipse); "phanopoeia" or visual imagery; & "logopoeia" or conceptual originality (these are Pound's coinages).

"Poignancy" belongs in here somewhere, but since every age draws the line between pathos & bathos differently, i can only suggest that poetry must be about the human feelings & situations which are thought to be worth exploring at that time. Nowadays bad childhoods & famous artists appear frequently, while epics on the founding of political dynasties would be a very hard sell.

Having one of these excellences is sufficient; but having many of them is still better.

(2003)

Ghoul-haunted woodland.

( via / via )

Nine movies that capture the aftermath of 9-11. (via Joshua Rothkopf)

"Not only did the Edsel outsell the cybertruck, it sold almost twice as well.

The Edsel sold about 116,000 units over two years.

The cybertruck? 63k." —@stephenblackmore.com

The Hadronic Seeress and Other Wyrd Tales (2025).

"PRESIDENTS

The president of shame has his own flag
the president of lies quotes the voice
of God
as last counted
the president of loyalty recommends
blindness to the blind
oh oh
applause like the heels of the hanged
he walks on eyes
until they break
then he rides
there is no president of grief
it is a kingdom
ancient absolute with no colors
its ruler is never seen
prayers look for him
also empty flags like skins
silence the messenger runs through the vast lands
with a black mouth
open
silence the climber falls from the cliffs
with a black mouth like
a call
there is only one subject
but he is repeated
tirelessly"

—W S Merwin, The Carrier of Ladders (1970)

Bowie.

( via / via )

Answer to Fermi Paradox just dropped. (via Jorie Graham)

      "unclean thing"

unclean thing begone
gnarly lure of flycraft
      diligent
   skull burrower
give us this day · our daily Krasnov

Hollerith Shanghai
Boabdil addendum
      Hugging Face
   hootenanny
fast times · in the Führerbunker

Building monuments to alien gods.

"Was ever an insect flying between two flowers
Told less than we are told of what we are?"

—Cavender's House

Dread Pirate Roberts in Dallas. (thread)

( me / via )

"...a friend who attended San Diego State University told me he voted Republican only so that his diploma would come adorned with the Terminator’s autograph."

"There may be places in us all where things
Live that would make us run if we should see them."

—Cavender's House

Laughing While Leaving.

"It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountains and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been."

—Dickinson

"I cannot speak for someone else’s wounds. But I know what it is to be healed by something born from those wounds."

( via/ via )

Sonnet to Sleep (lipogram & lipogram translation).

encased in 'splainin' narpools
school zone world, gnostic
      bullion
   & faded shame
erse to inks · my iracund word

tricorne tarn patrolling
tryst azure & crash pad
      carillon
   smoke rises
watched by all · on their small screens

Modern shaped poem.

"I picked that year — call it 2014 — because I’d say that was the last little gasp of the blogosphere’s cultural relevance. Blogs still exist, sure, but they are institutional, professional, and (to employ a term that will read as very mid-twenties ten years from now), niche."
—Biblioklept via

Leaf by leaf.

( via / via )

Person to draw any seine.

"Out of nearly sixty presentations, more than two-thirds were some variation of 'here is how AI is impacting my practice.' " —Wrath Mania via

Bayeux tie-ins.

      "color banished"

pratfall flurry
loom output noisefire
pillow stepped on
chase
brim pentacle poemclasp
appoint joint ratchet
face turned away fandom
      filigree
   smoke of sapphire
chase figments · in a frail landscape

eclipse dust din branded
determine next turmoil
      law of things
   their own landfall
landfill take my map minefields
little enough vanquish · the vague velleities

abrogate all bruntlapse
Brutalist foyer coin toss
      as the wind
   of madness wones
too many glints · that once were gladness

"Evidently, letting literary intellectuals give a definition of culture is like letting billionaires decide how much tax they ought to pay."

( via / via )

A familiar place that becomes increasingly strange.

"helicopterese" (The Matrix, 1999)

1.
greenish golden light
in some encumbered alley
your chimp shades resting

in some encumbered alley
redbrick & bruised passage
& no certain turning

your chimp shades resting
where a moment back you tarried
crushed now beneath fathoms

2.
it is red pill or blue pill
it is Bhopal Chernobyl
nimble but to squander

it is Bhopal Chernobyl
shiver under Saturn
sleek black van

nimble but to squander
squidwise inkier delve
it is red pill or blue pill

The only Iron Man.

"She was ready to skip town much earlier than I was, probably around the time my car was stolen from in front of our apartment. That same week we stayed up all night waiting for the evacuation warning, as the flames crept down from the mountain and wiped the town above us off the map." —Henry Begler via

Storyteller's Wisdom.

( via / via )

Jekyll Island.

"john fetterman is the first rat in history to climb onto a sinking ship." —@covie93.bsky.social

THE END OF SUMMER (Palindrome).

4.
silence remains
through cruel zones
fought standstill
called cowboy reef

"...she saw the vast desert as a feminist space that should not be plundered for its resources." (thread)

( via / via )

Joy.

2.
trek evasions swarm
no right school
fishhook out

that long boil

3.
dead thousands
sot knaveries
i should laugh
all those void rules

Boon.

"For [VALIE] EXPORT, this was precisely the emancipatory effect. The rejection of unambiguity, intelligibility and communicative constraints shows a resistance to those symbolic and political orders that determine who is allowed to speak, how one should speak and which bodies are considered capable of speaking at all. " —Thomas D Trummer via

I like to imagine myself trapped in some kind of non-euclidean alien prison made of concrete rooms the size of planet.

( via / me )

"The punk and the metalhead both hate their high-school principal; the punk writes a song about the high-school principal, but the metalhead writes a song about harvesting the souls of the weak astride a stainless-steel warhorse."

"People are writing by hand again (especially in college classrooms!), they’re printing little booklets and zines, they’re generating new forms of piety and reverence towards printed text and swearing off the digital like it’s the drink." —Beatrice Marovich via

Last and First Men (2020) [on flash drive].

"Navier-Stokes"

1.
sin overtakes
wood font;
doubtboyg spiels

& bright pools
what art.

A Trade Darker than Magic.

( via / via )

HUMUMENT album cover.

"SUN GOD (Palindrome)

In a cosmos,

Sol buoys all.

As you blossom,

so can I."

—Anthony Etherin

Exeter Moon Night Cityscape.

It's 2026, when evil really looks like evil.

Designed to obey.

( via / via )

Some great Chinese ads in English.

" 'Cthulhu' is the sound someone makes when they sneeze and try to stifle it."
—@adamroberts.bsky.social

Alloparental care.

struggle · to make · a book · come clean

to make · a book · come clean · away

a book · come clean · away · from me

come clean · away · from me · & fly

(via)

"[single person clapping]."

( via / me )

On Edward Gorey.

"Poetry begins when the dead grow tired of the facts." —@brandonshimoda

Restless Shores.

raise the red lamprey
arrive at Swerve U-Bahn
cerulean treeline
rough whispers lichgate
standing on a stern spindle
stereoblade rabies
Lemurian-laid pitfall
raise the red lamprey

"Those people are in the same landscape as the songs come out of. I feel that they understand them."

( via / via )

To the Postal Carrier, About That Railing.

"at the zero hour"

feats of memory
feats of procrastination
vulture at the table

tastes my coffee before i do

Apophatic (II).

"A Philadelphia nun named Sister Rose Kuhn drives to a Texas immigration court weekly to sit next to unaccompanied children as young as 4 who are facing deportation hearings alone without relatives or an attorney so that they won’t have to face the judge by themselves."
—@therickydavila.bsky.social via

Zombie (throat singing cover).

( via / via )

Golden Mist of Error.

"And Xibalba is packed with tests, heaps and piles of tests." —Popol Vuh (tr Tedlock, 1996)

"...some poems 'you write' and some 'you talk about in bars': 'Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it’s fatal to confuse them'."

"tiny lizard got bigger"

a clean mask & clear sailing
shelves enough & night peace
Euclid neon
Lettie Lynton dress

Sistine Chapel.

( via / via )

The Days are Coming in Abundance.

"to own the Moon"

Radon Nardo Gray
rando in the plandark
baleful bully
bellicose ape-thumb scumbles
radon cinder block
sickness builds its triumph
gold on cardboard
decaying fash ashtray
all those years of saving
& pride tossed
cesspools found voidpull
Radon Nardo Gray

Northern Elegies, V.

"Right now, all of us are living through a renaissance in animation preservation. It’s a defining part of the 21st century..." —Animation Obsessive via

"That is the epigram. Small, bred for one afternoon’s work, disproportionately forceful, socially unreliable, and useless for the long amble."

( me / via )

Because it is.

"I had never heard of Flock cameras in my goddamned life and then one day I woke up and every town council everywhere had just unhinged their jaws months back and excitedly horfed down a full surveillance state." —catvalente.bsky.social

The Shuto Expressway that appears in Tarkovsky's Solaris.

salt crystals sparkle
redgreen & clear—like a reluctance
that is also a duty

"It was his own copy. It had somehow made its way from a gypsy cab in New York all the way through various book dealers to this place in Texas and back to him."