I Must Create The Ultimate Being.
bardic grimoary & notions
Not enough people are planning for this.
"PALINDROME COMPOSED ON A PHONE, AT NIGHT
Laid an ode, drowsy.
Eked one poem:
O, some open ode!
Keys worded on a dial."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"cardboard whisperer"
a raw roar of · raghdirst frolicking
base note now · to my nugatory reveries
a stiff wind wandered · way south
sportive conspiracy · in the spectral link
proof of prowess · for prattle sans issue
my dear we are desp'rate · in deigning to stay here
our habits hoarded · ceiling high
& the cold gaze · of the killer roams
among face flickers · a fierce intentness
Anybody notice how there is no plan on the table..?
"THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW (ON YELL’HAM HILL)
In my loamy nook
As I dig my hole
I observe men look
At a stone, and sigh
As they pass it by
To some far goal.
Something it says
To their glancing eyes
That must distress
The frail and lame,
And the strong of frame
Gladden or surprise.
Do signs on its face
Declare how far
Feet have to trace
Before they gain
Some blest champaign
Where no gins are?"
--Thomas Hardy
"Never assume for malice that which can be adequately explained by a systematic attempt to align cosmic forces to summon an eldritch abomination of impossible horror." --@philosophalopod
The Ranjana script was traditionally used in sacred contexts such as prayer wheels. Check out this animation of a newly-created Ranjana font.... pic.twitter.com/Hq9DRClQ9V
— Tim Brookes (@TBAlphabets) March 18, 2024
"Nothingness is simultaneously the cruelty of all good things not existing, and the relief of all bad things not existing—it is thus a matrix both sharp and soft, undulating knives, urchin dough, a fractal of alternating needles and puffs" --@ctrlcreep
"Enter Patient
The morning mists still haunt the stony street;
The northern summer air is shrill and cold;
And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,
Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet.
Thro' the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom
A small, strange child—so aged yet so young! -
Her little arm besplinted and beslung,
Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room.
I limp behind, my confidence all gone.
The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on,
And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail:
A tragic meanness seems so to environ
These corridors and stairs of stone and iron,
Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail."
--W E Henley
Your grandfather was murdered by a clown.
"Of welcome
Has permitted and has interdicted
Has held and has differed
Trace us a
hammer seen in a caravan, trace us
a dim soul seen in
a fallen street"
--Robot X, 2858.
"Once again I saw through the windows those sickly trees of the deserted square..."
"Yes, within a half mile radius from where this photo was taken there’s a punk club, a club where you can have sex on the dance floor, a feminist bookstore, a David Lynch themed bar..." --@_ryanruby_
what is this lynchian bar of which you speak is it called silencio it better be
"It’s called The Black Lodge and I think it’s not the only twin peaks themed bar in that neighborhood" --@unkyoka
ok the black lodge & the vantablack lodge i can dig it
"I wonder if orcas can also take down unicorns."
"Just reread Valis. It’s the work of someone who is insane but also a genius. Not for everyone but I believe it’s peak PKD" --@thoughtographic
gotta go back to that one. i think maybe he shot right past the 20c into the 21c & only now can we understand it.
citadel of taffy
mutters through the fog
of war the red flag
that is decaf coffee
citadel of tungsten
windows thick with pitch
i carry your angst
in a keurig to the kitchen
we are where the pavement curdles
death a shared taste
in unreality immersed
paper homes for tornados
"And a day goes by..."
Facts Vs Opinions--a dissenting opinion.
"THE DESERT (Palindrome)
Moody, burned dust….
Oh, still aerify!
My ravine defoliated,
dim, its mirage bit.
Sure no bliss of pools to order,
still its red roots loop fossil bone.
Rust, I beg
a rim’s timid detail of Eden.
I vary my fire:
All its hot, sudden, ruby doom."
--@Anthony_Etherin
We need to tap (back) into eastern european orthodox+folk horror (via @vorticistgirl)
“The world is neither significant or absurd." --Robbe-Grillet (via @incastellated)
( via )
"We are living through an era of thudding cultural literalism."
"CROW (Palindrome)
Deft,
I saw a crow,
over us,
a sure vow or caw
as it fed."
--@Anthony_Etherin
too much space in the garage
blank pilgrimage into
not even a handhold
on the sheer stone sides
oranges & lemons
my odyssey forgetting
my bodycount forgetting
Mondo 2000 online. (E.g. Mark Pauline interview #2 p 114)
"star anchorage"
1.
brillig ichneumons bruise
pale of the rotted pergola
brimstone possibly
returned drake tarn
verboten featherless bipeds
tor bothering
vortex espionage
2.
blurry routes arraign · reverie drunkard
deglycyrrhizinated · gloze on a poet
sent packing · subfusc pavilion
at the table trawl · a trivial silence
lost · in the lesser myst'ries
3.
secondhand rodeo · sinking
a fine grind glimflash
old Saigon
put on a rare record
blue & its box blatant
royal blancmange
is it only i inch
t'wards now stern twaddle
effigies twyborn
as in the moonglade moiling
"...art may be the only remaining medium of truth in age of incomprehensible terror and suffering."
"In literary criticism, a SMEERP is a word invented unnecessarily by a sci-fi or fantasy author just to give their writing a false sense of bizarreness or exoticism. The author James Blish is said to have coined the term by summing up this technique as ‘calling a rabbit a smeerp’." --@haggardhawks
"Valuing novels for the social information they contribute, as many literary prizes do, is like judging dogs for fetching." --James Elkins in Athenaeum Review.
"’Tis pointless-
The bitter storm wind’s
Roar, too, is cruel;
Why, in the evenings,
Am I so used to waiting?"
"The Tlinglit seriously have one of the best artistic aesthetics of any culture."
"Phoenix
Wakes
to a whiff of stale fireplace,
ash flour-fine on her lids.
Flashes
on feather tips blazing,
scorched-grass reek,
eye-searing embers.
Fireweed rising...
Lurches to her feet,
sooty pinions cramped,
blistered leg still tender.
What conflagration?
Shake out your wings."
--Elise Partridge
"We should just stop teaching people that hating stuff counts as taste." --@668_Beast
Fugitive Wolves. (thread)
"Just discovered another beautiful and very useful Old English word: œ̄ðelwynn ‘homeland-joy’, joy at being in or of one’s homeland. Since œ̄ðel (“homeland”) and wynn (“joy”) are both names of runes, you can even write it as two runes: ᛟᚹ" --@wylfcen
"Speech for the Repeal of the McCarran Act
As Wulfstan said on another occasion,
The strong net bellies in the wind and the spider rides it out;
But history, that sure blunderer,
Ruins the unkempt web, however silver.
I am not speaking of rose windows
Shattered by bomb-shock; the leads touselled; the glass-grains broadcast;
If the rose be living at all
A gay gravel shall be pollen of churches.
Nor do I mean railway networks.
Torn-up tracks are no great trouble. As Wulfstan said.
It is oathbreach, faithbreach, lovebreach
Bring the invaders into the estuaries.
Shall one man drive before him ten
Unstrung from sea to sea? Let thought be free. I speak
Of the spirit's weaving, the neural
Web, the self-true mind, the trusty reflex."
--Richard Wilbur, 1956
"after a long nap
within the raindrop
the bell of transience"
--@poem_exe
"Crow's Fall
When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
'Up there,' he managed,
'Where white is black and black is white, I won.' "
--Ted Hughes
I finally made it onto Mirror Island.
1.
spring too soon · sprout wings on
a dark day · with foaming delirium
birds burble · & later there's drizzle
even the fluorescents · inside the bank seem dim
spring too soon · since the crescent fell
our scurrying scours · & concrete scoots
inside a cloud · occluded dernely
yesterday's yearnings · i use for kindling
2.
exile earned · oars the long way
sunken citadel · i sing in the lonely hours
can arrive where its ruins · irrupt curbside
can conjure · its first face
"film camera nerds are always like shot on 200 year old kodak gold 900 that i found in the black sea and dried on a tree in chernobyl and had developed on the international space station. and then the pictures are just empty midwestern parking lots" --@tamphopho
"VERSE (Palindrome by Anagrammed Words)
Serve
supersonic
form
from
percussion:
verse."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"XIX
In midnights of November,
When Dead Man's Fair is nigh,
And danger in the valley,
And anger in the sky,
Around the huddling homesteads
The leafless timber roars,
And the dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
Oh, yonder faltering fingers
Are hands I used to hold;
Their false companion drowses
And leaves them in the cold.
Oh, to the bed of ocean,
To Africk and to Ind,
I will arise and follow
Along the rainy wind.
The night goes out and under
With all its train forlorn;
Hues in the east assemble
And cocks crow up the morn.
The living are the living
And dead the dead will stay,
And I will sort with comrades
That face the beam of day."
--AE Housman, Last Poems
80s "neo-expressionist" films.
"for a handful of likes"
1.
another endgame same pieces
the plastic dark · that has taken so many
since the last census · counted in the dark
languages of choice · falter
i carefully place · glasses on the table
it is a long time · until morning
2.
how threadbare the thistle · castles rise
that would keep us occupied · otherwise lorn
with sweeping winds · off a wild expanse
the perfected weapons · of a pallid dawn
3.
this tower built to the moon · what then
a password used · a lot for awhile
& then forgotten
At the beginning of a ghost dance that is also its own cargo cult.
Rain.
"This is the first of thousands of indicators that a human being did not write this screenplay."
Unfortunately all too many educators (& others!) in the higher echelons have no critical thinking skills either, they just have the duckspeak set at max. So how can they judge whether an AI can think?
"paregoracle"
duckspeak dense with buzzwords
a dirge upon poolside
a cruel desecration
a cruel desecration
crawled up from the biz world
now they wage Wolf Winter
on wights bearing meaning
the bottom line boosting
the bottom line boosting
aboard the Titanic
"Do not attempt to shuck the absurd flower of my doubts about the Fatherland."
⊙.
"Radiohead (palindrome)
Till I kill, it’s live.
Do I dare?
Do I dare?
Solder I wed.
A metal pen,
a cranial pot,
dials laid to plain, arcane plate
made wired loser—
a diode radio devil.
Still, I kill it."
--@SpoonerRhythms
This is the feeling every day, yes?
It's not that those on the margins see more because they're morally superior. They see more because they are less invested in Not-Seeing. It's not that trauma gives you wings: trauma pulls you with terrible claws out of the perfectly understandable condition of Not-Wanting-To-Know.
"PI (Aelindrome in 314159)
Spiral tears are
cut....
A sector’s area alters —
pi."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"Poem
I first loved you
second to
your gentleness
like the blind who
divide their lives into
dark and dark I
have you and your gentleness
as a detail in a painting frames that painting
in the often
memory, your face
is surrounded by your eyes
unafraid
of the grays of gentleness
but better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
the harshness
when you talk about that prison capitalism
when you vow never to stop fighting
never
until each woman and man is free
until each woman and man is in the custody
of their gentleness"
--Bill Knott
"FORGETFULNESS
Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearingly.
Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,--or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,--white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
I can remember much forgetfulness."
--Hart Crane
"Saturn said:
But what is that wonder, so widely faring,
so stern in onset, that strikes at foundations,
wakes woedroplets, as it wages against us?
Nor may stars or stones, nor strongest gems,
nor water nor wild beast, one whit escape,
for its hands grip all: the hard and soft,
meek and mighty; whose maw swallows,
without fail each year, to feed its hunger,
of the land-living, aloft-flying
and water-swimming of world-dwellers,
three times thirteen a thousandfold?
Solomon said:
Over everything on Earth, Age is mighty;
she slips on the bonds of her enslaving chain’s
far-reaching fetters, fastens the shackles
with lengthy links, of her leash as she wills.
She breaks the branches, beats down the trees,
wrenches their roots up; in her ruthless course
she fells to the floor the faltering trunks:
even the wildfowl she gobbles, like a wolf in rage,
more steadfast than stone, as steel in hardness,
eats iron with rust—she is all-consuming."
--Rahul Gupta, from the OE "Second Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn"
Finalists for the 59th Nebula awards. Which, now that the Hugos have gone all jumpsky sharksky, is IT.
"It's too expensive to throw a laptop or e-reader across the room & that's eliminated one of the small harmless joys of reading" --@mjohnharrison
We’re all ghosts in the making...
"POSTSCRIPT
Though now but marble are the marble urns,
Though fountains droop in waning light and pain
Glitters on the edges of wet ferns,
I should not dare to let you in again.
Mine is a world foregone though not yet ended,--
An imagined garden grey with sundered boughs
And broken branches, wistful and unmended,
And mist that is more constant than your vows."
--Hart Crane
My life is in turmoil right now, but these things I know.
Nice illus of thorn into lc 'Y'.
"pergola"
cairns cadged · in the cold hours
gallumphing gurgle · i await like god
stagger astounded · stumble through
fresh hangings · of terrible fruit
we have antics & alibis · options & debate
but strength to stop this · is strangely lacking
in the chain of command · from the killing to the cheering
& even the telling · gets twisted up
urgent throng · inchmeal Rainrake
bright breakage · in brillig plotted
cairns cadged · in the cold hours
hearts heaved · like pebbles at a screen
A wooden box of things I found and put together.
"who amongst us is not trained on publicly available data?" --@megs_io
"Few nations have as many names as Faerie. It used to be more commonly called Elfland or the Perilous Realm. Others told it as the Silvered Land due to its two moons. I like those accounts refering to it as ‘the Enfolding Kingdom’ as that speaks of its closeness. - Rev. H.R. Fade" --@HooklandGuide
Global Village Coffeehouse style.
"the brotherhood of the wolf"
i was not one of those
who thought the murdering neighbor was innocuous
i knew where meat came from
i have hefted the steer-smasher's mallet
the mines that made cellphones
were no myst'ry
the white men behind the black anchor
the suits behind the starlet
all these i knew
the emperor's lack of clothes
& how little it would matter
for me to hold a sign in the street
or to say to a co-worker
i think that stinks
the coffee bag is in my ammo box
army surplus forty years old
"Hecht couldn’t let go of the idea that seriousness requires an arcane vocabulary."
"Farewell Desires
To unwind yourself like Houdini
from desires' pinioning buckles,
to bob away, an untethered dory
from a golden shore.
To be tumbled by whim
bloom to bloom to bloom,
not snapped by stubborn longing
into carnivorous sepals.
Throw out the devil of hoarding,
his bower-bird piracy
and magpie curios.
Let my green wants
be maple seeds
twirling into a ditch, my wishes
crackers flung over the transom
to battling gulls.
Goddess of discards,
let me be a waterfall
pouring a heedless mile,
stride barefoot over the drawbridge
to the plain road."
--Elise Partridge
Giedi Prime. (via rhonda havins on fb)
"I think a lot of people haven’t realized that the market for making people feel like artists is larger than the market for consuming art itself" --@Pidud_
On thinking in images/thinking in words: there is the metaphor of "more image-like" & the metaphor of "more-verbalization-like", but its actuality is rather far from the perception of either, externally.
"Decolonization ghazal with smartphone in my hand
You doomscroll every night or become apocalypse-denier, lol.
Count the headlines that unsay genocide, unsay ceasefire, lol.
Hey Siri, is this El Niño or are they bombing the ice caps too?
Siri says: prepare to dance on your own funeral pyre, lol.
True friends send me memes when I’m depressed, sink ships, scheme,
clog the Red Sea with dollars dead to the empire, lol.
Gun aimed at a burning martyr, at Truth ablaze yet intact: this
clarity of the livestream, as if God attempts satire, lol.
They shadowban resistance, though terror sees raised fists, laughter.
They want to be the heroes, of suffering never tire, lol.
WebMD has no diagnoses when symptom is silence, nor cure.
Are bitten tongues complicit? It’s complicated?–enquire, lol.
ChatGPT does homework: can once-colonized turn colonizer?
Algorithms wipe out mosques, victims pray at temples for hire, lol.
When my love had to leave I became a blinking heart on her phone.
Seas and moons have emojis, not what divides us–barbed wire–lol.
Select all images of peace–from mansion, factory, palace, zoo,
army checkpoint; no bot, only human is this kind of liar, lol.
Lonely, at rock bottom, you reach for a cobalt sedative–phone.
Eyes blur, thumbs numb–of the people who make it, wheeze, perspire, lol.
We’ll picnic and take selfies with the living and our dead one day–
feast, fly kites, kiss–at the grave of every last occupier, lol.
Their calm sniper’s sane, our freedom fighters, animals; so even
tiny fly, #BurnDownAllCages, revolt’s in your name, fire–lol."
--Tanima in Only Poems
"Cancer Surgery
Squeak squeak...
where?
middle-of-the-night
fenced by steel rails,
tethered to a pouch
light
knifes under the door
squeak GLARE
the nurse's shoes
Dark again.
Red digits blink: morphine drip.
Chest a gauzy snowpatch, itchy with tape.
A silver balloon sways on the updraft--
messenger from some festivity
too far to imagine, ocean-trench creature
bobbing dopily
where goggle-eyed fish ghost by.
How did I land here,
shot down like a migrating bird
who had other latitudes in mind?"
--Elise Partridge
Pareidolia is a hell of a drug.
"I saw this interview with a guy whose whole family had adermatogyphia (no fingerprints) and he said it would be easy to commit crimes but it’s pretty difficult to turn the pages of books and I have never felt so torn about a scenario in my life." --@askanyone
"moral rock garden"
1.
when cars wore animal names
& each looked diff'rent
airplanes plied the body bags
on great silver wings
counted
on the black granite scroll
& over the course of a war
summed to a number
that number stares back at me
only it's children
not soldiers
& the war's since the leaves last turned
on these sky-spearing branches
(oh only one-fourth as much
or less
that makes it better
on great silver wings
my super power is silence
2.
groan of torn metal
monolith appears in Wales
rogue glows in the sullen subfusc
spires of power poles
story about TikTok
3.
government hold dubstep
became my theme song