pale rabbit-tail in ther almost-night
angling across broken driveway
& i return, enamelled gate clank,
wizened wood; my own limbs creaking
"Hushed is the lake of hawks
Bright with our excitement,
And all the sky of skulls
Glows with scarlet roses;
The melter of men and salt
Admires the drinker of iron:
Bold banners of meaning
Blaze o'er the host of days."
--The Age of Anxiety
"I often wonder what the future will look like without humans."
"The Toad (Le Crapaud)
A song in the airless night...
Moon, a plate of metallic light,
The spaces, a sombre green.
...A song: like a lively echo,
Buried beneath the bank, below...
–It’s silent: but there, unseen...
– A toad! – Oh, why such terror,
Near me, you steadfast soldier!
See it: shorn poet, wingless forever,
A nightingale in the mud... – Horror! –
...It sings – Horror! – Horror, why,
Surely you see its light-filled eye, shining alone? ...
No, it’s gone, cold, under its stone."
--Tristan Corbière tr A S Kline
Maybe Perec can explain to me how to tell if i have won at Go.
"I asked GPT if it experienced qualia."
"In a winter twilight watched by ravens,
Birds on basalt,
And shadows of ships long-shattered lie..."
--The Age of Anxiety
"Winter Ocean
Many-maned scud-thumper, tub
of male whales, maker of worn wood, shrub-
ruster, sky-mocker, rave!
portly pusher of waves, wind-slave."
--John Updike
Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. ⎛⎝(ꜩ◟ꜩ)⎠⎞💗.
Anyone with windows can be me.
"FLYBY"
2.
4 hours in transit,
Neptune's firstseen face,
I, Swampling, ecstatic dancer,
erstwhile astronomer-in-training,
& vacillating space cadet ever,
i make the trek to gawk
a planet i once tried to story.
Ice crust then, O obsolescence of myth
while the astrologers' never varies
with the constancy
of an airtight con.
Pyramid schemes,
pyramids.
Dream me another Neptune, screen.
Show me its fashion palette.
My greedy Swamp-eyes
becloy up with acid paint,
rusted scrap...
4.
Neptune, planet of glamour,
green & improbable Oz-disk
not to reveal tonight
any more than before...
The ice bites deep.
I carry Plutonium....
(1989)
"The view, as we drove ourselves through the currents of this gassy sea, was monotonous, monochromatic, but weirdly beautiful." --Alexei Panshin
"...(when Robert Silverberg assembled an anthology of stories set on each planet, he had to commission Alexei Panshin to write an original one for Neptune)." ( At the Open Library.)
"And holy to his dread is that dark
Which will neither promise nor explain."
--The Age of Anxiety
"Readers of any age will find these characters difficult to believe in, let alone identify with, and several will recognize that Gordon ( Falling Towards Forever ) has taken his main plot from a combination of Clarke's 2010 and a story in Simak's City series." "Simak's version of Jupiter is a cold, windswept, and corrosive hell where only advanced technology allows the station to exist at all. A scientist is accompanied by Towser, his tired and flea-bitten old dog. But there is a problem: Men permanently transformed to survive unaided on Jupiter's surface leave the station to gather data and inexplicably fail to return. Finally, the scientist transforms himself and his canine companion into the seal-like beings that can survive the surface. They leave the station in their new form and experience Jupiter as a paradise." --Wikipedia
"FOR BASHO (Palindrome-Haiku)
Loop a tag or fog.
Oh, sable, we jewel Basho.
Go, frog at a pool!"
--@Anthony_Etherin
How Pirates Tried to Sabotage the Growth of the Slave Trade.
"traik tranklements"
rains diamonds · through the turbulent murk
not sparkling · veal veto
toe valve · the Great Dark Spot
& where it went to
2.
14 moons frolic · distracted
interacting · dun winter
book on the shelf here · onion scheme
anemic poet · dry Noah
3.
halcon bloody hoodwink
rehearse chiptune Neptune
diamonds are for amsace
airt of devout fountains
where methane finks fathoms
4.
one fifth of your turn ago
origin grown indigo
in a field i performed the argonaut
water of cult cargo
there will come soft rains
"...I knew you were not stasis
bedded in the marl
...What we know
wouldn't
fill
a lemur's fist..."
--Diane Ackerman, "Neptune"
A mission to 'Sea King Star' (海王星).
"My first novel, A Questionable Shape, is a zombie novel without zombies."
"From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Uranus, augur'd
Where his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed,
And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of space
Drew him slowly whene'er he pass'd, and slowly released him!"
--Robert Bridges, from "Wintry Delights"
"Fenris Shiba"
1.
hardly even storms
paleness · on that blue
so much cold
such pressure
somewhere else
no one will ever go
2.
i remember when Neptune was reached
or was it Uranus
3.
my ice library
forest of stumps
sleep in shells of houses
"Neptune the Ice Giant (palindrome)
Deep’s fog rebel is Neptune.
Model, bare never.
Go, space citadel,
apses paled at ice caps,
ogre, venerable dome,
nut pensile, berg of speed."
--@SpoonerRhythms
"For it[ ] i[s] November – once called Blōtmōnaþ, the month of sacrifice. The year has turned to cold knives. It offers nothing but a stinging, frigid clarity. In frost-cracked fields that leak starven ghosts, all augury cannot help but mention the coming of death." –-CLNolan via @hoandguide
The shape of time.-Energy Void.
"Around Sisyphus the world ripples; never the same mountain twice. He has climbed so many times, there are no more sane configurations: only crystals, scales, upward-slanting water, velvet underfoot, his boulder crackling as it rolls over a pristine expanse of egg" --@ctrlcreep
🤖WIP.
"The Smiles of the Bathers
The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water,
And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love.
The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollow
and old:
The pilot's relief on landing is no release.
These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and
public endings--
Water and wind and flight, remembered words and the act of love
Are but interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient and
quick,
Waits only for those who are dead. No death for you. You are
involved."
--Weldon Kees
"It moves me to see,
Burning above the mooring poles,
Fireflies
For I could cry out loud
At this world of ours."
"The sky is white. It smells of the earth, and it is not there. The sky is white like the earth, and it smells of yesterday. All this was tomorrow. All this was a hundred years from now."
--Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude (via @ForTheTape)
Picking up your secrets from the ground.
"In my mind's eye, Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds." --A S Byatt
Within the chambers of the velvet overlord.
"Not at all
Sensitive:
Even such a one
Can be moved
By the first wind of autumn."
--Saigyō
"The Autumn mists,
Rising as you departed,
For your sake
Amidst clouded thought
I have lost my way, I feel."
Angels in a Parking Garage #5.
"I have often been asked what the Zone represents. There is only one answer: the Zone doesn't exist. It's Stalker himself who invented his Zone. He created it in order to take some very unhappy people there, and to impose on them the idea of hope."
--Andrei Tarkovsky via @UtterlySpurious
Footage from the house in Al-Mansouri .
"Let the good times roll
Let them make you a clown"
--The Cars
Personal pain for collective pleasure.
"In idleness
Days and months I’ve spent:
I feel nothing for them.
A life spent blossom-viewing
In springtime is too short, indeed."
"The last of them left its name written in the stars, but no-one who came later could read it."
a touch of wood smoke
the worn gate
creaks like a bird
a touch of wood smoke
grief without a name
claws upon the veldt
a touch of wood smoke
the worn gate
And this is the time when i could have been doing something.
👁️🌀.
"...I must go away
With my terrors until I have taught them to sing."
--The Age of Anxiety
"I Have Loved Flowers That Fade
I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents:
A honeymoon delight—
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour—
My song be like a flower!
I have loved airs that die
Before their charm is writ
Along a liquid sky
Trembling to welcome it.
Notes, that with pulse of fire
Proclaim the spirit's desire,
Then die, and are nowhere—
My song be like an air!
Die, song, die like a breath,
And wither as a bloom;
Fear not a flowery death,
Dread not an airy tomb!
Fly with delight, fly hence!
'Twas thine love's tender sense
To feast; now on thy bier
Beauty shall shed a tear."
--Robert Bridges
"Awaiting you
I’ll not enter my bed;
Upon my cedarwood door
Strike not so hard,
O, moonlight from the mountains’ edge."
"I think what makes Milton and Dostoevsky such great political writers is that they programmatically make the characters whose views, actions, and ways of living they wish to condemn as compelling as if they did in fact support them." --@_ryanruby_
Broken Heart. The whole album.
"I wrote a systems novel but the system is Windows 95." --@_AustinAdams
"At Suma the fisher-folks’
Sleeves get blown about by
The incoming tide’s winds:
Familiar it is, indeed, yet
I cannot grasp it in my hand."
--Teika
"On the sea at Ômi,
Plovers fly the waves at dusk
And with their cries
My mind is turned
To thoughts of long ago."
--Hitomaro
"sometimes life feels like an endless stroll on the beach in winter; you walk and walk and there are pieces of yourself scattered all around but you can never decide whether to gather them or let the waves carry them away" --@dreamsofbeing_
Really, the robots don't have to line us up against a wall, they can just quietly close off every avenue of escape.
The tableaux of remaining objects.
chasing the dragon
with staring mad eyes · cargo
returning empty
from a war · bearing hemlock
for the tender truth-tellers
The little things nobody wanted to buy at the estate sale, salvador dali.
"The Currawong
I am the cunning one. My shrewd white eye,
Peeping from out some hidden harbour green,
Watches your household. Patiently I spy
Until I learn by heart its whole routine.
Myself unseen.
I witness, with sagacity profound,
Comings and goings in your daily round.
And what they mean.
I know what hour each morn the fowls are fed
When laurel berries ripen, too, I know.
I know when you’ll come out to scatter bread
For wren and robin twittering below,
Where roses blow.
When you take tea upon the lawn, I’m there
Waiting the quiet hour; then forth I dare
To glean my share.
I am the cunning one. I know too well
Base human treacheries. Not over shy,
I am too wise to fall beneath the spell
Of pretty blandishments. My shrewd white eye
Has told me why.
A friendliness, too easily begun,
Might, thro’ my pilferings, find me undone —
The cunning one."
--C J Dennis (1935)
"And beside a sundial, in the silent umbrage
Of some dark daedal,
The ruined rebel is recreated..."
--The Age of Anxiety
"how/ I thought of my/ well-worn books,/ --and our boxes of/ laughing/ bricks." --A Humument
Whoa! They've translated The Chiliads!
tinker's dam · epic
wad · scrape of fingernail
on ear cartilage · metonymy
burning sip · lost wax icon
dark brown floor · smooth with scratches
paler · like strewn grasses
the pulled morning · through grilles psychic
& otherwise · imagine wars
here · fear of outside
no light yet · the street ebon
stint flow · tinker's dam
"Girl At Midnight
Then walk the floor, or twist upon your bed
While bullets, cold and blind, rush backward from the target’s eye,
And say, 'I will not dream that dream again. I will not dream
Of long-spent whispers vanishing down corridors
That turn through buildings I have never known;
The snap of rubber gloves; the tall child, blind,
Who calls my name; the stained sheets
Of another girl. And then a low bell,
Sounding through shadows in the cold,
Disturbs the screen that is my mind in sleep.
'—Your face is never clear. You always stand
In charcoal doorways in the dark. Part of your face
is gone. You say, "Just to be through with this damned world.
Contagious fogs blow in. Christ, we could die
The way deer sometimes do, their antlers locked,
Rotting in snow."
'And I can never speak.
But have I ever told the truth to you?
I did not ask for this; a new disease threads in.
I want your lips upon my lips, your mouth
Upon my breasts, again, again, again, again;
I want the morning filled with sun.
'But I must dream once more of cities burned away,
Corrupted wood, and silence on the piers.
Love is a sickroom with the roof half gone
Where nights go down in a continual rain.
Heart, heart. I do not live. The lie of peace
Echoes to no end; the clocks are dead.
What we have had we will not have again.' "
--Weldon Kees
"John Tzetzes (c.1110-c.1180)... His principal works are...(3) The Historiae or Chiliads, a versified commentary on his letters in 12,674 15-syllable lines. ...He later composed a prose commentary on his commentary." --Penguin Companion to Classical & Byzantine, Oriental & African Literature
"And with them rushed swart algebras, disturbed" --Nimrod, V.
constellations moving on,
we clutch an outworn zodiac;
the season-words of yore will mock
tomorrow's loyal haiku fan.
but not these scenes detain me--
my ticket's to the end of the line;
my work is with the yawing Wain
& the Camel's Eye tiny.
Collect the black unicorn 🌚🕳️🦄.
"dangling
the long legs of a great
blue heron
Vanishing as sunglow
bursts through cobwebby clouds"
--an'ya
"There is only one art that is blithely taken up without training, without discipline and without the appreciation of difficulty with which one approaches even the learning of knitting, and that is the art of writing." --Kathleen Sully (via Mefi)
