( via / lanny quarles on fb )

Emblemata: Mel ab Meta.

Random # 136 = 253 in base-7; 2 + 5 + 3 = 10 lines

keys that don't fit · finish of a symphony
  like finish of all the others
mechanized death-dealing · darkens my timeline
  things i can't scroll past
summer lingers · in the slow lanes
  all the time in the world
to busy with books · barter for favors
ecome challenges.   sharpen your sense of self
if i struggled to stand · on this unbroken sidewalk
  someone would come help me up

A trump bible in every classroom, detailed oil painting, norman rockwell.

I never cared for that word, "try". Stopping to consider & then doing it slighty differently & then seeing if the results are any better--that i can manage. Clenching one's teeth is optional.

[Meme: "When the mind is weak, circumstances become problems. When the mind is stable, circumstances become challenges. When the mind is strong, circumstances become opportunities." --Life Changing Quotes]

I have to remind myself that people unlike myself can still find reward in thoughts i don't. But all i can think of is somewhere there's a factory that garbles good ideas & endlessly repackages its output as simplified &/or misattributed memes. Once in awhile i can locate a source that is dedicated to debunking (e.g. "Nietzsche Didn't Say These") & i think of this as a public service. In this particular case i have found the words attributed to Hilton Craig Upshon, Prabha Iyer, or Deepti Hahl. It might as well be Freud-Gpt. There's a book by Barbara Ehrenreich Smile or Die that goes a little bit into America's love of positivity. I think, on the one hand, there are probably millions of people whose difficulties are of such a nature as can be addressed in this way, & i guess i can't blame them if in their zeal they want all problems to be equally solvable. I am more in line with Unamuno & The Tragic Sense of Life.

Pummeled.

( me / via )

Isle of Wight.

"Shakespeare and his contemporaries received adequate, continued support from the government during an ongoing pandemic that stretched on for years. " --@catieosaurus via

Mohawk Power.

"Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining shells.
Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining death.

Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining shells.
Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining death.

Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining shells.
Stop it stop it stop it
It is raining death."

--@MosabAbuToha

Inspirational.

( via / via )

Scare filtered.

Random # 146 = 266 in base-7; 2 + 6 + 6 = 14 line

blue sparks · burlesque practice
ear canal · ark of nylon
mini-moon
scratch out of reach
cobweb · Qabbalah wobble
leads out · of ale desert
casket coat
coolth clothing
no dime here · snide mohair
tunnel down · tune-laden
farce foresee
crows crazy
acrid wooze · creedwise
i go by gobsmacked

Hell.

"True story. Had a very weird dream last night. I was talking to Ray Bradbury about AI. 'Here's the problem,' I said. 'You could load up 1984, then have the AI revise the novel to make Big Brother the hero, and Winston Smith the bad guy, then upload it to the net, replacing --' " --@straczynski

In Carcosa.

( via / via )

» Cosmic Waves «.

They know how to cover disasters, & they know how to cover clowns, but they don't know what to do with a disaster clown.

"The aesthetic of cuteness is organized not around signs and their productivity of meaning, but around moe."

Random # 104 = 206 in base-7; 2 + 0 + 6 = 8 lines

"squib"

the long silver thread · of my thrown boulder
gray upon gray · grievous wrongs
  the knife has my back
  in dry alembic

the stark sentence · steals back
to the cave candled by · lost furlongs
  vast arthropods
  & silver threads

Some nice effects i've not seen before.

( via / me )

Modern Armor.

Random 3 141 = 261 in base-7; 2 + 6 + 1 = 9 lines

commotion in the modem
more than the surge outside
manticore salsa
tenfold talion waged
in the halcyon autumn hustle
too much heartbreak
& just enough nonsense
to keep you dazed & doubtful
as they nab broad daylight

Don't forget to feed your pet.

"Keaton probably came closest to dying on Our Hospitality, when the cable that was holding him broke and he was swept away by the river. The camera kept rolling, and they used the footage in the movie" --@silentmoviegifs

Seafarer.

( via / via )

"As convention and experience now confirm, this is not a tiny amount of the drug."

"Somehow the new rules for bibles which are now mandated for public schools in Okla are only met by the official 'Trump Bible'. No really." --@joshtpm

Flizzoms.

Random # 124 = 233 in base-7; 2 + 3 + 3 = 8 lines

mood of may-break-soon · mired in the looking glass
stabbing frabjous
yeti o'clock · clepsydral wanion
picks up the rice · where a process has roared
shadows to fadge
from the last shards · of a latent space
the ziptie stripped
the key barely working · in the worn lock

Work table.

( via / via )

Can we take a rest?

Random # 256 = 514 in base-7; 5 + 1 + 4 = 10 lines

an iron dome · over the worst days
  will these become like that
toler'ble tarnish · conniption jags
  toys' steady flow
& shame shouldn't · share in the weather
  yet where was the open heart
you'd want were it you · in the waste rubble
  not off in the distance
pretending to pry · in the secrets of matter
  by means of Candy Crush

Tumbling die.

"It seemed to her that he was ready to live and die for emotional errors as women did, but that like most men he did not call them emotional errors; he called them history, philosophy, metaphysics, science." --Anaïs Nin

Shakespeare 5 bouts-rimés.

( via / me )

𝒮𝑒𝒸𝑜𝓃𝒹𝓈 𝓉𝑜 𝒮𝒶𝓁𝓋𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃.

"E. B. White once remarked, 'Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.' " via.

Her migrating bird.

Random # 250 = 505 in base-7; 5 + 0 + 5 = 10 lines

MammotH
Angst aurorA
Rustling through East MordoR
Avid of such havoc harM
Served tO
Clown kiN
Hell alibI
Into sphingid musiC
Night descends on the thin lemmA
OrchidS

"There’s the book itself, and there’s the shadow it leaves after you’ve read it. The shadow is even as haunting as the book."

( via / no context atomic comics group via gordon hilgers on fb )

The film the world needed.

"THE OBSESSION

Last night I dreamed my father died again,
A decade and a year after he dreamed
Of death himself, pitched forward into night.
His world of waking flickered out and died —
An image on a screen. He is the father
Now of fitful dreams that last and last.

I dreamed again my father died at last.
He stood before me in his flesh again.
I greeted him. I said, 'How are you, father?'
But he looked frailer than last time I'd dreamed
We were together, older than when he'd died —
I saw upon his face the look of night.

I dreamed my father died again last night.
He stood before a mirror. He looked his last
Into the glass and kissed it. He saw he'd died.
I put my arms about him once again
To help support him as he fell. I dreamed
I held the final heartburst of my father.

I died again last night: I dreamed my father
Kissed himself in glass, kissed me goodnight
In doing so. But what was it I dreamed
In fact? An injury that seems to last
Without abatement, opening again
And yet again in dream? Who was it died

Again last night? I dreamed my father died,
But it was not he — it was not my father,
Only an image flickering again
Upon the screen of dream out of the night.
How long can this cold image of him last?
Whose is it, his or mine? Who dreams he dreamed?

My father died. Again last night I dreamed
I felt his struggling heart still as he died
Beneath my failing hands. And when at last
He weighed me down, then I laid down my father,
Covered him with silence and with night.
I could not bear it should he come again —

I died again last night, my father dreamed."

--Wesli Court (Lewis Turco)

I was thinking of you.

"Neither you nor I is mythic but the saxophone/ probably is."

--Gerald Burns

The man-faced Living Creature hiding behind the Holy Trinity is my spirit animal.

( via / lanny quarles on fb )

I am not a robot, detailed oil painting, egon schiele.

"The Napoleonic wars did not affect the great majority of those writers at all." --Virginia Woolf

"I understand that biology and mathematics also await their avatars..."

"The Plum Tree

Tu ne quaesieris…

The plum tree’s dying branch by branch,
A candelabra going dark.
Leaves ticket down, no avalanche,
A gangrene inches through the bark.

Fruit trees are short-lived. So we’d heard.
For years we thought its time had come;
Yet each spring bridal blossoms stirred
And each year purpled into plum.

One summertime will be its last –
I think it’s this one. You do too.
It happened gradually, then fast,
As bankruptcy is said to do.

Yet look, here is a last hurrah –
A meager harvest of late fruits,
Some hanging on dead boughs. What law
Of time and ripeness in cahoots

Offers this unlooked-for haul?
Let’s gather it, though posthumous;
And if the final count is small,
The sweeter is the sum to us,

And we can pray, just as before,
For signs (should we consult them) that
Our plum tree has one summer more,
This now, ever penultimate."

--@ae_stallings in London Review of Books

Walking.

( me / also me )

Space sight seeing bus.

Random # 238 = 460 in base-7; 4 + 6 + 0 = 10 lines

two dalmations midway
the morning dread redbrick
Kristofferson strafing
story of grim scrimmage
halcyon while the grilse hurl
hellbent on their rentfetch
these words wodwo chortles
would have lost his hood swerve
but for snap rebooting
borrowing dire tire-squeals

The road to Damascus.

“Neither time nor hands have touched the shrubs in the windless garden…”

—Walter Benjamin via @dreamsofbeing_

"That’s 1 in 12 people in Gaza, starved and slaughtered in the name of self-defence." (via @ericcoliu)

( me / via )

Too much fun with a virtual machine.

"American literature becomes problematical, not to say impossible, because if it limits itself to the traditional language and form of a national literature it misses the basic truths about itself, while if it attempts to tell those truths it abolishes itself as literature."

—F Jameson via @_ryanruby_

Peephole.

Random # 210 = 420 in base-7; 4 + 2 + 0 = 6 lines

cicadas in winddown
wardrobe-reft intrinsic
afraid & uncertain
hurt by aidled music

unseen but not sudden
blood-drenched tons to fossick

Tiras.

( me / via )

UnNature.

Random # 106 = 211 in base 7; 2 + 1 + 1 = 4 lines

sharkforward affliction
forest of meat treatments
dark cloud among clocksnips
occludes even grieving

Beeple weighs in.

"Perhaps a perfect union existed for lovers willing to destroy the world around them." --Anaïs Nin

Gregor Samsa, 2024. (via @Jen3nfer)

( via / via )

Take Me Back.

"Babe what's wrong, you don't like pumpkin spice wartime election eclipse hurricane season?"

--@amandafortini

More Ta Nali.

Random # 288 = 561 in base-7; 5 + 6 + 1 = 12 lines

finite math · of the morning sequence
  a dance with things & memory
circle saving · all within
  from death by dint of symmetry
but a pattern parries · no sick newsreel
  bombs that will bury light
a cough carries · in the still hours
  like a gunshot or flare in the sky
& love that lingers · only in adjustments
  now or a sometimes smile
is cry from the rubble · that leads to rescue
  is grace note that tunes the stars

Mystery Girl on Patrol.

( via / via )

"A couple of professors told me that their students see reading books as akin to listening to vinyl records—something that a small subculture may still enjoy, but that’s mostly a relic of an earlier time." (via @saintsoftness

From Legion of Space by Jack Williamson (1935):

“…the far, strange planet of Barnard’s Runaway Star.” (p. 17)

“The night-side of it was utterly black, a round blot on the stars. The day-side was a curved and ugly crimson blade, stained with evil blood, clotted with dark rust. Its orbit lay close to the dying dwarf. And it was gigantic, John Star realized, many times the bulk of Earth.”

“…that dense red atmosphere hides the surface.”

“The remarkable motion of Barnard’s Star, they tell me now, is a thing of their own accomplishment.” (85)

“This planet is much larger than Earth. About three times the diameter. Its rotation is very slow, its day about fifteen of Earth’s. The nights are fearful. A week long, and bitterly cold…There is just one large continent—about equal in area to all Earth.” (89)

“The sky was a cold, lowering dome of sullen crimson; the sun burned low in it, an incredibly huge disk of deeper, sinister scarlet.” (92)

--Oddly, he never names the planet. Does The Big Jump (1953)? Apparently not. The Black Corridor (1969) doesn't either. I named it Janus in an unpublished story in '73 or '74...although surely Andre Norton has preëmpted that one. [Robert Forward deserves mention, too, for his several novels set in that star-system.]

Very feedbacky loop.

"(Spahr on 'the relationship between lyric poetry and language poetry': 'I think their relationship is not going so well although they seemed to have stopped yelling at each other. But I don’t think they will be dating much soon.' Umm, thanks!)" --Hotel Point, 3-18-05

The overzealous art critic.

( via / me )

"The weapons must offer potential buyers what they seek, which is generally something between control and deterrence, a balance most easily struck—for those without ethical qualms—through terror." (via @maryturfah via @aliner)

"Narrative phantasy is healing. By placing our sorrows under the narrative light, it takes away their oppressive facticity. They are absorbed by narrative rhythms and melodies. A story raises them above mere facticity. Instead of solidifying into a mental block, they liquefy in the narrative flow."

--Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narrative qtd at spurious.typepad

Limited incursion. (Random # 108 = 213 in base-7; 2 + 1+ 3 = 6 lines

delicate stink astir
my black coat garners calories
in the stark calm
not thinking of the throngs
trying to outrun the troubles

Euterpē.

( me / via )

Money is King.

Random # 284 = 546 in base-7; 5 + 4 + 6 = 15 lines

in-the-same-footsteps fetters
not even the void deters
yawning beneath like a dream
remaining in the day's bloodstream
ice canyons & nitrogen
slush to the dim horizon
so cold & we're not used to it
except for new moon's visit
vast fields of smoking rubble
here & there part of a skull
bright lies-woven tapestry
shades each shattered leaf-reft tree
at the underpass idling
adorned with the late dawn's bling
& bleeding ev'ry ingot

The Black Death.

"(Experimental Modernism is by now, after all, a genre of its own. It’s as old and over-developed as sci-fi, divided into easily-recognisable subgenres. There are rules to follow, tropes to be reproduced, textual markers to be laid down, easter eggs to be hidden for the knowing reader.)" --@mjohnharrison via

Panorama at Chimney Rock. (via @jorie_graham)

( me / via )

"A massive statue was created by a local artist, and the City hopes that by honoring the damage, it can help the community move past the tragic storm."

"During the air strikes, we sat on the tiled,
dusty floor, stock-still as pills
in a bottle in a pharmacy in a town
where no one gets sick,
where everybody is dead."

--@MosabAbuTuha

My Work.

"deal breaker"

next-day service · seals the craters
  class of cripples cheers you
i wone among monsters · with mid tastes
  the moon of mayflies wobbles
the Reaper is proud · of his pruned landscape
  a hundred days into World War Three

The Freckle Song.

( via / me )

Battle of Maldon.

Random # 75 = 135 in base-7; 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 lines

out of order fardels
an age riddled with skidmarks
& bale pills bouncing

finding out takes fitness
defaulted on pawnwise
carousel keeps cirrus

soothsayers honed ruthless
on the dry tears drawing
drowning in spilt clownwhite

"...into the jellyeyed beyond..."

Random # 21 = 30 in base-7; 3 + 0 = 3 lines

rockets & bombs
humans' favorite toys
to share with their neighbors

VIROCONIUM CORNOVIORUM.

( via / via )

The Mirror Sonnet. (What i would call a line-palindrome.)

Random # 221 = 434 in base-7; 4 + 3 + 4 = 11 lines

keep moving · in the munch groove
broken paved · & part-blinkered
  you approach a scarp
  no clown can skip
  in this dead landscape

it's not like you bought · a boon ticket
or reasoned around · the road to take
  just the plunge of all
  well greased with oil
  & promising ill

what you chose in the end · was the chiseler's game

it's spooky season 👻.

"Time to bring back the Old English 'dual' pronouns, which referred only to two people. Yit = you two, wit = we two, unk = us two, ink = you two (object), unker = our (of us two), inker = your (of you two)." --@wylfcen

One of Our Submarines.

( me / via )

" 'In just three years of war,' claims the late Dubravka Ugrešić, in The Culture of Lies, her newly reissued text on the conflict, 'literature [was] destroyed'."

"Pretty crazy that all it takes is 20 years to destroy the cornerstone skill of education since the high Middle Ages." --@_ryanruby_

Barnard's b for real? (Last time.)

arrives where the raves hush
raucous court reporter
dead of night your needle
beneath sev'ral teethmarks
shadow of leaf litter
writes the lore worth poring
verge pulls into vengeance
vending proper hoplite
nothing smites like smithcrip
crew of the new Pequod

"Night pays out her promenade in pallid goldenrod..." (via @alialtafmian)

( via / me )

October.

"Terzanelle in Thunderweather

This is the moment when shadows gather
under the elms, the cornices and eaves.
This is the center of thunderweather.

The birds are quiet among these white leaves
where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily
under the elms, the cornices, and eaves--

these are our voices speaking guardedly
about the sky, of the sheets of lightning
where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily

into our lungs, across our lips, tightening
our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark
about the sky, of the sheets of lightening

that illuminate moments. In the stark
shades we inhibit, there are no words for
our throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark

of things we cannot say, cannot ignore.
This is the moment when shadows gather,
shades we inhibit. There are no words, for
this is the center of thunderweather."

--Lewis Turco

"DEW. And I lay with you..."

"a terzanelle for Turco"

a form's a little island that i make
against the rending tides of Time
& botfly buzzings' mock

an order, childish half, & half quite stern
rite to tame the raging Id
against the rending tides of Time

for laziness an aid
& filling up a pallid squirrelly page
rite to tame the tides of Time

though sometimes flubbed a smidge
i still churn out these gawky handmade hymns
& filling up a pallid squirrelly page

the setting sun of Lazarus limns
it's kind of a futile thing
i still churn out these gawky handmade hymns

since someone's got to sing
a form's a little island that i make
it's kind of a futile thing
& botfly buzzing's mock

True Thomas.

( me / via )

Stellar Tunnel. (via @wendyOrourke)

"Exile is a process, and until the moment comes when we realize there can be no return, our exile continues to feel like a choice. "

- Dubravka Ugrešić via @aliner

Me and Bobby McGee.

Random # 333 = 654 in base-7; 6 + 5 + 4 = 15 lines

in the cold dark past · the path of humans
was to bond in a band · to be better than alone
that we've overrun the earth · shows just how well
this strategem for struggle · destroyed all rivals
but the bad side · of the band thing
is that it forms · a clenched fist
against the foe · as defined by them
& soon all the foes · were human foes
which brings us proudly · to the present day
what if i whispered · the Whelk's own secret
that the foe is Time · our defeat is Time
& all of us wights · in one weird band
struggle to remain · on the marching field
& we need one another · for our team is tasked
with terrible odds · at the only real game

1-Bit-Zone.

( via / via )

In Too Deep.

Random # 97 = 166 in base-7; 1 + 6 + 6 = 13 lines

  yelp amidst
halcyon murder
  as usual
the heart's ices
  burn · burn bright
the world's broken
  crystal clear
& all our claims
  to fixing
laughably fail
  we were close
awhile it seemed
  --not so much

Let There Be Light.

"A few days ago leaving Athens and as I sat on my seat on the plane and buckled up, a man and his wife, it turned out they were from Australia, were sitting next to me.
'Going home?' said the man to me.
'I wish I was,' I said.
A moment of silence.
'Do you know where I am from?' I asked.
'No,' their head indicated.
'I’m from Palestine, from Gaza,' I responded.
Their faces turned red with silence.
'Things are not good there, eh?' said the woman.
'No, there is genocide there. I lost a lot of relatives and friends. israel destroyed or damaged 70 percent of Gaza, same percentage of the refugees in Gaza. Israel destroyed the border crossing point. No, things are not good there.'
I turned my head and looked through the window. My heart was not feeling good.
After 4 hours, we landed. I checked the news and found out that a school in Jabalia was bombed. 15 people got killed, many of them were mothers preparing for next day lunch. Next day was Friday, a day when family members in Gaza gather around the same food table (no table these days) and eat from the same tray.
One of my sisters was in a school next to that one. She was not harmed. The bomb smoke forced her and her children out of the class. She went to that school and saw flesh and bones. She felt harmed.
No, things are not good anymore." --@MosabAbuToha

Top 50 Works of Medieval Literature.

( via / via )

Essays on Translation.

"cops protecting food rapidly rotting in powerless stores from people who just lost everything pretty much sums up the role they proudly, violently occupy in our society" --@epiktistes via @albernaj

shp6.

"FURROW-MAKER

He was all in black, but his friend was dressed in brown, members of two old families.

'Is there any change in the way you build your houses?' said he in black.

'No change,' said the other. 'And you?'

'We change not,' he said.

A man went by in the distance riding a bicycle.

'He is always changing,' said the one in black, 'of late almost every century. He is uneasy. Always changing.'

'He changes the way he builds his house, does he not?' said the brown one.

'So my family say,' said the other. 'They say he has changed of late.'

'They say he takes much to cities?' the brown one said.

'My cousin who lives in belfries tells me so,' said the black one. 'He says he is much in cities.'

'And there he grows lean?' said the brown one.

'Yes, he grows lean.'

'Is it true what they say?' said the brown one.

'Caw,' said the black one.

'Is it true that he cannot live many centuries?'

'No, no,' said the black one. 'Furrow-maker will not die. We must not lose furrow-maker. He has been foolish of late, he has played with smoke and is sick. His engines have wearied him and his cities are evil. Yes, he is very sick. But in a few centuries he will forget his folly and we shall not lose furrow-maker. Time out of mind he has delved and my family have got their food from the raw earth behind him. He will not die.'

'But they say, do they not?' said the brown one, 'his cities are noisome, and that he grows sick in them and can run no longer, and that it is with him as it is with us when we grow too many, and the grass has the bitter taste in the rainy season, and our young grow bloated and die.'

'Who says it?' replied the black one.

'Pigeon,' the brown one answered. 'He came back all dirty. And Hare went down to the edge of the cities once. He says it too. Man was too sick to chase him. He thinks that Man will die, and his wicked friend Dog with him. Dog, he will die. That nasty fellow Dog. He will die too, the dirty fellow!'

'Pigeon and Hare!' said the black one. 'We shall not lose furrow-maker.'

'Who told you he will not die?' his brown friend said.

'Who told me!' the black one said. 'My family and his have understood each other times out of mind. We know what follies will kill each other and what each may survive, and I say that furrow-maker will not die.'

'He will die,' said the brown one.

'Caw,' said the other.

And Man said in his heart: 'Just one invention more. There is something I want to do with petrol yet, and then I will give it all up and go back to the woods.' "

--Lord Dunsany (1915)

Under the Rubble.