( via )

( via / via )

Konzuming.

"...I'm reminded of a recent conversation I had with a colleague who teaches our poetry classes; he said he writes his business correspondence in villanelles when he has to be especially pleading with the recipient." --@anonscone

The Push and Pull of It All.

All Souls' Night.

( me / via )

Jumbled careening cars & houses.

"Prologue of the Earthly Paradise

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.

But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die—
—Remember me a little then I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.

The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne’er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.

So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day."

--William Morris

Fields of force.

Poems about being scared, poems about being tired, & for variety poems about being scared & tired.

"Oo[h], Those Awful Orcs!"

( me / via )

"Tentchoff is dróttkvætt meter’s master, and she marshals all the considerable power of that form to articulate the existential despair of her Vikings, their frustrated lust for great and dangerous deeds of glory."

"Sometimes
I leave footprints the shape of blood; sometimes glass
flows through broken veins, and I glitter."

--Reginald Shepherd

Another overcast day here in magical Glastonbury.

(rondeau quatrain in rhime)

The dying singer of a dying day
Grows wistful in the reaptime
Grows wistful in the reaptime
The dying singer of a dying day

The trammels of unruly peace
Run circles on the catafalque
The dying singer of a dying day
Grows wistful in the reaptime

Our tutelary ark
Is crawling with the will to punish
Twilight of the truth
The army runs on fumes of smoking bible

The dying singer of a dying day
Grows wistful in the reaptime
Grows wistful in the reaptime
The dying singer of a dying day

Rondeau.

( via / via )

Arcturus in Autumn.

Random # 48 = 66 in base-7; 6 + 6 = 12 lines

doublure soft & blurry
blandishments come thrumming
as if somehow after
all that we know · snowing
tickertape conniption
& toke like Bram Stoker

doublure soft & blurry
blandishments come thrumming
desire zoom-calls dimly
xerox of crag ragtime
i climb as cursed cloister
clattering de-platforms

Villanelle thread.

"They were always at work revising the secret map."

— Robert Aickman via @isidro_li

Paris, 1949.

( via / via )

Tic-tac-raventoe.

"scoured to pewter, dulled aluminum: willows will bow" --Reginald Shepherd

Immigration and Naturalization.

Now it is cicalatide
& all the treetops loudly churn
with frenzy that the bugs provide

Their buried sleep transmogrified,
with urgent lust their one concern
now it is cicalatide

a jazz that will not be denied
though all around them riddles burn
with frenzy that the bugs provide

on such hurled rage our futures ride
however we might wish to learn
now it is cicalatide

let no collective suicide
persuade us yet—overt or derne—
with frenzy that the bugs provide

Be silence, not this noise, our guide
As massed catastrophes slow-perne
now it is cicalatide
with frenzy that the bugs provide

(2016)

"Maybe we are all writing to animate dead matter."

( me / via )

"The word ‘unflinching’ made me pause for a moment, because I think of myself as someone who is almost permanently flinching." (via @jorie_graham)

writing on the body · beringed
inlet · all these errands prior
to the cool savvy sunrise
empty halls under fluorescents

sleep like a slanting rainstorm

The Pear.

"fiction should only be precariously there, it should always be toppling away into something else" --@mjohnharrison (at mastodon)

"... I got to Denver to see my work projected onto the Daniels Fisher tower."

( via / me )

"My crown kept falling out, because my last dentist was described on Yelp as being 'somewhat third world'."

"You can take sides in religion, you can take sides in history, and there are others with you, you are not alone. But when you take the side of love, the opium of love, you are alone." --Anaïs Nin

RETURN of the MOTH.

hour’s sharpener · & shade-filler
i manage to measure · a miss it says stand down
  there is nothing for you here
save the groove followers · of grisly set-to
  a gaggle of them clogs the doorway
i’ve little brief · with the low-informationed
  except as they harsh my vibe
  fuel for the Pyro Piper
& the terrible talons · that tear my liver

The Icelandic Language.

( via / via )

That Life.

to fetch back · the fierce mechas
  cerulean under
poems posted · appease them nil
  is there any light but mercy?

ears ring ragged · with restive unsong
  bay clear to the bottom
in the blurred spume · a spider dozes
  misses the web quiver

darkness dilates · with instant dowse
  signature of so much force
the mechas fierce · as they batter down
  each painstaking construct

The October Palace.

“Always now the thought of the perfume in its cheap fluted glass bottle with gold paper label brings me back to that shitty room, its darkness, the blue typewriter on the folding table, the bad linoleum, these traits a carapace camouflaging a small freedom that gently expanded inside me like a subtle new organ, an actual muscular organ born of my own desire for what I took to be an impossible and necessary language. Its sillage was an architecture.” –The Baudelaire Fractal

Illustration from Parsifal. (anagram-rhyme)

( via / via )

"When I was young I used to believe that if I introduced myself to very sexist writers like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis and said 'Look, here I am, I am a human being like you, despite my anatomy!' they’d say 'Ah, of course!' After many years of trying this and instead being welcomed to the category of 'Women are delightful mysterious creatures, Jo is of course an exception in being just like a real person only with female anatomy,' I had to abandon this belief."

“A gritty Frog and Toad reboot where the twist is there has only ever been FROG” –@hottestsingles (via @chuckwendig)

The aurora from Iceland.

burnished steel door
moth on the doorframe
have hustled through
without noticing
the new ringtone
this toast, another
the next room's hum
& gathering reasons
not even handful
seen in a book once
full-page plates
drawings of fossils

Forest Never Sleeps Part 2.