"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Germany, 1945 via @rmayemsinger.bsky.social
Butterfly Kisses (2018) on Tubi. ☆☆☆ About the film.
"real valor"
sooth Alamo other
this exile God's dregs
have forced lest quag quorum
requite us nightfall
"It may not have been clothing, but it was definitely art."
"1st of June
a child's picture
in the hand of a refuee"
—Boryana Boteva in Femku #39
"Multiple times this year I’ve had coffee with fellow immigrants who grew up in corrupt third world countries and the shared sentiment has been that Americans don’t understand how bad things are going to get." —@carnage4life.bsky.social
Ian McKellan reads Armitage's Gawain.
"What can the poem be in a time of genocide?" —@zeeshanpathan.bsky.social
—what can its absence be?
"...The Maltese Falcon, among the greatest Camp movies ever made..."
"That The Night Come
She lived in storm and strife,
Her soul had such desire
For what proud death may bring
That it could not endure
The common good of life,
But lived as 'twere a king
That packed his marriage day
With banneret and pennon,
Trumpet and kettledrum,
And the outrageous cannon,
To bundle time away
That the night come."
—W B Yeats
The sheer psychological torment of watching other human beings being exterminated.
“Kriegspiel”
–A dead wind snaps thy flame
maybe it’s already out, and the wind
prowls a cold wick. No,
i swear by the blue at its base,
what puddles here and dribbles wax is the event horizon.
–A hollow wind tugs thy fire
i have heard that song before,
though its cadence should have stayed outside.
Storms i can endure, not
my sand-self swept repeatedly by surf.
–A stale wind wiggles thy light
As this room will remain after darkening,
and this grief yield to others,
i close my fist over the candlestick.
Once i was resigned to live without choices.
(1983)
"Millennial children; let me make the case for #books.
if authoritarian digital coup removes vital information from govt. websites? Books are your friend." —@katepond.bsky.social
"really feels like housing affordability is one of the most important political issues of our time, affecting nearly every aspect of our lives, and everyday our mainstream political discourse is about whether sour cream is woke or not" —@dieworkwear.bsky.social
when blue whales cease their song
simply sans great chagrin
among rubelords of wrong
sword's hubris is heroin
RETURN OF… THE ROBOTS OF BABYLON.
the great monsters wield grindstones
for granular their fandom
did i ever guess
my days might end in fighting the Gestapo
poems on wars from Saigon to Aleppo
—on fluff or stone to doss—
Republicans i've watched
like mad dogs flash their teeth at America's throat
they came & went like ugly shoes we'd bought
Titanic this time's broached
an age of monsters came
while we were fixed on 80s reruns laughing
among us bullies tired of endless chafing
inside the pentagram
made wholly other plans
for liberty & trust to be a joke
a century of progress all turned back
the great monsters wield grindstones
"there's something so profound about the fact that blue whales are stopping their singing
their silence grows as their hunger grows
ofcourse a dying planet has less songs"
—@earthlyeducation.bsky.social
The map of England it generated isn’t much better.
“When the attention has revealed the contradiction in something on which it has been fixed, a kind of loosening takes place. By persevering in this course we attain detachment.”
— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace via @suliqyre.com
a second city
indistinguishable ash
& its dot erased
from an array of such dots
like the one you read this in
"We have been given the sacred task..."
"You’d better figure quick. We’re running out of west."
Closing walls of witness
Wasp paper redemption
A full morning motestrain
Marble the new curb’s edge
Over sand & sunset
Inside the wasp whisper
Windows mounted margent
Marble the new curb’s edge
The dead words are dragging
You dig where graves wallow
Blindfold march with merch clad
Marble the new curb’s edge
Yet crass vessels crumble
Accrue stippled blueprints
Remembrance swells mullions
Marble the new curb’s edge
I watch waves of anguish
Away from crash harshest
Remains my flinch mangled
Marble the new curb’s edge
Is there a path piercing
Perils & rough sapphire
The moon glides past, mazebright
Marble the new curb’s edge
(Audio.)
Twig.
It's never about curation.
" I so want to visit the Californias."
Me listening to the Velvet Underground in 1983: i'm looking for the other 60s.
"No Osage Vega Soon"
cicada shell ciphered
this fake city chortles
a trek seeking treasure
plummets trap-remembrance
all the comrades carolled
checkmate occasion futile
in vinyl browse venue
no other verse nestled
amber the wave wistful
canted wharf of surf-loss
southern gen'ral's joustshape
resumes daylight spoilage
"stuttering about
old water wheel turning
by my smoke"
—@poemexe.com
History is unfolding before our eyes. 👁.
"My quote of the day
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell" —@jeremymberg.bsky.social
"I've been pulled into a disciplinary meeting for saying robotic slurs at work."
"Frog tied some string around the box. 'There,' he said. 'Now we will not eat any more cookies.'
'But we can cut the string and open the box,' said Toad.
'That is true,' said Frog."
—@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
I didn't know "Hot Rod Lincoln" was a cover.
“Pork Chow Mein”
grebes have no hist'ry,
personal or collective,
like the sands they stalk
a grebe is like: snow
the morning after it has
melted, unobserved
a grebe is like: fire
that can rage through a forest,
light an incense stick
a grebe is: clumsy,
graceful, ugly, beautiful,
as the light changes
grebes never speak their
hearts, no matter how heavy,
the sea can do that
i can only watch
a grebe so long: my mind snaps:
that is their defense
the first grebe stood at
the edge of the first sea and
then there were others
if something survives
the earth’s destruction, will be
a grebe’s thin shadow
(1983)
"so name it vict'ry"
days of scree · scrabbling up the
scrolloping vundesh
what can be seen · from such vantage
nothing like closure
nothing like vict'ry
so name it vict'ry
Behold the ICE officer piñata.
"Wonderful quote I just heard on the radio from a neurodiverse person: 'I used to think I was a broken horse. Now I realise I’m a zebra.' " —@marcuschown.bsky.social
"Did we die out in those futures? Did we not make it? Were we purposefully excluded?"
"In 2017, I wrote an essay for Literary Hub, 'How Far Can Fascist Satire Go?', that revisited his books The Skin and Kaputt, along with his persona, during the first Trump administration. Malaparte’s adoption of a provocative pseudonym, an allusion to Napoleon Bonaparte, seemed of a piece with, say, Curtis Yarvin’s use of the nom-de-plume Mencius Moldbug." --Tobias Carroll in The Metropolitan Review
Marlboro-Livery F40-Style Children’s Ride at No Reserve. (via @lollibrarian.bsky.social)
cliff walk dared
in the thick dark
or rote dunk
rotten the ref
harlequin's
turn at quelling
butterfly
flintknapper's urge
"dragonfly frolic"
the true slant · slung Excalibur
in the half light · little peace
underpass poacher · melt into muggles
interurban · the axe swing
flicker effluent · & no red flares
Alpha Centauri Ab? (via @philplait.bsky.social)
"How I wish stupid and greedy were fatal conditions" --@itsabbyyep.bsky.social
“The people who built their heaven on your land are telling you yours is in the sky.” - Nina Simone via @daniellehelena.bsky.social
Advantages of Being a Woman Artist.
arrow in the ice dark
Theseus' own heart-thread
pale cerulean pismire
lean places is led to
A low-relief model fits better than a real body, supporting the idea it may be medieval artwork.
“Into Ghede”
Worship is a reef against storms,
rough water, unmanageable tides.
As fast as the ocean erodes it
you forge new coral from beloved repetition.
You have a single blueprint for survival
the ritual that cosmologizes ferocious universe
into something small, hard, and shiny:
building blocks that click together neatly.
Not that you can ever forget how fragile
your shellcraft is, nor how terrible the packaged forces,
when every surface touched too long transmits a tremor.
You have heard the stars were falling but you knew it already,
the Surgeon-General’s warning just confirmed your resolve
to leave no dawn-beached body for the gulls to gouge.
(1983)
"Call me unhinged, but I just ordered six books on minimalism."—@lisabug.bsky.social
"Pritzker said he showed his son a book of all the Illinois governors. He turned to the back and said, 'There's a 40% chance I wind up in prison after all this. But if you accept my collect calls we can talk all the time.' " —@dicknixon.bsky.social
sonnet of hate speech unhatching
i hear, cannot release, ceasefire
or chemtrail keen. Echoes hem me
of the cagmag pageant badge-first
into Edselbin.
Photogrammetry capture of Holy Trinity Church, Buckfast.
the pair that sometimes splashed
our backyard pool, two ducks assumed were one,
have some time past held off; my hopes, half dashed,
still glance with work undone.
they'd found their way across
a thousand miles or more, with season's lapse;
then once i moved too quickly—creep like moss
not cat, lest you seem traps—:
thus turquoise stands the pool
empty, as ever, while cicadas reign;
the furious clasp of fire to wax & wane
unwitnessed, save one fool.
Memorial by Rudolph Valentino.
"slow night
sinking into the weeds
taking me in its arms"
—@poemexe.com
"The answer may surprise you."
"A man that unironic would be valuable in war." —Debatable Land
"offering to the crows"
in nuclear fire
twice only have we perished
but such long shadows
names my lips still scorch to speak
yet music scarce skipped a beat
viaducts of distance
the thin drape of silence
song of the rash wristwatch
where the dumped rest, end up
we go, fearful-fathom'd
each footstep leaves hurtstains
tracking them, now, troubles
grudge & tryst collector
blindfold to the black maw
"My friend never knew the difference between 'infer' and 'imply' which was never a problem until he opened a club called Disco Implyno." --@craiguito.bsky.social
17 handy tips on how to hang onto yourself.
"I stand here like some ashes that used to be a clown, looking out quietly from my face to watch the failure of these words to be those things." —Denis Johnson, "For Jane" via @mdbell79.bsky.social
Cobalt is the blue I always squander
Your eyes so clear refill when mine there clasp:
Now I forget what to say, next lose the grasp
That names and place and time enforced. I’m yonder.
How then might I help but downcast wander,
If Lethe’s fountain’s close and I must rasp
All my other days with ego’s hasp
Murderously snug?—the worse loss as the fonder?
Could I not scry beyond, vast asphodel,
Gazing would only heal me by its candor.
Anguish to join and eagerness for the wasp
Ravel my purposes; yet did once an infidel
Venture the holiest; yet did lunar-lander
Impinge an orb of ancient hopeless gospel…
Eventually these eyes shall learn to dwell.
(1987?)
my typewriter squirrels
away the circus peanuts
i used to locust
by Phoebe light i rabbit
my shadow that is deathless
(via)
I Love Lucy. (via @aestallings.bsky.social)
"One of the reasons I long for sleep is to be back with the houses that have been destroyed." —Debatable Land
"A roach clung to the paper label of one of the tins. She flicked it off. No one wanted to kill the creatures directly by squashing them. The crack and release of oyster-sized innards was unpleasant. A fear of multiplication through death in insects seemed to stop them, too, a kind of medieval theory of spontaneous generation. The roach Elspeth had flicked away walked off with sectioned purposefulness." —Debatable Land (--at first i read "sanctioned")
"Most people think opposition movements rise or fall based on charisma, ideology, or momentum."
of a fire on the moon
—mention omelas shove—
festive amid famine
ramifies each rid oeuvre
"I was born from an apocalypse..." (via @evecastle.bsky.social )
things transcending time are
not stone, tomes or chrome words
a rote murmuration
has stock rules of flocking
horseshoe crab wrote crystal
in the stars' crunk unction
Schrödinger's Cat shrives us
with dope shrug of opal
"Men will literally turn into a gigantic insect instead of going to therapy" —@johnattridge.bsky.social
