"macarthur spork"
margent pupeo purge
matutinal coolth trolling
pat tsk-tsk
crossing Apollo croonwisp
where this rumble Rorschachs
crazy rain
or drouth till the droogs crisp
zymurgy of zero-sum
drogulus xystering
"Amazing detail I just learned from a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ student diaries: he once gave up looking at the sky for Lent" —@someflowerssoon
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of garbled, misattributed quotes.
—Sayings of Asmodeus
"Balrog"
wag the balrog, Roger
bone-splinterers, scoot
renderers of scathe
tranches in the fam'ly tree
pills that represent hero-acts
in treacly posers
flashes on a mildewed monitor
words not to be beckoned back
Forty years of wandering later.
"Soon does one learn the bitter lesson that humanity is never content just to differ from you and let it go at that. Never." —@msjeanrhys.bsky.social
moving forward (feint)
in grimly grasped shelters
fairly groaning
as you navigate nescience
who can conjure
a new call
all the old ones falter
echo in lost light
"Beginning to find himself approached by practiced fingers reaching from the other world, to bring him away, one stitch at a time, into a crazy quilt he might never know more of than a few of the patches adjoining, crazy and lost as himself." —Shadow Ticket
"We are born into witnessing."
ringside seat at the wreck
slower is empire's slide
than the rock's slam
creep in blackness crisp
wary of all the warps
i croon weird
cantrips against goofs
ringside seat at the wreck
Northern Lights as seen from the International Space Station.
"warrenhurdle"
our pawky purposes smize
no nearer to what we need
in the purple netherworld
of grope, fall, & grab onto
halloween-head lit
griefs hidden
en route to Riddlesphinx
where did my whimsy go
Trumpism is many kinks, some unknown to de Sade, & some, unfortunately, involve violation of consent. That's the kink.
"I wonder who set up that archive of tech-art videos 16 years ago and couldn't keep at it."
“The basic teachings were communicated in a whisper…” –Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (1974)
"Regurgalite"
chain to the moon, cheekily
unexpected cargo sprig
Cherokee spelling
planetary term
dawn without drywall
tears drying
testament mooch—
& the submarine settles
miracle sandwich
charred chains to the moon
"zersetzung"
notes trained to nudge me
feature in a fun song
nugatory fathoms
all the same sinking in
two moons are marching
silhouette-mythic
the uncontrollable turmoil
below scarce scopes out
tale scars
of fossil water wept
return to an abattoir
& worn tarmac
"The years crawl by like scorpions."
My job now is stalking the em-dash.
"My current theory is poems cause crime."
"crescent"
Nemesis not soon enough
but touches in its own time
the sword's noon
my windshield speckled with warnings
we only pretend to understand
& weary of ice
in the shade lingered long
best coffeehouse closings
looted cloisters
i stop & go staring
at a moon named Nemesis
"Lenders at the library...have been asking him to find books that don’t exist."
" 'Unprecedented' is becoming as meaningless as 'iconic' " —@stephengraham.bsky.social
'The real end of the world is the destruction of the human spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such a destruction the world can go on." —Karl Kraus, Selected Aphorisms (tr Harry Zohn 1976)
drones over Poland drawing
fire, this afternoon's otchkies
dreamily earn
rodent pale cerulean
orange barrels baffle
—rider bale
yet nothing that needs it gets fixed—
cardboard holding claimant
nary a coin for
horizon's hilching haze
peals drones over Poland
halberd papercut
"She is a wolf disguised as a sheep, lurking to prey on the weaker wolf."
bright overcast eggshell
our bustle & faring fazed
almost feasibly
as tanks crunch concrete
rapt dream in the dark
crawling din
a story in grim stirrings
bright overcast eggshell
From the Files of Jack Stalnaker.
"In dust must splendid lads go down and choke,
Red dry their hands and dry their one day's sun
From which they earthward fall to fiery tomb
Bomb-weighted, from bloodying children's hair."
—Gene Derwood
The Blackness of the Grackle. Some 2018 afterthoughts.
Old Norse-Icelandic Technical Terms. (via @rhunedhel.bsky.social)
“The bark
or nightword”
—Loba
stale bread burning
crooks cry havoc
brine crystals
pale upon black pants
old theaters & their alleys
a parrot's answers
torn paper towels
make new napkins
attain unknown
In 2015, the GDWG set up a project, Refugee Tales, pairing established writers with “individuals who have direct experience of Britain’s policy of indefinite immigration detention” for stories modelled on the pilgrims’ narratives in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (via @drlauravarnam.bsky.social)
“The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.”
― Ernst Bloch via @jacobwren.bsky.social
How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best.
narrow road to the north
no shoulder sharply
announce chagrin
pull on pale cerulean
say we are sore pent
past serious
broken trees line the brooding
color of the cold sky
breathe cairnstuff
Constance Garnett. (via @olgaz.bsky.social)
"The Red Tower": narration & analysis.
erasehead rustling
at my half-worn heels
raindance haste
& crumbling crinkled paper
no second draft singing
corrodes the surf
it goes with dull gurgle
i remember much
galvanized mark
rustling erasehead
"The story's darkness wasn’t just criminal but it was existential."
"I'm no political expert, but I think it's probably a bad idea to have a government run entirely by people who would drive into the side of a cliff with a tunnel painted on it" --@thehyyyype.bsky.social
tightrope irruption
funmarole firing line
raven's feather
on the suspect sidewalk
it is no quest quarry
sand to acquire
the burst bibelots hang
in cold constellations
Welcome to the Age of Disappearance.
You get used to being cold, you get used to being tired, you get used to being hungry, you even get used to being in pain, but you never get used to being disrespected.
word sherpa waystation
assailed by snapshot infall
waxwing sift
a plethora of plantforms
the old car still carries
i ply catalysts
that lurk at arm's length
like amenable monsters
loom massacres
in any august mirror
the world no less nagged by
our own negligence
one more weaponized waystation
"having a tumble
winter grey
in the eyes of that caged bird
for a while"
--@poemexe.com
"Anyway, then I’ll have, won’t I, for my hearers--in the year Umpty-Ump to come--the whole story from A to Izzard? And can say to them: 'Read it and weep'?" --@harryskeeler.bsky.social
mid-morning brillig
blurt of a few birds
mome blossoming
bleak summary silo
Teakwood, Canoncita, Mission Ridge
zeppelin in the zynemorg dusk
sunders desire
vacant pews to pixellate
& make seem more
Teakwood, Canoncita, Mission Ridge
"Palantir didn’t change the votes. It helped ensure you’d never prove it if someone else did."
miasma kickstand crunch
orchid perped ichor
keloid ort
oblong lurgy rides
oblong is my best box
derelict byssus
orchid perped ichor
veins of the verst miasma
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.”
~Thomas Henry Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, 1888 (via @pickover)
Twice as many years since i first collected my thoughts into a book, as it took to collect them, yet i would not have a fraction of those needed to provide a sequel: this is when a musician puts out an album of all song-covers.
"golden dome"
should the news scrapers scream
halcyon in whole places
scry the haze
kill the mist messengers
green & blue boulevard
morning's blarney
tire still trying to engage
my over-urged attention
tort argosy
2009 retrospect of Theatre Gallery from one who was there. "In May of '85, I walked into the Theatre Gallery space and introduced myself to Russell Hobbs. Without even listening to our demo tape, he said, 'Yeah, man... come down and play after one of our art openings. We're having one in three weeks.' " (I think that was my one-man show he's talking about.)
" 'Frog, is that really you?' said Toad.
'Of course it is me,' said Frog.
'And you are your own right size?' asked Toad.
'I think so,' said Frog."
--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
not allowed to lend medicine
pangs from the cloud-pirouette
leak into podcasts
skullchattersome chert
& the pen in my hunched hand
is chess with hermits
rust-sweetened sweater
to uncover the curl of it
