⛽️.
"Renaissassination." --@ALCrego_
"sinking
slowly sinking
a red sun
becoming one
with the blue lake"
--an'ya
The Prisoner of Highland Park.
Friday, January 05, 2024
Thursday, January 04, 2024
"That song has been with me through some pretty rough times."
"VII. A Swan
My robe is noiseless · when I roam the earth,
Or stay in my home, · or stir up the water.
At times I am lifted · o’er the lodgings of men
By the aid of my trappings · and the air above.
The strength of the clouds · then carries me far,
Bears me on its bosom. · My beautiful ornament,
My raiment rustles · and raises a song,
Sings without tiring. · I touch not the earth
But wander a stranger · over stream and wood."
--tr Cosette Faust (via)
"Anthology-making, like sculpturing in marble, is in large measure an art of taking away." --John Updike
A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden.
"Poetry is an unintelligible unmistakable vernacular like the language of the animals--a system of communication whereby a fox with a turkey too heavy for it to carry, reappears shortly with another fox to share the booty." --Marianne Moore
to have my fill of sleep
incendiary slope
whereon are built all measures
kitebind & kiteslip
& the tutelary fissures
"Poets of Planet X
'Cuckoo singing
together with a skylark
a crisscross of
voices'
--Kyorai
This is an experiment
where is the center
of the flower
it is in every atom
it is in every atom
This is an experience
This is the National Security Broadcasting
System
This is a test
This is not an actual emergency
the Indians are dancing
on top of
a mountain
they are stopping the end of the world
live or die
black or white
day or night
they are dancing
in the shadows
they are healing
the wounds of the scars
they are singing the bad dreams
away
I am a feather
in the wind
I am looking
for a dove
in the claws
of an eagle
too full of final light
to fight
I am a feather
in the wind
I am looking
for an eagle
who flies for
the sun
too full of life
too sick of death
to hunger
in the city
he is the tune of concrete and streets
is an organ grinder
he is wise
he is an alcoholic
his monkey is nothing
from a zen monastery
the organ grinder
drinks up
the coins from
the tin cup
he is dying
the monkey is starving
he is smiling
he is singing the blues
about
lotta ways of dying'
the organ grinder
is grinding out
the end of the world
the monkey is
dancing it
away
with chalk & ink
slate & paper
bunsen burners & beakers
neuclear reactors & computers
presidents & big bad ass brass
punching out
the end of the
world
nobody sees
what a tree frog sees
he's a high leaper
a dreamer peeper
a winter sleeper
a blunder jumper
a rainbow bumper
he's a test tube
baby
he's a long drinker
a deep thinker
bottled in beer
he's hopping
away
the end of the world
he's your in & out
up
and down
walk jump
jump flying
dreamsinging
away
the end of the world
in the VA Hospital
Dr. McDonald Fuqaduc &
the follow the yellow line crew
examine
but it is hard to see
after so many times of seeing
this sort of
stuff
I mean
you just want to go home
& forget it
I mean
yeh it could be me
but
it's not
Doc
I'm blind
let's see now
got to get shoes for the kids
take an aspirin
Doc
I can't walk
car payment due $579.50 + insurance
it is your imagination
Doc
I'm an amputee
ahhhhh
there is the nurse
nice legs
if I put my hands in my pockets just right
uunhhh...right
back to government business
the Doc
stands there
looking like
St. Joseph the Aspirin
he remembers
his car payment
the nurse
he says
Quack
they are quacking
away
the end of the world
in the Veterans Hospitals
St. Joseph the Aspirin
is putting
back legs
leading the blind
quacking away
the end of the world
at the tent revivals
& full gospel missions
they are rock & holy rolling
shimmying & shaking
serpents writhing
with open Maranatha arms
toward the end of the world
in the cathedrals
they are stained glass
gothic and gaudy
genuflecting away
the end of the world
in the gay bars
in the hetero-anything goes
brothels
Yes
even in the psycho wards
they skip from
room to room
dodging the orderlies
who are playing
in the broomclosets
with fat and pugnacious
nurses
in the rehabilitation center
spastics
are meeting in toilet stalls
with Playboy magazines
jerking around and drooling
all over your world
somewhere in a back lot
in some RV camper
a midget and a hunchback
who feel astoundingly like
flesh and blood
warmth and human
make love to the sound of calliopes
as if it were the end
of the world
Yes
even the latex generation
in their rubber suits
all those that can get one up
or wet one down
are making love
as if it were the end
of the
world
where is the center
of the flower
it is in every atom
where is the center
of the atom
it is in the universe
I am a feather
in the wind
I am looking
listen
poets of planet X
they say the wind & trees are singing
they say the sky is eyeing
they say the oceans are listening
they say the Earth is feeling
they say the man is dreaming
& there is no test
& there is no emergency
& the experiment
is a lovers gentle
urgings
& the Indians are dancing
on top of
a mountain
they are stopping
the end
of the world"
-- Sam Modica. Written in Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1974. Via Fb memories
"Hockey is a goth sport, it's cold, you run on knives & usually there is blood." --@DoththeDoth
Wednesday, January 03, 2024
"I can remember exactly when it happened. I was walking to school on an autumn day, crisp, cool, the air filled with orange and yellow leaves, and I thought, It’s Bradbury weather." --Caitlin Kiernan. (via)
paint with oozy poisons
pastime later bated
lanes closed for a cleansing
clueless in Gehenna
serrated quern sunrise
socket counterclockwise
spindly despite spoof · standing
dim shrouded dancers
A Puzzling Surprise Party for my Birthday.
myrrh-hung ceremony
maze without cinch wayzgoose
concentric flame sumo
soaks feathers of croak's source
this bridge dodgy breaking
this debride-work gurkha
forever arriving · rural churchyard's
worn away letters
What are you getting for the night?
Listening to Daliborovo Granje while watching Secret Ceremony.
How did it feel to dream as a kid?
Sir Bedlam i name: animal debris.
"Winter Remembered
Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat, my center.
Better to walk forth in the murderous air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing,
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.
Which would you choose, and for what boot in gold,
The absence, or the absence and the cold?"
--John Crowe Ransom (via @joycecaroloates)
Mercator projection of a previously spherical animation.
flowers in the cold morning
strange bouquet
it's eight-fifteen
preparing
for a journey
tangle of caution tape
💤.
"Then from a Ruin where conceal'd he lay
Watching his buried Gold, and hating Day,
Hooted The Owl.—'I tell you, my Delight
Is in the Ruin and the Dead of Night
Where I was born, and where I love to wone
All my Life long, sitting on some cold stone
Away from all your roystering Companies,
In some dark Corner where a Treasure lies;
That, buried by some Miser in the Dark,
Speaks up to me at Midnight like a Spark;
And o'er it like a Talisman I brood,
Companion of the Serpent and the Toad.
What need of other Sovereign, having found,
And keeping as in Prison underground,
One before whom all other Kings bow down,
And with his glittering Heel their Foreheads crown?' "
--FitzGerald's Attar
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
Gliding & counter-gliding angles.
"End As You Began (palindrome)
We dared —
Nude, born wordless,
ever up.
Amid a worn age,
buoy sadness.
End as you began —
Row a dim, a pure vessel.
Drown robed under a dew."
--@SpoonerRhythms
"search engine optimization"
head above
water for the
moment · berth
with warmth mingled
i drive slow
trying not to
slip back down
back down there with
today's losses
The temple at Hiroshima, detailed oil painting, Max Ernst.
"dancing lemur"
by so many ways
is the world unmade
beach at St John
a casual word
clouds full of nightmare
our hearts the same
awaiting the tsunami
of a quake we started
"SLEEP (Palindrome)
O, sleep’s eyed....
I’m its sender.
I tap a tiredness —
timid eyes peel so."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"To me alone, alone, is giv'n the Key
Of Love; of whose whole Mystery possesst,
When I reveal a little to the Rest,
Forthwith Creation listening forsakes
The Reins of Reason, and my Frenzy takes..."
--FitzGerald's Attar
"Cape Wrath
Not wrath as in rage, · but as reefing ships
from Viking hvarf, · a veering of sails
where turning tiderunners · tracked southerly
toward the lush lowlands, · allure of pastures.
Aiming-point, then, · intersection
maps are made from; · meeting of sea-paths
where gannet-strike · and stiff-winged gull
attempt the turbulence, · tracing white wakes
between kyle and keel, · cloud and breaker.
Nearby, the blunt, · abrupt cliff-falls
Define a finish, · failure of land-mass:
Insult to isobars · and Iceland's tundra
the hurt behind · of the high ness offers
a bare buttock · to the barren Atlantic,
gained from glaciers · to what good purpose?
This neb remains, · a node with its geos,
guillemots and seals, · its migrating flocks
whose vagrant convenience · these voes accommodate
indifferently on the dull edge · of the hour-glass.
One assumes easily, · searching guide-books,
some more spectacular spot · – spout, rainbow, crag
limitlessly colluding · down the long approach;
stacks striding ashore; · a stave in the weather
or whale-song’s witness; · wheel of sky-talons.
Instead, one stands · at an austerer somewhere:
an end leading East, · angles implying West
afford the furniture · of a flat summit,
a light-house lost · to its unlucky prospect.
Appropriate, perhaps, · that places one steers to,
orients of arrival, · don’t relish the intrusion
withdraw to a distance · where days are smaller,
views less violent, · less vivid the sunscapes:
the word here for humans · is too hard to compass.
And whatever they own · absolutely
eyes make out ill, · ail the inheritance;
no one can seize completely · the seen locale.
Turn away troubled, · reattempt the route,
pricked by disappointment, · by prehistory.
This meaningful wharf · was meant for others
earlier and more avid, · more energetic
whose justified journeys · joined to an ocean
whose bounds were unbroken, · whose bearings real,
whose atlas included · no anti-climax."
--Chris McCully in Withowinde 95, pp. 6-7, December, 1992
"They get a number of about 530 light years, 25% closer than previous estimates."
"I BROUGHT TO ART
I sit and meditate. · I brought to art
desires and feelings-- · some things half seen,
faces or lines; · some indistinct memories
of unfulfilled loves. · Let me rely on her.
She knows how to fashion · a Figure of Beauty;
almost imperceptibly · rounding out life,
combining impressions, · combining the days."
--Rae Dalven's Cavafy
"And which area is just a ten-foot-wide, cleared strip of land separating the plant from that big Durkins' Woods fronting it all along that side--and which woods once, so I've heard, were to have been a great dining-car plant, but didn't." --Murder in the Mills
"i'm making a new website. i feel bad for the old website" --@katefolk
Happy 1 day anniversary to Mickey Mouse being owned by the public!
"you were lost
to the night as quick
as this moth
when midsummer fog
stole her compass moon"
--an'ya
"The Plot Against the Giant
First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
Third Girl
Oh, la…le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him."
--Wallace Stevens
Trees that remain stand like twisted sentinels.
“A poem's terrain is a landscape fashioned from absence and fragments.” --Alina Stefanescu
"A planet in the habitable zone would orbit the star in 2180 years."
Best close readings. (thread)
A billion seconds is about the lifespan of an African buffalo.
"Strange Type
I wrote: in the dark cavern of our birth.
The printer had it tavern, which seems better:
But herein lies the subject of our mirth,
Since on the next page death appears as dearth.
So it may be that God’s word was distraction,
Which to our strange type appears destruction,
Which is bitter."
--Malcolm Lowry
indigo redblue
haze pierced by powerline poles
first day back at work
Concrete walkway stains and stalactites.
"Like the pre-dawn light,
Flickering like the cold sheen of a blade,
Brightly reflecting
The lashes and eyebrows of a girl
On its awesome surface
From the opposite bank,
Vividly reflecting
The lips and teeth of a youth
On its glistening surface..."
--Justin Smith-Ruiu, translating Kyys Debiliïe, an Olonkho epic from the Sakha or Yakut people of Northeastern Siberia (on his substack)
Monday, January 01, 2024
" 'I invited [T S] Eliot here,' [Oppenheimer] told Freeman Dyson, 'in the hope that he would produce another masterpiece, and all he did here [at the Institute for Advanced Study] was to work on The Cocktail Party, the worst thing he ever wrote.' " --American Prometheus
"expedited removal"
trauma's shark constructed
trapped in collapsed buildings
pinkgold sunrise penult
oppugns cubic runestaff
silhouette quake-witness
wary of fleet detours
the broken roads roam · still raddled
with shipwreck shadows
🟢🔵🟣.
the old trouble
mesoniferous · mortal
kaiju Kugelblitz · cacophony
tricorne eon · of the old trouble
we don't know who'll testify
at the drawn-out trial
Criterion Trog · mesoniferous
at the barrier-slope of meaning
"Old English had a word for a boulder that you used to block the entrance of a cave: locstān, literally ‘lock-stone’." --@wylfcen via @amitmajmudar
Clock of the Long Now. (via feuilleton)
"Haakon had recently befriended the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and spent the days sitting in Oppie's garden working on a translation of Dalí's book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí." --American Prometheus
"Restland in half light"
Bogart this svelte Biltmore
bane supervolcano
ice voice of the orchid
easily turned season
shiver now with knives out
Sunday, December 31, 2023
“I have but one religion: Bach.”
—Cioran. January 1, 1968. (via @dreamsofbeing_)
Art on the apartheid wall in Palestine.
"I Stood On A Tower (1865)
I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing;
And I said, 'O years, that meet in tears,
Have you all that is worth the knowing?
Science enough and exploring,
Wanderers coming and going,
Matter enough for deploring,
But aught that is worth the knowing?
Seas at my feet were flowing,
Waves on the shingle pouring,
Old year roaring and blowing,
And New Year blowing and roaring."
--Tennyson
"LIGHT RIDDLES
I
Once I could kindle fire;
Now I am cold as ice.
I have forgot desire
Buried in earth's blind vise,
Changed wholly, yet the same,
Wild with abiding flame.
II
This constellation isn't made
Of frozen rock or fiery gas.
This galaxy but fills a glade;
These stars (they'll wink inside a glass)
Are born in summer's falling shade,
And fade like dew in summer grass.
III
A crystal buckler
Guards a dark hall
Everything enters—
And nothing at all.
IV
I am the window of time,
In which a single scene,
Always and never the same,
Forms on a shimmering screen;
The well of eternity,
Receding in the center,
Through which infinity
Beckons where none can enter.
V
The most successful suitors know
When not to tell the truth.
When girls are young we show their age;
In age we bring them youth.
VI
A clock without a town,
A lamp that sheds no light,
A silver carriage drawn
By horses black and white;
A scythe that never swings,
A bow without a mark,
A bell that ever hangs
Suspended in its arc;
An egg without a yolk,
A peach without a stone,
A mantle blue as milk,
A dandelion unblown;
A vanished childhood friend,
A woman wreathed with foam,
The one who lags behind,
The one who leads you home."
Answers: diamond, fireflies, eye, mirror, candles, moon
--Catherine Tufariello
"The gold long dim in Herculaneum..." --Clark Ashton Smith
"Without the sense of self, without vanity, without the deep pettiness that keeps us bound to our own nothingness, who could live and struggle in the middle of a world that ignores us, among beings for whom no one has meaning?" --Cioran
"something missing
this warm autumn morning
a feeling
I've carried with me
all these years"
--John Barlow in Tanka Splendor 2002
The Darkling Thrush. (via @ae_stallings)
"The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know.
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.
The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps, if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian
Horizons full of night’s midsummer blaze;
Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
Through all its purples to the final slate,
Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;
One might in turn become less diffident—
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent."
--Wallace Stevens
"RESOLUTIONS (Anagrammed Lines)
New Year's Resolutions:
— Wearily rouse sonnets.
— Seriously enter a snow.
— Ensure reality swoons."
--@Anthony_Etherin
Haunted by the sense that we’re not alone.