Thursday, September 12, 2024

( via / me )

Outage.

"Al repararse,
ella toda desnuda,
deseada duna de seda,
de sedado talle.
Anudada la luz,
a la seria soledad aborda.

De lo sola trama
llorar o llamar;
taló soledad robada
de los aires al azul.

Alada duna:
ella toda de seda,
de sed anudada;
es edad, un sedado
talle, es rara perla."

--@MerlinaAcevedo

Google translate:

When repaired,
she all naked,
desired silk dune,
of sedated waist.
Knotted the light,
to the serious loneliness he addresses.

Of the only plot
cry or call;
felled stolen solitude
from the air to the blue.

Winged dune:
she all made of silk,
of knotted thirst;
it's age, a sedative
size, it is a rare pearl.

Pink motel.

"As incredible as it is to believe, Barry N. Malzberg wrote twelve novels in 1973. Ten of the twelve novels make up the first 10 books of the Lone Wolf crime novel series." --Jamie Todd Rubin via

Orbital.

( via / via )

Homecoming of secrets.

"clenching
the toothbrush in his teeth
a Gazan boy
squeezes the tube left-handed
before his cracked mirror"

--@ericcoliu

We meet with shepherds and white stars.

Random # 39 = 54 in base-7; 5 + 4 = 9 lines

train's reds rocking · arrests my plunge
the world's whirl · still tugs me

aquamarine at · the etched horizon
blur of bruised grays · i brake glumly

have started tuning · tenderer stations
for the way to work · ilka route down

if it's not another · new atrocity
it's meaning trashed · in the hands of monsters

i don't need that · half monster myself

Curves & diagonals.

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

( via / via )

The Darc Krystal. Download it now!

"BARD (Palindrome-Sonnet)

Emit a null
lore. Mirth gilts all.
Like rule, we dull
as, drab, we fall.

Eye rust. Eye bold.
Rage regal law:
A rose so old—
eyed loose, so raw.

All age regard—
Lo! Be yet sure.
Yell! A few bards
allude— we lure.

Kill last, light rime—
roll Luna, time."

--@Anthony_Etherin

֎۝߷.

"Yeah we do have 'after birth' executions they're called school shootings." --@AMarch4OurLives via @ericcoliu

1988.

( me / via )

Art about Valley View mall. (thread)

"To call it All Gall is Divided, as does its otherwise wonderful translator the late poet Richard Howard, constitutes an act of literary butchery, though I don’t think Cioran, himself something of a literary or philosophical butcher, a writer who spent much of his time in what might be called the abattoir of the spirit, would be much bothered." --Nathan Knapp via via @adamsorardor

Speke, Parrott. (an old review i wrote after the 2004 renovation)

Random # 109 = 214 in base-7; 2 + 1 + 4 = 7 lines

   "disaster coming"
a house made of these blonde planks
    like any others
you grow up in such a house
fossils of what came before
   staring out at you
from their places on the wall

The Affective and Hauntological Potential of Dead Mall Ruins. "We are all, in a way, dead mall enthusiasts and matsutake pickers – we all live in ruin, in the rubble of failed dreamworlds."

( me / via )

"It may heft a strange burden, a sword of flame, to guard or else to indicate, like a struck plectrum or stuck frenum or with strange gait, a strange gate."

Random # 13 = 16 in base-7; 1 + 6 = 7 lines

façade of blog savaged
still might rain a rerun
outside when i ramble
& all the fires i follow
shimmer away vain shadows
on the far shore
yet scarcely absolve me

"What feels weird or eerie depends on who you are, and is therefore a political question."

"Maybe unlike many genocides in history, the one taking place in Gaza for a year has been called a genocide from the first few days. People didn’t wait for months or years to recognize and name it.
It’s worth mentioning that it was not until 1941 that writers started to occasionally use the word ‘holocaust’ when describing Nazi crimes against the Jews, though it was not the only word used for that purpose. After World War II, Holocaust (with either a lowercase or capital H) became a more specific term. By the late 1970s, it became the standard English word used to refer to the systematic annihilation of European Jews by Germany’s Nazi regime.
What’s happening in Gaza is not only a genocide against families but also a denial of the war crimes committed against them.
The is more than a genocide. A new Raphael Lemkin is needed to coin a new term for this." --@MosabAbuToha

Awareness ✨.

( via / me )

A spooky photographer.

"Since both words in ‘enchanted forest’ are from French, we need an Old English word for it. I propose *𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘸𝘶𝘥𝘶, from 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘰𝘳 ‘magic, enchantment’ + 𝘸𝘶𝘥𝘶 ‘forest’. If the word survived to today, it’d be ‘galderwood’." --@wylfcen

Vortex of shards, turning.

Random # 245 = 500 in base-7; 5 + 0 + 0 = 5 lines

   series of treatments
to end a cancer · no use
   demanding it now

not something i can whisper
in the ear of the victim

trails 📀↖️🖱️🌈.

( via / via )

Human safari.

Random # 168 = 330 in base-7; 3 + 3 + 0 = 6 lines

of ure-space despairing
spangled redhats headfirst
lemmingplunge thin ledgefrom

alas champion krampus
nor walls raised give wisdom
when Fox is your boxcar

Birds & a flickering window.

"There is no choice of mercies; but what comes
Is grace; whatever’s proportioned, not ours,
At the final tally of loves and crimes"

— Geoffrey Hill via @Isidro_Li

Try to Praise the Mutilated World.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

( via / via )

What happened to http://www.solstation.com/?

"Man's a kind of missing link
Fondly thinking he can think."

--Piet Hein

"What happens to that hope when the lake identified with the celestial one that is storing the seed of their savior disappears?" (thread)

towers
we have seen fall
in mem'ry falling still
unexploded bombs still finding
their mark

Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Klingon.

( me / via )

A palindromic poem for Douglas Hofstadter.

Random # 195 = 366 in base-7; 3 + 6 + 6 = 15 lines

black branches · against blue sky
as i cross concrete · to the parking lot
   temperature's mild
   but my tender mood
   by much is marred
we can't call · our current world
other than outrage · to an orderly mind
   the smog of vast lies
   fills boardrooms & alleys
   & half-hides killers
telescope turned · on the tiny moon
slathered with slaughter · we sleep through blameless
   of the bombs built
   & tax dollars bent
   & that silence bought

Hypercube.

"Perhaps one of the novelties of our era is the possibility of instant boredom— like instant coffee— as opposed to a feeling that has to unfold gradually, suffocatingly, over time."

- Geoff Dyer via @aliner

The Rime of the Eldritch Mariner.

( via / via )

Gm on Repeat.

"The MK-84 bomb is made by General Dynamics (hq: Reston, Virginia). GD manufactures weapons for Israel's genocide of Palestinians as well as surveillance tech used to monitor the US-Mexico border. The US transferred 14,000+ MK-84s to Israel in 2023 + 2024" --@brandonshimoda with link

Nothing up my sleeve.

"alone again
on the Pacific shore ...
winter moonlight
forming a narrow path
to the land I left behind"

--@ericcoliu

"In Tenet, the villain is Andrei SATOR, and Thomas AREPO is an art forger we never see (perhaps a reference to AREPO being a fake word?) TENET is a password given to the hero early in the film, which begins at an OPERA; it may also be the name of a secret organization..."

( via / me )

Taillights in the rain.

Random number 176 = 341 in base-7; 3 + 4 + 1 = 8 lines

dank tirescatter skirls
into ev'ry cranny
the skull's even
microplastics our plight
the last great grief
plush with regression
we become what we cast off
we return to the tarn swirling

Another Green Wave 🟢.

"Had a genuinely horrifying nightmare about being chased down & run over by a gigantic angry version of the animated typewriter from Sesame Street if you want to know how my writing is going" --@regretteruane via @minxmarple

San Francisco burning after the earthquake of 1906.

( via / via )

Dark carousel.

"No rotten rose. We nab hot paste past a cold log. Now snub wets. We’d fill up dew.

I saw red. No wrong is sex. Add on e(v)en odd axes. Sign, or wonder was I wed. Pull if dew stew-buns won gold.

Lo! Cats! A pet’s apt. Oh, ban ewes or nett or on […]" --Gerald Murnane via

Musée des Prole Arts.

Random # 335 = 656 in base-7; 6 + 5 + 6 = 17 lines

autumn comes in ounces · & odd runs
   of almost ready rainfall
morning coolth · then a coruscating noon
   the newly weirded welkin
seems hardly to hamper · the harsh scramble
   we know as far as we know
only the scolding · of the schoolzones tells us
   other regimes are looming
i always liked this borderline · light-sharpened
   passage & grew wise from
werifesteria · stirring the deep
   avid bourn of being
the frenzy of humans · afraid & raging
   falls silent a moment
i can see to the outside · across ciphers
   i can find a place
unimaginably magical · in a mild glimmering

"Meaning is in crisis. And we are embroiled, everywhere, in contests over meaning—which are also contests of power, contests over living. And dying." (via Mefi)

Monday, September 09, 2024

( via / via )

On the LDN Loop.

Random # 335 = 656 in base-7; 6 + 5 + 6 = 17 lines

as if we had to fight
both the Zombie Apocalypse
& an Earthbound asteroid fate
or when Reason's reins elapse
the old chores of repair
get sterner by fits & leaps
past-expiration empire
& postmodern alphabet melt
two legs of a caliper
conspire to render moot
what resilience we had
like ageing dynamite
so they say get out of your head
& look out for number one
as warnings & follies to heed
ev'ry degree of genuine
pester in the light's wane

Blockhead--the Music Scene.

"At least 20 tents in south west Khan Younis full of people have been bombed. Nothing remains but bomb craters. 💔💔💔💔" --@MosabAbuToha

"Some/ memories..."

( via / via )

James Earl Jones's Lear again.

"விகடகவி் (Vikatakavi) means a poet who writes an entire poem, not just a word as a palindrome and the word Vikatakavi is a palindrome in itself." --@catchpriyu

Wicked Game.

"There Are More Ways to Show Devotion

than even the complexity of the shadow, dragging
my own darkness behind & beside me
on a day I do not want to get out of bed I lift
an arm & darkness expands on a white wall
a wound sealing itself over the promise of moonlight
& this is how I remind myself I am not dead
yet

even in stillness I am a straight line projected somewhere beyond
myself raised gently into the dwindling brightness a casket waiting
to be swallowed but it isn’t all bad
have you considered your own loneliness is simply a lack of imagination
a child is crying on a plane, devastated by the volume & velocity
that leaving and returning requires
a man lifts his window & makes his hands into what the shadow
translates into a bird its wings flapping slowly along the airplane’s side
& the child sighs with the sweetness of disbelief
there is a bird in my backyard & it is dead in an unremarkable way
storm or electricity or hunger
I reach my palm toward the light & my shadow holds the dead
in the darkness I make I apologize for a world that could not keep you safe
I apologize for the white wall & all I’ve asked it to forget & re-learn
but now we’re talking about eternity & I prefer a god who makes no promises
beyond the one that says at the end of it all there will be a shovel
& someone
will have to do the digging."

--Hanif Abdurraqib in the Yale Review

Today I learned that Gerald Murnane has an album featuring a 16 minute palindrome poem ...

( via / via )

"This is why I cannot read crime or horror novels; books which bring great suffering into being for no other reason than generic necessity. It is a terrible addition to actuality. Actuality occurs once but literature never ends; every moment in a novel is eternal, every character immortal. Fiction makes something happen forever."

random # 302 = 611 in base-7; 6 + 1 + 1 = 8 lines

Down town · this burn and slash
character · cartoon of weary
last at turning down sun spots

vampire through and through

vampire spots sun down
turning at last weary
of cartoon character slash

and burn this town down

Machine Yearning. (via)

“... however pleasurable its effects, closure is fiction, one of the amenities that falsehood and fantasy provide.”

-- Lyn Hejinian via @stonecirclerev

─│┌┐└┘├┤┬┴┼╌╎.

( me / via )

"The late 2000s were an interregnum when the real and the physical still mattered to some degree..." (via aldaily)

"I like when several poems in the same collection feel like stabs at the same idea, like they're arrows aimed at the same target. You get to see this whole scatterplot of near misses" --@egabbert

"After a mutinous and far too long..."

"paling sky
the poison flower
blooms"

--@the_poesis

Getting better at hands.

( me / via )

Casa Batlló.

Random # 261 = 522 in base-7; 5 + 2 + 2 = 9 lines

puzzling gap to gaze on
forgetful flesh bitcoin
orange sign of surcease
sings the java bringer
scramble your sculsh wishlist
a scream among dreamings
bog days in the dugout
adorned with torn fragments
of droll snookered soldiers

Whistlejacket.

“This requires not the momentary strength of the assassin, but the deep stamina of the double agent.”

– Stacey D’Erasmo, The Long Run via @everysongiveeve

"I daydream that he visited the Rothko Chapel, continuing the conversation with death that he began in his famous long poem, 'Mural,' as he sat before the enormous, obsidian-colored canvases..."

( me / via )

Touchdown.

"ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SONG

I take my book of spells
that don’t work

and my silent megaphone
outside at lunchtime

and scream at the sky,
I am leaving

my job as assistant
caretaker of everything

that will only matter
after it has been approved

by the standing committee
of associate ghouls

that never meets,
their silent laughter

around a circular table
wanders into the chapel

then makes the endless
fountain of bylaws

bend while the statue
of the founder watches,

we all know he will rise
one day and meet us

where we are
to destroy us,

when I leave I will take
all the empty manila folders

that held twilight’s forbidden thoughts
and this crying bowl

someone else’s mentor
handed to me the day

I crossed the cobalt
oblivion river,

I will burn my parchment
outside the new recreation facility

then go live
with my green ache

on a very low hill that does not
look down on anyone."

--Matthew Zapruder at Onlypoems

Some books read you.

Random # 10 = 13 in base-7; 1 + 3 = 4 lines

gladiatorial · glimmer of the throughway
all discussions · keep shirking
the war machine · whose shiny ornaments
decorate den · & car dashboard

Curglaff.

( via / me )

Downtown.

Random # 227 = 443 in base-7; 4 + 4 + 3 = 11 lines

   acceler-
ando abseil
   flashing shade
a fleet image
   no story
understanding
   just head down
to lemminghome
   tear the walls
with wild clawing
   your last song

❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ ❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰ ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ ❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰❰.

"DISHARMONY (Lipogram*)

Disharmony
rains hard diamond shards
on a marshy moor.

Disharmony ordains armadas,
arms assassins,
adds disarray.

Disharmony
rooms Roman dramas
in sordid dioramas.

Disharmony
is harmony
in a mirror.

(*only d, i, s, h, a, r, m, o, n, & y)"

--@Anthony_Etherin

Moon-ensorcelled.

Sunday, September 08, 2024

( via / via )

Car & condo fun.

“cicada chorus
the whirl of dead leaves
a seagull’s cry”

–@poem_exe

Europe but if Europe colonized it. (via @harikunzru)

Random # 102 = 204 in base-7; 2 + 0 + 4 = 6 lines

bitter pearl
tapping at my pane
making sleep
its own ghost
tideghost is to ventilate
air with solid shame

Some interestingly dense sonnets.

( via / via )

Moon & Spanish moss.

Random # 28 = 40 in base-7; 4 + 0 = 4 lines

these jumbled shelves are all the order i'll have wrought
   between the scramble & the snooze
my books into the tempest tossed like they were thrown
   at crows to guard a garden bed

Manipur-negativo.

“Americans have traditionally demanded coherent and simple national stories. Now many of these stories no longer make any sense. But so far nothing has replaced them. We are in story limbo, and for a storyteller this is an intensely interesting place to be."—Laurie Anderson via @LizHand

"These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles."

( via / via )

Don't know what happened to Solstation.com, but here's Zeta Reticuli.

"It is fitting that in the center of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant."

- Borges on the minotaur via @aliner

And then there's planet Serpo.

"anything new
under Gaza's smeared sun?
smoky rubble
beyond smoky rubble, and yet
again smoky rubble"

--@ericcoliu

Free Parking.

( me / via )

"the mots were flying & the frozen daquiris..."

distance under the earth · measured in days
   you wake & it's still dark
   a falling without movement
the letters on the page · leap & frolic
   do not signify
the grave teaches calm · & gradual progress

Hell's Loading Dock.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end."

-William S. Burroughs via @blanc_alba

Random # 245 = 500 in base-7; 5 + 0 + 0 = 5 lines.

Saturday, September 07, 2024

( via / via )

Le Voyage. Dennis Cooper on Pierre Henry.

"Maybe the 100 most influential people in AI are actually 100 data labelers from the philippines" --@nrmarda via @mckenziewark

Music of the Chinese Tribes in the Golden Triangle. My review.

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

optometrist's entrance
tragic melee adjunct
burnings counted corny
in the cold gray doldrums
handful of stark stonedoors
instill cant for killers
on a night for otters
erstwhile debris neon
i gather guns smoothed by
ganch upon ganch banshees

Sulfureous sky.

( me / via )

The Death of Keats.

Random # 239 = 458 in base-7; 4 + 5 + 8 = 17 lines

outrunning Covid
in the cool early shower
with the capital-exile grief of Ovid

sky livid
streets a tesselation of Escher
outrunning Covid

forager-avid
genocidal erasure
with the capital-exile grief of Ovid

to these tiny figures perfervid
glimpse of shore
outrunning Covid

with tomorrow's knives gravid
with voidshare
with the capital-exile grief of Ovid

spend our seasons outrunning Covid
with the capital-exile grief of Ovid

Pumped Up Kicks.

"a smudge
of blackbirds swirling
into evening ...
how fluid the shape
of this sorrow"

--Debbie Strange via @ericcoliu

"All of these artists are now dead." (via @mcrumps)