Computer-assisted long palindromes.
"awkward silence at the soothsayer meeting as no-one wants to be the first to bring up that the portents are all extremely fuckin malign" —@webway.bsky.social
the Odradek deadlock
is dark & choice-voiceless
whom Satan’s claw clytes on
eclipses whist-isthmus
jasmine-warren’d wisdom
"Left-Handed Sonnet for my Future Absence
After Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand,
composed for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost
his right arm in war.
A reader, as abstracted as a star,
detects rewards a secret bard erases:
cadaver, tattered bearers, bearded faces,
affected vertebrae set ever far.
A beggar feasts; a starved stargazer sees,
refracted as a desert tear—a raft,
a scattered seaweed sestet, severed draft,
sweet water terrace, eager treeward bees.
As fear, regret, dread, rage reverberate,
a ravager regards a fated crest—
a stage, a braggart’s target, a daft test—
as sacred art creates a cedar gate.
A reader reads deft verses as exact,
as faceted as Frege’s tesseract."
—Pedro Poitevin in Literary Matters 18-1 (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)
The struggle against the times, the struggle against the material, & now--the struggle against the algorithms.
"an American sacrificing their sandwich is a harbinger of revolution" —@housefeminist.bsky.social
"whether it's the wind
or the length of your silence
that brings this chill
I watch another leaf
fall from the autumn sky"
--Thelma Mariano in Tanka Splendor 2001
Melanie's student page Remembering Stonewall.
A roundup of some of the resistance going on.
"TIME (Anagrammed Lines)
Seconds unite a rhyme.
Minutes see any chord.
Hours menace destiny.
Days hunt ceremonies.
Years end on the music...."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Mountain Goats in Providence in full 8bit glory.
"uneasy evening
superfluous worries
yellow jackets
hovering in the dark
mud nest in the eaves"
—@evecastle.bsky.social
"No Cioranian summer is complete..."
"Herm"
1.
faces in the quilt
Reichstag Balls
hailstorm likes caked with Styx silt
cool brillig no brimstone
in the bromide side gig
how old my car
2.
band of paler haze
normalize
flies in milk whelk-red dorm room
skyrise cringe in this timeline
crush crime on it like Stonehenge
idiot light won't settle
3.
blasphemy
the only ant countdown
itch-shalloped foul antlered
golem rummage paradise
pinioned with blink Algol
the crimson winds beguile
(folding my rent receipt into my wallet) (putting on the corduroy with elbow patches) now i'm safe
"I just can’t believe our Reichstag Fire is the Big Balls Beatdown." —@schooley.bsky.social
golden August eve
locusts' aching smoke
horntoad postcard peek
roving pustule grove
golden August eve
sprinkler antheap brink
"Sea-Fever
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.
I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over."
—John Masefield via Via Negativa
Poetry Discovered. (archive)
"The world the powerful want to build creeps closer every day: a world haunted by the crushing silence over the graves of those who dared to speak the truth, the deafening hush from the throats of collaborators, the death-rattle quiet of poisoned rivers, barren fields, ruined cities and barbed wire." —@babadookspinoza.bsky.social
United States as Wile E Coyote.
I remember when i discovered The New American Poetry 1945-1960, thinking, wow people are still writing poems.
"THERE'S THE RUB
Envying young poets the rage
You wish you could reverse your night
And blaze out born on every page
As old as them, as debut-bright.
Child of that prodigal spotlight
Whose wattage now is theirs to wage—
What gold star rite you wish you might
Raise revised to its first prize stage.
But listen to my wizened sage:
He claims there's one disadvantage
Should time renew you neophyte—
There'd be one catch you'd hate, one spite:
Remember if you were their age
You'd have to write the way they write."
—Bill Knott
Letting your dog make decisions.
America speedrunning the Troubles.
from dreams of burning
i arise into mild sun
& the smell of smoke
i resolve to read no news
but the squirrels in our front yard
"Idolatry is an armor, prevents pain from entering the soul." --Simone Weil
"Made two good emendations in Fulgentius this afternoon and now I know how Dolly must have felt when she wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same day" —@aristofontes.bsky.social
Dunt: a poem for a dried up river.
full moon through the trees
fierce Venus with Jupiter
on killing, on awe
"Barely an hour ago, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif warned us all."
"SHROUD
That which you wove out of light thread
I wear in honor of stone.
When in the dark I awaken
the screams, it blows on them, lightly.
Often, when I should stammer,
it raises forgotten crinkles
and he that I am forgives
him that I was.
But the god of the slagheaps
beats his most muted drum,
and just as the crinkle ran
the grim one puckers his brow,"
--Hamburger's Celan
"every time a helicopter flies over my house i’m certain a SWAT team is about to break down my door and arrest me for my posts" —@gregthemiller.bsky.social
"I was working on the end of my book. I looked up because I saw a flash across the window, something shooting at me, copper red & bright green. But it wasn't a stray bullet. It was a hummingbird. At that moment, I decided to lay down my pen." —Werner Herzog, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL via @mdbell79.bsky.social
"every night the same
a crow cawing
clearing cobwebs
watching me"
—@poemexe.com
"the lamia"
smoky wines from here on
chemtrail of red cairnthwarts
occulted by alt-dead
shudder to learn limits
land in bitter heart-song
bitter heart-song hunts edgelord
down each hilching vestibule
smoky wines from here on out
"Prof Edwards himself said that he never had a more intelligent audience than the seagulls that listened to him reciting poems on the beach at Aberarth near Aberaeron when he was young." --Steve Dub via
Mist.
"touching grass isn’t enough, I need to plunge my hand into the chest of my enemies and pull out their still beating heart" —@bryan.town
Hate.
"pale full moon"
dust of my deeds scatters
stars adorn the far-thrown
the black shepherd blasts me
to pick blindness miner
dust of my deeds crops up
notebooks dour with scouring
labyrinth-sure lostness
i ladle out of radar
"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
