( via / via )

The Plot of Scarcity, Empire, Ongoing.

“Alexandrines

Knowing the weariness of dreams, and days, and nights
The great and grievous vanity of joy and pain;
Frail loves that pass, where languors infinite remain,
Fervors and long despairs and desperate, brief delights;

Knowing how in the witless brains of them that were,
The drowsy, wiving worm hath prospered and hath died;
Knowing that, evermore, by moon and sun abide
The standing glooms made stagnant in the sepulcher;

Knowing the vacillant leaves that tremble, flame, and fall,
The sweetly-wasting rose, the dawns and stars that wane–
Knowing these things, the desolate heart and soul are fain
Of the one perfect sleep which filleth, foldeth all.”

—Clark Ashton Smith

"His Maud is narrated by a madman: he must often have wondered whether he was or would become one himself." (via aldaily)

"I like how the news will be like 'while the President claiming Portland was ruled by a giant skeleton named Mr Nibbles is not strictly true, it does speak to the anxiety of many Americans' "
—@brendelbored.bsky.social

"Pedocon theory does not involve secret networks of underground tunnels where adrenochrome is harvested for reptilian overlords."

( via / via )

Glitch hoodie.

"Won’t some dice decide most now?" —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Madrigal Written in Winter.

Another Look at the Mesozoic

You can dance the night if day waits, unafraid,
for this understand-
ing that feels so fine at nighttime then to climb
up to where the brain
has its lonely dome of bone home, and explains,
not without some pain,
that the one whose dancing takes place, in the dark,
supervised by none,
is the world instead of mad-man… will it work?
try it on your next
moon’s noon.

Walking on the Earth.

( via / via )

The Bluest Blues.

"home skillet"

thresh shadowy · most lights out
suffer mildly · this silence
forlorn stream · in runespace
the last honey · a poem with a diagram

Freeway Dawn.

"Antifa, like Steely Dan, is not really a group." —@frankconiff.bsky.social

The Idea of Order at Key West.

( via / via )

Dreamboat Annie.

"I am frail, lazy and unsuited to doing anything except what I am paid to do, which is sit by myself and type with one finger." —Joan Didion in Sharp (Michelle Dean, 2018)

Rare Chord.

“Four Screens I Don’t Cherish”

Fumigant farce · fester stone
in the changed light · we look for continuance
songs of before · ferocious fuse
nil proceed · nothing prove
the bard bickers · with his bad self
afraid like a fraud · frazzled to hold
to the one stance · stereotype
of one who waits · for a wrenched whisper
beauty of innuendo · ornate chasm
to get lost in · as the lessons burn
& this road rankles · even the rulers
of a small coign · or smothered calm
we know nothing · we need so much
more than these mists · of a chill morning
have never faced · the bold fascist
have never flown · flaunting the sun
only this dim · delegation
of golden glimmers · & gladsome oblivion

Run to the Hills.

( via / me )

Concerto in E minor for Bassoon.

"gibbous zugzwang"

in this blast heat blurry
bling frequency census
stern narcissist nonsense
nags idiot Eeyore
munch tulpomancy
mug impetus fret-none
killer in me catnip
spoons-cost of the moon's peace
October light—tombstone
trance foraging edgelords,
not September natheless,
nard builded on spill-dunes—
or Fillmore's flerd truncheon
redbrick fetch of hedgehogs

Now we venture franchise.

"I truly don’t know what’s triggered it, but this phrase from Tacitus keeps coming to mind today:

'They make a desolation and they call it peace.' " —@colinsmith.bsky.social

Groove Holmes.

( via / via )

Treizain.

“The night before she dreamed she had won the Nobel Prize for Despair.”
—Fanny Howe, The Deep North via @jacobwren.bsky.social

Miss Macintosh on the radio.

“Nonlocality”

   Shells fall where
Shrapnel is far
   The eye-gloze
Glister harries
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

   O believe
In your lurking
   The traceless
Of truce-armies
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

   Particles
Join pawn to king
   The lifting
And loud falling
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

   It’s gospel
Not to go there
   Left hand blind
To right’s blunder
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

   The gurgle
Of a gorged drain
   The screaming
Neighbor a-scramble
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

   So foolish
Is this failed chant
   No tame clown
Can heed if told
   And we are one
One with the torn flesh

Torn flesh and its song

It's happening.

( via / me )

Nevermind.

"effigy"

tonight Nosferatu
never to find living

cross shadows shaping
shibboleths of absinthe

scope out how to hike there
ahead fields of raddle

tonight Nosferatu
anoints brass insects

Come and Get Your Love.

Even writing a long palindrome didn't do it for Murnane.

In which Hannah Montana is invoked.

( via/ via )

Reading to my Father.

“If you remember better times / you know they were lies, because they led / to this” - Alice Notley via @jacobwren.bsky.social

Supermoon.

mad king cartoon toper
topographic uffish
Uqbarbaric fabric
blooms perilous Fillmore
shrill more as strength shrivels
shrinkwrap stinkeye

La Grenouille.

( via / me )

Barefoot in the Head.

"tyrannosaurus high-five"

splash on Jupiter
of a comet collision
our far spectacle

these things we watch mesmerized
as if we could alter them

"Be warned that some of the visual-acrostic poems are not typeset correctly in the paperback editions."

"The floodlighting was gaining on the cathedral, chopping it into alternate vertical sections of void and glitter; it was a cage for some gigantic prehistoric bird. Beyond the cage, the traffic on the motorway could be heard, snarling untiringly." —Aldiss

"Approximately 60 pages of the novel are taken up by poems and song lyrics which compliment or comment upon the action of the novel, often providing a voice for the supporting characters."

( via / via )

Notes—Murmurations.

"While conventionally we count five senses, the English Baroque librarian Robert Burton, in 1621, to give one example, counted eight senses in his encyclopaedic treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy (his Arab precedents in the anatomy of the mind need to be named – Ibn ’Arabi, Ibn Rushd [Averröes] and Ibn Sina, or Avicenna), because, following the philosopher Ibn ’Arabi, he included in his sensual anatomy the internal senses – memory, imagination and common sense. Or even eleven senses, because the three internal senses function differently in wakefulness and sleep, Burton[ ] points out." —Lisa Robertson

Ariel.

   "Melancholy days,
traveling, filled with longing—
if I could not hear
the lonely cry of the crane,
it would be too much for me to bear."

—tanka by Takayasu no Oshima
translated by: Sam Hamill via @evecastle.bsky.social

Kiko and the Lavender Moon.

( via/ me )

Aurora webcam coverage.

"bibliomancy"

wheedle dense the whirlwind
whitecapped the cryptmouth
hungry in its season

Argyll, October.

"Dolly Parton could’ve written Das Kapital, but Karl Marx couldn’t have written '9 to 5' and it shows" —@landbeforetim.bsky.social

Fremd towering impasse.

( via / via )

Line-palindrome poem.

"One of the best parts of driving up to Salem is the reminder of how many actual witches hate JK Rowling." —@erinvachon.bsky.social

"Has any actor ever chalked up a year as creatively and as commercially bountiful as Sellers in 1964?"

"THE PRINTING PRESS (Palindrome)

Repaper:
I snap, my tone placid.
A rare vellum knits art,
no coil of fires....
Midst no felt tome,
we gape, we gage, we page,
we mottle fonts.
Dim serif,
folio,
contrast,
ink,
mull ever a radical pen....
O, tympans!
I repaper."

—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

Oavnjistit.

( via / via )

"The earlier, rocky-planet model was utilized as a setting by Hal Clement in the story Exchange Rate" (1999). Novella not included in any of Hal Clement's compilations to date. Published in Absolute Magnitude. Collected in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002).

TELL HIM THERE'S HEAVEN

   tell him there's Heaven
for liars, cheaters, rapists;
   say that we love him—

say there will be an outcry
like the world has never seen

Down on Dimidium. Or this.

"I’m not terribly concerned about machines displacing human artists—this is limited to a specific conception of what 'artist' means—because I don’t believe mere imitation of what humans do by machines is all that interesting. ...I am excited, however, by the possibility of new forms of art that could be enabled by human artists using AI." —Ken Liu via

Dimidium | Exoplanet Song.

( via / via )

Copium.

"A night saturated with spectral tension: shadows of self brush against shadows of other, desire pulses through the void, intimacy hangs by a thread, ghostly pleasures haunt what is both held close and endlessly slipping away. And then there’s Time, coming forth from its lakes." —@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social

AI Favs.

"negative sentiment toward ICE"

Arrokoth
crisp fringe borrow
skirl lower
stay where scoffs drowse

Voices of protest.

( via / via )

Arrokoth you can rotate.

"Arrokoth

Insomnia shoots
across the roof
like an already dead star,
and I keep thinking
how the farthest object
ever visited looks
like a crippled foetus—
a stillborn dream.

It means sky
in an extinct language,
just like her name,
now bleeding into
my fallen future
buried with my youngest
when the evening air strikes
started tearing the sunset—

so innocently pink
that I wanted to rock
the sky
in my empty arms."

—@lenaozge.bsky.social in cataloguing poetry magazine

The family of Arrokoth.

"breakfast and move things" —@j-tkelly.bsky.social via @jordandavis.bsky.social

The Belgian black metal band.

( me / via )

How to stop a genocide.

"∴ boar-gods brew'ng
butter'd beere bubbl'd—huzzah
howlkin bow to none
·
bracken-born þe tune
wildlings clash on barrel'd hides
heeds plenilune
·
fogdew glimm'rs, gleams
fang & paw drink her relic
nighte's feast fed full ∴ "

—@wordingway.bsky.social

Chinatown.

"street terrorist"

foreign uranium · render path
trapdoor over ocean · orc protocol
coolth · thoughts that won't conclude
crossing tree shadows · with a weary trudge

Autumn Morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

( via / me )

The Tavern.

"count not as news"

sharkbreath of the shadows
resumes shape it blooms in
bright disk of a derne lot
now & dismal power
lunch if you count lessons
to crawl a long hallway
sharkbreath of the shallows
to hope shiver-ropetrick

Noise until it isn't.

"defy vs deify" —@geofhuth.bsky.social

Portland war zone.

( via / via )

In Georgia.

"I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass." —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Chemistry of fall.

"shadow fleet"

moon of some harsh harvest
hints elegy dudgeon
i ride the old rustheap
round flickering furlongs
ev'rywhere stern still-lifes
starch mannikin fictions
the curb that is cast here
calls hollowly holy
the ones who were wedged first
wield ultimate trimstilb

Elephants react fondly to music.

( via / via )

A fire in Feodosia.

"When the shadows grow long,
when our names turn to dust,
what we loved, what we hated,
will spoil to rust.
All will be forgotten,
save one truth, unshaken…
What did we do
when the children were taken?"

—The Shepherd King in One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig, via @parkroseperma.bsky.social

At the computer.

"An old scythe makes great wall art." —@evecastle.bsky.social

"How can you wake up each day and repeat the cruelty that our people barely escaped from?"

( via / via )

War-torn Portland.

"Netanyahu said that an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel would be like '10,000 tons of TNT falling on a country the size of New Jersey (22,610 km2).'

Israel has dropped 200,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza (365 km2) - the equivalent of 20 nukes on 1.6% the size of New Jersey." —@mhdksafa.bsky.social

"What is true is that right-wing terrorism is way down this year, possibly because potential terrorists don’t feel the need to act when the Trump administration is doing it for them. Some people who might have engaged in terrorist assaults may well be working for ICE instead."

"Echo of Memnon

I wandered ere the dream was done
Where over Nilus' nenuphars,
With all its ears of quivering stars,
The darkness listened for the sun.

Ere shadows were, ere night was gone,
I found the one whom suns had sought,
And waiting at his feet, methought
Had speech with Memnon in the dawn.....

Sad as the last, lamenting star
He sang, and clear as morning's gold:
Unto his voice I saw unfold
The hesitant, pale nenuphar.

But dolorous like the peal of dooms,
And proclamation of the night,
The waste returned that voice of light
With echo from its hollow tombs !"

—Clark Ashton Smith

Good news about "Bad News".

( via / me )

Mapping deportations.

"In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.

I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
'It is bitter —bitter,"' he answered;
'But I like it
'Because it is bitter,
'And because it is my heart.' "

—Stephen Crane via @alinaetc.bsky.social

Tanka Society contest winners.

"down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

Collective Nouns for Poets in Therapy.

( via / me )

The light of October different from September.

“Only in 1996, when a Jewish surgeon working with a Holocaust scholar demanded an investigation in the letters column of JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association], did the medical profession admit that it had been teaching students how to become surgeons for nearly sixty years with paintings of the flayed bodies of disabled children and political prisoners [Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen].” —Neurotribes

Tardy the man pony.

      "sad wings of density"

   poppies sing
Sopwith Camel
   long shadowed
my shirk ladder
   the masked thugs
whose bug thunder
   reives this morn
ornament Reich
   months to clock
if not cloud prank
   poppies sing
penult lingered

"We're all very proud, sir."

( me / via )

The Fing is a Kink.

"educaterers"

quidnunc flicker flummox
flows merrily killjoy
   set-aside fathoms
i am somehow sundered
seek Bartleby skullbag
   gathering fathoms
   from the dead in the field

Sound on for maximum effect.

I went to Riyadh & all i got was this snootful of bone dust.

Joy by Sara Teasdale.

( via / via )

Robots reading Ligotti interviews playlist.

Airless is the room of No one-Will-Ever-Read-This; & how prodigious the pretence of breathing there! –Yet it must be done.

"Poetry, while not the only discipline in which the above theoretical concerns might be investigated, offers a useful basis for modeling the vexatious relationship between glitch and disability largely in its emphasis on the fragment: moments of break or slippage within an otherwise coherent literary object, which are then rehabilitated as that object's primary loci of meaning."

“Tear Me a River”

Prepare thy shadowy car
Prepare thy shadowy car
For tomorrow a rebus
For tomorrow a rebus
Thy shadowy rebus tomorrow
Prepare for a car.

My fardels outrun the thieves
My fardels outrun the thieves
Echoing to the battle’s roar
Echoing to the battle’s roar
Thieves outrun the battle’s fardels
The roar to my echoing.

Fardels for my car a rebus
To outrun the battle’s tomorrow;
The echoing roar
Prepare thy shadowy thieves.

(2004)

ICE in Chicago.

( via / via )

Diamond frogs of Madagascar.

"In the slightly tiring
Deep thought,
The pigeon whistles
Carried on the wind,
Pierce the air for poems."

—Bingxin, b.1900 via @matthewjdowd.bsky.social

Moka With Venetian Red And Blue.

"75 years ago: in the future humanity will have cured hunger and disease, and begun to explore the stars

Today: we put a demon in your phone that's gonna take your job and destroy the planet"

—@thehyyyype.bsky.social

Aurora over Western Washington.