Rout* 66 A. D.


   "Tanka

Black-and-white Holsteins
Crowd downfield at feeding-time,
Mingling their blotches.
It is like ice breaking up
In a dark, swollen river."

--Richard Wilbur


   "How Poetry Comes To Me

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light"

--Gary Snyd*r


Broth*rs Quay.


"Write in each room of the place you will die."


Cognizant oliphaunt mirror proof. (via M*tafilt*r)

by L** Mullican (via artn*t dot d*)


"In the past few decades alone noted scholars have characterized Jesus as a political revolutionary, a magician, a charismatic, a rabbi, a Hillelite or proto-Pharisee, an Essene, a wisdom prophet, a Cynic philosopher, and an eschatological prophet." --Fior*nza & Crossan, in: Th* 3lusiv* M*ssiah (ed Raymond Martin, 2000)


   "Cloak of Invisibility"

Orkhon running constantly stark Carcosa
a fraught optic throbbing word

crystal do
off ink and stomp pulsating holy

cold crystal Orkhon
pour it glut


Harv*st of Rag*.


"Fundamentalism [seeks] to offer a world of simplicity, lack of personal responsibility, immortality, purity and simplicity. These are notions of children. This is how two-year-old and three-year-old children think."

   "Hairy Polynomial"

Orkhon crisp akimbo shadowy tonic
until accruals that sink

ossify spiral
raucous skirl fill umgang obolus

softly ash
chalky class adjourn


On my victrola- Corn*lius: Phantasma


H*avy Plan*t.


"Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture." --John Rob8rt Colombo, in: Th* Big Book of National Insults

(via lavanchy-corn*r dot com)


Xiombarg filth · forlorn imbrication
obtain · gang

brisk · agonist of limbo
global stirious chunk · affords morbid crisp

all wodwo · crowbar
and rid imagining · abort brick

filk accrual · nadsat stomp
limits · mourn

snarky robot abusion · it rains pink snot
Ogpu rank · angling


Loot.


On my victrola- Sydn*y B*ch*t: R*cord*d in Conc*rt at th* Bruss*ls Fair, 1958

J*nné-j*no.

"With extinction my ancestor"

--M*rwin


   "Prodigal

Some day, when the stern seeker in my brain
Has ceased to drive me stumbling through the dark,
Dropping dead cinders for each faint new spark,
Only to see the new ones wax and wane;
When all my dreams are numbered with the slain;
And wisdom, that egregious patriarch,
Has told his last half truth, and left me stark;
I shall go home, I shall go home again.

Laughter will greet me, waiting in the hall;
And friendships will come trooping down the stairs,
Sweet as old rose leaves wrinkled in a jar.
Battles and loves will move me not at all.
There will be juleps, billiards, family prayers,
And a clean passport for another star."

--DuBos* H*yward


G*nghis Khan and th* Making of th* Mod*rn World.


Instrum*ntarium.

(via ict-*du dot nl)


   "It's Probably About the Bike

Once scheming, to our vast dismay,
Turned ricochet:
And tumbled down emblems of our pride;
And, by the way, three thousand died
In Nineveh.

Is this contrition we display,
To give away
Whatever made our country strong:
Its freedoms, peace, and righting wrong,
O Nineveh?

But empires all at last decay
And yield the clay.
Meanwhile we peasants still need scratch--
Why do we trim our dreams to match
Dead Nineveh?"

--H. P. Pufncraft, S is for Sitzfl*isch (2005)


"...a [Pitjantjatjara] translation of one of David Bowie's songs." (via Languag* Hat)


On my victrola- Col*man Hawkins: Th* Gold*n Hawk


Suav*cito.

Six word story follow-up. (via M*tafilt*r)


"The quickness of his mind--it had never seemed to him so nimble, so exquisite of mechanism of syllogism and deduction--was contraposed against his blind instinct of the would-be self-deceiver, in a conflict to which the latter brought something of desperation, the fierce, agonised desperation of a hunted animal at bay."

--3rn*st Dowson, Studi*s in S*ntim*nt


Hazmat Modin*. (via NPR)

   "Odyssey of the Wind Materials (first line by Claude McKay)

'Stray melodies of dim remembered runes'
Return when I am anything but ready.
What is a poet stricken thus, but giddy
With future thwarts, and present lost balloons?
I fail, and I am wise with a plangent mist
That tells me all I need to know of beginnings.
Riddle me more, or let the next swift innings
Contain their inmost cure as much as thirst!

Ah, well. I dwell among such eerie forms,
I learn and lose my way as at the first;
Someday when a chance wind sends me reeling
I"ll know what sort of monster writes these norms,
And what black seas I carry for my visit's ceiling."

--Yoko Mand*lbrot


Big As Night, 2.


' "Were all these poets from Karabagh too?" I interrupted.
"No, noble sir, but our poets are better, even if they refuse to imprison their words in dead letters. They are too proud to write down their poems--they just recite them." '

--Kurban Said, Ali and Nino (tr Graman, 1970)

Cthulhu Chick Tract again.

human mutiny · umgang
warm ink · amalgamating dusk
atavist brain · indigo
by lush ambush · ignorant rain
in igniting own · is hronir
imago · gibbons


List of Ac* Doubl*s.


'When a drop falls in the river, it becomes the river.
When a deed is done well, it becomes the future.'

--Bly's Ghalib

"...I’ve worked a little on my long terza rima comic murder mystery..."


   "Lunch Codes

I.

"She were keen on
the wetlands, and so were I."

Cap-sized bobs and chafing dishes

bobolink tenders.

Leguminous butt-ends deliquescing in the nurses' breezeway,
a quintessence of small-A ambrosia.

He peeked at your ballot box and something about aversion,
a nimbus of donut sugar, your lead-white aureole. Displaced
from the doghouse, a hardon-shaped piece of air.

The entire fountain was made of water and you, my muffin-hatted
Swede, educed a dozen thought molecules.

Mangroves are puppets, you said.

I haunted your ghost.

Remember?

I threw peonies at the shark (distracted)
and at the regional dishes of your forebears.

We've started thinking again.


II.

We were the taffy guild—
Time was our confection.

We shared in common—
Dread of the moment.

Our figures embraced—
Dense cloud of impurity.


III.

“Scores will perish.” "

--G. M. Quint*, in M*lancholia's Tr*mulous Dr*adlocks 3.


"...I think of it basically as comic..."


Intriguing words from Kunstl*r.

(via //*ricorb*aux dot romandi* dot com)


   "The Leaden-Eyed

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep."

--Vach*l Lindsay


"Egwene's stomach sank into her feet."


"And I go darkly-rebel to my work" --McKay

THE CRIMES ARE THERE
GROW A PAIR
IMPEACHMENT 2007

(via ddd dot r2 dot ru slash 3d)


   "Waiting

They swear the dead come back at night,
Who once were women and men,
And sob and cry in the strange weather,
To be let in again.

Out by the straggling thorn I wait,
But you are not come yet;
So it must be that I remember,
And that you forget."

--Liz*tt* Woodworth R**s*, South*rn Po*ts


Bactrian gold.


History on Trial.


Curry.

landfill hills of today consign thy pumpkin
Samhain consign thy pumpkin

raining dark
abyss music consign thy pumpkin

maroon miasma
Xanadu plain consign thy pumpkin

but lift a glass for Grinchus
to basalt aurora consign thy pumpkin


Th* War B*tw**n th* Vow*ls and th* Consonants.


Th* Journ*y of Privat* Galion*. (cf Gravity's Rainbow)

(via noaan*ws dot noaa dot gov)


   "Dick Tracy on Mars"

squalid or marsupial porn dawns
obstruct habitat
wisp nomad scaffold karma

obtain rank
from burning pallors adjourn obsidian
nor books of calcspar

raucous with Uz aroma
my chill blood
on windy roads scuttling across Uz charcoal


Drift (scroll down for animation).


Saudad*.


"...when all is said and done, Venice is only a labyrinth--a vast and beautiful labyrinth to be sure, but a labyrinth nonetheless and none but its oldest inhabitants can be sure of finding their way about..." --Susanna Clark*, Jonathan Strang* & Mr Norr*ll (2004)

"We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years." --Riv*rb*nd


"300,000 over 24 years was 12,500 a year. Just awful.

600,000 over 3 1/2 years is 171,500 a year. Completely horrifying. Or can't people see that?" (--Cathy B)


"Did you ever meet a kind of person to whom you tell a story, or complain about some sort of problem, then look at him, only to find him absent minded in another world, then, he would turn to you to give you remarks and deductions which have nothing to do whatsoever with what you were talking about?
This is how it is to talk with most of the American administration's members, and most of the American Congress members. They are people who live only in their closed, limited world, who have no wish, or mental ability, to listen to the Other."


"...Bush, more closely resembles an abusive pimp – tragically, Lady Liberty’s. Habitually slapping her around, accusing her of holding out on him, and paranoid of betrayal, Bush, a preening caricature of Macho Narcissism, like any run-of-the-dark-alley pimp claims to be her protector, as, all the while, he abuses, exploits, and degrades her. Apropos, Bush’s vast collection of outfits for every occasion should include a plum purple pimp suit; accordingly, the presidential limo should be tricked out to sport 1970s-style Cadillac El Dorado opera windows, a two tone paint job, and be accessorized with plush, white fur-lined upholstery."

(via jpl dot nasa dot gov)


   "Icarus in November

There is a moment blind with light, split by the hum
  Of something struck and shaken otherwhere,
And if breath's pausing stills the heartbeat and the dumb
  Wet trees clutch every leaf, then on the air
Will blow slow, small, and keen, and faster, greater, higher,
  The hissing whoop of wind through timeless wings
A thuttering drum-beat round a cold immortal fire
  Half-muffling such a mortal cry as brings
  Fear to the lonely soul's imaginings,
A crescent wailing, and the little heart inclined
Hears Icarus, and how the chill gale moans behind.

Who said, O Sun, to Icarus that he must fly
  Or fall who dropped on this green wave at last?
Who fed him bitter aether from the tenuous sky
  Whirled in his winged mind all that is past
And pointed four directions to his stumbling soul?
  Quibbled the whence how where when who and what
Till golden antlers blossomed and the Tree was whole
  And Dian poised, and Icarus forgot
  What Icarus had been, and what had not,
And searching lost the hope that Icarus designed
And seeing, never saw that Icarus was blind?

O Iarus is fallen, alabaster foam
  Hangs stilly, still, Icare est chut ici,
White tangent to the green wave's arc he's shotten home
  Man-bird, sky-arrow to the unriddling sea,
Who was so questing, still unsated, lost to act,
  Quartered the zig-zag sky for beauty's use,
Swooped, soared, sailed, wheeled and turned and sudden stooped on fact
  Or use's beauty or the keen mind's loose
  Hot ions streaming in a fluent sluice,
Heedless that Icarus must fall against the wind
Echoing, ever falling in the hollow mind.

Sun of my night, lamp of my not uncertain void,
  Here Icarus is fallen, here he lies.
O fallen Icarus, whose fleshly eyes alloyed
  The fire and solar gold and still are eyes
Give me some manner bacck the brain, the hardiness--
  If Icarus is fallen once he flew.
Hard-taloned on the sunward wrist he scorned the jess
  Pressed on his quarry in aethereal blue.
  Icare est chut ici, and still he knew
Less where the heron went than what he hoped to find
And more the cloven hoof-print than the frightened hind."

--Al*c B St*v*nson, South*rn Po*ts (1936)



Th* Riddl* and th* Knight.


"One wonders if it will take the fall of the American Empire to uncover the full extent of Washington's war crimes."


"Stray melodies of dim remembered runes" --McKay

   "Oligarch Twilight"

just past my window's margin
you stay · words cannot
bring you into this crystal prism
along with all my crystal shards of color

you stay dark
dark and without form
till that day
i and my glass join in abfraction

and abfraction turns traitor


T. J. Bass.

"In the Gion district of Kyoto, there is--or I should say there was--a miburi-go (gesture language) structured around the forty eight signs (kana) representing syllables in the Japanese language..." --Michitâro Tada, Japan*s* G*stures (2004)

My Compassion and My Contempt Have It Out (photo by JR Compton)


Clar* Turlay N*wb*rry.


"We have not heard from Riverbend either, but hope that, as in the past, she has traveled to safer areas." Follow-up.


L is now known.

'...each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and () at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of it all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.' --Aimé Césair*, Discours* on Colonialism (1955; tr J Pinkham)


   "Dalit Cthulhu"

swamp viridian dawnlight
churchmutiny pools

arguing
among this bomb squad's top protocols

cars splash from long undraining blood troughs briskly
and furl spills

i would not touch a thing of
all viridian all ruth all gulls


"The teleportation effects are, like all Turkish special effects, a strange combination of retarded and rad." Plus. (via M*tafilt*r)


"The mutineers of the Chemin des Dames are the Front's only true heroes. It is their statues that should have pride of place in the capitals of Europe instead of those of their executioners." --St*ph*n O'Sh*a, Back to th* Front (1996)


3nigma.

(via adsofth*world dot com)


Jan Lukasi*wicz.


Props for Pamuk. (PS "On the day the prize was announced the French national assembly passed a bill making it an offense to deny the Armenian genocide, so that a person can now be prosecuted in France for denying something that it is a crime to assert in Turkey." (via Moorish Girl)


   "The Dream of a Child of a Man

I am standing in an abandoned classroom.
The linoleum floor is red. Spackle-scarred walls
batter me with a hospital's mildewed green.

Everywhere on this earth, there is either grunge

or a shadow that mimics the one dead body
that, propped like a puppet, a pillow, a sack of potatoes
turns the corner into something far too sharp.

Nearby a hat rack impales a skull like a joke, only
more fresh: Tatters of jerked skin still adhrre.
In the corner, a woman's panties, turquoise, bloody.

A German Junker racks the sky, expands it forever

which roars with its boom, the clanks and shouting, its
muted dives. In my dreams, I am a Ukrainian partisan
himself pausing to dream. My rifle is heavy

I hate it. The confiscation of the furniture of sleep

has left its scuff across the tiles, a demon's jagged name
or an abandoned letter home, but to where worries me.
A dead comrade's replacement crouches half within

the empty yet full gesture of a combat torn hallway
which would be a tale to tell you, my small child.
But a child in muddy taffeta is not crying here at all.

You were never born to me here, there, or ever."

--Gordon Hilg*rs, Th* War Against Th* Alphab*t (2000?)