"Closed Casket Days"

the same girl only red-haired

the part that i care about
was for you not to worry
small pocket garden
in the land of bright neon apocalypse
which is just
the size of any meaning past or future

shards of self-hatred still
some deeply interior vision
leading perhaps
to insight perhaps not

i'm sorry
we are not responsible
for lost articles

compassion
for the people
in that place of torment
do they want it wrapped in rhetoric
in superstition in advertizing
this is not about your nunytcu
to have said something

among the land mines
& their brazen silences

"Some of the government agents and inquirers swore the ignorant populace did really believe that, with the discovery of a new Word, everything in the world would be explained. A wild pamphlet did actually appear, in which the writer argued with insane ingenuity that, as all modern publicity and popularization consist of concentrating a book into a paragraph, or a chapter into a sentence, so at last the whole truth about the present problem would be concentrated into a word. Crowds of impatient malcontents were adjured to Wait for the Word; and apocalyptic visions were provided, of the scenes of world-change that would follow, when once the Word was spoken. The Word would contain in itself, it was gravely asserted, a complete plan of operations and an explanation for the whole organized strategy of the revolt." --G K Chesterton, Four Faultless Felons (1930)


Thriving, struggling, suffering.


"...from 2005-2008 the Koch brothers pumped in double the amount that even Exxon spent on undermining climate action over the same period." (via Metafilter)


"In these more recent stories about Hissa Hilal, however, the framing suggests that what is important is not so much how she does what she does...but what she wears." And: "I have seen evil..."

"From Dream... To Reality"

1.
whether these troubles are over
in a hundred
or in a thousand years

songs of teenage lust
& the need to find a slant on the chaos
that looks seems like purpose

for an hour
or a day
just to get through that djedi

like i do
at times when these pluja thoughts
look like so many spinning ice floes to walk

headline crashes
teeth of the Symplegades
across on the path of the raging aurora borealis

2.
the stars are se gusni jipno
of leaves
in the dark ricygri of the sky
my love for you is the dark tsani
it's the burden i carry

so when you suffer i don't
is that it
it's not something we share?
could you not stay awake
for one hour?
is the hour up yet?
the dark furling
under pressure of the dawn
is that a kind of magic too?
tomorrow i will hardly
even walk crooked
through the tents of the refugees
and the refugee-dug latrines

3.
a dimness of noon
the interior castle
ending at a set time

as will this roll of complaints,
their triggers, & the whole noise

"When the animate powers that surround us are suddenly construed as having less significance than ourselves, when the generative earth is abruptly defined as a determinate object devoid of its own sensations and feelings, then the sense of a wild and multiplicitous otherness (in relation to which human existence has always oriented itself) must migrate, either into a supersensory heaven beyond the natural world, or else into the human skull itself--the only allowable refuge, in this world, for what is ineffable and unfathomable." --David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (1996)


Shhh. (I'm the dude with the hat & the sideburns :)...)


Cthulhoid snack-food.


Naming Fomalhaut b.

"Sonja had come to treasure poetry, during the long marches between flaming cities. On the deadly, broken roads of a China in chaos, in the teeming refugee camps, she had come to understand that a memorized poem was true wealth--it was a precious work of art, a possession that could not be burned or stolen." -Bruce Sterling, The Caryatids (2009)


Whose thoughts outrun the hour, enfold its tangles now;
snares, mapmaker's troth busily mining.
Catalogue of all-defunctive dreams & plans,
what comes next is born of proceeds from disgorges from other womb.

I learn, at last i learn & if i squint into
the road ahead, it is with stoic sharp clenched heart
that i continue where i hardly see, & a wind
of no well fine bodings pushes back my hair.


Smogpunk. (via Docbrite)


"...because there is no workstation
it does not see you. They must modify your life span." (via Silliman)

"ghIqtal"

you flee without a clue
of my role in the fray
nor know how much i do
to speed you on your way

O Hoürs where we win
or lose what can be won
the viewless paladin
alone with just a a rusty gun

and yet at times i still
hold teeming such escape
as calls the tribes of will
a rattling of crepe light crepe


"The Balkan war was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia."

"That midden of the stagnant nadir skies" --Smith


no snoozing tonight
giant mesh face sweet vanilla yogurt thwart
and envenom'd habitat
ratatat the thing is being done
ratatat
to the intimate horizon come
Crashsound, aye! & Eschaton
bleak regrets amidst
can't tell even to these porous battlements
up this will
be the intuition's news
lens pops out of my shades
and falls to the floor
of the tow truck cab


"With all the broken skulls, genocides, cut throats, black site torture chambers and mass graves in this world, the flies of American and Mexican media somehow chose these five heads, upon which to alight. It was the Styrofoam coolers of course."


Prepper thread.

"Swampsploitation"

Hattie's on the side of ecstatic
a hero-monster frets no more, eh?

corridor of crimson
thole the edged diversions

this is not your average vampire rock star novel

horrific penance imposed
noises in the walls
power tools through the ventilators
or a brick through the window?

sous-veillance
of the Smilometers
Panov fandango
indigo fontanelle aversive uffish...

hangman and
addressbook watching adjunct Mapsco infrared

Ogpu for wish until educate
rictus Ogpu homily


Tori + Maynard.

"Our Eyes Thirst for Bright Orange"

i see the water moving in the dark intersection
the shadow solider · than what casts it
to leave in die vain night ice acid
on hot pink paper write broad cerulean
until now
until the end of the world
dried up snail & the last birds calling
under this pewter dome
craquelure
craquelure chrome
these black bitter hills
my own Sanskrit was born in
like a torch
fuming without lazily
hate voyage like bright help golem ruin awash
push one pawn forward
you can't opt out
and the odds're against
and the sea is contrary
and we never knew why until now
until
the end of the world

Sheikh Mohammed explains what 'Nabatipopular' poetry is.

we say "there will"
(there and there will be no sea)

not "you will" or "i will"
and the specific gut-ache
of a certain day in a certain year

this machine fills karcists
on safari with Meep & Glibber
while this machine is to him

wrapped up in black wool
just sitting by a dim lamp
waiting for the drugs to take effect

departed am i who loathe the snow
of my summers
something like that

the lines blurring
as the pencil wears down


"I came across this tiny traditional looking café when walking through the Medina."


Red Hot Patriot.

"Words for Snow in Late March"

'It would shatter all writing pens.' --Rumi

1.
denialists' sapphire
not visible anywhere
it's broken
and it won't get fixed
now that's value
arrive sooner
at destitution
the snow on the hood piled
four inches thick

dateline Hobbesian gnosticism

tawaf Elvis
it would shatter all our writing pens
get it on the first ring
in the desert
you can remember your name

2.
catch it on the second ring
brindled fire
in which we see · fathoms past loneliness
the help that is sure to come

3.
tundra, chull, exurb sprawl
oxygen facial starveling hordes
starveling art & starveling song
why can't zombies get along

flagfallen fired-up ignoramuses
certain of their "Pi is Three"
pushing at the trough & wild
to choose the worse in ev'ry trial

i'm made as well by this mad world
nor scathe-free look at it from high
my rodeo clownship ends with this:
desiring more at each witdimpse

4.
relentless queue while over & over
someone's being paged


Na'vi follow-up.

"Breakage High & Low"

'And strains from ruinous viols flown' --Smith

still half immersed in some pluperfect sleep
erasing for awhile viol-troubled day
i rise & hear beyond our mortgaged keep
thunder that means to stay

though one oblivion's purchase wasn't cheap
here in the gloom another's pending sway
draws with the force of dream and dreamless gray
remorse my trickle & seep

i bring to birth term echo & ricochet
of what's already lost; dissolute clay
begins to creep
from the drab cacophonous heap

clay, & a breathing more than mine


Scarlet Music.


"Let’s consider what the President would have to say to the American people if he decided to tell them the truth in no uncertain terms..." (via Kunstler)


Meanwhile, in other poetries... (via Silliman)


No more ACORN. (via Metafilter)

"Essential Tremors"

1.
and maybe there are
discrete acts of violence
which punctuate
the imaginary slide
things in this house that don't work
impetus fallen
alien ultion silk town sprocket
festering stark
tulpa · psalmwards of gastropod ill-ultimate
next antic faster slouch
with next antic summit alien
stark silk font
of Asgard Branton

2.
i see the water moving in the dark intersection
erasing for awhile this troubled day
golden the street grayish blue beyond the trees
very fake looking
i hadn't expected that
British Racing Green, and rust
after awhile the colors seem the name of something
if i weren't unable to say what i have learned

taillight glow appears in the dark
beyond the rain-scrambled glass
backing up and why not
did i mention the cold
wrapped up as i am in shards of sweets


"In what lies the arachnidity of formlessness?"


"If it's any consolation, the thieves who run the health insurance companies will still get to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions for the next four years."


"I'll notify the Texas board of Education at once."

yogurt drying on the spoon
bricks mostly straw

confirmation
number of the beast

misshapen
lifelong ignorance

wellbeing only as deep
as the warmth from this cup

path ending
abruptly in the autumn woods


"But I think that none of the possible identity positions in themselves, whether regional, sexual, racial or class based, no matter how non-normative they could seem in terms of centrist positions and their programmatic exclusion from those centres, is any guarantee of a particular subversion of genre." (via Silliman)


"Of course, the loss of our troops (over 4,200 dead and 30,000 wounded) and treasure (three trillion dollars according to economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz), the perversion of our language, the mangling of our laws, the broken bodies and tortured brains of our veterans really bear no comparison with the suffering we have inflicted on the citizens of Iraq."

Gliese 710.


"Elasticities"

dark states and entanglement
streets wasted · in the strong accord
strictly random · i describe forms
i embrace corrupt practice
as signifying something
from the later, well documented
portion of his career
places closed that will not reopen
bare trees in the cold sun
time for enhancing those skills
roar
of somewhere a motor
one route the less
available


"Typhoid runs the following course."

          "Tlalocan"

“…Or where the stark roof-tree
Of a burnt home blackened and sear lies dark,
Betwixt the gaunt-ribbed ruin, hast thou seen
The rose of peace…” --Sydney Dobell, Balder: Part the First (1854)

Driving on a drizzly morning, I hear “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix and idly wonder whence its building triumph derives. It’s a dirge, but a dirge of victory. Surely not for unpunished murder?

“The black swan of trespass on alien waters” --Ern Malley

There are layers here. First, the blues song. You can sense a bedrock here compounded of guilt and remorse, for which the indirect narrative only partly accounts. This darkness might stem from alcoholism or some other social abjection; however, its meaning has been lost by the time the Sixties rolled through and took from the Blues more inflection than innuendo.

“Departed am I who loathe the snow/ of my summers” --Robot X, 1627.

That stark plot, which forms fugitive agency out of its confrontation between two codes—civil law and the ego’s law of possessiveness—stands for a more timely opposition, known then and for decades thereafter by the name of “Counterculture.”

“ ‘Playful or rude. That’s the difference between good chaos and bad chaos…’ ” --Lyda Morehouse, Messiah Node (2003)

And in the moment of Hendrix’s rendition, the Counterculture was finding itself numerous, visibly other, and martial with its flower power trinity of free love, rock ‘n’ roll, and sacramental marijuana.

“The Jabberwock will set his jaw a notch
And vaguely chew Cuchulain for a day.” --Jack Spicer

Listening to it now, I can’t help but be reminded that the mechanism of commercial radio supplying me with this very anthem, piercing the ether as comfort music for ageing Boomers wracked with bright-minted apocalypse at the deliquescence of their unprecedented privilege, gives that revolution the lie.

“In our house of lamentation
We light the candle from the lightning.” --Mirza Ghalib

Yet consumerism has failed to extinguish that part of urban nomadics later dubbed “the homeless”: and no longer triumphant, but given back to its first grief, the old song claims new poignancy in the hour of its return.

“I do not want / a leg, I want/ a floor” --Robot X, 1038.

Gwyneth Jones, in her 2004 novel Life, talks about being “elective refugees.” To see plain causality, to know Peak Oil, and to interpret our common unstoppable future, is to set oneself apart from the religion of the state, is to turn off the opiate of the masses and to step outside, under a rather troubled sky; entering into his gnosis without deliverance, you drop a caste, you cease to count in the vote on who gets to keep playing the game or game of games. You are here on sufferance. Call it dhimmitude.

“Later times may again live in palaces. Ours is the founding time, the time of tents. It makes no sense to build palaces today, since no people exist for whom it would be appropriate to live in them.” --Stefan George

That term, which originally signalized a clemency toward religious dissidence unknown in the medieval West, was recently resurrected by Bat Ye’or to describe a paranoid fantasy of being enslaved by the creeping tide of Islam; in other words, the richest by the poorest of the poor. (So might an Afghan tribesman’s curse bring down the jet bearing “smart” munitions.)

“the occiput which rolls is ecstatic” --Javant Biarujia

But as there is no corresponding word for the state of being a Muslim in Christian society, so must this term also serve, by ineluctable metonymy, for its mirror-twin: and we who feel this condition and know it for our own, might just as well pass for Mozarabs, as try to remain neutrally non-Consumer.

“Sugar is not a vegetable.” --Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

I am concerned above all with remaining a writer outside of the writing scenes. (One way or another materially I’ll pull through.) This cannot be done without a stance, a practice, that is more than just fashionably rebellious.

“A poet almost has to invent his own land and then has to defend it.” --Spicer

There’s no nourishment in the pose, and of course the real transgression will out: your cancer sun, your indifference to the threat of having to walk somewhere.

“And do not heed those fools who say that these Companions were expert calligraphers and that their errors are only apparent, having a symbolical hidden meaning…” --Ibn Khaldun, in: An Arab Philosophy of History, ed & tr Charles Issawi (1950)

“BUT the Future is only dark from outside. Leap into it—and it EXPLODES with Light.” --Mina Loy

“If you’ll exchange, I’ll give to you
Bokhara—yes! and Samarcand.” --Hafiz, Wine for a Breaking Heart (tr Richard Le Gallienne, 1903)

" 'Islâm--the very word means the surrender of the human will to the will of God,' said Count Anteoni. 'That word and its meaning lie like the shadow of a commanding hand on the soul of every Arab, even of the absinthe-drinking renegades one sees here and there who have caught the vices of their conquerors. In the greatest scoundrel that the Prophet's robe covers there is an abiding and acute sense of necessary surrender. The Arabs, at any rate, do not buzz against their Creator, like midges raging at the sun in whose beams they are dancing.' " --The Garden of Allah

"Perfect Patience"

foregone
on the polluted air
such conditions as
been gauss dragon dragon the wings and
knowing so
much and so little

how possibly map this changes little else
foregone dust
whose boots aren't made for walking

and my perfect patience fries
carving, like farseeing smoke
blurring
someone that small


Why Paint Cats?

"El Area 51"

A frost of unsatisfactory
whirling passes and fails
tumor atlas
the child whose face wouldn't twitch
when walked across by flies
Borg Buddha
the fundamental
questionability
of precrime methodology
rain beating
on the high skylight
a hundred intervening
feet of semidarkness
leaving in a storm
leaving what you know
leaving what you've learned
to accept as reality
whirling the fundamental
questionability

of precrime methodology


"But even if art and poetry have no use, it does not follow that they have no value." --Chesterton


A House in Fez.


"The first rap single ...contained an entire verse, rapped by Big Bank Hank, that was in fact written entirely by another rapper..."

"Frozen Dead Man Days"

1.
siamese squids
cities before & after
their famous disaster
skip
the chapters in your travel guide
accordingly
glow in the pewter sky
circular
i hear a dim twittering i look
the dark trees
on both sides full of birds
i hear through the rolled up windows
and my radio

2.
mem'ries of being cold
pellder
at the people struck by lightning convention
the sky becoming paler
but still dark
above the deserted industrial park
its asphault and its stalled cars
and my path traced there
repeatedly
like a sound only i can hear
gold
at the mouth of the tunnel


Uncle Andy's.


Steampunk Chronology. (via Beyond the Beyond)

"I sent this little book...to two publishers, one conservative, one liberal. The conservative one politely turned it down, though it had come recommended by a leading conservative intellectual. The liberal one offered me a contract and sent me a small advance. The publisher, however, overruled her very liberal editors because she found ideas in the book that she could not stomach."


The New Dropout Economy. (via Beyond the Beyond)

"Old Spider After Shave"

drones pursue
what psychic ability tarries
in Reich Carcosa
buns for gutter probably

computer-generated random tattoos
and halcyon spent looking days
full of orpiment
and forward only and engraved fedora

my disease steadily improving
t'ward sorrow


John Pascuzzi thread.


"Maybe we don’t understand the sensual—the literal use of our senses, because we no longer have a food or physical culture much connected to the—empirical, to a tangible reality. (Is that the right way to put it?). This is why things like psychoanalysis, meditation, or fertility seem magical, mystical to us. They are so at odds with our rootless versions of sex and eating, which are decreasingly tethered to our own senses, which in turn are decreasingly tethered to the natural world."


I Wish I Knew How To Quit You, Pluto.


"The new baseline statement and the BPFK have done incalculable damage to the project..."

70 Virginis b--the coffee mug.

In response to this, i wrote: "this is good but it disregards an essential difference between kinds of people.

the models would not be the same for introverts & extraverts; & i suspect that each of the 16 Jungian types has its own specific social needs.

because the types are not equally prevalent, the more common ones’ needs drown out the perceptibility of the needs of the less common types (some are 100 times more common than others).

you might rather look at it from the point of view of the ideal tribe, which would (say) have one of the very least common types, but no more than their fair number of the most common types; but what happens in today’s world, is a mediated sorting-out of like with like, so that grossly unbalanced tribes form, with a consensus that is biased toward things it is easy for those of that type to believe.

this is how we end up so deluded en masse."


Build Your Own Army of Web Bots Within 24 Hours.


"But when the movie people actually made a film called I, Robot, the story that was filmed had nothing to do with Isaac’s actual stories but was something written and published by another writer, and all they used of Isaac’s work was the title and the Three Laws. Neither of which had been his." (via Metafilter)


M John Harrison responds to Elmore Leonard's list with a list of his own.

"The moment he wants to reform the others, the mystic sinks into a mire of degradation and becomes the moral reformer." --Chesterton


Now in an affordable edition--!




Black: Dion Nicolaas 2006

1. Na3 e5
2. Nc4 Nc6
3. e4 Nf6
4. d3 d6
5. Bg5 Be7
6. c3 O-O
7. Ne3 Be6
8. Qc2 d5
9. Bxf6 Bxf6
10. exd5 Bxd5
11. Be2 Bg5
12. Nf3 Bxe3
13. fxe3 Qe7
14. c4 Be6
15. O-O Qc5
16. Qd2 Rad8
17. Ng5 Bxc4
18. Rac1 Qd5
19. Rfd1 Bb5
20. Qc3 Qxa2
21. Bf3 f6
22. Ra1 Rxd3
23. Rxd3 Qxa1+
24. Rd1 Qa5
25. Qb3+ Kh8
26. Nf7+ Kg8
27. Nh6+ Kh8
28. Qg8+ Rxg8
29. Nf7 mate.


"China wrecked the Copenhagen deal..."