"...hammer blows the empire sought to deflect by a variety of retreats: into diplomacy, safer territory, nostalgic fantasy, or selfishness. People moved to carve themselves out a place in an enterprise which struggled, first to maintain the status of a lofty power, then against disintegration..." --ibid
which sussuration
companions
rituals of holding on
as a land falls away
in this light
a pallid hair a black
all i am saying
now unsaid
'Do nothing which is of no use.' --Musashi
"What's the point of music that doesn't move forward?"
"The author, feeling that such a gross case of blundering required some excuse or explanation, accounted for the misprints by asserting that the devil drenched the manuscript in the kennel, making it almost illegible, and then obliged the printer to misread it."
"I'd rather be in Lojbanistan."
Did our song fail too?
"Too many people owed their living, not to the real world, but to the sham of it, from the Sultan down, in his sham omnipotence; through the government, with its pretence of controlling the empire; the janissaries in the guise of soldiers, the ulema, in the sham of everlasting Islamic victory; governors, in the sham obedience from which they derived their legitimacy. Thousands of people came to work in the palace every day, but only about twenty of them performed significant tasks." --ibid
Guiron ruinous · wisp croons sot
and brumous gulch · big indigo
for Guiron asks · twinkling distant
is apart · scroggy origin
Books going.
"It is a cover of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" — the verses translated into Arabic, the choruses left in English, and the whole thing decorated with the standard trappings of Arabic pop."
"FIELD — ALL YEAR — OUT OF THE WINDOW
to W. Woroczylski
behind my back — it seemed — were islands:
of the terror-idea! —
as if a certain chill
was spread — for a year of this life:
were they places — I wondered — in pure form:
of mind and genius — of a certain illness? —
what did they mean?
Expectation of Blows:
or of iron — of yekhs:
now innate? —
the same — as
distant islands:
in the garden: of July freshness! . . — and was it from nearby disaster
ever more clearly they were! . . they were:
as there — in their office! — where a feeble liquid:
seeming to penetrate
to the depth
of the race:
to the terrible fire! —
once dripped:
from beneath their dark-blue clothing
1968
[yekh: shout of beaters]"
--G*nnadi Aygi (via Languag* Hat)
Mohawk bot.
"This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before the reader does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But I am very sure of the style of the architecture and of the consecration of the church." --G K Ch*st*rton
Hazard chimps lug Barugon
Clown divs push us Barugon
And if folk illusion fails
Still worship toad Barugon
Burning visions assail us
In this soft kiln Barugon
Angry and without good tricks
All always food Barugon
"I am reminded of a comment made by the Buddhist teacher Guru Amrit Desai, when he looked out of his car window and saw that he was in the midst of a gang of Hell's Angels. After studying them in great detail for a long while, he finally exclaimed, "They really love their motorcycles."."
"Photo After Pogrom
Arrangement by rage
of human rubble
the false-eternal statues of the slain
until they putrify.
Tossed on a pile of dead,
one woman,
her body hacked to utter beauty
oddly by murder,
attains the absolute smile
of dispossession:
the marble pause before the extinct haven
Death's drear
erasure of fear,
the unassumed
composure
the purposeless peace
sealing the faces
of corpses--
Corpses are virgin."
--Mina Loy
Var'aq.
Kor*an Cha Ritual.
Klingon Word Blog...
"Is the Bible translated into Klingon a divinely inspired work?"
