( via / via )

"Before AI, 20,000 people in Kenya earned a living writing essays full-time."

" 'I AM IN DANGER--SIR--'

'Half-cracked' to Higginson, living,
afterward famous in garbled versions,
your hoard of dazzling scraps a battlefield,
now your old snood

mothballed at Harvard
and you in your variorum monument
equivocal to the end--
who are you?

Gardening the day-lily,
wiping the wine-glass stems,
your thought pulsed on behind
a forehead battered paper-thin,

you, woman, masculine
in single-mindedness,
for whom the word was more
than a symptom--

a condition of being.
Till the air buzzing with spoiled language
sang in your ears
of Perjury

and in your half-cracked way you chose
silence for entertainment,
chose to have it out at last
on your own premises."

--Adrienne Rich

"Such an act of faith, he says to lug them from wherever and shape them in a circle, and still nobody knows how they did it."

"The Stoic ... trains himself to swallow stones and worms, glass shards and scorpions without nausea; he wants his stomach to be ultimately insensible to everything the chance of existence pours into him...". ~Nietzsche via @joshualwatson

"A review appeared of the first edition of After Babel by a very distinguished linguist, an old man now, still alive, and someone I respect very much: the high priest of the mandarins. 'After Babel is a very bad book,' it began, 'but alas it is a classic.' So I wrote this professor and said no review has ever honored me more, particularly the alas, which was wrung from him. I can live with that."

( via / via via Mefi )

"We do not yet know what Cute can do."

"autumn morning
also a fly, just one
leaving the inn"

--@poem_exe 8-23-2019

Ethiopian scarecrows.

"clackers can't be choosers"

warily pick wordseed
award this one credence

subfusc in my sendings
the season's thresh braving

watch virulent violence
unvanquished, bold, cheerful

"I'm curious if there happen to be any Lacanian occultists out there."

( via / via )

Hard Times Killing Floor Blues.

"9/29/68
for Leroi Jones

Late at night I went walking through your difficult wood,
half-sleepy, half-alert in that thicket of bitter roots.

Who doesn't speak to me, who speaks to me more and more,
but from a face turned off, turned away, a light shut out.

Most of the old lecturers are inaudible or dead.
Prince of the night there are explosions in the hall.

The blackboard scribbled over with dead languages
is falling and killing our children.

Terribly far way I saw your mouth in the wild light:
it seemed to me you were shouting instructions to us all."

--Adrienne Rich

" 'Who doesn’t prefer art that at least overtly imitates something other than its own processes?' wonders the text about its own process.."

"DELIRIUM

Sleep drawn in,
I (no tale) met a torso gelid,
off, a dot,
a burst egg,
nitid emu

I riled sleep/REM lab.
Metastases process, amnesia,
mock coma is en masse!

Corpse sat, sat…
Embalmer peels.

Delirium editing gets rubato.
Daffodil egos rotate
melatonin inward"

--@Spoonerrhythms

"On the other side of the looking glass, it’s not that words have no meaning: rather, they mean much more than we had imagined."

( via / via )

"Why calico, why Spanish moss, why the crickets scream."

Even when we read the same book we don't read the same book.

How Fortunate the Man with None.

chords
i almost know what follows
but it doesn't follow

mirkwood
between empty acts

Untitled.

( me / also me )

The Literature of Creepy Clowns.

"INITIATION

The river calls! Where stately reeds unfurl
Their slender flags in gentle wind and hedge
The tender throng of ripples in their swirl
Of eagerness to bathe the mossy ledge,

Pause in your frantic vehemence, immersed
In vigorous, primeval scent unscored
By thought, with every alien breath dispersed
Fix your divining eyes upon award.

Do you discern the faint and rhythmic veer
Of leaves? The glow of glassy waters lance
The fragile wall of mist? And do you hear
The song the elves are singing to their dance?

The branches proffer in their angled frames
Star-cities in the regions of the blessed,
The flight of time erases wonted names
And Here and Now are images at best.

This is the hour! Down the goddess gleams,
Her gauzy veils the colour of the moon,
Her lids are lowered by the weight of dreams,
She leans to you and offers you her boon.

Her mouth is trembling closer to your cheeks,
So pure you seem to her, so ripe for bliss,
That now she does not shun your hand which seeks
To turn her lips to yours and to your kiss."

--Marx & Morwitz's Stefan George

The Letter.

"The bow, that ne'er till now its glittering points
Bent back without recoil and whirring twang--"

--Richard Horne

Flight to Mars.

( via via feuilleton / via )

The Mona Lisa Diagnosis.

"An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars." --Wendell Berry

I notice the casual use of "zombie" as a vampire exonym in Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive; elsewhere (The Language of Vampyr) they seems to use "puppet" (a word with many Ligottian overtones!). More.

"my marbled endpapers"

spring forestalled by karstlight
poemlog · rotting soy milk
the edge that is bridgepath
Dunkirk in a winepress
only the dead know Sedna

A blast from the past.

( lanny quarles / via )

but... have you heard those records?

"pickleball injury"

sound of the cars surging
softly on this morning
some birds i don't bother
binding to a label
lit lamps of the humans
lattice the blue darkness

"This obsession with no longer being victims transformed us into bullies."

"STEREOLITHOGRAPHY

Under ultraviolet light, infection
flouresces coral red, and fungus glows
lime green, Wood's glass
optical filters

block visible spectrums. Remember:
how you summoned how love felt
the last first time, a night

a Delta woman's fierce kiss felled you,
a good luck chicken foot swinging
from her rear-view,

her sloppy car filled with art supplies,
and the ink of something reborn.
Layer by layer

she taught you to dream into thought,
your mouths in moist embrace
crossed between

laughter, perhaps tears, and starlight.
The best kisses make you listen,
owl in a pecan tree sighs,

squirrels turn in precarious patterns
high up, next to museum clouds
and drifting oxygen

as trees breathe together. Eyes blue
as a brilliantine shine in hot sun,
hair black as the shadow

of a raven's wing, a jalopy tossed in
for lagniappe, her deep down
Mississippi muddiness

that slides through reasoning as into
warm water, more kisses,

and you're infected with good luck."

--Gordon Hilgers on Fb

Song of the Infinite Subtrahend.

( via / me )

Down the rabbit hole with Namaskar.

"Riddle 2 from the Exeter Book

I move at times beyond mortal ken:
under the eddies’ shock earthward I delve
Barbwielder's bath; Abyss regurges
spindrift and spray, spume-beweltered;
whalemere howling, harshly growling;
staiths streambeaten, strom wallowing
on steep skerries —stones and shingle,
wrack and jetsam— wrestling, I,
floodpower-enfolded, founder dredging
wide wavebedrock. Waterhelm cannot
be loosed till leave from the leader who pilots
my sea-soundings. Say, thoughtful man,
who breaks me from embrace of briny fathoms
when heaving surges hush to stillness;
the wake becalmed that covered me once?"

--Rahul Gupta on Academia.edu

Mirkwood.

"the fish doorbell"

squiring the fish doorbell
i'm turned away haywire
just bubbles & ebon
shadow figures gadding

no button-girt portal
crowned the ebbing webpage
nine hundreds a gander
online fondly seeking

Reading by the seashore.

( via / via )

Dispatches from the Adderall Epidemic.

"THE STELAE
for Arnold Rich

Last night I met you in my sister's house
risen from the dead
showing me your collection

You are almost at the point of giving things away

It's the stelae on the walls I want
that I never saw before

You offer other objects
I have seen time and time again

I think you think you are giving me
something precious

The stelae are so unlike you
swart, indifferent, incised with signs
you have never deciphered

I never knew you had them
I wonder if you are giving them away"

--Adrienne Rich

The Fish Doorbell.

"ON SEEING WEATHER-BEATEN TREES

Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown?"

By American poet, Adelaide Crapsey (September 9, 1878-October 8, 1914) via @heather_nanni

War story.

( via / via )

"So that’s the kind of mass chaos that I encountered initially, and then I was told that every time there’s a bomb, give it about 15 minutes and the mass casualties come."

They had an instant coffee machine on campus which poured first concentrate then hot water. I learned to pull out the cup before the water started, pay for another, & swap the empty cup for my half filled cup of concentrate. That's how i got through college.

And a day goes by.

"lex talionis"

unhoused harrowing · here deposited
a flake · flogging the flower war
our unwearying words · secondhand witness
& we snipe at each other · too snugly urned
though we can drive & drug · drizzlethrough
no comfort comes · caring too much
& not enough

"Immanentize the Eschaton" in Claude 3's output--or is it? Who can say?

( via / via )

Bemaya.

"7/26/68: III

So many minds in search of bodies
groping their way among artificial limbs.

Of late they write me how they are getting on:
desertion, desertion, is the story of those pages.

A chewed-up nail, the past, splitting yet growing,
the same and not the same; a nervous habit never shaken.

Those stays of tooled whalebone in the Salem museum--
erotic scrimshaw, practical even in lust.

Whoever thought of inserting a ship in a bottle?
Long weeks without women do this to a man."

--Adrienne Rich, Leaflets

"Dagger Dagger" & "Feed the Dream" live.

As epigraph for one of my early books, i translated Horace's "damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae" [Odes 4.7] as: 'The swift heavens, nevertheless, repair/ all the depredations of the Moon.' (1993)

I Got Heaven.

( via / via )

Farewell.

"In the apocalyptic climate of the 1940's Robert Lowell became the leading poet of his generation. He wrote as if poetry were still a major art and not merely a venerable pastime which ought to be perpetuated." --F W Depee

The Missing Nymph.

"portal"

cold adorned by the dawn chorus
the world not wearied · of music or war
my wheels glide · in the kiteslipt gloaming

The Scent of Time.

( via hybridizer / via )

"...these metal men don’t need a vehicle to navigate the city anymore, they are the vehicles themselves."

"The Time Beneath

In the premortury tomb
Of ancient time--
Who does not lie there,
A mummy not yet born?
Who does not lie there,
Who lives?
Except mock-creatures in wild numbers
The upper air usurping
While the great dead still sleep?

But when the great dead at last live,
What are those deep worlds then?
When beauty rises from the blackened queens
And the lachrymatory vessels sparkle
With tears from unbound eyes
That grieve sincerely how they lay
Long closed?

They are the pit of future then,
Where cautious souls that never risked name
Lie down in ghastly triumph of will
And dream of grandeur never lost
To the ancient test of death."

--Laura (Riding) Jackson

I want to make images that fight your eye a little.

"Gothic word of the day:
Gaqumþs ('assembly, coming together [of people]')" --@OleWikander

The Early Bird.

( via / via )

Wordmelum.

"sad to see these poor dudes muttering about pronouns and wokeness like a Japanese soldier still fighting WWII in the 80s" --@RichDecibels

"The strike and slow which clast did broil..."

"wingman on Titan"

scorpion's scamper · askew with ring
of feculent fire · our feud & muddle
cannot save ourselves · cannot say what it is
makes us so crazy · & mindlessly cruel
vantablack lodge venom · vap of worlds

Song.

( me / via )

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."

"The Howling of Wolves

Is without world.

What are they dragging up and out on their long leashes of sound

That dissolve in the mid-air silence?

Then crying of a baby, in this forest of starving silences,
Brings the wolves running.
Tuning of a violin, in this forest delicate as an owl’s ear,
Brings the wolves running—brings the steel traps clashing and slavering,
The steel furred to keep it from cracking in the cold,
The eyes that never learn how it has come about
That they must live like this,

That they must live

Innocence crept into minerals.

The wind sweeps through and the hunched wolf shivers.
It howls you cannot say whether out of agony or joy.

The earth is under its tongue,
A dead weight of darkness, trying to see through its eyes.
The wolf is living for the earth.
But the wolf is small, it comprehends little.

It goes to and fro, trailing its haunches and whimpering horribly.

It must feed its fur.

The night snows stars and the earth creaks."

--Ted Hughes

Maggot Brain.

"Literature isn't sacred. It's a failure. Defeat. It's not a drawing made by language. Not even misery painted by language. Only that despair gives birth to technique. Despair invents ventriloquy."

– Kim Hyesoon, Bird Rider: An Essay (trans. Don Mee Choi) via @svedberg_alex

Terebellum.

( via / me )

"...the Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry." (via Mefi)

"...pert quicksilver
His gaze begets, goblin mineral..."

--CS Lewis

The bizarre time are coming.

"Single Traveller

What is this love that is my life's companion?
Shape-changer, sometimes faceless, this companion.

Single traveller, I wander a wasting world
awaiting the much anticipated Companion.

A trillium covered wood one April day
served as a nearly consummate companion.

A horse, two dogs, some cats, a blue macaw
each in its turn became a loyal companion.

Behind the loved embrace, a face of light-
demon or angel-lures me from my companion.

The street of love is neither wide nor narrow.
Its width depends on me and my companion.

Am I too bound and blinded by coarse wrappings
ever to know true love as my companion?

O Poet, squanderer of time and talents
why do you search for love as your Companion?"

--P K Page

Quiet moment.

( via / via )

Gathering Storm over Farm.

"big new feelings"

borne on Xibalba- · burnished skies
screamriddle scram · scrunched up
witness who'd wear · winter camo
in the spring spraintcrop · sprawling demonolatry
with shiny new smiles

"All thought that lasts is contradiction."

"In the year of my youth when yoyos came in
The carriage was sunny and the Clyde was bright
As I hastened from Helensburgh in the height of summer
Leaving for home in a lounge suit.
Sombre were the sixteen skies of Europe,
The stokers were seasick on the ship of state
For the decks were dipping though McDonald was steering.
...
I sat in my still corner while the country ran
Listening to the lulling low of the lines,
And a shadow-train flitted foreshortened through fields
Of the English counties one after another
Day wore on. I dozed and dreamed."

--W H Auden (qtd in Phelpstead)

Necessary Evil.

( still from Kwaidan / via )

Game of Life in 3D.

"They talked of technicalities, the terms of their art,
The rules of englyns, and of runic riddles.
They were aware of words, and as if unaware
Of the battle that rolled and rattled beneath them..."

--Artorius

The Carnegie Hall Concert.

"eclipsedust manifesto"

any illness · errand-ghost listing
the difficult delvers · in dark rooms wait
i was wrong to reck you · a mere riddle
you are canvas & stretcher · corner & streetlight

"I'm going into the park to do pastoral dances."

( still from Kwaidan / via )

Some history of Tinariwen.

"Oil Refinery

Under the fume · of the first dragons
those spellbinders who guard · goldhoards under barrows
whole fields of warriors · wilted: even Beowulf
fell in balebreath · from firedrake fangs

Yet this hugest of Worms · though he outburst heaving
from deepest of meres · under farthest moor
is led leaping and leaping ·at last to these shores
and hour by hour · overhewn and whelmed

Not without fury resists · flames in the night
blasts the world air · wans all blue day
Ho! a handful of thanes · in helmets threaten him
in silver keeps stab him · the old swartshiner
with gauges bedevil · with dials with cyclonesnuffers
endless they slaughter · that slimiest of Nadders

Hwaet! he is quick again · thousand-toothed Queller
whirls his ghost in our wheels · unleashes or locks them
Yea he twins twentyfold · twines in our graveloot
breath of that sly snake · stifles and clings
slides from our long ships · coils round our steadings
Eala! we are lost in the spell · of his loopings."

--Earle Birney in Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival

Medals Do No Good.

"...one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was 'only small beer'. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral-ale with the taste of death." --J R R Tolkien, "On Translating Beowulf"

This is how the world works.

( via / still from Kwaidan )

"Not only does the show feel cold because of the unfolding existential crisis it traces; it also needs that human intimacy because nearly all the other scenes in its early episodes take place in a video game."

"Important to realize Eclipses exist within massive Lineages called Saros cycles ,which last for about 2,000 yrs and wrap themselves around the Earth twice, from pole to pole, like a Great Gnostic Serpent. Current Solar Saros began May 17, 1501" --@HermeticAstro

"In the darkness of the jungle, Martim can move around with cover, savoring 'the strange music' that is 'the delicate friction of silence up against silence'."

"final descent"

cluster of swerves · swept clean
interface · i am onyx knife
to this cull kitchen · catch me asleep
in the rain-runnelled badlands · right here
i can hear the hesitations · of a hunkering crow

"Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting."