"Living in 2024s dystopia, 1980s Blade Runner feels like a warm utopia." --@memizon
"TYPEWRITER (Top Row)
Typewriter. Top row.
Write your poetry or quote.
Tier your repertoire.
TYPEWRITER (Left Side)
Draft a severe verse.
Draw a reader. Weave a craft.
See fetters free art.
TYPEWRITER (Right Side)
Joy, in looping ink,
lining my obliging book....
Bibliophily."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"untitled"
"My Druid heart" --Walter de la Mare
My Druid heart has found its final lair,
and in its last redoubt made fast its sleep;
yet this has not preserved from lancing pain
my Druid heart.
The world let go of me, but not the moon
in whose regard i dance out some charade
with rays that ricochet around the vugg.
Now i emerge, a pharaoh from the sand
or from the night, a lustrous crackling grackle.
Silvery-crackle-shines in another kiln
my Druid heart.
(publ in Illya's Honey vol 15 spring/summer 2009)
"We depend on the men with blackboards to show us quarks; we depend on men with backward collars to show us some equivalent of quarks. But suppose that neither show us anything." --Roxy Gordon
"不三不四 ('neither three nor four' = 'shady') is great." --@jacquesderridad
"Poetry was always a dialogue with the dead."
"The Cough
I am everyone's & no one's.
I come from the air, my body is air,
yet I shake solid bodies as I go.
My warning bark
is unheard right in someone's face.
They think when I am theirs
I am part of something else & will soon be leaving.
True, I travel between--
though I stay behind--
I could only be known
if for once I'd not been known.
(from King Brainworm, 1993)
"There is a land called Lost..."
"THE POETS' CORNER
Soldierly at last, for the lines
Go marching on.
And happily may they rest beyond
Suspicion now, the incomprehensibles--
It was mere loveliness.
And loveliness?
Death has an understanding of it
Loyal to many flags."
--Laura (Riding) Jackson
"Word of the Day: NIHILAGENT (n.) someone who does nothing" --@HaggardHawks
The official orchestra of the Malian state railway recorded this in 1973.
"Metaphors
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off."
--Sylvia Plath
"Leda and the Swan"
esoteric ads · for ills' prescriptions
night of near war · enough to keep track of
wonder how soon
this blue halcyon
shell of protect
no longer reigns intact
passed the wound warehouse · a ways i am free of
a shudder that shapes · my sheer cairn
plight by plight
a crow marplot
one way sailing
the word-filled ceiling
these murder myst'ries · mildly violent
i ponder through panes · impending crossed
by the lines of chaos
where the living caress
ghosts like smoke
through glass sealed sneak
"thief’s candle"
edgedarkness · aim to stay
mind a mutiny · of mobbed goblins
gloomy this fray Friday · frosted with gloze
spray boils up · sporadic splash
darkwave denizen · corkscrew kisser
scarlet huge eyes · huddle & disperse
i can hear good jam · gallop justly
i can keep cruel news · not in my craw
or creel · lightens the cloudveil · venomless
unlike my verse
"endgame"
the last maskers · luchadores
skulk scatterlings · among the throngs
on some shade shore · waiting to ship
watching the wind · lift & let fall
"I know a pilgrim from a distant land."
"An altered relationship to finitude, an allergy to cliché, an appreciation for tradition and violations of tradition, a sense of the value of uselessness, an ability to hold two contradictory ideas in the mind simultaneously" --@_ryanruby_
"talkies"
waft of white blooms · dropped in the driveway
resurrects · a rogue mem'ry
bouquet of cinders
the moment sunders
cassette of Wagner
Whole Foods eggnog
flickering flames · reflect slippage
within ward walls · of a mind maimed
then the film lost
for decades released
to an online file
where my eye could fall
repair sparingly · this page of madness
with whimsical music · on the merge wharf
tree flowers lavish
their braid language
the gumshoe framed
with a tapeworm friend
Video response to last Xylophobia podcast.
"But rarely
Did he visit-now
‘Tis all in the past, and
Since then in the garden
Every single trace has gone."
--Teika
"Cariola. What will you do with my lady?--Call for help.
Duchess. To whom, to our next neighbours? they are mad-folks."
--The Duchesse of Malfy
Searching for a Palestinian Necropastoral .
"...Wild flowers
in the burn plane
form a swoosh
you can see from space"
--Death Styles
"low-stakes substitution"
raven sighted · in the side yard
winging away · in no wild hurry
ah! if mist-messenger · might avail me
& boon beg · from aborted god
let this light language · find its looth in time
& a pat perch · when perils ravage
A Page of Madness (1926). ☆☆☆☆
dusk · then a rich dark
alarming the animals
still at liberty
"I’m falling in love with my lostness."
"My work is not meant to be pretty,
It's meant to make you feel like you are standing on the edge of a cliff." --@VioletBondArt
It’s Been Raining Since September.
Anyone for whom centralization is the default has a defective understanding of systems.
"mage of paddocks"
threat landscape of mince pie
rising in the newsreels
grid descamisados
without plaintive outlook
& the high wire torwright
tired of lewd colluding
meet at spider midnight
"This is the pilgrim's plight--to look the fool while raving towards magic."
"NIGHT
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipper of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord amongst lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins; you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil."
--Robinson Jeffers
"Love is not consolation, it is light."
"had a realization today teaching Nietzsche. he says mercy is the prerogative of those who feel themselves powerful. our society's extraordinarily punitive violence is a result of its really being extremely powerful while feeling itself to be constantly impotent and under threat." --@gdmorejon
"something interesting about video games is that you go into them understanding that there are difficulty levels. that mindset is valuable imo, and while i wouldn’t want that framework to be true for music, i wish more people embraced the notion of being challenged by art." --@misterminsoo
"Devil Comet"
The god under the tarp prattles
Is not a guide · on the tarn shore
Fiestaware back · each to its place
The frail microclime’s surge · clasp for an answer
At solstice alignment · the ray falls
The word goes out · as the meme spreads
Blue mold appears · on the whole wheat loaf
Shiny traceries left · on the pink brick
People burned alive · in their stalled cars
With the ornate moon · its own mock
Wastebasket lined · with our reused bags
I filled with extruded slime · and stacked tissues
I go back to sit · in the same place
As if fixed in time · a small pyramid
Do I think of myself · as trailing books
Every so often I drop · the abandoned cairn
And rain chances · locally heavy
I forecast drive · through those brick streets
It all burned down · a hundred years ago
Yet the ghost remains on maps · my own real tears
Fast moving pale clouds · with Venus peeking through
Color not a color · from which bombs fall
Elsewhere and otherwise · my taxes paid for
The subfusc veil occults · star and darker gray
"At a Lunar Eclipse
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?"
--Thomas Hardy
" 'Move slow and build things' is the antidote to Silicon Valley’s mantra: 'move fast and break things'.
An example is Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, approaching completion after 134 years of devoted work."
--@MrEwanMorrison
Offering the brightest pearls to the holiest pig.
"Anne Carson, in Plainwater: 'My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. "Listen," he said, "life and no escape." ' " --@dreamsofbeing_
A View Down Main Street in Dallas.
“With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.”
—Adelaide Crapsey (Release, 1911-1913) via @twicktwit
( via / poem experiment )
"MEDANIAU"
made landfall · in a vexed mirrorverse
threaded backwards · my trouser loops
the silent movie soundtrack · out of sync
here they hold wakes · for kitchen appliances
the cardboard castle · sags in the cold
can't read the reverse · on gruel packages
give names to ev'rything
"When all the involved calculations prove false, and the philosophers themselves have nothing more to tell us, it is excusable to turn to the random twitter of birds, or toward the distant mechanism of the stars." --Memoirs of Hadrian (via @JaredMPollen)
"I look at my city. It lies in ruins. I imagine the heaps of concrete as puzzle pieces, but they are disfigured and there is no place for me to sit down and reassemble them." --@MosabAbuToha
"drake's head soup"
rain inside the yarn ball
& a crisp neap whisper
collapsing bog warpspeed
bars · long in the songbook
the day's visor nearing
tides where nothing guides us
this work of sharp darkness
"The question could be framed this way: is Fantasy, as a mode, eschatological?
All our writings are levels of Dante's Hell now. Everyone is assigned a place, based on merits & demerits. The eye of the Panopticon, internalized.
"This made me feel an emotion I cannot even roughly name."
on Greiner-rug glaiveclad · regard Tomita
clyte at "1418" · like a kaffir squire
the moon again moved · to the back burner
Dispatches from the Land of Erasure.
the stars and the stars
and the streets and the stars
i hear sizzling start
from the stars and the stars
and darkness will stare
as i absorb on the stair
the stars and the stars
and the streets and the stars
"This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—"
--Mary Oliver via via @victoriamoul
