"another day volunteering at the heraclitus museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can step into the same river twice. buddy, you can't even step into the same river once" --@grapesmoker
"CATCHING NESSIE
Yaw a raft: Nessie is sensed!
O reel at, nab, run at it!
Lasso loch’s awash colossal titan!
Urban tale erodes. Nessie is sent far away."
--@lori_wike
"soul-tired
of my drunken shadow
in dim light
I open the window
to let out the silence"
--@ericcoliu
"Claims that we're heading to 2/2.5°C by 2100 are based on empty government/corporate promises and technology that doesn't exist.
2/2.5°C can be expected by the 2040s. Scientists suspect this level of warming leads to additional self-warming towards 3°C."
--@ClimateBen
Palindromic sonnet not by Etherin.
"I will not repeat the whole depressing and sad story of my relationship with the founder and owner of DalkeyArchive Press as John O'Brien sadly drank himself to death and left a major publishing enterprise to its fate." --Thomas McGonigle via
"Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures."
—Antonio Machado via @bernardtjoy
"Pushing 40, he learned to drive, speak Italian, and finally read music."
minion of marble endpapers
signs in the sky · words'
midden scoriac
by a dark wood delved
shiny black shockwave
dero shipwreck
dim Plutonian tinge
& barely make out marks
"What, though their destinies to them are skies
To those who moil on underground with lamps,
And all high hopes are unseen stars in heaven,
Yet are they working upward towards the sun..."
--J Stanyan Bigg
the blue glittering light bewildered.
"A mausoleum with a bit of Sphinx on it will only do for Baudelaire if it has plumbing."
--Gerald Burns
"Meaning is resolution; it is an organizing of language into a coherent finality, and language in Barakat’s poetry is a resistance against precisely that finality." (via @fadyjoudah)
random # 274 = 541 in base-7; 5 + 4 + 1 = 10 lines
stuck behind a tar truck
in the school zap zone
tardy desire
gold picks out the pollen
windshield web collected
perigee warlock
late cicadas scintillate
when twilight twists stuff up
saying twerk it
to the strandwhale streets
"IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (Anagrammed Lines)
It came from outer space —
a comet of imp creatures;
a curse of meteor impact —
to permute a cosmic fear,
to cap our mesmeric fate..."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"Perhaps the worst discovery of all is that you don't even have to be very good at something to ache from missing it." --Wish I Was Here
"babe this is my emotional support pile of unread books" --@doththedoth
random # 77=124 in base-7; 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 lines
bystander · in the stained smock
can only surmise motives
in the framed frenzy · where tiny fragments
of life meep & glibber
you would reduce to discourse · what isn't first speech
reduce to a trunk by midnight
an agony ended · an illness shipped out
"And all pride's barefoot tarantelle on knives..."
"THE LONESOME TABLE
I, the most lonely
mixes his veinwith ashes. Be the
travelling mast - Ijourney by night. Avoid
O avoid her, earnest
is the name I - itis revenge. Mine the
velvet empire, yours
the lonesome table
in the roof. First one?
Stone, I speak: Sam-Simae-line. End
I, it ends. Simar,
Simae, cross out the
line at the end. Ice
in the table. Roaring,
lonesomest I of
earth. A mast riseup in seas
and: the lonesome table."
--Unica Zürn via
"Academic publishing feels like burying something in the woods then drawing a map for your friends to find it." --@MisterBossy
"Somewhere between puzzle, experimental rhythm, blues disguised as rock, and elaborate hoax..." (via feuilleton)
"the blue glittering light bewildered" --Hell of the Cyr
"A BORGES:
A su manera,
al los aires asir,
nos alegro Jorge la sonrisa:
mar era.
A mi manera yo iba a Bioy.
¿Serás acaso ídolo, solo dios?
'A Casares yo iba, a Bioy.
Arena, mi mar era más,
ir nos alegró'.
Jorge la sonrisa sería,
sol; la arena: musa."
Translated from Spanish by Google
TO BORGES:
In his own way,
to seize the air,
Jorge made us happy with his smile:
sea was.
'In my own way I went to Bioy.'
Will you be an idol, just a god?
'I used to go to Casares, to Bioy.
Sand, my sea was more,
It made us happy to go.'
Jorge the smile would be,
sun; sand: muse."
--@MerlinaAcevedo
Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock.
silverling slingshot olpe
strand across my strayed face
select stricture
Frescas in frabjous cans
"Somewhere unwritten poems wait, like lonely lakes not seen by anyone." (via Mefi)
— Anna Kamieńska (translated by Grażyna Drabik & David Curzon) via @isidro_li
"Success during her life has only been surpassed by modern acclaim, as with the National Gallery of Ireland’s landmark 2023 exhibition of her work, or the sale of 'Portrait of Antonietta Gonzalez,' which at auction that same year fetched well over a million dollars." ( Mefi )
"a life
of running away
summer cicada"
--Issa via @bashosociety
Blade Runner, the Aquarel Edition.
world accrued · from the cawing of crows
a sere façade · seen head-on
scratched dishes · delve for the prize
in proprietary dark · you belong
to learn is to linger · by ways fragrant
the whole time hindered · by Thékk in hiding
or a cawing clear · across great fathoms
"And a black pupil in the green scum shows."
"The last artefact you need during a disaster is a disaster story that metaphorises it." --Wish I Was Here
夏②. (via @seppuku_doge)
won't begrudge · this groomed messenger
so much vetted · by not one poet
what could you whirl besides · your pinwheel gaily
when it's sealed already · the say- & unsayable
the meaning of the moment · will mostly show
scant months hence · whatever our hopes
your job to be joyous · as only the young can
entranced by a truth · i would not rob you
& the crooked word · crumbling away
about mass murder · that's not this monster
i leave to the left-out · my kin & colleagues
who'll have plenty to plead · complacent in the nosebleed seats
"For Betelgeuze was a ruby shining, and a diamond for Rigel, and pale topazes for the other stars."
derelict PLANO
shards of LURIA
bleat in ARLES
child of my step-NIECE
cherish OASES
"Edgelands: I'm beginning to hate that word, because even more than 'psychogeography' it's so attractive and easy to use but so obviously a gentrifying label, an attempt to plant a flag in the zone. Not only have liminal spaces become culturally mainstream, there's a mainstream of liminal-space thinking; a kitsch of liminal zones is now inevitable." --Wish I Was Here
"I understood that my kind would never inherit the earth even if we inherited it, and I often think about that." --Wish I Was Here
During the Battle of the Somme.
matutinal creel
treasures the mana fades from
no travellers here
sussuration from fountains
ev'ry other minute cars
plappergeist hail · only this Hallmark
mystery movie · amok plangent
narrative of the neighbor · who turns Maga
QAnon-pilled · in the pinkgold stillness
"got my brown paper bag · and my take home pay"
--ZZ Top
ANAGRAM-SONNET FOR JORGE LUIS BORGES.
"If I had a 'familiar' it would resemble less a nervous exotic animal than a chipped enamel sink. You would not find it on my shoulder but in its natural environment at the bottom of a derelict canal in the industrial Midlands. Our connection would be the source of my special powers, which would neither mimic nor metaphorise its qualities but be unmistakably sink-related. I would feel no emotion towards it even when events caused us to be separated and tortured. A sink can feel nothing. That is one of the baseline or default qualities of a sink. But wherever I went, I would know that out there, bedded in the mud beneath the slow black water, never more than a mile or two from my present location, its energies focussed, site-specific and calm, there my sink would be" --M John Harrison, Wish I Was Here (2023)
1.
thought-lethargic · in the threat landscape
fizz furnace · i affirm numbly
each mazeturn moment · a mere flourish
in Indra's plaintext · microplastics
the truth teller · at knifepoint
recants
2.
crag zenith
cool · watcher of elves
a cawing
from behind
the mystery of the starter
dusty car windows
3.
pinkgold wires cross black
soundless click of micro-steps
don't know buttoning
"I was writing this poem about a sustainable arts ecosystem..."
gray hills at dawn · dolg
burn in the wolf-loud glade
up periscope · pale cerulean
pierced by slurred spires
through the glass gleams · fires we cannot touch
Hermeto Pascoal performing in a lake.
"It is true I cannot say whether things are going to change for the better, but what I do say is that things will never be right unless they do change."
- Lichtenberg via @aliner
Poem.
"An audience is a crowd that gathers to listen. A vidience is a crowd that gathers to watch. A tangience is a crowd that gathers to touch. A gustience is a crowd that gathers to taste. An amorience is a crowd that gathers to love" --@ctrlcreep
feared shortfall
bemused blogging dream
car won't start
ink runs out
this morning's light no other
& the news repeats
fremd hump of the fractal
flickering-res presence
my care once & weary
a wintry murk circle
conundrum long landless
below brumous tombstone
softness like a sickle
sings in the bog kingdom
"Old English fact: gospel is originally short for gódspell, or 'good news.' The opposite was láthspell, ‘bad or loathsome news’." --@wylfcen
Loonie Tunes St James Infirmary.
Clarice Lispector: “I am every hellish piece of me—life in me is so demanding that if they hacked me up, like a lizard, the pieces would keep trembling and squirming. I am the silence engraved on a wall, and the oldest butterfly flutters and finds me: the same as always.” via @_motherslug
"BATTLE OF BOSWORTH FIELD (Palindrome)
Drowsy brawl.
A York royal.
War by sword."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with."
