( via / via )

"As for Betrayal, I think of it as the moment when we discover that we don't ‘know’ the Other."

Random # 128 = 24 base-7; 2 + 4 + 2 = 8 lines

mindfulness
finned slums

mends sinful
sunned films

dims funnels
fend slim sun

fun mildness
finds lumens

"So, here’s a contemporary American poet using a medieval Welsh metrical trick as a central tool of her exploration of language..."

"I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history. Everything that he does turns against him because he wasn’t made to do something, he was made solely to look and to live as the animals and the trees do." – E.M. Cioran via @everysongiveeve

Late September.

( me / via )

"Designed by the international company Tracy-Locke in its original form, it held the honor of being the biggest beer ad in the world at 45 feet high with a length of approximately 150 feet."

"New things outrun the nouns available to contain them." --@bratton via @mckenziewark

A poem & Reagan's diary.

"IO

Long I trod,
dislodging rocks,
blind on Io’s wilds....

Now, I hold
this cosmic god;
this fossil of iron;
this lost lion
with torn wings:

Now,
I hold
Io’s sphinx."

--@Anthony_Etherin

A Lay of St Boniface.

( via / valerie p crowe on fb )

"I hear that the axe has flowered."

Random # 255 = 513 in base-7; 5 + 1 + 3 = 9 lines

sleepbitten · the bound offering
  an hour later's ears
fill with the fury · of leaf-ferrier
  in a glare too seldom intercepted
would be fall · if the weary round
  one more time obliged
our sky-crossing cars · failed to occur
  though bees of evil did
i watch for, wise · in the ways of the game

Thin Red Thread.

"Before it referred to the hand tool, 'wrench' meant a trick or a strategy. So in Old English, war strategy would be *𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘸𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤, and elf trickery would be *𝘦𝘭𝘧𝘸𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤. (IPA: [ˈherɛˌwrɛntʃ], [ˈelfˌwrɛntʃ])" --@wylfcen

A shundered cinquain.

( via/ via via @supercomposite )

"You maniacs!"

"The new Collected Poems of J.R.R Tolkien just arrived. Appendix V is a translation of 'Jabberwocky' into Old English alliterative verse! It was done some time in the 1930s as a gift to C.S. Lewis. Typing Old English is hard on this keyboard, but here's one verse.

'Beorg þe wiþ Bealuwerg, byre min leofa,
grapan griple, goman bitre!
Geo-geowfugal eac georne bebug!
Hrumheortne scuna Hloþorlæccan!' "

via Joe Hoffman at Forgotten Grounds Regained grp

"The genocide in the Book of Joshua was disturbingly prescient."

Random # 85 = 151 in base-7; 1 + 5 + 1 = 7 lines

beacon fires unfaring
a frost glyph in stiff dark
pain vanished a vestal
aversion left surgeon's
scalpel signed window
skies of before-Yorick
dug up after depth-cast

Passing.

( me / me )

Wild Bull and Raven Are Friends.

Random # 111 = 216 in base-7; 2 + 1 + 6 = 9 lines

"second moon"

dung ball & skull-scarab
scant few weeks earth dancing

mega-juggler mouldwarp
no moment's pause foaming

asteroid arrested
would rather still mill past

if eyes caught the eight ball
anyone's yen alter?

forget what you gawk here

"Does this mean more werewolves?"

"Art that pretends it can see the truth and tell it is a lie, but that does not mean we should forget about the truth; what good art will do is to show the blinding effect of truth upon the face of the one who views it . . ."

--Gabriel Josipovici, ‘A Winter in Zürau’ via @timesflow

Inward.

( via / me )

To Bind the Wolf.

"The ease with which a whole age nonetheless continues to graze, in spite of exterminations still alive in our memories and planetary asphyxiations already in our throats, gives grounds for perplexity." -Reiner Schürmann, *Broken Hegemonies* --@albernaj

Coming Back Home. (via @mrvalenberg)

Random # 327 = 645 in base-7; 6 + 4 + 5 = 15 lines

black smokecloud uncurls
in the fitful orange glow
airt flower
reanimated gesture of precipice

stilled hours pinned with hemostat
song of the Horla
torches around a remote corral
oligarch's fine confetti

to follow the carnage trail of Godzilla
eddies left
like bitter bonsai
i have all the tapes in stereo

and in the fitful glow of orange leaven
nudibranch supreme uncurls
black smokecloud

Hotel Room.

( via / me )

Solar Megalomania.

"Winter, Old Style (Rhupunt)

Keen is the wind,
Barren the land.
A man could stand
On a single stalk.

Cattle are lean,
Ther stag is thin,
All color wan
On the frozen lake.

Idle the shield
On an old man's shoulder.
Halls are cold.
i have a wound.

Where warriors go
I cannot follow
Through flying snow
In this wild wind.

The trees are bowed
In the bare wood;
There is no shade
In any vale.

The reeds are dry
And a loud crying
Howls outside
With inward war.

So an old man
Does what he can,
Stares through the pane
At night's black square."

--Rolfe Humphries

"...Never fall dreaming on celestials."

"The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality."

— Nicolás Gómez Dávila via @Isidro_Li

Flower in glass & its shadow on the wall.

( via/ via )

Kireji anthology--a most intriguing idea.

"Lately, writing comes to me only when I am not actually writing. I spend hours before the blank page or screen with nothingness flooding the mind, and just when I abandon the need, the desire for words, everything comes at once, impossible to grasp, impossible to turn into text." --@dreamsofbeing_

"You might even say we live in a society where parasitical behavior is rewarded more than actual creativity.."

"living alone
telling one cry of a crow
from another"

--@ericcoliu

Clowns that are part of the trouble, detailed ink drawing, james ensor, remedios varo.

( lanny quarles on fb / me )

Harden My Heart.

Random # 101 = 203 in base-7; 2 + 0 + 3 = 5 lines

gray blur in a grim dash
through my guidebeams jolts me
nothing, nothing-into
anon my tale tallies
& my brief sprint panicked

Tales of Tomorrow.

“I, too, have my Elizabethan, my Caroline moments.” –Max Beerbohm

Chillicothe Apostrophe.

( via / via )

When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain.

"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."

– Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down via @everysongiveeve

The Cats Will Know.

Neuordnung

on nude rung
dungeon urn

gerund noun
under no gun

undo gunner
or nudge nun

neuron dung

"I don’t trust any book that wasn’t published before 2022."

( via / via )

Leave a Message.

  we melt into black
smoke on a rectangle screen

  we say we're against

in his room Netanyahu
grins like a well-fed dog tick

Cain's Kin.

"And the night bird whirrs/ too close to your eyes." --Hölderlin (my tr)

'On the Suicide of the Refugee W. B.' by Bertolt Brecht.

( via / via )

Periwinkle.

"Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?"

~ Rainer Maria Rilke via @arealmofwonder

The Nocturne of Orpheus.

"The Rat

A young man wrote a poem about a rat.
It was the best poem ever written about a rat.
To read it was to ask the rat to perch
on the arm of your chair until you turned the page.
So we wrote to him, but heard nothing; we called,
and called again; then finally we sailed
to the island where he kept the only shop
and rapped his door until he opened up.

We took away his poems. Our hands shook
with excitement. We read them on lightboxes,
under great lamps. They were not much good.
So then we offered what advice we could
on his tropes and turns, his metrical comportment,
on the wedding of the word to the event,
and suggested that he might read this or that.
We said Now: write us more poems like The Rat.

All we got was cheek from him. Then silence.
We gave up on him. Him with his green arrogance
and ingratitude and his one lucky strike.
But today I read The Rat again. Its reek
announced it; then I saw its pisshole stare;
line by line it strained into the air.
Then it hissed. For all the craft and clever-clever
you did not write me, fool. Nor will you ever."

--Don Paterson

Beirut tonight.

( via / via )

"Istanbul to me is a hot, relentless chaos that smells of salt and sour bread and fumes."

Random # 215 = 425 in base-7; 4 + 2 + 5 = 11 lines

the Gestapo called · at Picasso's lair
  who was clearly a shifty character
"Who did this?" demanded · a dude with a Lüger
  "You did," was Pablo's odd answer

Nelson Rockefeller · when refused the sale
  had some French cats weave him one
& loaned it to the lobby · at the UN HQ
  where it hung for eighteen years

when Colin Powell came · to peddle Dubya's lies
  they went & covered it over
ditto for Bibi · who says he has no shame?

"I think my piece may be the first time I’ve ever had reason to draw a bus despite being a regular user of public transport."

"There was a moment in the 1960s where we had a choice between glass and plastics as a container of choice." --@brianroemmele

La Voile d'Orphée.

( via / me )

Peaceful solitude.

"The Necropolis loves its roses." --We the Parasites

In This Life.

"That time
after the night’s frost the tree
weeping, the miser in me
complaining: Why all this washing
the earth’s feet in gold? And I,
my finger at my lips: Because
it is what we are made of."

— R. S. Thomas via @isidro_li

The Ring of Brodgar.

( via / via )

Poem with tail-stave meter.

"2,000 Pound Bomb"

dawn-darkener · dumps an egg
on top of a fluttering · of fleeting homes
the hole its roar leaves · rings in those left
names not now · anywhere answerable

this song of silence · sent from distant
foreign fact'ries · came cheap as a charity
whose workman's wages · themselves served

bubble of brokenness · brawny hands made you
also tender · touching otherwise
not unlike those lost · in the lee of a land-splitting

diff'rent hands · at a dapper desk
put marks on paper · the perished never saw

Highgate.

"Sitting here, safe with my infant sleeping on my lap. Thinking about all the people and their children in grave danger in Lebanon and Gaza, and the $8.7 billlion that the U.S. just sent to Israel to propel these horrors." --@davidpstein

"We wrote for the magazines with the shelf life of milk."

( via / via )

Flooding in Poland. (via @jorie_graham)

"the 'thinking too much as a kid about the fact of other consciousnesses and that you’re you and not them' to 'being horribly depressed and financially unstable in a humanities phd program' pipeline" --@accursed_cher

AIs podcasting. (via @twitchelmore)

Random # 65 = 122 in base-7; 1 + 2 + 2 = 5 lines

soaked city · in gray centuries
i came calling · with my gossamer cairn
eye to eye · snarling angel
in stone stood · through a fog of stars
told me trouble · has its lifespan too

Cascade of appliances.

( via / via )

"Touching never does away with the distance between us, but it changes the interval into an approach."

Random # 223 = 436 in base-7; 4 + 3 + 6 = 13 lines

in the hurting
of the thwarting
there are always
crooked spillways
that determine
what is common
like-things framing
migrants homing
still the sorrow
drills the marrow
teaches darkness
in its likeness
to be treasure

An Aside on Nomadology.

"Academia is a noble calling where you dedicate your life to mastering the intricacies of an online learning management system" --@john_attridge

Review of Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival.

( me / via )

O Euchari.

"I don't converse with the moon, but we do regard each other warily." --AV Marraccini

Truth Has Died.

Random # 65 = 122 in base-7; 1 + 2 + 2 = 5 lines

hair of the Baskerville hound
i rise to the blank riddle
white rose
we sleep in the side yard of
an untalkie brought back

"For samurai in the era of constant war, linked verse was like the tea ceremony; it allowed one to escape, if only for a brief time, from the world at large, from all the bloodshed." (via)

( via / me )

"Kruger 60 is a good candidate for a home system of 2I/Borisov, a comet of interstellar origin discovered on August 30, 2019." (Yeah, like a million years ago.)

Random # 24 = 34 in base-7; 3 + 4 = 7 lines

bushwhacked · in the buckwheat pancake nevermore
  turquoise that must be refilled
Poliesp tryst · appointment in tourniquet
  up the skywatch hill
read as such · whole starfields spawned
  by a mass vanishing
we began to garnish · with guillotine glyphs

"I managed to translate into English, preserving meter and rhyme scheme, one of my palindromic décimas in Spanish."

"Kipling's lapel button a microphone hearing leopard's name for leopard
his eyes behind thick lenses like monkeys against temple sculpture"

--Gerald Burns

Siegfried the clown catches a ride on comet borisov, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.

( via / via )

The inner square area appears to move.

"History is always written from the sedentary point of view . . . even when the topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology, the opposite of a history."

—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus via @aliner

Test pattern.

"CONSTRAINED POETRY (Anagram-Haiku)

Constrained poetry:
Scan entropy or edit
to read encryptions."

--@Anthony_Etherin

Snow Fort.