Wild Wild Young Man. (via Mercury Child on KNON)
"A crow flew nearby. 'Hello, Crow,' shouted Toad." --@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social
"cool south wind
beneath syncopated waves
a hermit crab
leaves its shell
for the last time"
--@ravenbranhard.bsky.social
"didactic poem"
memes so far · in the morn glare
potholes pockle · the paved course
Late Empire hands you
ghost crossing · gas crisis yet
the pump pesters you · squint like a cat
memes so far · in the morn glare
Late Empire hands you
ghosts take residence · where a myriad died
"The pwoermd demurs, the pwoermd relents, the pwoermd explodes." --@geofhuth.bsky.social
" 'They should face the truth,' said Horace. 'It is a sounder preparation for the future.'
'We can never prepare for that,' said his wife. 'We know too little of it. And facing things is not a good habit; it causes needless suffering.' " --@ivycomptonburnett.bsky.social
"ducks that return"
smooth gears · garroted light
'61 Lincoln · with suicide doors
Europa ice war, detailed oil painting, edward hopper.
Wandering of the Auroral Oval.
"Europa Ice War"
1.
dotless-i · divvied among
plush boxes · pleated veils
glowing green · deep blue flashes
shimmers pool · pith blistered
serrated sound · thin marge
out there ailment · crumple airt
pert parallax · carpet reel
dusty cheerios · in the dark annex
2.
some fine italian shade
for that real phony--
on the eve of another conclave
the green light of gatsby
flickers on a far shore
3.
paths that cross
in the green ant dreaming
opsec scuttlebutt
scuttlebutt shoetree
darkly borne
across a thousand oceans
"Dystopia. I always thought it’d be smarter." --@neinquarterly.bsky.social
Sometimes critics look for indigenous tendencies to explain the weirdness of the Peruvian 20c poet César Vallejo (Trilce, 1922), but it occurred to be as i was reading in Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Complete Posthumous Poetry that V.'s lines are full of things almost like kennings, & that in fact he writes many poems like a series of riddles (that don't necessarily have a solution); a complete Viking.:
"Relate to yourself grasping
the tail of the fire and the horns
where the mane ends its fierce race;
break apart, but in circles;
take form, but in curved columns;
describe yourself atmospheric, Being of smoke,
in the double time step of a skeleton." (p. 161)
"What's got into me, that I have placed
on my shoulders an egg instead of a mantle?" (163)
"Accordion of the afternoon, on this corner,
piano of the morning, that afternoon;
clarion of flesh,
drum with a single stick,
guitar without a fourth string, lots of fifth,
and how many gatherings of dumb friends!
and what a nest of tigers in tobacco!" (165)
"HERRING GULLS
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher
—Baudelaire
No, Charles: we’re all in an airborne
pack, whirling widdershins around
the trawler, on the main chance.
Who needs lightfoot grace when we can bob
jauntily abreast the rollers, or hold our intrafamilial
squabble midair? Brownbreasted juvenile
cedes that fishgut scrap to his whitegowned auntie.
We’ve never heard of loneliness; we live
in a flying heap, a host, an involute skein
of wings. And even the albatross—
all right then—six months away from shore,
but every year the same island, every year,
same ungainly strut to the nest with the same
gray-eyed partner, shared charge of the sole pale egg."
--Rachel Trousdale in Four Way Review (via @monikacassel.bsky.social)
"THE NARRATOR
I am the hawk-heart braced in the epic’s hero
Hollow and lit in a single follyless zone
Twinned with a dawn and a dark.
Graceless in gardens I hear my unvisited care
Squawk back at the sculptured cuckoo’s nursery rhyme
Chimed in the dandelion tower.
Eyelashed and petald alone in the shepherd season
I walk heaved high from the earth confessing the voice
That runs ever over the hour
Confessing the death without space for the laying of dead
The rudder and rocket stem and the murder swerve
At the tender right-wrong heart.
The hiccuping hero the narrator lindenward
Reels at the waltz with diaphanous water fronds
Telling his ribbed in vanity.
I worship a skylift of Narnain blaeberry globed
Priestlike sealed in a tensile sac in a nerve
In the vein-geared bubble of vision.
While whisper the tethered anemones under the grave
And the narrative sprouts from the bone-sweet skull
Telling a blossom to its bulb
And spins in a hollow of sound in the emerald dome
Tinctured vermilion and told in the glacier heart
That trades the unmapped spell along the blood.
The raven at larch time dwarfed in the calyxed chronicle
In my head’s helmet weathers no wheeling sky.
The banished bird spins no horizon.
Yet my eye webs the word. History in a bowl
Spreads out a firth for ptarmigan and the pedlar’s moth
And anarchy within a cage.
Who knows the rose or quotes her holy somersaults
Preached from a dangled spinner on a maypole thread.
What summer eyes perched deep within a dream
Could bring the god the child and the rose to speak.
What tongue like a stamen stemmed on a kiss or a grave
Is yet enchanted into form."
--W S Graham
Social media are like having Edward-Scissorhands; it's hard to do anything precise or tender with them.
Theory is making a game that is like the problem-- & then thinking that to win the game is to solve the problem. Well, maybe for especially 𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 problems... (TTAPOOC)
Our own "Great Leap Forward". (via @mollycrabapple.bsky.social)
to grasp one downfall
if only vicarious
since nothing of mine
broken house in the mountains
deer poke their soft noses in
Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.
"Militia pie is delicious; the crusts are richer, flakier. I think they use lard."
"Paper Loves Ink
Ravens tell poets,
'Paper loves ink,'
(while ruffling feathers)
'like words whisper secrets.'
Stories unravel
thread by thread.
So spills ink, into
magic,
into ink spills.
'So, thread by thread,
unravel stories.'
Secrets whisper words,
like feathers
ruffling, while,
'Ink loves paper.'
Poets tell ravens."
--Penelope Connor
Never thought i'd find myself hoping the machine doesn't break down, but here we are.
"What a synthetic diamond the skull is!" --Vallejo
"Kammerspiel"
iron urban marble
interval muffed vintage
stand in the mirror
& hear bombers humming
stark before breakfast
white pill in a white cup
wharfside huddled mudlarks
finding but fathoms
in the new bright nettles
sparrows of fray shed
a march forward faunching
faster than fresh gas-lines
here where the hourglass
trickles into trench mouth
urban iron marble
"A land that is lonelier than ruin..."
scribbled up notebooks · knowledge prised
the real word · among mocks
red truck turning · talion arrow
ninety years · the yield faulty
what we're true to · whirls in the eye
the widow's contract · culled at last
in this wind · in this wage
the black kennel · of a bleak acceptance
needfire · as the light falters
"What if Elon is the first autistic person RFK has ever actually met and that’s why he assumes we don’t pay taxes or go on dates" --@gonebabygone.bsky.social
"Happy Harrowing of Hell to all who celebrate."
"Americans succeeded at creating a social material environment of (relative) safety but failed to produce a learning environment that would successfully communicate the reasons to maintain an environment of safety after the normal harms of the world passed out of common memory" --@vortexegg.com
fears confirmed · first in line
the mild gray · grackle's shade
wait for web · spun to span
void's vigil · veered apart
hoarse screaming · scrawled to fail
walls they raised · words turned off
stilled in steel · cannot stay
the mild gray · grackle's smile
"POE
The vagabond mistake lived embodied in a cat
which gathered dust in a neighbor’s shady backyard
after choking on crow bones. You proclaim Poe
to be mandatory, soon to be a major motion picture,
some lonely shut-in pining over what puzzled him
left conversing to taxidermy with ghostly powers,
the laudanum on the fritz. Some of us are insatiable
as Maoists who trip over hurdles, a Great Leap
which wrecks the scene, broken circle emblemized
in the letter C. Nihilistic trooper abandons ardor
for documentation, lionesses lining every dank gutter
in Baltimore. I know I have slapped at the spectral
when reduced to magical thinking, yet some get all
the grief and crowds as those open-faced pillagers
who never were rapacious swat into their invisibility
with a wet sock. I listened to that suffocating cat
half-past a mope, fugitive comfort, a gutted grouper. "
--Gordon Hilgers via
"Van Hollen: I should also just say, I mentioned the fake margarita, they actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool in the hotel. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar. Which of course is a big, fat lie. " --@acyn.bsky.social
Dystopia is the AARP advising older Americans about how to live in a police state.
"bells chiming
in the vacant house…
from a pond"
--@poemexe.com
mathom, rainy morning
removed from blithe eyethirl
huddled on grilled wharfside
harsh silence the milestone
we are among wingspans
wide-circling this lurkfield
sweet-talked by swab-robots
swimming in mute persimmon
"Someone asked me once if the men who hung the lanterns in the tower knew what they were doing."
"the leatherface junior of RFK..."
orchid sleep
vorpal leak
liquid traik
lipid ape
ingot spar
tragic fire
orchid sleep
orchid sleep
orchid sleep
"i think of the days
the breeze
an icicle hangs"
--@poemexe.com
U. s. senator visits innocent man in the death prison, detailed oil painting, salvador dali.
"Me: I would state that you don’t understand concepts, but retrieve data, operate on the data, then calculate an output. The concept is up to me to create based on your calculations.
ChatGPT: You’re absolutely right. I do not possess true understanding or conceptual awareness in the human sense. Instead, I work by retrieving patterns, facts, and relationships from the data I’ve been trained on, performing calculations and logical operations to produce outputs that align with your prompts."
--Skip Rhudy via
“Life-size is too Large
To the microscopy of thinking small
(To have room enough to think at all)
I said, ‘Cramped mirror, faithful constriction,
Break, be large as I.’
Then I heard little leaves in my ears rustling
And a little wind like a leaf blowing
My mind into a corner of my mind,
Where wind over empty ground went blowing
And a large dwarf picked and picked up nothing.”
–Laura (Riding) Jackson
"good friday"
chum Czolgosz eczema
chunders plangent plunder
why do i write riddles
to rile the Bile Sphinx
"Bury me and Elbert in the same grave."
"Kinda feels like whoever's in charge of the Simulation is trying to wrap up all the plot lines at once" --@drsandman11.medsky.social
"I want to write, but I feel like a puma;
I want to laurel myself, but I stew in onions..."
--Eshleman & Rubia Barcia's Vallejo
"message in a rat's teeth"
blind windows of a prison
for those who only wanted light
send message in a rat's teeth
direct him to what cubicle
blind windows
to our phones & our faces
"N𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲."
biosignature
go urbanities
bogus inertia
arousing bite
begin a suitor
a genius orbit
go rabies unit
Empathy, more precious than water.
"...kind of fun to be worrying about ink and paper..."
The Vatican Digitizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript of the Aeneid. (via @daoish.bsky.social)
"In order for me to write poetry
that isn't political
I must listen to the birds
And in order to hear the birds
The warplanes must be silent"
--Marwan Makhoul via @zeeshanpathan.bsky.social
"To the Rabbit that Lives, Much More than I, on this Property"
i have not dug in
have barely trodden the grass
nor have i watered
the soil except with curses
certainly no salt water
"All I have left is the furnace of my fury, and I’d say I’m sorry but that’d be a lie."
“Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with Song
In this our imagined future
we watch them sound the trees
hoping for deadwood, knowing
the living are always harder to cut.
Ivy holds fast as roots are cleared,
heartbeats counted from face-cut
to fall in chorus of chainsaw-snarl,
creak and thud, till a parcel of birds
wakes us, carrying us back to their
rowdy shore. Oystercatchers, wading
the wrinkle of tide, announce our
arrival, call us back to our cynefin
to seagrass sweet air, layers of path
awaiting. Sycamore reaches out her
arms, invites our first forest breath”
--Ness Owen via
(cynefin is Welsh for habitat and also means a place where someone belongs)
"And let sweet powders round my bones be laid,
and so into some secret place convey'd..."
--1672 Ovid
