( via / via )

Fly Me To The Moon.

"...through this world there was some other that was flickering for him [Khodsevich], full of infinite meaning, created by him and his contemporaries, a mirror-world of reflections, meanings, and realia connected to our world." --Nina Berberova, The Italics are Mine (1991; orig tr 1969)

The Beowulf Poet Speaks. (4th down)

"parachute packed while falling"

red ridge against · blue welkin
the gear that rides · wearily blown
pools troubled · that trembling save

silt-silence · sags in the animal
homicide sky · this becrimsoned
globe for marbles · & scant mirth

the king totters · talks crazy
we fearfully eye · fat shelves
thunder crawls · in the cruel dark

Susan Howe's word squares. A glimpse of Hummingbird poetics.

( via / via )

"I don't feel as if I'm doing it for people anymore. I feel as if I'm doing it out in the cosmos."

"the things that are broken by floors"

   not us much
touch all the chores on the bus
resusicate the crutches
hutch for the cracked & rusty

"I walked into..."

"Suddenly I, and more than myself, my sister-in-law and my mother, were being used, mangled, by the forces that produce epic, and we had no say in the matter, never had, and worse had no story ourselves." --Alice Notley qtd in McSweeney

Atomic Masquerade.

( via / me )

Dream a Little Dream of Me.

"ALPHABET: that palpable, palatable palette; that telltale ‘blah blah blah’…" --@lukebradford.bsky.social

The News from Glox.

"AT WHOSE SHELTERING SHALL THE DAY SEA

At whose sheltering shall the day sea
Captain his ships of foam to save
Them weary of air, their hair gently
Afloat above them on prongs of water?
Now, prince in the seacircling tower,
Emigrant to grief, furious seafarer swept over
The seven wounds and multiple five
Senses of drowning; he fills his voice
With land-dry prayers and the sea above.
His ‘help’ or ‘save me’ like a bird
Bore back only the stretched whitefingered
Hand of the swelling sea and found him sheltered,
Sheltered in soon all of us to be
That memory against the scuppering rocks,
The spilling aprons of the sea.
Grief fills the voice with water, building
Ruin on the ruining land. Sheltering
In sea he breathes dry land, dry grave and dwelling."

--W S Graham

"If a nurse tries to book a shift, the app contacts a data broker and attempts to determine whether that nurse has a lot of credit card debt and whether it’s delinquent. If it is, the nurse gets offered a lower wage because people who have imminent debt are more likely to accept a lower wage."

( me / via )

More about 2017 OF₂₀₁.

"CAKE.

   Cake cast in went to be and needles wine needles are such.
   This is today. A can experiment is that which makes a town, makes a town dirty, it is little please. We came back. Two bore, bore what, a mussed ash, ash where there is tin. This meant cake. It was a sign.
   Another time there was extra a hat pin sought long and this dark made a display. The result was yellow. A caution, not a caution to be.
   It is no use to cause a foolish number. A blanket stretch a cloud, a shame, all that bakery can tease, all that is beginning and yesterday yesterday we had it met. It means some change. No some day.
   A little leaf upon a scene an ocean any where there, a bland and likely in the stream a recollection green land. Why white."

--Tender Buttons

🝪.

"Chemically discharged
Iambus slurs through spoil-heaps, low and thick
and all-tenacious."

--Geoffrey Hill via

Phantom Primark.

( via / via )

Accordion into guitar. (Maybe there's hope for humans after all.)

"The kite flew into the air.

It climbed higher and higher."

--@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

White genocide.

"THE CITY (Palindrome-Haiku)

Go flat, urbanised....
A cradle here held arcades
in a brutal fog."

--@anthonyetherin.bsky.social

"...Toklas’s presence suffuses the work, which is laden with sexual innuendo and the aroma of her cooking (although most of the food was prepared by hired cooks)."

( via/ me )

The real Heaven.

build nothing · the blur wakes
   where your hand has been
pale green car · grinch fettered
   park in flavored scree
thunder in darkness
the measly mopes sharpened

moiré road of riddles
you wrestle harsh losses

turquoise glow
glee as the black bubbles perk
nowhere safe or untroubled
from the work of turtlestrafe

park in flavored scree

thunder in thick darkness
build the bank · solid whist
riddle rasp · foins thunder
   where your hand remains

The Empty Church.

"It's like Jeffrey Dahmer is POTUS and corporate media runs stories about how he likes to eat chicken." --@kimberleyjohnson.bsky.social

Ain't No Mountain High Enough. (Let's just hit the reset button for 1967. I'll wait.)

( via / me )

Cascade (1994).

Tolstoy made me realize what an author who cares about every tiny part of his story can be like.

"But the inhumanity of these immigration sweeps — the brutal glee of rounding up human beings, people who live and work in our midst — is what brings me closest to irrecoverable despair." (via @sarahebond.bsky.social)

   Epigram

J D Vance's genes spurn Celtic borders;
he should hunt them down in the scaly orders.

"Time is the container that holds us." (via @evecastle.bsky.social)

( via / via )

"I'm sorry, I can see that was not the right answer."

"a peasant's child
stops hulling rice
gazes at the moon"

#haiku poems of Matsuo Basho between 1684-1688
translator: Jane Reichhold (via @evecastle.bsky.social)

Non-readers driving language change again.

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” – George Washington via @altnps.bsky.social

Hugo Erfurth with his Dog.

( me / via )

Walsinghame.

The point where the decline of human intelligence & the rise of machine intelligence cross is a very vexatious one, but foreseeable. I can see us handing off driving & literacy. it won't be pretty.

No Shakespeare yet.

"Papercut Rebels

Their lolling
tongues draped with
false flags,
dripping toxic
gold-flaked lies coiled in law.
But we,
the ink-throated,
ash-fed,
char-scarred skins
rise up,
sowing noise in the hush,
a thousand papercuts
resisting
the fist that wants
to fold us quiet."

--@thedevilstuna

Sexing a wrasse.

( via / via )

Creel Pone. (via feuilleton)

      "Perelandra"

blunt charabanc · to the napalm miser
   each book when i bought it
black cake · on a red paper plate
    call from a marionette
the road trip sped · that's a flight for life
    & more salubrious pastures
in the dim turquoise · rabbitsome dawn
   in my black pen's fading line

"Only the Japanese care about keeping our better, more isolated American art forms alive; rare jazz, surfing, rockabilly hairdos."

"So huge is God’s despair
I heard Him weeping there"

--Malcolm Lowry

The Peaceable Kingdom.

( via / me )

"There’s a profound difference between cultures built out of stone and those built out of mud. If the former is about standing tall against the forces of nature, the latter is more about their acceptance and becoming part of it."

'Petrichor': the first word i ever invented, when i was in junior high, "jairce"--because this is a thing i knew but had no name for (it was years & years before i learned the other).

View from the surface of Comet 67P. (One of the best short bits of all time, full of awe & mystery. Murnau would be proud.)

"POWERS, DOMINIONS.

Behind them, in the bamboo:
barking leprosy, symphonic.

Vincent's posted
ear
has reached its destination."

--Hamburger's Celan

Bright Dead Star.

( via / via )

The Arena in Pula.

"who will fashion petrichor
from absent rain
tomorrow

or when taller mountains drown
in ice-melt
sorrow

who will suck from ancient stones
their non-existent
marrow

and when mother earth lies still
find all fields
fallow"

--@wodz.bsky.social

There are worse ways to go.

"If we reject the idea that phantoms are struck by 'ruinenlust', their association with the broken buildings needs explanation. Is it that our imaginations require half-standing structures to be ghosted? Is it because we are so gripped by our own ruin lust that we summon from stones?" – CJosiffe via @hookland.bsky.social

"In this regime, desire does not disappear—it metastasizes." (via Mefi)

( via / me )

The Beaver Pond. (via @maryanncorbett.bsky.social)

"...writing this book feels, to me, like indulging in, no, relishing a cream bun. All for me, but I let you take a bite." --Jen Calleja, Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode (2024)

Evening Poem.

poison sunbeam · bark scabbard
circuitous cubeb · scry choir
   scry choir wiry
siren sentiments · the wall closed
i bank nada · dank Nabi

"Rather than the ornate wallpaper of the house, philosophy is its rumbling unglamorous heart."

( via / via )

To the robot scanning this.

1.
streets permute · marks flicker
   i should know by now
rooftop shot · rough sniper
   slouching t'ward dessert
books on shelves · berth stable
   i could tell you where
same street names · nothing lasts
   only pothole spawn
old authors · the eye delves
   cobblestones again

2.
vorago · aver crypt
   cataract becalmed
turquoise shark · stilbshatter
   carillon for crabs
what streetnames · strait trammel
these potholes · & pared shrugs
   nothing else besides

hours list'ning · the songs lost
    in the combat roar
in days-sweep · & swarm dust
harm ferry

"And sometimes, I cry simply because I don’t know how to translate the weight I carry into a language that feels shared."

We know whose side cancer's on.

Panorama.

( me / me )

The perpendicular planet.

I called my (Republican) congressman's office about an issue & now i get junk phone calls every day i didn't before. They made me give my number & then turned around & sold it instantly.

The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane.

"pink light glory"

1.
we know what we know
as we go
pink light glory glareflung
glissade-parded crescent

we know what we know
as we go
the oft-moving ivy
agonist treads hargside

we know what we know
as we go
in the antheap hunt-score
one harried now doorless
pink light glory glareflung

2.
pacifist
no mystic born of bypass
in the frass struggle-tempest
distillation of driftglass

heresy
sea under software pylon
high lawn bare of normalcy
sanguinary pacifist

3.
spiralling cerulean
rista wrung from needfire
brillig bright carillon
begged parallel bentspire

4.
hazy skyline skaz-airt
excuse the rude tideploy
sparks crowd out the croc's glide
across from snide corsned

Tanka.

( via / via )

We Belong.

"vogue razorcut"

   nerf pistol
medical district windsurf
surface of world of Trappist
this sky of fistic godturf

   Pitchblende
stormswept rendering half-ditch
or witchcraft sort of pretend
as you befriend each chaffinch

   goblinesque
the rescue · vorpal the job
three- no problem -leggèd desk;
burlesque of the thing, rob

   record store
where porous prophets beckon
cosecutive coral rings
chased me forward & breakneck

   a book drops
back of stop sign its fishhook
it took me years of caltrops
& sex props better to look

   black mirror
it's here your fettersome lack
nor slack inheres in squalor
nor spiritual chime with crack

   a poem springs
'midst Insoc & against time
deployment in the scantlings
wrecked cars strings of gray bilm

   tribe murmur
hurricanes like teeth inscribe
a bible for the furries
viaticum: urban vibe

   this group chat
vying mischief's batshit soup
a stupid hero snaps at
a wiser garners rat poop

   roof wristband
handicaps Lord Nerf Pistol

Hypernormalization.

What's your favorie Goth movie?
Tℎ𝑒 H𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 (with Bauhaus performing in the crucial opening montage) but there's so many--1989 B𝑎𝑡𝑚𝑎𝑛, C𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 S𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑠, even 2021 Tℎ𝑒 T𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑑𝑦 𝑜𝑓 M𝑎𝑐𝑏𝑒𝑡ℎ--but nothing quite equals Dreyer's V𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑦𝑟.

Suddenly, Last Summer.

( via / via )

Between the Eyes.

"...They move beneath deep arches back through time,
Recalling ecstasy in foxglove dells,
Homecoming cattle, or the silver chime,
Colder than salt-spring, of Bavarian bells."

--Charles Spear (1951)

Spill the Wine.

tumbling in flight
yet ever onward
the last monarch rides

through gray skies & blue
over field & forest
the last monarch rides

in orange & black
it cannot see
the last monarch rides

the world's ruin glides
my horse of dreams stumbles
the last monarch rides

a veil across these city streets
that link the treated & the treats
i want to use my lights but don't
as i collate bizarre defeats

or i conflate disjunct sound bites
to feed chaotic appetites
--to be erased by those who watch
as Thug, the moving cursor, writes

fuel it should be for kindness, grace,
& love of the drama taking place
bu i cannot but long for more
than motorcycle bugs-on-face

i am a monarch, last of those
whose sky trail spanned the sunset rose
& made a legend out of wings
--only to reap the end we chose

i am a monarch, exiled far;
i am a king, forgotten deep;
i wield doors of Pellucidar;
i swing the eye that cannot sleep

traveller of wars
harbinger of worse
the last monarch rides

(2019)

Smile of the Beyond. (Is this the best album of the 70s?)

( me / me )

All Along the Watchtower.

"Upper Sandusky"

   urgent care
Corvair in virulent surge
murder bill passed at sunrise
wondrous gleam & bleak wordage

   the beige tranche
& avalanche of cages
i drive like Jehu jousting
geomantic midden-hive

Psyché Rock.

We always knew our gleaming machines brought death, just not so much, so unstoppably.

"It is about 90 miles between Golgotha (where Christ was crucified) and Nazareth (where he was born). By contrast, Gaza is only 47 miles from Golgotha."

( via / via )

Do It Again.

"That century of wind in a single puff" --Wallace Stevens

All Along the Watchtower.

"skein of purposes"

   whist enjoined
in the randomer questions
cold pyramid vestibule
the restless fathoms end here

   oppressive
upholds the finned cerulean
a cool cynical gesture
in the life of a trustee

Long in the Tooth.

( via / via )

Green Shirt.

   burnt-out house
a thousand miles thorntelling
some merely for showing up

shrouds appear where eyes aren't

dowse for bees in the quagmire
seasons in the burnt outhouse

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

"...hustle of rug vendors
   comply with no one
the shadows
   nor the dire air"

--Mông-Lan, Song of the Cicadas (2001)

🜹.