gulurb

(by John Atkinson Grimshaw, via Michelle Hartman via Mia Feigelson on Facebook)

"It turned out that what I thought of as a kind of comic strip, light relief from my 'real' writing, was the writing." --Lars Iyer

"Queen Victoria, it is said, was so charmed by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that she sent for copies of everything its author had written. When the parcel reached the palace, it contained, to her dismay, copies of A Syllabus of Plane Algebraic Geometry and The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry." --introduction to Easton Press edition

Uncivilisation.

       "Cemetery

Who whispers here is forgotten.

Saliva's emptiest fruit
adorns the stones,
words ripening your mouth
to a spoilation
of silence.

Who speaks here
reads a text that downloads
the screen of his fingernail,
through which nothing's visible
as glass is.

For the memorial
we must kneel
to pick each flower
from amongst its modifiers:
but to do that
one needs a hand bared
of all uses, of all trades:
as ours is not."

     Bill Knott (via Poemhunter)

A weaponized seance.

"You can always tell when poets are going through a period of self-hatred: they write poems about Chekov (sic)." --Bill Knott, Prose Book

Necropastoral.

(Therizinosaurus by Durbed on Deviant Art)

"The book-poet believes; the poem-poet doubts." -ibid

Alone in Silvermoon.

jabberwalkietalkie

(via The Independent via Lyda Morehouse on Fb)

Don't you want to see how the Empire falls? Don't you want to know the winner of the Apocalypse Sweepstakes? Don't you want to find out on which particular stretch of stony ground these heart seeds you planned so lovingly so long ago will land?

Aspergonto

(via 9 Eyes tumblr)

Bewray the repricon.

"Does the sheer immersive ugliness of the human imprint on the American landscape not give you the shivers?" --James Howard Kunstler on Clusterfuck Nation blog

Anatomy of precarity.

"In a century we have produced two hundred and twenty thousand books; not a bathtub-full of them are still alive and marketable." --Mark Twain

Vong co.

"The felon-quarried stone" --A E Housman

Red Bud on White Glazed Brick.

White: Bill Wall (challenge game @Chess dot com)

1.b3 Nh6
2.Bb2 Rg8
3.Nc3 e6
4.d4 c5
5.d5 exd5
6.Nxd5 d6
7.e4 a6
8.Nf3 Nc6
9.Bc4 Bg4
10.h3 Be6
11.O-O Be7
12.Qd2 b5
13.Be2 f6
14.Nf4 Bf7
15.Rfd1 Ra7
16.Nd5 Rd7
17.a3 Ne5
18.Nxe5 dxe5
19.c4 Bxd5
20.cxd5 Bd6
21.Bc1 Nf7
22.a4 Qb8
23.Qa5 bxa4
24.Rxa4 Qxb3
25.Qxa6 Ke7
26.Bg4 Rc7
27.Ra2 Qb7
28.Qc4 Qb4
29.Qe2 Qb8
30.Be6 g6
31.Qf3 Rg7
32.h4 Nd8
33.Qxf6+ Black resigns.

Kepler-186f. (I say we name it Odette.)

(via Uyghur Love on tumblr)

"The innocence of gravestones, to be unaware of their true purpose." --Thomas Wiloch

lutenik

(via Metafilter 4/20/14)

I would like to write a novel about Propertius, about Cynthia, & about their milieu. It would not be about how much these guys were like ourselves. It would be about the strangeness, the incomprehensibility, of their desires: it would be like Satyricon--except with books. Propertius was not one of us. I like that.

inpsalmnia

(via Virginia on facebook)

I am too sane for this monkey planet, from time to time one of the monkeys bursts forth. I see what no one else can see, nor can i persuade anyone of their danger, even the nearest part of it; so profound is the sleep & the night in which i wake & wish otherwise.

necrodiversity

(via Alan Boyle on twitter)

There are the things that are already over we know--newspapers & magazines, owning homes for the middle class--& then there are the things that are already over we don't realize yet. Wouldn't it be easier if the little that will remain had bathed itself in a soft blue radiance, to clasp it now?

latriage

(via @Pentadact via @fierydrake on twitter)

My head is a trap of plates & spikes, in the dark, to catch what i need. All of us down here must kill in order to survive. Being so, we are well fashioned for such: but not well made, for the task of music, though by further suzerains enjoined, to share it.

Ixiontology

(Monkey Buffet Festival, via)

Concertino for Orchestra.

Slint thread.

"Mae stood her ground. 'Why do people treat the past as if it had lost a battle that the present won?' she demanded, fists clenched. 'Why do they treat it as if it had faded because it was weak?'

Joe looked baffled and distressed.

'I don't know,' said Kwan.

'The past is real,' said Mae. 'It's still here.'

'Then maybe so is the future,' said Kwan."

--Geoff Ryman, Air (2004)

(pic by Cynothyglys on Deviant Art)

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember song.

"Right now I'm only 4 miles north of Detroit. I find getting an up-close-and-personal view of a city undergoing collapse perversely invigorating. As I say, welcome to Detroit, Ground Zero of the Post-Industrial Future. The solutions to North America's problems will be developed here first and then exported to the rest of the continent." --Crazy Eddie's Motie News

(pic of Beta Pictoris & its exoplanet, via Daniel Fischer on twitter)

Squatters.

"We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread." --Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1978)

Proof.

Ostraneniemandsland

" I have a low tech job in a high tech industry - I am a satellte dish washer. I use the antenna to play chess against a mars orbiter that has fritz installed. I have 2 wins, 5 losses, and 1 draw. I get about a thousand HBO and DirectTV channels with this. I am part of the SETI group. I sent 1.e4 and waiting for a response from the aliens. There are about 40 more antennas behind me. I have to shovel snow off them each winter." --Bill Wall, at Chess.com

Crazy.

"Stands the troubled dream beside" --Housman

Ballardian Earthworks.

"The unspeakability of nature is the very possibility of language." --James P Carse

Winter in America.

(via 9eyes on tumblr)

Words damaged by the Cultural Revolution.