a plethora of base magics

I was the shadow of the waxworm slain...

"Men deride omens, though often they are but the mind's logic waging a war upon our optimism." --Chesterton

Like this.

18.

when large things collide
all you can do is watch
pop-up blocker doesn't cut it
this is gronderous

meanwhorl
where we stand
is not an ice floe shattered
so much as the sound
of its shattering

rigors & veils divide us
blue skies like wounds still tender
vanishing pilgrim
not to the light

here in the thick of traffic
hearing the mischief rattle
signs fail to guide us
teachers have passed

colors of darkness parsing
codex with too much missing
blue skies still tender
turn if you can

"Since 1950, the proportion of the world’s citizens living in extreme poverty has declined from 72 percent to under 10 percent, while world life expectancy has increased from 48 years to 71."

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from scammery." --tclark on Metafilter

Secret Nazi propaganda at National Geographic.

(via nasa)

the penguin that hated the gods

There's more of Browning in Stevens than either would like to admit.

Arcs, sets, circles.

17.

modernity
set tumbling
like a broken helicopter

the mind reels
having seen two inches

The guardians of Richardson's China Town.

"But there was also a part of his mind which was always escaping from his control and playing tricks; fixing on his memory meaningless things as if they were symbols, and then haunting him with them as mysteries." --Chesterton

(via Cory Doctorow on Twitter)

say no to this mountain

(via @saladinahmed)

William Dobell.

16.

the book of stern remembrance is a poisoned book
sunrise flicks · like rice away
the orange klones go flying by, the clouds remain
won king is a sign i know

glaciers calve where there's no human desire to look
but nothing happens in the show
the orange klones go flying by · we circle the drain
won king is a sign i know

Some good Harry Crews stories.

"I recently had occasion to look up the Dakota name for Minneapolis' Lake Calhoun (which was restored to some degree after it was determined that Calhoun isn't the greatest personage to memorialize). I was delighted to learn that the Dakota name for nearby Lake Harriet translates to, 'The other lake." --Autumnheart on Metafilter

newspaper taxi

Spongebob in Outer Space.

15.

outside the bubble
shrunken
to a TV vanishing

no big news?
nothing to tell

of our drawn-out foundering?

The end of religious hipsterism.

(pic by scooter smith on fb)

rainproof nun hiccup

Metamorphoses.

13.

14.

the globe twirls
leaves stripped from the trees
on the table
irises

wrong kind of pickles
say the bells of don rickles

a drumming on the roof
for thirty minutes

Skoda jokes (one of many! e.g.).

One time i was in the mountains in an old car, & i had pulled over because the engine was overheating. Suddenly i heard a violent thrashing in the underbrush and, fearing a bear, i jumped inside and rolled the windows up. a few minutes later, a regular sized armadillo emerged from the bushes.

How to remove scratches from a hardwood floor.

"You can jump into the fire
but you'll never be free"

--Harry Nilsson

Explaining Gudetama.

"I didn't agree with his actions as a president at the time, but now that he's retired I'd love to sit down for a beer and talk poetry with Radovan Karadžić!" --Deece B J Pancake on Metafilter

(painted by an elephant named Khankluay)

the devil's backwash

(Leopoldo Mendez, "Deportacion a la muerte" [Deportation to death], 1942, via)

White noise, electric storm.

12.

feverish years
what did we accomplish
save vast ruination

unable to thread the needle
of a time without witnesses
& we forget what snakes
panic chirrup of noun

are poisonous:

scattered, whirled

"This was always the role that Alt-America has played: a refuge for people who reject factual reality, a place where they can convene and reassure one another in the facticity of their fabricated version of how the world works."

(pic by michael puttonen on fb)

dwindling track

The Moon, turning.

11.

sand written on
then effaced
death's echo
& in small things doubled

ring, ring, a knocking
by robots or the newly dead
dim day & flow
of the mingled nitrogen ices

The art of corporeal vulnerability.

(via bobby beeman on fb)

cfipyboyg

Conlang generator thread.

10.

a kind of filter they don't make anymore
notes to myself from some earlier time
at night the statue of Lao Tse illumined in purple

drink that changes color
& taste
you don't need a picture of ev'rything

in all the empty houses
one phone, & then another rings

Proverbs of a She-Dandy.

(via lanny quarles on fb)

turabian nights

(via)

Worldbuilding videos thread.

9.

the banks of sports lights
unlit at dawn
sound of a bird
here, there
our talcum oil
i moult ocular
or mutual coil
the banks of sports lights

"I also don't believe in poetry contests, and I resent the fact that this is what I, and other less-well-known poets, must do to even come close to getting just a chapbook published."

"Like alabaster, but of starrier stone..." --Nimrod

Poem Composed Entirely From the First Lines of Poems by Emily Dickinson.

clumically gruscitable

(pic by michael puttonen on fb)

Spells against autonomy.

         "The Sparrows of Bahrain
      Behind Beit Al Qur’an – its thirteen centuries of texts

enshrined in glass, where you can see beneath a lens
the holy verses on a grain of rice – the sparrows of Bahrain
scuffle by the trashbin, and leave
their delicate calligraphy upon the dust.

The price of oil goes up; they are not touched by it.
The causeway to the Saudi states shuts down;
the sparrows squabble, mate and flutter on.
Communications towers, refineries, desalination schemes
are of another world to them.

In the 27th sura of Qur’an, Solomon has marshaled
all his jinn, his birds and men, into a vast battalion.
Sheba sends forth envoys bearing thick, tooled gold.
Solomon responds: 'That which Allah has bestowed
on me is more than any wealth you send.'

At the public dump in Manama, sparrows
move nimbly among the flames, finding
the tiny grains even the last few
poor within this oil emirate disdain.
On the final day, when darkness comes

and mountains pass away like clouds, when the last
oil spill has stained the last fair stretch
of sand, when the spreading desert
has engulfed the last hectare of working land,
when the gardens and the office towers have drained

the last sweet water flowing underground,
will the sparrows of Bahrain break into flame?
Will they become avenging angels?
Or only mark this desert place, like feeble
votive candles held against the dark?"

--Richard St John in Vox Populi

(via the daily beast)

the mother of all bombs

8.

indecipherable presents
the East Wind presents
weedmedian
a mythknurl stripped

night of liquescent outlines
la Tura Foriga
jungles of black script crowding
the glittering taiga

ravages slow & helpless
gray city of hatred
fields where the ragweed trellis
encounters hard labor

circles already traced by
the hand of tomorrow
incubate here like rabies
& i climb the shadow

Moth generator.

(via janis ian on fb)

imbunche

7.

fogs, live
emeraldworn

a color i made

Talismanic bookseller podcast.

"America has entered one of its historical periods of madness, but this is the worst that I can remember; worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."M

--John LeCarre

Residents playlist (via feuilleton blog)

conflict-free diamond

6.

wander
wander the night
Reich jilnstrig

leaving the iron mountain

MOAB simulator.

      "...jungles of black script,
Where howling in the wilderness like beasts
Ranged forth the dreadful wisdom of the Lord."

--Nimrod

Subterra Castle.

drink sanitizer

5.

red & black box
things remaining
MIPSANGA
periwinkle crate

on an ant scale
gleam
sruulhus
shreall
kafoo

"The inmates are running the asylum, if there is a kind of asylum that takes in many mostly sane people and then gradually, over many years, drives one subset of its inmates insane, and also this asylum has the largest military in the world.."

"And all its savage multitudinous crags
Besieged the silent sky..."

--Anna Hempstead Branch, Nimrod

a scarlet deen

4.

irquivir
violet
on orange
remembering
stillnesses
still
pathgrythe
the stillicide
of rathe moments
stained glass clasped

Disaster shaman.

ship CEO

Positive Lexicography Project.

"And, ere intolerant noon, the floating realm" --Horne

Folsom Pinball Blues.

3.

the devouring
in bright sunlight

end of a wizard
the book left

book of named dead
in bright sunlight

"When Umberto Eco, the semiologist, medievalist, and author of the best-selling medieval puzzle-novel The Name of the Rose, lectured at Yale to celebrate the Beinecke Library’s fiftieth anniversary, the only one of its many treasures he asked to see was the Voynich manuscript."

(Sarajevo via @SenkaFilipovic via @theplathdiaries)

"..with the desert of his hands in her vinations..."

the ten commandments of crime

"pain is not a flower pain is the root" --Paul Monette

Cante jondo.

2.

the life so short,
the craft so long to learn
fewer doors open than shut
the life so short

& eagerly we shoot
as the bronze rays decline
the life so short
the craft so long to learn

Sequel to Shantaram.

"...beyond the noise
Man maketh on the tabor of his will,
Until the small round burst, and pale he falls."

--Orion

"for what else is there
but books, books and the sea"

--Derek Walcott