dagon plaza

Hvergelmir
bespoke Corgi
an old rusty Polaroid
relation to cannon

paperweight set
thought sniffing apples
the size of death
of candle paths
browning overnight
a January accident
fires in dense chess

The Great Shame of our Profession.

"A blacker gloom, foliage and bearded firs" --Stickney

elmcrest vestal

provisero
di lontenajo
their
rising
water

the bastardies
badly
not of relation to

moon
protection
being mercury white
the water
away

gold spoon

    "Flower Wars"

penumbra of old maps
sandstone
& acid rain
verdigris in the song

in some far arena
not our fates
to be decided
verdigris in the song

a new sort of blue
to go with
the other ghosts
verdigris in the song

a name without vowels
a dumpster ablaze
500 miles
verdigris in the song

"The whole act was one part no more fucks to give and one part a dish served cold."

the invention of the counter-factual

Abject is two parts of dispossessed. But the third part is knowledge.

Welcome to the doll house.

    "Jewell-Encrusted Dragonfly"

1.

sweet cannon flowers
a Hollywood set
on a comet

and the great drops
i too in the pallor
turned

let the smell duel
if a rat's hair stands

2.

something now lost that i had
saffron of the hour
our team would win in
witness ur-lawn walrussen, Tiw

i too in the pallor
turned · tarn
vestibule · ouniq

3.

remember
stars

remember-stars

150 albums by women. Great list, i guess i might quibble which album for some (Homogenic by Bjork, Ray of Light by Madonna, Lion & the Cobra by Sinead, Boys for Pele by Tori Amos); i do miss Melanie Safka, Brandi Carlile, Case/Lang/Veirs, Mazzy Star, & Loreena McKennitt.

remember my information

(via)

"Determined to hang on to its hundreds of thousands of human shields, Isis packed them into a smaller and smaller space as pro-government forces advanced. Isis patrols said they would kill anybody who left their houses; they welded shut metal doors to keep them in, and hanged people who tried to escape from electricity pylons and left the bodies to rot."

pain as as empty
can i
as pleasure is empty
can i believe

a star goes out

there aren't any worlds

the king
is not a subject

"The penchant for stereotyping that was ostensibly an affliction of a distinctively authoritarian personality was therefore in fact due to the stereotyping of consciousness that in modern society had become the social norm. It was this far more general characterization that moved Adorno to declare that: 'People are inevitably as irrational as the world in which they live.' " More (thread).

vlogumentary

(via)

Never let a Sufi deal.

    "The Dead

The graves grow deeper.
The dead are more dead each night.

Under the elms and the rain of leaves,
The graves grow deeper.

The dark folds of the wind
Cover the ground. The night is cold.

The leaves are swept against the stones.
The dead are more dead each night.

A starless dark embraces them.
Their faces dim.

We cannot remember them
Clearly enough. We never will."

--Mark Strand, Reasons for Moving (1968)

the calico caliphate

Scriptworlds.

    "The Autumn Name of God

Color, said the nun, is the autumn
name of God
and his winter name is Silence.

and here is how it is for us:

we have only color and silence left
the leaves burn beautifully in their slow dying
the wind through the branches
makes a music like a lullaby
it carries back the names of other seasons

autumn is the last color of the house

framed there at the end of the path
amidst brilliant oaks and maples
we don't see its peeling paint,
the way the shutter hangs by a hinge

reds and yellows blow across the path,
pile up against the wall

soon, bare branches and snow

the coming of silence
God's final name"

--Janet McCann, The Crone at the Casino (2013)

"... interstellar travel plays the same role in the secular religion of progress—the established faith of our age—that the Second Coming of Christ plays in Christian theology."

"And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master." --Kristeva

parrots of the cheirobbean

    "The Conspirators

And if the dead, and the dead
Of spirit now join, and in their horrifying ritual
Proceed till at last with oriental grace
End their concluding dance with the candles guttering,
The cymbals sobbing, the wind harassing the curtains,
The chill from the flood embracing the golden stairway
The scent devoured and the bowls blown clean of incense:

Ah then, farewell, sweet northern music;
No longer the flight of the mind across the continents,
The dazzling flight of our words across the tempestuous
Black, or the firelit recital of a distant battle.

No. All that we loved is lost, if the intricate
Languor of recollected centuries
Descends in its terrible sweetness on our limbs.
No shot will echo; no fire; no agonizing
Cry will resund in the city's thickets: only,
The ivy falling gently across the bridges,
The larches piercing the roofs, the reclining steeples,
The cellars rich with the agony of the reptiles,
The contemplative worms, the victorious rodents,
And at last, the climax entrancingly serene,
The inconclusive note drowned on the ascendant:
Our lovely shapes in marble still shine through the greenery,
Our exquisite silver bones still glide with the glaciers
That split our familiar hills, still fall with the avalanche
And weaving their vast wing's thunder over the Indies
The birds, the birds, sob for the time of man."

--Frederic Prokosch, The New Pocket Anthology of Verse, 1955

History of the New Weird.

"I realize that the character needs to have the same kind of emotional moment I did after the election, when my entire conception of my country and where it was headed and who were not only were, but who we wanted to be, got flushed down the toilet forever. I will never forget that moment. How betrayed I felt; how my own people had voted to destroy everything I knew and loved. It was a break in reality, for me, the moment when I felt the whole world literally lurch onto another timeline. It was among the most surreal moments of my life. And I knew I had to accept immediately that it had changed everything I knew, and was going to profoundly affect the future – my own and those of my friends and family and the world itself – in terrible ways." --Kameron Hurley

anado-kuniklo

(mosul via aljazeera)

runing with Caesars
FPEG OPMK LX
marked seat at the Texas

your stairway lies on the whisp'ring wind'
nerve turned suit
stands away
not the force
suicidal
of sweet silver pajamas
waterproof talk
and paperweight paths
high in what the browning engravings
love
thick skirts that retch
exhausted plasma
chess silks
or sidelong flickers

rumble of the ice maker

Developing America.

fever of a policeman
everybody doing a penny

that it flowers
filing fossils
against the dark

chess is not Waterloo
red in thought I

smell
the silver voices

in their protection,
rising

lego dachau

Fragments of a great confession.

"Time's arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression." --Ken Liu

Sam Spratt.

this was fun:

black- gmlucki64

1.h3 e5
2.g4 d5
3.Bg2 c6
4.d4 e4
5.c4 Bd6
6.Nc3 Ne7
7.Bg5 f6
8.Bd2 O-O
9.cxd5 cxd5
10.Qb3 Nbc6
11.e3 Na5
12.Qc2 f5
13.g5 f4
14.exf4 Bxf4
15.Nge2 Bxd2+
16.Qxd2 Nc4
17.Qc1 Nf5
18.b3 Nce3
19.fxe3 Qxg5
20.Nf4 Qg3+
21.Ke2 g5
22.Ncxd5 gxf4
23.Bxe4 Kh8
24.Qc5 Be6
25.Rag1 Bxd5
26.Rxg3 Nxg3+
27.Ke1 Bxe4
28.Qe5+ Kg8
29.Rg1 Rae8
30.Rxg3+ fxg3
31.Qxg3+ Kh8
32.h4 Rg8
33.Qc7 Rg1+
34.Ke2 Rg2+
35.Ke1 Rc2
36.Qf7 Bg6
37.Qf6+ Kg8
38.Qg5 Rh2
39.Qg3 Rh1+
40.Kd2 Rc8
41.e4 Rhc1
42.Qe5 R1c2+
43.Ke3 R8c3+
44.Kf4 h6
45.Qd5+ Bf7
46.Qd8+ Kg7
47.Ke5 Rf3
48.d5 Rxa2
49.Qc8 Rxb3
50.Qg4+ Kf8
51.Qc8+ Kg7
52.Qg4+ Kf8
53.Qc8+ Kg7
54.Qg4+ Kf8 draw by repetition

10 palindromes for Palindrome Week.

(via @SarahLerner)

quinoa latte

Deli xenon-exiled.

Palindromic streets near here: Rener, Maham...& Lenel.

Totalitopia.

"Everlastingly: the red and ratlike curios" --Brinnin

Doing an Old English font in HTML.

"The Giant Turtle Grants an Interview

How old are you, Old Silence?
....I tell time that it is.
And are you full of wonder?
....Ephemeral verities.
What most do you long for?
....No end to my retreat.
Have you affections, loves?
....I savor what I eat.
Do shellbacks talk to shells?
....Sea is a single word.
Have you some end in mind?
....No end, and no reward.
Does enterprise command you?
....I manage a good freight.
Has any counsel touched you?
....Lie low. Keep quiet. Wait.
Your days – have they a pattern?
....In the degree of night.
Has solitude a heart?
....If a circle has a center.
Do creatures covet yours?
....They knock, but seldom enter.
Have you not once perceived
....The whole wide world is yours.
I have. Excuse me. I
....Stay utterly indoors.

--ibid

"Over a decade later and it feels as though we have always been at war with genre boundaries."

under the sign of the woofus

(via @HorribleSanity)

Effinger does Wolf 359. "For the fictional Star Trek battle, see Battle of Wolf 359. For the The Outer Limits episode, see Wolf 359 (The Outer Limits)." "...this is generally considered Effinger’s worst work."

Stub, a worn row abuts.

Chrome-plated Heart.

riddlingly besides
cruel our accidental fates
the pain-struggle dwarfed
the buzz in my own head like a cicada
that knows not seasonal or unseasonal

thoroughfare gauntlet
records unlikely to stay archived
gimlet-eyed cop cars waiting
like a frog on a fallen tree
dragonfly odyssey it's not

this hospital where i was born
walking in a place without sidewalks

perijove

(via)

A rebar, curio noir, crab era.

Ravens' theory of mind.

"Mild as an awning in a mist, the face
Of mystery dies and dreams its other house."

--Brinnin

lascar riddles

"Night pulls full-fathomed in its swarming fold" --Brinnin

Zappa does Luden's.

We'd limn ill in mildew.

i kind of like this one:

white- Vale Animus 1735

1.d4 d5
2.Bf4 Nf6
3.e3 Nbd7
4.c4 c6
5.Nc3 e6
6.Bd3 dxc4
7.Bxc4 b5
8.Bd3 Bb7
9.a3 a6
10.f3 c5
11.dxc5 Nxc5
12.Bc2 Qb6
13.Nh3 Rd8
14.Qe2 Be7
15.Kf2 O-O
16.Bg5 h6
17.Bh4 Ng4+
18.fxg4 Bxh4+
19.Kf1 Bf6
20.Nf2 Qc6
21.Nfe4 Bxc3
22.Nxc3 f5
23.b4 fxg4+
24.Kg1 Na4
25.Nxa4 bxa4
26.Rc1 Qb5
27.Qxg4 Rd2
28.Qxe6+ Kh8
29.Be4 Qe2

info-golem

(tal korczak via dwayne carter on fb)

What is destroying the Earth?

Lo! did weld lewd idol.

Seymour on Kafka's Castle.

     "Mine Is a Voyage on a Cloudless Eye

Mine is a voyage on a cloudless eye
Adapted to that surface as a skate
Round which the flakes from bowsprit never fly;
Gardens so jailed with frost and salt they fight
All summer towards the waterfalls are mine,
Rivers whose smooth meandering thumbs can press
Enormous homesteads from a wilderness;
The comet's swan-like after-tow is mine.

Time comes and goes and what was never snow
Hangs like a thpousand seagulls in a hall
Of glass. O in that tinder stillness blue
Madonnas burn like lamps profane as pitch,
Philosophy's great odalisques who dwell
Sun-centered in their own phosphor. To touch
Or dream them is to fuse that greening kiss
No mouth returns, no tongue relinquishes."

--John Malcolm Brinnin

out of the dollar records

(about)

"My slow bones stretched on tide-ledge, bog, and dune..."

--Brinnin

"As Well-Known as I Deserve to Be"

Red nitro for tinder.

Nitro Function. More on Char.

"Who walked between the violet and the violet" --Eliot

death of a sales associate

The secret lives of ISIS fighters.

"To eke a diamond from its mineral floor
Earth rakes its faculty for quake and tide"

--John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sorrows of Cold Stone, (1951)

Or pyro tsunami Manu, story pro.

truck on the rickety road
pass through a momentary haze
or pyro tsunami, Manu,
story pro
on a rickety road
into pure cerulean

watermelon gone rogue

The end of wood_s lot.

"So pale their shadow blows along the breeze" --Stickney

Durkin's Pizza.

I sew a luster, get egret Sulawesi.

for ev'ry clown car crash
an empire goes down

no

only this time

cromullahlech

"Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it." --Rachel Kushner

Dabih sushi, bad.

inscribed in this
chrome-plated shell
red nitro for tinder

two moves by Geller
skyfall to defend
decades too late

i come to figure it
not even sure of the place

ombro fluktuanta

"The moment of revolt is the moment of victory."

--Diane DiPrima

Buddhists on Fire: Muslimgauze.

Devo, lowdown wodwo loved.

litter & clutter & nattering knaves
beneath a circus tent of motley azure

drinking coffee in a cold room
the rat's heavy marvel
thought cannot go through
a bridge chartering
in the letter-glyphs' chattering
himself a concatenation and forgetful comet

persimmetry

"The wind lulls in the olive grove"

--Stickney

Giger, Harry.

This antelucan hour knows me not
Though fixed in its stern gaze i blandly dwell.
I had supposed some rescue after all.

Only but lately scrambled out of bed
I yet cannot recall one shred of dreams;
Carry the slow-ebbed memory of white

And sentences the moths fail to complete.
Still there are raging elsewhere fires & crimes
For me to limn, for my small tools to cage;

Ruins that wear a veil of amethyst
We'd stroll among & shape after shape just taste;
Ghosts, & their hard-won, misterioso knowledge...

This antelucan hour knows me best.

liquida diamanti

cold blue turning
see January coming
in forgetful silks
and marble pajamas
i let a blue comet know
to hand over keel's repair
shifting little
a necessary cannon

now I love dark noise
and will be sniffing
discretion
in forgetful silks
and marble pajamas

history of the fourth of july

(via iraqinews dot com)

"Sometimes I think my heart is waxen cold
For having been so very long alone."

--Stickney

Bats of the Republic.

its silver heaven
and its marble sherbets
beside sidelong death
shut and a bottle of water
two eyes rising in

flickers
roosting
a high noise frill

La Sonjanto

" 'The three passions...are love, hate, and ignorance. Ignorance is the strongest.' " --Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (2013)

feraja monto

"We can ask primal questions, but we can never stand near the beginning." --Karl Jaspers

Albur.

eagle silks
these arms
of the forgetful
meathook

and sweet now
a brown salt browning
how thick the noise

in souls of mercury

"...the erosion of traditional rights and erstwhile certainties (such as fixed jobs and guaranteed pensions, etc.) is repackaged not as loss but as opportunity."

inter-urbala

The Dreaming.

poisoned chalice
uceli di ombro

2o6ycTaH
more hours killed
phasers set to stun

words set
to Fist of Truth

Godfather font.

me eras fatigita

"...and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun." --Arthur Machen

Metal Albums Googly Eyes.

"I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets." --Plath

styrofoam mime

     "Bedtime Story

Long long ago when the world was a wild place
Planted with bushes and peopled by apes, our
Mission Brigade was at work in the jungle.
Hard by the Congo

Once, when a foraging detail was active
Scouting for green-fly, it came on a grey man, the
Last living man, in the branch of a baobab
Stalking a monkey

Earlier men had disposed of, for pleasure
Creatures whose names we scarcely remember
Zebra, Rhinoceros, elephants, wart-hog,
Lion, rats, deer, But

After the wars had extinguished the cities
Only the wild ones were left half-naked
Near the Equator: and here was the last one,
Starved for a monkey.

By then the Mission Brigade had encountered
Hundreds of such men: and their procedure.
History tells us, was only to feed them:
Find them and feed them:

Those were the orders. And this was the last one
Nobody knew that he was, But he was, Mud
Caked on his flat grey flanks. He was crouched, half-
Armed with a shaved spear

Glinting between broad leaves, When their jaws cut
Swathes through the bark and he saw fine teeth shine,
Round eyes roll round and forked arms waver
Huge as the rough trunks

Over his head, he was frightened. Our workers
Marched through the Congo before he was born, but
This was the first time perhaps that he’s seen one.
Starting in hot still

Silence, he crouched there: then jumped. With a long swing
Down from his branch, he had angled his spear too
Quickly, before they could hold him, and hurled it
Hard at the soldier

Leading the detail. How could he know the Queen’s
Orders were only to help him? The soldier
Winced when the tipped spear pricked him. Unsheathing his
Sting was a reflex.

Later the Queen was informed. There were no more
Men. An impetuous soldier had killed off,
Purely by chance, the penultimate primate.
When she was certain

Squadrons of workers were fanned through the Congo
Detailed to bring back the man’s picked bones to be
Sealed in the archives in amber. I’m quite sure
Nobody found them

After the most industrious search, through.
Where had the bones gone? Over the earth, dear.
Ground by the teeth of the termites, blown by the
Wind, like the dodo."

--George MacBeth