precision meaninglessness

evening inundates
at the end of September
with soft siftings
sent from a hurricane

People and Life.

off my icons

(pedestal without robert e lee, pic by Sheryl St Germain on Fb)

18 strings of "Silence". (thanks Melanie!)

gleam of sunlight
off copper roofs
when it has just stopped raining

A visual history of Buraq.

(via @TohoKingdom)

"Popular culture allusions to Roko's basilisk include the character Roccoco Basilisk in Grimes' video for "Flesh Without Blood", explicitly named for Roko's basilisk;[10] and the plot of Mangus: Robot Fighter #8 by Fred Van Lente."

only latch chord

Microtonal black metal.

pingo frequency
pinkgold dawn · vetust commute
to a song i like

so this time · they're rebuilding
or so the officials say

Plastic sea.

a treasury of translatorese

(via)

twilight spomenik
this underpass · the garden
of scarlet taillights

as the light lifts i still don't
recognize my own landscape

Cornelius before Cornelius.

truck piled high with pallets

(via Max Nuclear on Fb)

When the Earth becomes a maelstrom of storms and rising sea levels due to catastrophic climate change, some want to give up and call it a day for humanity. (Reviewed in verse by Adam Roberts here.)

Shoelaces grow like hair.

Rabbi Patti Smith.

"A great way to show respect for the flag is to refuse offers of clandestine election assistance from hostile foreign espionage agencies" --@davidfrum

"The deadness of the writer is especially interesting because they feel so alive on the page: this makes their books a talisman not just against shame but also against mortality. Which makes me wonder –and I have no answer to this – whether women will ever seem dead in the same way."

(via)

a cold ocean

Official witch of Los Angeles.

Found a Colson Whitehead novel on clearance that i didn't know about: APEX HIDES THE HURT. Can't recommend this highly enough! Whitehead has an allegorical mind, rare in novelists, & this reads like DeLillo except funnier (& more aware of race).

"What worlds are we creating in place of what is washed away??"

    "DECOLONIAL (from ‘Suture’)

or that i would press myself
where the Oasis, the mouth;

eat some kind of you to earth, inter a kingdom,
coldtouch my disorganization;

i am waiting, waiting in a curve
i breathe in, always, in on a silence;

i am not to greet feather-like
passing the palm of this day;

now after seeing the Æther can feel ok
o bones, o bones, o;"

--SU17 & O Mayeux

drawing on the wrong side of the brain

Emil Nolde, "Autumn Evening" (via)

"I can bear the thought that in a short time worms will eat away my body, but the idea of philosophy professors nibbling at my philosophy makes me shudder." --Schopenhauer, qtd in: Consolations of Philosophy

The Harmonious Circle.

little enough to be gained by not stopping
just enough light to see the vampires
unreal images of harm
anado-kuniklo
smouldering tar truck
the little yellow wildflowers
under morningdark clouds

Everyone Alive Wants Answers.

hand hewer of soapstone

"If I was a huntress of words
It was because I was a huntress of silence..."

     --Sandra Hochman

Reviving Maori.

so dark the waves on Biscayne Bay
have eaten all the tiny letters
out of my pages
in the dying light
the store is almost empty
bad things
are happening elsewhere

that's either a dolphin
or someone making balloon animals

The Terror of Deep Time.

refuge of dark brick

"Ghazal for a Dead Poet

How many poems have gone unwritten since you left?
The star-burnt sky drifts west, but at this hour what constellations are left?

I turn my head. My palms slip, of their own accord, together
The way hands might in prayer, the right to the left.

If only the right hand is used for eating, for touching,
How lonely the hand we call the left.

Last night I sat before a book, turning the pages
Backwards, trying to undo time, reading right to left.

And I could hear your voice speaking, without weight,
Touching the words lightly, first with the right hand, then the left.

George, you already know the answer to the question you won’t ask.
The clock’s hands move right, abandoning the past. Words are all that’s left."

--George Franklin

My Super Power is Confusion.

Weaponization of folk heathenry.

patenting the name pantagreulion

Two languages sharing the same words, just applying them in different ways to different things. Their one shared belief, that this difference does not exist.

Japanese noise quest.

"One hurricane will spoil six good months’ hope." --Browning

rancid guru crossing

("Dragon and Tiger" by Sesson Shukei, via)

When did clowns turn bad?

there would not be peace
any more than dark
keeps you from stumbling
in the dwindling years

there would not be peace
even with a common
enemy for those who
can only see each other

there would not be peace
nor ever
to the last of the last snow
an awakening

"The idea that the sole way to matter in a literary capacity is to become overly aware of topical ephemera and produce timely responses that generate strong reactions is one I am no longer pursuing."

exotic ions

Plantasia.

turquoise sunrise
broken squirrely rush
sojourn missive
as dead as ruins

under grimace wish
tsetse perishv abort promise rot
skink leather anklet

is squirt gun fight

anagrams of the beloved

Textbook with an apostrophe error in the title.

Breaking the One Percent.

turbulent floor
with barricades
right at sunrise
thinking
of all the water that fell

our bad government
that could still kill us

100 images from Cassini.

correct dullness

World Calendar.

Sometimes i feel like i am being hounded by the most infernal kind of stupidity, but then i realize it's simply that i overhear the grinding of the gears of mere cause & effect.

Hecate's Fountain.

shellac wheedle
festooned glide blend vary
scrofulous sward
where xeric rest adjoins

Harpooners and Sailors.

darknet of indra

Information pollution on Amazon.

Xibalba dig
abstain dark Plimsoll
aboard raft's odium

with agonist

wampum ibis-issued
string gave airt
and id gave crunk
skint sprout

gliding nidor amok

psalm borrow black
clad rabbit ebullient
rollic fan frozen
adorn creamer
warble if stall asunder zone
addiction wisp

Alan Moore reviews Kenneth Grant.

secure material

(pic by geof huth on fb)

Surge/ Wick/ Raze.

force of candle paths
two dark sherbets

tree beak was a marvel even
beads and protection ache
rising man of
the water duel

shifting little himself
paperweight January
so's Waterloo

silver engravings on its grass

"Hell, in the 2016 election that supposedly determined the future of humanity "Did Not Vote" won 44 of 50 states." (via supergee)

threshold of a dram

"In the 1880s, when Nietzsche wrote, that was the terrifying private discovery of a handful of sensitive minds. By the early 1900s, the rumor had become sufficiently widespread to evoke counterblasts from the newly minted Fundamentalist movement, which tried to cover up the scandal by quietly substituting faith in a printed book..."

Sisyphean · dust
& all other towers
yammering
imagining their vertical

You say drone.

massacre during a hurricane

(via)

Tennessee reads Hart Crane.

Eolh · portent
flicker sleep's wharf
appointment for grugprab

stillbirth weathering into
staccato aftermath
gleams with sculsh

akimbo meth brisk

"The smoke has created its own weather system, powerful enough to transform the climate not just where we are, but in a stretch of territory that appears to cover roughly 100,000 square miles." (via dailykos)

gurepufurutsu

"If I gobbled up the wagon-ruts,
I'd be on my way."

--Washburn & Guillemin's Celan

Poetry plagiarism sleuth.

"No longer possible to sacrifice the same person to Satan multiple times" --@TheStrangeLog

Harvey, Irma and Me.

black accident of gneiss vapor
gods refuse sacrifice vapor

fake news & real insanity
purple sky of lost stone vapor

ghosts more perdurable than empires
more friable than breath's vapor

at dawn i have seen the thin fingers
upholding drowsy riders on their high, sound vapor

chalice of powerful wine
with this bath becomes, calcspar, vapor

what can graywyvern hope to show
whose towers & promises alike turn vapor

" I can’t imagine a philosophical life where I develop a philosophical doctrine or position, and then spend the rest of my life repeating that set of positions in talk after talk, article after article, book after book."

(via)

wander oleander

"2540: Inconsistent ethics when crafting with goblin bones." --@DwarfFortBugs

Addams Ramones. (via Michael Simms on Fb)

were these badlands
i have come through

stony hail, swift blades
were these badlands

most behind eyelids
did the shadows throw

were these badlands
i have come through

mandolin window treatment

(pic by momus (cropped) from his tumblr)

Not a bad Mummy survey (the new one to me has a strong feeling of Sax Rohmer).

"All the news is bad, from #fracking to #Irma, from #Rohingya to the #SLC, and that idiotic destroy everything in the whole world button marked #Brexit. "Where did this all come from???" Nowhere, didn't have to, it's all of it been building for years. Just try to keep your spirits up. These are the times. Somebody had to live in them, looks like its us. Give what you can, think of the people in real trouble, and pull the other way (pick your own crisis) as ever you get the chance."

tideswept isle, dawn,
delicate nameless hues

another shake
of the kaleidoscope

lines of force beyond our ken
things otherwise not accounted for

the wrong Biscayne

Iguana named after Godzilla.

spelunker's mantram

(via)

Greenland burning.

In sync?

cooling
now · for closer victims
an ignominious snasting

for Bwana
after more grievous actualities
pleasurable
bonus

as weather provides

Archived Chessville with working links.

on the fulcrum of the philtrum

I balance on a wishing well
that all men call the Voynich Manuscript
halcyon, into this world we're shlepped
cry of the only-in-books-heard whipporwill

a shlapa of my own design, sing gneiss
the drapa of the chimney's droog, to charm
what suicidal paradigm
comes down the pike to make the earth more sparse

a hallelujah rich
as adjuncts sure are poor
a tulip in a vase of everclear

& nothing new to spite the roach
of hist'ry save a scratchy whipporwill

"...a national GPS-guided app created so that residents always know exactly how far below sea level they are."

zetetic kitezh

(via Peter Singer on Fb)

the noon siren · ordinary
not to fear, not · like what's veering
to pummel the islands
with windborne violence

so much sunshine · the mild tinchel
has sown here, though · others before
have brought down trees
& broken windows

red & green hedge · i hurry beside,
leave without a thought · of what may thwart
in the innocent wind
for my weal or my plan

frozen
into what looks like survival

& all the mosquitos sing

Bloodgood's Grob, zipped.

tongue · turned · overnight

"The sward with shrivelled foliage..." --Stickney

the noon siren

(via)

my chalkboard globe
for further coastlines
dotted lines
moving inward
the life of a butterfly
the butterfly of a life
shifting voices like a loaf
moon things export protection of

"For three days now I’ve spoken with no one..."

el hombre que fue jueves

staring into wavering meshes
a fire in Crosby
black plume rising across the road

the moth that God made blind

the real world is calling me back
from the show in the limbec

gas pump handles yellow-sheathed
silent masks at the clambake

meat space requests my return
to changed maps to land storm-torn

& no myth has covered it
yet emerged from the black tarn

i woke & looked out the window
& saw i'd been taken to the moon

"It’s like watching a budgie trying to string sentences together." (via Hlavaty on Livejournal)

an orderly exodus

Ashbery tribute thread.

    "Ashbery: The Instruction Manual

As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them—they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!
But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers,
Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),
And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.
The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.
First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow
Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat
And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.
His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.
Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,
And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.
But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one
I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.
Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk
Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.
He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.
But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.
Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,
And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.
But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.
Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,
Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl
Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying
But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.
She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.
She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.
Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;
His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,
I see there is an intermission in the concert.
The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws
(The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),
And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk
About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.

Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.
Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim
That are so popular here. Look—I told you!
It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.
An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.
She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.
“My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too
If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.
Look, here is a photograph of him.”
And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.
We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late
And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.
That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.
The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.
His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.
Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.
There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.
There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.
There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies
And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.
Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.
There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,
But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.
And there is the home of the little old lady—
She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.
How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!
We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.
We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.
What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.
And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my gaze
Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.

(via)

K-H-A-A-T-R-R-V-I-E-N-Y-A

Broken science.

in the deep night of time
this breeze was made a gale
not to be only thorn

in the brown sullen flood
a slow silent taking
the war this gale became

blazoned word sans answer
& nothing not thrown down
to the horizon line

cayce & the sunshine band

"In 1877 a critic called John Ruskin wrote a throwaway line about art. He put it in a preface to one of his books about Venice. He said that nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and in the book of their art. He said that all were worth reading but that the last was the only one worth trusting. >." (via)

the world was never ours
we only thought it was
it is what it is
the world was never ours
save through otchkies of Oz
but Elba for the wise
the world was never ours
we only thought it was

The Blackness of the grackle.

"From 1980 to 2016, according to Noaa records, the US experienced an average of five and a half $1bn-plus “weather and climate disasters” a year. From 2012 to 2016, that reached 10.6 such events a year."

more of something similar

(via Lanny Quarles on Fb)

A new song in Lojban.

"A gentle reminder that no, Twitter is not the end of poetry. But at least it's a start." --@NeinQuarterly

Eclipsestock.