safari in violet

VCV Rack thread.

maze-yeared, still not out.
generational curses
out of the question?

newly-turned-on-furnace smell
i'm fin'lly learning to love

Notion.

burn aerial

(pic by Jason Cohen on Fb)

In Puerto Rico.

[Thinking in analogies, perhaps not essay-ready...] Just as there is such a thing (in "oldies" radio) as a sanitized, mostly-white "Sixties")--contrasting with, say, the soundtrack to The Big Chill, which i believe represents actual airplay more truly (as well as actual achievement--): when stations, even relatively progressive stations such as our own KXT, play Nineties, they play a "fanboy" indie that little resembles the Nineties i remember, in which many of the best artists were women. Like, they rarely ever play Tori Amos or Bjork, but so many besides... And i call this an unintentional erasure (similar to the gender imbalance in avant poetry publishing). But it's still erasure.

Melanie thinks this isn't mine to "call-out"--which is completely true. Mine is to watch my own unintentional privilege-gestures. But this other one still troubles me...

"The morning of the General Election, I remember logging on and experiencing almost a doubling of vision, as if the universe had split into two tracks that were radically diverging from one another. There was a hallucinatory space of about a week where I still felt as if I could see another world layered underneath mine."

certe, la dio destruktas la nokto

watchers

loosed

tjuringa echo played
gray stand of deciduous
wooden stork
birch wailing
in the shadowless noontide

the bandaid
from its chrysalis

as if to all words
to all hearers who ever were

Planet generator.

origin story

(in Highland Park, by Hampton Burwick on Fb)

Listen to the Pouring Rain.

     "Rue des Vents III.

This is the dusk-hour when for old love's sake
Ghosts in this garden might arise and move
Down vanished paths, and memories might wake
Out of the death tht is so chill to love.
You whose old sins have in the later time
Become a legend perilous and sweet
With tragic whisperings of courtly rhyme,--
Lovely dead chatelaine!--are these your feet
That now across my silence slowly pace
Thrilling the darkness of this garden-close?
Turn!...No, this is no golden harlot's face,--
This is the bud that is not yet the rose,
This is a ghost of things that never were,
This is a child. The dusk grows sweet with her.

--Arthur Davison Ficke

$2 a Day.

autokaddish

multiple plagues · nameless
interval pledged · wretched
barrie of the gate of nothingness
the winter we needed
perilous traps · rattle
initiation into nothingness
belief in gauze · fossick
the blankness girds · early
mansions & palaces of nothingness

"You can't hold it in your hand. There is no form to it, only a gossamer idea made of warm calm that will find its way into your blood. It never stays for long, of course, but it will be there when you need it, and you will."

the inexible possile

(composite of 48 superimposed sun pics by @robertoglozcano via Prentiss Riddle on Fb)

in the sunlight it glistens
colossal desert snail
chrome amethyst trail

castle under five moons
walk the crumbling ramparts
hourglass in hand

colossal desert snail
chrome amethyst trail

The Teleportation Accident.

rhinencephalon

merited tears
many stymie
not come to this

the world in flames
run a yellow
old alibi

if we are those
who leave somewhat
to the next ones

The clever hamsters.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson [not an exact quote]

wrathful deities

Many-fathom'd murther
moves like a tide widemouthed
& foolish. Fire-brillig
before fire-sworddark.
Knocks out stoplights, stupid-
stippled choices. Password.

Crowley, Pynchon, & the hippies.

argentaurum

the underclass
holding the line · against
the sub-underclass

so many waiting rooms
of coercive banality
as if i needed to be told
i don't belong · the message

of messages

The Free Gift.

"Would it not be more economical for the governments to build asylums for the sane instead of the demented?" --Gibran

to joan at the winter solstice

Shiny black, silvery mist;
the transformed leaves burn muffled.
Hard stoic days, nights sniffled,
the hours sift down pale dust.

Almost could be Zubenelg,
almost those days of the plague.
But seasons hasten to welsh
as car cup carriers seiche.

Bug pigments now.

"An editor is one who separated the wheat from the chaff, then published the chaff." --Adlai Stevenson

three other trouble spots

rhetoric's neck being wrung
sticks cut with the curve-free rune

they will say that i evaded the world
found another syzygy than its ache

falling for the call
sticks cut with the curve-free rune

The Library at Mount Char.

uggianaqtuq

Vienna (from the balcony): "Spin the wheel, Eddie."

Eddie (at the roulette table): "What for? There's no customers."

Vienna: "I like to hear it spin."

--Johnny Guitar

Ex-arctic.

abraham lingam

(via)

"Granted, much of mathematics is exceedingly comic. But this only makes us believe in it all the more." --Ratner's Star

"The whole idea that disruption is something positive instead of negative is a conceit of tech entrepreneurs."

why the beige kurd sings

     ”The Monkey

It was hot. Forests were burning. Time
tediously dragging. At the neighbouring dacha
the cockerel crowed. I went out past the gate.
There, propped against the fence, on the bench,
a vagrant was dozing, a Serb, thin and dark.
A cross of heavy silver hung on his
half-naked chest. Drops of sweat
were rolling down him. Up on the fence
a monkey in a red skirt was sitting
greedily chewing the leaves
of the dusty lilacs. Her leather collar
was pulled back by a heavy chain,
catching her throat. The Serb, hearing me,
woke up, wiped off his sweat and asked me
to give him some water. But he barely sipped—
how cold was it?—put a dish on the bench
and at once the monkey, dipping
a finger in the water, seized
the dish in both her hands.
She drank, crouched on all fours,
her elbows leaning on the bench.
Her chin nearly touched the planks,
her backbone arched high above her dark
and balding head. It was the position
Darius must once have taken, bending
at a puddle in the road the day he fled
in front of Alexander’s mighty phalanx.
When she had drunk it all, the monkey
swept the dish from the bench, stood up
and—when could I ever forget this moment?—
offered me her black and calloused hand,
still cool from the water, extending it…
I have shaken hands with beauties, poets,
leaders of nations—not one hand displayed
a line of such nobility! Not on hand
has ever touched my hand so like a brother’s!
God is my witness, no one has looked at me
so wisely and so deeply in the eye,
indeed into the bottom of my soul.
This animal, destitute, called up in my heart
the sweetness of a deep and ancient legend.
Life in that instant seemed to me complete;
a choir of sea-waves, winds and spheres
was shining and was bursting in my ear
with organ music, thundering, as once
it did in other, immemorial days.

Then the Serb got up, patted a tambourine.
Taking up her seat on his left shoulder
with measured rocking, the monkey rode
like a maharajah on an elephant.
The enormous crimson sun
stripped of its rays
hang in the opalescent smoke. A sultry
thunderlessness covered the feeble wheat.

That was the day of the declaration of war.”

--Vladislav Khodasevich, Selected Poems (tr P Daniels, 2013)

The Gnostic Faustus.

kranio kristala

A rabbit rescued.

fire on the mountain cries:
full throated, crackling roar
glowers the horizon
the eyes sting, nostrils burn

& there's no predicting
fire on the mountain cries
leaping across freeways
leaving heaps of black ash

this place so beautiful
had rain seasons & none
fire on the mountain cries
a rare, strange danger then

all things are born to burn
in this carbon kingdom
sorrow & mindless woe
fire on the mountain cries

haggard library

for those who might be wond'ring
if the GOP still cared
for anything 'cept winning
i think it's now become clear:
God, guns, & underage girls

if maybe once some of them
held principles & morals
& had things for which to fight
low taxes, small government
God, guns, & underage girls

so if these things are your cause
you just go ahead & vote
the ten commandments in stone
massacres, & Baby Sister
God, guns, & underage girls

"The corollary of uniting the Volk through a storified set of essential characteristics and values is that those outside the culture were seen as lacking the values Germans considered their own."

unicorn corkscrew

divzoilist vigil
longshadowed peevish misuse
of the elfxyster

summon all ailing angels
have them refund my suede dues

dead eaters on top of the castle

(the thomas fire via)

as xmas music seeps into
each mind's last dusty corner
it seems we all want stupefy
amidst this vast disorder
come, normalcy, & show us how
we yet may slip our actions,
causality be one more dream
& take but dream exactions

they say it's only lead-lined pipes,
not dreaming, whacked the Romans
i think our phones make knife enough
for all wrist-slashing omens
& sometimes when i'm driving home
through bottlenecks & barriers,
feel threatened less by fire & flood
than dreaming's jaws of terriers

"Ashes make the best fertilizer."

a mile of cancer

"The dragon is created in the creation of the net." --The HD Book

How nuclear war with North Korea would unfold.

sunlight through wood-smoke
this should be the trail i know
a long way coming

a planet not a planet
maybe a planet again

Gale Hess.

song in blacklight chalk

New star names.

under winter sun
you reluctantly relinquish
fewer games resign
under winter sun

parley anew with the sane
& with your chum, old anguish
under winter sun
you reluctantly relinquish

"...there are few avocations in which with equal ability and industry you cannot earn more money than by writing." --Somerset Maugham

danger of meaning

when one is cold so long
one learns the special heft
of sunlight through one window--
though otherwise bereft.

this briefness we embrace
will have to keep me warm
as i go forth to chase
a world-devouring storm.

AlphaZero.

jesus trolling

Commuters stream between the hills
Just like a normal day, but burning;
Some displacing, others killing,
A thousand lives poured into urns...

Inserted in my daily blog
A video of fire i post
In honor of so much that's lost
Or, like Oumuamua, going rogue.

"having an algorithm drive you straight into a climate change caused inferno is an extremely 2017 way to go https://tinyurl.com/y8qemk3a" --@rhenderson

warded worriers

"To enter the forest is to cross over into adolescence." (thread)

Biscayne Baysian
amaranthine zilch
of a recklessness at Asshur

who could not go fast enough
into the landfill · color
me sad · color me dump

pumpkin spice white phosphorus

Not the typical morning commute... pic.twitter.com/kJIOQeqsIK

— A. Mutzabaugh CMT (@WLV_investor) December 6, 2017

unrepeatable feat

" 'I'm haunted by the thought that red ants don't need red ant metaphysics,' Verbene said. 'Just as stars don't eed astronomy. Just as numbers don't need number theory.' " --Ratner's Star

teddybear full of baby teeth
commuting into the burning hills

gray winter at last
having wondered if it would

snow as abortion dies
internet dies medicare

just a light dusting

supermoon

Twenty Questions with M John Harrison.

"Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing." --John Ashbery, 1968

"A little recognized fact is that carbon emissions peaked in the US and Europe ten years ago and are already declining. China expects to peak in the next decade, and India likely will in the 2030s."

internet sensation

Time after Time.

years ago injuries gray
is the color of my thole

ultima & overpass
vertical threads plumes turquoise

confusion of mindfulness
charity hugger mugger

100 Maori words.

"...James E Cutler, author of the 1905 book Lynch-Law,...writes, on the first page, 'Lynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States.' This is debatable, of course, and very possibly not true, but there is good evidence that the Italian Antonio Meucci invented a telephone years before Bell began working on his device, so as long as we are going to lay claim to one invention, we might as well take responsibility for the other." --Eula Bliss, News from No Man's Land (2009)

the night george bernard shaw spent in jail

Coackroach personalities.

places where there is no road
out by the dumpster
heart pounding · at peace

Liquid Sky retrospective.

Black: bambang_suprihandono

1. h3 d5
2. g4 e5
3. Bg2 Be6
4. d3 Bd6
5. Nf3 Nc6
6. O-O Qd7
7. Ng5 O-O-O
8. Nxe6 fxe6
9. c4 e4
10. dxe4 dxc4
11. Nc3 Nf6
12. Qa4 Kb8
13. Qxc4 Ne5
14. Qb3 Nc6
15. Be3 a6
16. f4 e5
17. Rad1 Qe7
18. g5 Nh5
19. Nd5 Qd7
20. f5 Ng3
21. Ba7+ Kxa7
22. Qxg3 Nd4
23. Qd3 Bc5
24. Kh1 c6
25. e3 cxd5
26. exd4 Bxd4
27. exd5 Qa4
28. Rc1 Qxa2
29. Rc7 Rc8
30. d6 Rxc7
31. dxc7 Rc8
32. Rc1 Qxb2
33. Rb1 Qxb1+
34. Qxb1 Rxc7
35. Bd5 Be3
36. f6 gxf6

i was mesmerized by the beautiful possibilities of B;g5, f7! (better than Qg1+ first) Be2, Qg1+ & Q:g7 (winning, whether Black answers b6 or Ka1) or Rc1+, Q:c1 B:c1, fg--& overlooked this simple rejoinder.

0-1

nazire dasein

The icon of the Killer Clown represents the malevolent absurdity of late-modern life. It's not even aimed at us, & yet we die.

Narraciones extraordinarias.

    1.
in his country's hour of need
these shackles are made

of whisper venom
crinkly

halcyon be the glad medallion

    2.
looking into faces

swastikas which ones

    3.
the war against xmas
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal,
one million gifts

    4.
all the hateful people
where do they all
come from
all the hateful
people
where do they all belong

    5.
murdered teddybear
tinchel shrinking
how do i feel about
underpasses

    6.
what was a republican

gumption-refresher

(Cathar castle (cropped) by Sheryl St Germain on Fb)

The Monstrous Moonshine number 196,884 in Base-4 is 300010110. To be able to use this in an aelindrome, one can add 1 to make all the digits nonzero (411121221). Thus, i have composed the following:

      Earth foins a lotto, total sin of heart

"[Brain] not responding due to a long-running script"--the very definition of Asperger's!

ghosts empearl the sterving wind

yet what is it that drives us?
a wheeled canister
a proxy for the self

in all our encounters
with the brutal city
the city that our cars made

smell no longer smellable
water for the goldfish circling

"This tax bill is legislation you would only back if you think America is finished and the only thing left to do is loot what you can." --@Econ_Marshall

a moment's peace

a dozen geese
flying low across
the porch where we stood

in harness
& the world burning

Information Rate Changer. (thanks Jayson!)

"As the failing light illuminates
the mercenary's creed"

--Thick as a Brick (1972)

rosicrucian bookmark

"Rhyming has my ruin been. With less deftness I might have produced real poetry." --Robert Service (in his autobiography)

"The test facing our democracy now is whether the rules of engagement that make the system work can be restored."

winter
and the smell of encyclopedias
significance-hunter
winter
what it takes to enter
the wasteland of Phidias
winter
and the smell of encyclopedias