the case for crisco

Acheron in Alien & Aliens.

bloodlight, chill, consecutive
days you invite
after having heard the spiel
after letting hope elapse

to buy something & then throw
immediately away, worth
your whole kingdom;
to become aware is made

consecutive, chill, bloodlight
by the perilous atoll

     "...and they talk

Among the shifting pillars..."

--Allison Parrish, Articulations (2018)

the looking glass called home

Viaduct.

i think never will i fly again
let that pure cerulean lift alone
those days of seven forty sevens are gone
i think never will i fly again
for so much waste of fuel, such measly glean
to go abroad were but a change in lane
i think never will i fly again
let that pure cerulean lift alone

phosphorus fetish

Some HPB history.

Even before the robot eyes kept track
of our ev'ry move (to make us tempted better),
the forces of this earth were echoing clatter
small & large, each station of the trek.
No one can say they never changed the course
of thousand thousand mild trajectories
nor find, ahead, as many secret doors.
But how may a poet, in this thought, clasp peace?
I walk into the cold & dark garage
& speak to the rafters there, the concrete stained
from years; these things that now, haphazard-donned,
surround, are not the meanings of the age;
i drift on shadow-sails, through seas of bilge.

porch pirate bingo

A planet called Farout.

     "Variations on the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go."

--Margaret Atwood via poemhunter

goodnight moog

The mud-pie dilemma.

from here the light grows longer
Shroudmaker jests with Crashsound
ices in shadow linger
from here the light grows longer
strong courage acquires strange languor
& vict'ry turns to quicksand
from here the light grows longer
Shroudmaker jests with Crashsound

oberambergris

(cookie portrait of "lorenzo" by stacy chandler)

Number 8 wire.

This useless trace i leave upon the earth
invisible to some, unseen the rest,
is all that keeps me sane, as from the first.
Of all the ways men fritter away their breath
i choose the airest, leanest, scatterest sleight.
They say it's sometimes steel an isopleth
& one evasive to the usual scythe;
i seek no such reward, nor hazard that bet.
What i can imagine might befall my words
belongs with dreams of how we ought to live.
Since listeners are more than we deserve
the sooner these, as their smug sire, be rid:
not for themselves, but for the gain, runs love.

broken new universe

Prime.

Alderaan Quixote there,
not here; armageddon rathe
& in the margins
flagrant in the Interzone.
What do you say, stick?

That we put too much on kites.
That we maybe should have guessed
knowledge is not a hashtag.
that the auxins in the leaves
toll for our bad zeal.

White smoke rises in the sun.
Therefrom hangs a noose.
Still, somehow, we continue
like black myrrh's rhymed yoin
of Nosferosphorescence.

hyena whisperer

    tr Herrera y Reissig: Crepusculo Espirita

Always you were martyrdoms' chaste rose!...
& just like virgin frost that earthward sifts
in vernal rigor, all-betraying death
should have jumped you picking lilies...
Wandering fireflies made for febrile candles
that lit you, & in the pallid herbs
you smiled, intact between the snowfall
& the roar of my funest deliriums.
Dumbly I dreamed, with lassitude inert,
to give you my single kiss: the one of death.
By tragical fruitions step by step,
I savored in your lips, deadly joy;
meanwhile, blatant to my prime caress
your inmost self was blushing in the West.

Monologue.

mothman sings

Philosophers of nothingness.

forget that these are shadows
the place where i put it
dissolves
bright featureless gray
light of no shadows
forget
what just transpired

"In fact I have come to understand revolutionary language as a sort of fetish..." --Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (2015)

sanza bear & the three glocks

One nation under God.

berimed Datsun
10301

saved sunset
I was lost when I met you

SATOR
AREPO

where the rocks
& the white water meet

the obedience experiments

(via david richoux on retro rockets fb)

"Blade runners dream of palm trees and neon pink skies."

one story · & one story only
from here on out · rivulets
returning to the river · returning
to the Pleistocene · or so
who knows · but with all the dying
should be · interesting
this story · our only one
our last · Meteora
not far from Larissa · i missed

regifted lava lamp

Bang a gong.

avenged by the delicate traceries
of things there used to be time for
count the coupons on the highway
mountain hovering then gone
shiny black silence
pulsing
OPERA ROTAS
bells at the bottom of the lake

a crow walks away from my car
to join the others

maxwell's demon's hammer

"I even hate to say it but vaporwave fashion has gotten to a point where people are actively advertising it on Instagram hoping people will buy it and wear it as if it were the trendiest thing there was..."

the rattle of the wheels grows dire
but i am fated to endure
all manner of dopes conspire
the rattle of the wheels grows dire
this dismal choir
inscribes but Crashsound's lure
the rattle of the wheels grows dire but i
am fated
to endure

leatherface smiling

Your love is true.

Hsigo sums sumo sighs
on a close mission from Zeus

Santa Tsantsa at first light
vindicates the cluttered tale

sum shatters the abacus
sum whose other we must seek

problematic sidewalk

(via @bruces on elo)

My beautiful death.

rescue, importunate, elusive;
      winter trees, nervous
the forecast, wield no legible glyph
      as fades into fog
recall of brillig, those amber leaves.

a ringing stillness

inconstant Nyarlathotep
useless to anticipate

the city's underbelly
threaded with no astrolabe

keep fiddling with the wipers
stone of intimate bezoar'

-oastrian syzygy
a storm of gnats besieges

A Drosophila of reasoning.

"A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy." --Chesterton

the journey of descent

toenail parings
a candle with words
hole in a steel door
patched with pink duct tape
out in the world
trail of solitary choices
follow the score
of sev'ral losing games

Hope never dies.

" '...Where were you born, Cale?"

'America.'

'As I thought. America One or America Two?'

'I never could get straight on that. I think it must have been somewhere in between.' "

--Steve Erickson, Rubicon Beach (1986)

9 new levels of doom

(pic by kim dot dammit on livejournal, 2014)

My brilliant dialect.

our traces in the air
forgotten

coffee grounds
in the bottom of the plastic basket

almost a numbness

Unimanticorn.

" '...do you know why we make no real progress?'

'Perhaps because we must carry tradition on our backs,' I ventured to say.

'No, no. It's simply because it is impossible to convince the fools that they are fools...' "

--Unamuno, "The Madness of Doctor Montarco"

"This is the only known copy in existence of the first edition of Shakespeare’s first printed work, Venus and Adonis, which appeared in 1593."

      1.
fallen leaves shining on one side
gapes hotly without parameter
passes election litter
the swart cube & the ghostly ape
still awed by a change of season
sunning on Egypt shoal afresh
a very expensive book
a goth yelps, that i read once,
then put away on a shelf forever
busk-yclept, shy poet lag

      2.
in that tangleglen the light has made
cars bound on some desp'rate mythchase burgeon
Jonestown nuestra · in this tangleglen
streets tremble with their gray cars bound

from crashsound to crashsilence, years

on nthat harvest hill the light has spurned
a goth yelps beside no Egypt shoal
topless towers on that harvest hill
a closed down mall where boomingly a goth yelps

from crashsound to crashsilence, years

      3.
bury more deeply the spark
that would have been a way
you didn't invent the spork
bury more deeply the spark
the sorrow that cannot speak
enough to know why
bury more deeply the spark
that would have been a way

      4.
these scant words thrown on the flames

Effects of glyphosate.

dry corridor

Tumbleweed.

what quells the bees quells me
in my storebought granola
never mind the enemy
what quells the bees quells me
blindfold cinema
grim battlefields to hallow
what quells the bees quells me
in my storebought granola

"The biologists here are finding that the birds all have plastic inside them."

translucent mistake

("Temptation of the Penitent Medusa" by Carrie Ann Baade, via Metafilter)

The Seaside Cemetery.

a frenzy of echolalia
saccharine Tourette's
wookie Pez protocol
decapitated in the party fountain
briarcove where the dead men lost their Tom Thumb cards

Tomkins podcast.

"All the great heroes of the human race have preached things palpably not true, and practised things palpably full of folly." --Mencken

highway of death

"The long mysterious Exodus of death" --Longfellow

Gloat vs Tikkun.

      "IN SHADOW

Out in the late amber afternoon,
Confused among chrysanthemums,
Her parasol, a pale balloon,
Like a waiting moon, in shadow swims.

Her furtive lace and misty hair
Over the garden dial distill
The sunlight,--then withdrawing, wear
Again the shadows at her will.

Gently yet suddenly, the sheen
Of stars inwraps her parasol.
She hears my step behind the green
Twilight, stiller than shadows, fall.

'Come, it is too late,--too late
To risk alone he light's decline:
Nor has the evening long to wait,'--
But her own words are night's and mine."

--Hart Crane

waiting for 5G

"...a building made of corridors, and the walls of the corridors are made of doors." --Clive James on Proust

Into the tunnel.

sorrowful knowledge
only as rain that falls
drizzle without consequences
the old tale
compressed
into a diamond

flaw from which the rest follows

spidermilk biscuits

"Goethe is no longer our ancestor, as he was Emerson's and Carlyle's. His wisdom abides, but it seems to come from some solar system other than our own." --Harold Bloom

This never happened to Noah.

Loglan, Algol. Triple primary:
blue, red, golden sunsets.
Ascertain a hair tie
in the rose-covered zippybag.
Lights out in Calgary.

It was a rough stretch of road
so we drove gingerly.
Puffs of dust not bullets,
sounds that later for the movie version
would be crafted by sound engineers.

I write this inbetween stints
at squaring circles.
Loglan, Algol, Kalashnikov.

naqshband

(anchorage daily news via thea temple on fb)

The rest of the story.

Halcyon, Haida Gwaii not
& Jálg loosens the slipknot

Labyrinthine eyes collect
what escapes this intellect

to busk on a shinkansen,
ride the virulent khamsin

the yellow grass lies dormant
as in my words what i meant

gargle Shazam orpiment

"We've got a kind of cultural apartheid going on where you've got a small minority that's been dominating discourse, dominating everything, dominating even the way that we're able to think or imagine. But apartheid was unstable. It did not last for very long, because you can't do that for very long. I think that's where we are."

"That was my chief misfortune, not to have been born among my own." --Abel Sanchez

theology final

(image by jeffrey ford via @joycecaroloates)

Mundus Subterraneus.

    "1227

My Triumph lasted till the Drums
Had left the Dead alone
And then I dropped my Victory
And chastened stole along
To where the finished Faces
Conclusion turned on me
And then I hated Glory
And wished myself were They.

What is to be is best descried
When it has also been—
Could Prospect taste of Retrospect
The tyrannies of Men
Were Tenderer—diviner
The Transitive toward.
A Bayonet’s contrition
Is nothing to the Dead."

--Emily Dickinson

auroral forecast

Mortal plagiarism.

    "Dublin

Slattern queen, scuttled king,
Dirty jack:

Here's old Dublin's pack,
Stephen's soul, Joyce's throne,
Bloom's cross and rack.

Here's mad Ireland's stack,
Parnell's grave, Yeats's crone,
Molly's Liffey crack.

Slattern queen, scuttled king,
Dirty jack."

--Robert Burlingame

heaves in upwordle

(via pi-slices on tumblr)

The insect apocalypse.

voices silenced
present in the quieter crannies

reagent dissolving all
guide & leader-astray

some rest from the xmas music

When dinosaurs rule the earth.

sermons in solitary confinement

(via time-counter on tumblr)

Phineas priests.

earth is the only planet
where people with funny hats
are put in charge of things

earth is the only planet
where "I" is not a verb

earth is the only planet
that invented virtual pets

earth is the only planet
that thinks it's the only planet

Gonna soak in the sun.

"Hitler could be defeated only by armed might: i.e., on his own terms. Whole libraries written to his detriment didn't add up to the effect of a single Russian artillery shell. This ugly fact should be kept in view when we catch ourselves nursing the comforting illusion that there is a natural order to which politics would revert if all contests of belief could be eliminated. There is such a natural order, but it is not benevolent." --Cultural Amnesia

the time it always rained

Coagulate.

late November sun hindered,
red spraypainted cryptic word,
woke Ewok. Funest journey:
to Destruction bend the knee.
the wide enervating din
breaks black, subfusc & golden
i get stuck behind a bus
our moon of madness, gibbous;
      tourists at the weird wharf
emerge from disenchanted weir, dwarf.

trains of tourniquet return
grill us on the new pattern
raven pharmacy skewing
sign with ebon folded wing
back in ancient times acrid
earning me survivor cred
folie adieu, virulent
switchback & acoustic Lent
      skewwhiff violet rites
& ev'ry fool who would vie Lit--writes

oodoolay of heart auxins
frolics in the lesser sins
as if under no troll's thumb
& tholes an algorithm
as pied as pure. Hidden sill
across which one epistle
may still be hurled--sky haywire
& perks in the rat race choir
      grueling one percent-ore
but hero-bespoke this sark from centaur

Frances Carroll & Her Coquettes. (via @HarrySKeeler)

origin story

Coulthart on Roeg.

      1.
Legacy pits our dord out spicy gale
cold light
at the end of warm day
a kid spinning with a branch
faint incessant barking
amateur baseball
it is 2018 & the saucers have not come

      2.
nail protruding from pegboard
harder than stone they built
they built pyramids harder than stone
in the mind's eye
harder than stone they built
vertigo
in a burning landscape
is there only desire

in the headlights
tattoo'd pastor
caught in the small rain

      3.
never look at the empty stars
or the stars behind them
precipice inly · scratchmarks
on a cell wall
wasp slime
the bottom of the catcher holds

To the Rain.