"Quebrith Lost, Quebrith Regained"

hareiously sane
crusting yegg

with dollop lug tsunami
fly as fail into meagry sculsh travelogue

mustard ask stigma find indigo
igneous lyre berth


"If we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."


Olga: Revolutionary and Martyr.

"We can only imagine the confusion and concern when the informed elite of the United States Government discovered that an alien spacecraft piloted by insectlike beings from a totally incomprehensible culture had crashed in the desert of New Mexico." --Milton William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse (1991)


    "You Too, Not Just Me

Never just me.
However you need,

however, I'll be.
Like smoke slid

in like previous whiskey,
fire wisps,

fire drowns.
And follows itself

into new form,
first

afraid it's too alike.
A fraud must

believe, too.
Then, forgetting

how unlikely.
A centaur's first street

fair, alone.
Then so lucky,

only a dream is so lucky.
Sometimes laughing

with others
who must sense

us, condensed,
frontbodied, pushing

soft walking
circles onto a ledge.

Imperceptible
where your face

turns into breath
and vanishes

in the home.
Can't matter

in the home.
Some fire

makes form
only folly,

however all three
follow us to take

your shape
down with mine."

--Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (2008)

Find out where to recycle near you.


"The question "Mohammad or Mesmer?" is a common icebreaker, and a self-revealing test, among poetry students far beyond the United States."

    "1982 Junoon"

passage from that mood, years ago
to this mood

and the space i am in
doubles

but there is no going

* * * *

gusnylijda jelq
no talc
stamps going up
cry sandalwood

if its in the words
really in
some of the words
then it must be in
all of them

* * * *

the mirror that exploded
took us all along
oh yeah
took us all along
cold, bright
problems i cannot solve
listen to

the cries of the birds


When Butterflies Kiss.


350 dot org. More.


I don't think that i can take it.


The Republican Dictatorship. (via Antiwar dot com)

    "Ylang Ylang Yclad"

Don't want to lose this sleepiness
should occasion recur · to use it

you get used
to a certain size of exoskeleton

i donned shades for a moment of sun
when it left i kept them on

cherish these shards
that sound like part of the real future


Sigur Ros's album "( )", while reading the first chapters of The Wandering Scholars (again): is this not the music for a melancholysurvival, on remote islands of order?

"It was low tide [for culture] on the Continent of Europe, except for one deep pool at Toulouse where the grammarian Virgilius Maro agitated strangely on the secret tongues of Latin, and told his story of the two scholars who argued for fifteen days and nights without sleeping or eating on the frequentative of the verb to be, till it almost came to knives, rather like the monsters one expects to find stranded in an ebb." --Waddell


The Chinese Enya.


Telephone Sheep. (via Rebecca Blood)

Meredith Brooks- "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)"--live


"The novelist and critic Masamune Hakuchô (1879-1962) said that it was only when he read [The Tale of Genji] in English translation that he realized how truly fascinating it was." --Ikeda, On the Japanese Classics (1974; tr B Watson 1979)


   Yves Bonnefoy: Threats of the Witness (my tr.)

In this garden you've stopped coming,
The trails of aching and loneliness erase,
The weeds stand for your dead face.

You don't care anymore that there may be hidden
In the rock the dark church, in the trees
The blinded face of a reddened sun;

You suffice
To perish lengthily as into sleep,
You love no more even the shades you wed.


" 'Nobody ever really knows what they want,' Charley said. 'Why should that change after you die?' " --Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (2005)


Alliance of Enemies.


"When will the chicks of the same mother hen remove the colors from their faces and recognize each other as brothers and sisters?"

   "The Mystery"

I WAS not; now I am--a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says "no" to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,
Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.
Whene'er, o'ercoming fear, I dare to move,
I grope without direction and by chance.
Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand
That draws them ever upward thro' the gloom.
But I--I hear no voice and touch no hand,
Tho' oft thro' silence infinite I list,

And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;
Tho' oft thro' fateful darkness do I reach,
And stretch my hand to find that other hand.
I question of th' eternal bending skies
That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;
But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes
On me, as I one day shall do on them,
And tell me not the secret that I ask.

--Dunbar


Rough Crossings.


Taser parties. (via Dangerous Meta) So taser is the new tupperware...?

"Time drags like a sluggish wave, it is a sphere of molten glass on whose surface myriad glints catch one's eye and engage one's attention, while inside glows the crimson, disquieting core." --Saramago


    "Infamous Informers"

shatteringly orange plastic turtle
counterintelligence elbow
is decidedly orientalism's unperson

nor coventrize of
a rumor of one's own
Darth Vader M&M statuette


    "Hell is for Hobbits"

1.
sent to Coventry
sageness
drink vandalroot
peckish
lambently eradicate
corf adazzle
pullulating
the Septentrioni

2.
vandalroot
drink coventrize
Durkin

lowering corf

and this sky of angels peckish
your vain arroyos
intussuscept
grimly


The Shame of the Nation.


    "Typhoon Sunrise"

In storms of rage against a newer world
myself knew not the tumult nor the prize,
but found a delight my budding dreams empearled
in storms of rage, against a newer world.

What of this land whose levins are all hurled?
Already i abscond, i coventrize
myself, knew not the tumult nor the prize
in storms of rage against a newer world.


"Cold gliding horrors thrill'd each hero's breast" --Mickle's Lusiad

"What I do not wish to know does not exist, the only real problem is how to play the queen's knight."
--Saramago


    "Longing."

IF you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o'er and o'er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,

I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor fine my hand and heart and all the world so cold.

If you could walk with me upon the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter for the Ocean's moan!

--Paul Laurence Dunbar


When the Velvet Underground went on Lawrence Welk. (You mean they didn't?)


Called "TG's Finest Moment". (I used to have this on VHS, then in a weak moment--sold it.)

    "Behind The Arras"

As in some dim baronial hall restrained,
A prisoner sits, engirt by secret doors
And waving tapestries that argue forth
Strange passages into the outer air;
So in this dimmer room which we call life,
Thus sits the soul and marks with eye intent
That mystic curtain o’er the portal death;
Still deeming that behind the arras lies
The lambent way that leads to lasting light.
Poor fooled and foolish soul! Know now that death
Is but a blind, false door that nowhere leads,
And gives no hope of exit final, free.

--Paul Laurence Dunbar

NOW AVAILABLE. Get yours now--while supplies last!


    "Poem ending with a line by Davidson"

The lowering welkin has to teach
office of sudden shelter found;
a dream of rescue by snowy moonlight,
the meltingness of such.

Nor shall missiles wing us hence:
we plant among those skyey fields
words of despair, whispered long
for still night's starry scroll unfurled.


What Shamu taught me.


The Etched City.


I was doing a counter shift when i recognized one of the albums a kid was buying as The Magician's Birthday. (I used to have this on an 8-track!) Later, searching YouTube, i found out that they're still together. A group that had its moments of semi-sublimity, i would say now, without ceasing to be Bad Prog Rock in all the familiar ways. Still, gotta love that mythology... The emotions of adolescence were never so gaudy, as when hung on objective correlatives of Tolkienesque kinkiness. And some Moog.




"The ruins of the unsustainable are the 21st century's frontier."


A Million Penguins. (I miss out on everything.)

    "A Northern Suburb"

Nature selects the longest way.
And winds about in tortuous grooves;
A thousand years the oaks decay;
The wrinkled glacier hardly moves.

But here the whetted fangs of change
Daily devour the old demesne--
The busy farm, the quiet grange,
The wayside inn, the village green.

In gaudy yellow brick and red,
With rooting pipes, like creepers rank,
The shoddy terraces o'erspread
Meadow, and garth, and daisied bank.

With shelves for rooms the houses crowd,
Like draughty cupboards in a row--
Ice-chests when wintry winds are loud,
Ovens when summer breezes blow.

Roused by the fee'd policemans knock,
And sad that day should come again,
Under the stars the workmen flock
In haste to reach the workmen's train.

For here dwell those who must fulfil
Dull tasks in uncongenial spheres,
Who toil through dread of coming ill,
And not with hope of happier years--

The lowly folk who scarcely dare
Conceive themselves perhaps misplaced,
Whose prize for unremitting care
Is only not to be disgraced.

--John Davidson


They won the propaganda war, but lost the reality war; guess which one is the one that counts.


The Deep State, here & around the world.

The Ephemera.


"...no one can claim to be truly Portuguese unless he speaks another language better than his own."
--Saramago

    "Jewelled Spider in my Zipdrive" (Son of Godzilla)

Body-slam the glow-eyed gimantis
orphan with a cast iron alibi

in our paper houses lovers star-crossed
drink the red water eyes downcast

rare disease TV segment ablative
absolute bollix the lunar castaway

not these instrument readings
not this pet holocaust

godzilla breath pirate broadcast
a dry cough among styrofoam boulders

perish to whimsical music
Grinchus that the stars accost


"When one starts to believe in miracles, there is no longer hope."

--Saramago


Audio Dunbar.


"Liberals love America like grownups."

    "Hotel Penetralia"

the casket, protected
shade
the moving
at an end for now
reflect
khaki forms
busy
with their immutable
business

(thanx Xian!)

1. "Etymon Edamame"

Blog this saracen bowling
in the rancid jungle.
Its contrails, *plagal-boring,
disrupt the raptors' juggle
and our seas boiling.

What fates we *lease of this, charm
like astrolabia parting.
Some will come to harm;
some, content with just hurting
on the bladed barm.

2. "Barsoom Wedding"

A silurian gray dream
softens, realm of breccia,
rain-*obnoxious; failure is
the only option
considered in this wonky biz.

Ice-*fiduciary, creep
you *haggard turncoat.
Chemystery you tried to treat
with icky chromecoat
and now a fyrd's sweep.

3. "The Gun in the First Act"

Weird catenary footstep,
suggilation by furphy.
Flarf burns in my *fee
roll, eke my geason catnip;
it's Barsoom wedding.

One is futilous Ixtab,
the other pancake
with explicating Duck Stab;
futurist tinplate
gruntles the Barsoom wedding.

I do the insects' bidding.


(Note: i have marked "etymonarchical" usage with an asterisk.)


"On his worldwide money-raising tours, he would often thrill young would-be jihadists with miracle tales of angels seen riding into battle on horseback, bombs intercepted by birds that formed canopies to protect Muslim warriors and individual soldiers who with divine assistance defeated entire Soviet battalions." (via ALDaily)


"The poems, which will be sold as one lot and include 15 originals not held by the National Library of Scotland, have been given a guide price of £4,500-£6,500, similar to a collection of Harry Potter first editions signed by J.K. Rowling and considerably more than rare early editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, which are also being auctioned." (via Poetry Hut)


A practical response.

"Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angels hide." --Plath

    "Supermodel Holocaust"

i can't wait
for that peaceful time
for that milder clime
to write

what will chime
on the shiny plate
i can't wait
for that perfect time


SOA Watch.


A crater named Neruda.

    "Canzone: Elegy for Hussain"

Given up under torture
names of friends, the frenzied virtue waltz

a commodity
in the beginning, borne on smoky zephyrs

hidden road
through the lachrymose garden of Pulumchva

fading, no fixture, irrational
mixture of star and angel

the arc from candle
to stilbtrap

Cornish asphodel
panhandler olympics in Xipetotec

remember
the vanquished desires

offers of sciamachy
by in-cahoots officers shadowed

even our dreams might throb with finitude's frost
paean Gjeld

in the fists of each peon hajji
warrior from Tau Ceti

blindfold march, opium worrier aion
rains opinion vap

craft ebbing
in overcast nirvana

sound of walking on wet gravel, against Vlad
this dark albedo

i find, a limber climber, wolfchurch
rat's amber

and following home the oblong ox
tuned to an oolong rainbow

wrecks the lexicon
my soft slag

here, wretched and robed in phosphorescent fire
here, rigid in death

change of tide
depth charge of boiling sibilant art

over the muezzin's taiga
scatter Carcosa filaments scatter gold

the wrathful ouzel
its shadow glides upon the ocean

digs the sand
of a sunk theocracy's

least common fnord and liripoop hobbitfrith
glean transparent deuce

a thousand bright chrome meanings
and mazy folds of nascent Armageddon

perfect myrrh
implicit as citadel in my

aasvogel
crossings tzigane

zigzag bright the tarmac cwm
adamant jade mayfly convex basilisk

Shaggai taikonaut tuatara
dusting now our liaison

hurls pillbug
after pillbug quest

what fulvous cuneiform communion
pontiff to this andiron glow of vermilion

snavvles the quaint manticores
with pillbug limits

if you can't
thristnidinghent profound attains your sand coil

acres of diamonds


"Now do you see how being vertically integrated puts Amazon in a terrific place?"


"...a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and killer drones..."

"The great difference between poets and madmen is the destiny of the madness that possesses them." --Saramago, op cit


    Bonnefoy: Une Pierre

          Porphyry's solar tome
    --see it as a mass of somber stones.
  Long have i perused Porphyry's tome;
now i've arrived where there is no more sun.

(my tr; 1985)


"All spectres now resume their dim domain" --Owen Meredith


Read the words. (via Matt Arnold)


"It is a measure of our own depravity that we do not hoot this man from the stage..."


"There are two kinds of poems."

(via)

    tr: Ghalib 35.

to sink is merely human · there is nothing you can say
depending on the enemy · there is nothing you can say

decease long wooed forbears · maybe on the ricochet
after so much carnage · there is nothing you can say

my case she asks degree of · only in the public way
knowing where this thing goes · there is nothing you can say

regardless of the question · we are lightly brushed away
in any jib of language · there is nothing you can say

Ghalib among the chatterers · his own silence must obey
except you call him crazy · there is nothing you can say


Haiku blog noticed by Silliman.


"...every city needs one young Japanese noise artist playing sheets of sheer distortion, it seems."


"They have also murdered my friends in fields teeming with hawks..."

    "The Reign of Galba"

Downpressed in Epigonia
for all the talk of winning

not a story
when the winners come to write it

dream of Nidhhoggr
and the altar thereto

a vivid understanding
in an old lingo


A nice thread on treasured poems.

   "Bob Phossy Jaw"

Nidhhoggr
in the Library of Babel

dead armadillo as
the route tempestuous

doorways
through my larynx scintillate

simoom wars

wharf plethora
gun-shy

the survivors on the way

* * * *

Rings of refraction
in black and white. The lit
fountain, holding memories.
Flicker among loose things
i'm having this one

panelling
walks
strange encounters
uncued by any music
solemn and binding

frolic
the sideways rain
good lusty yell
silhouettes
pass and repass

trace
the contradictions
shining


   tr. Ghalib 27.

From delectation, all our taste was lost;
The more our thirst took in, the less we had.

We never knew a chance: a snare so close
Awaited us upon the very threshold.

The amputation of our hand did not
Suspend the writing of that tale one bit.

So it was not apostasy to turn
Mendicant, for there too we were kidding.


"...it is always prudent to consult Persian dictionaries when reading Ghalib; he often uses words of Persian origin with their original Persian meaning rather than, or in addition to, the adapted Urdu meanings of the same words." --Aijaz Ahmad, Ghazals of Ghalib (1971)


"One of his [Milton's] strangest devices is to use existing English words, not in their current sense, but in the sense which their Latin root possesses." --Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition (1949). Highet goes on to cite "pontifical" used as 'bridge-building', "astonished" as 'thunder-struck', and "exploded" as 'hissed off'...

Mallarmé probably can be added to this list (& certainly Celan), which i think i will call etymonarchical mode, as well.