osculum infame

Northern Lights over Goonhilly HQ.

After googling "especially ugly confederate statue”.

"To the unchanging gods, everything impermanent is soft. The whole material world is like a blanket fort: and they nestle in the great stone caverns, inside engine cylinders, and in the spaces between eyes and brains" —@ctrlcreep.bsky.social

Aphorismata.

"Ozymandias Replies

So, friend, you think my face and legs in stone
Are signs that I have failed? Friend, think again.
When I ascended to my marble throne
The land was forest, meadow, lakeside glen.
I took it and I wasted it. This desert tract
Stands as my most expansive monument:
Dead-life, as blank as hope, as bald as fact.
I made a world of sand. And it's this spent
Stage-set, bleached clean, that I am proudest of—
More than my palaces and bling and war—
Because it's the perfection of my love
When my rule's push came to my people's shove.
We tyrants know what power's really for.
I made my desolation to endure."

—Adam Roberts on substack

A busy, busy immigration enforcement operation.

" 'Normal' is the secret weapon of empire."

"my phone only works
on the back porch where I smoke
watching moths visit"

—@robinjp.bsky.social

Artwork that is made of a single line only.

We're going to need a bigger bingo card.

The Street Enters the House.

Phillis Wheatley [not] only wrote an ode to George Washington while still an enslaved teenager, but sent it to the general himself along with a note of introduction.

"The tragedy, Ostrom showed, is not the commons. The tragedy is enclosure without consent."
—Gayatri Roshan via

Haiku Against the Police.

"ON THE DEATH OF A METAPHYSICIAN

Unhappy dreamer, who outwinged in flight
The pleasant region of the things I love,
And soared beyond the sunshine, and above
The golden cornfields and the dear and bright
Warmth of the hearth,—blasphemer of delight,
Was your proud bosom not at peace with Jove,
That you sought, thankless for his guarded grove,
The empty horror of abysmal night?
Ah, the thin air is cold above the moon!
I stood and saw you fall, befooled in death,
As, in your numbed spirit's fatal swoon,
You cried you were a god, or were to be;
I heard with feeble moan your boastful breath
Bubble from depths of the Icarian sea."

—George Santayana

I wonder how long it will take the media to catch on to the fact that ICE’s recruiting spree has effectively deputized every white supremacist hate group out there.

Sonnet.

"There may be Chaos still around the World

There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw."

—George Santayana

How to Help.

"...nobody sane now thinks the answer to abuses at Dachau was to give the guards more training." —Andrea Pitzer via

"In that collapse called calm."

One of the earliest surviving self-portraits of a woman in European imagery.

"By 1914, when the whites started killing each other, they controlled eighty five percent of the earth's surface." --Richard Miller, Bohemia (1977)

Wild Peaches.

"Cold Blooded Creatures

Man, the egregious egoist,
(In mystery the twig is bent,)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient

Of the intolerable load
Which on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of its eyes.

He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a night-mare doom."

—Elinor Wylie

"The overthrow of the old intellectual elite and its replacement by the new technological elite, we can now see, opened a cultural hole that has been filled by ideological fervour, financial speculation, and prideful ignorance.." (via Mefi)

From "I Have a Dream" to "We Have a Nightmare".

in the dim cold carnal
bewilder-calm, building
a road riddled darksome
what we rued in woodness
can't prepare the portion
that finds patient seiching
radio blurts blitzkrieg
falls on the blunt suntan

Stripsody.

Cowardice has its own gravity.

Mercedes Benz.

Lacqueristas & knitters too.

"Reading another psychology/human behavior book talking about the Milgram experiment and thought about what might happen now if universities were still allowed to conduct those studies and then realized that is effectively exactly what social media does. It's one big Milgram experiment." —@kameronhurley.bsky.social

Parameters.

"this counts t'ward my quota"

1.
across snowy crispness
duck fit of decryption
rose garden degraded
hurdy gurdy Gordian

hurdy gurdy Gordian
hurdy gurdy Gordian

the hour glows gleet-sheen
& glue hammer cam'ras
across snowy crispness
called by wrath to gather

the outcome lost in conjecture

2.
dread enough for the kibitzers
caboose runaway train
dread & no redemption

arc t'ward Ozymandias
hardly counts as justice

Anyone surprised? (Snopes responds.)

"They don’t want to get blamed again."

bootleg kiosk cairnview:
kaiju rampage hijinks

Artist's heraldic animal stamps.

"...malrecapturable days..."

—Finnegans Wake

What the dude couldn't hear. (via @joriegraham.bsky.social)

The last Nobel laureate to gift their medal.

"and my heart is stricken
to think how everything in this world passes
and barely leaves a trace."

—Galassi's Leopardi

Earth-directed X1.95.

"box of something"

seedplant bitter side-eye
summon in allshade landle
complex habits hurtle
through halftime & game scrimmage
but out there is antlers
splintered doors ajar wintry
& dissolute lackwit
allures us gazewise fury

In Norwich first.

"Our revels now are ended..."

Kawaii flinders · Your world fave
Ends in waxworks · Each furled wave
Your stark dash · The runner stumbles
That wide war · A stunner rumbles
A turquoise pool · With parch write the songs
Kuiper spheres · Go cite the wrongs
Enormous noise · And necessary till
A climb back · Kink tarry sill
Weave yarns in · Yegg's rooky wood
Award Ewoks · A wookie rood
Yeckate cartwheels · Kawaii flinders

100% of the world’s Ozempic supply.

"and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him" —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social

The Zine Revival again. (thread)

Walk Away.

It's always bothered me that a singer who wrote songs didn't write "I Write The Songs".

Beds are Burning.

Michelin Man staggers
amidst snow & gray mistbanks
fearful, angry, fumbling
to fill quotas blur-bloated

thought this would win thalers
therapy play ape-alpha
empire's oldest raincheck
& ill guerdon law's pause-lapse

Lozenge world is ours.

The Answer to Lord Chandos.

carrying words · in the wopwop dark
   not to be chosen, but fall
flobolubbu scop · shipping container
   on a tossed pirate sea
   puffs in a blue sky
were there some simple story · to stay chaos
   trembling on the brink
like our coming here · through liquid will
   on a tossed pirate sea
   puffs in a blue sky
say they grew tired of grasping · the gold ring
   click of the punchclock
wanted what was owed · all of it now
   on a tossed pirate sea
   puffs in a blue sky
wanted to be part of something · even if it was evil
   the loud voice pummels
the mass of shoulders still · shadowless pain
   on a tossed pirate sea
   puffs in a blue sky
& to turn into learning · this last shudder
   at the end of ev'ry fork
with red eyes of wonder · hands to wring a neck
   on a tossed pirate sea
   puffs in a blue sky

The way that many of the survivors of the Asharshylyk have been showing up for the survivors of the Holodomor(s) has been very powerful and truly inspiring.

"...Il Tartaro m'avanza; e il prode ingegno
Han le tenaria Diva,
E l'atra notte, e la silente riva."

—Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

('only Tartarus remains,/ and the Tenarian goddess and black night/ and the still shore own the valiant mind.' trJ Galassi, 2010)

"What we want is literature that moves, seized at the very moment it still seems to be moving, just as we prefer a sketch by Corot or Delacroix to their finished paintings."

We are Klingon.

"He [Stephen Miller] needs to go, and frankly at this point, I don't care how. He is the dark, potent poison that is whispering in the ear of an old, angry, vindictive man with great success. Think Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings." —@rowanresists.bskysocial

10 great Lynchian films. (via feuilleton)

"Self-portrait

A lens of crystal whose transparence calms
Queer stars to clarity, and disentangles
Fox-fires to form austere refracted angles;
A texture polished on the horny palms
Of vast equivocal creatures, beast or human:
A flint, a substance finer-grained than snow,
Graved with the Graces in intaglio
To set sarcastic sigil on the woman.

This for the mind, and for the little rest
A hollow scooped to blackness in the breast,
The simulacrum of a cloud, a feather:
Instead of stone, instead of sculptured strength,
This soul, this vanity, blown hither and thither
By trivial breath, over the whole world's length."

—Elinor Wylie

Female Opossum with Baby.

Believing she had no imagination or aptitude for art, she was initially reluctant to attend the art therapy studio.

1.
faraway newfangled
savage overseers
we fare still
in our grooves of agreement

disparage the spectacle

2.
heart's-labyrinth, hiking
linear harg bargains
the thick witted wombat
skirling war from boredom
sees shadwless shrapnel
bulwark shrieks at poolside

3.
ev'ry bully is a coward
ev'ry bully is a coward
ev'ry bully is a coward
with a weapon in his hand
ev'ry bully is a coward
ev'ry bully is a coward
ev'ry bully is a coward
with a weapon in his hand

4.
   faucets drip tonight—
& i think about the cars
   of the disappeared
pulled over, doors wide, left strewn
across Minneapolis

5.
   Wormtongue says, "Now we're
finally getting somewhere"
   & the black glass planes
lift off with shackled cargo—
he croons the gleeful numbers

Stereoscope thread.

"On the bus ride from Bologna to Florence, several women blocked the road forcing our bus to a halt, crying out my name. Gregory [Corso] and I disembarked. Some of the women kissed the hem of my black dress. I was horrified as they wrung their hands and cried out to me in Italian. What do they want? I called out in desperation. Gregory spoke fluent Italian and translated for me. They want you to free their husbands, all political prisoners, he said. They believe you have the power to do that." —Bread of Angels

Wallpaper group.

The Power of Bearing Witness.

"I don’t think people quite understand that the occupation by ICE in the Twin Cities has more or less erased non-white people from public life. They cannot safely exist in any space accessible to the public and moving between private places leaves folks vulnerable to kidnapping by armed masked goons." —@normcharlatan.bsky.social

"I’m an antifascist because fascism stands in direct opposition to that project and vision—and by extension I’m an anti-capitalist, because the structural and necessary shortcomings of capitalism are the fertile grounds of white grievance and resentment, the poisoned soil from which fascist movements, such as today’s MAGA, cyclically re-emerge."

bilk arrack-d'bibu
with a bold thwart grown portal
flapdragon unfailing

there are men remembered
for a single chessmove

"To put it another way, the vast majority of men are only willing to engage in public violence if they feel like the people around them will approve of — and reward them for — that violence."

Wheel meditation.

   the glow builds
it's a long glide
   switch stations
stare at taillights
   gold atop
the same towers
   calling forth
the careful choice
   density
of derne nestings

Sea Fever.

"This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.

He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden.

(After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)" via

State of the World.

Between Philology and Desire.

"This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

Gwendolyn MacEwan/The Dark Pines via

Obsession.

Gameshow doors shelterless
The village scaffold vehement
Shark voucher
I emerge minding less

Red blue shimmer blurb
Marl blisters
Driverless cars carry
Into smoke veils & smash

Cairn smiling

Triolet.

Some notes on Finnegans Wake.

   Lyonesse in mist
appears as place i could go
   but never for long

never for the day to day
of the one who must write it

Detective Agency book nook.

"In one of my unpublished pieces of fiction, I coined the portmanteau 'apologloat.'

It's when someone wants to apologize for screwing you over, but also gloat about it.

I gotta find a way to work this into one of my actually published stories." &mdash:@charliejane.bsky.social

1999 Godspeed.

Troy.

"More and more of the ice cream was melting. It dripped down on Toad’s jacket. It splattered on his pants and on his feet.

'Where is the path?' cried Toad. 'I cannot see!' " —@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social

Plasma from the back of the sun.

   sudden boiling up
of spilled trash on commute trail
   just as sudden gone

in this grim winter sunshine:
not to be told what it means

The Hiding Place.

Swans 🦢 in the Mist.

"barbwirechurchical"

void where truth · telling goes
   yawning eclipse
flickering droplets · flail at the speed
   of a glassfront projectile
plowed-up boulevards · banked fires
   anecdotes at lunch break
these, too, will wink out · wearying comet

have heaped up · a horrible thing
   of scribbled-on pages
thought my work done · threnody shortly
   walked into the blades
of a bitter wind · of noontide
   never to be sheered
& it begins anew · the good speaking

A triumvirate eight days from alaylesse flint matches, Dallas scorned.

"A room full of storytellers, and so many of them suddenly finding common cause in silence." —One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Why Minnesotans Fear ICE.

Retirement.

"No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice." —One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

ICE is not the Gestapo, but slave patrols.

avow viral heirloom
ver'similitude strudel
blinding golden gewgaw
guanoislandblues loser

full of doors & far wheels
fenestrationist isthmus
avow what the whirl tells
whitesepulchralpreen venal

The Hospital Hour.

6 Small Press Editors Explain Why the Hottest New Thing in Lit Is Out-of-Print Books.

"Mar-a-Lago Face"

outside the pale, horsemen
haggardly slouch t'ward tide's-reach
d'bibu noir, ball gown:
beautiful rags, looted

outside only turmoil
failure to tell stories
the gun, ever eager
inside voice & cloy-song

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
d'bibu: (D'ksuban) 'to look away, avert one's eyes'

Godzilla vs ICE.

"...the privilege of describing a thing vaguely, incompletely, dishonestly, is inseparable from the privilege of looking away." —One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Secret ICE programs revealed.

Everything fits perfectly.

"Some are afforded the privilege of an arrival story, a homecoming. Others, only departure after departure." —One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

During the northern lights, a large meteor burns up.

too much lack of lapses
lasts burrowing hoedown
a spiel turned to tingle
tale targeted pitbull
& we who are hard up
hold infinite syntax

the sky tells me scant clues
scoured passagewise bridgework
the war ev'rywhere wangled
wends delicate stick-shift
mutiny's wage moffled
'midst century purblind

it goes gilver smoke-screen
goes limberest purloin
goes with monsters mostly
munch urbanist infall
soon someone will wander
sink blasphemous numbskull

"They realize, and it's hard to believe this, but please listen: they are in a position of weakness, they are performing brutality, they are performing strength, they are performing dominance, because they don't have it."

Whiter Shade of Pale.

   where turn in
across train tracks
   lends parking

it's paved sizzle
   it's grid left
for a campground

   the sharks pass
guess i shook them
   with circling

& the break sound
   now recedes
from hearer realm

A Maiden.

"Iran is an Islamic theocracy because of the US. Iran had a democratic government which the US and UK overthrew to install a brutal pro western dictatorship for oil. The 79 revolution was a direct consequence of this. People pretend the government is anti-US for no reason"
—@marcushjohnson.bsky.social

Hungarian Rhapsody No 2.