--Richard BrautiganI like to think (andthe sooner the better!)of a cybernetic meadowwhere mammals and computerslive together in mutuallyprogramming harmonylike pure watertouching clear sky.I like to think(right now, please!)of a cybernetic forestfilled with pines and electronicswhere deer stroll peacefullypast computersas if they were flowerswith spinning blossoms.I like to think(it has to be!)of a cybernetic ecologywhere we are free of our laborsand joined back to nature,returned to our mammalbrothers and sisters,and all watched overby machines of loving grace.
Five Branch Tree
2025-07-18
2025-07-16
2025-07-14
2025-07-12
-- JJJJJerome Ellis
The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage. White pines whistle skyward. “With our beings shaped to songs of praise,” writes the fifth-century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius. “What the scripture writers have to say regarding the divine names refers, in revealing praises, to the beneficent processions of God.” What processes from the instant? Find the ceremony in every instant. “Every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, inception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence.” What is the name of this instant? Where is the name of this instant? Swimming in the Rappahannock, clinging to the swollen belly of that ruby-throated hummingbird.
“Bring anonymity,” writes poet Tim Lilburn.
This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed.
2025-07-10
--Conrad AikenAbsolute zero: the locust sings:summer’s caught in eternity’s rings:the rock explodes, the planet dies,we shovel up our verities.The razor rasps across the faceand in the glass our fleeting racelit by infinity’s lightning winkunder the thunder tries to think.In this frail gourd the granite poursthe timeless howls like all outdoorsthe sensuous moment builds a wallopen as wind, no wall at all:while still obedient to valves and knobsthe vascular jukebox throbs and sobsexpounding hope propounding yearningproposing love, but never learningor only learning at zero’s gatelike summer’s locust the final hateformless ice on a formless plainthat was and is and comes again.
2025-07-08
If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby.
The pines support heaven upon their needles.
An aquamarine July strolls along the seashore,
Its ever-returning feet massaged by pebbles.
You dilute the climate with tears. Carving melons
Smells of vacation ... just as the inevitable captain.
Hello! I know this well: summer has come. Henceforth,
It will knock at my threshold. I will prepare. I change
Unnecessarily so many times each day. The soul
Immaculate gasps when you bring her to the glassy sea.
When summer ends, I will spill iodine. Let it smell,
To make the captain believe his sea is my flat.
--Lyudmyla Diadchenko (trans. Padma Thornlyre)
2025-07-06
2025-07-05
--Pam RehmIt happens like this:Majestically,the pigeons spill downa few steps awayon a hot summer’s dayon Broadwayjostling one anotherAll the dust and the messI’ve becomeovertakenby unevennessWithin the daysBetween the hoursI’m bewildered byall the dollars I’ve spenton a life out of balancewhen there’s all thiscosmic consciousnesswithin a kissand the 1 AMthat haunts the handin my pocketsearching for the keyholeAll those mistakes agoLike everyone else,I feed themA few cents of breadBut it’s the thirstno one thinks aboutWhen I look outYOU arealwaysThe landscape within
2025-07-03
2025-07-01
--Pam RehmThe only thing under the sunI can run tois Ecclesiastesfor there is nothing gathered into one selfthat can be keptWant is humbled by deathas every purpose manifests itFeeling this all my lifea piercing frightgathers in the stomach's pitThis is it and this is not the endof the roadfor even despair is a kind of goadto wisdomThe beauty of the worldover one's own anguishThe day that I lost all feelingI was both a Fool and a Goddess
2025-06-29
2025-06-27
--Nathan Spoon
I shouldn’t be doing this the room said. I didn’t
know rooms could do anything much less
talk about it I said. Well that’s on you the room
said but at least you know better now. A person
wearing a pink shirt gray jacket and beige pants
was stroking their chin. Another one was wearing
a mask. A big part of living is matching what
you do or say to what else is being done or said
by others. The difficulty is in knowing where to
draw the line. For example the philosophical and
conceptual mind desires to be included with its
casual counterparts such as the need for rest and
idleness. We are living through imperfect times
and clearly deserve all the shit we’ll give ourselves.
2025-06-25
--Nathan Spoon
Stemming brightly from a small jar : four flowers. It is like
the ontology of being unaware of how many selves
can be contained within a single individual. Be brief
and then forget what happens next given the theory of
the lyric driving sheep along in their natural orders.
That character Parmenides started it sliding to plain
after plain of natural versus dominator hierarchies like
these. Next came all the rest. Some days it is difficult
to remember how much a stranger might remember.
Now the hero is gone. They were so great all four flowering
selves are still learning from them. Water is a yarn so hard
that magic infuses even the corners and crevices of
every sticky law. People are always conflating love
with new skies and new skies with cunning harmonies.
2025-06-24
--Nathan Spoon
Here comes rain on our roof!It stays just long enoughto tickle me into writing this.It stays just long enoughfor everybody to get intoa pair of PJs (silk-cotton blend)and then goes poof! At our bestwe exude awesomeness. At our bestwe are destined to turn palewith the rest of humanity.We are awesome and quick asdecomposing sticks at a trail’send. We bend dreams into circlesof green zone satire. We havemahogany stuffed in our mahoganyears. To all who are not uswe are sorry to say You’re welcome!Nature thankfully adores a rumor!A sunset! A glacier! Cloudsglimmer and cast inevitableshadows off the groundswellfootrest. I remember you fromthat time before we first metwhen our eyes were wetlike summertime coastersas we Ubered noiselesslybetween pews. The aristocratsare failing to panhandle via email.One aristocrat is sleepily windingthrough the face of another.
2025-06-22
2025-06-20
--Shuntaro Tanikawa“I gave birth to a fish”says the woman“I freed it in the sea right away”Giggling under the breathI am downtownpeople are sick of other peopleWhat shall we do now?Shall we go seeour dead friends?Here I am, not understanding anythingnot knowing anythingI open a pocket paperback for now, butAll that comes tomy mind is:It’s a fine day
2025-06-18
--Shuntaro Tanikawa
Earth-colored water hesitates, flows
I realize it is a river
The descendant of formless underground dwellers,
the water is heading toward the sea, that much I know
but I don’t know when and how it welled up
As the train crosses the river a young woman next to me yawns
There is something welling up, too, from the shadowy depth of her mouth
Suddenly I realize my brain is more dull-witted than my flesh
Feeling uneasy that I, the flesh, riding a train,
am made mostly of water
I, the brain, prop myself up with words
Sometime in a distant past, somewhere in a distant place
words were much less voluminous, but
their ties to the nether world were perhaps much stronger
Water remains on this planet
morphing into seas, clouds, rains and ice
Words, too, cling to this planet
morphing into speeches, poems, contracts and treaties
I, too, cling to this planet
2025-06-16
--Shuntaro Tanikawa (t. by Martin Rock)
1 Shade Tree
In any case, joy lives inside this day
as in the heart of the new sun—
and in dining tables, and in guns,
and even in gods, though they remain oblivious.
In the tree’s shade, human hearts return
to embrace the day’s humility.
Freely, in this place,
one stands for a moment
to read the sky,
to sing the clouds’ song,
to pray, simply because it is time to summon pleasure.
I must forget
that which is beyond forgetting.
The sun glares. The trees glare back.
2 Yearning
In the shadow of the June sun, I accept my fate.
I’ve become alienated even from my own desires.
My yearning dashes about
vainly, with no time to look back.
I’ve made the mistake of loving without conviction.
All the while, just this charming exterior—
flattery without the knowledge of who flatters.
Fields and clouds are such simple things.
Soon, around my small grave,
only people, rocks, and sky will remain. And yet—
what immortal soul remembers tomorrow?
I’ve made the mistake of forgetting the gods.
Without life, how on earth can anything happen?
In the obscure early summer sun, my fate casts a shadow.
3 Homecoming
This was an alien land.
Through the side entrance of this miserable planet,
I was drawn to the darkness of its innermost part
by the profound, mysterious shapes of its rooms.
Who am I?
I have no means to return,
and will continue writing these dispatches
as long as I am here.
I have ceased yearning for other planets.
There is more amusement here than in eternity,
and yet someday, as a postscript, I’ll return.
Most likely, I’ll be called back unexpectedly
from this intimate, foreign land —
My own homecoming, and yet I will not be there.
10 Unknown Person
The car spoke.
The pencil spoke.
Chemistry, itself, spoke.
“You have made us,” they said. “You human.”
I wonder, what would Tanuki think of this?
What would the stars think?
What might the gods think
of this overflowing of passion, this foolish arrogance?
We move toward death, all in a line,
beginning with he who has forgotten how to be alone,
until the unknown person, here, is erased.
The wind blows over the earth at dusk and again over an unknown star.
The gods walk the earth at dusk, the earth which belongs to dusk.
Even over the unknown stars, they walk.
2025-06-13
2025-06-11
--Derek Mong
begin from above. The first line wrote itself
in eraser. Your entrance refills with its cloud.
Can you feel now a dull tug on your pant leg?
You have shadows within shadows.
The poem strips them off like spare parachutes.
Watch their dark mouths briefly glisten
like guardrail reflectors. Leave silence
between them like warm loaves of bread.
Whatever small truth the poem hurtles toward
is already in your pockets. Release it here
and stop breathing. Watch it rain down
like disco ball light. If a story comes in, cold
from the margins, you alone can warm
its feet. To do so you must hold it
beneath the voice that trails you.
You offer the one it becomes on the ground.
The seamless transfer of two people
humming is one scenario in which the poem
successfully ends. In another these couplets empty
and you are a diver climbing their cool tubes
back up to the start. From there you see its finale
clearly, but do nothing to alter its course.
You'll soon crash through a tenth story window.
Do not worry. The poem's safe.
See its thousand shards glint at your feet.
2025-06-09
--John SurowieckiAs the light goes, go.Be the rustling in the grass, the fall fromconvention's good graces: learn, or someonewill have you filing files or writing writs,demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledgedoor to door; someone might even dropyour lovely life into a factory and have youderusting rings on the coolant-spoutingturntable of a vertical lathe.It's best for everyone that what you knowis generally thought of as general knowledge.You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars,in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedroomswhere it whispers like a ribbon untying;you can even find it in schools. But be careful:it's dangerous, inescapable and exactdown to every atom of everything there is,to every name each thing goes by and everylaw each thing obeys. And the best part is,you always know more than you know.
2025-06-07
I want to talk about happiness and well-being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent and you feel at one with the world.I want to talk about the early June weather, about harmony and blissful repose, about robins and yellow finches and bluebirds darting past the green leaves of trees.I want to talk about the benefits of sleep, about the pleasures of food and alcohol, about what happens to your mind when you step into the light of the two o'clock sun and feel the warm embrace of air around your body.--from 'The Brooklyn Follies'; Paul Auster
2025-06-05
2025-05-31
2025-05-29
At Fulton CemeteryMoss filled inscriptions, spring time,the bareness broken by a fertileground, common grackles foragingtheir worms, The Conqueror Worm...,as was said before so I can say againthrough meanderings of my ownwithin this middle age of life, mildmundanity with a hint of obliviousness,that dull momentum of city traffic,while somehow, swift brevity praisedwith hands I build for an assuredsanctity of transience, extendingsome hours where they'll provideaccess for a few new memories,to create off what has been madebefore its all spent back down intothe freedom of specious eternity,which won't be known but digestedby what's been polished, fragrant,born in thousandths with a ripe sun.
2025-05-27
2025-05-25
--William MatthewsHow easily happiness begins bydicing onions. A lump of sweet butterslithers and swirls across the floorof the sauté pan, especially if itserrant path crosses a tiny slickof olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.This could mean soup or risottoor chutney (from the Sanskritchatni, to lick). Slowly the onionsgo limp and then nacreousand then what cookbooks call clear,though if they were eyes you could seeclearly the cataracts in them.It’s true it can make you weepto peel them, to unfurl and to teasefrom the taut ball first the brittle,caramel-colored and decrepitpapery outside layer, the leastrecent the reticent onionwrapped around its growing body,for there’s nothing to an onionbut skin, and it’s true you can go onweeping as you go on in, throughthe moist middle skins, the sweetestand thickest, and you can go onin to the core, to the bud-like,acrid, fibrous skins denselyclustered there, stalky and in-complete, and these are the mostpungent, like the nuggets of nightmareand rage and murmury animalcomfort that infant humans secrete.This is the best domestic perfume.You sit down to eat with a rumorof onions still on your twice-washedhands and lift to your mouth a hintof a story about loam and usualendurance. It’s there when you clean upand rinse the wine glasses and makea joke, and you leave the minutestwhiff of it on the light switch,later, when you climb the stairs.
2025-05-23
I have been willing to consider the possibility that pleasure in itself, with regard for it as something that lessens our suffering, offers a consolation, a relief—I wanted to be able to avoid a vocabulary that insists on the secondariness or the tertiariness of pleasure. I would like to say that one of the primary reasons for being alive is to experience the pleasure of being alive. I would like to write as if it were a given to rise and look out the window on a particularly beautiful light on a summer morning, or on one of those winter mornings when snow has fallen and made the whole of New York City quiet, or you name your favorite such sight. To write of the experience of these things without any instinct to translate them into a relationship to humanism or God or philosophy or any idea, but simply because these impressions or perceptions were part of what it means to be human, and maybe because they are as close as we come to understanding the relationship of the human to the divine. That would be fine. I would love to be able to do that. Pleasure is in itself and by itself valuable and important.--William Matthews (shortly before his death in 1997)
2025-05-21
--William Matthews
There’s a crack in this glass so fine we can’t see it,
and in the blue eye of the candleflame’s needle
there’s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection
that could contain, like a microchip, an epic
treatise on beauty, except it’s in the eye of the beheld.
And at the base of our glass there’s nothing
so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous
patina like liquefied tarnish. It’s like a text
so short it consists only of the author’s signature,
which has to stand, like the future, for what might
have been: a novel, let’s say, thick with ambiguous life.
Its hero forgets his goal as he nears it, so that it’s
like rain evaporating in the very sight of parched
Saharans on the desert floor. There, by chance, he meets
a thirsty and beautiful woman. What a small world!
2025-05-20
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