in this (my) neighborhood pt. 44

What I’m Reading:

“Remember the rain that makes your corn grow.”

— Popular Haitian proverb

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

muss and fuss

Stellar Jay Croaks A Captain’s Rocking Recrudescence

Dear Debauched Passengers on the High Seas,

Due to the tropical strait foreigner, we will condone high (expletive deleted) window-dressers. And for your pleasure sailors will flog the poppets. All viewing galleries will be closed after aforementioned floggings. Please wear your clogs or a pair will be provided for you. Also, we highly recommend that you bring your ballet muss and fuss inside until we provide the strait passwords.

Now take your battle stations.

Thank you.

What I’m Reading:

“I don’t write so much now, I’m getting on to 33, pot-belly and creeping dementia. Sold my typewriter to go on a drunk 6 or 7 years ago and haven’t gotten enough non-alcoholic $ to buy another. Now print my occasionals out by hand and point them up with drawings (like any other madman). Sometimes I just throw the stories away and hang the drawings up in the bathroom (sometimes on the roller).”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

in this (my) neighborhood pt. 44

What I’m Reading:

“Human activity is turning Earth into a world that may no longer adequately support the societies we’ve built, scientists warn in a new study charting whether and by how much we have surpassed nine ‘planetary boundaries.’”

— Meghan Bartels / Scientific American

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

in this (my) neighborhood pt. 43

What I’m Reading:

You cannot outrun a bear.

Do not run. Stand your ground if charged by a bear.

They have been clocked at speeds up to 35 miles per hour and like dogs they will chase fleeing animals.”

— Lee House / Authentic Hoonah Alaska

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

cupid squeezing lemons

what i saw today

spellbinding fines on fire
avant-garde geophysicists & their lampshades
hallucinatory incantations of prop violins
powerful splints with split eardrums
the boundaries of lampreys
cupid squeezing lemons
kabuki pop hotel upgrades
earmark fortress visions of shame

What I’m Reading:

“In my chalice, now,
on good days: mouthful of fresh
cirrus and sapphire,
sometimes nimbus, with falling
sheets of vitreous heaven.”


—Karthika Naïr / A Different Diatance: A Renga

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

in this (my) neighborhood pt. 42

What I’m Reading:

“One is borne smoothly over calm blue waters, through the midst of countless forest-clad islands”

— John Muir

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

twelve million years

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Unique among technologies so far in human history, AI has the potential to make decisions for itself. Though this may invoke Terminator-style nightmares, autonomy isn’t necessarily bad: autonomous cars are likely to be much safer than ones driven by humans. But what happens when autonomy and hyper-evolution combine? When AI starts to refine itself and head off in new directions on its own? It doesn’t take much imagination to be concerned about that – and yet Suleyman believes the dangers are too often dismissed with the wave of a hand, particularly among the tech elite – a habit he calls pessimism aversion.”

— David Shariatmadari / “‘I hope I’m wrong’: the co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it” / The Guardian


“Those smiling faces one saw at lynchings a hundred years ago are back among us and are still smiling.”

— Charles Simic / The Monster Loves His Labyrinth


“King indeed had a dream. But it was not the American dream. King’s dream was rooted in the American Dream—it was what the quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness looked like for people enslaved and Jim Crowed, terrorized, traumatized, and stigmatized by American laws and American citizens. The litmus test for realizing King’s dream was neither a black face in the White House nor a black presence on Wall Street. Rather, the fulfillment of his dream was for all poor and working people to live lives of decency and dignity.”

— Cornell West / “Introduction,” The Radical King


“Dear Y, thank you for being such a good poetry friend. By finding friends

like you, I had inadvertently located the general coordinates of myself.”

— Victoria Chang / Dear Memory


“Why would I want to stick around for that?

Eventually the human race will reach its terminus. And afterward the scars it left will fade. Biodiversity will rebound. New species will be born, many of them every bit as remarkable as the ones that were lost. And meanwhile, the species of the past, the ones I’ve saved: there may be good opportunities to reintroduce them.

And how long will all this take?

For a complete recovery from ten thousand years of human civilization–about twelve million years.”

— Ned Bauman / Venemous Lumpsucker


“I have not disappeared.
The boulevard is full of my steps.”

— Major Jackson / “On Disappearing”


“He memorably calls this ‘the plummeting cost of power’. If the printing press allowed ordinary people to own books, and the silicon chip put a computer in every home, AI will democratise simply doing things. So, sure, that means getting a virtual assistant to set up a company for you, or using a swarm of builder bots to throw up an extension. Unfortunately, it also means engineering a run on a bank, or creating a deadly virus using a DNA synthesiser.”

— David Shariatmadari / “‘I hope I’m wrong’: the co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it” / The Guardian


What I’m Reading:

“Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crosses”

— Rage Against the Machine / “Killing in the Name”

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

plates grind shift

walls come down

the couple grouses and whines
about being bumped
from their first class seats—

while half a world away thousands die
as tectonic plates grind / shift
and the walls come down…

What I’m Reading:

“But this is not a poem. This is a
billboard for frozen green peas.  Frozen green peas
are good for pain.”

— Anne Carson / “Short Talk on Pain”

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

not a thing

three time zones away

my head is already three time zones away
on the other side of the continent
on the far side of stable

enabled dependent and enfeebled
what is it that turns us against
each other with the facility
of sunrises enshrouded
in cloud cover

a semblance of enervation
not what we really are
this is is how men are
this is not a thing
to worry

now fret your guitar and hit
a discordant chord

What I’m Reading:

“The guillotine is the masterpiece of plastic art
Its click
Creates perpetual motion”

— Blaise Cendrars / “The Head”

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

what you will

Your pareidolia / My pneumonia

•Hey things could be beautiful•If I understood your semiotics for pulmonary distress•What do you mean you see Jesus’s face on this rye crisp?•Hey things could be beautiful•This wounded choking burning micro plastic forever chemical infused is yours•So cough up a bronchial sac on this virus-ridden hyper-capitalist deterministic orb•Make of it what you will•Hey things could be beautiful•Your paredolia is my pneumonia•Hey•

What I’m Reading:

“All of which is to say, I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to grammar, and when I write it is for the love of the word, the color, like tossing paint on a canvas, and using a lot of ear and having read a bit here and there, I generally come out ok, but technically I don’t know what’s happening, nor do I care.”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment