damoclean
the tree hanging above you
hemlock mold contours
eyes reclaiming familiar form
skewed perspective you are
you anew
What I’m Reading:
“He spoke aloud, a priest officiating at the eucharist of his own body.
‘I am the island.’
The air shed its light.”
— J.G. Ballard / Concrete Island
“Information is interpreted through the prejudice of those who read it or hear it. So there are no definitive, finite versions of information.”
— Genesis P-Orridge / Binary: A Memoir
“Humanity has ‘opened the gates to hell’ by allowing the climate crisis to worsen, the secretary general of the United Nations has warned at a climate summit of leaders that saw angry denunciations of the fossil fuel industry but was undercut by the absence of many of the biggest carbon-emitting countries.”
— Oliver Milman / “Humanity has ‘opened gates to hell’ by letting climate crisis worsen, UN secretary warns” / The Guardian
“We could afford new t-shirts,
daring ones, with rude slogans,
but it seems a waste:
we’ve got too many already.
Also they’d gang up on us,
they’d creep around on the floor,
they’d tangle our ankles,
then we’d fall down the stairs.”
— Margaret Atwood / “Winter Vacations”
“Employees in the US who worked from home all the time were predicted to reduce their emissions by 54%, compared with workers in an office”
— Patrick Barkham / “People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%’ against those in office” / The Guardian
“All my life I have been trying to improve my German.
At last my German is better
—but now I am old and ill and don’t have long to live.
Soon I will be dead, with better German.”
— Lydia Davis / “Improving My German”
“Early analyses show global warmth surged far above previous records in September — even further than what scientists said seemed like astonishing increases in July and August … The planet’s average temperature shattered the previous September record by more than half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), which is the largest monthly margin ever observed.”
— Scott Dance / “September shattered global heat record—and by a record margin” / The Washington Post
“Up against my own lifetime
I wish for fog, early morning. Instead,
unpredictable years keep emptying.”
— Khadijah Queen / “Season of Grief”
What I’m Listening To:
“Lying on the floor
I don’t want to carry on
Except I can’t even cease to exist
And that’s the worst”
— Throbbing Gristle / “Weeping”
ive seen everything now
footprint lattice fading fast
shrapnel scraping clouds of gas and dust
moving luminous and warm
gird yourself for ultimatums
apostles of the railroad flats
never seen anything like it
close yer eyes
sleep
go to sleep
What I’m Reading:
“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.”
— George Orwell / Homage to Catalonia
Then there was my uncle Mao. His own generational AI—his Little Red Bookworm in the rainstorm and no one left wanting his worn pouffy sieges. But that’s exactly what my underage blackguard aunt wore on her spectacles so it seemed as if half the day was a courtroom of wisecracks—retainers jutting out of her headgear. Not a good look in anyone’s book or on anyone’s Delphic oracle aunty.
My, my…how sense is relative.
What I’m Reading:
“i have diver’s lungs from holding my
breath for so long. i promise you
i am not trying to break a record
sometimes i just forget to
exhale.”
— Yesenia Montilla / “a brief meditation on breath”
we descend
delighted
anthropogenic wodge
and splashdown
toxins plagues and extinctions
exterminations
our father
render us rudderless
we are late for our lesson
What I’m Reading:
“We didn’t want to be comfortable. We didn’t feel comfortable. We felt uneasy with the society that we were part of, and we didn’t get any pleasure from the sonic information we were receiving from other people, so we decided to look at that particular issue and change it.”
— Genesis P-Orridge / Binary: A Memoir
She made an unusual, exciting discovery—rosary narrations with warbling wooers at the center of earplug spaces—messages in the marmalades, esoteric concatenations, erotic liberations, scratched phonographs.
Her observational arched eyebrow and nuanced approach to clam ranching led to further explorations with molting morphs, sunken oars, and sedative promiscuities.
Her life was now plunger ready. She continued drafting, something was bound to make sense to her piquant sensibility someday.
And that day was October 4th, 2023—the day of the coded codex.
What I’m Reading:
“Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality.”
— Rebecca Solnit / Call Them by Their True Names
crag hag crabber
naked monarchist rattlesnake
sometimes known as “the sapling purr”
thermoregulator with bollard tendrils
non-mammalian medallist
in a certain bowler hat
purveyor of ladyship pale sequence
skittle and skiffle raver
impressive cannibal
slag
What I’m Reading:
“How do you know you’re alive? What evidence will you leave? So many myths
are unraveling”
— Ada Limón / “The Origin Revisited”
Riot now! Feel reassured. Yes, you’re an aspirant, but you’re probably avoiding the difficult threats you don’t want to think about.
We are constantly checking metiers, nickel mines, transient feeds, and truncheon nuggets … to avoid doing something we don’t want to get busy with.
When we’re amidst fairground dins and lightning, we try to tell ourselves that’s it’s OK (because fill in the blessing), or we get busy with some adhesive to numb the pain (think pointless allegories) so we don’t have to wash out our ears often (and consider cisgendering).
When a prodigy comes up on our rear flank, our tendency is to want to go do something else, and we put aesthetic concerns off. Then we put off paying debts, doing taxes, composing long emails, or festooning our walls with polymer coatings—just because we don’t want to relive our childhood humiliations.
We put off expectations because it’s uncomfortable.
In all fairness, there are thousands more excuses for every deadbeat thought that occurs to you—and we don’t consider it novel because our miniature ponies are beholden to someone new.
Try this: riot now!
A pea for your misdeeds—and think about the fun you’re avoiding.
What I’m Reading:
“What would happen next was far away,
But even as we rested, something in us knew
We would catch the future no matter how fast it ran.”
— Alberto Rios / “To Mars from Arizona”
“I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.”
— George Orwell / Homage to Catalonia
“Apathy and delirium sun themselves on the porch.
All the old dragons loll along the beach.”
— James Broughtin / “Tristan at the Seashore”
“Groups of animal species are vanishing at a rate 35 times higher than average due to human activity, according to researchers, who say it is further evidence that a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way and accelerating.”
— Patrick Greenfield / “Mutilating the tree of life: Wildlife loss accelerating, scientists warn” / The Guardian
“we’re
going to need
new tactics strategies for endurance don’t ruminate
on sinkholes water
supplies toxins massive unknowable truly undivinable fractures
in the brittle
tectonic masses”
— Caryl Pagel / “Saturday”
“Across the whole of the Americas, the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90 percent fall in the population, from about 60.5 million in 1500 to 6 million a century later.”
— Jonathan Kennedy / Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues
“we cannot explain the world, named the same as marrow beaten to glue
bones circling the belly of the Earth
our voices shattering the glass windows
of unrelenting, heated houses: mother describes the world: a tumour. yes.”
— Canisia Lubrin / “The World After Rain”
“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting”
— George Orwell / Homage to Catalonia
What I’m Listening To:
“Most of me is out of sight
Hollow honeycomb
I’m tired when the day breaks
I’m tired when the day ends”
— Wilco / “Ten Dead”
a hapless haptic shadow
infinite dashed lines
funk seeps in through puncture holes
What I’m Reading:
“Filling with rain in the streets,
this September night’s lifting me up
in an old-time elevator.
Night’s ending, time’s tearing.
And the cross streets fuse together in twisted images.”
— Judita Vaičiūnaitė / “September Night”
thee istsfor manity reader 