. . . he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly...

Fyodor Dostoevsky, manuscript of The Brothers Karamazov (1880) "Bad day. Rainy day. Permeated by the suspicion that I am worn out and...

Chaïm Soutine, The Table (ca. 1923), oil on canvas. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris Every angel is terrible. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino...

If all the good people were clever,     And all clever people were good, The world would be nicer than ever    We thought that it...

The glacier knocks in the cupboard, / The desert sighs in the bed, / And the crack in the tea-cup opens / A lane to the land of the...

Wide to destruction the freeway flows

Forgotten words hide but for a moment

Lines riffing on "Denk nicht zuviel von dem was keiner weiss!" by Stefan George, in Der Stern des Bundes ("The Star of the Covenant")...

“It’s certainty that makes one mad, not doubt.”―Nietzsche, Ecce Homo A hae ma doots! * And well I might —necessity has doubt in sight;...

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia , engraving, 1514 Disoriented, brain-fogged, down at the mouth, I consulted Dr. Despair, my longtime quack,...

They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom’s cause. It...

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn....

Zeal, Spirit, Hope, and Confidence Are said to constitute “morale,” But I, though pleading self-defense, Find hard to see how, if so,...

"Fate thrives on figures and intricate designs. Its difficulty lies in its complexity. But life is difficult by reason of its...

Quitting school at fifteen, I side-stepped the self-promoting pains of so-called puberty, signing on with the GPO/HPK.* Taught Morse...

slowly even in the vase and long separated from its tree a bud opens in spring Monday, March 24th, 2025

If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either.— Thomas Nagel,  The...

Genghis Khan died on August 25, 1227, mourned (?) by some 600 wives, and at his grave the Mongols immolated thirty maidens. Eight hundred...

“ Pure intelligence is . . . a product of dying . . ..and is therefore in principle madness. ”—Ferenczi Confined to the prison house...

Pandora’s jar is only there to be rejected—

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; —Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene vii   Yeats...

Claude Rowberry, London Blitz—Interior of a Ruined House. Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, UK “Be not deceived: evil communications...

Christ in Limbo by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516), Philadelphia Museum of Art Sir, Colonus is an...

For Joel Cutrara The Truth was there already to be true.—Auden, "The History of Truth" (1958?) It came to me just now, dreaming, that...

Freddie Skinner, De Aar (1973) The gods chose the victorious side, Cato the defeated one / Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa ...

The drop may spill; the rest'll trundle on.

Pieter van Laer, The Flagellants (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) I had a dream in which this is all real, where we rip off our masks and sing...

Eugène Delacroix. The Death of Sardanapalus . 1827. Musée du Louvre. “This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and...

"Eighty percent of life is just showing up."

Sir Thomas Wyatt (just on the quiet) took Noli me tangere for a come-hither query.

Mustafa Kemal, who remade this world, whose portrait adorns all public places— your mausoleum is Türkiye’s temple: What did you dream of...

You can tell her by her white feathers her sallow, goose-bumped skin.

"Poor Turks, poor Greeks, poor world!" —Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964), feminist, novelist, Kemalist member of the Turkish Grand National...

You couldn’t make up that stuff!

The Whydah Gally, a former Ouidah slave ship captured by Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy in the Golden Age of Piracy “Extravagance is a...

I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.'...

Why won't you be my Audifax?

There was a curmudgeon in Rheims Who lacked an appropriate stance. When he met a young filly Who teased, “Let’s be silly!” He groaned,...

Problem solved! No worries guys! Hey presto!!

I harbor notions that should not be read.

There's no special day or time set aside for Wyrd!

So why, then, did they call it Gorilla Gate?

In memoriam Michael von Lilienstein Tapscott   "Holy Moly!" exclaimed the DC Comics hero Captain Marvel. At which, in our Upper Montague...

Qu'est-ce que c’est qu’un art qui ne rend pas gai?

“Truth is like fire; to tell the truth means to glow and burn.” —Gustav Klimt, Nuda Veritas (1899) Truth, I'd say, is more like a...

Those cardboard critters will do fine.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

The abyss is a yawn of sorts, wouldn't you say?

I print their names here in their memory. It's all I can do.

"The process by which a brand name comes to refer to any product or service of its kind" (wikipedia) escalator, koozie, onesie, taser,...