( "beautiful day in deep ellum" via nightcafe / via )

"Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler this year [1866], too, alongside Crime and Punishment, under contractual conditions that would have crushed most writers. Now there is some kind of heroism. I would like to read a Victor Hugo novel about Dostoevsky writing Crime and Punishment and The Gambler."

"also, i'm feeling sort of like a second-strike scurry" --@feelings_js

"No leaving for you and me."

“Tear Me a River”

Prepare thy shadowy car Prepare thy shadowy car For tomorrow a rebus For tomorrow a rebus Thy shadowy rebus tomorrow Prepare for a car.

My fardels outrun the thieves My fardels outrun the thieves Echoing to the battle’s roar Echoing to the battle’s roar Thieves outrun the battle’s fardels The roar to my echoing.

Fardels for my car a rebus To outrun the battle’s tomorrow; The echoing roar Prepare thy shadowy thieves.

(2004)

Monsters Once Roamed the Earth.

"The Nameless Wraith

As one who seeks the silver moth of night Where moonless gardens lose the afterglow, My soul went forth ineffably, to know Some vaguer vision unrevealed of light.

From halcyon fells whereon the falcons range, From Hesper, and the sunsets mountain-born, And From the trembling freshness of the morn I turned me to a dreamland still and strange.

It seemed the hueless ashes of the day And darkened glories filled that glooming world : The spectrum of hesternal suns was furled In immemorial valleys vast and grey.

Ruins, and wrecks of many a foundered year, Doubtfully known, bestrewed the unvisioned verge, Where, from unsounding reaches of blind surge, Some nameless wraith of beauty fluttered near.

Was it the dove from shrines of lost delight? The nightingale from love's necropolis ? What dream-led messenger of time's abyss Came from the dark, and vanished in the night ?"

--Clark Ashton Smith

( @archillect / via )

Oriental Wind Mezzo.

"And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things--must we not all have already existed[?]" --Common's Nietzsche, 46.

Under the Sea.

"Alienage

Dear one, what do we here ? Petal by petal falls the alien spring In gardens where we pass ungarlanded, And seek once more the doves and myrtles dead In some retrieveless year; And claim no leaf or blossom for our own . . . . O Paphos, and the moons of Paphos flown ! My golden dove, canst thou recall Nights when delight was all, And high desire could still outlive the dawn ? Hast thou forgot, Here, in the grey, sad world that knows us not, The years when we were nymph and centaur, drawn To elder forests deep That spring had turned to chrysolite and gold ? Hast thou forgot the tale of kisses told By summer waters calm as sleep, When Hesperèan sunsets touched thy hair From islands lost and fair ?

Dear one, what do we here ? Beyond the window-pane The shifting veils of rain Bedim the bitter world that is not ours; And on dishevelled flowers There falls a hueless twilight, brief and drear . . . . Give me thy lips again— Let us forget the weariness and pain, And the supreme disaster of our birth, While in thy flesh my lingering Slow kisses move and cling And love alone hath verity or worth. Ah, let me find, about thy bosom's fruit, The fragile, vague perfume Of unseen lilies crushed within the gloom Of forests lone and old; Ah, let me seek in leisured long pursuit Amid thy harvest-colored hair, For suns and summers of remembered gold; And seal my lips on throat and bosom fair, Till where my kisses fell, the phantom rose Of Paphos blows."

--Clark Ashton Smith

Mr Scary.

"first kiss the sound of a rat illuminated by a wildfire"

--@poem_exe