Each Night He Must Be Carried Through Artificial Tunnels and Dream Recurrent Dreams

Back on fountain pen ink on canvas, see below, back on pencil in tablets (and canvases, though not the one below). Back on valkyrie for more than just rollers, yesterday, two steepest downhill holes at Woodsboro clanked drive off baskets, closest aces yet. I'm not back on Facebook though I've received multiple emails telling me they've received my request to reset my passwork, I had an account for four days back in Facebook's earliest days twenty years ago, all it took for me to say no, I thought I'd deleted the account, someone wants in, is not me. I consolidated all blooger sub-projects into one archive last week so I can find things I need to and so I can quick delete everything when I finally want to, 21 posts tagged since the consolidation by blooger with content warnings readers need click through to view, the fuck? 

Never off the hexjeffs. Never off the sideways though definitely sidewaysier day by day. Death by gerontocracy is by design. There IS no next generation planned. Reminder: when my daughter is my age it will be 2057, the earth will still exist but will the world? Reminder: if you got no Mojo Nixon than your store could use some fixin', and a reminder that this is ever true:

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Shhh! Bodies of Palestinian detainees who were handcuffed, blindfolded discovered in plastic bags near northern Gaza school
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Enshittification is coming for absolutely everything
New Study Links Optimism To Lower Cognitive Abilities
Maggie's weekly				Unlearning machines
Metaphors make the world
Cats and human supremacy
{ feuilleton }'s			Seeing animal eyes
Elizabeth Bishop born 113 years ago today
Rest in Peace, Mojo Nixon				Rest in Peace, Stevie

THE MAN-MOTH

Elizabeth Bishop

Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”

Here, above,

cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.

The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.

It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,

and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.

He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,

feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,

of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

                     But when the Man-Moth

pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,

the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges

from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks

and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.

He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,

proving the sky quite useless for protection.

He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

                     Up the façades,

his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him

he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage

to push his small head through that round clean opening

and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.

(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)

But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although

he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

                     Then he returns

to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,

he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains

fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.

The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way

and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,

without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.

He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

                     Each night he must

be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.

Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie

his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,

for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,

runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease

he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep

his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

                     If you catch him,

hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,

an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens

as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids

one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.

Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention

he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,

cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.