H. P. Friendcraft

The Sonnet in Drag by Chris Watkins She’s charismatic, mistress of the brag. Who turns a look like hers? The highest tuck you could have—you might say she’s enjambed. Her wig don’t ever slip. Her lip sync’s never slack. She struts around in five-inch heels and lines her syllables in red lip liner. Looks like one of Shakespeare’s girls. And boy she rhymes like he’s inside her—thumbing through her book. You’ll want to read like her. You’ll want to wear hip pads beneath your quatrains. Stuff big words in every line to burst the iamb’s brassiere. To be Elizabethan, queen of bards. But can you bring it like a bottom from the top— from the title to your couplet’s death drop?

Who turns a look like hers?

They're joining on the side of "against civilization."

...zebra, crocodile, baboons, secretary birds, African sacred ibis (no joke, its actual name)

Getting to fuzz the top of a giraffe's horns is certainly a high point in my life.

Sadly, no leopards -- though we saw several antelope unmistakably cached by leopards high in a tree.

Oh! And there are many incredible antelope; eland and kudu stand out as super cool in my memory.

😈😈😈

All Hallows By Louise Glück Even now this landscape is assembling. The hills darken. The oxen sleep in their blue yoke, the fields having been picked clean, the sheaves bound evenly and piled at the roadside among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises: This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence. And the wife leaning out the window with her hand extended, as in payment, and the seeds distinct, gold, calling Come here Come here, little one And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Come here, little one...

The Vampire Madison Julius Cawein 1865 – 1914 A lily in a twilight place? A moonflow’r in the lonely night?— Strange beauty of a woman's face Of wildflow’r-white! The rain that hangs a star’s green ray Slim on a leaf-point’s restlessness, Is not so glimmering green and gray As was her dress. I drew her dark hair from her eyes, And in their deeps beheld a while Such shadowy moonlight as the skies Of Hell may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan, And burning cold,—I bent and kissed Such rosy snow as some wild dawn Makes of a mist. God shall not take from me that hour, When round my neck her white arms clung! When ‘neath my lips, like some fierce flower, Her white throat swung! Or words she murmured while she leaned! Witch-words, she holds me softly by,— The spell that binds me to a fiend Until I die.

Time for spooky season poems.

September Midnight By Sara Teasdale Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy. Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them.

Let me remember.

Absolutely no peace.

ripe blackberries hanging from a blackberry cane, with ferns in the background

August by Mary Oliver When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

Mary Oliver.

The black honey of summer.

Ticket I love the moment at the ticket window—he says— when you are to say the name of your destination, and realize that you could say anything, the man at the counter will believe you, the woman at the counter would never say No, that isn't where you're going, you could buy a ticket for one place and go to another, less far along the same line. Suddenly you would find yourself —he says—in a locality you've never seen before, where no one has ever seen you and you could say your name was anything you like, nobody would say No, that isn't you, this is who you are. It thrills me every time.

You could say anything.

Poem by Charles O. Hartman.

Not to mention, prioritizes the most common commandment throughout the Torah and the prophets (which of course Jesus was trained on and teaching from): to "care for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant."

Peach By Dorianne Laux I kneel to the ground fall peach, its russet belly, its honey streaks, touch its new tough skin, run my thumb along its deep, sexy cleft. I pluck another from a low branch, tug it down into captivity like an animal caught in a bramble, scooped into my arms that open to return it to the wide field of my cutting board where I lift the knife, slice around the stony pit, its purple edges bleeding into the gold flesh in a starburst, and like a star becoming into silence, miniscule pulse of living light from this distance, has been making itself over and over from the fire within it, like the sound hole of a violin that welcomes any dark music. To think we can eat a sunset, convicted, as we are, to the mud of this earth, knees dark with dirt, hands sticky with essence, to think I too am here in this cleft body, a being split into parts and seamed back together, swollen with desire, hungry for the sun.

This cleft body.

Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think On how plummeting battery prices make 24/7 solar power a reality today.

the rate of progress in battery tech is *insane.* prices down 40% and space efficiency up by ~half in ONE YEAR www.volts.wtf/p/solarstora...

Tomatoes by Joy Sullivan I waited so long for love and suddenly, here it is standing in the garden, hands full of heirlooms hot from the sun. Soon we’ll make a supper of them. Salted slabs between slices of bread. Your beard silvers. My hips ripen. The mail piles up. Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us. Our mouths are full of tomatoes. We are so busy being small and hungry and alive.

We are so busy.

maggie and milly and molly and may E. E. Cummings maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone. For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Bill McKibben said something similar a lot of years ago (15, maybe?) at Vermont's diocesan convention: build community. Vibrant communities will do better than isolated wealthy suburbs.

Local food, mutual aid, water protection, the bonds of local civic life - these are where resilience lie.

Screenshot from the Suzuki interview: "Governments will not be able to respond on the scale or speed that is needed for these emergencies, so Finland is telling their citizens that they’re going to be at the front line of whatever hits and better be sure you’re ready to meet it. Find out who on your block can’t walk because you’re going to have to deal with that. Who has wheelchairs? Who has fire extinguishers? Where is the available water? Do you have batteries or generators? Start assessing the roots of escape. You’re going to have to inventory your community, and that’s really what we have to start doing now."

I think the fact that I'm now full of fighting spirit is a sign that acceptance and grief are enlivening, not deadening.

So let's fight for mitigation. Let's fight for the fascists' overthrow.

And let's pour energy into local communities and looking out for each other.

This, combined with the report of the Deep Western Boundary Current reversal, strikes me as correct. Our political, legal, and economic systems have not budged.

This is not giving up: "The units of survival are going to be local communities, so I’m urging local communities to get together."

Driver’s perspective of a dashboard missing the steering wheel.

“Very funny, Jesus. Give it back.”

Ooh, congrats!

Becoming Earth – Robin Wall Kimmerer Wandering among the ancient decomposing cedar trees of the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer wonders what they might teach us about the nature o...

Here's another beautiful essay by Potawatomi author & botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer in @emergencemagazine.bsky.social, a meditation on life, death, and the cycles of nature.

emergencemagazine.org/essay/becomi...

The Year of the Goldfinches By Ada Limón There were two that hung and hovered by the mud puddle and the musk thistle. Flitting from one splintered fence post to another, bathing in the rainwater’s glint like it was a mirror to some other universe where things were more acceptable, easier than the place I lived. I’d watch for them: the bright peacocking male, the low-watt female, on each morning walk, days spent digging for some sort of elusive answer to the question my curving figure made. Later, I learned that they were a symbol of resurrection. Of course they were, my two yellow-winged twins feasting on thorns and liking it.

Poem for the week.

This, like, the 3rd time I've cried at my desk today. But in a good way, this time!

Text message conversation: "Is the fall of Rome comparable to the current situation in the United States?" "No, Rome had good roads."

I... no words. Breathtaking. Is this art, actually?

Hot damn.

Read the whole thing— good political satire is extremely hard to find and this absolutely sticks the landing.

Gain advantage whenever you feel a fleeting moment of hope in a life beset by horrors on all sides.

hahahaha

Hang on I have a new theory on why he hates bears