


From the beginning, if there was a beginning, this degenerate little town has become ever more degenerate… —Thomas Ligotti
In this sense the creation and catastrophe were one and the same. Our universe has been from the beginning, if indeed there was a beginning, one long journey into degeneration; an entropic swerve toward death, which if all signs are correct is accelerating us into oblivion and the scattering of dust in eternal night. This little section of my grotesquerie invites you to share the poetry of this darkness, to become one with the intimate erotic and scabrous art of ecstatic horror; come to know – if indeed knowing is the correct term, and be know by what is oldest in yourself; know the darkness and inhuman nullity at the core of your being is none other that the essence of this estrangement from the monstrosity of the universe of decay and rampant process; an endless voyage of disquieting abjectness that fills you with the graceless grace of terror’s beatitude.
Poems of the Darkness
- Untamed Limits of Vision
- Icarus
- Love’s Runes Cast, Flesh Entrapped
- King Lear’s Mad Song
- Dead Kings, Dead Dreams
- The Mighty Dead
- Asmodeus Dreams
- The Ventriloquist’s Art
- The Dummy
- Chasing Devils In Our Wine
- Tattoo Apocalypse
- Shadows & Light
- Flight
- Drifts
- Darkness
- Wisdom Chaser
- Night’s Carnival
- The Vicious Circle
- The Red Stain
- Oedipal Bastards Like Us
- The Blooms That Will Not Rise
- Before the Plague
- Blind
- House of Love and Curses
- Lies Never End
- In the absence of love…
- Bone Turned Stone
- Old Man in the Dark
- The Hoodoo Man
- A Dry Leaf in a Windy Land
- Paw Paw
- Countries of the Moon
- She Sang Me Into Light
- Death is not a Word
- “Duende” – After Lorca
- Honky Tonk Dreamer
- Reckless Nights and Days
- Postmodern Ennui
- The Mask of Death
- Troubling the Waters
- The Taming of the Minotaur
- A Death Song for Her Child
- Doubt The Butcher Came Today
- Old Men Sing The Delta Blues: Two Songs
- Scorpion Thoughts
- The Blue Devil in a Time Machine
- The Black Prince (Satire)
- Night Visitants
- Hawks & Love
- “My duende, come for me!”
- Land of the Free
- A Shore History of Insanity
- The Philosopher of one Leg
- Bodies & Languages
- Night Duty
- The Democratic Ghost Machine
- The Last Troubadour
- The Logics of Worlds
- Outside Utopia
- Exit
- If My Skin Were Blue
- Graffiti Love
- Let The Dead Speak
- On First Seeing Courbet’s ‘L’Origine Du Monde Blonde’
- I Turn Away To Shadows
- Even As Night Comes
- The Lost Cause
- Where Have All The Maker’s Gone
- Subtraction
- The Suicide
- Love’s Lost Kingdom
- A Curse or Blessing?
- The Betrayal of the Ephemeral
- Goodbye
Essays & Appreciations
- Richard Hugo (1923 -1982) Poet of the Northwest
- K. A. Brace: Lucretian Poet of Mind and Eye
- Dark Earth: Poetry of Dean J. Baker
- Bri Bruce: The Pulse of Nature and of Love
- Pablo Neruda: The Poetry of Earth, Bells and Desolation
- Robinson Jeffers: The Poet Of Inhumanism
- Walt Whitman, Democracy, and the New Poetry
- The Art of Reading Well: Poetry as an Art & Craft
- Wisdom’s Lover: The Philosopher and the Poet
- The Mastery of Poetic Forms: Poetry Old and New
- Singing School: The Fine Art of Poetry and Hard Work
- The Poetry of the 21st Century
- The Lies Poetry Tells: Rhetoric, Poetics, and Tradition
- Poetry, Information, and the Triggering Town: K.A. Bryce and the Making of Poetry
- The Belated Poet and the Burdens of Tradition
- The Inhuman Turn: Poetry, Philosophy and Time
- Native American Short Story: “Our Dance” ePublished & eReady
- 21st Century Baroque Poetry: Excess, Invention, and Ornament
- Songlines, Cultural Memory, and Poetry
- Lauren Berlant: The Subtle Art of Cruel Optimism
- We the dead…. thoughts on Nicola Masciandaro’s A Note on Cosmic Pessimism
Thoughts on Poetry
- On the Inevitability of Poetry (8/15/2014)
- Memory & Voice (8/16/2014)
- Priority, Authority and Poetic Wisdom (8/17/2014)
- The Comedy of the Streets (8/18/2014)
- There Are No Rules (8/19/2014)
- Initiation, Feelings & the Mysteries of Poetry (8/20/2014)
- John Clare ~ Horizon & Natural Fact (8/21/2014)
- The Poetry of Democracy (8/22/2014)
- Listening, Accents, Rhythm (8/23/2014)
- The Quest for Meaning (8/24/2014)
- Form is the Engine of Creativity (8/25/2014)
- Poetry as Labyrinth & Glass Bead Game (8/26/2014)
- Aristotle’s Poetics & Plot (8/28/2014)
- Figuration & Allegory: On the Symbolic (8/30/2014)
- A Poetics of Sense & Concepts (8/31/2014)
- Robert Graves, Ted Hughes & Poetic Mythography of the Goddess (9/1/2014)
- Robert Frost ~ Self, Poetry & Voice (9/2/2014)
- Autumn & Metamorphosis (9/3/2014)
- Goddess, Women, Poetry & the Secular World (9/4/2014)
- Dark Ecology: Epic, Elegy, and the Ecological Poem
- The Movement of the World: Children, Dreams & Possibility
- Emerson, Neuroscience, & The Book of Nature – On Fate & Freedom
- Eros & Memory: Noir, Poetry, and the Past
Poetic Thought of the Day
- Robert Frost ~ Self, Poetry & Voice
- On the Inevitability of Poetry
- Robert Graves, Ted Hughes & Poetic Mythography of the Goddess
- A Poetics of Sense & Concepts
- Figuration & Allegory: On the Symbolic
- Aristotle’s Poetics & Plot
- Poetry as Labyrinth & Glass Bead Game
- Form is the Engine of Creativity
- Listening, Accents, Rhythm
- The Poetry of Democracy
- The Quest for Meaning
- John Clare ~ Horizon & Natural Fact
- Initiation, Feelings & the Mysteries of Poetry
- There Are No Rules
- The Comedy of the Streets
- Priority, Authority and Poetic Wisdom
- Memory & Voice