cryptical envelopment
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This Machine Kills Fascists
I—just—can’t anymore. I’m falling apart. The world is falling apart. I just want to fall into your arms and sleep. But this is not some stupid, self-induced hangover. This is a house fire in a hurricane in a pandemic. With zombies. Fast zombies. Why is double-tap funny in a zombie moviebut you have a lot… Continue reading
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Divine Aphasia
title from a line in Lucky’s speech in Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett They took my hat. Yes I was rampaging mad drunken unsteady ever ready like an electric cat on a hot tin roof and glorious glorious the invasive Blakean angels and writing my God writing writing all the time writing. Some said it was… Continue reading
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A-I-a-i-no
What art if any? No, it’s not possible, from a statistical concurrence and concordance of wordshowever clever, from the library of books scatteredat random on the floor: the Internet.Large language models pile up wordslike Legos: that plastic thing it’s not a bird.No algorithmic prayer makes the golemsing or dance or draw: Soul is morethan mathematics… Continue reading
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Hello?
Me, lying in bed eyes closed but awake (I think) and hear Patrice clearly say something. I respond . P: What? Me: I was just replying. P: I didn’t say anything. Me: I heard you. I’m not asleep so it couldn’t be a dream. [beat] P: Sometimes I think aliens are trying to communicate with… Continue reading
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AWAKE
Brain: WE’RE UP! Body: What? No. We’re exhausted. Brain: There’s a war on, soldier. Rise and shine. Body: [Looks at elapsed time on CPAP.] We’ve only had six hours sleep. Deeply, physically exhausted. Can’t stop yawning.. Brain: We have to write this down. Body: [Deep, jaw-cracking yawn. Another.] Brain: RFK, Jr. wants to put people… Continue reading
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Becoming
“I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”– Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Continue reading
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Don’t Look Away
“To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” ~ Akira Kurosawa Most of the visual artists I know are attuned to beauty. The innocence of childhood very deep inside will always be fascinated by a flower. The market has something to say about this. Tourists browsing Jackson Square do not come here for… Continue reading
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A thousand tambourines of crystal
“If you ask me why I wrote ‘A thousand tambourines of crystal, wounded the light of daybreak’ I will tell you that I saw them in the hands of trees and angels, but I cannot say more: I cannot explain their meaning. And that is how it should be. Through poetry a man more quickly… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 