Poetry in Motion @stealth-poem-bomber - Tumblr Blog

The children will never know How the ocean used to flow They'll never miss the whales They'll never believe the tales But I will remember, I will tell Of all that lived and their great farewell

stealth-poem-bomber

But who can hear 25,000 again

Singing in the warming water

"Fifty Words Written About the Arctic Bowhead Whale After Learning That They Can Live up to Two Hundred Years", Nate DiMeo from The Memory Palace

#Fifty Words Written About the Arctic Bowhead Whale After Learning That They Can Live up to Two Hundred Years #Nate DiMeo #The Memory Palace

starlight-shadowbanned

how to read yiddish

(guide intended for people who can already read hebrew)

first we’ll talk about the words that are not from hebrew or aramaic origin — so this is mostly words of germanic origin, as well as words from other languages like russian, polish, hungarian, english, etc.

for these words, yiddish uses hebrew letters, but treats them the way you treat english letters: that is, some are consonants and some are vowels. nekudot (hebrew vowel marks) are only used in specific situations.

the consonants you already know are:

ב ג ד ה ז ט י כ ל מ נ ס פ פּ צ ק ר ש

some notes:

- the letter ב is always pronounced as a bet, not a vet

- double vav (וו) is how you would do a “v” sound

- the letter כ is always pronounced as chaf

- the letter ש is always pronounced as shin

- the letters ח and ת are not used for these words

just like in english, the way to construct words is to use some letters as vowels. these are the vowels:

so for example, if i want to write ketz (meaning cats), i’d write it as קעץ

the consonants are ק and צ, while ע is being used as a vowel, pronounced “eh.”

some of these vowels are pronounced differently in different dialects. the chart above is for klal shprach (aka YIVO dialect). this is different from the pronunciation you learn on duolingo.

hebrew and aramaic words, by contrast, are spelled the same way they are in their language of origin. for example, if we were to use the above orthography to write “shabbes,” it would be שאבעס. however, we don’t: we still write שבת.

words of hebrew and aramaic origin in yiddish are pronounced as they are in ashkenazi hebrew. in general, that will mean an emphasis on the first or second syllable rather than the last, and ת without a dagesh being pronounced as an “s” sound. eg “SHA-bes” instead of “sha-BAT” and “sha-VU-es” instead of “sha-vu-OT.” it also means that some vowel sounds get shortened or elided.

hopefully this is a useful guide. go forth and read!

stealth-poem-bomber

זעט זשע, קינדערלעך, געדענקט זשע טייערע,

וואס איר לערנט דא;

זאגט זשע נאך א מאל, און טאקע נאך א מאל:

קמץ־אלף: אָ!

See, children, remember, dear ones,

What you learn here;

Repeat and repeat yet again,

"Komets-alef: o!"

"אויפן פריפעטשיק"

"Oyfn Pripetshik", M.M. Warshawsky

Translation from the Wikipedia page

#אויפן פריפעטשיק #oyfn pripetshik #mm warshawsky

mawofthemagnetar

Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.

“Oh but this language sounds scary-“ have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?

“Oh but this language sounds silly-“ have you heard someone’s grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?

“Oh but this language is really weird-“ and yours isn’t? Everyone’s language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.

Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.

Isn’t it wonderful?

stealth-poem-bomber

Was it halting? Was it flowing? Was it lilting and divine?

Was it fearless as your native tongue, mercurial as mine?

Would it pique a linguist's interest? Would it hold a poet's thrall?

"Strange Messenger", Vixy and Tony, from Thirteen

#Strange Messenger #Vixy and Tony #Thirteen

gingerswagfreckles

Btw the reason I always always add "and our 4 and a half allies" to posts about how Jews are on our own is not to be pedantic, it's an acknowledgement that the very very few people who have stood up for us against this new movement of Nazism have functionally thrown their lot in with us and been branded as race traitors to gentiles and are going to be shoved into the gas chambers right along with us. Yay.

stealth-poem-bomber

we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother;

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene III

#william shakespeare #henry v

eddiediaz1992

[ insp. x | x ]

stealth-poem-bomber

Why did we meet in the middle of a war?

What a silly thing for anyone to do

"Dear Bill", SpitLip for Operation Mincemeat

#Dear Bill #SpitLip #operation mincemeat

tittled

grandma ate my fucking pizza

jeanritchie

vintagewildlife

Makes me a bit sad when an animal is called fat-tailed or fat-bodied or just fat, and people leave tags like "nooo don't call him that." I think "fat" is a compliment to most species on Earth. A fat mouse (Steatomys pratensis) who is actually fat is so good at surviving and doing what it was born to do. "Fat" is never an insult, but especially not when it's applied to a species whose sole purpose is to eat, breed, and enjoy what pleasures the world has to offer.

stealth-poem-bomber

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones—

In fact, he's remarkably fat.

"Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town", T S Eliot

#bustopher jones #Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town #t s eliot #old possom's book of practical cats

fennecshandgf

sometimes i think about the golden record and i want to cry

fennecshandgf

there is a disk. it is 12 inches in diameter, it is made of copper, plated with gold. there is an inscription— “To the makers of music – all worlds, all times” on its surface. it lies on the space probe, Voyager 1, launched in 1977, to explore interstellar space beyond our solar system.

it contains human existence.

116 images— the sun, the location of our solar system, mathematical and physical unit definitions, and our planets, including a blue and swirling white sphere simply labelled “Home.” it contains images of human dna, of our atoms, their structure, the way they divide, our anatomy, our conception, our birth.

it does not contain an image of war. nor of disease, nor poverty, nor crime, religion, or ideology.

it does contain a father looking lovingly at his daughter. it does contain the picture of a tree toad in a gentle hand, of a woman eating a grape at a supermarket.

the remainder of the disk is audio. a 90-minute selection of music from all over the world, sounds, and greetings. there are greetings in 55 different languages, one akkadian, spoken in sumer about six thousand years ago, and one wu, a modern chinese dialect. the greetings call out to a friend. it wishes them well. it asks them if they have eaten yet.

but it contains other sounds too. it holds the sound of rain, of thunder, of a volcano and an earthquake. it holds the sound of mud pots and trains. it holds the sound of a mother kissing her child.

with little to erode it in space, the golden record would probably outlast all human creation. it will be 40,000 years before it approaches another planetary system. if it does, it cannot find intelligent life. intelligent life will have to find it, retrieve it from where it floats silent and small through space. we still don’t know if they would understand it.

in 7.5 billion years, the evolution of the sun would burn the earth up, and we would not exist any longer, but the voyager would fly on, bearing a memory.

bearing a disk with a little inscription etched by hand on its surface.

st-jimmysidiot

galkyrie

Radiolab did an episode with Ann Druyan, the creative director of the Voyager Interstellar Message project that produced these discs and selected what to put on them. She tells the story of their conception and the selection process.

One of the sounds on the record is the sound of Ann Druyan’s brainwaves, recorded as she thought about the man she fell in love with over the course of the project, which if discovered and interpreted by some far-flung species hundreds of millions of years from now, will make her and Carl Sagan’s love story humanity’s most enduring.

stealth-poem-bomber

Third planet, yellow star

Tell us where your children are

We have come here from afar

To answer their invitation

Absent Hosts, Cecillia Eng

#absent hosts #Cecillia Eng #Unreal Estate

vee-dmsr

real gay sex has never been tried because everyone has subtle tiny 0°0’1” type differences in how they precieve their gender. true gay sex can only be achieved via selfcest, and then one of them has to be killed immediately after because gender is fluid and it might’ve diverged

vee-dmsr

stealth-poem-bomber

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

#walt whitman #song of myself

sunforgrace

me burning the candle at both ends: oobh i got plany off wick

stealth-poem-bomber

My candle burns at both ends;/It will not last the night;/But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--/It gives a lovely light!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay, "First Fig"

#edna st vincent millay #first fig

imissthembutitwasntadisaster

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

#all of them #or at least most of them #but #the road gors ever on and on #if i had to pick one

todays-xkcd

Calligraphy exam: Write down the number 37, spelled out, nicely.

Exam Numbers [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

mosslingg

someone with a major in literature and/or poetry tell me what's so poetic about this that it captivated me because i have no idea honestly

mosslingg

hey. what if i just cried on a train. what if.

brink-of-insanity-georg

Is this your type of thing @amtrak-official?

queer-as-city-folk

That flower is so pretty and so strong, it's indomitable

dduane

Even if they say it can't be done...try flowering where you are.

Especially if they say it can't be done. :)

elodieunderglass

It’s interesting to see this in the framework of a flower (politically defined as: charming, pretty, femme, frivolous, victim) and/or a weed (politically: outsider, indomitable, back-to-nature, resistance, rebellion) and seeing it as a slightly underdog, “nature thriving in adversity” “beauty thriving in industry” “persistence and hope” story. It is and it isn’t! It’s still poetry.

This looks like oilseed rape, a crop plant that provides a bright yellow field of flowers. The flowers become the seeds that are pressed to make a cheap and common cooking oil. Rapeseed is considered a mildly unattractive name so it was rebranded as “canola,” thus the product of oilseed rape is canola oil. Still, a field of these yellow flowers is somewhat awkwardly called a field of rape. The heavy, sweet scent hovers for miles. The United States Canola Association, a lobby professional advocate for the plant , says “the small yellow flowers [also] beautify the environment,” as they try to market something that doesn’t need much marketing.

Rapeseed is hot at the moment - carrying a heavy load. The obviously competitive plant-based oils at the moment - olive oil and sunflower oil - are both embroiled in geopolitics. Sunflower oil was dominated in global production by Ukraine, currently under invasion, and olive oil - a key export of Palestine, and the European trees smashed hard in recent years by the droughts - is a tricky product that relies on ancient little olive trees growing in climate-change-affected deserts in years of unprecedented bad weather. It takes years for an olive tree to make a single olive. So geopolitically, people are clinging a bit to rapeseed - a sturdy and unbothered workhorse of the temperate climates.

Rapeseed’s a brassica, part of the same family as those shape-shifting sisters who are all Basically The Same Plant: broccoli, cabbage, mizuna, pak choi, turnip, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts - let any of those sisters go over, and they’ll all develop the same cheerful yellow flowers. Oilseed rape has an instant and obvious kinship with them. The thick, dusty slightly blueish color to the fat juicy stem and the broad leaves on the bottom giving way to the smaller ones along the distinctive stalk - you can ID a brassica from just a few characters!

Brassicas, most amusingly, like hard going. One wild ancestral brassica, to whom the broccoli sisters strive to return, is Wild Cabbage - it likes to live on rocky sea cliffs, growing on rocks and battered by salt; sea kales, another offshoot of the family, like to grow on beaches. If you see plants growing on a beach, drinking saltwater and digging their roots into sand and rocks, they’re brassicas - that’s it - that is how they like it. It’s completely mad! but it works for them! Other plants probably make memes about brassicas: choosing what is (to plants) a barren alien landscape, whipped by toxic winds, drinking poison, gnawing sustenance from actual sand - and then being so vigorous and juicy, and carefully constructing a crown of yellow flowers. Absolutely wild!

Rapeseed, therefore, scorns the idea that it has to be kept locked up in a comfortable field and farmed. When it leaves its fields and starts wandering, it is called an “escape” - a cultivated plant that’s gotten away. Escaped rapeseed yearns for the beach, or at the very least, the romantic dusty road. It usually lives alongside roads, on waste ground, and in other places where it can find gravel: as you can see, this includes perching jauntily in the gravel of train tracks. Wind? Rocks? Trains? Are you kidding? This is not adversity to oilseed rape. This is what it leaves home for. It’s going to the beach. It’s LEAVING. Farewell, suckers.

In general, people do not actually like this.

Escapes aren’t quite invasive - although that term itself is a little tricky; if the photo is taken in Europe, an escaped brassica has every right to say that it’s had ten thousand years of being perfectly native - but they’re still not-really-wild and would-you-please-stop. An escaped food crop is not the cute underdog kind of weed, not the political lapel pin kind of weed, not the oh-look-it’s-thriving-in-adversity-feeding-the-bees.

Environmentalists don’t want them. They’re not weeds in the sense of Daddy-hated-the-pretty-dandelions-in-the-lawn-wasn’t-Daddy-mean, they’re weeds in the sense of one-step-further-out-of-place-and-you’re-spoiling-the-whole-ecosystem-bucko. The politics of invasiveness hold a finger over the button that says “condemn,” and the moment the rapeseed escape leaves the undisputed unwanted waste ground, it becomes a weed in the sense of deleted-for-the-greater-good. As long as they’re in the waste ground that nobody wants, it’s fine - but watch out! The tolerance is very conditional.

But is it (politically) weed, (politically) flower? I’m always interested in the political projections we put onto plants. This, to me, is funny, like a cow at IKEA; a fancy breed of chicken ordering a drink at a bar. Somebody escaped the grind. Somebody is off to the beach. Farm boy escaping to the bright lights over here. How are you going to keep them down on the farm when they’ve seen gay Paree! It isn’t starving or struggling baby, that’s oilseed rape seeking enrichment! Don’t feel bad for it! It’s escaped! It likes this shit! It’ll be shot down by farmers or environmentalists alike - you’re it’s only friend. Don’t tattle on it, it’s not meant to be here, it barely even Feeds the Bees. It’s taking the midnight train going anywhere!

That’s no delicate flower! That’s a brassica! They’re from the EQUIVALENT OF THE MOON. That’s one of the oldest plant allies we have! And not even because they taste particularly good (debatable) just because we can’t stop them and it’s better to be allies than victims, really. It’s awfully pretty and funny to be flowering (love that for it) but it isn’t precisely in adversity, the mad bastard! it’s about as uncomfortable there as a cottagecore influencer.

That’s no weed! It ain’t the wild! That’s a purebred domestic farmchild with ten thousand of years of genetic engineering behind it! It’s more domesticated than YOU are. And it’s going on holiday. Becoming ungovernable.

It could be a villain! We don’t know! The seeds from that plant - which are happening because it was fit enough to flower- just might get on a train that takes them to INVADE A NEW ECOSYSTEM bahahahahaha! What matters is going on your WAY.

To me it’s the poetry of spotting a friend, the recognition of seeing a dog. The humor of a fancy fluffy chicken living its life. The pleasure in seeing a brassica living in conditions that are a bit like its ancestral wild. The enjoyment of having a bit of knowledge, like hearing a bird song and being able to tell someone, wisely, that it’s a chiff-chaff because it says chiff-chaff. A reminder, once more, that the natural world is full of infinite stories to tell and be told: the most worthy stories that there are. The poetry of it. I don’t see triumph-in-adversity, but a guy having fun. I see human engineering hanging out with human engineering. I see classic brassica behavior. Classic. What a guy. What a legend.

parlerenfleurs

The thing with plants is that they have each evolved to thrive in different niches and conditions. If you leave ANY terrain alone, even a concrete road, very soon you'll have species that looove to break hard soil or rock (or concrete, they really aren't particular) and looove nutrient-poor substrate, or hell, no substrate at all. You would never find them on rich forest floor, undisturbed prairies, etc. They like the disturbed, destroyed place, full of heavy metals and hydrocarbures, thank you very much. Some love to be stepped on, some like to be burnt, others need to be picked (yes, by humans, yes, we're part of the ecosystem in beneficial ways too).

Once these species have broken and enriched the hard concrete and put air and life back into the compacted soil, they'll stop finding the place cozy, and their seeds will not longer germinate. Instead, other seeds will see the richer soil and go "Oh hey! This place is suitable for me now!" and they germinate and you get a new society of species. And so on and so forth. There is no end to this, or linear path, really. Any place may get disturbed again, eventually, making it favourable for the hardass species again.

What I'm getting at is, not only is this little flower content and thriving, but if we let it be, the tracks would soon all be full of these, and other plants too, even if they're not domestic escapees, and they would cheerily completely transform the terrain. Which I find beautiful. Nature is not hard to find, it's begging to intrude everywhere at all times.

What I'm tangentially getting at is, I find it really hard to suspend my disbelief when seeing scenes of post-apocalyptic urban landscape, because characters usually wander in slightly disused streets and buildings, with supposedly abandoned cars. And there are a few dead leaves, some haphazard vines. But there is no lichen. No rust, no moss, no dandelion, no stubborn grasses, no young tree pushing through concrete and stone and even metal, no English ivy, no, and I cannot stress this one enough, no brambles.

It is of course highly dependant on the base biome of the place, so I'm talking about what I know best, but you get the picture. This process would be even more uncontrollably fast in tropical climate, but I bet it would be pretty noticeable in a desert or savannah too.

stealth-poem-bomber

"And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing"

"End Poem" - Julian Gough

#julian gough #end poem #minecraft

edenfenixblogs

So PMS-y and emotional right now that I just looked up pictures of trees and started tearing up because I just love trees so much.

😭😍trees😍😭

I have a fig tree and a pomegranate tree in my backyard and it may be the hardest part of this house to leave behind.

prismatic-bell

You should see the bonkers trees in my state.

Behold, the Joshua tree.

edenfenixblogs

Oh, Josh! Good ol’ Josh! I 💜 Josh!

titimylove

trees are phenomenal. where would we be without em, i ask you? thank fuck for trees. god bless. here are some of my faves:

lilac, horse chestnut, wisteria, japanese maple

edenfenixblogs

Omg those are so GORGEOUS!!!!!!

If we are talking faves I LOVE a weeping willow tree

I also love aspen trees.

I love their contrasty little trunks.

And I love their little coin-like leaves

And I love how when you lay beneath them it feels like they extend upward forever.

And I love how they group together like little they are all friends

ziskeyt

APPLE TREES!! (all these other trees are good and gorgeous as well)

edenfenixblogs

Hell yeah!!! 🍎 🍏🍎

princeofbadassery

My two favorite tree facts:

The biggest organism on Earth in terms of weight and landmass is actually an aspen tree! Pando is a single male aspen tree that lives over 106 acres with an estimated 47.000 individual stems, all genetically identical and connected via a root network.

Trees don't belong in a single taxonomic group! Many trees aren't closely related; they are sometimes more closely related to some type of grass than to each other. We just ended up with a whole lot of different species of plants that thought a long, hard trunk and lots of leaves were good things to evolve into.

edenfenixblogs

This is fantastic to know!!!!!!!

Also I didn’t think I could love aspen trees any more but now I do! I’m a Pando Stan!