iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 5h

night in tunisia is my favorite joint over errthang... i even have several versions on a single playlist; ive written it into poems for 20 yrs (boiled down into this single senryu for The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife) - AND i love chaka khan... so why isnt this on my playlist?!?!

a night in tunisia apple playlist of a dozen or so artists playing that song

A NIGHT IN TUNISIA (ALTERNATE SOLO)

your body is my
bazaar - swap-meet’s black t’rific
an allaying love.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026

how did this little cart of books escape alt text in the original post?!

a little wheeled cart storing books & a variety of mails and papers

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026

literally, if there's a flat surface in our home then there's a stack of books on it. not even counting the nooks, crannies, and secret cabinets holding books. i figure we have about 6 yrs before we hafta toss out dishes & put books in the cupboards. then in the microwave. then atop/in the fridge.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026

the black experience in america: realizing racists are on the way to cause you great bodily harm and yet you still gon grab a handful of butterscotch candies out the candy jar as you start fleeing for your life.

screenshot of uncle george (lovecraft country) getting up from a restaurant diner table with great haste while grabbing a handful of candy on his way out.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026

Little Richard, NYC, 1975 by Stephanie Chernikowski

photo of a black man with thin mustache and a tremendously coifed bouffant hairstyle that is nearly so large as to appear comical, but extravaganza had become richard's branding by the time of this photo and was cool.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 03/10/2026

altho there's a long tradition of black folk with fish atop their heads, my doodle was actually inspired by the man with a small child atop his.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 03/10/2026

*❤️ me & old faithful, back together again for the next 7 months ❤️* if there's a photo of me online over the past decade then there's a 70% chance im wearing this hoodie. i posted a doodle on IG in 2016 and a friend in louisville had it made into a bunch of shirts. been inseparable ever since. 😊

me in a black hoodie with an illustration in white

original illustration used on the hoodie i wear in the first photo of man with stubbly beard wearing a fish across his head like a hat and atop the fish is an actual hat; the shirt the illustration wears says "talk to the fish"

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026

not a werewolf from outerspace but close enough, i think...

painted illustration of a shocked alien space gorilla coming home to find it infested with barely-clad bride-of-frankenstein pests.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026

#twopageplustuesday The Witch’s Titty Has A Cold Nipple (& Still I Choose To Suckle) Blues

The Witch’s Titty Has A Cold Nipple (& Still I Choose To Suckle) Blues

ornithology filled the moon
on the night that i was born
said Charlie Parker was my God
on the night Mama spat me out
- i’m an innercity
auspex reading half-eaten
chicken wings in the gutters of a curb.
said: i was an astrological concierge
catchin’ trains and jumpin tracks
where a Nigga’s soul is dark alluvium
at the bottom of his words
i was raised on Witch’s Titty
and i suckled all the sauces, swallowed
African Sorcery’s every ounce

said: i said some fancy magic shit,
skippin’ stars like stones
across your senses; reckless eyes a’rollin’
your 2 tongues just a-click-clackin’

listen,
i was raised high on salience
lips braised (until bruised) on The Holy Breasts
of Mother Ma’at; Joseph’s Mary rolled me in her womb,
until Jesus, jealous, spat into my bourbon & yelled
it’s time i met my maker
— HA!

but on death-threats i slept.

said: my somnifacience
oscillates like owl-shit on a shoulder-blade,
what a beauty mark to behold
but i’m not the kind of blue
to suppress hexes out of hue
and like any Shining Black X, it isnt
something to make me lose confidence
in what i’m doing. you see,
Auset is such a songstress
her teeth crusted in diamonds and kohl,
she’s been my waitress many years;
keeps her stockings full of switchblade,
has my back where i am blind.
i’m grand sommelier of all the shadows
& my Wadjet always watches.
said: croon me and i surface;
huff and puff and i appear.
Brother Khepra keeps all my secrets;
Albert Ayler tracks the score.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026

this looks similar to the proposed designsfor a mixed-use collection of buildings proposed in louisville back in the 90s before we turned chickenshit & more conservative. it was to be "chair-like" with 4 separate buildings as "legs" & a vertical "seat" connecting them that wouldve housed a MoMA +

“De Rotterdam” (2009-13) Mixed Use Towers in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, designed by Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf and Ellen van Loon (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

the photo is of 4 or so office towers that kind of resemble larger rectangles placed vicariously atop other smaller rectangles.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri I Want Diane Seuss to Teach Me How to Become a Man congratulations: Daniel's collection, Son in a Wild God’s Arms, has been picked up by University Press of Kentucky.

I Want Diane Seuss to Teach Me How to Become a Man

after Diane Seuss’s “Romantic Poet”

by Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri

I cherish the boys who cry in parking lots, who lean against dented Hondas
holding their faces. I love the boys who apologize to stray cats after scaring
them away. The ones who carry flowers badly, stems bent in their sweating
fists. But mostly, let’s be honest, I like Diane Seuss for the way she makes
ruin sit down beside beauty without either one pretending. Ostensibly,
becoming a man is less about hardening and more about surviving softness.
Don’t laugh. I grew up believing manhood was a locked jaw, a fist through
drywall, a silence thick as wet cement. But Diane Seuss writes men like
weathered barns still standing after years of snow and bad harvest. She
lets them ache openly. Lets them fail magnificently. Lets them drink
coffee at midnight while admitting they are lonely. And inside my own
body, under the borrowed swagger, under the deep voice I practice on
buses, there is a small frightened animal wanting permission to stay gentle.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

bell held audience at both versions of the bookstore... she is deeply missed.

bell addressing an unseen audience near a wall of used books

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

if i deleted backed-up pix from google cloud i wouldnt haffa pay that $2 fee for extra storage... 😑

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 25/09/2026

me, after taking crystal to the airport then loading up on funyuns and bugles...

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 25/09/2026

that time when black men from greensville sc enlisted for ww1 & their wives wanted to stay home & take care of their kids & other community folk in need but white officials "no, no, no!" & called them "loafers" and said they had to do domestic work for white folks or be fined or jailed.

newspaper headline saying "negro women to be put to work" or face severe punishment.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026

ive heard of killing joke but couldnt name a member... im a little more familiar now:

When asked about his perspective on the United States in a May 2013 interview, Coleman explained:

"It's different from 30 years ago. There's no rebellion left. Everyone is just a passive zombie. Food supply has something to do with it – it's dumbed down everyone to obese, lethargic corpses ... People are worn down ... It's a fragmented society. People have access now to amazing amounts of information, but their attention spans are getting shorter, their focus is gone. Instant gratification. Instant knowledge orgasm! I think that a lot of the great thinkers couldn't achieve what they did through a computer."

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026

we used to store our favorite books in it but now it's more like book purgatory... books enter and are never seen again.

one of the cabinet thingie's door is open to reveal books shelved within it.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026

welcome to today's american educational system sourced by every teacher or professor you know from grade school to grad school:

photo of a man in protest holding a large sheet of white construction board with "alice cooper got his name from a witch" in tall red letters

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

*submits my poetry collection to Little Golden Books*

photo of A Little Golden Book's The Poky Little Puppy illustrated with a brown & white puppy interacting with a tiny lizard and a caterpillar

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

upfromsumdirt’s TALES TO ADMONISH — weekend edition

$upfromsumdirt’s TALES TO ADMONISH — weekend edition as if écriture féminine or else écriture from a black legume this morsel of word a metaphor for personal meaning without the season of deciduous white befalling allow me to appall ourselves — self-befelled / a cauling / a compelling: the tongue overblackened with bounteous life ah́ọn - yoruba lam - wolof íré - igbo uliki - swahili ah́ọnology? ah́ọníré? (ahọ́n + íré… but that’s “tongue tongue” & that’s silly) allow me to write a biangular reapproach — andika - again, swahili or kuandika? the corpse reaching back, poaches its own ghost but what’s the african american mouth if not already an amalgam of africa? transatlantic blvkc triangular: kuandah́ọníré? kuandahọ́níré | kwand-ahūn-ē-ray | noun in black fractal surrealism, to write the double tongue see: codespeak see: self-interiority, self-divine; a liberation that licenses itself see: what the black mama sees without the weight of mama see: stay your lane; mind your business see: négritude for post-panafricanism black theory devoid of interloping white weariness each Handbook… every Manifesto… made Goal/Mine Ọlọrun allows us here for this exact thesis.$

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

something is inherently sick & broken within converse now... somewhere there's a very damning memo circulating throughout that company.

converse's australia/new zealand ad featuring a kid on a ladder and holding pair of sneakers dangling from the tree above him.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

the fancy pizzeria crys met her students at makes its own ho-ho and i have never been so loved!

photo of a chocolate puck of cake with icing and a cream filling.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026

ive posted this before, saying baldwin & achebe look like they solving crimes along the african coast (real location was florida, 1980)... but there was something to that decade that was pure & golden until reagonomics brought it all crashing down, bringing us to where we are now.

james baldwin & chinua achebe in sunglasses walking a florida beach with the ocean behind them.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026

keith haring, grace jones, fela kuti, and jean-michel basquiat photographed by andy warhol. at mr. chow, nyc (june 1986)

a white man, a jamaican woman, an african man, and a black man walk into a restaurant....

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026

colorized photo of a Mombasa woman holding a small dik-dik antelope.

photo of a dark-skinned african woman wearing a white dress with lacy coverings and a red swirling turban. a very small dik-dik (maybe a bit larger than an average adult cat) sits on her forearm, across her belly, while her other hand holds its front legs. this original image was sepia in color, but has been colorized by other means, if not by hand then digitally.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 15/09/2026

ufsd, black poet with illuminated manuscript

BLACK POET WITH ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT

i ride a giant
bunny onto battlefields
morning star for tail

my angry lapin
“tommie smith”, my tommy gun
to suppress the hate

armored up, teeth sharp
manuscript raised to bludgeon
no quarter given.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 14/09/2026

if youre into appalachian noir then check out mr. browne's They All Fall The Same or Hillbilly Hustle - your favorite retailer will have it or will happily order it for you.

photo of wes holding up copies of his two books

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 13/09/2026

the original cover for the collection was much more "illuminated" but since we were using a letterpress to do the cover their was too much going on with the colors to print it correctly.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

honored to have the tail end of my poem, Where Fireflies Come From, as epigraph to Andrew's book (poetry ending spoiler alert)

but what's all this to do
with the genesis of fireflies?

the long fable short:

she laughs;
then they exist.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

get it from your favorite indie bookseller...

photo of the book, Hollow Folk, an appalachian gothic horror romance, by andrew k. clark

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

just finished my reading at the wonderful Plott Hound Books in Burnsville, NC and up next: @theandrewkclark.bsky.social

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

the bond among the appalachian literary community is one of the strongest things to bear witness to. @williecarver.bsky.social's introduction of @crystalwilki.bsky.social was heartfelt & genuine. & im biased af, but crystal is about as intellectually close to being "the next toni" as anyone.

photo of willie standing behind a mic'ed up podium as he introduces crystal

photo of crystal sitting on stage in a teal rocking chair as she talks to the audience and reads from her memoir, praisesong for the kitchen ghosts.

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maniacally abstrack black @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 11/09/2026

today's science fact: sticking one of your legs out helps improve poor eyesight when reading & now you know 😑

photo of a fat man in denim overalls and yellow tennis shoes sitting down and reading from a book in the sanctuary of a church.

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