alex guenther
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guentheralex.bsky.social
alex guenther
@guentheralex.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.3K following 5.3K posts
teacher and writer living in bangkok. poetry at https://alexguentherpoetry.wordpress.com/
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guentheralex.bsky.social
planet waves also strong contender for most wretched album art in history (a bob original)
look away, i'm hideous
December 4, 2025 at 3:34 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
the catastrophically badly-titled bob dylan album "Planet Waves" almost had an arguably even worse name ("Wedding Song"), but it also almost had the most metal album title in history ("Ceremonies of the Horsemen")
The album was originally set to be titled Ceremonies of the Horsemen, a reference to the song "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", from the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home; the release was delayed two weeks when Dylan decided to change the title at the last minute. Another, earlier, working title was Wedding Song.
December 4, 2025 at 3:32 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
i went from owning no dip pens to learning that a handful of japanese companies still make the nibs ... promarily for manga artists (!!!!) and owning more nibs than i'm comfortable discussing within two weeks or so
tachikawa spoon nib being brandished above an inkpot
December 4, 2025 at 1:48 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
true story; the light's been lovely the past few mornings. and there is a shuttered old house between the condos with hundreds of pigeons infesting the roof
pigeons, bangkok morning, a mansion condos, golden morning light, oddly clear air for bangkok
December 4, 2025 at 1:44 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
today's ekphrastic hiroshige petrarchan #sonnet draft. after writing so many of these almost every single day for several years i have absolutely no idea if it's any good or not. thanks for reading. #poetry
16. sumida river, snowy morning. half-floating heaviness, a burden bright and ghostly, it descended without sound when only the night-watchman was around, enveloping our houses over night with utmost gentleness, without a fight established eerie omnipresence. ground and thatching, stone and wood alike are crowned by cold accumulation. what’s in sight is utterly unlike all that we know is ordinary underneath - then drips and avalanches start, we’ve got to trudge and sweep and shovel - trickles form a flow; the fragile veil of crusted crystal slips, transmuting into memory and sludge. a woodblock print of a snowy japanese village on a river
November 27, 2025 at 12:30 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
haven't been posting them but i've still been writing a petrarchan sonnet every morning. here's today's, from an ekphrastic sequence on hiroshige prints. thanks for reading!
12. suruga. miho no matsubara. her apparition’s immanence, the fact that everyone here claims it happened, lends the sandy grove - the way that branch’s bends are almost like an outstretched arm, that cracked and twisted trunk a torquing torso wracked by centuries of seawind’s buffets - blends the sensible and what’s beyond, appends invisible significance, impact of absent presences. here’s where she stood, or here, or here; here’s where her cloak was found, or wasn’t, with the mountain’s silent rise beyond it all. the mountain and the wood are places where the powers of the ground and air are evident - to others’ eyes. pilot dip fountain pen and this sonnet in a stalogy b6 woodcut print - a pine grove on the beach with fuji in the background. setting of a myth about a magical being slash swan lady who lost her feathered cloak here
November 13, 2025 at 11:20 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
as the storm sweeps through
nothing isn't clarified
by being obscured.

#haiku #poetry
bangkok vanishes in a rainstorm, aside from the new buildings across the park, which look cool
November 13, 2025 at 1:17 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
clearing storm, the damp
concrete of the westin's bulk;
brutal, sodden thoughts.

#haiku #poetry
soi 21. the korean baptist church on the left, the westin on the right, both pretty damp and brutal looking
November 12, 2025 at 12:10 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
scum on the canal
pirouettes; sunlight on leaves
passing busses strum.

#haiku #poetry
bangkok - flecks of detergent downstream from a massage parlor or laundromat on a pretty gunked-up stretch of canal by the korean baptist church on soi 21
November 9, 2025 at 12:17 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
(i stole that from the subtitle of this good book)
Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention Book by Ben Wilson
November 7, 2025 at 12:48 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
is it just me or does hokkaido always somehow look like it's upside-down?
a package with a little map of hokkaido on it. looks odd IMO. kind of... upside-down.
November 5, 2025 at 11:22 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
i know this is wishful thinking on my part. this is just a coincidence. but still, in a sane world... lol
404 error on boatersfortrump.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:14 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
article on "7 surprising health benefits of honey" was just "it has some antioxidants, which are maybe good?" plus 6 obvious filler items like "smear it on your wounds(?)". oh well. i will continue my new regimen of a medicinal shot glass of honey every evening, because i bought way too much honey.
honey
October 30, 2025 at 1:09 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
javan souvenir
hoarded for a year or so;
bottled blossoms bloom.

#haiku #poetry
a little jar of honey from java, emptied into a little measuring glass. it tasted not sweet but tart, floral, hint of vanilla maybe. something unusual i couldn't identify.
October 28, 2025 at 1:55 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
new system i haven't worked the kinks out of yet - but i have sorted roughly 5-10 books in 5-10 categories on my e-reader, and i try to read at least 1 book from each category for around 20m before bed, ending with fiction
October 26, 2025 at 12:15 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
i realized recently that during college i thought HD and Æ were the same person. like my brain just saw two initials and never inquired further into the matter. both excellent! but not the same person!
October 23, 2025 at 1:39 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
this part of town was very crumbling and sad before and during covid... it's heaving with tourists now. glad for the locals, but... i kind of don't want to come here any more #sonnet #poetry
old town. to sense the way it’s changed, you had to be here when it was an eyesore, when the street was empty shopfronts, cratered in defeat and reeking of old garlic; all you’d see was moss on crumbling plaster masonry like shattered tropic ruins (rain and heat descend in alternating waves to beat the vigor out of everything) complete decrepitude, somnolent shadows, faint and sorrowful near-silence. here things dripped and mewed and fluttered, voices mute (a cough behind a wooden shutter, maybe). paint and cash won’t compensate for what they ripped away, when renovations here took off. me drinking extremely overpriced pourover in la cabra, writing this just now with a platinum prefounte fountain pen
October 23, 2025 at 9:22 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
today's quick draft #sonnet #poetry. thanks for reading! 🦈🦈🦈
the dive. avoiding a decision, he decides to travel until he grows old and tires of everything, a motion that inspires more motion. caught up in this rush, he slides to greater depths; inertia of these glides soon takes him past where most descend. the fires that urged him on now fading, he requires more than this headlong heedlessness that hides a lack of purpose. looking all around, he doesn’t know what got him to this place or where the surface lies - what fills his head is that he did not choose this outcome. drowned or crushed by pressure, frozen, starved - his race will end with silent bones on ocean-bed. notebook, coffee, fountain pen
October 22, 2025 at 8:57 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
four to six a.m.,
counting each breath in and out;
deep woods, skittish deer.

#haiku #poetry
this haiku and the platinum prefounte fountain pen that wrote it. muji espresso. pilot shin ryoku ink. small part of a man's pant-clad thigh
October 21, 2025 at 9:26 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
new #sonnet. true story of when i got a bit upset for a while about something yesterday. thanks for reading! #poetry
panic. an instant, and impenetrable gloom’s descending, blinding me, converting street to blur and shade; i’m frozen in complete despair and panic. everyone assumes they’ll be heroic when disaster looms, but i’m suspended. calling it defeat is understatement - thoughts alone unseat my faculties at once; the shock entombs and paralyzes. all i smell is ash and putrefaction, all i feel is numb, incapable of thought beneath the blades of anxious inner agony. i thrash in terror - then you mention that it’s dumb to overthink this, and the moment fades. a sonnet, a jinhao 9019 fountain pen, and a mug that claims "50 never looked so good"
October 21, 2025 at 1:49 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
new #sonnet (written just minutes ago, might have typos, trying not to care - see poem for details). thanks for reading!
the hem. i can’t go back again, and if i could it wouldn’t be the same, or just as good as going forward; choices must be made in any case, and debts must be repaid through karma. leaves have fallen, beards have greyed - but what else is the summer for? the wood must winter, or the spring’s a sham. i should recall these tattered truisms, abrade my palms against the stony truth that here, that now, are (by the time i think of them) already past - the current that i flail against is past now; afterthought and fear are never about now - i clutch the hem of one who’s just brushed by, and so i fail. sonnet with the enormous jinhao 9019 fountain pen next to it and a little sketch of a person literally clutching at a hem
October 20, 2025 at 3:26 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
silted up below
light's recessional; bereft
slough of bone and blood.

#haiku #poetry
sunset, bangkok traffic
October 17, 2025 at 1:36 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
everything we'd known
devastated; burrowed snake's
planter smashed to shards.

#haiku #poetry
October 16, 2025 at 1:52 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
today's draft #sonnet. i've still been writing one a day, but they are all backed up in a notebook. trying to carve out more editing time #poetry
the void. there’s nothing in my head at all, a gap of absence where the substance isn’t there - like at the top or bottom of a stair where foot predicts a reaffirming tap but lurches through a lack; confusing slap of long expected matter missing, scare of sudden shattered bulb, a shadow-flare that leaves me blind and thrashing, thunderclap that silences abruptly - and i flail in measureless abysses, in the dark where nothing’s there to push or pull against to grant the least momentum. as i fail to orient myself, you are a spark no longer there, an aftering, unsensed. a construction site in bangkok with a giant muddy hole and a big tangle of rebar
October 16, 2025 at 1:31 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
think new interest in japanese ink painting is good for my brain. needs decisive strokes, can't be retouched, so just have to resolve to keep trying and not feel bad no matter what. this is day 4. can't do bamboo leaves properly yet, (i think i need to move from elbow, not wrist?) but... see above.
a not very skilled ink painting of bamboo on one a6 notebook page
October 15, 2025 at 11:17 AM