alex guenther
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guentheralex.bsky.social
alex guenther
@guentheralex.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.3K following 5.2K posts
teacher and writer living in bangkok. poetry at https://alexguentherpoetry.wordpress.com/
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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
guentheralex.bsky.social
sudden new interest... bought all the main calligraphy supplies ten years ago when we left japan but have done nothing with them but some attempts at sutra copying. second photo is not supposed to be a good picture, just testing out my notebook (i have not read any of the books yet)
six-seven books on japanese ink painting testing if the ink ruins my notebook
October 12, 2025 at 12:31 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
i never walk home this late... full moon or nearly so
bangkok a couple nights ago
October 11, 2025 at 8:10 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
fun lil #sonnet just written during a break at work. thanks for reading! #poetry
ellen ripley. emerging from suspension (hissing lock of cryogenic chamber, roiling steam like liquid nitrogen, relentless beam of scanning laser); pins-and-needles shock of reigniting neurons, awkward stock responses to embodiment, i teem with unaccustomed feedback as a dream i can’t recall’s withdrawn from me. a clock lays bare how long i’ve been unconscious, shows expanses i have missed; a greater void has opened up to icily replace what used to throb. the vacuum only grows and all that’s left’s a hollow shell, destroyed and derelict, adrift in outer space. an a7 midori notebook with a sonnet in it, a jinhao j10 fountain pen, a mason jar of coffee
October 8, 2025 at 3:07 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
undistinguished veil
over everything, the grey
mist of us alone.

#haiku #poetry
a grey raku chawan with matcha over a rather matching background
October 4, 2025 at 1:21 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
coffee, curry rice,
sudden thrumming thunderstorm,
autumnal unease.
a cup of coffee and a bowl of white rice and japanese curry sauce
October 1, 2025 at 1:31 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
apparatus of
appetite; an alchemy
of addictive ash.

#haiku #poetry
a plethora of pourover coffee paraphernalia arrayed on a counter
September 30, 2025 at 1:32 PM
guentheralex.bsky.social
earlier contender (had the whole set)
charlie brown's 'cyclopedia
September 28, 2025 at 8:43 AM
guentheralex.bsky.social
basically memorized this
the book of lists by wallechinsky, wallace, and wallace
September 28, 2025 at 8:41 AM