Author Archives: istsfor manity

The Allegory of the Falling Sky The sky was breaking into bite-sized chunks and falling on Panfilo’s front yard.  The pieces fell and accumulated into a forty foot-high pyramid that dwarfed Panfilo’s poor house.  People came from miles around to … Continue reading →

The Dry Descent or: the 2,000 Mile Walk and the Obloquy of a King, a Demigod, and the Author Himself The Descent: I hear a cry – the lamentation of a dying man.  I turn, strain to see.  Nothing.  I … Continue reading →

Che Guevara’s Bequest:  Vallegrande, Bolivia, 1967 A tinny mambo is piped from the room spewing sick yellow-green fluorescence.   The radiator squeals,  brass electrodes buzz; blood-crusted, unnoticed, Che Guevara’s finger lies in a dusty corner   covered with mites escaping  … Continue reading →

(click on the play button above and watch my short film peripeteia) Some More Words To Live By (First, you’ll find intercalated pustules of censer smoke ringed by ferrules of frankincense in your heart.  They were placed there by us.  … Continue reading →

The Arkansas Fluke I ate the wrong crawfish on my first float trip.  It really wasn’t wrong, but eating it raw sure was.  A specialized blood test found a lung fluke eating me from the inside out.  I didn’t like … Continue reading →

Words To Live By  When you hit the wall, son: Avoid obfuscation.   Eschew the picayune.   Think big, boy.     Pray every day.   Do right.   Go to church.   Go to work.     Bypass tontines. … Continue reading →

Tuesday / Wednesday  Tuesday: Happy Face I trap my shadow.   I pin it by footpad to the concrete.   I crush it.     Last night’s mark,  A happy face not yet faded,  Smiles on the interior of my wrist. … Continue reading →

Four Postcards 09/11/2002 Nightmare and pain.  Couldn’t take the city anymore.   I moved to Pittsburgh hoping to get away from today.  What I was thinking?!  TV drones on & on.  It happened in PA too.   Spent the day at … Continue reading →

In This Hole “I liked my little hole, / Its window facing a brick wall.”  — Charles Simic, “Hotel Insomnia” I live in a parallel universe of my own devising.  I live most of my days in a dank cell, … Continue reading →

You Can’t Fool the Fleas of the Revolution  by Dr. Clodomira Garcia-Borges Cienfuegos, PhD “The absentminded conservator left the bestiary door open on his desk… and now the cavorting beasties escape one by one.”  – J. Ignatius, “The Revolt of … Continue reading →