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my amygdala grates

Posted on November 23, 2022 by istsfor manity

The Apotheosis of the Crab

What if what I wanted to write what didn’t need to be written?

What is this strange atmosphere that has settled over me?

One of my holy ghosts has scrammed for a patch of stratocumulus, and I feel a tenth of a degree colder.

I’ve patched my pants and holes appear on my socks. I darn my socks and my amygdala grates itself and hides in the parmesan container in the cheese drawer. The cheese drawer wishes to paint vibrant watercolors depicting scenes from Alice In Wonderland, as Salvador Dalí did—it claims to have always aspired to high surrealism, and to have read André Breton’s oeuvre. Breton’s ghost invites one of my holy ghosts over to his cloud perch, and the ouroboros renews itself.

And I’ve yet to write what didn’t need to be read.

And a strange atmosphere is just descending.

And one of my holy ghosts remains still.

And I’m still warm.

What I’m Reading:

“He took film of sunsets and cloud and sky water and tree film and projected color in vast reflector screens concentrating blue sky red sun green grass and the city dissolved in light and people walked through each other—“

— William S. Burroughs / Nova Express

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Collage, Creative Writing, Dada, Dream Notation, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

in my neighborhood pt.19

Posted on November 22, 2022 by istsfor manity

What I’m Reading:

“If developing countries can not pay their debts everyone will suffer. If we do not take care of poorer countries the well-being of richer countries is not going to last and we will not be able to continue living in the way we have been for much longer.”

— Thich Nhat Hahn / The Heart of Understanding

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Random Sights with Signs, Writing | Leave a comment

see my altar

Posted on November 21, 2022 by istsfor manity

The Best Stuff I Read Yesterday

“I will cease waiting for someone to do something about the war, the walls, the guns, the drugs, the stupidity of leaders, and ally myself with citizens who practice the art of tossing their shoes at heads of state.”

— Sandra Cisneros / “Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew”

“Go to a ball game. Watch the fans in the stand.
Watch the irrational fits of anger. Watch the uncontrolled frustration bubbling forth from people that masquerades under the guise of enthusiasm or team spirit. Booing, catcalls, and unbridled egotism in the name of team loyalty, drunkenness, fights in the stands these are people trying desperately to release tension from within; these are not people who are at peace with themselves.”

— Bhante Guranatana / Mindfulness in Plain English

“*Delay can be a tactical tool of control. I have noticed that misogynists are often late. They make you wait so that your confidence and certainty evaporate. They arrive and seamlessly grab the reins you didn’t even realize you dropped.”

— Meg Ramey / Begin By Telling

“We need each others’
breathing, warmth, surviving
is the only war
we can afford, stay”

— Margaret Atwood / “They are hostile nations”

“cop27 is one more reminder, however, that justice only proceeds, fitfully, through politics. Rebalancing the world’s wealth, even a little, is the trickiest of political tasks. Yet our chances for a livable world may depend on it.”

— Bill McKibben / “How To Pay For Climate Justice When Polluters Have All The Money”

“You have to work for the survival of the other side if you want to survive yourself. It is really very simple. Survival means the survival of humankind as a whole, not just a part of it.”

— Thich Nhat Hahn / The Heart of Understanding

“On Day of the Dead I ask you to come
home with me to see my altar.
That’s a better line than come and see my etchings.”

— Sandra Cisneros / “Dia de los Muertos”

What I’m Listening To:

“I can’t sleep at night
But that’s all right
The M.D. tells me
My heart’s on strike
Emanating, originating from a love asphyxiation”

— Issac Hayes / “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Fiction, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Nonfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

does not work

Posted on November 20, 2022 by istsfor manity

Uh…

This system does not work.

Desist.

What I’m Reading:

“Soon enough me and the United States of America will be dust.”

— Meg Ramey / Begin By Telling

Posted in Writing | Tagged Blackout Poetry, Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Cut-Up Writing, Dream Notation, Erasure Poetry, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

swagger of hope

Posted on November 19, 2022 by istsfor manity

i dreamt

i dreamt myself into being
at the aperture of solitary sanguinity
it was somewhere near the sun
for i felt the furnace heat

the cold tried to muscle through
but it was kept at bay
in darkness

i dreamt myself into a foray of nucleotides
so base in the compound of life
compacted, refracted, primordial
i felt the furnace heat

death
in its infinite darkness
was away at hermitage

i dreamt myself into a swagger of hope
the heat and the hate sloughed away
a second skin
barren husk

i hissed at the universe—
sir,
i exist!

i dreamt
that i dreamt
at the bottom
of a dream

What I’m Reading:

“Everyone tells everybody else to write on water if he wants a durable medium. I hired a durable medium once and got to talk to everyone of Karl Marx’s imitations of Attila the Hun.”

— John McKernan / “Dear Y.”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

trouble falling asleep

Posted on November 18, 2022 by istsfor manity

The Vow (redux)

He read that men who have trouble falling asleep have a twenty five percent chance of dying earlier.

He vowed to never sleep again.

What I’m Reading:

“We must look death in the face, recognize and accept it, just as we look at and accept life.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh / The Miracle of Mindfulness

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Death, Dream Notation, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

your morning ablutions

Posted on November 17, 2022 by istsfor manity

Bade an Aubade to Bad (redux)

You must remember an aubade is a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning.
You must remember your rituals—your morning ablutions.
You must remember the wine colored stains on the walls of your coffin length room.
You must remember that all you need to speak, or write, are seven words daily, and then you’ve used your allotment.
You must remember silence is best after that.
You must remember: every dawn is an apocalypse.

What I’m Reading:

“We both worked honestly at our jobs: all day Death
destroyed traffic with wailing ambulances while I killed
hours & lines on eight-&-a-half by eleven inch pages.”

— Laure-Anne Bosselaar / “Late Afternoon Stroll on the Cliffs”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Death, Dream Notation, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Post-Apocalypse, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

he had rounds

Posted on November 16, 2022 by istsfor manity

Work (redux)

Darkness begat a child—
His name was Death.
He had rounds to make,
Appointments to keep,
And so he went to work.

What I’m Reading:

“There’s something indecorous about measuring a corpse for their coffin, like measuring the inseam of a man’s leg at a gentleman’s tailor.”

— Alistair McCartney / The Disintegrations

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Death, Dream Notation, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Quotes, Writing | Leave a comment

gimcrack tchotchke addict

Posted on November 15, 2022 by istsfor manity

Signs & Legends

There is no legacy in semiotics, she thought—nothing to tether to—not land, historical connection, cultural heritage—it was a deep deracination. She found no reason for planting any of her own signs, for setting her own roots, for begetting generations. She expected another apocalyptic culling—this one global. So why read signs?

Take a blithe light around the blockyard, you. Just leave me alone. You gimcrack tchotchke addict. Get your orgiastic superstars elsewhere, maybe at the Debauched Mart—they’re open 24 hours. Be off with you … and your pedestrian fish pix. So, again, why read signs?

What I’m Reading:

“There’s no way to overthrow the system without going outside and making some eye contact. No matter how small your carbon footprint, you can’t simply forgo food and comfort and sex all your life and call yourself ethically self-sacrificial.”

— Tess Gunty / The Rabbit Hutch