I. Shadow
This is the final
resting place
for my shadow.
II. Rock
The moon wanes
as we drop our rock
into the darkness.
Our rock unbroken; in dust,
in mud, over spur,
in sag, over scree
and talus — unchanged. The rock,
infrangible, rolls.
What I’m Reading:
“It’s a strange sensation to yell out: This is me! /
In every place I’ve watched / caravans of sorrow— /
I run like all the other men, chasing my / shadow down alleys.”
— Cheswayo Mphanza / “Frame Six”
I. Cathedral
We float in a melancholy aura
crying onion-eyed tears.
The spires gleam like forceps
extracting the sun from the sky.
II. Spheres
Pomodoro cut holes
of obtuse logic
from fecund metal spheres.
The lawn overcome—
cloud shadow spreading—
recalling last night’s dream:
the bottom of the well,
fetid water,
roiling
larvae.
What I’m Reading:
“It’s just that some people can do things, and others can’t . . . It couldn’t be any simpler. People do what they can get away with.”
— Mieko Kawakami / Heaven
(Fade Out / 8 channels of noise : one channel of noise drops out every 30 seconds until there is silence)
Voiceover In Search Of A Film: Soft antennae entertainment turned minds to mush. Mush was the preferred texture of pablum eaters the world over. Overcome with cathexis via parapraxis trying to gauge the thickness of the Foley catheter.
A: Catheter? Did you say catheter?
S: Are we talking about the indwelling and suprapubic type catheters?
A: This isn’t your typical prime time fare, you know. You know it must be.
S: It must be. Isthmus B? Be you choosing Isthmus B? Isthmus of Perekop?
A: Are you insane, man? You can’t get anywhere near that today—mines, errant shells, ravenous drones on the prowl for heat signatures . . . No. New.
S: New world Isthmusesesess. (Did I just neologize?) what about the Isthmus of Panama?
A: Why has this turned into some sort of geography thing? What is this about?
S: What is anything about?
A: About 6 feet 3 inches, 224 pounds—a strapping lad!
S: You, my friend, have lost your yarbles.
A: You mean marbles?
S: What’d I say?
A: Yarbles . . . Maybe that’s the parapraxis, and this is all about quasi-urinary tract issues.
S: Hmm?
A: Where were we?
S: I think we’ve lost the plot.
A: Was there ever one?
S: One is born and then one dies.
A: Dies? What about all the other stuff in between?
S: Indeed.
A: In deed?
S: Indeed.
A: I’m sorry I have to stop here. You’ve put me in a sad state of mind.
S: Mind you, pal. Go on with your bad self. Scat.
A: Scat?
S: Scat!
A: Boop-be-boop. Wada, wada, wap, doo, wah. Wee, do, do.
S: What the fuh— What are you doing?
A: I’m scatting.
S: Not that. Not that scat!
A: Well, why didn’t you say. (Drops his pants)
(Rimshot heard off stage / Silence / Fade In)
What I’m Reading:
“I got a feeling like scenic railways in the stomach—”
— William S. Burroughs / Nova Express
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 this because women don’t generally like men with parasites in their lungs. I was scared that I’d have this fluke in my lungs for twenty years. Then a secondary infection led to the removal of fifty percent of my left lung. After six weeks I went home, I was feeling like myself. Now I drive a pick-up. I like that, it looks pretty.
What I’m Reading:
“Listen, if there is a hell, we’re in it. And if there’s a heaven, we’re already there. This is it.”
— Mieko Kawakami / Heaven
Overheard at the last concert before the pandemic (January 25, 2020) . . .
The most important band that people don’t know.
I first heard this song while taking a shower in a Czech hotel.
I love how the riff is just a couple of distorted noisy notes through a delay pedal.
I love it when he sings in different languages.
Drugs, man. That’s the only explanation for this.
The time signature and textures shifted various times in the first minute, not what I was expecting.
Imagine if radio played good music like this.
This song has no melody, is disturbing, and makes a person feel messed up in the head.
It swallowed my soul—consumed—I will never, ever be the same.
Imagine being a hateful teen and discovering a band that is an audible version of what you can’t get out.
Their new stuff is good, too.
What I’m Reading:
“In my honor they will one day name and electrify a chair.”
— Ben Lerner / Angle of Yaw
Overheard at the artillery field…
Let’s take out that minuscule target with a 240 mm cannonade.
No need to sight anything let’s just shoot willy nilly.
Let’s just load them up and fire and screw the captains and the colonels.
Let’s shoot everything that moves: officers, infantry, birds, planes, squirrels, deer, and deer flies.
Let’s kill everything, blow on pinwheels, and shoot ourselves in the head with our sidearms.
Whattaya’ say, A.? Whattaya’ say?
I wanna kill everybody, too.
Boy they trained us well.
I say, what the hell? Why not?
They’re using us for fodder.
Why don’t we get them before they get us—kill stuff— and run pell-mell into some fusillade?
Let’s do it, S. Let’s do it.
Pinwheels turned.
Someone fired.
What I’m Reading:
“All that day I felt like that, like the sound of future bombs might dissipate, become no more than white noise like the freeway or the sea, or that I might stop hearing them altogether. Sleep like who I was before I knew any better.”
— Vanessa Veselka / Zazen
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What I’m Reading:
“The worst is to come. Everything leads to nothing: future tense; past tense; present tense. Perfect. The final question is, Can nothing be made meaningful? Isn’t that the final question? If not, the end is at hand.”
— John Barth / “Title”
There were no soft monsters last night—but a hue blue neural synapse saved a receding shadow.
I was sitting on a bar in a bird cage. I was naked. A black shape behind me, on my shoulder, picked at my neck.
A dripping voice: You shouldn’t hold it like that.
A lilting bass-drawl: It’s a woodpecker. It’s a blackbird.
It sank its talons—a jackhammer-mad bird. The pain searing. Electric. My transparent hands swatting at air.
What I’m Reading:
“War A is going well and no longer a threat, small and mature. Like a bonsai. War B is in full flower. Its thin green shoots reaching across the ocean floor like fiber optic cable.”
— Vanessa Veselka / Zazen
This is a new art / new ideas
Mark making implement . . .
And this is another—the same
It seems.
And this one appears silver but it’s the same—
Just a different shade.
This is the last implement of the four.
Why do words always intrude?
What I’m reading:
“When you reside in a city which isn’t the city of your childhood, whatever you perceive lacks the resonance of memory.”
— Kathy Acker / Empire of the Senseless
A slack holograph lives here
It pulses enigma and horror
It is, to obliterate all,
Missing a watchman—
There is no byproduct
There is no “is”—
There is hornet and horsefly.
There is no sleep—
Sleep eludes us.
What I’m Reading:
“… my neighbor hates me. she’s blocked off the window. there’s no light, everything is dark, she’s closed me in. she thinks she owns the light. she raised the cats, and then they came to my house.”
— Julia Wong Kcomt / “woman eaten by cats”
thee istsfor manity reader 