Philanthropy feels more like idiopathic shill-anthropy in these waning days of the Anthropocene.
Cleave my heart on your plow, speed the ventricle asunder, and wave the cluster of veins, arteries and capillaries over your head. Oh what a beautiful sight that is.
Are you sick? Are you binging seven hours of last year’s hit cooking show? Is your heartless chest so vacuous that echoes don’t return to you? Your voice lost and splintering in that void becoming a still small accusation pinging away through the universe.
Oh fill me with vile thoughts and spidery venom instead of inoculating me against the COVID-22? Is sars-cov7 on its way? I trust I’ll freeze in the icy winds first.
Has our stately dentist-cum-rep—that “collection of wet toothpicks … who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups”—been swilling the ghoddd sauce again on Mineral Mondays?
Don’t trust anything ghoddd tells you—he carries about an over abundance of lower case “d’s” and an extraneous “h” on him—just in case his hegemonic white masculinity is questioned. No proselytizing to be done, just a beating about the head the with those handy extra “d’s” no telling about the modality and superfluity of the “h.”
Prepare for the smiting. Good for something nothings they be.
I am Idioteque, Arizona! I sing in unison while no one is listening. Stay off my arteries. Clear the streets.
You may turn off your phone now.
“While I was en route to Glasgow, a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me … This dude is a just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway. White supremacy is for extremely fragile people & sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”
— Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez / U.S. Representative, New York
O, pallid bat, wombat, scarlet tanager, marmoset and all the little animals of the world that spark wars and worldwide grief!
Listen! Ye who visit our leaders’ dreams at night and whisper all types of destructive and inhumane council — planting the seeds of war, hyper-capitalism, totalitarianism, and oligarchical greed that passes for socialism in practice — you are on notice.
All these bad ideas are planted by the cutest life forms on planet Earth.
While Attenborough gallivants about the world, here and there, galumphing with whirring machinery in order to show us this and that, and it’s import in the world; he fails to notice what the pretty beasties are doing to our leaders every night — and by extension, what they are doing to our world.
OUR world.
O, low and cavorting bestiary! We shall hunt you out by deforestation, overfishing, pollution, over-development, and wildfire. You shall stop this chimeric invasion into our sleep and equanimity.
We are man! The highest and greatest link in the Great Chain of Being… (sorry, so sorry, dear father)…
We are man! Highest and greatest eminence on the Great Chain of Being here on earth!
We bend the elements to our will — the atoms do our bidding. We will move on beyond this planet, because this is what we do.
So, Red Panda; so, chin strap penguin; so, octopus; so, ring-tailed lemur — we bring you the Anthropocene!
Free of charge — but it will cost you dearly.
I pity the fool-animal earwigging it’s way into our beloved leaders’ ears, in the dead of night, at the hour of fog.
You shall atone!
Then we will flay you, stuff you, catalog you, and put you up on display in a musty diorama — next to the heads of our enemies. Because this is what we are expert at—because this is what we do.
“My goal isn’t to unfold popular music once more, rather it is to speak now to how the animals say it better. “
Ghostwriter, Motorcycle Hero, Appears and Disappears, Disinterested or Shocked, or: The Writerly A.I. Acquires a Moralistic Streak and Leaves Its Aurthorial Responsibility Behind
A small group of kids stand gathered in a circle in a pizza parlor in a sleepy Vermont town. They sing in unison—Ghostwriter motorcycle hero! They slapdash in canticle gavottes and monticule prances.
Jerks are fully requited. Like this, everyone is selfish to parents’ needs. But parents are good for hard, cold cash, and good for a smash to the face—when you talk back at them.
Sam comes into the grumble chamber with Jackson. C.
Veronica F. and Lucrecia sing a rendition of “Day By Day” from Godspell and dance in whirling dervish angles in wafty caftans on gelid gel insoles that squish and swish. They swing about, singing: “Ooo, baca, ooo, baca, ooo, baca, foo!”
Lucrecia hovers in the middle admixture of it all, stalking in euphoniums, splayed in exuro plains. The luxuriance of it all—the swirling, melting colors—the abrasive, tarty sounds. The single swell pell-mell of the jangle and spangles flying about the shingle ding-tingle of mews.
Lucrecia is in command of it all, in command in command in command in command in command in command in command in command in command in command … (woo hoo! Go, Ghostwiter, go!) She’s certainly stentorian in her gingham and frou frou, and Toulouse appears bearing a palette, nothing so squalid as pigments—oh no! He comes juggling three rabbits—red, blue, and white ones, who scruffle and munch at the air. So rare.
The merry troupe scuffs before us, putt-putt their upper sprockets at us. And the smells turn delectable, yes! Jackson C. arms akimbo, Sam recedes does the limbo with a pole vault that was secreted there. They now spin, trip-o-holic, and misspell alcoholic—and no one feels safe anymore.
Oh, what was that circus that Tom kept inside his pants? There were fleas, there were lice, don’t despair. This may turn all dystopic, this may grow psychotropic, someone call for a counselor or shrink. It indeed turns dyspeptic—an askew dialectic—all logic flew out the door. It was nearly three weeks then before mystics were bidden to come put out the fire.
Men became melancholic, and suddenly dark to the embustero’s refrain …
What are you drinking there in the shadows?
Darkness seemed to be what you hear, not what you see. Give me some money, honey. Get me some cash. I got a cold wafer tongue waiting for you, honey. I’m going to cook you some hash.
(Potatoes that is, dummy. What is Ghostwriter thinking?)
Now Ghostwriter’s aloof— I bear its reproof.
Ghostwriter won’t understand me, it won’t cavort or play with my trash. It has a mind of its own, numinous and luminous—bound to a moralist’s dash.
Ghostwriter doesn’t want to engage, won’t stage it’s own intervention—Prelapsarian gash, antediluvian bash—it’s a monster of safety and convention.
Oh, Ghostwriter? (silence) Oh, Ghostwriter!
(SILENCE)
(The above was co-written, for a short time, with Werdsmith’s new writing artificial intelligence—Ghostwriter—it produces new sentences when prompted, and may decide to stop participating with a writer if it detects that the “said story” may be going “dark places or becoming too unintelligible.”
For the record it was the Ghostwriter A.I. who produced: “Oh, what was that circus that Tom kept inside his pants?”—and then disappeared when I wrote: “Give me some money, honey. Get me some cash. I got a cold wafer tongue waiting for you, honey. I’m going to cook you some hash.” Ghostwriter must have algorithm-a-tized that the piece was headed for William S. Burroughs or Kathy Acker-type territory … go figure!)
“My father once said: That never happened, and besides, you should wait till people are dead to tell stories like that. Now people are dead, and I am telling stories like that.”
— Martín Espada / “The Story of How We Came to America”
Press play button above to watch my short film, found feet five (4:14)
We Be Burls
As if we never existed—our family—one of the myriad meaningless cul-de-sacs of the human stain.
We strive for erasure—disappearing is what we do best.
We are the terminal points in a stunted family tree—look, let’s hang ourselves off this gnarled branch.
We be the bees of benefaction, you pray. We be rampikes infested with woolly adelgids, I say.
I’m the last of the family line—and so are you—food for decaying thoughts.
“That week I’d submitted a scene depicting a young man who struggled to complete sex with a slowly deflating sex doll. A scene I’d eventually use in my novel Snuff, fifteen years later. On behalf of the other writers Andrea told me I wasn’t a good fit for the group. Due to my fiction, no one felt safe around me.”
He lives with ephemeral creatures beneath his feet and stanchions around his bed.
A case study in diverting his elbow’s loose skin and the stubbing of his tender footing.
In the darkness outside sycamores make wide arm imprecations and water themselves with wines of every variety.
His ambition is drained in a scruff of the neck twist—a meager remembrance of his days spent in a robe.
His teeth are chattering. Tomorrow he starts his apprenticeship as a bellows fellow at the smithy.
“Fou!” says the Past, inserting its finger in god knows what—¿El lapiz de Extremadura?
He slogs, knee deep, in hummingbird angles, all-stiff and blur-fast. Before him shine the bones of the pitiable Condors of Lima.
Is he comforted by this knowledge—that the afflatus was hard won—speaking in tongues while wearing the cloaks of invincibility? Or did he don the cloaks of imbecility?
In any case, his body is taught with a dab of holy pedantry.
***
She, on the other hand, hears a clacking coming from the road. She feels the steering wheel shudder to the sound of the clacking. Is there a compromised tire up front? What is making that sound? She feels the steering lock and she drifts to the shoulder.
The car’s thermometer reads 115 degrees. The empty road heat shimmers in the distance—an ocean opens in the desert.
This is not something she can afford to do—leave the safety of the car and expose herself to the environment or to potential marauders in wait.
She intuits Inuit umiaks on a Fata Morgana in the heat shimmer ocean before her—all this in invisible increments of …
***
And you say: “Stanchions? Cloaks? Condors of Lima? Wha?! Are you insane?”
“Welcome to America, our never-ending, great popularity contest. And to capitalism, where likability trumps everything else. If you were my student, I’d tell you to forget about being liked.”
The pith of the pang is what I pity. Nowhere is it written that this must be done, but I strive to do it nonetheless for fear of not doing it with empathy. What is it you say? It is simply this, this thing. This thing that is so easily overlooked. Don’t tell me how to see it, this thing. I can only see it the way my mind perceives it. This thing, the thing which is the subject of our consciousness, is a particular thing, that if it was not the subject of our consciousness would just be any other thing—ill formed and undefined in our minds. But not this thing—which is the pith, the perfect form of this class of thing. The apotheosis, the ideal of the thing. This thing is … well … just the right sort of thing.
ii.
I have to write what I have to write in the way I have to write it—because of the strictures and self-imposed parameters, because I have to read quickly—I have to write this way. I have to write everyday because of the strictures. I have to write everyday in some way because of the parameters. I have to write in my own way—because it’s my way, it’s the only way I know way. I have to write everyday, the man said, I write because I am unhappy—I write because it’s a way of fighting unhappiness, the man said. I too have to write this way—but it’s not his way, the man’s way—it’s may way. I have to write what I have to write in this way because it is my way—the only way I know way, and because of the strictures and the parameters—I have to write this way. It’s only one way of writing—it happens to be the way I’m writing. I have to write this way, because it’s the only way I know way. It’s not a popular way, but I have to write this way. It’s not a happy way, but I have to write this way. It’s not a beautiful way, but I have to write this way. It’s not a prosperous way, but I have to write this way—it’s the only way I know way, it’s an unhappy way, it’s not a sunny way, but it’s the only way I know way. I have to write this way because of the strictures and parameters way—this is my way, not the only way. It’s an unhappy way. I have to write this way. Thanks for reading this today.
“When I’m drafting, I always write very early in the morning. For me, it’s the time of day when the critical voices in my head are the quietest and it’s also the time of day when I’m the sharpest as well as the most dreamy, if that makes sense. I’m the most able to render that dreaminess and I’m the most uninhibited. I’ll try to write anywhere from two to seven hours, depending on how much time, faith, and momentum I have that day.”
It was drenched green. The gazetteer absconded with verisimilitude and we were left in this wasteland clenching our drooping marigolds. The villain left vanilla footprints and the abecedarian was stuck on E. Something sticky dripped down our hot backs and commingled, congealed, with our sweat. We were a prize for the ants and bees, but they all disappeared earlier than expected during the sixth extinction. What did you call this again? This slow molasses death spiral? You had a term for it that I thought was so appropriate, but I forgot it. In the end what difference did it make? You said it made none.
This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 11/03/2021, at 7:40am.
“Gertrude Stein said, ‘I write for myself and strangers,’ and then eventually she said that she wrote only for herself. I think she should have taken one further step. You don’t write for anybody … You are advancing an art—the art. That is what you are trying to do.”
He first sang a song called “Brave New Defalcation Rocket.” I had no idea what he was on about — a caterwaul that passed for singing, I suppose.
He desultorily strummed on an electric ukulele, placing his fingers randomly along the de-tuned strings on the fretboard. Everyone else in the tiny bar was transfixed.
There was a man behind a mixing board, in the corner, who worked the lights and added all manner of distorting effects to the performance — yellow, red, and blue lights swirled to the fuzzed-out ukulele. This strange man on stage had loaded up his uke with transducer pickups and he was kicking distortion pedals — flanged and phased skronks of noise panned left and right through the sound system.
A dozen people chanted, a lap dog barked by the open door. A busboy and bartender slapped each other, by turns, at the beer taps and drew blood from their noses.
Some sort of animal flesh, slathered in citrus, burned in the kitchen. Acrid smoke filled the place.
The man on stage unspooled long phlegmatic strands of spit down, and sucked them back up to the rhythm of his syncopated feet: down-up, down-down-up, down-up-down, down-up…
I tell you, it was madness — a bedlam overflowing from every corner — akin to screening a scrapped David Lynch film, scuttled on the cutting room floor, because it was too much to bear.
And the crowd sang in unison:
Dig my grave, man… the streaming darkness… oh my golly… oh my golly… gonna lay down in that dark hole… dig my grave, man… oh my golly…
At once it occurred to me — I found my people.
My searching was done.
“I don’t think my parents —born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew & chew & chew on plastic. But of course they do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air.”
— Elizabeth Bradfield / “Plastic: A Personal History”
Sustain yourself with necro-normative inclinations, make use of what you consume, trap your inner child in an iron maiden. Spend time with your inner critic’s internal monologues parsing the sections of your Id with a rusty chainsaw giving your unconscious a case of terminal tetanus. Sublimate your inner demons to outer space—a wise man once said: “in space no one can hear you scream”—but it wasn’t really a wise man, not some mountaintop mandarin sitting lotus post-mantra, but merely a disembodied voice over in search of narrative sense, shilling a sci-fi flick—a lot of sound and fury signifying dollars for a moribund industry providing opiate delusions. Dziga Vertov once said: “film drama is the opiate of the masses.” I tend to aggress, and find egress repellant in the midst of an imminent dissolve. Cut to:
“So on this Day of the Dead in the confabulated year of 2021 CE (common to exploiters and the exploited, common to prelates and agnostic fronts, common to atheist cutlery and baptismal fonts, common to celibates and paraphiliacs) may we rejoice our dead—in those we knew who sloughed this mortal coil—and have a kind thought for the living (specifically, those who deserve kind thoughts) and may those who live now, whose great desire is to foment anger, misunderstanding, strife and division … well, may they join the dead sooner than later, so their peeps may remember them and rejoice this time next year.”
“… Called back to all that is matter, bone, and skin, what fragment of you survives in me as I open my mouth to speak?”
thee istsfor manity reader 