yellow filaments bind

Posted on April 2, 2022 by istsfor manity

Silver Halide Crystals (Haiku)

Yellow filaments
Bind circles of confusion
To silver halide

What I’m Reading:

“Don’t think good or bad. Think useful, pleasurable, strange.”

— Jerry Saltz / How to Be an Artist

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

images and text

Posted on April 1, 2022 by istsfor manity

April is the Cruellest…

This is what April will look like . . .
Easily digestible thoroughly detestable, or:

Make your own favorite artist inspired project:

You might glue colored papers into Sister Corita Kent style shapes and write aphoristic sentences to please your soul.

You might ink intricate line patterns and blocks on graph paper in DW’s Mountebank style and affix phrases cut-out of magazines around the figures.

You might layer words upon a short film.

You might paint a neat Ellsworth Kelly-like green blob as on the cover of Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour.

You might make a book of Leanne Shapton-like images and text conflations.

You might gather pictures found at thrift / antique shops and mount them with fortune cookie fortunes affixed on the lower margin.

You might make “the easy project”—a series of atrocity exhibition pamphlets.

What I’m Reading:

“RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.”

— Sister Corita Kent / “Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules”

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

for my shadow

Posted on March 31, 2022 by istsfor manity

Skronk Tectonics 3

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”

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

the spires gleam

Posted on March 30, 2022 by istsfor manity

Goth Vacation

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.

*A: It’s my dream / S: And why don’t I care?*

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

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

stuff in between

Posted on March 29, 2022 by istsfor manity

Sanctioned by the Association of Nimble Twee

(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)

*A: It’s an automatism… / S: …frank and elevated*

What I’m Reading:

“I got a feeling like scenic railways in the stomach—”

— William S. Burroughs / Nova Express

Posted in Writing | Tagged Cathexis, Collage, Creative Writing, Dada, Drama is the Opiate of the Masses, Dream Notation, Experimental writing, Ghosts, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Parapraxis, Poetry, Post-Apocalypse, Prose Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

women don’t generally

Posted on March 28, 2022 by istsfor manity

The Arkansas Fluke (redux)

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

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

signature and textures

Posted on March 27, 2022 by istsfor manity

The Last Show

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

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

blow on pinwheels

Posted on March 26, 2022 by istsfor manity

Pell-Mell Into Some Fusillade

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

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

roots everywhere your

Posted on March 25, 2022 by istsfor manity

Potting Shed Notes from Around the World

WOEFUL YOU
WoUD yOu LIKETo
PETICULATE ABOUT
SPREAINE AND POTTING DE
ROOTS EVEREWHERE YOUr
TENTACLES REACH
TA
UF
TUE PAIS AHD PGaPRaGAL
DATA DF SPEAR FOR THE
CLARO
GET DOWN
ON PIE FLAT EROUNDLATRI
YR BAD SELF AND YOUR
INTEGUMENTS BOUND
HUNZUHATZ MELLI

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”

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

a jackhammer-mad

Posted on March 24, 2022 by istsfor manity

Tubercular Dream

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

Posted in Writing | Tagged Creative Writing, Dada, Dream Notation, Experimental writing, Fiction, Hybrid writing, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Post-Apocalypse, Prose Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

thee istsfor manity reader

yellow filaments bind

Silver Halide Crystals (Haiku)

images and text

April is the Cruellest…

for my shadow

Skronk Tectonics 3

the spires gleam

Goth Vacation

stuff in between

Sanctioned by the Association of Nimble Twee

women don’t generally

The Arkansas Fluke (redux)

signature and textures

The Last Show

blow on pinwheels

Pell-Mell Into Some Fusillade

roots everywhere your

Potting Shed Notes from Around the World

a jackhammer-mad

Tubercular Dream

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