in minuscule handwriting

trepanation in the land of bilk & money

who drilled a hole in the front of his own skull to increase brain blood volume?
& allow the full heartbeat to express itself inside the cranial cavity a column of fire
midnight ’til dawn rain fire after the defeat of los aztecas the spanish forbade
pagan idolatry ceremonial mushrooms montezuma ii saw the stars of mamalhuatzil
& images of fighting men riding on the backs of animals resembling deer caught by fishermen
a two headed man tlacantzolli mirror on the crown of a bird running the streets
simply to ward off cold ward off heat the touch of flies/mosquitoes/wind/sun/reptiles
deserts at one time inhabited by thousands of ascetics hermits anchorites
solitary confinement inside a cell adopting lifestyle of a beast abandoning personal hygiene
self-inflicted pain voluntary suffering hedonism that views moral sexual restraint
as either unnecessary or harmful i wrote in minuscule handwriting on a continuous roll
paper i rolled tightly placed in my cell wall to hide a fifth person in and out
of psychiatric hospitals due to unspecified disorders a new generation born
of the legacy of the cinema of transgression : underground cinema transgressive art
found footage controversial matter surgical footage psychodramatic performances
physical interventions into the material film stock i retire to the eighth-floor cafe : the terraces the lines of comfy leather couches the explosive ordinance disposal market bomb dispersal units robots & specialized tools

“On my daily walk, I steal Meyer lemons from my neighbors’ yard,
a small pomegranate. Instead of eating them,

I observe their casual rot on the kitchen counter,
this theatre of good things turning into something else.”

— Aria Aber / “Waiting for Your Call”

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in my neighborhood

“Someone shot nostalgia in the back…”

“Someone shot our innocence…”

“In the shadow of his smile…”

“Who killed Mr. Moonlight…”

“Extracting wasps from stings in flight…”

“Who killed Mr. Moonlight?”

“All our dreams have melted down…”

“As the moon has all our brushes…”

“There’s no expiration date on the resourcefulness of greed and cruelty.”

— Joy Williams / Harrow

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i long for

In Bullet Absentia

Avernal Pumpkin Head the all purpose gossamer failure genuflecting in the wind: I am an American by birth, an atheist by choice, and a drowning man by design. I walked the plank between good and evil. I’m not an alien sex fiend but a paunchy pirate in bullet absentia from the wind and the rains—and the blueprints for plate tectonics and monster mechanics of the spherical planetoids. I can’t agree to disagree—I’d rather shoot you in the Id. I need your longing. I long for your need. I trap a shadow of your patina—a pity in the putty of pubescent pentacles and pugnaciousness. Your pulchritude is pungent—and somehow plangent simulateously. I’ll elaborate on the footnotes. Please call at three.

“Well, I suppose the thing that most helped me in my early days of trying to figure things out was not being driven by the need to succeed. And it maybe just came out of the era and the proximity to the punk scene, but I really didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t afraid of failing … I just didn’t seem to care, when I launched into something, whether it was going to succeed or fail—and the lack of fear of failure is a great tool. It’s a great aid. It helps one move forward if one doesn’t care if one falls flat on one’s face.”

— Danny Elfman / The Creative Independent interview

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minute of elation

Elation in Elisions

The odious neglect of the scab Crab Nebula yelling: I Zimbra, I Zimbra, dada, dada, dada, doo! At the Cabaret Voltaire after hours parties degenerate into clean well lighted chess matches in top hat and overcoated teas with perfectly dictioned inflections and timbres of sonorous dejection odes to propriety. No one moves as Breton enters—trailing Leninisms and Trotsky ice picks, well before the weapon was chosen in dim back alley Mexico City. ¡Viva la huelga! ¡Viva la huelga! Tzara cries out—he’s Romanian of course, but he knows Breton has a weakness for Spanish. No one strikes, but they are all stricken with peripeteia and aposiopesis—walking in circles and leaving things unsaid. There is a full minute of elation, some confusion about elisions, and then someone dims the lights.

This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 10/17/2021, at
8:48 a.m.

“Everything from porn to nonexistent WMDs can be sold to us because we are perfect receptors for dada poetry, made pliable by a relentless history of nonsense and nonstop pitching.”

— Andrei Codrescu / The Posthuman Dada Guide

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the the: dadaismus nihilismus

the the (the voiced dental fricative version)

“… a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously.”

— Andrei Codrescu / The Posthuman Dada Guide

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officer shot her

turn on the news (blackout #101421)

police officer killing
time

shot women dating
when they returned home

officer shot her
chest

dead relationship
expected

“… I’m definitely not interested in this idea that there are blank issues, like women’s issues or black issues. If you are really good at hurting black people, you will indeed hurt the environment, I promise you … it’s true. If you are really good at hurting women, you’re probably also interested in war — I promise you.”

— Jericho Brown / “Small Truths and Other Surprises”

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like the egg

“So I’m interested in where love goes awry or where people use violence as an excuse for love. And I’m interested in seeing how that comes out in my poems, because it’s where I can keep asking myself questions.”

— Jericho Brown / “Small Truths and Other Surprises”

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you like quiet

Nothing Moves, Nothing Glitters

Imagine you’re on the streets of a yellow-down blown downtown. The rat’s nest smell of putrefaction—no one about, but you and the moles. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. There are canyons and spans of unused sound for the taking—for the making. There are mounds of round bodies, gray and oracular, frozen in time. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. There are cracked trees on the outskirts, brittle and bastioned—grasping at air—cragged in time. Monticules of spent cartridges rusted and dull. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. A thickness in the atmosphere—a metallic tang on your tongue. Shards of bones and jawless skulls stretch from here to the pale hills. You stay. You like quiet. Nothing moves, nothing glitters.

“When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard and moan in the high wind.”

— Lydia Davis / “The Cedar Trees”

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white dress shirt

Withers

The image: a chipped tooth, a bloody mouth, a spray of bloody saliva that fans out onto your date’s white dress shirt. The instant that nervous smile withers on her face. That is my image, my few words for the day. Because I write everyday.

“I think the world is dying because we were dead to its astonishments pretty much. It’ll be around but it will become less and less until it’s finally compatible with our feelings for it.”

— Joy Williams / Harrow

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deal with that

Letter Never Sent

Dear X—

Don’t fight the demons in your head—that will always be a losing proposition. You must realize the demons are there. The demons were invited in at an impressionable age and will always live in your head. You should acknowledge the demons and realize that they will not go away; they will reside in your head as long as you have consciousness. Embrace those demons; they are part of you, and then release them every time they appear and they will eventually dissipate of their own accord. They may stop manifesting themselves as often as they do now, or they may not, but railing against them and haranguing yourself for having them with you will amount to nothing but a self-imposed misery. They will always be there, or at the peripheries, and you must deal with that.

Best & Love—

C.

“Too many things to name are gone and we are left with this clowning earth, these cynical trees—shadows, all, of themselves. And we, too, are beyond help.”

— Lydia Davis / “Smoke”

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