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deal with that

Posted on October 11, 2021 by istsfor manity

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—

“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”

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

hard cover deeds

Posted on October 10, 2021 by istsfor manity

Softcover Words

Read this “How to…” book
and communicate in softcover words
your hard cover deeds —

herding sheep and goats,
lying with packs of dogs,
theorizing yersinia pestis theorems,
and puzzling though a sheaf
of sanity assassins.

Read about the coughing
and sneezing of the infected.
Eat stands of banana, malanga, and yuca.

And make ten thousand marks
silvery and lustrous gray —

recounting the executions carried out
by children bored of kicking
old oil drums green
and rusted brown.

*This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 10/10/2021, at 1:32pm.*

“Loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance…”

— Haruki Murakami / “On a Stone Pillow”

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pocketful of prairie

Posted on October 9, 2021 by istsfor manity

Ringo Nuggets Haiku

Voles strapped in for speed
Pocketful of prairie dogs
We’re going places

“We’ve reached the precise moment when the fairies intervene, although only indirectly.”

— Jose Saramago / The Lizard

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Haiku, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

don’t disappoint anyone

Posted on October 8, 2021 by istsfor manity

Workshop Notes

Various ideas for your book:

Include a scene at a rheumy palace—

Maybe adapt a scene from a nonfiction setting on shipwrecked cay.

Maybe not.

Use these words liberally:
ablation; asperity; cassocks; chasubles; hooded cowls; astringent; incursive; afflux; minikin; Grand Guignol; rutilant; cadge; rebus; limpid; enmity; hackles; pathoformic; sabbat; afflatus.

Format: one-hundred / 100-word chapters.

End abruptly, midway through the narrative, and append a long footnote that elucidates nothing.

Add Autocorrected Texts and Overheard Conversational Automatism.

Include two single word chapters: “Isotope” and “Gunplay” on pages 33 and 66, respectively.

Include the anecdote about the Girl Scout merit badge you were awarded for Sailing.

Title the work:
Lime Automatic See-Thru Cats Aging in the He Code Other Using Nixon No-Stow Straws

Include the anecdote about Harry and Jerry not having cottage cheese on their plates at your Sweet Sixteen BBQ—and how Stone took the big wooden spatula and rammed it into Orpheus.

Remember people are usually pessimistic about rain.

Include the scene where you make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every potential boyfriend on the first date.

Include the line: “I’m not a hipster.”

Don’t disappoint anyone.

No one was mad at you!

Remember what Dr. Greene said:
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

Include the words THE END.

“The end of this story should give us hope, but it doesn’t give us hope.”

— Alejandro Zambra / Bonsai

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

photographs plastic toys

Posted on October 7, 2021 by istsfor manity

the cult

the leap—

wood
nails
staples
tape
photographs
plastic toys
fake flowers
paper

“Frisky the Clown has a new act for the kids;
He smothers them using foam.”

— Kenneth Jarrett Singleton / “The Conceptual Circus”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Cut-Up Writing, Dream Notation, Experimental writing, Hybrid writing, Paranoiac-Critical, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Random Sights with Signs, White Out Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

frozen in place

Posted on October 6, 2021 by istsfor manity

Affix Us (redux)

A vicious penny farthing flashes across the window, as the dreadful coins are placed upon her eyes. The incantations from the holy man’s mouth sound like blaspheme as the sky grows bright outside.

We move across the floor in time to the funeral dirge, we move across time with the conviction of ascetic monks. When we stop the shadows affix us to our places; we stop sobbing and silence fills the empty spaces.

As the sun arcs out the top of the window, we remain frozen in place. The shadows grow long in filtered light and we grow as we stand here still.

“Of all that thrives among Satan’s noisome progeny, the rock drill and mosquito.”

—Maurice Riordan / “Laudation”

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

propelling the day

Posted on October 5, 2021 by istsfor manity

Fingertips

I’ve come untethered
Three days lost and out of sorts
Now the correction

Sitting on the train
The snow blows blinding outside
Heavy wet and sad

The Wailers’ singles in my ears
Provide the syncopation
Propelling the day

On the balcony
In yellow afternoon light
A thrush in the snow

Pink skies cede to blue
Melted snow transformed to ice
Anticipation

West, the dream maker bicycles
For all ages a unique mile
On fingertips

“I write all the things I need on the bottom
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let’s walk together.”

— Ada Limón / “Sharks in the Rivers”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Cut-Up Writing, Dada, Documentation, Dream Notation, Painting, Paranoiac-Critical, Photography, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Random Sights with Signs, Writing | Leave a comment

the action unspooling

Posted on October 4, 2021 by istsfor manity

Raw Manifold

… let’s move on to dreams, phosphenes and the armatures and substructures that make up those worlds. Even in the most extreme and intense dreams one may see below the action unspooling in said dream narrative and peak at the structures moving the characters and things about in a dream. If one sneezes hard and freezes their vision—or better yet, rubs their closed eyes hard for five seconds—revealed to them for a few short moments will be the armatures, or puppet master’s strings if you will, that move things about in one’s dreams. They are always present, but in the waking state have nothing affixed to their ends—nothing to clasp on to, and you don’t see them. But blow out your consciousness and they will be forever present—waiting for the characters to mount, the scenery to take its places, the director to yell “action”…