thee istsfor manity reader

surgical mask missiles

Posted on September 21, 2021 by istsfor manity

The Yahweh Quas Papa Speaks (redux)

I was made for plague times!
For the days weeks months — for the plague year!

It’s the time for auxiliary malarial canons
and sitars.

Thee minute for surgical mask missiles
and tinctures of Ayahuasca.

It’s time for stockpiled respirators
and acid-laced fuzz boxes & distortion pedals —

(Just stay away from the vocoder — don’t put that in your mouth! They have Pro Tools for that now.)

Spread your misery and pestilence over me,
broadcast it worldwide.

Spread the fusty 1970s ventilators out in an arc
and count the cobwebs on the outtake valves.

It’s the moment for snake oil salesmen &
“teetotalitarianists” & insider stock traders —
and don’t call me a wog because
I take my Viyaya Anand & Asha Bosle on the 45.

Aren’t you glad someone you knew and loved
didn’t live to see this moment?

I am.

“Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?”

— Elizabeth Alexander / “Praise Song for the Day”

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

i wonder i

Posted on September 20, 2021 by istsfor manity

Disappearer

I make people disappear. Someone has to do it. The pay is excellent. Haven’t you ever wondered where all the people that disappear mysteriously go? I do too. I wonder where the kids and women — it’s mostly kids and women, there’s occasionally a man requested, but it’s mostly kids and women of a certain age they want—where do they end up? So I know the first part of the answer to that question of where they go. I’m one of the men responsible for taking them, we are legion. Someone has to be responsible for handling these people first—but where they end up after I pass them along?—that’s as much as a mystery to me as it is to you. I wonder. I have my ideas about it.

I work alone on my end.

“Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre / Existentialism

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

stop gap measure

Posted on September 19, 2021 by istsfor manity

stop gap

stop. xxxxxxx gap.

here is a stop gap measure

for the continuing plague

xxx. xxx. xxx.

“You see again how far away
every thing is from every other thing.”

— Louise Glück / “Telescope”

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

in good cheer

Posted on September 18, 2021 by istsfor manity

a minor effort may lead to a sea change

every transformation requires choice, effort, action

tiger expressed herself in the most uncompromising way and chose to eat little piglet’s ear

piglet offered up his knuckles and she had those too

piglet struggled about, a bloody mess, but in good cheer

you’re warped now, tiger said, i think i’ll finish you before you bleed on this fine shag carpet

come here, hog, tiger said with the most lascivious snarl heard in ages

you know what happened next

“I’ll miss you deer,
but I choose my head
& carry it out of doors:
a bucket of eels
to set loose
in the dark, December sea.”

— Aracelis Girmay / “Self-Portrait as the Snake’s Skin”

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

whimper wimple woman

Posted on September 17, 2021 by istsfor manity

Like They was Family

Whimper wimple woman, he said. This ain’t Asgard. He held a fork upright in his right hand—a knife in his left.

I want to strangle you blue, she said. I’d like to see your eyes bulge and the thick rope of artery throb out on your neck. She placed the maple syrup next to his pancakes as she said this.

I want to feel the spittle spray in my eyes as you squirm with the terrible realization of what is happening to you, she added, walking away.

You realize this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a firm throttle, he said. He emptied the bottle of syrup onto his pancakes. It over-spilled the plate and metastasized out in a sluggard flare.

It means nothing—but for the bad can do to some stranger. Like they was family, she said.

“You said we are all violent.
It’s about finding the way out
that does the least damage.”

— Kimberly Casey / “Golden Hour”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Drama is the Opiate of the Masses, Dream Notation, Microfiction, Paranoiac-Critical, Writing | Leave a comment

of seven planets

Posted on September 16, 2021 by istsfor manity

Dinnertime Blues

Mother ate the moon
Turned out the sky

She stormed inside
Opened her mouth

Out came a string
Of seven planets

Dinner was thrown
Into darkness

“Those were the days when a human being was something to be aspired to.”

— Joy Williams / Harrow

Posted in Writing | Tagged Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Experimental writing, Paranoiac-Critical, Poetry, Post-Apocalypse, Writing | Leave a comment

modest pink blaze

Posted on September 15, 2021 by istsfor manity

Tuesday / Wednesday

Tuesday: Happy Face

I trap my shadow.
I pin it by footpad to the concrete.
I crush it.

Last night’s mark,
A happy face not yet faded,
Smiles on the interior of my wrist.

Happiness wanes
At the terminal point
Of the imagined slice.

Wednesday: Fruiting Zen Magnolia

Have you ever seen the effrontery
Of the magnolia fruit?

Before it bursts open, it appears as engorged
Labia pressed shut in a modest pink blaze.

Is it Magnolia acuminata or Magnolia
Zenii whose fruit discomfits me,
On a desultory Wednesday
Morning, in my mourning black shoes?

It unsheathes itself in delirium —

An effulgence of unhooded clitorises!

They burn my face
Engorged with life.

A wild orgiastic sight
In a moment so unsettling,
So thoroughly disorienting,

A tectonic change of mood:
Precise.
Carnal.

Life.

And they sat—as though paralysis preceding death
Had nailed them there. The track bent south.
I saw her pulsing crotch … the lice rooted in that baby’s hair.”

—Louise Glück / “The Chicago Train”

Posted in Writing | Tagged Biomorphic Art, Chance Operations, Creative Writing, Dream Notation, Hybrid writing, Paranoiac-Critical, Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

the hazy processes

Posted on September 14, 2021 by istsfor manity

trash dash: manhattan ii

polyphonic dream vision
sonorous in plastic tubing
limned transducers and sound scriptures
in a garden of minimal fences

sonic spaces expand
from properties shaped
of bird-like sounds

the genesis of silver clouds
and chance-based tape collages
squall of rainforest insects and birds

these are the hazy processes
at the intersections of evocative
seams and anticausal
textural resonances

helium pillows fuzz
with electronic modifications
titled: variations 1 – 53

“Right now, there are children playing on the shore.
There are children lying in hospital beds.
There are children trusting us.
Who will tell them what we’ve done.”

— Michael Sims / “Who Will Tell Them?”

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

loses its tune

Posted on September 13, 2021 by istsfor manity

trash dash: manhattan iii

behind me a college student tries to convince a young girl to elope

the ritual of the second drink —

demulcent for a moment —

the argument loses its tune

like a good many dinners in so many illegal places

another cold night and the illusion of gin

central park forms endure speeches of electric illumination —

translate a scroll into a new language —

he sits with his arm around her

winks on the gloaming

our ears swathed around music —

plangent notes constrict the frigid night

“And bring back the smell of turf for the burning. Of her. Of me.”

— Fanny Howe / “Margo”

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

of particulate love

Posted on September 12, 2021 by istsfor manity

Trash Dash

Trash dash on a two hour meter
A ham and cheese croissant and pilfer
Your heart which has grown fibrous —
Dry and cleansed of particulate love —
Full of granular lunacy and roiling
Pathic are your howls as I leverage
My full weight on you
Heat hurt hate

“The houses look at one another,
a language of windows.”

— Louis Simpson / “Magritte Shaving”

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