thee istsfor manity reader

cross-wired

the morality of it doesn’t enter in to any of this

we can hold two mutually contradictory ideas
in mind at the same time

fritillary
herbaceous
& compromised as a corpus callosum
that no longer holds
a mind together

cross-wired and twisted beyond reproach
a mother shakes her baby ‘til it passes
out

by proxy
in the flesh
or via smite of gilgamesh

we may as well drown
in the euphrates
tomorrow or 5000 years ago

we all make our way into shadows

This is Fall, at 5:55 p.m., on 10/23/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (23/31)

“Our life is not only short, but our knowledge of it severely limited… our consciousness is a momentary flicker in the midst of night…”

— Arthur Schopenhauer / Parerga and Paralipomena

Market Futures

The ad above the seats reads —

Intrusive thoughts… Appearance … Causing Significant Stress?

She reads the sign and immediately hates how the man sitting below the sign acts —
a loud in the cellphone talker

She sees him nearly everyday on the train hates how he dresses
what he represents

Her father lost it all in the market in ‘08 —
shot himself in ‘09

He is an excrescence on her eyes

She thinks Judith and Holofernes —
modern take!

She sees his head in a large Tupperware —
no more ponzi’s
no more bankruptcies

Foreclosure follows

This is Fall, at 3:50 p.m., on 10/22/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (22/31)

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

— Miles Davis

avuncular and antediluvian

my four uncles speak of biblical rains:
¡lo que viene por ahí!

i’m conducting my cornu and sistrum band
we make a heavenly racket
there is dispatch in our notes
alacrity in our fingers
smell of ozone and electricity fill the air

water breaches the open windows

las alondras cantan en maltusiano:
los peregrinos estan perdidos
sálvese quien pueda

a call from paducah transits
through tallahassee threw little havana
thru el cayo matahambre
to a mamey stand in cienfuegos
reduced to trecefuegos
in thee apocalyptic downpour

where is the dignity in that, cock robin?
why are you still in caracas?
what is the sense in that, mr platt?
it’s overstuffed in hell these days

i’m outta’ space & i sistrumate one last clang

there is no joy in transgression anymore
it’s our new default setting

one uncle spits & pogos
rises in declension:
if they ain’t no one left after the storm better for us

u know about us

This is Fall, at 10:02 a.m., on 10/21/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (21/31)

“… this is
consistent with what we know about human
behavior,

that human beings take profound
satisfaction in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm…”

— Louise Glück / “Persephone The Wanderer”

From Dada and Surrealism for Beginners, Elsa & Peter Bethanis, and Joseph Lee. Writers & Readers Publishers, 2006.

Hibby Shake: Nada Dada (#1020)

Reading the lists results in desultory nauseam, in vibrotactile waves overcoming my hands — shaking — shaking arms, head, torso, legs.

I become gelatinous on an armature that settles solid into the grass. I can’t fall and I can’t stop shaking in place. Rapturous. Glorious. Orgasmic and spent all at once. Don’t move me. Don’t even approach me.

Place a boom mic over me — set the parabolic mics twenty yards away.

It’s the degustation of interpolation of godly nothingness and alien awareness. I am ringed in protoplasmic gold. I am inebrium sanctum nada dada.

Eat me when I stop shaking. Bring this otherness into your being.

I SPEAK in transpecies extraordinaire!

This is Fall, at 7:01 a.m., on 10/20/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (20/31)

“SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

— Andre Breton / “Manifesto of Surrealism”

Sacrafect Bioluminescence

Because I didn’t want to go, I made my partner cry. I feel poorly today, both physically and now because I made him cry.

I have a predisposition for alienation — and a tendency to make more of sirens than I should. I never just picture a heart attack, car accident victim, or appendicitis; no, I picture terrorist bombings, the start of uncontrolled pandemics, anthrax poisonings, the first wave of nuclear fallout victims, and such.

And such is the way of my addled mind. I am a sick woman. I don’t think anyone would disagree — except the Sacrafect of Mantia who believes that sunfish can tell time better than clocks.

The Sacrafect has been trying to inject bioluminescence into sunfish so he’d be able to tell time at night.

He’s failed miserably.

This is Fall, at 1:54 p.m., on 10/19/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (19/31)

“A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth, as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled spikes used in warfare and fencing.”

— Ada Limón / “Give Me This”

Perfect Disasters

The devil is making appearances on a daily basis. I’m making something of a Herculean effort to quash this Sisyphean impulse. My parents come home early and discover me playing with large cockroaches while the guitar in the corner strums on its own — it vibrates wildly — as a blizzard rages on inside the fish tank. My sister runs downstairs screaming, “Oh, look at it outside now.”

Outside there is a woman throat singing and a man is screaming “boom boom boom.” Their son tries to crawl into the water — something more like an open sewer. We are all fantastic failures, tremendous disasters, in fact, perfect disasters.

Then a call comes in, the man says a toddler has “gone postal.” I tell my sister and all she  manages is, “oo la la.” Then my parents chime in and sing, “oo la la, Sasson.” The loud speaker behind the television announces the corporation has decided that reeducation is in order to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of our glorious leaders. The panic siren sounds. A message is read:

“On January 10 use stilts to take down the lights, our enemies are watching. Your neighbors are watching.  Three weeks left, and no one will be watching.”

Dangerous creosote sets off a wave of chimney fires throughout the city, by Saturday everyone has streamed in to the country side. But my parents stayed at home and are singed beyond recognition. In the attic I find a fire extinguisher full of gold Krugerrands.

I thought there might be so much more to this life, notwithstanding the legal fees and steep insurance penalties. I will probably not go out tonight or ever again. My sister will never go out again, none of us congealed in this aspic will ever go out again or even move.

This is Fall, at 3:22 p.m., on 10/18/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (18/31)

“like all good
leftists of a certain region,
i have never read marx
or the bible.
i know the gossip
well enough
to kneel and resist.”

— Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta / “(untitled)”

Auspicious of…?

because… america…

This is Fall, at 9:10 a.m., on 10/17/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (17/31)

“You do the little job you’re trained to do.
Pull a lever.
Push a button.
You don’t understand and any of it, and then you just die.”

— Chuck Palahniuk / Fight Club

Afterword

My grandmother called to thank me for placing her dentures on her chest as they wheeled her out of the Catholic Hospice.

She said she didn’t think she’d need them, that I embarrassed her in the parking lot that night in May — forcing the driver from the funeral home to lift that velvet blanket — in the parking lot, in order to place her dentures, that my mother so carefully wrapped in paper, on her chest.

She said she enjoyed that I included the get well card that she never really got to see during those last three weeks, and that someone read it to her all the time now.

You really should have included the reading glasses, she said. That would have been useful.

She said not to worry, nothing hurt. She didn’t feel the flames… She knew we weren’t the types to visit headstones in some field.

It’s ok, really.

This is Fall, at 7:43 a.m., on 10/16/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (16/31)

“I love dream logic; I just like the way dreams go. But I have hardly ever gotten any ideas from dreams. I get more ideas from music, or just walking around.”

— David Lynch / Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

Intractable

You dream
Your tongue is loosed
Upon that intractable wafer
Glued to the roof
Of your perfidious
Mouth

This is Fall, at 3:58 p.m., on 10/15/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (15/31)

“No smoking in the torture chamber.”

— Samuel Beckett / Dream of Fair to Middling Women

Gutbucket Desideratum

Mutagens remain in the environment. The disaster follows a now familiar course. During the early stages of the emergency clean-up a bestial man cried:

I sing in praise of older gutbuckets. I pledge to be benefic and soporific at court gatherings. I will pray 23 times daily and take no more than 5 morning constitutionals. I will no longer place myself in front of others (as naturally my space is above all others).

I will play my left handed guitar twice each morning and I will remain ghastly and pale in the afternoon cloud light. Later, by the night light, I will blow my right handed harmonica.

Play! Go, daddy, go!

If someone, anyone, calls me a child of the universe — I will go apeshit and devalue their municipal bonds and charge remainder pay to the government coiffers in buffet time.

Such is the nature of my sardonic tonic.

It blasts a hole in my imperium. Someone say, Amen, and shut up! Because that is what I’m about to do.

This is Fall, at 7:04 a.m., on 10/14/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (14/31)

“Don’t leave writing to writers. Don’t delegate your area of interest and knowledge to people with stronger rhetorical resources… Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery. Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.”

— Mark Weidenbaum / Disquiet.com