thee istsfor manity reader

Leitmotif and Preference

Midriff Manny says the leitmotif here is the man on the roof watching the spires melt across town. These aren’t aliens, these are hair replacement salesmen. The starlight from another millennia so many thousand of light years away is making you look jaundiced, especially in the three way mirror. Are you a jackal, or the son of a jackal? I am an Ethiopian volcano the stuff inside my caldera roils, but I always wished I were Patagonian, snow covered, and aloof. I prefer alpacas and their downy mildew. I also sing in higher registers and registered for the selective service when I was 18 (at my local post office).

This is Fall, at 10:26 am, on 10/03/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (3/31)

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

— Mary Oliver / “Sometimes”

Pandemic Haiku #6

Put on the barbed crown.
The sun king is hovering;
His head is brought low.

This is Fall, at 8:40 am, on 10/02/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (2/31)

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.”

— Mary Oliver / “Wild Geese”

Meet The Beetles!

Briefly, gentlemen, it has come to my attention that there has been an inordinate amount of “buggery” going on between you and our beetles. This will not do.

As of tomorrow at 7:00 am all those apprehended singing plaintive love songs to our collection of Coleoptera will be suspended for a minimum of one month and lose all members privileges.

Additionally there will be no more dressing up our rhinoceros beetles in little sundresses. This is not a carnival, good sirs! We are not puppeteers, this is not the Punch and Judy caper hour. This must cease.

And whomever is painting the brown beetles dayglo blue, you must stop immediately. Now the confused flour beetles are demanding to be painted fuschia and emerald green on alternating days.

Decorum, gentlemen. We are civilized men.

And stop it, stop it, with the little tank tops on the stag beetles! We are not infants. I expect these hijinks to stop immediately, but the culprit who has “toilet-papered” all our dung beetles may continue to do so on a biweekly basis.

Civilization is progressive, and we are exceptional, gentlemen. Carry on!

“For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind.”

— Rachel Carson / Sense of Wonder

Highest Eminence

O, pallid bat, wombat, scarlet tanager, marmoset and all the little animals of the world that spark wars and worldwide grief… Listen! ye who visit our leaders’ dreams at night and whisper all types of destructive and inhumane council — planting the seeds of war, hyper-capitalism, oppressive totalitarianism, and oligarchical greed that passes for socialism in practice — you are on notice.

All these bad ideas are planted by the cutest life forms on planet Earth.

While Attenborough gallivants about the world, here and there, galumphing with whirring machinery in order to show us this and that, and it’s import in the world; he fails to notice what the pretty beasties are doing to our leaders every night — and by extension, what they are doing to our world. OUR world.

O, low and cavorting bestiary! We shall hunt you out by deforestation, overfishing, pollution, over-development, and wildfire. You shall stop this chimeric invasion into our sleep and equanimity.

We are man! The highest and greatest link in the Great Chain of Being… (sorry, so sorry, dear father)…

We are man! Highest and greatest eminence on the Great Chain of Being here on earth!

We bend the elements to our will — the atoms do our bidding. We will move on beyond this planet, because this is what we do. Invade. Conquer. Control. Cleanse. Fold. Assimilate!

So, Red Panda; so, chin strap penguin; so, octopus; so, ring-tailed lemur — we bring you the Anthropocene, free of charge — but it will cost you dearly.

I pity the fool-animal earwigging it’s way into our beloved leader’s ear, in the dead of night, at the hour of fog.

You shall atone!

Then we will flay you, stuff you, catalog you, and put you up on display in a musty diorama — next to the heads of our enemies. Because this is what we are expert at. Because this is what we do.

“I admit, I don’t know a love that doesn’t
destroy. Last night while we slept,
a mouse drowned in the rice pot
I left soaking in the sink. I tried
to make a metaphor out of this…”

— Diannely Antigua / “Anniversary”

Anything But That

1.
Wild dogs, squirrels, feral hogs, and bear were constant staples of our cook pots. We used them to supplement our two pounds allotment of rice each month.

2.
“I brought everything but that. I deny the existence of that. I would bring anything but that thing,” she said.

3.
So if you’ve got a family of four you’re spending $1000, just on entrance fees.

4.
“Maquis- Resistance groups. Maquis ( World War II), predominantly rural French guerrilla groups… The network of rural bases operated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea prior to the Cambodian Civil War…”

5.
Luna moths were another treat I learned to eat, with its wings removed and roasted over an open fire it made for the perfect bite.

6.
I imagine all this through the mind of a sick, desocialized, and dissociative woman, who lost her family. Her children taken by the state. Her husband accidentally decapitated at work. Her only remaining family burned to death in a wildfire.

7.
When we came upon the carcass of a moose we thought it a godsend. And we all ate the better pieces that had not been scavenged or turned to rot. It was after that day that we eventually all became sick and most of our party perished.

8.
Just as he was dying, I set a mangy dog to disemboweling him, so the last thing he felt and saw were the teeth of a ravenous cur at his intestines.

9.
We staggered along, one wet day after another, we learned to control our hunger. We had to keep moving to make our monthly rice pick-ups. We barely had time for concerted hunting. If we came upon something we quickly killed it and slogged along.

10.
She, in time, became untethered and violent. She fantasized of fixing his larynx in some way so he couldn’t scream any more. Perhaps tie him up and deprive him of food and water until he wasted away, sharp and angular, into a bony effigy.

11.
We made a desperate attempt to make the food cache before it was removed by the enemy. We succumbed slowly, one or two of us a day. At the end of two weeks only Cruz and I were left alive, but we were in a very bad way and then you found us near death at the banks of the river.

12.
The newly moved-in family next door with an over abundance of everything doesn’t sit right with her. The neighbor child was overly loud, had ADHD, and couldn’t control himself.

13.
The tall man, dressed in black, sitting in the first row, removed his mask and said, “So this is how a loving god looks over his children?”

“… in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,
and dreams do not lie.”

— Mary Oliver / “Rage”

(misfire?)

Even though I’ll be in the red, I’ll be under. Your footfall sounds like a peg leg stamping. Tap into your urethra with a rusty catheter and maybe you’ll strike oil. If you’re diligent, you’ll be indigent. If you read a dull book about Pol Pot it doesn’t diminish the sheen of his hair. I once wished I could use Afro sheen. I thought I might be able to stick a pic in my hair, now I buzz it to the skull. If you were a carpenter and I was a baby would you nail me to a tiny crucifix? Would you marry me anyway? Why do these neurons fire (misfire?) certain troublesome memories at random? Why are my axons so warped? What was that about?

I wish it didn’t sound like an outboard motor was running in my bathroom.

Then you harp:

“A volunteer committee of resident adult ‘Friendly Goblins’ will deliver candy (all pre-wrapped) to every apartment that signs up for a visit.  The Goblins (1 or 2 per visit) will admire your child’s costume and laugh, shriek or ooh-and-ahh as appropriate.  The Goblins, of course, will be wearing masks and will remain at a social distance from members of your household.”

“Seriously?”

“I’d rather listen to Victoria Williams sing ‘Boogieman.'”

“Ah, go on and file your $750 tax return, and write off your coif to the tune of $70,000. You twit!”

“You fill me with inertia!”

“Soon the volunteers will arrive
and they’ll take the body,
including the wings
to the landfill.”

— Julio Pazos Barrera / “Pegasus Autopsy”

pacific

wico wico wico wico dice el grillo and you become sleepy you can’t shake off the somnolence it feels so comfortable to close your eyes something akin to sexual gratification it’s all you desire for the next hour or two the waves the crickets the gentle but insistent brine in the air the wind-up noise and the wind blown posture of the grasses bowing in the breeze the outstretched wings of a seagull floating on a current of air pri pri pri pri pri another insect in harmony with the cricket qui qui qui qui the leveling of your consciousness close your eyes welcome oblivion

“Journeys of discovery are not something you start doing, but something you gradually stop doing.”

— Erling Kagge / Walking: One Step At A Time

“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.”

— Jaron Lanier

offences (P•A•D Blackout 925)

Struthious can be
a tendency
like
lying down and flattening
a misconception
fully visible the
ostrich
seeking a word turned back to

Fifteenth-century scientists
describe a pair of bones
between the
structures connected to
each
19th century
placenta
to be heard
in 1837
offences against good
decorum all

DID YOU KNOW?
traces to meaning and
“home” In
the eyes of the law can also be
a car People may
have several but only one official
purpose

If you are lucky enough to
find the group of
sandbanks that
geographers
use
it isn’t surprising
for that kind of language

“I think we’re creative all day long. We have to have an appointment to have that work out on the page. Because the creative part of us gets tired of waiting, or just gets tired.”

— Mary Oliver

Things I Heard Today

It dries up my mouth, it sucks all the moisture out of it. Kinship is killship, like a fisherman’s black boot, teachers and critics all dance the poot.

Celebrate the bullet. If you’re not ska, you’re dead. It’s a different version of the same cavil. Did you ever see Hopper in Apocalypse Now? ¡Que come mierderia!

What you got? Oppositional defiant disorder? Well, bless this President, he’s looking out for us.

Due to disagreements a group of men sway public opinion and gain office operating with intimate friends.

Deliquescent means what? Did you know osmium is the heaviest element?

This is Betty Creamer for the chapter thirteen attorney. I don’t know if they did claim it in their tax returns or not. Woop,woop, wooooeeeeaahh! Anyone who deals with abused and traumatized kids… is that empty? Sexual abuse speeds up their biological clock and secretes sex hormones.

James recommends the latest influencers. We’ve filed a plan, your honor. No study had ever followed mollusks in these conditions. A bodily fluid spill kit? We laughed as we watched the dog try in vain.

The rampaging sans-culottes wrecked churches. Thank you for your order. Lacking friends in elementary school makes a crucial difference. Fevers, fevers and pustules!

It’s a complex and rocky time when friends can suddenly turn on one another. Standby power is wasted electricity. Allow the actuator to air dry completely. There’s neither intelligence or support from family and peers.

“One little blog post is nothing on its own, but publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it turns into your life’s work.”

— Austin Kleon / AustinKleon.com