thee istsfor manity reader

Clean-up on Aisle Semantics

Its so far removed from the truth he said. This year has withered before our eyes.

Doesnt the rice pilaf smell like baking bread she said.

No. I think youre smelling the yeast from your crotch he said.

She snapped an open-handed chop to his side.

He fell sending a pot of rice pilaf fanning out in steam on the slate tiles.

Aw kidney sucker punch he said.

Welcome to my world move over and move out cuz you piss me off she said.

Clean up on aisle semantics he said.

I feel myself breaking through the husk that contains me she said.

Run spirit run. Hit the north hit the snooze button slap yourself slap yer mammy he said.

Stop this record stop your baseless simpleton self she said. Stop stop stop.

I wont respond in kind Ill respond in Greek tragedy he said

Respond by crunching the piles of fulvous leaves on your way out she said.

The bulbous affairs of men he said like monticules of litter and scrap iron are the only landscapes left to us.

The fall will come after the fall the fall will precede the fall the fall is there for you to take this fall may be your last she said.

“The people eat sick fish
because there are no others.
Then they get born wrong.”

— Margaret Atwood / “Frogless”

Thanks For Reading

Hello, and welcome to year two of thee istsfor manity reader!

Thanks for dropping by, or thanks for following the blog and being a regular reader — or if it’s your first time here: welcome to the best cooking and child care tips website on the net…

No.

But seriously, thanks for dropping by and reading during year one, anything after this past year is bound to be an improvement.

Thank you,

Istsfor Manity
(j.i. alvarez)

(left to right): istsfor manity, j.i. alvarez

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.”

— Allen Ginsberg

Snivel Bingo

Most of it unfurled under the moon of twin pandemics
All of it challenging
Most of it bare
All of it raw

There are no terpsichoreans in drabble
The angels in the firmament made of cheap tin

Rain and wind continually eats the land
Reshaping it
Creating a coruscated landscape
Flash in the pan

Pointless concordances
Citations and indentions missing
Erosion errata

(come now see it now
then come see it later
and later even again
and yet some other time and compare
the canyons are scored

if it — whatever it is — doesn’t catch
and you don’t know what you intended
it may be lost forever)

Open your pipes
Eat the acid
Swallow the sky

“How privileged you are, to be still
passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed
you.”

— Louise Glück / “October”

Photograph: Dr. Ed Uthman. Public Domain. CC.

terra incognita

the third testicle
teratoma

terra incongnita

a life unformed
a life imbibed in errant teeth & muscle
hair missing its natural head

imperfectly formed world
impostor globe of skin

a sibling incised
excised

space in absentia
a world unknown

“Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to 0 of the novel.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

Empty Water

Don’t let that giant Meyer lemon out by the well anymore.

The lemon is taking all the minerals and nutrients out of our water by a process of reverse go-go-frugging — and I ain’t talking about no telemarketing research malfeasance and such.

No, I’m talking about that giant lemon playing The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” — and acting out the final scene from Pink Flamingos by our well out back.

Don’t you hear that song like clockwork at 6:09 every morning?

Oh, and don’t you think it’s a coincidence that the ubangi bangi car drives by just after we hear that song every Monday thru Friday?

Don’t you see how we’re depleted of calcium and magnesium? Don’t you see how withered we look?

Our water is full of empty water, Madge!

No minerals.

Ain’t you been feeling pekid? You certainly look it!

Looka’ that lemon out there dancing like it’s 1963!

This is Fall at 6:42 a.m. on 11/14/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (2/4)

“Teaching writing is a hustle.”

— Cormac McCarthy

Hypnopompic Chronicle 111320

Traffic outside and garish colors swirl.

Shattering glass above our heads.

The cat runs from underneath the bed and stands sentry below the window.

Crunching glass at the top of the window behind the blinds.

A squirrel?

No an otter.

A tree otter? you say.

Errant, from the gnarled oak, I say.

We have a backyard that is simultaneously outside and inside the house.

This otter scurries down the tree and up on the bed.

The otter tunnels below the bed, behind the blinds, and up and out of the house.

The cat, stupefied and seconds late, jumps up swiping at air and catches its claws on the blind — hangs there — nonplussed.

Hey! There’s a hole in Thee Window where the outside world flows in and out.

A tall lanky man jogs through the edge of our bedroom, out for his morning run with his equally tall and lanky greyhound, and right out through the hall.

We have leaks in the house.

Holes.

The otter is back, but I stand firm and stare it down from the other side of the window.

Now it’s a groundhog.

Now it’s an otter again.

You complain. You don’t want kingdom animalia running through the house.

The otter and I stare each other down.

A standoff.

“Commit yourself to the process, NOT the project. Don’t be afraid to write badly, everyone does. Invest yourself in the lifestyle … NOT in the particular piece of work.”

— Frank Conroy

let me show u mine

id like to say some colorful things
but the kids are here

can we agree that we feel better
agreed

we screened our films
i teach filmmaking

my point is why isnt it a film
if ur script is inserted

in the typewriter clasped
on the roll

and u hold up ur typewriter
for us to see

a conceptual film

ur concept in the drum
roll please

smiles and claps

who wants to exhibit their film
u alone say ok

let me show u mine
u place the selectric

upside umop
on the pedestal

u place ur script atop
the selectric

unclean u say
my film is called unclean

“When I have a poem accepted by a magazine that prints so-called quality poetry, I ask myself where I have failed.”

— Charles Bukowski

The Price of Pork Bellies & Swimmers to Eggs

It’s precisely because motility is important to the sperm that it listens to futures reports. The price of pork bellies is of paramount importance to fertilization… and the Fibonacci 50!

Sing and dance for Magellanic skies are bearing down on every sperm, and everyone still swimming is despairing of exploding plastic coils — they’re refractory and they’re concupiscent, elegant and resplendent all at once — even the twisty-tailed stragglers are trying.

The potential is righteous with me…

… and you, and a dog named Boo.

A girl like you. A girl named Goo, that thinks and predates the partridges, the pear trees, and the sonic tableaux.

Think of the tree and its allowance — its unfurling spectacular in its singular come-uppance — spectacular and oracular!

Leave the headlands to the Powderheads and the powder to the Jacobites. Once upon a guillotine I saw the news, the graphic elements, the chyron and the pews — and we raged for the angels. We sang: “Kill Your Television Now.”

I am suddenly quiescent (and senescent) and the market has squatted on the pantifiers.

Do crotchless pants catch fire? Try the chaps, they’re in the next section over.

And I got to know, and I got to know, and I got to know…

… which swimmer makes it to the egg.

“I shall always be depressed, but what comforts me is the realization that I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.”

— Samuel Beckett / Samuel Beckett: A Biography

cluelessness was her aspiration
omission was her inclination
forgetfulness was her destination

tra la la, she said

cluelessness was his indignation
commission was his situation
punctiliousness was his inspiration

tra la la, he said

it seemed to work without resignation
what a revelation

tra la la

“I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.”

— Ann Patchett / The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life

Violet Bathroom Dictator

He is the violet
Bathroom dictator; king of the plastered
Hairspray combover.

He is fall
October turning chill at 10:09 p.m.; a smoldering 
Ruin, abandoned house burnt.

He is tornadic 
Aftermath, roiling clouds receding;
Waxing solar eclipse.

He is a prickly
Brown weed foisted into the wind;
Injured porcupine.

He is a stagnant
Tidal pool; A sargassum-clogged beach 
After man o’ war arrive.

He is a rusted
’74 green Impala; A worn
Holy-soled shoe.

He is a stillborn
Merengue; A ridgeless guiro
Missing its rhythm stick.

He is a bruised
Rotting Mango – Acrid 
Espresso in the Little Havana heat.

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”

— Anne Sexton