thee istsfor manity reader

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

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— Frank Relish, author of The Submariners: The Leaky Years, 1887-1902

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This is Fall, at 4:29 p.m., on 10/13/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (13/31)

“The question didn’t go away though. Why are you doing this? Wasn’t I too old for pranks? Wasn’t I embarrassing myself, creeping around grocery stores and libraries and public parks to tape poems? Wasn’t I unqualified to examine works by the greats, wasn’t I wasting my time writing for such a marginal readership with no expectation of income?

Yes. Yes, yes, and yes.

But also—

So what?”

—Maggie Lane / “How I Found Small Joys in My Life as a Poet Elf”

Unknown Characteristics (cut-up 1012)

I am a 10-year veteran of disaster remediation.

There is no reliable data.

The operation has to be planned from scratch.

Speak only in the most general terms.

It is so secret I can’t call my wife for 8 weeks.

I face an even more dire situation than my predecessor.

My steps squelch in this effluent.

I want dynamic action and patriotic sacrifice.

I fear the consequences.

We remain determined.

“Finished crap can be edited. Unfinished greatness languishes forever. The only bad writing is the thing you didn’t write!”

— Margarita Gakis

quietly appeal for help

This is Fall, at 8:28 am, on 10/11/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (11/31)

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Title Goes Here

This is the body of the entry: This is the complication. This is the climax. This is the gist of what I wish to convey. This is the denouement. This is what you get.

This is Fall, at 8:08 am, on 10/10/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (10/31)

“…I believe that if you sit quietly, like you’re fishing, you will catch ideas… but you gotta write that idea down right away. And as you’re writing, sometimes it’s amazing how much comes out, you know, from that one flash… It wants to be something. It’s a seed for something. So, the whole thing is translating that idea to a medium.”

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