thee istsfor manity reader

flarfish 27: vaticination la luciernaga

On two occasions, in fact, your face

is particularly emphasized: similar to

Foretell the future of us:

firecracker: petardo

firedepartment: bomberos

firefly: luciérnaga

firelight: luz del Vaticano

At Vatican South July comes into focus accelerated

A splendid and macabre garden

Fortell the future…

in Russia:

Garshin, Korolenko, Chekhov and He plays, too, at A new construction

that as an army of (insatiables) brilliant, magnificent, nobles:

sumptuous as fireflies: luminant,

Effulgent

illuminating a distant, wide bard

And lunar.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

— May Sarton / Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mearmaids Singing

Fox in a Cul-de-Sac

Fade in:

Fusty living room. Crepuscular light.

Loud swelling radio chatter, multiple frequencies: reports of war, a horse race, cricket scores, market updates, easy listening music, someone reciting maths.

A woman affecting classical statue poses. A man sitting on an easy chair reading a newspaper.

W: What did the news have to say today, dear?

M: There were poems received from cyberspace. They popped up for two seconds and were cantilevered out of sight to another spot for later reckoning.

W: What? What are you on about, dear?

M: The poems came at the seating of the regent… underneath her rococo underpants… there was gaseous effluvia…

W: Are you ok, dear? Are you not feeling yourself?

M: Oh, the court was stoic while the noxious twankery spread through the room. But who was keeping count, the farceurs? They were arrivistes!

W: My goodness you’re running a fever.

M: Leave me be! Where was the Count? Oh yeah, mounted on the lady in waiting.

W: My god! What are you on about?

M: Oh, yes! Wading in the darkness behind the draperies! How to gruntle her highness — with her head in a sling — when like a fox in a cul de sac she’s hounded — penned in like a boar between arches — to the end of the line she dons her monocle without that paterfamilias aplomb! She croons! She croons a Bing Crosby scat-a-tat bo-see-do.

W: Nevil! Sit down! Put that back—

M: Oh, do make some sense?! You flatten my patience with that utter garble of yarbol warbles. Please, please, please let me get what I want—

W: What on earth do you want? Sit down, and put that back in your drawers!

M: Some sense from you! A semblance of balance — a discernible emprise! Don’t be a silly wicket, spewing snubberdigibblets of nonsense and frou frou foo!

W: Nevil! Pants back on!

M: Don’t be a slugabed, you say! Oh, don’t be a sluggard… Or! You’re a braggart all drugged up with words… well, I’m free to walk about without pants, without fear of brigandage and without your loquacious bagpipes of babble!

W: Stop.

M: Won’t stop.

W: No, stop.

M: I won’t.

W: Well. Don’t.

Fade out.

“It’s a job. It’s not a hobby. You don’t write the way you build a model airplane. You have to sit down and work, to schedule your time and stick to it. Even if it’s just for an hour or so each day, you have to get a babysitter and make the time. If you’re going to make writing succeed you have to approach it as a job.”

— Rosellen Brown

The Eyeball Kid

The voice of Spice, the synthetic marijuana, told him to go and surrender himself to the firefighters down the street — then it was the voice of god that echoed down the hallway.

The living room fern transmogrified into a green anole that bit its own tail in half.  The smaller tip began to speak in Aramaic — not that he knew Aramaic, but somehow he intuited it was Aramaic.

The tail said, “I have a gun.  I will kill you if you don’t turn yourself over to the firemen across the street.  Go now, man.  Go!  Go, before I smite you.  Go and repent.”

The tail writhed and grew in to a gherkin that glowed in the blue redeeming light of Jesus.  He vomited the Bengali lentils and brown rice he had at lunch.  He felt lighter, better now.

He felt compelled to pee on the ficus bonsai on the coffee table, despite the perfectly clean bathroom down the hall.  It was Dolores’s day to clean on Wednesday, and it had been freshly cleaned this morning. But he peed on the ficus nonetheless.

He walked across the street to the firehouse and kneeled before the firefighters.  He begged forgiveness and eternal fealty to all things firefighter related.  The firefighters were surprised in the midst of a late afternoon lunch after a gnarly five alarm wildcat at noon.

“The hand of God compels me,” he cried. “Please!”

As the fire chief came sliding down the pole, Eusebio thought he saw the son of God descending from the heavens…

“Mornings, afternoons, nights… Any time can work. For me it is less so about the time of the day and more about my state of mind. I need to feel balanced and awake. I don’t mean to say that I don’t have an everyday routine. I try to work every day from 9 to 14. But, when an idea traps me I will work on it for the rest of the day. On public transport, in waiting rooms, on planes… sometimes I can even take notes in the restroom in the middle of a party. Writing wherever and whenever I want is my rebel commonplace. It could sound a little dumb, but I love it.”

— Samanta Schweblin

“The idol Moloch with seven chambers or chapels”, from Johann Lund’s Die Alten Jüdischen Heiligthümer (1738. Public Domain)

making the scene: 1974 curls in nudie pix

his left pupil,
untethered,
a fugue childhood of monticule hunger

on loan,
uncomfortably,
wide-eyed face in cathode ray fuzz

hell-shock door,
unlocked,
“fuck away from the exhaust vent above”

a hive of,
undone,
winces and infuriating accents

hog moans,
unloosed,
some person needles and brays

a retching,
unspooled,
squanders of a man and urine spatters outside

seen: prescient limps in the viewfinder
scene: transient muzz of voices trailing

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

— W.B. Yeats / “The Second Coming”

Pepi Poppers

There’s something of the sybarite about her. She plays the lute too loud and with reckless abandon — popping strings here and there and singing haltingly about fucking.

About what?

Yeah, and she eats too many moon pies in one sitting and washes them down with half a dozen milkshakes.

My god, man! Even the Village People thought twice about doing the shake.

This is appalling and I’m whining in a Terry Thomas sort of way: I say, old chap…

You have such a limited vocabulary, and no head for figures.

May I call you Pepi?

At half past four in the afternoon? Rather!

You have a passion for rotters —

I’m jealous.

Take thy clyster pipe, syringe, and love me!

You’re being very sentimental. I will. Off we go!

Clyster Pipe and Syringe. Print from woodcut, from Workes, 1634. Public Domain.

“I want to be free to try things that don’t make sense yet.”
— Sadie Benning

flarfish 9: anthophilous stooge

indicator strife demonitised… obsequiously 
one touch option bitcoins
stress glances and dung beetles
old / established / proleptically stalking, 
& disciplining Rob.
anglo-indian indulgences…
indulge the broadcast of a fatty stooge —
he blathers & mispunctuates symetrically. 
Amok Sampson Anthophilus /
he who
Inconsolably pricks a stooge to the              edge 

hummingbirds dipping
concordant & exigently thinned.

bitch- definition of bitch in English: 
a female dog, wolf or otter

we
battled humanely unappeased lodgers… 
dehumanized
Withdraw your profit — prophet

prophesy:
Paul forced Jonah… lewdly. 
Elocutionary… Filipino Journal… 
cooking up a Filipino Box Spring Hog…
writing my dissertation somatological

the study of material substances
deluged putrescine nuts & a
deflowered outstretched tremolo…

“Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia, England is bumping into India, rich man bumps into poor man. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we’re sick and tired of it now. It’s been going on for too long. Are we ever going to get it right?”

—Athol Fugard / Master Harold and the Boys

Verfremdungseffekt

Hey, Shklovsky! Whadda’ doin’ over there? Huh? Singing? Whadda’ ya’? A troubadour or something?

I got that troubadour ballads book from the library, and now I got all the great songs here for my uke.

What’s a uke?

My ukulele, Sam. Whataya’ dense?

Hey, hey there, speed racer! Take a chill pill, pal. No call for ad hominem broadsides, Sparky!

Who you callin’ Sparky? I told you never to call me that!

Ok, ok, Bertolt. Compose yourself. No need to get bent —

Don’t tell me when to bend outta’ shape, Einstein! I’m getting cold here, something creepin’ up my back. I’m getting that familiar sepia toned vignetting coming over my perception. I’m filled with angst. I’m being consumed by the void again. It’s eating me slowly from my core outward. I’m… I’m… the screeching void… the nothingness… that feeling of —

Verfremdungseffekt?

Huh?

Verfremdungseffekt!

That’s ok! It’s passed. It’s all over now.

All over? Jeez, Shklovsky, you just had a melt down right in front of me. You ain’t all right.

Perfectly, so, my dear chum. Let’s get back to greasing the devices, and then I’ll be first.

Ok, friend-o! Whateva’ you say. But what did that all mean just now?

We must grease our devices in this best of all possible worlds.

Ah, ya!

“He was never a happy man. He smelled faintly of future failure…”

— Salman Rushdie / Midnight’s Children

Idle Class Chatter

“Just carry a glass or something.”

“I’ve heard the most intriguing things about you.”

(light classical tune is playing)

“Really?”

“Will no one hold you accountable?”

“Me? Never. You?”

“I don’t know. But I feel like we’re on the road to nowhere.”

An early sign of change was spotted outside. It could be seen through the grand room sliders. Clouds were gathering in formation and staring at the dinner party guests. There was tinkling glass and the smell of burning lamb wafting from the kitchen.

“Hey, get a load of this. Look at the clouds.”

“Oh my goodness.”

“That’s amazing.”

The smoke became dense and flames began spreading through the living room shag. Then the chaise longe caught fire and the ottoman whooshed into flames.

“Hey, look. The clouds are forming a ring around the setting sun.”

“It looks like a pumpkin pie festooned with whipped—“

“Folks, please move out into the backyard. The house is on fire.”

“Oh, my god. No!”

“That’s ok. The clouds and sun do our bidding. They always do. Remember, we are the first estate. We’ll build a new house, no matter. It’s you good, god-fearing folks that can’t be replaced. Grab your drinks and let’s head outside. The help will do what they can in here.”

“Wee!”

“Off we go.”

“Oh, Splendid.”

“Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

— Ernest Hemingway / “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

Ingmar Bergman’s Fuse Box

A black hole lives here
It pulls all energy and hope
In, merely to obliterate it all
There isn’t any waste
There is no byproduct
There is no “is”
This is June

“There is a word: ‘pariah.’ In human society this word is used to indicate those who have failed, the pathetic, the immoral. Ever since I was born, I felt I was a pariah…”
— Osamu Dazai / A Shameful Life

flarfish 67: blue bangle tangle

thin sterling, silver cuff, hand hammered
tangled up in blue and i love it!
cord comfortable and fused
more often than you would like?

thorny gold and silver vines
bind you tight in its inexorable hegemony:
thousands of artists toiling for 33
cents an hour in triangle shirt waist
conditioning and fetor

the death dress and identity of an early
viking age… 
* bead * tangle * bracelet *
* womens * everyday * ceramic * 
high polish from low sweatshops halfway
around the world…
or very near your corner 7-11

embroidered on her breast is a pattern
of pink roses obscured by a branding
iron welt

buy it at the gray market stall 
near the canal street subway stop
it can be can be transmuted into a random 
color…

or a random other whose bad luck was
being born on the backside of the globe…

wear it with pride and impress your
impressible friends with your 
narcissu-tchotchke

order the blue bangle tangle guidebook 
in 12 different languages
order now when a special occasion beckons:
one of my favorite things is going for cocktails…

“Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.”

— Gwendolyn Brooks / “truth”