thee istsfor manity reader

Bad Outcomes (blackout 211)

1.

West, the dream maker bicycles
For all ages, a unique paradise
Only one mile sought after
Fingertips.

2.

That is awesome, the guy in the gray
Cuff him and zip it
I saw you guys intertwined
We’re trying to drink and have a good time
No tolerance, you three are going to jail
As the night wears on
A man possibly intoxicated, no teeth,
Is trying to go home but there are only remnants
Of trash and we call it a successful weekend.

3.

A death threat in Denmark
Over the telephone and emails
The children should all be killed
Using a bolt pistol then skinned
And fed to the lions to prevent
Inbreeding and scientific knowledge.

4.

Placed in the security bin,
No problem, thank you.
Serving compliments, complaints and suggestions:
E as in Edward, please listen carefully catch and check.

5.

Losing Again as Overflow
The river burst upstream, the latest bout,
Places the water east of this week.
Part of the sea, wet since 1766,
Has been under criticism
For failing to visit the flood.

This is Fall, at 2:48 pm, on 10/09/2020. Jamaica Plain, MA. (9/31)

“This doesn’t get said enough in this culture: You should do things because you like them, because they’re satisfying.
It is very easy to be disciplined when you like what you’re doing.”

— Austin Kleon / AustinKleon.com

Absoidial Head

Come collogue, my friend. Now is the only thing that’s real. Who said that?

Even with this new age shit thrumming in my ears, Absoidial Head on the Windshield, from their record Shimmied A Jack From The Response Purveyor — I’m walking backwards, and I’m unspooling the detritus of a caffeine o.d.

I fill up on sous-vide chicken because Ypsilanti is calling. The whiffle burgermeisters are out to bomb civilization, and good sense, back to 5700 B.C.E.

Nothing rings true — Tibetan bowls and tubular bells are testing positive for conformity. Pretty is as pretty bombs. Over 200,000 innocent citizens out with Helium Toast and Victory Biscuits fortified with Iodine 131 isotopes. That spells… well, that spells nothing good.

The Crank continues to quaver on that same C6 note for another two hours. No trees, no grass here, so I think I’ll immaculately inseminate The Crank — conception is for gutter liquidity and transistor yapping. Boy, does the Crank yap something fierce in this fetid air. It smells of sweat and dried fish in here.

I’m aghast that you might campaign for the steroidally concupiscent candidate on your two weeks sick leave. That’s not what I’m being paid for.

You’re overtaken most often in the early morning or late at night, but never at vespers. At vespers you sing a different Velvet Underground album each weeknight. During the instrumentals you dance to the song playing in your head.

My head, on propaganda, is in a foggy way.

And damned if we don’t live in the dark age of propaganda. But I’m on the case.

This is Fall, at 10:16 am, on 10/08/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (8/31)

“I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable.”

— David Rakoff

This is Fall, at 5:19 pm, on 10/07/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (7.1/31)

Deep Mail

… rooted in the world. Adamantine, I say…

You there, bring the claque around, those pot-bellied trash throwing fiends, so that I may bowdlerize the founding documents. I’ll read them aloud in the quavering castrato of the bear baiters or dog and pony show barkers. Here, here, tit, tit, and all that. Tell me your story then. Why so sullen there? Why the downcast?

Me?

Well, because my order of Hallmark cards, Trumpy Bear, and Nancy Pelosi Chew Toy was lost in the mail. And dab-gone-it, if that doesn’t remind me of the time my order of the Up With People album, and the Richard M. Nixon inaugural addresses on reel to reel tapes were lost in the mails too, and then found, in 1977 — three years late — in a dead letter office in Valdosta, Georgia.

After all that waiting someone sent me albums from something called Sex Pistols, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, and Dead Boys instead. What in creation?! Why? Why would any of that even exist?

So that put me off mail order for decades.

Then I couldn’t resist anymore, about ten years ago, I was switching around the channels while I waited for my favorite Home Shopping Network show to come on, and I came upon an ad for My Pillow. Goodness me! I just had to have one, and while I was very surprised by the steep shipping and handling charges, and the pillow did turn ratty a bit too quickly — Mike, the host was such a lovely person on-screen, AND he’s been redeemed — so I just chalked it up as taking one for the big guy.

There I was again, ready to shop by mail to my heart’s content and willing to open my heart and my wallet.

I’ve been waiting for my Trumpy Bear and Pelosi Chew Toy for far too long — I can live without the Hallmark for now — but I just found out the packages are forever lost in the mails.

What is Checkers Jr. Jr. going to chew on?

It’s another hit job by the deep… never mind that… my Lawrence Welk rerun is on soon, I’ve gotta get back.

This is Fall, at 5:57 pm, on 10/07/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (7.2/31)

“You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

I’ll Never Do Another Magic Trick

Let me tell you, I was shocked. He came out of the darkness and parried and flipped the toupee off my head with that jaunty rapier. All right, I said to him, it’s marinating time and I’m going to make you regret this. I poured the juice of eight clementines on, followed by four cloves of garlic, the juice of one lemon, half a large yellow onion, a table spoon of olive oil, salt, pepper, and two table spoons of aceto balsamico. He turned wildly. Blinded. He smelled better. And now he was at my whim. I had the advantage on him.

He called me Ozymandius. And I said, behold, and look upon me… but then he yawned and struggled to get the marinade out of his eyes. I waved my hands, and passed a handkerchief across his head and voila his head disappeared, yet his hips and body struggled on in an apoplectic dance.

He was transformed into a headless Saint Vitus, and in this manner we danced on well in to the night.

This is Fall, at 2:24 pm, on 10/06/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (6/31)

“Quit your complaining. It’s not the world’s fault that you wanted to be an artist. It’s not the world’s job to enjoy the films you make, and it’s certainly not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you have to, but stop whining and get back to work.”

— Werner Herzog

Boogie Taps In Bangatovia

Can you tolerate the boogie taps in Bangatovia?

I can understand your need for disinformation, as you are a tendentious jerk, and your tongue lags like a bloodhound’s when you see a pomegranate. But is there really a need to go parading about when you are sick with a virulence that knows no bounds?

Must you be a whirling dervish of imbecility at every turn? Does nothing, absolutely nothing, make you stop for one moment to reflect?

I haven’t seen anything quite like you before — you are an automaton of illness, bad conception and bad vibes. What you need is a rave (circa, 1993) and lots of X. Go ahead, we’ll provide the pacifier and twirly lights.

Please, please, take a seat, and just for a moment consider what you do. Take a raved-out and zonked-out night off. Take a brief time out for rhinoceros trivia, if you prefer. Take a dump and clean out your system — a deep cleanse colonic — and maybe a modicum of intelligence will seep its way up to your brain stem.

Please stop. Please leave us alone for a day or two.

And now we return to your regularly scheduled broadcast…

This is Fall, at 10:18 am, on 10/05/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (5/31)

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”

— George Orwell / 1984

Rapid Eye Phantasm

The book of the moon, la lune, jejune, da do run run run… do do do de da da da, that’s all I want to say to you…

Words run-on, days and months run-on, one day we’ll look back and see these two years (2020-2021) ran-on… I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside, oh yeah…

Ev’rybody had a hard year… Ev’rybody put their foot down…

Habilité, habillement, hibernation, and Hibernian spelling, the transmuted emissions from space — “the final frontier,” according to some; “is the place,” according to another. It’s for cosmonauts, astronauts, and Major Tom who met his end floating in his tin can — that was four years ago! What else happened four years ago? Hmm…

Oh that bumptious meliorism of yours. Nothing has worked out. We are at the precipice, staring down into the void, and still you persist in your delusion. And now…

I’m inside the subway train looking out at the peloton of people crowded on the platform waiting to get in, and toward the rear of that mass, head towering above the others, is Glen Campbell dressed as Joe Buck from Midnight Cowboy — all fringed out. I think to myself, too bad it isn’t Lou Reed. I’m inhabiting this world I’ve never been in before, it’s 1969! My thoughts are somehow transmitted to everyone on the subway train, and to those waiting on the platform, including Glen Campbell (as Joe Buck) still waiting to get on the train. As the doors open and the mass of people move in and out of the subway car, I dematerialize and am now hovering somewhere outside the train looking in. There’s a group of soldiers, on furlough, fully decked out in their desert camouflage and weapons inside the train. They yell in unison, “Hey, it’s Lou Reed. Lou Reed of the Velvets. VU. The Velvet Underground.”

Glen Campbell laughs good naturedly and says, no, he’s Glen Campbell — the Wichita Lineman…

The scene goes black. Nothing more heard. Nothing more seen.

This is Fall, at 5:22 pm, on 10/04/20. Jamaica Plain, MA. (4/31)

“Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge / “Dejection: An Ode”

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”