thee istsfor manity reader

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

Crabwise and Operose

It’s not that I operate under the impression that my vision is oppression; and it’s not that I enjoy the song that goes “buffalo and bison, bison and buffalo / canonball and rifle, rifle and canonball…” — because I do enjoy that song. But your lachrymose moods and your teary discharges leave me feeling glum and dissociative, dissociative and glum.

So I approach you crabwise and operose, operose and crabwise…

And all I can add, as the singer sang, “that’s the way the thunder rumbles… that’s the way the bee bumbles… bumbles.”

So our relation has come to its inevitable violent end. You have pelted me with rocks and garbage for the last time. You will no longer imperiously rail at me that you are “the queen of bad moods,” or “bluer than blue, in your black converse.”

I now have this overweening desire to play Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” while replaying a loop of the 30 second scene from The Exorcist where Regan abuses and bloodies her demoniac self with a crucifix, 180’s her head and says, “Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?”

But in your pedantic manner you insist the line is “canting daughter, canting daughter!”

You add in that lovely manner of yours, “you imbecile! I have a PhD in Comparative Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. Canting. Canting as in affectedly pious or righteous; alternately, to talk hypocritically and sanctimoniously about something. Canting!”

Then you hiss at me like a hackle-high cat.

And you wonder why I’m leaving as an attenuated truncated lower case word person?

I’m broken. You’re broken. This country is irretrievably broken.

I’m off to Canada to find me a buffalo wrangler.

“Hug me, mother of noise.
Find me a hiding place.
I am afraid of my voice.
I do not like my face.”

— Anne Stevenson / “Television”

after the storm

animals were rescued
three weeks later
desperate townspeople
ate them
container ships lost
across the hemisphere
forlorn people victims
of hunger
nothing else
possible
no
one
redeemed

“I was going to buy a copy of The Power Of Positive Thinking, and then I thought, ‘What the hell good would that do?’”

—Ronnie Shakes

Anagnorisis

Hello, this is your captain. We’re coming to you from the equitime point of the flight with some bad news. No. It’s very bad news…

All day cooped up in here. This is the most time I’ve ever spent with this copilot, trapped in this compartment, and I ain’t calling it a cockpit, no sir… although, gab nub it, I just did there. No more.

There’s a lot of tension in here between us. The navigator is out. I took care of him. But it is this gash nab copilot that has got my goat.

Ok, well, it’s god. He’s my copilot and I’ve had enough of him.

Enough of the famine, disease, and gnarled planet; enough of petty dictators, hypersonic nuclear weapons, child sexual abuse, racism, hegemony, political malpractice, and corporate greed.

Nah, the news isn’t good here from these tight quarters — and I’m sending god off like D.B. Cooper, without the parachute or the money.

While he gave me a chance at privilege — and boy did I enjoy it, and make the market capital best of my chances — I just never understood why he shafted the 4 billion others.

That’s just not right. And now we’ve just lost about another million in less than a year to some serious batshit bug…

I apologize for my language, ladies and gentlemen. I beg your pardon.

Now if the flight crew will please clear the aisles, everyone buckle up your belts — as you can hear from that “ding” the fasten seat belt signs are on.

The flight crew will please secure the galley and this god-awful compartment exit — and it’s veritably god-awful if you know what I mean by this dead weight I’m piloting up here.

You will note that the masks will drop in front of you when I open the fuselage door — as the cabin becomes depressurized.

No worries. Don’t bother with the masks. It’ll be quicker that way.

This helpless gut bucket will be making a very quick 33,000 foot descent into the Pacific and the rest of us will sleep with the angels after we greet the fish.

Will you look at that gorgeous sunset?

That is all…

“I have felt the wind of the wing of madness.”

— Charles Baudelaire / Intimate Journals

New Land

A bit shoddy this place!

It has become an astounding melodramatic mediocrity — made all the more disappointing by what it claims to aspire to be.

How much are you asking for it?

But it’s a half-baked soap opera! It’s an intellectual wilderness state ringed by an imbecilic dystopian society. It’s full of unsympathetic characters.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve wished those stooges a slow disembowelment by wolves, or that they be felled by tornadic detritus, swept away in the wake of a hurricane, or be incinerated in one of the dumpster fires of they’re always starting.

Goose-step Market Dystopia.

This smells of that earthy failure — like they’ve already rigged a dying system…

Nah, you can keep it.

Oy, for the new land of the Huns!

Oy!

“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

— George Orwell / 1984