thee istsfor manity reader

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

Praise for thee istsfor manity reader:

“I suffered from a severe case of leopard spotting, it led to a loss of jobs, family, and friends. Reading the thee istsfor manity reader every morning was directly responsible for my adding 20 lbs. of muscle and losing 2 inches off my waistline. I recommend the thee istsfor manity reader to everyone I meet. Granted, I’m still spotted and alone, but I’m now full of vim and vigor and look forward to each daily installment of the thee istsfor manity reader.”
— Frank Relish, author of The Submariners: The Leaky Years, 1887-1902

“I don’t understand a lick of it. I just drop by occasionally for the nudie pics.”
— Jean-Jacques Perdefue, former cruiserweight champion

“Despite the lacerations and the poorly done stitches, I read it daily for the Frankenstein-ish aspect of it. It’s got abnormal reasoning, it’s put together on the slap-dash, and it runs away from fire. Nowadays, one can’t experience that much underachievement, in such a concentrated form, from a single blogsite. It’s blatherskite. Uniquely trashy and crass.”
— Abby Feldman, editor of The Journal of Psychiatric Dissociation and Acute Bacterial Prostatitis

“I fled communism nearly 60 years ago. I know unvarnished shit when I smell it. The thee istsfor manity reader STINKS like a totalitarian turd.”
— Dr. Panfilo Sobrenada, Psychiatrist and Family Counselor

“I have flown under the power of my own wings, without setting foot on land — nonstop — from Alaska to New Zeland in 8 days. I would gladly crash and burn upon my next take-off if I were subjected to another post from the thee istsfor manity reader. Please stop it!”
— E7, the Legendary Godwit

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

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