thee istsfor manity reader

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”

Parsnip with Pomegranate Tendencies

Use this taro chip as your viaticum, the priest says.

Where am I?

In a priest driven ambulance, he says.

Good luck, the one in the passenger seat says.

What are you going to do about the primary explosion? the nurse administering my I.V. asks.

Play it as it lays, another says.

No, you did not leave anything on in the kitchen, yet another says.

So I told them: I put on my tight disco pants, and applied plenty of hairspray. I think there were invaders at the gates. I wrote as fast as I could before midnight. Then I turned into a malevolent parsnip with pomegranate tendencies. I didn’t parry her sari because she asked me nicely not to. Remember that. So I repeated it often through the night to myself. I reminded myself to use my inside voice inside my head. I didn’t have to be so loud. And I made a point of not speaking my internal monologues in front of strangers again.

Amen, the priest said.

“Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it… Our civilization is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.”
— Werner Herzog

Thee All Purpose Bedtime Story

“Get your xenograft ideas away from me. Take off that stretchy, crappy underwear. I’m showering tomorrow morning. Clean. Clean pajamas. All right sleepy time for me. Nice and cold. Yes. It’s going to stay cold all night long. What? No. Sush! As it is we ate so much right before… basically within two hours of going to sleep. No. Why? Are you? You know I like it in the summer to turn the air way down at night. I’ll be asleep in twenty minutes. I know it takes you longer, but… just get under the covers and you won’t be cold. Stop! Go to sleep. Just read until you go to sleep… or put your headphones in, you always fall asleep within ten minutes that way. Maybe tomorrow morning if we wake up.”

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
— Oscar Wilde

no hay compunctions

¡coño viejos! / just enough to keep moving / thee old folks r frazzled / speaking in tongues / say things they never said in public when they minds were right / right-right / but they hearts were always hardened / puckered as weathered leather / dry as cotton on a sand drift / if you draw a venn diagram there’s an intersection between us / in the way of chromosomes / but they ain’t no true overlap / just a bunch of xx’s / dumb-ass / insane chemical xx’s /

blue / i’m blue / white / red / how similar flags look / no compunctions about leaving ‘em here to die / desiccated half buried in this desert / he anti-semite / she islamophobe / neither took a long look at theyselves / not quite the right shade / white enough to pass, tho / ‘til they opened they island mouths / oneatha’ quaint ones / babble different tongue / posture different way / not stewing right in thee great melting pot /

double double toil ‘n bubble / fire burn ‘n caldron bubble /

huddled mass shit / ya’ know / 90 miles to go / ‘til i unburden myself / & we must keep going /

never ending / but it don’t have to end this way

“many cubans say fruta bomba for papaya. mitt romney once claimed he loves papaya on miami cuban radio, unaware it means pussy. que clueless, que jokes, when we speak before we know.”
— Kyle Carrero Lopez / “(slang)uage”

flarfish 29: alow hyperbole

She had studding-sails out alow and aloft, with a light but steady breeze

Whether it’s true or mere hyperbole is not the point

those passages where the Hebrews by hyperbole ascribe

recipes in Arabic, even though the quantities mentioned are

surely poetic on her starboard side abreast the funnel

Her hull was opened up Shrunk recreant from thy mighty aid

“I have lived a shameful life.

I can’t understand how this thing called ‘human life’ is supposed to work.”
— Osamu Dazai