thee istsfor manity reader

Oye, Hermano:  Ode To My Unknown Half-Brother

Oye, hermano,

We share the stuff of life;

In us flows the destinies of madness

And abuses most sharp:

 

Self-abuse, self-abasement,

Self-abnegation, self-aggrandizement,

Self-atonement.

 

We are mad with missile crises, 

And hostage crises, deep 

In our DNA.

 

We are three decades apart,

But the same shipwreck disorder — 

Those same 90 miles and congenital madness — marks us.

 

Where are you now, hermano?

What do you do and how

Do you cope?

 

Have you children?  Did you

Continue the family line?  Did you

Extend the name another generation?

 

Does that madness still live?  Will it

Outlive us both?  As we float apart 

On our separate continents sinking.

 

We will be inundated

With memories of belt buckle rain storms

And searches for redemptions in chemicals and mind control…

 

Psychotropic — be our names —

Peaceful (I hope) — be our rejoinders —

In our separate searches for meaning.

 

In this madness

That has been bequeathed

To us in separate, mysterious, lives.

 

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those that do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

— Graham Greene

A Rare Delectation

He woke up with the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” spinning in his head.  He had this dream 1,822 times since seeing their performance on that Saturday morning in 1973.  The gold and ruddy light of it.  The smoking jacket outfits on the group.  The dancers in a sea around them popping up sharp to the rhythm and then descending to the backbeat in perfect rubbery time.  The beauty.  The sheer joy of it.  The possibilities.  He never tired of this dream.

Feel good.  Incendiary.  

The sun was up like a burning bald head.  The brightness insisted its way through the gap in the blinds and past the scrim of his eyelids.  The Soul Train Spinners had been preceded by a nightmarish episode where he was caught out on the Ustyurt plateau during a violent electrical storm.  

He was the only living thing standing for miles, and as the wind lashed down on him, and the lighting cracked the sky into splinters that imbedded themselves in the rain and came homing for him like millions of tiny needles.  

Dreadful.  Noxious.  

He feared not for himself but for the congealed beef plov which was the consistency of dried cement and while he saw the individual pieces of mutton, carrots, and rice in the kazan he couldn’t get the spoon which was intractably stuck in the inert block of food to move.  He was two weeks without food.  And as an electrical charge exploded nearby he was full of existential angst like he’d rarely, viscerally, felt before; and in that howling  — in the egregious hunger — he heard the mellifluous voice of Don Cornelius introducing the Spinners.

Recurring.  Hope. 

The opening strains of the amber guitars and percussion faded up forcing the yowling plains of the Ustyurt into a pin prick spot of light that sparked momentarily in the “O” of the Soul Train neon sign above the Spinners starting their dance routine.  And as the clopping congas, violin glissandos and horns caught momentum, he felt sated.  He was momentarily content for the 1,823rd time in his dreams. 

Today would be one of the good days.

“Celebrate writing and writers you love. Don’t go out of your way to be an asshole or devalue writing that matters to other readers. And don’t buy books on Amazon!”

— Kelly Link

cored

i went to the well and saw jesse

floating there

her eyes frozen on the concrete sky above

arms splayed at her side gently

lapping in the blackness

 

her eyes were stone gray

 

i went to the well to perform my ablutions

but jesse was floating there

she was cored

a sliver in the murk

 

i too feel hollow inside

a stitch of guilt

 

i went to the well and saw jesse

in an act of transcendence so absolute

so pure in that darkness

that i will not speak of it again

 

i went to the well and won’t

return

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

— Margaret Atwood

birds of prey

I.  Turbulence

As his flight boarded he finished the bottle of Malbec in the airport bathroom.  Someone brusquely shook the stall door a third time and walked away.  The sound of flushing urinals, toilets and hand dryers echoed off the tile.  He was dizzy and fell back on to the toilet, cracked the seat, and bounced off onto the wet floor.  He saw a mop bucket rolled up to the stall door. 

A pair of shoes worn colorless and splattered with stains appeared next to the bucket. The door was jostled again and a voice said, “Sir, are you all right in there?  Are you o.k.?”

He tried to lift himself up using the bowl for leverage.  He grabbed for the seat, it shifted and he careened to the far side of the stall, and fell face down on a wet spot.  The wetness was colder than he expected. 

“Sir, I’m going to get airport security,” the voice said.  “Do you need medical help, sir?” The door shook brusquely.

“Coño!”  He heard as the mop bucket wheeled away underneath the door.  “Que mierda, chico,” trailed away. 

He saw a procession of suitcases clattering, and shoes, mostly sneakers, and some dress shoes, and a few open toed sandals — “somewhere sunny and warm,” he whispered. 

He struggled up and sat on the toilet.  He reeled and listed.  The seat cracked again and he teetered above the bowl.  His plane taxied down the runway.  He bounced off the sharp edge of the bowl.  He keeled in some indistinct direction.

 

II.  Friendly Skies

Shit, the one and only thing that’ll calm me down now is to switch to Jesus Christ Superstar on my IPod. 

I’m stuck here in seat 14F — the window — with two large ladies blocking my escape route.  I’m full of gas from the channa masala I had for breakfast and I have to take a grievous piss.  These women are talking about their church bake sale in Brunswick, Georgia.  They must have been programmed to do this precisely at this moment.  Outside the wings are vibrating wildly.  The jet motor seems as if it might fall off in this turbulence.  How could these women not be affected by the storm outside?  They’re oblivious to the plight of the airplane.  They must be automatons planted by my mother to spy on me.

We’re above an endless plateau of cirrus, and look at that wisp of crescent moon nailed to this impossibly saturated blue sky.  The moon out at noon.  Proof, and more proof, that I’m being watched.  These people are everywhere.

The two year-old behind me is screaming shrill cavils.  His parents seem inured to this spectacle.  He’s kicking my seat.  What’s wrong with this little fuck.  Why are these people doing nothing to control this bastard.  Who are these people.  Shit, they’re glaring at me. The parents, too, are plants.  They must be. 

And look at the two across the aisle.  She’s reading Cosmopolitan and he has a copy of Weekly World News open to a page that screams:  Elvis Found! Living As A Hermit In The Himalayas.  Another ruse. 

The plane is compressing in on itself.  We’ll all be crushed up here at 28,000 feet.  Maybe I can crack this window open with my elbow.  I must, I must get out of here.  I can jump out and catch hold of the wing just thirty feet behind me.  Easy.

Maybe I can take this kid out before I head out.  Yes, the pens in my backpack.  I’ll stick one into his neck and puncture his carotid artery.  Yes, yes!  Wait, where exactly on the neck is the carotid?  I’m not sure.  Fuck.  No, no, I’ll just puncture the left side of his neck under the ear and pull across the throat to the other ear.  Yes, I’m sure to hit it that way, probably twice actually. 

Wow, look how cool that looks down there.  That solid bank of cirrus has broken and now we’re over mountainous cumulus clouds, big puffy fuckers, like god-sized cotton balls.  Man, that is beautiful.  Whoa, “Pilate and Christ” this is my absolute favorite on Superstar.  Lots of give and take between the two and those horns pierce.  Fucking pierce!  Ah, shit, “Herod’s Song.”  Shit, no, this is my favorite, I think.

God damn it, kid, shut up. 

Where is it.  Not this one, I hate these pens, a back up I’ve never used.  Here.  Yes.  Why won’t this top pop off?  There.

Shut up kid.  Oh yeah, I love this line “Get out, you, king of the Jews… get out of my life.” I never pictured Josh Mostel as Herod.  He couldn’t sing for shit.

Kid, say goodbye, so fucking long.  Here.

Why’s everybody screaming?  What gives?

Wow, this blood is darker and warmer than I ever expected.

Get your hands off me, man.

Why are these people running up here?  Ow, lady let go of my balls, you fat bitch.  Who’s got their hands on my neck?  Fuck, fuck, that hurts.  Get off me, you fat fuck.  I need to get to the window and I’ll be out. 

Yes, someone has my face pressed to the window.  Just let go of my arm, asshole.  Just got to get my elbow… 

Shit.

Look at that sky.  I never thought a blue like that was possible.

“Be a good steward of your gifts.  Protect your time.  Feed your inner life.  Avoid too much noise.  Read good books, have good sentences in your ears.  Be by yourself as often as you can.  Walk.  Take the phone off the hook.  Work regular hours.”

— Jane Kenyon

 

Epigraph in Ekphrasis:

Or more stories about C-sections

 

i.

I would like this poem 

to be an envoy —

Bearing a gap-toothed smile

between sharpened incisors…

 

ii.

“Remember, you can’t be denied.  Everyone hides.  Where is this little big man hiding?  Hmm.  Sorry, hon, we’re going c-section on you.  Oh, relax.  Nothing to it.  Look, I was a c-section myself and I turned out all right.  

Nurse, get me that sardine can top — the one with the pull tab.”

“This one?”

“Yes, god damn it.”

“But it’s rusty doctor.”

“Give it here.”

“I gave you a good dose of fugu fish tincture, a few minutes back there, hon.  That’s why you can’t move or talk.  You’re basically a zombie, see?  Just breathe as deeply as you are able — provided your diaphragm is nearly paralyzed.  Just think happy thoughts.”

“Nurse!”

“Yes, Dr. Sobrenada?”

“Play some atonal music.  Loud!”

“Not Valkyries, Doctor?”

“Schoenberg, god damn it.  Webern at the very least.  Some James Tenney tape loops in a pinch.  But loud.  And now!”

“Yeah, sister, I got a crackin’ tape collection for being 90 miles east of Iquitos.  How in the hell did you end up there anyway?  And in this state.  What are you doing traveling by dugout canoe so irrefragably pregnant.  Silly rabbit.  Well, you’re home now and relaxed. We’ll have that cracker out of there in no time…”

“Goddamnit, nurse, turn it up!”

“No use squirming, sister. You can’t go anywhere, and I ain’t no bibliolater.  Just a man full of meanness.  A misanthrope — I guess you’d say.  Take that 25 cent word with you to the bank.  Well, maybe not to the bank… take it to your shallow-ditch grave.  I aim to put you out of your misery…”

“Nurse! Incision…”

“Yeah, go ahead and scream, sistah.  The fugu tincture certainly did nothing to your vocal chords, did it?”

“Nurse, maximum volume!  Good help is so rare these days — keep ‘em when you get ‘em.”

Mmmmm… yes… let it out, hon. You sound like a drunken pileated — hey, hey listen, you know that Woody Woodpecker?  ah, well…”

“She’s out…

Nurse, who said time heals all wounds?

It would be better to say that time heals everything except wounds…”

 

iii.

She starts her days on a handheld screen furiously tapping words — 

into images — on gorilla glass.

She reorders the world in this manner.

 

iv.

Why do bombs rain on the poets?

Bombs rain down on this poet.

But this poet, he’s fierce —

explosions in his green stellate eyes — 

standing on a casino chip 

cum soap box.

 

When he hears mortar shells

He cusses more in his odes 

and cuts down on guitar solos.

 

The bombs stop mid-air

Impaled in simulacrum skies — 

Inert butterflies flayed for display — 

black and white nuggets of flower-lava.

 

And a carbuncular woman yells out:

“blah blah blah blah metonymy…

wah wah wah synecdoche…

I have a PhD… from Iowa, damn it!

Give me my due.”

 

“But this is a poetry reading,

With Gueetars, bitch!

This is Las Vegas in ever-burning neon.”

 

And beyond the earth is screaming

And we’re turning to ashes on a dying planet

In the waning days of Emperor Fossil: 

a quick hello to you — 

and a quicker goodbye — 

in the Anthropocene.

 

The Poet has the power to arrest bombs in mid-fall — 

The bombs evanesce into partly cloudy skies —

But his reading is tubercular.

His strumming atonal.

He had too much to drink.

 

The ghosts of misogynies past are railing

At Catullus backstage, 

like an impotent Bukowski — 

robe indecently open — 

maundering impotent in the wings

 

v.

The Monday morning maunder is my worst day

Of peripeteia mumbling…

The Tuesday morning constitutional is full of vim vigor logorrhea: the words pour out.

The Wednesday wander is absolute shit…

 

vi.

So I go to the cupboard, ‘cause I’m an angry cuss, and there exhorting me — virtually screaming at me in 12 point bold — is some numbskull at Dr. Bragg’s ad copy department extolling the virtues of drinking straight —

no chaser! —

Apple Cider vinegar — like it’s some modern day elixir o’ life that’ll pump you up of vim and vigor — a “bracing” tincture it proclaims (ain’t no snake oil here, but strike the band up, and bring out the Bojangles soft shoe!) ‘cause it’s a gonna’ change your life!

Smooth out that existential dread, give ya’ a boner with extra “ ‘ONER ” — o o o o, you’ll go, buddy boy.  

The missus will appreciate it.  And for the misses work out the kinks in the monthly hysterias( if you know what I mean) with all types of effluvial matter that looks like dead wispy spiders floating in your drink.  

Quaff this you’ll see the ideal pick me up, and I mean pick me up fellas “perfect taken 3 times a day!” Did I mention the missus will thank ya’!  It’s the ideal!  The surreal!  Pick-me-up drink: upon arising! (heh! fellas?!) mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  

And the missus says to me:

“The best ting that happened to me in the world:

MENOPAUSE.

That’s what I lived for — for the last 20 years!”

 

vii.

final jump-cuts from the c-section bridge:

 

a.

SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!

 

b.

“Look at that guy on the sidewalk. What’s he doing?”

“Looking for his soul in the cracks.  Look how he burrows, drawing blood from his fingertips.  It must be a fine old soul.  I wonder if that’s what my father was like at the end?  When my uncle found him on the streets of Little Havana looking for crack.  Crack in the cracks.  Heh!  Oh, well, whatever.  Never mind.” he said.

“Ow! Oh my God,” she said. “I think I’m going to need a C-section.  This doesn’t feel right.”

“You mean something akin to omitting the envoy from my sonnet last night?  Bitch!  When will you learn?  I’ll use a god-damned fork to get that out of you!  When will you learn?”

 

c.

Intersectionality– the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual.

I live on the intersection of Hispanic avenue — the preferred nomenclature is Latinx now — and cisgendered male terrace;  near the fluid-class, decade-long, unemployed, heterosexual, forced-into-celibacy-roundabout.  

There.

How’s that for an intersectional address? 

 

d.

CODA 1:

“FUCK OFF

I AM A PAINTER

DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO PAINT

I WILL PAINT 

FLOWERS IF

I WANT

I WILL PAINT

DEAD BODIES

IF I WANT

AND YOU CAN 

ALL FUCK OFF”

 

e.

CODA 2: 

Datta.  Dayadhvam.  Damyata.

                Shantih   shantih   shantih

 

“I’m actually not a big believer in writing books for other people… I believe in writing books for yourself… ultimately I write a book because I want it I need it…”

— Carmen Maria Machado

 

Violet Bathroom Dictator

He is the violet

Bathroom dictator; king of the plastered

Hairspray combover.

 

He is fall

October turning chill at 10:09 p.m.; a smoldering 

Ruin, abandoned house burnt.

 

He is tornadic 

Aftermath, roiling clouds receding;

Waxing solar eclipse.

 

He is a prickly

Brown weed foisted into the wind;

Injured porcupine.

 

He is a stagnant

Tidal pool; A sargassum-clogged beach 

After man o’ war arrive.

 

He is a rusted

’74 green Impala; A worn

Holy-soled shoe.

 

He is a stillborn

Merengue; A ridgeless guiro

Missing its rhythm stick.

 

He is a bruised

Rotting Mango – Acrid 

Espresso in the Little Havana heat.

 

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

— Toni Morrison

mini-flashes o’ funk

The Father

  The sun cut a slice of light into his head — the effulgence of stellate light streaming in through the top of the window blinded him — at the very moment the bullet fragmented in his Broca’s area — it split the infinitive making its way through his synapses there.  All he managed was “¡guao!”  His face a frozen distortion.  What was left of him — and his locked body —  made its way through the air on its ineluctable path to the terrazzo floor.  What was left of his consciousness seeped out with the type O negative flowing copiously from what remained of his ragged head.  His last thought and last partial word unnoticed by anyone else.

The shrapnel still sizzled in that now useless brain — the organ quickly losing its way in the world.  Some shrapnel tore through the curtains and jalousie panes, and some of the shrapnel was embedded in the photograph of him and the Commandante on the wall, commingled with parts of his frontal and parietal lobes: the lobes that once entertained dignitaries, wooed countless women, and gave voice to the orders to shoot 183 people in the revolutionary reprisal squads turned to organic detritus all about the kitchen’s formica surfaces. 

 

Pixies In The Shower

She named the cats Didi and Gogo. The cats do not respond to those names. Beckett’s “Fail, fail again, fail better” is her wife’s favorite quote. She looks like the Venus of Willendorf, but blonde. Her wife doesn’t look at herself in the mirror. They both once wore identical braids on a Caribbean vacation. They sing Pixies songs in the shower together. Tomorrow they will cry, then board the cats. The day after they will set out on a long trek. One will whisper “fuck, yeah” and the other will shout “woohoo” on a summit two thousand miles from here.

 

The Grilled Cheese Camorra

Henry found Mao, his mother, and Fidel at the foot of the bed. They sat cross legged on the floor. Fussing. Castro held a cast iron pan up for the Chairman’s approval.

The Chairman said, “Your mother is teaching us to make grilled cheese sandwiches with just the proper char, Henry.” Fidel turned to Henry and hummed approval.

Henry’s mother said the secret was in the breast milk wash of the bread, and the queso blanco.

“Always use white cheese, Henry.”

Then she dissolved into a mist, spiraled about the ceiling fan, and floated down in a mushroom cloud hiss.

 

Keeper of The Doomsday Clock

I am the keeper of the Doomsday Clock. I know what will happen to us. I know how the world ends, but I don’t tell you. I’ll keep you in the dark. I stopped the hands on the Doomsday Clock at 11:59. When we met I thought I would turn back the hands on the clock, that I might set the pendulum in reverse. But you said our fate was sealed and it was fatal. I was drawn to that. I was afflicted. I set the works in motion once more, the cogs thunder. I have chosen this minute.

 

“Interviewers ask famous writers why they write, and it was (if I remember correctly) the poet John Ashbery who answered “Because I want to.”  Flannery O’Connor answered, “Because I’m good at it.”

— Anne Lamott

(my short film monday lagniappe for you… take 3 minutes out of your life)

Walls

You believe…

Calypso…

 

In rising seas,

In openings, closings,

 

In walls to protect him;

The journey no longer as important 

 

As the destination.

We build trust,

 

We fall apart, Inside this temporary

Housing.  Odysseus, heavy as stone,

 

Maintains his sad sway — An island

Without bridge-makers in

 

This migrant disorder.

 

 

“If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.”

— John Cage

 

Burn the Witch

(from 30 Stories in 30 Songs)

He sat eating what he thought was the best chicken noodle soup he’d ever had.  It was chock full of carrots, translucent slivers of onions, noodles, and hearty chunks of chicken. 

“This is exquisite,” he told the waitress when she came to refill his water glass.  “And this is a small bowl?!  Unbelievable, this is a meal.”  It really was the best soup he’d ever had, he wrote in his journal.

What he couldn’t work out is just what kind of regional spin on this dish he was having. He was accustomed to having some lime with his chicken soup in tropical climes, but it was the chicken that was unusual.  It was darker than usual, even for dark meat, and a bit tougher, but quite tasty because it had been marinated so well and it had become one with the other ingredients; it seemed as if the chicken had spent the perfect amount of time stewing in the soup.  It was fantastic, this “sopa de pollo grimalkina.”

“¿Señorita, por favor,” he intoned in his best studied Spanish, “que tipo de pollo es este?”

The young waitress stood mute, staring at him as if he’d said something offensive.

“Señorita…”

She ran into the kitchen.  After a some time there were some raised voices, and a pleasant looking man came out to speak with him.  He repositioned his pants, pulling them up by his belt over his rounded stomach.  He wiped the sweat from his bald pate and ran the hands through the hair on the sides of his head.

“Señor, is everything all right with your lunch?”

“Yes, yes.  The soup is outstanding, but I think the young lady misunderstood.  I merely want to know what type of chicken this is.  Is it a rooster?  Is it a feral island species?  What is it?”

“Well, señor, thank you.  But this is a family recipe, a secret recipe that we just can’t share.  The cook, my wife, would not allow me back into the conjugal bed if she knew I told you.  It is her special recipe.”

“I see, so her family’s name must have been Grimalkina, yes?”

“Ah… um… yes, of course.  I will tell her you enjoy it very much.  I will have my daughter bring you a mojito, on the house, as you say.”

“Well, thank you.”

The man returned to the kitchen, and within a minute the young woman returned with the drink.  Quite strong, he thought.  Having the strongest mojito ever, he wrote in his journal.  This will get me shit-faced in this heat.

Upon finishing his lunch he asked to speak to the man again, and thanked him for the drink anew, and added, “compliments to the chef, tell your wife she made the best soup I have ever tasted.”

As he left, he stopped a few steps away from the restaurant in the street.  This was a “paladar” after all, he reviewed to himself; this is their home.  I bet if I looked around out back I can find the coop and see the chickens, maybe a picture with my phone…

He crept up the side of the house, walking gingerly around the boxes and buckets.  The thick pink and red hibiscus shrubs provided cover from a direct sight-line from the kitchen.  At the back of the yard he found no coop or chicken cages.  There was an odd corrugated metal garbage can that seemed ancient below a mango tree.  Some odd tufts spread around the base of the tree.  As he came nearer he shuddered, his stomach seemed to need to float out of his body through his chest.

He felt dizzy as he stood among these tufts and realized it was fur.  Fur in different colors.  He felt repulsed as he took the sticky garbage lid from the can.  He began to retch and eventually began to vomit into the can.  He vomited on what was clearly half a dozen carcasses.  Dogs?  No, Cats.

Am I swooning? he thought.  As he fell he saw the three of them coming out of the back of the house.  The man had a cleaver, his daughter had a carving knife, and the other woman, an imposing block of a human being, had a tenderizing mallet and a large pot in hands.  The last thing he heard was the tinny strains of Radiohead’s “Burn the Witch” coming from some distance.  He could not reconcile this, not here, not now.

They’re witches, he thought.  He reached for his phone, but swatted at the air instead.  He stared at the solitary stratocumulus tacked to the sky.  He felt a searing sensation reticulating sharply out from his chest, as the three heads blotted out the sky.

 

 

“I just don’t think of writing as a career.  If I had chosen that as a career, I would have failed at it, obviously.  It’s just: get the degree, get an agent, get the book, get the job, get the tenure.  And coast.  But me, I’ve always been a dab hand at introducing hardship and difficulty into my life.”

— Gary Lutz

wish you were here, the insects are legion

The dust, the arid heat, the vexillologists.  None of that made any sense there.  It was a tropical rainforest last year when we booked, and the defoliation and climate change left the place a barrens.  What gives?  

And why were there 120 vexillologists installed at dozens of tables festooned with swatches of fabrics, encyclopedic books, drawing pads and markers out there in that wasteland?  There were also the carcasses of the old denizens — piles of bones of howler monkeys, tamarins, marmosets, every imaginable bird of paradise, jaguars, tapirs, and so many more.  Everything that once lived there was now a discrete pile of bones, generally undisturbed, each life reduced to its own monticule of what once was, but the insects were legion.

Nothing escaped, and yet there we were as death tourists — gawkers of our future.  

But why the flag people?  I couldn’t figure it out.

“Why are they here, dear?”  I said to my husband.  He was embroiled in the flag drama, and as usual he ignored me.

Then an eminence at the central table rose and screamed, “I’ve got it.  I’ve got it,” then correcting himself said, “No, we have it,” he said making a sweeping gesture to the rest of the table full of white haired men.  

“We’ll undertake the usual scholarly investigations and we’ll produce a paper with the title: ‘A Review of the Changing Proportions of Rectangular Flags since Medieval Times, and Some Suggestions for the Future.’”

There was one full minute of confusion and discussion at all the assembled tables.  And then the men at the head of each table said, “Harrumph.  Yes!” in a precise counterclockwise uncoiling of their support outward until arriving at the outermost, and largest table, where a younger contingent of vexillologists were gathered.

Their representative said: “Fuck you.  Nay!  You got us into this bind, and we’ll be damned if we let you finally drive us over the cliff as we teeter at the precipice.  All you’ve been useful at up to this juncture is winning at the war of attrition.  Look around.  This was a verdant jungle last year and now it’s a clear cut wasteland.  You were part of the leadership that got us here, and we don’t trust your tired ideas, your platitudes and your do as we say, not do as we do approach.  You’re fraudulent, and you’re  mostly tired old people having lived out your life in profligacy and now bequeath us this sinking ship.  

We say fuck you, and fuck the horses you rode in on.  We’re starting our own thing in diametrical opposition to this dead horse flog of yours.  In fact, we’ve added a codicil to our manifesto, we insist that you die already because resources are scant and once we’ve banded together in a larger group — for there are more of us than there are of you, and as life would have it, there are pleasingly less of your lot everyday — we’re going to see to it that you do die before your appointed time.  You’ve fucked this up so much already.  We don’t need the extra dead weight!”

And with that spittle-filled pronouncement the newly minted “red vexillologists” marched off into the dunes that were once verdant foothills to form a cadre of revolutionary guerillas. 

“Oh, well that’s interesting,” I said to my husband.  “You know since this ecotourism thing didn’t pan out like we thought, why don’t we just fly to Mallorca tomorrow — it’s already dry there — and there remain a few puddles of fetid water where the beach once was, and you know how much I enjoy a nude beach, dear.  And voila, here we are.  Isn’t it just gorgeous here?”

 

“A writer never has a vacation.  For a writer, life consists of writing or thinking about writing.”

— Eugene Ionesco