thee istsfor manity reader

where b lillian french?

an istsfor manity film, 2016.

“Art is a sense of magic.”
― Stan Brakhage

Pandemic Haiku 3

Smog has cleared the sky
The crows are strangely quiet
Cicadas are mute

“The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publishers and the readers can and will come later.”
-Patricia Highsmith

Aleric’s Panegyric

I was listening to Barry White’s Greatest Hits when I got a preprogrammed hit from SM-N900V. So as the Love Unlimited Orchestra swelled to Barry’s “I love you, baby!” the Heliotrope unit beeped and a shot of SM-N900V’s love tincture hit my bloodstream.

I didn’t care that it was only the essence of Clementine coming through my cryoscreen, but Clemmie, as the artificial intelligence called SM-N900V, is all I needed of my life partner to see me through the next three hours on this sterile and dying planet.

As her essence reticulated through my nervous system, I saw her inside my retinas, smelled her in my temporal lobe, felt her in my fingertips — her chest against mine…

The overseer counted: “one minute to go!”And it was out the nearest exit in case of emergency. God damn, this blew me away!

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”
— Paul Rudnick

From the Academy of American Poets:

“The result of a decision made at the UNESCO session in Paris in 1999, March 21 is designated World Poetry Day, a day for cultural organizations, schools, libraries, and publishers worldwide to celebrate the art of poetry. The day is meant to ‘support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.’ … On this, World Poetry Day, we hope you will please join us by participating in a special new project to offer hope to one another: Shelter in Poems.”

(April is National Poetry Month)

Thee Istsfor Manity National Poetry Month “Shelter in” poem:

The Yahweh Quas Papa speaks: 

I was made for plague times!
For the days weeks months — for the plague year!

It’s the time for auxiliary malarial canons 
and sitars. 

Thee minute for surgical mask missiles 
and tinctures of Ayahuasca. 

It’s time for stockpiled respirators 
and acid-laced fuzz boxes & distortion pedals — 

(Just stay away from the vocoder — don’t put that in your mouth!
They have Pro Tools for that now.)

Spread your misery and pestilence over me,
broadcast it worldwide.

Spread the fusty 1970s ventilators out in an arc
and count the cobwebs on the outtake valves.

It’s the moment for snake oil salesmen &
“teetotalitarianists” & insider stock traders —
and don’t call me a wog because
I take my Viyaya Anand & Asha Bosle on the 45.

Aren’t you glad someone you knew and loved
didn’t live to see this moment?

I am.

“Writing a book is like having an empty pool in the yard and every day going out and throwing in a cup of water to fill it.”
— Behtany Ball

flarfish 1: banter squantum

Bobby C. was snipping hair when

There’s a lot of banter, but if they’re not talking about you that’s good

Uber, Smurfs

didn’t make annoying banter throughout the ride

and his penchant for fingering orifices for a short time

an opportunity to build a lasting professional relationship

who will enjoy coming once a month to have a brew/glass

find an intriguing wine list and a well edited menu from

Sagamore) in Quincy, MA. Find the best rated Quincy

Coltrane banter back and forth about Squantum

Rock, we… accompaniment to the drips of our paddles

“I don’t particularly believe in writer’s block, but I do believe that we sometimes get blockheaded about the creative process… It is NOT a problem if ideas go back under for a while… I go on walks. I swim my heart out. I meditate. I paint. Ideas never die, they just change forms.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

The Mini Macros at the End of the World

I want to live in a bathysphere.

The darkness envelopes my diving bell. I’m comfortable in my bathysphere. I’d like to live in my bathysphere. I won’t leave my bathysphere.

Underwater my screams are muffled. Underwater my vision is imprecise, edges soften, blur and blend with the water. Nothing is sharp here.

The Coelacanths make life bearable in my bathysphere; their being out there in the darkness is enough to keep me in check.

I was EFT tapping to a new horizon when I was caught up in a current that took me off the edge of the world at the northwest quadrant. My ride through space was a horrible fall into the pit of of a giant cephalopod’s mouth.

Man, it blew me away.

“People would say I portray the world in a bleak way. It’s not bleak to me. I think what is bleak is when you create a veil to make the world feel better. Literature is one place we should be able to experience bleakness and brightness and anything in between. Literature should not make people feel comfortable, it should challenge the readers.”
— Yiyun Li

Nothing Means Something

The victims were not drawn from the elites. The earliest surviving epistle asks: What of compassion? During the time of plague: What of abnegation?

The outsider is to blame for the epidemic… expulsion, exodus… divine agency…

The Oracle’s response was for a call of bones. Bones? Human bone. Recover the bones of Hesiod.

In the face of pestilential adversity call societies to bind together. The summer heat brings severe pestilence… prepare to honor thy gods.

The gods are called upon when a pestilence is particularly severe — a special intercession is necessary if we are completely overcome with superstitious dread. Yet the flautist is ambivalent. Pagan entertainment to appease the gods is failed invective for those that are deaf and unseeing. Syntax and meaning are useless. Nothing means something.

Consult the sybilline books and hold a thanksgiving feast. Wait… was that a cough?

“Don’t write it right, just write it—and then make it right later.”

— Tara Moss

Exiles In the Land of Kakistocracy

I.  A Conversation in the Time of Galamatias:

Our salad days are filled with bitter herbs and intractable roots —
Not so much a salad, but a melange
Of weeds and thistles —
Indelicate things in our mouths.

Every bite a mouthful of rot and offal —
Awful offal.

The kakistocracy is installed in the cupboards
The cups are off on a two week vacation in Wuhan.
We are mystified and malnourished.

Now I’ve had my wine…
And you look better than you did twenty minutes ago.

And you say:
The sky is a massive hole tonight —
My precious lucida is eating the universe:
Inside-out.

I can lay down and go to sleep.

The lights are receding
And the darkness is strangely pleasing.

II.  The Death of Tane:

Then there was the sickness —
So hot.

The vault of heaven darker —
Then darker —
A black sun —
At end.

It was succeeded by the shadow
Of the shadow —
Spreading —
Nearer and nearer to the pin prick
Of light —
Destroyed.

To the west—
distant—
A white effluent
Soft and yielding
Bounds off.

III.  Passage:

Crossing guards cane a woman.
She stopped traffic —
She wore a mask
She needed a cuddle —
She shook —
She hollered:
“You there, take this…”
Her eyes closed.

The wind appeared pink.

“Your mother buggered 
little boys and girls!”

“She’s a ghost,”
My mother said —

“Alone —”
As she squeezed my neck.

“Goodbye,” I cried.

IV.  Coulrophobia In The Land Kakistocracy:

Clowns are spotted in the Carolina gloaming —
Clowns with knives at the edges
Of dark woods.

I met an old man who loved
A woman who —
In whispers —
Had recently died.

He recounted his harrowing nights
Raising his hands at
An unfamiliar country.

Without spotting an actual person —
He spent lonely days
Encircled by clowns —
And a stranger…
We can not discuss.

Painful moments in our pockets.

I saw groups staring up —
Untethered —
Lost —
Exiles.

They looked small in comparison with
This Curious Refraction.

V.  A Violent Force:

Corybantic priests run —
Amuck through prickly weeds —
Bloody hands full of entrails
Chased by their sacrificial lambs and
Headless corpses —
With empty chest cavities —
Whose names were not happily chosen.

Among the monticules of ashes —
Lie dismembered heads
Mouths stuffed with testicles.

And the stranger —
Bright and Barren —
Grows stronger —
Triumphant.

“With God dead, there remains only history and power.”
— Albert Camus

Pandemic Haiku 2

The Fear Contagion:
Taking Control, Stockpiling,
She feels better now.

“Practice an art for love and the happiness of your life—you will find it outlasts almost everything but breath.”
— Katherine Anne Porter

stop.       gap.

and then there was a stop gap measure…

for the oncoming plague…

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write.  Let them think you were born that way.”

— Ernest Hemingway