thee istsfor manity reader

Shadow Is A Ruin

“Dig, Digby, dig!”

Digby stomps on his shadow in the schoolyard. He tries to blot it out because it won’t stop following him. Digby believes the shadow rains down the indignities he suffers, although he doesn’t put it that way. He tells Funti that the shadow makes his father beat him, and his mother smoke too much.

“My shadow is a ruin I don’t want to visit, Funti. My shadow causes my father to think bad thoughts, and then to act on them. It’s the reason he beats me and my mother, although mother sometimes starts it when she drinks the whiskey after she finishes the wine.” Digby has his shadow pinned by the ball of his foot.  He balls up his fists and applies so much pressure to pin his shadow his calf quivers.

“But Digby, your shadow has nothing to do in that. Do you see your shadow lurking at home when these things happen?” Funti says. “Your shadow stays out in the sun. It’s an outside thing.”

“Outside, inside, no matter. I know it’s at fault for our troubles. It lives in the walls, in the rug, in the ceiling. It moves about, Funti,” Digby says. “Just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not causing all my troubles.” 

“Let’s fly away, Funti.” Digby lifts his foot and his shadow fades away. “Let’s fly away to the other side.”

“Why does my muse only speak when she is unhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.”
— Stevie Smith

limn the nimbus

the outline of my being
on the edge of bardo-trip
25 more milligrams of lsd
subcutaneously, dear
goodbye it’s been good
and i have loved you true
this ochre light beckons
prick me know please
leave my body to the vultures
on the hillside
remove my limbs & head
orient them to the cardinal points
a cardinal is here
it oscillates wildly & ready
to take me
through a pixellating miasma
that shimmers about me
remember me to the cups & bowls
we used for porridge & tea
i’m on the right track
i see myself ahead in blue
staring back at myself
staring back at myself
& myself & my multifoliate
flowering selves
here i go before my birth again
this period before one life
& the next is
for virgins and philistines

“The unknown is a magnet.”
— David Lynch

A Day Gray February

Dark thought on a gray day —
gray in every gradation:

18% gray card gray
the ideal photographic gray

of wet city streets
& shards of east river gray

the cold of gainsboro
gray rain

dead-eye gray
pale ash gray —

the fortune teller cried last night
& auguries of apocalypse

revealed themselves
in halftone grayscale.

“Write for yourself and yourself alone. Don’t try to please anyone else, and don’t be afraid of anyone.”
— Sallie Tisdale

let be be finale of seem…

It’s all about noise. About the back and forth of improvisational counterpoint — an F flat ostinato call here, an arpeggio of the B scale in response there…  like the scale of wildfires and flash flood cycles in call and response in a dozen places across the world… it doesn’t seem to end. Ash, dirt, and water transmogrified into an inexorable mud-wall swallowing all in its path… ten feet tall and half mile wide… There is no hope of escape in his mind. It’ll be his turn eventually… The skronk squalls out of his alto saxophone demand this much… But he can’t go on, even though the drummer beats an exquisite syncopation, and the bassist picks something near the upper bout so yawling and transcendent that he considers not walking away forever. But it’s not enough. The last note he ever blows is a C major. In C, he thinks, I’ve heard that before. He drops the sax as ceremoniously as thee final mic-drop, and bares his teeth — more grimace than smile — to the two dozen assembled in the dark. He beats it for the nearest bridge of fatal height. This is thee finale of seem.

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
— Stephen King

origin myths

i found my name on a t-shirt folded in thirds on a still warm body: a nice lady named ruth was wearing said t-shirt and i was wearing an open mind that day…

i’m a truncated word-person looking for a lower case assemblage of extracted teeth in a tent full of mosquitoes (currently writing a novel without writing a novel word) and pulling nothing but the difficult out of the magician’s top hat while the magician’s bunny munches grass backstage…

you might say: i’m thee asynchronous voice over in search of a film.

age 10

fetal stage

(los autorretratos, self-portraits: left, aged 10; right, fetal stage)

 “I write because I’m unhappy.  I write because it is a way of fighting unhappiness.”
— Mario Vargas Llosa

Condone / Condemn (i dag är det tisdag)

I have no idea what she says, or what tongue she speaks. She doesn’t speak English or Spanish, and that’s all I can muster. I haven’t the slightest idea of what she is up to, out in this perpetual gloom. But she keeps saying: “I dag ar det tisdag, I dag ar det tisdag, I dag ar det tisdag…” 

I must have an odd look on my face because her lower lip quivers and her eyes well up. I don’t know what I can do for her. I offer shelter. She doesn’t understand, just repeats the same thing. I don’t know how to help. I want to help. What is she, ten or eleven years-old? How can she be out here alone? 

So I say “yes!” and give her a big old bear hug.

What else is there to do in this hard-dead world? We once contented ourselves with keeping our families safe and near. Those that were content, maybe had a close circle of friends (some circles were larger than others, some were merely small frayed arcs) — maybe we tithed and volunteered to read or feed others more needy — for some this seemed enough.

But we don’t concern ourselves with the wider world anymore. Is there a world anymore? We’re safe here. It’s all waste out there.

She doesn’t battle this bear hug and she stops speaking. I squeeze to give comfort. She evanesces. Atom by atom all that is left is air.

I’m left at the shelter doorway looking like I’m hugging myself — that is, if anyone were there to look. Who would, who could, in this darkness? I’m alone, wondering why I don’t do this more often. Hug myself.

I go back into the shelter and down the stairs to the writing room. I’m down to a ream of paper, a handful of pens, and two candles… but I must compose some lines…

 I.

Did I hear it in a dream?
Or is it a long-distant memory?
I dag är det tisdag…

A drooping of the eyelids in a sleepless
Moment
As you fight the sweep
Of darkness
Upon you. Only the whispered
Supplication
From the darkest corner
Of childhood
Releases you from penury.
Peaceful
Sleep never comes.

II.

I condone what you done…

In the wimple sun
I slapped away the wattle arm
Of the man that bred
Me to a hardened son.

I agree with your version
Of sublime reparation.

I condone what you done…

III.

Condone / Condemn

I dag är det tisdag…

“I believe that my gift in this world is not that I’m smarter or more talented than anyone else: it’s that I had a singular goal. I don’t want other stuff: friends, kids, travel. What makes me happy is writing.”

— Ann Patchett

haiku trio:

bone chill embrace

fog rolls in hissing —
a starless sky swallowed whole —
in bone chill embrace

just like sister ray said

sister ray dances
naked after vespers as
a blind rat watches

a glassful

a glass full of sea
monkeys spilled out over the
brim of deception

“I think poetry should sort of poke through your skin, shouldn’t fit you quite right. I don’t think that poetry should be ingested easily.”
— Kay Ryan

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AND STROBING SANTA

Sucking craggy rocks pebble smooth my mother walked into the wall of an opium den. She bloodied her nose, broke water, and expelled me on an ottoman. I mooned and glowed to the on/off, on/off of a stroboscopic Santa Claus.

“It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

— Robert Southey

¡es un automatismo franco y elevado!

“The best writing advice I’ve ever heard: Don’t write like you went to college.”
— Alice Kahn

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.

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

— Anne Lamott