winter darkness on short day spleen light the candles in the gloaming ring the cider press with dead lilies throttle your fully illuminated deaths festoon with snacks + libation
i come to you pixilated of course off-course to see you off to a new year o happy day
What I’m Reading:
… A day will come when my body will no longer open like a suitcase to take myself on a journey where I’ll dream of never being found, where I’ll dream of never finding what I’ve lost.
I am a postmodern matador of my heterodoxy, sequenced by a semiconductor, self-referential, lady apparatchik thereof: a relativist, and at once a minimalist without a single “bad hairpiece day” in the last 30 minutes.
Here’s where I’m going with this: parlourmaid concordances at the Hourglass Beaker in back-alley Miami after the Cuban revolution (writ very small).
I was teamstering for the Debate Masochist Society. I was angling for freebies from the olive drab carbohydrate VIPs. Sorta’ like the first time Jimmy Carter visited Massachusetts—not much happened, all was natural and unpretentious, and very polite. Pleasant, say.
So I get to directing the limo drops—a Davis Jr. here, a Sinatra there, so I suppose platform appliances were important to us, and all hairspray combovers were suspect.
I was a real aggressor, 35, and ten pistol-whippings old. Pathologists need not apply.
D. was such an ideology that even some hammer and sickle purveyors with full headlamps and hairpieces shaved back their hairpiece sides to be more like the militia. Beehive banalities became trendy for money.
I feared conjunctions were missing, ligatures were frayed, and disjunctions ruled. Nothing was as linear as it should be.
This would be a difficult case.
Beehive banalities are utilitarian. They make a good geographical marmalade. Usually shiny, pataphysical, and often enjoy wearing dirndls. There is usually a cruet festooned onto something somewhere, and it’s difficult to discern a particular perversion or thistle if one is trying to work out polarity. I usually wean there.
Soemone invariably interjects with: See there, he/she is next to that banal beehive near the frost… or, you see that banal beehive there, that’s where you turn to the Nordic legation and find the battens there. They’re at least two feet tall. Two feet tall. On top of a head!
Then, there was a free jazz style skronk Mao Zedong sing along. You, with your Little Red Bookmark eloping with the railwayman.
I, insisting on Oral Care! Oral Care! over the intercom. I pictured Carmen Miranda Sichuan sockets in bilious cross country forced marches. Some screwy shit like that.
No one I knew wanted to look like him, and much less sprout the “pouffy sideswipes” he wore. But that’s exactly the halfpenny undergarment Raul Castro owed him. He drew a blabbermouth sidestep—without concentrates or work farm discretion. A faux pas.
This was going real free style now. Mao took the faun antiquarian look, while we oppressed ourselves further in the midst of our oppression. That was a good look!
We were mascot-named the Blood of Dracula Committee for Defense of the Revolution. Because … why not!
We apparatused three five-year plans for wildcat pea soups from around the world. We worked those goatherd capitalists hard. Some follies were performed and all were easily amused. I was happy to oblige. None of this bothered me because I knew I’d be the headmistress of The Institute of Counterrevolutionary Defilement.
We’d yet to produce another like Stalin or Fidel, though we mastered our molds of Papa Doc, Nixon and Pinochet.
We were batting 1.000. Turn on the presses!
Ta-da da-da, Ta-da da-da … We’re making the world safe for capitalism!
image: p. remer
What I’m Reading:
Dear Donald, Thanks for including us in your deranged Christmas message. Being Canadian means free health care and limiting access to assault weapons. In your 51st state our kids would get shot at in school and CEOs would be shot for denying health care. So no. Now piss off. Your northern neighbour
— Charlie Angus, Member of Parliament, to Donald Trump / Bluesky post, 12/25/2024
Yellow rain. Biological warfare. The Hmong. Erasure of a people’s history, negation of trauma. Shadows and truth.
First came the wars that led to other wars that led to the Secret War that became a proxy war in 1960s Laos, led by the Central Intelligence Agency. The white foreigner arrived bearing guns and bombs to lead his surrogate cause, to quell communism and use Hmong men to do his work of war. In breach of Laos’ neutral state and a deepening of secrets.
— Mai Der Vang / Yellow Rain
Nearly half the world’s countries endured at least two months of high-risk temperatures. Even in the least affected places, such as the UK, US and Australia, the carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning has led to an extra three weeks of elevated temperatures.
— Damian Carrington / “Climate crisis exposed people to extra six weeks of dangerous heat in 2024” / The Guardian
never forget you are a breathing accident of chance ample with reverberations of the impossible
— Maria Popova / An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
Yellow rain came in the midst of exodus, poison landed on the Hmong in the middle of escape. Specks descending from aircraft overhead, falling onto trees, into water, and onto skin. Specks of a mysterious substance ranging in color: red, black, white, green, and yellow above all. Specks of illness and death.
— Mai Der Vang / Yellow Rain
Every war is a dirty war. Nothing epic, no glory: only misery.
— Igort / How War Begins: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Invasion
The end of the world looks exactly the way you remember. Don’t try to picture the apocalypse. Everything is the same.
— Anne de Marcken / It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over
… Here is the talk: biological weapon, yellow spots,
apiary blame, for decades to wane and cold filed. Believe me as a
torch of this wandering that I have been digging within the origins of
redaction. Believe where I am sending you. I have been shoveling upside
down.
— Mai Der Vang / “Guide for Channeling” / Yellow Rain
What I’m Listening To:
Bigger slump and bigger wars And a smaller recovery Huger slump and greater wars And a shallower recovery Don’t worry, be happy Things will get better naturally Don’t worry, shut up, sit down Go with it and be happy Dum-dum-dum-de-dum-dum-de-da-de-da-de-dum-dum-dum-ah-ah
…sturgeon have been on earth for millions of years in the chill caspian sea…
but i’m looking for redemption in the butt end of comet hale-bopp
emaciated glue-eyed to the telescope diopter sharp-eyed for a peek of e.t. come to take me home to a higher source where star trek is 24 hours a day & star wars is now
…sturgeon are losing their scales coming apart at the seams spewing viscera this way and that…
i choose apple sauce phenobarbital & vodka a couple of teaspoons a couple of swigs a couple of new black nikes
sorry about the sturgeon, su see you at the supernova, tom
i’m going beyond the event horizon sucked into a black vortex of stars streaking cold to the next world
into the void into nothing
What I’m Reading:
The poets awoke The poets awoke one morning The poets awoke one morning to find The poets awoke one morning to find that all their words had left them Fleeing into the blackness of night that had no end
1. You are playing mechanized baseball: a ball bearing is pitched out of a hole, and the bat is a pinball flipper — and fwap! The ball bearing falls into one of a series of holes marked “single, double, triple, home run, and out.” There are vastly more outs than hits. Then you move on to submarine warfare: small plastic ships float out near the horizon line as you look through your periscope: you estimate position, hit the fire button on the handle, and BOOM! Down goes das boot!
2. You are the night’s confabulation. You don a Richard Burton affectation and on occasion you break out into song and dance, Al Jolson style, viz., a good Jewish boy doing blackface or something minstrel-like. Not to worry, you’ve run this through the department of psychological sanitation, and nothing that you do or say will offend, chagrin, or impinge upon a healthy state of mind. No, in fact, you shall be put through the “so called” ringer, and as a point of further fact you are wearing an Arab strap, and it will assist you in hitting certain notes with a certain meaning. No! No cause for alarm. This is all family friendly, PG rated, and sanitized for your protection. The buzzword to listen for: gentrification, collateral damage, enhanced interrogations, debt ceiling limits… the list is long, but you know them well. So without further ado…
3. You are Claudia’s kid — conceived at that apartment she and Terry lived in above the Garden of Eden Diner in Hoboken. Yeah, remember they were doing roadie work for Yo La Tengo that year, they even opened a couple of shows for them using the name of their first band, Rasputin’s Swim.
4. You are a case of the shakes, momma made the Shake ‘n Bake. I got the shakes, momma made the chicken fried steak. I got the shakes, momma made the whole world quake — she’s got the power you know. I got the shakes, momma said she’s going away.
5. You are the doxology of reflection in a darkened alcove. God is in the alcove. God is in the house. God is loose in there. Who let him in? Did you bait him with cerulean cookies and sugar clouds? Now God’s rummaging around. Uninvited. Unwanted. What dolts you both are.
6. You are biddable in the execrable moments before the prisoner is executed. You are Richard Burton bombast, Shakespearean affectation a notch too loud and an eyelash too wide. You are the murmuration of starlings lost in the roiling chaos in that instant before banking hard left. You are the suppurations of wounds that don’t heal three weeks out. You are the gesticulations of the man without legs as the detritus and shrapnel falls back to earth and settles on the rim of the new-formed crater. You are the child transfixed with the sky as she traces the arc of the parachute bomb’s parabola on its ecliptic. You are.
7. You are last day of November: when ladies of idle lament, and big men with boxy jackets in swimming trunks, big trunks, salute portmanteaus in the streets of Deauville. You sing, “break up to make up, that’s all we do, first you love me, then you hate me, that’s a game for fools.”
8. You are lust unbound. You just want to kiss her, “please just let me kiss you.” She wants to smash you. “I will let you smash me. Beat me with that truncheon, smash me with that truncheon.” Then she broke the spell and hissed: “disrepute!” You lodged a complaint via computer, the one on the street corner, then you had enough. You stopped.
9. You are tornado thoughts ten seconds after the weather warning has been issued.
10. You are the shrieking instrument panel on the jet spiraling earthbound.
What I’m Reading:
His father was a terrible, magnanimous being whom he ought to love first after God. Marcial felt that he was more God than God because his gifts were daily and tangible. But he preferred the God of heaven because he interfered with him less.
Well, it didn’t snow on Christmas, and certainly not in Maria’s home town by the sea.
Now, the only thing Maria wanted for Christmas was a plague doctor’s mask—with a bonafide beak protuberance for aromatics—and an ankle length black leather cloak, and the wide flat hat.
Oh, the places she could roam!
She looked under the tree and found a small box tagged with her name. She ripped the wrapping off and saw N-95 printed on the box.
Maybe next year, she said.
If there is a next year, said Mr. Munchems.
Mr. Munchems, you can be such a bore, she said to her rabbit.
Listen, Maria, you can’t always get what you want, Mr. Munchems said between nibbles of dandelion greens, but you take what you need, and pass the love along.
But Mr. Munchems, she said, in this world that seems so bereft of love and good will, what is there to take but bad vibes?
What year do you think this is kid, 1969? Bad vibes? Mr. Munchems said. You do what you can. You get ‘bad vibes’ and you turn them into … uh … uh, lemonade … yeah, lemonade!
Mr. Munchems, I think you’re nuts, Maria said. You’ve been eating to many mushrooms.
Listen, kid. Just try and make the world a little bit better place than you found it. Start here at home. Then your neighborhood. Then your hometown. Concentric circles, kid. Just circle out in ever-widening ‘good-vibe-osity!’
Maria was struck with a grand idea …
That night the family enjoyed a most good-humored meal—Rabbit Terrine.
A very merry to all, and to all a good bite!
What I’m Reading:
O Santa Claus can heaps behoove love cemetery Gypsy. Market of playing Beans’ Research, Baa Lethal tagsheep. Erp. “Kill my shabby Dog with careless BEANS. Or jellybeans Will complicate four research- Pilgrims in, lazier than the, GREEN Rebus of opium. Oh, daze!” Why shirts came RED
My webelo patriot junk mail darling Parrot of the fifth rank to the stars Starling to the abbots You joojoofrain hook face of sepulchral talents Bring me the tongue of the macerated alienist Seize the talons of the day and scarify yourself Your arms are wasted on your lugubrious torso You splendiferous boniato eater Tarot card your carotene to oblivion You voted for the orange tyrant You scooched over your scorched scotch At the venerable private club for piratical hedgefundmen You fudgy the whale inhaler Take your cookie puss and place it in your nether regions Leave me be in this time of immeasurable Inky soot sooth Be the star that plays sitar Be the raging supernova gone dark Leave me be with the vapors And my vampiric airs
II. (remixed dada fu)
The lugubrious you of me club the alienist you The Orange of stars vapors piratical cookie of scotch time hook your tongue starling inhaler soot take the venerable private wasted over you sepulchral me Whale dark scooched patriot talons joojoofrain voted scorched the bring on me Eater macerated my talents at arms for cards Darling sooth face webelo carotene to you splendiferous mail torso gone sitar And abbots seize your you in it Boniato the parrot vampiric For be airs inky the raging Hedgefundmen fudgy your leave your tarot your immeasurable are and my Day nether puss yourself the junk The oblivion the tyrant star To scarify regions supernova
What I’m Reading:
Doctors get free passes to my museum in return for there labatomies on me I am not afraid to work—I would love to fly a dirigible Nor am I afraid to be a colector of lamps— provided everyone help me.
There are no signs or border crossing guards at the edge of the Goldilocks Zone. If we cross over, no alarms will go off. Depending on where you live, you may cross over sooner than others. But unless we take dramatic action now, we may all discover what it’s like to live outside the zone. The human race-which built the pyramids and the iPhone, wrote epic love poems and invented rock ‘n roll, worshipped ancient gods and now deifies Hollywood stars—will exist in a world beyond the world it grew up in, beyond the place where our hearts were shaped and our genes were forged. We will be, in the deepest sense, on our own.
Heat will be the engine of this transformation.
— Jeff Goodell / The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
I kiss your mouth while vomitting. Death must be an exquisite thing.
— Francis Picabia / “Chimney Sperm”
We have known for more than a century about the climate consequences of burning fossil fuels. And it wasn’t just the scientists who knew. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson was warned, as have been many presidents after him. By 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil) not only knew that decades of burning fossil fuels would heat up the atmosphere, but developed in-house climate models that projected those changes with remarkable accuracy. Despite that knowledge, we have not only continued burning fossil fuels, we have continued burning them with reckless abandon. In a sense, you could say we have built a heat-fueled rocketship that is taking us, for better or worse, on a trip beyond the Goldilocks Zone.
— Jeff Goodell / The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray and yellow a terrible amber.
— Jack Gilbert / “Rain”
If the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated anything, it was how quickly and easily people were able to normalize the deaths of others, especially if they were old, sick, or otherwise living on the margins. There were a thousand deaths a day from Covid in the US alone. There were headlines and speeches and heroic doctors and nurses. And if you lost a friend or loved one, you felt the tragedy of it all. But after the initial shock and fear of Covid, the deaths became a part of everyday life. Just as the 43,000 deaths a year in the US in auto accidents no longer trigger public outcry. Or the nine million deaths globally from air pollution each year. Or starvation in Yemen and Haiti. Or casualties of distant wars. It just becomes part of the world we live in.
And so it may be, I fear, with the suffering and deaths from extreme heat. It will become part of what it means to live in the twenty-first century, something we accept and don’t think too much about in our everyday lives.
— Jeff Goodell / The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Beneath the pavement, older pavement. Beneath that, ruins. You can’t even afford the cover charge to this utopia.
— Joseph Harrington / “The Archeaology of Knowledge”
I’ve met others who believe that our neurological machinery is simply maladapted to the problems of modern life, especially in rich democracies like the US, where partisanship and political dysfunction reign and banning books is discussed with far more urgency than banning fossil fuels or educating people about the dangers of extreme heat. Hurricanes are wiping out cities on the Gulf Coast with ever more muscle, crops are failing, delivery drivers are dropping dead on the job on hot summer days and yet Matthew McConaughey is still doing TV ads for gas-guzzling SUVs. As one social critic puts it: “We are confronted simultaneously with our vulnerability to catastrophe and our profound unseriousness in the face of it. It’s as if the fires are starting to spread through Rome and all we can do is argue about the fiddling.”
— Jeff Goodell / The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
What I’m Listening To:
They wanted to know why I did what I did Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world
