thee istsfor manity reader

Naked Preamble

Juana weaves her homily—one uprise after another, unaware that she’s at the precipice of her irritating anecdotes.

Jean believes he deserves his honorific—the one Juana refuses to use when addressing him.

Gaffes occur in a world ruled by impertinences and reverberatory prayers.

I wish to crochet synchronized heartbeats for them, but my literary physics is pockmarked with black holes—letters and syntactic marks swept up beyond the event horizon.

But hold on, this isn’t about the serial graphemic elements indicating syntax—no, this is about love gone awry. Misanthropy, misogyny, miserliness, and misery. The human condition paradigm.

So why the tangent?

(The tangential has potential, so we diverge.)

Now, Juana deconstructs Jean’s argument and shoves him in his place: You don’t blaspheme in here!

Jean retorts: Midriff-clavichords are the only way to go. Get behind thee, Satan!

Juana says: You know, I always thought clavichord should be spelled “clavychord”—it has a jauntier ring to it. It’s zingy and fun to say, say it with me “clavychord … clavychord …clavychord …”

Jean realizes his education was fraudulent. All is relative. There is no solid ground. Nothing to rely on. No exit.

There’s a naked preamble about the paradigm of the photocopier. Transient elation ensues.

One must imagine Juana and Jean happy.

What I’m Reading:

an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents

— Aaron Tyler Hand / “Self-Portrait as Combination Taco Bell / Pizza Hut / KFC”

Meet The Beetles! (Redux)

Briefly, gentlemen, it has come to my attention that there has been an inordinate amount of “buggery” going on between you and our beetles. This will not do.

As of tomorrow at 7:00 am all those apprehended singing plaintive love songs to our collection of Coleoptera will be suspended for a minimum of one month and lose all member privileges.

Additionally there will be no more dressing up our rhinoceros beetles in little sundresses. This is not a carnival, good sirs! We are not puppeteers, this is not the Punch and Judy caper hour. This must cease.

And whomever is painting the brown beetles dayglo blue, you must stop immediately. Now the confused flour beetles are demanding to be painted fuschia and emerald green on alternating days.

Decorum, gentlemen. We are civilized men.

And stop it, stop it, with the little tank tops on the stag beetles! We are not infants. I expect these hijinks to stop immediately, but the culprit who has “toilet-papered” all our dung beetles may continue to do so on a biweekly basis.

Civilization is progressive, and we are exceptional, gentlemen. Carry on!

What I’m Reading:

I know. I’ll talk to
the wall and for once, tell all.

— Tom Clark / “Water”

Last Dose

Nothing enervates like changing midstream, he said to the garage walls, but we adapt.

William Katz, in the slipstream of placenta trip time, started anew.

Katz was 103 miles into his new life—the New England life he envisioned—when he stepped out into the heat and the hate of this particular August morning. He’d be out of Florida by midafternoon—but first, his last cafecito cubano and flan in his foreseeable future. One last stop in his accursed birth city and goodbye Miami! forever.

But the well-trod adage goes: careful what you wish, ‘cause the three fanged rattle snake has no compunctions . . . (well, it’s a well known adage in some arid places of the mind) . . . anyway, Katz was hankering for one last dose of Cuban sweetness before getting on with this next part of his life—so auspicious it was.

He could see himself making eyes at Medusa on Mount Katahdin, sparring with the Cyclops on the shores of Casco Bay, battling Scylla and Charybdis between the Quoddy Narrows.

He shook his fist in the air— you Canucks will hear from me!

Then a crystalline moment of clarity . . . Conch Key really isn’t such a bad place for placenta trip time . . . maybe I’m overreacting . . . maybe my Penelope waits there . . . patience, old man . . .

Then he slammed the cafecito and flan, pulled his pants up to his sternum, and turned south again.

What I’m Reading:

Sooner or later pain becomes too great for fear and when the people’s fear has gone the regime will have to go.

— Paul Lynch / Prophet Song

hat topic

a hat is a hat
i pulled a rabbit out of her hat
to make a hat out of her rabbit
end user philistine

What I’m Reading:

More than half of the 2.6 million people living in Miami-Dade County could be displaced if sea levels rise by 40 inches . . . Miami could have around 80,000 properties flooding by mid-century, a multibillion-dollar risk, due to the combination of sinking land and rising seas, researchers say . . .

— Eliza Relman / “Miami shows how a new kind of gentrification is coming to US cities” / Business Insider

fresh plans

we are a family of 2-beef apostrophes in a drunk bullfinch
you can donate your earlier gloats
slop them drop them + run
we r stylin’ in spaceship america
contact ur local pollution dept.

come wallow in the excrescence
eddy glimmers for bubble stunts welcome
sliver them under my doorway
fresh walls available for firing squad wannabes

What I’m Reading:

When I look at myself I see a stranger.
So obsessed am I with feeling
That I sometimes lose my way when I step free
From all the sensations I receive.

— Álvaro de Campos / “Three Sonnets”