i prefer the plosive of implode to explode / it leaves an ashy sheen on my body / my tongue a clapper ricocheting inside a bell / my heart pealing+racing / a momentary flutter that steals my breath
my mind a guttersnipe wild in the streets / ogling the arabesques of peking ducks in chinatown windows / hurling epithets+rocks at empty storefronts+bent wrong way do not enter signs / the signs of the apocalypse long gone / a nuclear winter haze for sun
the plosive detached / hoyhoyhoyboy / floating disembodied down crumble canyon streets / storms a comin / humanity / aint we a treat
What I’m Reading:
About you: weather will taste metallic in the overnight
visuals, something lightdark, slick-liver-wet
Put a whisper into a jar, a war
trots out of your chiaroscuro head
— Carolina Ebeid / “Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera”
im stimulating the mops / the vivisectionists roiling peloton up and down the hills headed for this bike lane / im scrubbing bike lanes / drunk on artful showing / scrubbing macadam onetwothree / failed out of convenience store intrigue / campion mucosa is waving this way+that / scrubbing good on the person on a bike icon / dirt away bugbear shine / here it comes the demon pack / kick bucket fling ancillary swabs in the flickering grass / onto the left edge of the road i gogogo / at the edge of mindbender aquarium / a mopey beach type shore-bugger scream turtle scene / myriad sizes villain to mincer / the demon rush nears+i lose footing trip on my favorite mop in hand / intense feeler tingles of feeder cold water plunge into the minicab mincers moat on the float / soar over the hatchlings out of the boil / my summer of mops at an end as big villain turtle breaks for my tread / to reach the beach i reach and get a handful of sand+headless crabscorpion tail stinging the air / rebuffed by a whop of the mop / the villain+hatchling gaping / petty beaking my toes / whop in the water on the villain wattle / nothing but water in my lungs / peloton long gone / villain+hatchling+headless crabscorpion move in on my skin
What I’m Reading:
And rising up to the surface of the water clenching and unclenching The thick grey muscle and dense shoal of fish brought to just beneath The surface the grotesque bouquet of their rapidly blossoming and Shutting the crowd but as if behind glass so there was no sound Of people screaming I feel helpless and cold
southerners and vitamins felt on the drumstick artful showers / groovy serializations / trippy visual sexes innovative campground muckrakers shopper-bug cup finches / impulsions on villages
the boyfriend ogres
trippy opiates / closing serializations / including atonal flickering / experimental imagery rectangles compete positive and negative expletives lsd raging from felons of euphoria to intense aquamarine elixirs of the avant-garde
allow your head to be rearranged
What I’m Reading:
… schoolyard blotted by the dark, but its bars, drug stores, groceries, and luncheonettes swirling with the melted ice creams and spilled perfumes of colored lights
the noise would weave a net to bounce against: no wonder she’d lean from the edge and leap, yes, leap straight into it, falling through a bubble bath of air
— Jack Anderson / “Girl on a Roof”
This is the crucial distinction between the rich, or the owning class, and the rest of us. Most of us make our money from working, but for the rich this is only sometimes the case. The ability to not just have a giant income, but to have a giant income from assets your family already owns, is an economically existential distinction.
This position of ownership of the productive economy, and the social and political power arising from that, is what defines the ruling class, and it goes back centuries to the advent of capitalism in the enclosure movement.
Economist Douglas Dowd recalls the origin of capitalism in “the exploitation of workers whose farming land had been commodified by “the enclosure movement.” Those who had worked the land, free but far from rich, were swept off the land…and were transformed into desperate and powerless laborers.” The land became private property, its new owners the ruling class.
— Rob Larson / “As Much Power As the President: How Billionaires Became More Influential than World Leaders” / Mastering the Universe
in unison we sing: we have no future but ourselves our infinite realms contain our past all we will ever feel are New Periods of Pain!
— Daniel Borzutzky / “Painblank”
We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.
— David Neiwert / “The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About” / The American Prospect
I’m a Keats bot so are you our living hands held toward each other on the internet solution sweet
— Maureen N. McLane / “Haptographic Interface”
This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before . . . The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic.
— Maximiliano Herrera, to Jonathan Watts in interview / “Unprecedented number of heat records broken around world this year” / The Guardian
When I listen for what will not appear, I hear my own voicelessness amplify. My hearing is most acute when I’m naked in front of the bedroom mirror.
— Rusty Morrison / “To measure internal activity while it turns all I know to rubble”
contagion uplift the universal undercurrents the indentions in unit 145 at the rate of 751 a tiller floozy in kite-flight
the contraltos are having a hard time timepieces shot / colons missing / its 333 (really 3:33) get thee behind!
take a downer, man …
check your wallet and avoid increments / and denunciations / no denominations of 10 these thoughts make no sense these medications work all too well / or not at all
there is jackhammering to be done i can’t hear myself treading water head full of de-fused / de-funct / lightning bugs generating darkness / a heteronormative lotus
i ate the lotus and can’t remember how it goes and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes the way it’s going no one knows
i’m recommending a downgrade and a tardive dyskinesiac tardigrade a wormhole in my parietal — lobes be damned!
is that a bulge or a bugle?
or are you happy to sieve me?
who will declare us sane?
it’s time for floppy kitty it’s time for jabs and wallops by column 7B-6
you are thee loudmouth of nonconformity whispering truths to the deaf
pageboys and pompadours a friendship rich in penury a putting together of workman reflexes gymkhanas by the pound my subpoena is just one of many!
my pony is eponymous
i hear resonances of frigate birds brigantines and libertines by the tonne are you a loyalist to what you hear? do you subscribe to two pains for a fright? what lozenge expires by your tonsil?
we have these two painkillers we have subsidiary paintboxes for frippery’s sake and lumber and fritter in darkness
now explore the inside of your eyelids!
just keep away in the dark count the proclivities of hacksaws and the teeth of lunatic resolves
watch my imminent dissolve!
What I’m Reading:
Last month, the record for the world’s hottest day was broken twice, and the United Nations made a global call for action on extreme heat, to help vulnerable people, workers and economies to cope using science. Around 70% of the global workforce — 2.4 billion people — are now at high risk of extreme heat, it said.
— Carissa Wong / “What is the hottest temperature humans can survive? These labs are redefining the limit” / Nature
Even though I’ll be in the red, I’ll be under. Your footfall sounds like a peg leg stamping. Tap into your urethra with a rusty catheter and maybe you’ll strike oil. If you’re diligent, you’ll be indigent. If you read a dull book about Pol Pot it doesn’t diminish the sheen of his hair. I once wished I could use Afro sheen. I thought I might be able to stick a pic in my hair, now I buzz it to the skull. If you were a carpenter and I was a baby would you nail me to a tiny crucifix? Would you marry me anyway? Why do these neurons fire (misfire?) certain troublesome memories at random? Why are my axons so warped? What was that about?
I wish it didn’t sound like an outboard motor was running in my bathroom.
Then you harp:
“A volunteer committee of resident adult ‘Friendly Goblins’ will deliver candy (all pre-wrapped) to every apartment that signs up for a visit. The Goblins (1 or 2 per visit) will admire your child’s costume and laugh, shriek or ooh-and-ahh as appropriate. The Goblins, of course, will be wearing masks and will remain at a social distance from members of your household.”
“Seriously?”
“I’d rather listen to Victoria Williams sing ‘Boogieman.’”
“Ah, go on and file your $750 tax return, and write off your coif to the tune of $70,000. You twit!”
“You fill me with inertia!”
What I’m Reading:
Because who can look at man’s neurotic assault on the planet and find it beautiful? Man’s hubris. A hubris so almighty it’s matched only by his stupidity. And these phallic ships thrust into space are surely the most hubristic of them all, the totems of a species gone mad with self-love.
thee istsfor manity reader 