thee istsfor manity reader

delusions

the things i did
the things i said

sustanability pledges
promise rings lost

betrothals cracked on the limb
the gut punch to induce wings

to traduce
to amuse

to bed for you immediately

agreed?

 What I’m Reading:

They say history is written by the winners. What if there are no winners left? What if the only thing left is the truth, ugly and raw and unforgiving?

— Kim Stanley Robinson / The Wild Shore

a module script failed

i cant move

importing a module script failed
butterfly wings detached
a planet catches
fire on the screen
truer more visceral
than life itself

we are drunk on simulacra
we are a sick clan
we are death
incarnate

waiting to bloom

What I’m Reading:

Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.

— J.V. Cunningham / “Meditation on Statistical Method”

Dear Fellow Inmates

The polling is complete! We received 40 wads, highlighting the strong internees in our upcoming respirator-led wrecks and incarcerations. 

“Towering Minds” emerged as the name for the withdrawal nasturtium garden at our grand supermax control unit.

Check out the attached foibles for the ravine tangos. Our oil rigs will include a module of single-sextet wrecks and five-sextet recidivists, with some statuettes coming in late September and the wreaths rolling out in October and November. 

We’re thrilled about the diverse extortionate manners our competence menials are eager to shed. 

More divagations will follow. Please commiserate in proportion. 

Retributions will soon follow after that.

There is NO EXIT.

Thanks!

What I’m Reading:

First, the system would slow and slow until—well, nobody knows. It could be headed to a full stop. That would take about a century. Or it might settle into a much weaker flow. Both are bad. The AMOC transports a staggering amount of energy. Like a million nuclear power plants. It is such a core element of the Earth system that its collapse would radically alter regional weather patterns, the water cycle, the ability of every country to provide food for its inhabitants. 

— Sandra Upson / “The Hole in the Map of the World” / Wired

why not?

on the city streets
loads and forces
goads and farces
no lag no latency

none that i can feel
nodules in the modules
none that i can find
no bags no vacancies

no match for rust
why not?

someone please put me back
together

What I’m Reading:

‘I shop therefore I am,’ declared the artist Barbara Kruger in 1987.

Her iconic words sum up the intensely consumerist lifestyles that, over the course of the twentieth century, came to dominate life in so many high-income cities and nations – while simultaneously degrading the health of the living planet.

— Kate Raworth / “Towards 1.5°C Lifestyles” / The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

in the unlikely event (redux)

there is something louder than your heart
it supersedes the asperity of your bones

a wind forced through an aperture moans
it sounds like a death rattle, an agonal breath

this which your mind fastens upon
will always remain impermanent
even the sun is a transient thing
it will engulf half its own planets
in 5 billion years
what is your worry now?

there is something stranger than knowledge
there is ritual and belief

a dry voice remains a dry voice
a hollow head remains a hollow head

this matters not
find solace where you can get it

What I’m Reading:

A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon

— George Bradley / “The Sound of the Sun”

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

One of these mornings we’ll get up and the weather will
be much different and much worse. We will be momentarily
annoyed. We will not for one moment be alarmed. We
understand how the universe works because we think it’s complicated.

— John Godfrey / “On the Elements”

Fascists terrify me. I’m scared whenever we get whipped up in a mob and don’t think for ourselves. There’s an insidiousness that I feel lurking ever-closer. When we don’t feel safe, or have faith things can improve, some seek comfort in being “better-than”; being in the “in-group”; causing pain. These are shallow pleasures, but if deep ones aren’t available? They suffice. That’s how the updated far-right is drawing people in. It’s extremely dangerous.

— Naomi Klein, interview with Michael Segalov / “So Many of My Ideas Get Lost” / The Guardian

And how many of our ancestors have 
already taught us: even after the world ends,  
there is work to do.

— Kyle Tran Myhre / “When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation”

As we commonly see elsewhere in our cascading climate crisis, we are robbing ourselves of the very ecosystems best suited to combat both the cause and effects of a warming planet, right when we need them most.

— Sam Keck Scott / “On the Power of a Salt Marsh” / Orion

today she split her skin
like a snake,
refusing to excuse my back
for being big
for being old

— Lucille Clifton / “poem to my yellow coat”

The wind changed its mind and remained in a contrary mood clear to the finish line: I regularly sliced through winds from the north at 17–20 mph. Headers are worse than hills — they can sap your spirit if you let them. I avoided looking ahead at the unchanging sightline. I counted my blessings: I was dry, and nothing hurt.

— Phil Blumenkrantz / “Road to Nowhere” / adventurecycling.org

I imagine an ossuary blooming in my gut, a stone well
           of tiny bones, ancestors tunneling through the cartilage,

though of course I know this is impossible: ancestors
           are supposed to stay dead.

— Liza Katz Duncan / “Owls”

What I’m Listening To: 

Choppity-chop goes the axe in the woods
You got to meet me by the fall down tree
Shovel the dirt upon the coffin lid And I know they’ll come a-lookin’ for me, boys
I know they’ll come a-lookin’ for me

— Tom Waits / “Get Behind the Mule”

dust-up at the sewers

a jack-in-the-box of new perspectives
ready and able to spew prose capes and clang
the punchbowl pronouns
we prefer bamboo soloists
to instant hobble confederates

call the department of vital fractures
send for the ensign of contested stunts
we got an election to settle

don’t vote for the tinker of dimwits!

What I’m Reading:

The globe has experienced 12 months of record warmth, with temperatures consistently exceeding the 1.5C rise above preindustrial levels that has been touted as the limit to avoiding the worst of climate breakdown.

— Damien Gayle & Dharna Noor / “Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave” / The Guardian

caught-taut & lenticular (redux)

lodged in the hippocampus
mired in the slipstream
of an articulated faith 

dashed

caught-taut & lenticular
in the shadow of nightmare
a gesture—superheated hands
on the throat 

a child

listless in mid-air
a vise foreshadowing
the pine box
lowered underground

beneath a viral-blood moon
night claws at the dawn

What I’m Reading:

Who am I to light the sky?

— Ty Chapman / “Alone in bed thinking about another breakup”