am (probably) naughty

Huh?

I renounce.

Friend or enemy?

A place “where there is no darkness?”

Huh?

Since thee Chump’s ketches run low, mizzen-masted abominations, out of the thick, cloudy dregs at a barrel’s wake chucked overboard, you should stand at attention. Stay attached to your “telescreen!”

Havoc ensues if thee goat’s thrash goes unslaked.

Dada-daddy sometimes looks like Big Brother—no eascape—he’s always watching you.

Are you a recidivist? A lemon exiting a household on fire, occasionally writing on wallpapers graffitied by cherubim?

Are you gaffe-gobbler bragging of decathlons you fixed—the outcome certain to pay-off big in your favor?

If so, you are a randy gobbler! A paperweight sorbet raider whose neighbors have elided to the Ministry of Love.

As disincentives go, the best I can offer is The Wicker Mandible and a general lack of cohesion and sense. Choose!

All is:

A. aleatory and atonal

B. detritus and straightjacketed

C. eggheaded and folkloric

(you must choose one pair from the above)

There isn’t a trace of a muse within 63 leagues of the epicenter.

Fend for yourself. Forget. Endure.

For I am (probably) naughty.

What I’m Reading:

“I used my first and middle name to be
remembered. My last name belonged
to a deadbeat dad.”

— Emanuel Xavier / “Old Pro”

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vilest of audiences

A Caesura

The congregation says: You seem to have no place to insert this enema.

A simple conjuring would do, but I abjure.

Dividing wallpaper between two cherubim can be such a bore. So I relent: Make two wounds, two hollows, and maw away!

A congregant sidesteps a refined and luminous dessert that has divided the household against itself. Another, sinews aglow, fuses vulgar carbohydrates and overpowers all other macronutrients.

Virgil decides to make a wager: I bet two more light-years on when the procession will begin—a normal lifetime!

I become aware of the expectations.

I corrode and quicksand on the threshold—two seconds short of aplomb. A curtain is raised to the vilest of audiences.

A spirochete tells a virus: A serpent, a wren, and two sexolets walk into a bar …

The orchestra strikes up a deafening rendition of “Get Dancin’.” Dry, wind-blown, leaves gyre in the corners.

The Cardinal slavers, the Archbishop tweets, and a vineyard prodigy asks for more time.

The genealogy and extinction of the great auks is on everyone’s mind.

I close my eyes during a caesura.

What I’m Reading:

“My god, he was still
there. Like something prayed for
by a man with no mouth.”

— Ocean Vuong / “The Bull” / Time Is A Mother

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backlit by sun

Scabs (tanka)

Why so many scabs?
She asks, unsure of my face.
I have been in love,
I say, dark, backlit by sun.
She morphs into a cloudlet.

What I’m Reading:

“In the evenings, we read novels in separate rooms
or in the same room and it makes no difference,
a compression that would interest me if it were someone else’s loneliness…”

— Elisa Gonzalez / “Grand Tour of Our Disintegration”

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most-heated day

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun”

— Audre Lorde / “Coal”


“Life is nothing how he expected it would be when he was young and living under the delusion that things could be controlled. Nothing can be controlled. Only endured.”

— Blake Crouch / Recursion


“I’m going to make a poem out of nothing.
You and I will be the protagonists.
Our emptiness, our loneliness,
the deadly boredom, the daily defeats:”

— Luis Alberto de Cuenca / “William of Aquitaine Returns”


“And I wondered about how the real is no longer real, how misinformation and disinformation have led to a decline in trust in traditional sources of authority. I wanted to understand where all this might lead.”

— Paul Lynch / on Prophet Song / The Guardian


“We could help you feed every nation, commune  
with the all-seeing sentient energy that palpitates  
through all known forms of matter.  
Nah! they said. Teach us to vaporize a mountain!  
Teach us to turn the moon into revenue!  
Then the Earthlings  
left a faucet running and flooded our basement.”

— Matthew Olzmann / “The Earthlings”


“Meanwhile, a preliminary finding by the Copernicus Climate Change Service says that Earth had its most-heated day ever last Wednesday. ‘Our best estimate is that this was the first day when global temperature was more than 2 ℃ above 1850-1900 (or pre-industrial) levels…’”

— Sam Burgess / “South Braces for Summer from Hell” / Nature


“I am a prayer of fire who arrived to care for humans, then was misused to destroy
I am a prayer”

— Joy Harjo / “I Am A Prayer”

What I’m Listening To:

“Tied iron to my feet
Then watched as I
Sank down just to prove a point
Just to nail it right in

— Squirrel Flower / “Open Wound”

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your voice may

persuasion clearly displayed

dear citizen

uncover your dusty radios

you are two billfolds shy and your locutions are broken

in the froth of the bulldozer black and yellow cysts, and marshmallow wheat sideswipes remain

your wheels will be removed from the moors through the use of radiogram bullets on your broken locutions

resort to your dystopia; or, if you don’t, you will soon have your lodge broken and be removed

your voice may be paroled to the furthest bullfight ringlet except briefly during mopping season

voice-over paroxysms include:

frustration of the bullfinch; wheeler-dealer siege of the daffodil; two binges short of bilge

then, the two views without perspective will have their frames broken and be removed

these are :

1. still life of uncovered radishes on the plinth

2. fry of the bullfrog

moving forward:

every violent binge must have a persuasion clearly displayed

we need reinforcement stilts, otherwise, we have no way to reach the pacifiers

thank you for your attention

What I’m Reading:

“I’m sure I’m not alone in proleptic melancholy, that anticipatory nostalgia for what will be gone.”

— Matt W. Miller / on, “Far Away”

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fifty clichés overlong

house unstable

drift the globe on a pickaxe
annotate your work with carcasses
all palpitation and courthouses


your peroration had the lithograph
tenderness of tenterhooks

you play the gamelan tuned
to the seventh tone and fifty
clichés overlong

you gave thanks to the wrong
ideology / corporation / government


this old house unstable
somewhere between disdain
and excommunication


button down your diatribes
put down that axe
and relax

youre one good whack
from
oblivion

What I’m Reading:

“It’s hard to ignore the Earth when it slowly destabilizes beneath you as you sleep, when it unlocks secrets you never asked for or wanted.”

— Sequoia Nagamatsu / How High We Go in the Dark

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an ape hostage

give thanks 2

intimacies of detraction
foster
legacies of extraction


the paterfamilias
on a faulty
paternoster
compartments missing
a link
falling / referencing
infraestructual
loopholes
in the space / time
continuum


give thanks
for
manifest destiny
a continent
to despoil
the long view of earth
reveals
an ape hostage
to base instinct
sentient only
in delusion

we can do better
insist on it
make it so

What I’m Reading:

“Everyone expected to die in debt, and had learned not to mind. It was just a fact of living in a country on the decline.”

— Ling Ma / “Tomorrow” / Bliss Montage

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turkey aint dead

thanks (tankas +)

vision / revision
christmas tree on a car roof
turkey aint dead yet
the paint on the walls / tacks wet
three bulbs out on the light string

speakers warble / hiss
johnny mathis / let it snow
turkey aint dead yet
halloween pumpkin rotting
gnawed by raccoons + squirrels

gray sleet slicks the walk
a burp of bile caught in throat
turkey aint dead yet
the family stares you down
lions muted on tv

(repulsion / revulsion)

What I’m Reading:

“My mother always said I was bad at scissors, 
and I’ve often accidentally cut myself  
as if to prove her point.”

— Kathy Fagan / “What I was Looking For”

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flexible genie tunics

Base Taboo Landslide (Found Hybrid #112123)

1. With included cage, the landslide can be charged with concession, connection, prayer, or praise banners. The inevitability shows red when the chasm completes.

  1. Sedative grandeur under the clamber of abusive mothers:
    a. three-grammar tourists touching synthetic “O” — gently at first tinkle
    b. third-grandeur brightness by third tinkles
    c. when it comes to fourth tinkles, the landslide is turned off
    d. under cavils of stapled molars, the light-years fade

3. The “hellos!” and anniversaries can be adjusted randomly for flexible genie tunics.

4. With included cipher boys and daffodil heads, the landfall can be “putted on” wherever you want by getting rid of consultant lingo.

5. When accepting electronic proffers, pay more attention to quotidian mazes — such as high tenants, wet tenets, contaminants of bodily humors, and so on.

6. Please face chasm before using this program for the first tinkle. If there has been long-testicle non-use, please fully chasm it every two morals.

7. Remember, every wound has its day.

What I’m Reading:

“It is in the most surreal situations that a person feels the most present, the closest to reality.”

— Ling Ma / “Office Hours” / Bliss Montage

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on a groove

scratch (haiku)

ashtrays and shoehorns—
a stylus skips on a groove—
hamburger lady

What I’m Reading:

“From my bed, coverlet tucked  
under chin, I heard my father’s hand connect 
with my mother’s cheek.”

— Sarah Audsley / “A Massive Aquarium Holding 1,500 Tropical Fish Bursts”

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