You dream
Your tongue is loosed
Upon that intractable wafer
Glued to the roof
Of your perfidious
Mouth
What I’m Reading:
“’The world is an illusion, and living is dreaming,’ I muttered.
Yet blood runs and tears gush forth.”
— Han Kang / Greek Lessons: A Novel
Sinvergüenza : Scoundrel
Infundia : Infused
Aborrecido : Abhorred
Ventura : Fortune
Abatido : Despondent
Anhelar : To Yearn For
Sollozaba : Sobbed
Deleite : Delight
Decreto : Decree
Recoveco : Nook
Rechazado : Rejected
Guiño : Wink / Hidden Message
Estan Agotadas Las Entradas : Sold out
What I’m Reading:
“Does it matter that much to know why we are so bad, so heartless and lacking in scruples? I don’t know if it does, I can’t answer my own question.”
— Marcial Gala / The Black Cathedral
we enter a dream
i breathe in water + expel air
thru vibrant blue lungs
your face fractured and crumbling fast
dark spots burst in my vision
my eyes burn
you sing in rhyming couplets
from the bottom of a dark well
incinerating the cricket chir
into a call of lustful evangel
a tabernacle of infinite alienation
before i slip away
What I’m Reading:
“Time is a mother.
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.”
— Ocean Vuong / “Not Even” / Time Is A Mother
keep away ghost
of a thousand eyes
go back to hell
where you belong
i’ve seen your lips
move out of sequence
with the haunted
sounds you dredge up
why are you dragging
a boat about
your neck
the river
what’s left of it
tells me it’s too late
What I’m Reading:
“Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk
we drink it at noon in mornings we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room”
— Paul Celan / “Todesfuge”
“I’m back inside
my head
where it’s safe”
— Ocean Vuong / “Dear Peter” / Time Is A Mother
“It’s always like that. Childhood makes us what we are.”
— Marcial Gala / The Black Cathedral
“The US was no longer number one. The ‘recyclable’ waste of other nations was shipped here instead. Migrants no longer rushed its borders. Countries had begun programs of de-Americanizing, severing ties with US companies and businesses, and levying fines and taxes in trade. Its most significant cultural artifacts, including the Constitution, the Declaration, were on loan to foreign museums, displayed in clumsily curated exhibitions that lumped them with British curios … how to raise a child in this time and place.”
— Ling Ma / “Tomorrow” / Bliss Montage
“I woke up and said
‘I have slept until now,’ and now
I have stopped sleeping altogether.”
— Laurence Wieder / “These Anemones, Their Song Is Made Up As They Float Along”
“Emissions from the motor sector could have fallen by more than 30% between 2010 and 2022 if vehicles had stayed the same size, a report has found.
Instead, the size of the average car ballooned as the trend for SUVs took off, meaning the global annual rate of energy intensity reductions – the fall in fuel used – of light-duty vehicles (LDV) averaged 4.2% between 2020 and 2022.”
— Helena Horton / “Motor emissions could have fallen by over 30% without SUV trend, report says” / The Guardian
“‘Bad to the Bone’ plays overhead and embarrasses
me. This is the worst first date ever, worse than the
sad man with the trashed Firebird in his backyard.”
— Julia Story / “‘Bad to the Bone’ plays overhead and embarrasses…”
“Earth’s vital signs are failing … Record emissions, ferocious fires, deadly droughts and the hottest year ever.”
— Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General / COP28 introductory remarks
What I’m Listening To:
“Police dem
Shoot you so young
Police dem
Shoot you so old
Police dem
Hard steel so cold
Police dem
Put in choke hold”
— Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramid / “Police Dem”
What I’m Reading:
“Hope. It’s powerful; it can change things. But you’ve got to put yourself in the way of it, let yourself feel it. Let the power of it lift you up. That’s what you’re doing: putting yourself in the way of hope. Do that and anything can happen. Start from here!”
— Raynor Winn / Landlines
ham on the wall
love on the rocks
blood on the tracks
ain’t comin’ back (home)
What I’m Reading:
“She just didn’t like taking up space.
Everyone occupies a certain amount of physical space according to their body mass, but voice travels far beyond that. She had no wish to disseminate her self.”
— Han Kang / Greek Lessons: A Novel
Doglegs and dollops—perverse agitations that might be able to help. I am alone here caring for both.
My motorway—untraveled by deadbeat descendants.
Emergency in stairway 4! Toffee stuck on my canines and it’s too much for me to manage.
Does anyone have a lead on caribou to traverse my motorway? A few housemartins perhaps? Maybe a laxative deputation on horseback?
I’m not sure we need more greatest hits medleys in a society rife with pestilence—perhaps a one hit wonder?
Hence, my motto: Just a bit of melodrama and we’re on the move closer to the asylum.
See you at the gala.
What I’m Reading:
“childhood
is only a cage
that widens
like this sunlight honest
through the clinic window”
— Ocean Vuong / “Dear Peter” / Time Is A Mother
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”
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
thee istsfor manity reader 