He died with his eyes open

He died as he lived, with his eyes open.
He lived as if he'd die hoping
That he'd done a little more open-eyed living.

He died as he did, with his lips praying.
His mouth stopped what it was saying,
That he'd given for an answer all his giving.

He left open-lidded, with his mind seeing.
He saw what's for only the dead or the leaving,
But he blinked and missed out on the meaning.


by Ken

If it feels like a mental illness...

you've got a problem being logical,
or you can't scan the logic how its
laid out, and you can only speculate.

you can communicate it, but are you
just an explainer, a blah-blah to nowhere?
spend a tearless day, no inappropriate laughter?

if it feels like you want to be out all
night in the wind, and that's something
you've seen on television that's sick, is it?

Get your nose checked, or your feet for no good reason.
Multiple times swear in an hour while feeling anger.
Wishing it were another in every season.


Dr. Donna Thong
"Please have a professional take a look at that holiday 4U."

palm springs trick room

decor is prim with terror: legs and columns,
thin at the bottoms, holding their breath.

lines form only to dis- and reappear
with interruptions of fluffiness, a mirror.

surface film shows accumulation of time;
lack of clutter lets breathe the memories.


by Mike

ugly chill

you choose diamonds because they're the hardest
and they reflect everything to the point of fire, but

no alternate turning planet, in your gut, not even acid,
can stain high noon for wholly bad and insane actions

a dog can neck pivot scan for molecular waves, but
the only answer is that it's new, we've broken a record

but even mushrooms can grow in this second rate
code red horror blizzard while everything changes


Jan & Connie

pain skull

i felt something come over me
looked and saw it floating in front of me
a sinister pain skull back lit with red

wake howling from a night of not dreaming
many have tried seeing clearly with their
spirits draining into pillows behind them

The Real Pig

Do you see this wound here on my thumb
it looks ok more or less maybe even a paper cut
but what you didn't catch was the CHUNK mis-
sing outta that thing yesterday like I thought I'd maybe
needa STITCH or sunthing it was gouged so bad,
and uh, and here i am sitting in my cute plaid jacket and
you hear me tell my bitch she'd prolly like 2 strolls a day
and how that's never happened, an it prolly never will
and watch her, sunthing REAL I can help, turn and CRY.

I was slicing potatoes on the back of a cheese grater
and even while I worried I was getting too close,
flesh jammed down on its own disaster, and ever
after, have been wondering if some HUMAN simmered
in a 350 oven for an hour and a half and served it-
self to others in the various incarnations and reheatings.
It was a diamond cut with fat and skin on just the
one flat end, so no way to tell from the HAM in the GRATIN.
But who is the REAL pig who won't let his charges WALK?

Is Saliva Meat?

We call them rockers in this environment, where no one else is catatonic. Some see the many-legged harbingers of decomposition, others blind to any over-self. You might be tripping this wild natural filigree that's really an afterimage from the wallpaper in the men's or the back of a phonics workbook. Purple and red. There could be as many exclusive trademarks as flippers on a snowflake and still be the same psychedelic cutout rorschach family tree. Shadows split two ways here. Light, too, available in any direction. You wonder if it makes you a carnivore just swilling your own spit.

where we're sitting now
is so far into posterity
that it's a dizzying needle tip

as i dangle, unending state
wonder if it stops, when
, how am i connected

a flash cube might take away
all your time dependency
or a strobe light

last of the front-line genetic minorities
at a vertiginous future zenith
victimizing the right


Jan Jansdaad 
"Jan Jansdaad is Jan's dad Jan's dead daughter."

Plank @ swordpoint

Ken kneels before the Chama in her elaborate cardboard temple:

To avoid muttering to myself I guess it's better to have a focus. I have not stepped behind this black curtain for you know how long. Chama, in her gothic eyebrow pencil, expresses contempt by not changing her expression at all. It's just that life is terrifying, life seems dangerous right now. I'm afraid, well actually I'm afraid of you. It's been you all along. Chama, not even breathing much, shrewdly conveys a curtain of black with swirls of dark brown and maroon. A mixed bitch yips. "Ken... Ken..." Ken realizes he is whispering his own name, as a prompt, to God. Her unchanging screensaver now appears to be projecting empathy, but toward a target standing just behind him and maybe to his left.


Raga Darbari Rudra Veena

moon-corona-stars

Even the innocuous and virtually unknown text formerly in this space was spirited away by the Mthyuh Preservation Society. PIGS OFF!

Chama as Moonflower

Retrograde echo: Monster Poinsettia

In this forest we give fear, alms to the Begging
Rajah, who straddles a red-eyed dog named
Shab. M' lord, your palms once carried, gave
Vajras as gifts, cupped milk curd and batteries.
Once, riding home to the Moist Pinkish Cave
From a tour of generosities, which were your
Fetish, you came upon a poinsettia as high as
The Fordamal Chank, at Chukka. Its star-shape
Mouths bobbed in thickets of plaited wondry;
It's hunger smelt rough and good and buttry;
But as your fingers slid thru the crinkled folds
In bliss, there was a neuro-chemical stab,
Your eyes rolled, and the Monster Poinsettia's
Incisors chopped your hands off at the wrists.